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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Son of Hagar, by Sir Hall Caine
+
+
+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: A Son of Hagar
+       A Romance of Our Time
+
+
+Author: Sir Hall Caine
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 19, 2008  [eBook #26088]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SON OF HAGAR***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+A SON OF HAGAR.
+
+A Romance of Our Time
+
+by
+
+HALL CAINE,
+
+Author of "The Bondsman," "The Deemster," etc.
+
+"God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Hurst & Company
+Publishers.
+
+
+
+TO
+
+R.D. BLACKMORE.
+
+It must be an exceeding great reward, beyond all the rewards of material
+success, to know that you have written a book that is deep, tranquil,
+strong and pure. Again and again you have nobly earned that knowledge.
+Across the more than thirty years that divide us, the elder from the
+younger brother, the veteran from the raw comrade, let me offer my hand
+to you as to a master of our craft.
+
+To the author, then, of a romance that has no equal save in Scott, I
+humbly dedicate this romance of mine.
+
+H.C.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CUMBRIAN WORDS.
+
+barn=child; dusta=dost thou; hasta=hast thou.
+
+laal=little; leet=alight; girt=great.
+
+sista=seëst thou.
+
+varra=very.
+
+wadsta=wouldst thou.
+
+wilta=wilt thou.
+
+Shaf!=_an expression of contempt_.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+In my first novel, "The Shadow of a Crime," I tried to penetrate into
+the soul of a brave, unselfish, long-suffering man, and to lay bare the
+processes by which he raised himself to a great height of
+self-sacrifice. In this novel the aim has been to penetrate into the
+soul of a bad man, and to lay bare the processes by which he is tempted
+to his fall. To find a character that shall be above all common
+tendencies to guilt and yet tainted with the plague-spot of evil hidden
+somewhere; then to watch the first sharp struggle of what is good in the
+man with what is bad, until he is in the coil of his temptation; and
+finally, to show in what tragic ruin a man of strong passions, great
+will and power of mind may resist the force that precipitates him and
+save his soul alive--this is, I trust, a motive no less worthy, no less
+profitable to study, in the utmost result no less heroic and inspiring,
+than that of tracing the upward path of noble types of mind. For me
+there has been a pathetic, and I think purifying, interest in looking
+into the soul of this man and seeing it corrode beneath the touch of a
+powerful temptation until at the last, when it seems to lie spent, it
+rises again in strength and shows that the human heart has no depths in
+which it is lost. If this character had been equal to my intention, it
+might have been a real contribution to fiction, and far as I know it to
+fall short of the first deep blow of feeling in which it was conceived,
+it is, I think, new to the novel, though it holds a notable place in the
+drama--it would be presumptuous to say where--unnecessary, also, as I
+have made no disguise of my purpose.
+
+One of the usual disadvantages of choosing a leading character that is
+off the lines of heroic portraiture is that the author may seem to be in
+sympathy with a base part in life and with base opinions. In this novel
+I run a different risk. I shall not be surprised if I provoke some
+hostility in making the bad man justify his course by the gaunt and grim
+morality that masquerades as the morality of our own time, while the
+good man is made to justify his one dubious act by the full and sincere
+and just morality that too often wears now the garb of vice--the
+morality of the books of Moses. This novel relies, I trust, on the sheer
+humanities alone, but among its less aggressive purposes is that of a
+plea for the natural rights of the bastard. Those rights have been
+recognized in every country and by every race, except one, since the day
+when the outcast woman in the wilderness hearkened to the cry from
+heaven which said, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is." In
+England alone have the rights of blood been as nothing compared with
+the rights of property, and it is part of the business of this novel to
+exhibit these interests at a climax of strife. I have no fear that any
+true-hearted person will accuse me of a desire to cast reproach upon
+marriage as an ordinance. Recognizing the beauty and the sanctity of
+marriage, I have tried to show that true marriage is a higher thing than
+a ceremony, and that people who use the gibbet and stake for offenders
+against its forms are too often those who see no offense in the
+violation of its spirit.
+
+My principal scenes are again among the mountains of Cumberland; but in
+this second attempt I have tried to realize more completely their
+solitude and sweetness, their breezy healthfulness, and their scent as
+of new-cut turf, by putting them side by side with scenes full of the
+garrulous clangor and the malodor of the dark side of London.
+
+When I began, I thought to enlarge the popular knowledge of our robust
+north-country by the addition of some whimsical character and quaint
+folk-lore. If much of this quiet local atmosphere has had to make way
+before one strong current of tragic feeling, I trust some of it remains
+that is fresh and bracing in the incidents of the booth, the smithy, the
+dalesman's wedding, the rush-bearing, the cock-fighting, and the
+sheep-shearing. Those readers of the earlier book who found human nature
+and an element of humor in the patois, will regret with me the necessity
+so to modify the dialect in this book as to remove from it nearly all
+the race quality that comes of intonation.
+
+I ought to add that one of my characters, Parson Christian, is a
+portrait of a dear, simple, honest soul long gone to his account, and
+that the words here put into his mouth are oftener his own than mine.
+
+I trust this book may help to correct a prevailing misconception as to
+the morals and mind of the typical English peasantry. It is certain that
+the conventional peasant of literature, the broad-mouthed rustic in a
+smock-frock, dull-eyed, mulish, beetle-headed, doddering, too vacant to
+be vicious, too doltish to do amiss, does not exist as a type in
+England. What does exist in every corner of the country is a peasantry
+speaking a patois that is often of varying inflections, but is always
+full of racy poetry, illiterate and yet possessed of a vast oral
+literature, sharing brains with other classes more equally than
+education, humorous, nimble-witted; clear-sighted, astute, cynical, not
+too virtuous, and having a lofty, contempt for the wiseacres of the
+town.
+
+The manners and customs, the folk lore and folk-talk of Cumberland are
+far from exhausted in my two Cumberland novels; but it is not probable
+that I shall work in this vein again. In parting from it, may I venture
+to hope that here and there a reader grown tired of the life of the
+great cities has sometimes found it a relief to escape with me into
+these mountain solitudes and look upon a life as real and more true; a
+life that is humble and yet not low; a life in which men may be men, and
+the rude people of the soil need study the face of no master save nature
+alone?
+
+
+A SON OF HAGAR.
+
+
+
+
+_BOOK I._
+
+
+RETRO ME, SATHANA!
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+IN THE YEAR 1845.
+
+
+It was a chill December morning. The atmosphere was dense with fog in
+the dusky chamber of a London police court; the lights were bleared and
+the voices drowsed. A woman carrying a child in her arms had been half
+dragged, half pushed into the dock. She was young; beneath her
+disheveled hair her face showed almost girlish. Her features were
+pinched with pain; her eyes had at one moment a serene look, and at the
+next moment a look of defiance. Her dress had been rich; it was now torn
+and damp, and clung in dank folds to her limbs. The child she carried
+appeared to be four months old. She held it convulsively at her breast,
+and when it gave forth a feeble cry she rocked it mechanically.
+
+"Your worship, I picked this person out of the river at ha'past one
+o'clock this morning," said a constable. "She had throwed herself off
+the steps of Blackfriars Bridge."
+
+"Had she the child with her?" asked the bench.
+
+"Yes, your worship; and when I brought her to land I couldn't get the
+little one out of her arms nohow--she clung that tight to it. The
+mother, she was insensible; but the child opened its eyes and cried."
+
+"Have you not learned her name?"
+
+"No, sir; she won't give us no answer when we ask her that."
+
+"I am informed," said the clerk, "that against all inquiries touching
+her name and circumstances she keeps a rigid silence. The doctor is of
+opinion, your worship, that the woman is not entirely responsible."
+
+"Her appearance in court might certainly justify that conclusion," said
+the magistrate.
+
+The young woman had gazed vacantly about her with an air of
+indifference. She seemed scarcely to realize that through the yellow
+vagueness the eyes of a hundred persons were centered on her haggard
+face.
+
+"Anybody here who knows her?" asked the bench.
+
+"Yes, your worship; I found out the old woman alonger she lodged."
+
+"Let us hear the old person."
+
+A woman in middle life--a little, confused, aimless, uncomfortable
+body--stepped into the box. She answered to the name of Drayton. Her
+husband was a hotel porter. She had a house in Pimlico. A month ago one
+of her rooms on the first floor back had been to let. She put a card in
+her window, and the prisoner applied. Accepted the young lady as tenant,
+and had been duly paid her rent. Knew nothing of who she was or where
+she came from. Couldn't even get her name. Had heard her call the baby
+Paul. That was all she knew.
+
+"Her occupation, my good woman, what was it?
+
+"Nothing; she hadn't no occupation, your worship."
+
+"Never went out? Not at night?"
+
+"No, sir; leastways not at night, sir. I hopes your worship takes me for
+an honest woman, sir."
+
+"Did nothing for a living, and yet she paid you. Did you board her?"
+
+"Yes, your worship; she could cook her wittles, but the poor young thing
+seemed never to have heart for nothing, sir."
+
+"Never talked to you?"
+
+"No, sir; nothing but cried. She cried, and cried, and cried, 'cept when
+she laughed, and then it were awful, your worship. My man always did say
+as how there was no knowing what she'd be doing of yet."
+
+"Is she married, do you know?"
+
+"Yes, your worship; she wears her wedding-ring quite regular--only, once
+she plucked it off and flung it in the fire--I saw it with my own eyes,
+sir, or I mightn't ha' believed it; and I never did see the like--but
+the poor creature's not responsible at whiles--that's what my husband
+says."
+
+"What was her behavior to the child? Did she seem fond of it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, your worship; she used to hug, and hug, and hug it, and call
+it her darling, and Paul, and Paul, and Paul, and all she had left in
+the world."
+
+"When did you see her last before to-day?"
+
+"Yesterday, sir; she put on her bonnet and cape and drew a shawl around
+the baby, and went out in the afternoon. 'It will do you a mort of
+good,' says I to her; 'Yes, Mrs. Drayton,' says she, 'it will do us both
+a world of good.' That was on the front doorsteps, your worship and it
+was a nice afternoon, but I had never no idea what she meant to be doing
+of; but she's not responsible, poor young thing, that's what my--"
+
+"And when night came and she hadn't got home, did you go in search of
+her?"
+
+"Yes, your worship; for I says to my husband, says I, 'Poor young thing,
+I can't rest in my bed, and knowing nothing of what's come to her.' And
+my man, he says to me, 'Maggie,' he says, 'you go to the station and
+give the officers her description,' he says--'a tall young woman as
+might ha' been a lady, a-carrying a baby--- that'll be good enough,' he
+says, and I went. And this morning the officer came, and I knew by his
+face as something had happened, and--"
+
+"Let us hear the doctor. Is he in court?"
+
+"Yes, your worship," said the constable.
+
+Mrs. Drayton was being bustled out of the box. She stopped on the first
+step down--
+
+"And I do hope as no harm will come to her--she's not
+responsible--that's what my hus--"
+
+"All right, we know all that; down with you; this way; don't bother his
+worship!"
+
+At the bottom of the steps the woman stopped again with a handkerchief
+to her eyes.
+
+"And it do make me cry to see her, poor thing, and the baby, too, and
+innocent as a kitten--and I hopes if anything is done to her as--"
+
+Mrs. Drayton's further hopes and fears were lost in the bustle of the
+court. The young woman in the dock still gazed about her vacantly. There
+was strength in her firmly molded lip, sensibility in her large dark
+eyes, power in her broad, smooth brow, and a certain stateliness in the
+outlines of her tall, slim figure.
+
+The doctor who had examined her gave his report in a few words; the
+woman should be under control, though she was dangerous to no one but
+herself. Her attempt at suicide was one of the common results of
+disaster in affairs of love. Perhaps she was a married woman, abandoned
+by her husband; more likely she was an unfortunate lady in whom the
+shame of pregnancy had produced insanity. She was obviously a person of
+education and delicacy of feeling.
+
+"She must have connections of some kind," said the magistrate; and,
+turning to the dock, he said quietly, "Give us your name, my good lady."
+
+The woman seemed not to hear, but she pressed her child yet closer to
+her breast, and it cried feebly.
+
+The magistrate tried again.
+
+"Your baby's name is Paul, isn't it? Paul--what?"
+
+She looked around, glanced at the magistrate and back at the people in
+the court, but said nothing.
+
+Just then the door opposite the bench creaked slightly, and a gentleman
+entered. The woman's wondering eyes passed over him. In an instant her
+torpor was shaken off. She riveted her gaze on the new-comer. Her
+features contracted with lines of pain. She drew the child aside, as if
+to hide it from sight. Then her face twitched, and she staggered back
+into the arms of the constable behind her. She was now insensible.
+Through the dense folds of the fog the vague faces of the spectators
+showed an intent expression.
+
+It was observed that the gentleman who had entered the court a moment
+before immediately left it. The magistrate saw him pass out of the door
+merely as a distorted figure in the dusky shadows.
+
+"Let her be removed to the Dartford asylum," said the magistrate; "I
+will give an order at once."
+
+A voice came from the body of the court. It was Mrs. Drayton's voice,
+thick with sobs.
+
+"And if you please, your worship, may me and my husband take care of the
+child until the poor young thing is well enough to come for it? We've no
+children of our own, sir, and my husband and me, we'd like to have it,
+and no one would do no better by it, your worship."
+
+"I think you are a good woman, Mrs. Drayton," said the magistrate. Then,
+turning to the clerk, he added: "Let inquiries be made about her, and,
+if all prove satisfactory, let the child be given into her care."
+
+"Oh, thank your worship; it do make me cry--"
+
+"Yes, all right--never mind now--we know all about it--come along."
+
+The prisoner recovered consciousness in being removed from the dock; the
+constable was taking the child out of her arms. She clung to it with
+feverish hands.
+
+"Take me away," she said in a deep whisper, and her eyes wandered to the
+door.
+
+"Stop that man!" said the magistrate, pointing to the vague recesses
+into which the spectator had disappeared. An officer of the court went
+out hastily. Presently returning: "He is gone," said the officer.
+
+"Take me away, take me away!" cried the prisoner in a tense voice.
+"Paul, Paul, my own little Paul!" The woman's breath came and went in
+gusts, and her child cried from the convulsive pressure to her breast.
+
+"Remove them," said the bench.
+
+There was a faint commotion. Among the people in the court, huddled like
+sheep, there was a harsh scraping of feet, and some suppressed
+whispering. The stolid faces on the bench turned and smiled slightly in
+the yellow gleam of the gas that burned in front of them. Then the
+momentary bustle ended, the woman and child were gone, and the calm
+monotony of the court was resumed.
+
+Six months later a handsome woman, still little more than a girl, yet
+with eyes of suffering, stepped up to the door of a house in Pimlico and
+knocked timidly.
+
+"I wish to see Mrs. Drayton," she said, when the door was opened by an
+elderly person.
+
+"Bless you, they're gone, Mrs. Drayton and her Husband."
+
+"Gone!" said the young woman, "gone! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, gone--removed--shifted."
+
+"Removed--shifted?" The idea seemed to struggle its slow way into her
+brain.
+
+"In course--what else, when the big hotel fails and he loses his job?
+Rents can't be paid on nothing a week, and something to put in the mouth
+besides."
+
+"Gone? Are you mad? Woman, think what you're saying. Gone where?"
+
+"How do I know where? Mad, indeed! I'll not say but other folk look a
+mort madder nor ever I looked."
+
+The young woman took her by the shoulder.
+
+"Don't say that--don't say you don't know where they're gone. They've
+got my child, I tell you; my poor little Paul.
+
+"Oh, so you're the young party as drowned herself, are you? Well,
+they're gone anyways, and the little chit with them, and there's no
+saying where. You may believe me. Ask the neighbors else."
+
+The young woman leaned against the door-jamb with a white face and great
+eyes.
+
+"Well, well, how hard she takes it. Deary me, deary me, she's not a bad
+sort, after all. Well, well, who'd ha' thought it! There, there, come in
+and sit awhile. It is cruel to lose one's babby--and me to tell her,
+too. Misbegotten or not, it's one's own flesh and blood, and that's what
+I always says."
+
+The young woman had been drawn into the house and seated on a chair. She
+got up again with the face of an old woman.
+
+"Oh, I'm choking!" she said.
+
+"Rest awhile, do now, my dear--there--there."
+
+"No, no, my good woman, let me go."
+
+"Heaven help you, child; how you look!"
+
+"Heaven has never helped me," said the young woman. "I was a Sister of
+Charity only two years ago. A man found me and wooed me; married me and
+abandoned me; I tried to die and they rescued me; they separated me from
+my child and put me in an asylum; I escaped, and have now come for my
+darling, and he is gone."
+
+"Deary me, deary me!" and the old woman stroked her consolingly.
+
+"Let me go," she cried, starting up afresh. "If Heaven has done nothing
+for me, perhaps the world itself will have mercy."
+
+The ghastly face answered ill to the grating laugh that followed as she
+jerked her head aside and hurried away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IN THE YEAR 1875.
+
+
+It was Young Folks' Day in the Vale of Newlands. The summer was at its
+height; the sun shone brightly; the lake to the north lay flat as a
+floor of glass, and reflected a continent of blue cloud; the fells were
+clear to their summits, and purple with waves of heather. It was
+noontide, and the shadows were short. In the slumberous atmosphere the
+bees droned, and the hot air quivered some feet above the long, lush
+grass. The fragrance of new-mown hay floated languidly through a
+sub-current of wild rose and honeysuckle. In a meadow at the foot of the
+Causey Pike tents were pitched, flags were flying, and crowds of men,
+women, and children watched the mountain sports.
+
+In the center of a group of spectators two men, stripped to the waist,
+were wrestling. They were huge fellows, with muscles that stood out on
+their arms like giant bulbs, and feet that held the ground like the
+hoofs of oxen. The wrestlers were calm to all outward appearance, and
+embraced each other with the quiet fondling of lambs and the sinuous
+power of less affectionate creatures. But the people about them were
+wildly excited. They stopped to watch every wary movement of the foot,
+and craned their necks to catch the subtlest twist of the wrist.
+
+"Sista, Reuben, sista! He'll have enough to do to tummel John Proudfoot.
+John's up to the scat to-day, anyways."
+
+"Look tha! John's on for giving him the cross-buttock."
+
+John was the blacksmith, a big buirdly fellow with a larger blunt head.
+
+"And he has given it too, has John."
+
+"Nay, nay, John's doon--ey, ey, he's doon, is John."
+
+One of the wrestlers had thrown the other, and was standing quietly over
+him. He was a stalwart young man of eight-and-twenty, brown-haired,
+clear-eyed, of a ruddy complexion, with a short, thick, curly beard, and
+the grace and bearing that comes of health and strength and a complete
+absence of self-consciousness. He smiled cheerfully, and nodded his head
+in response to loud shouts of applause. "Weel done! Verra weel done!
+That's the way to ding 'em ower! What sayst tha, Reuben?"
+
+"What a bash it was, to be sure!"
+
+"What dusta think you of yon wrestling, ey, man?"
+
+"Nay, nay, it's verra middling."
+
+"Ever seen owt like it since the good auld days you crack on sa often,
+auld man?"
+
+"Nay, he doont him verra neat, did Paul--I will allow it."
+
+"There's never a man in Cumberland need take a hand with young Paul
+Ritson after this."
+
+"Ey, ey; he's his father's son."
+
+The wrestler, surrounded by a little multitude of boys, who clung to his
+sparse garments on every side, made his way to a tent.
+
+At the same moment a ludicrous figure forced a passage through the
+crowd, and came to a stand in the middle of the green. It was a
+diminutive creature, mounted on a pony that carried its owner on a
+saddle immediately below its neck, and a pair of paniers just above its
+tail. The rider was an elderly man with shaggy eyebrows and beard of
+mingled black and gray. His swarthy, keen wizened face was twisted into
+grotesque lines beneath a pair of little blinking eyes, which seemed to
+say that anybody who refused to see that they belonged to a perfectly,
+wideawake son of old Adam made a portentous mistake. He was the mountain
+peddler, and to-day, at least, his visit was opportune.
+
+"Lasses, here's for you! Look you, here's Gubblum Oglethorpe, pony and
+all."
+
+"Why, didsta ever see the like--Gubblum's getten hissel into a saddle!"
+
+Gubblum, from his seat on the pony, twisted one half of his wrinkled
+face awry, and said:
+
+"In course I have! But it's a vast easier getting into this saddle nor
+getting out of it, I can tell you!"
+
+"Why, how's that, Gubblum?" cried a voice from the crowd.
+
+"What, man, did you never hear of the day I bought it?"
+
+Sundry shakes of many heads were the response.
+
+"No?" said Gubblum, with an accent of sheer incredulity, and added,
+"Well, there is no accounting for the ignorance of some folks."
+
+"What happened to you, Gubblum?"
+
+Gubblum's expression of surprise gave place to a look of condescension.
+He lifted his bronzed and hairy hand to the rim of his straw hat to
+shade his eyes from the sun.
+
+"Well, when I got on to auld Bessy, here, I couldn't get off
+again--that's what happened."
+
+"No? Why?"
+
+"You see, I'd got my clogs on when I went to buy the saddle in Kezzick,
+and they're middling wide in the soles, my clogs are. So when I put my
+feet into the stirrups, there they stuck."
+
+"Stuck!"
+
+"Ey, fast as nails! And when I got home to Branth'et Edge I couldn't get
+them out. So our Sally, she said to my auld woman, 'Mother,' she said,
+'we'll have to put father into the stable with the pony and fetch him a
+cup of tea.' And that's what they did, and when I had summat into me I
+had another fratch at getting out of the saddle; but I couldn't manish
+it; so I had--what you think I had to do?"
+
+"Nay, man, what?"
+
+"I had to sleep all night in the stable on Bessy's back!"
+
+"Bless thee, Gubblum, and whatever didsta do?"
+
+"I'm coming to that, on'y some folks are so impatient. Next morning that
+lass of mine, she said to her mother, 'Mother,' she said, 'wouldn't it
+be best to take the saddle off the pony, and then father he'll sure come
+off with it?'"
+
+"And they did do it?"
+
+"Ey, they did. They took Bessy and me round to the soft bed as they
+keeps maistly at the back of a stable, and they loosened the straps and
+gave a push, and cried 'Away.'"
+
+"Weel, man, weel?"
+
+"Weel! nowt of the sort! It wasn't weel at all! When I rolled over I was
+off the pony, for sure; but I was stuck fast to the saddle just the
+same."
+
+"What ever did they do with thee then?"
+
+"I'm coming to that, too, on'y some folks are so mortal fond of hearing
+theirselves talk. They picked me up, saddle and all, and set me on the
+edge of the kitchen dresser. And there I sat for the best part of a
+week, sleeping and waking, and carding and spinning, and getting fearful
+thin. But I got off at last, I did!" There was a look of proud content
+in Gubblum's face as he added, "What a thing it is to be eddicated! We
+don't vally eddication half enough!"
+
+A young fellow--it was Lang Geordie Moore--pushed a smirking face
+between the shoulders of two girls, and said:
+
+"Did you take to reading and writing, then, Gubblum, when you were on
+the kitchen dresser?"
+
+There was a gurgling titter, but, disdaining to notice the interruption,
+Gubblum lifted his tawny face into the glare of the sun, and said:
+
+"It was my son as did it--him that is learning for a parson. He came
+home from St. Bees, and 'Mother,' he said, before he'd been in the house
+a minute, 'let's take fathers clogs off, and then his feet will come
+out of the stirrups."
+
+A loud laugh bubbled over the company. Gubblum sat erect in the saddle
+and added with a grave face:
+
+"That's what comes of eddication and reading the Bible and all o' that!
+If I had fifty sons I'd make 'em all parsons."
+
+The people laughed again, and crowed and exchanged nods and knowing
+winks. They enjoyed the peddler's talk, and felt an indulgent tenderness
+for his slow and feeble intellect. He on his part enjoyed no less to
+assume a simple and shallow nature. A twinkle lurked under his bushy
+brows while he "smoked the gonies." They laughed and he smiled slyly,
+and both were satisfied.
+
+Gubblum Oglethorpe, peddler, of Branth'et Edge, got off his pony and
+stroked its tousled mane. He was leading it to a temporary stable, when
+he met face to face the young wrestler, Paul Ritson, who was coming from
+the tent in his walking costume. Drawing up sharply, he surveyed Paul
+rapidly from head to foot, and then asked him with a look of
+bewilderment what he could be doing there.
+
+"Why, when did you come back to these parts?"
+
+Paul smiled.
+
+"Come back! I've not been away."
+
+The old man looked slyly up into Paul's face and winked. Perceiving no
+response to that insinuating communication, his wrinkled face became
+more grave, and he said:
+
+"You were nigh to London three days ago."
+
+"Nigh to London three days ago!" Paul laughed, then nodded across at a
+burly dalesman standing near, and said: "Geordie, just pinch the old
+man, and see if he's dreaming."
+
+There was a general titter, followed by glances of amused inquiry. The
+peddler took off his hat, held his head aside, scratched it leisurely,
+glanced up again at the face of young Ritson, as if to satisfy himself
+finally as to his identity, and eventually muttered half aloud:
+
+"Well, I'm fair maizelt--that's what I am!"
+
+"Maizelt--why?"
+
+"I could ha' sworn I saw you at a spot near London three days ago."
+
+"Not been there these three years," said Paul.
+
+"Didn't you wave your hand to me as we went by--me and Bessy?"
+
+"Did I? Where?"
+
+"Why, at the Hawk and Heron, in Hendon."
+
+"Never saw the place in my life."
+
+"Sure of that?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+The grave old head dropped once more, and the pony's head was held down
+to the withered hand that scratched and caressed it. Then the first idea
+of a possible reason on Paul's part for keeping his movements secret
+suggested itself afresh to Gubblum. He glanced soberly around, caught
+the eye of the young dalesman furtively, and winked again. Paul laughed
+outright, nodded his head good-humoredly, and rather ostentatiously
+winked in response. The company that had gathered about them caught the
+humor of the situation, and tittered audibly enough to provoke the
+peddler's wrath.
+
+"But I say you have seen it," shouted Gubblum in emphatic tones.
+
+At that moment a slim young man walked slowly past the group. He was
+well dressed, and carried himself with ease and some dignity, albeit
+with an air of listlessness--a weary and dragging gait, due in part to a
+slight infirmity of one foot. When some of the dalesmen bowed to him his
+smile lacked warmth. He was Hugh Ritson, the younger brother of Paul.
+
+Gubblum's manner gathered emphasis. "You were standing on the step of
+the Hawk and Heron," said he, "and I waved my hand and shouted 'A canny
+morning to you, Master Paul'--ey, that I did!"
+
+"You don't say so!" said Paul, with mock solemnity. His brother had
+caught the peddler's words, and stopped.
+
+"But I do say so," said Gubblum, with many shakes of his big head. Let
+any facetious young gentleman who supposed that it was possible to make
+sport of him, understand once for all that it might be as well to throw
+a stone into his own garden.
+
+"Why, Gubblum," said Paul, smothering a laugh, "what was I doing at
+Hendon?"
+
+"Doing! Well, a chap 'at was on the road along of me said that Master
+Paul had started innkeeper."
+
+"Innkeeper!"
+
+There was a prolonged burst of laughter, amid which one amused patriarch
+on a stick shouted: "Feel if tha's abed, Gubblum, ma man!"
+
+"And if I is abed, it's better nor being in bed-lam, isn't it?" shouted
+the peddler.
+
+Then Gubblum scratched his head again, and said more quietly: "It caps
+all. If it wasn't you, it must ha' been the old gentleman hissel'."
+
+"Are we so much alike? Come, let's see your pack."
+
+"His name was Paul, anyways."
+
+Hugh Ritson had elbowed his way through the group, and was now at
+Gubblum's elbow listening intently. When the others had laughed, he
+alone preserved an equal countenance.
+
+"Paul--what?" he asked.
+
+"Nay, don't ax me--I know nowt no mair--I must be an auld maizelin, I
+must, for sure!"
+
+Hugh Ritson turned on his heel and walked off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The Vale of Newlands runs north and south. On its east banks rise the
+Cat Bell fells and the Eel Crags; on the west rise Hindscarth and
+Robinson, backed by Whiteless Pike and Grasmoor. A river flows down the
+bed of the valley, springing in the south among the heights of Dale
+Head, and emptying into Bassenthwaite on the north. A village known as
+Little Town stands about midway in the vale, and a road runs along each
+bank. The tents were pitched for the sports near the bed of the valley,
+on the east side of the Newlands Beck. On the west side, above the road,
+there was a thick copse of hazel, oak, and birch. From a clearing in
+this wood a thin column of pale blue smoke was rising through the still
+air. A hut in the shape of a cone stood a few yards from the road. It
+was thatched from the ground upward with heather and bracken, leaving
+only a low aperture as door. Near the hut a small fire of hazel sticks
+crackled under the pot that swung from a forked triangle of oak limbs.
+Fagots were stacked at one end of the clearing; a pile of loose bark lay
+near. It was a charcoal pit, and behind a line of hurdles that were
+propped with poles and intertwined with dead grass and gorse, an old man
+was building a charcoal fire.
+
+He was tall and slight, and he stooped. His eyes were large and heavy;
+his long beard was whitening. He wore a low-crowned hat with broad brim,
+and a loose flannel jacket without a waistcoat. Most of us convey the
+idea that to our own view we are centers of our circles, and that the
+universe revolves about us. This old man suggested a different feeling.
+To himself he might have been a thing gone somehow out of its orbit.
+There was a listless melancholy, a lonely weariness in his look and
+movements. An old misery seemed to sit on him.
+
+His name was Matthew Fisher; but the folk of the country-side called him
+Laird Fisher. The dubious dignity came of the circumstance that he was
+the holder of an absolute royalty on a few acres of land under
+Hindscarth. The royalty had been many generations in his family. His
+grandfather had set store by it. When the lord of the manor had worked
+the copper pits at the foot of the Eel Crags, he had tried to possess
+himself of the royalties of the Fishers. But the peasant family resisted
+the aristocrat. Luke Fisher believed there was a fortune under his feet,
+and he meant to try his own luck on his holding some day. That day never
+came. His son, Mark Fisher, carried on the tradition, but made no effort
+to unearth the fortune. They were a cool, silent, slow, and stubborn
+race. Matthew Fisher followed his father and his grandfather, and
+inherited the family faith. All these years the tenders of the lord of
+the manor were ignored, and the Fishers enjoyed their title of courtesy
+or badinage. When Matthew was a boy there was a rhyme current in the
+vale which ran:
+
+"There's t' auld laird, and t' young laird, and t' laird among t' barns.
+If iver there comes another laird, we'll hang-him up by t' arms."
+
+There is a tough bit of Toryism in the grain of these northern
+dalesfolk. Their threat was idle; no other laird ever came. Matthew
+married, and had one daughter only. He farmed his few acres with poor
+results. The ground was good enough, but Matthew was living under the
+shadow of the family tradition. One day--it was Sunday morning, and the
+sun shone brightly--he was rambling by the Po Beck that rose on
+Hindscarth and passed through his land, when his eye glanced over a
+glittering stone that lay among the pebbles, at the bottom of the
+stream. It was ore, good full ore, and on the very surface. Then the
+Laird Fisher sunk a shaft and all his earnings with it in an attempt to
+procure iron or copper. The dalespeople derided him, but he held
+silently on his way.
+
+"How dusta find the cobbles to-day--any softer?" they would ask.
+
+"As soft as the hearts of most folk," he would answer, and then add in a
+murmur, "and maybe a vast harder nor their heads."
+
+The undeceiving came at length, and then the Laird Fisher was old and
+poor. His wife died broken-hearted. After that the laird never rallied.
+The breezy irony of the dalesfolk did not spare the old man's bent head.
+"He's brankan" (holding up his head) "like a steg swan," they would say
+as he went past. The shaft was left unworked, and the holding lay
+fallow. Laird Fisher took wage from the lord of the manor to burn
+charcoal in the copse.
+
+The old man had raised his vertical shaft, and was laying the oak limbs
+against it, when a girl of about eighteen came along the road from the
+south, and clambered over the stile that led to the charcoal pit. She
+was followed by a sheep-dog, small and wiry as a hill-fox.
+
+"Is that thee, Mercy?" said the charcoal-burner from the fire, without
+turning.
+
+The girl was a pretty little thing; yet there was something wrong with
+her prettiness. One saw at once that her cheeks should have been pink
+and white like the daisy, and that her hair, which was yellow as the
+primrose, should have tumbled in wavelets about them. There ought to
+have been sunshine in the blue eyes, and laughter on the red lips, and
+merry lilt in the soft voice. But the pink had faded from the girl's
+cheek; the shadow had chased the sunshine from her eyes; her lips had
+taken a downward turn, and a note of sadness had stolen the merriment
+from her voice.
+
+"It's only your tea, father," she said, setting down a basket. Then
+taking up a spoon that lay on the ground, she stirred the mess that was
+simmering over the fire. The dog lay and blinked in the sun.
+
+A rabbit rustled through the coppice, and a jay screeched in the distant
+glade. But above all came the peals of merry laughter from below. The
+girl's eyes wandered yearningly to the tents over which the flags were
+flying.
+
+"Do you hear the sports, father?" she said.
+
+"Ey, lass, there's gay carryin's-on. They're chirming and chirping like
+as many sparrows." The old man twisted about. "I should have thowt as
+thou'd have been in the thick of the thrang thysel', Mercy, carryin' on
+the war."
+
+"I didn't care to go," said Mercy in an undertone.
+
+The old man looked at her silently for a moment.
+
+"Ways me, but thoos not the same heartsome lass," he said, and went on
+piling the fagots around the shaft. "But I count nowt of sec wark," he
+added, after a pause.
+
+Little Mercy's eyes strayed back from the bubbling pot to the tents
+below. There was a shout of applause.
+
+"That's Geordie Moore's voice," thought Mercy. She could see a circle
+with linked hands. "They're playing the cushion game," she said under
+her breath, and then drew a long sigh.
+
+Though she did not care to go to the sports to-day, she felt, oh! so
+sick at heart. Like a wounded hare that creeps into quiet ambush, and
+lies down on the dry clover to die, she had stolen away from all this
+noisy happiness; but her heart's joy was draining away. In her wistful
+eyes there was something almost cruel in this bustling merriment, in
+this flaunting gayety, in this sweet summer day itself.
+
+The old charcoal-burner had stepped up to where the girl knelt with
+far-away eyes.
+
+"Mercy," he said, "I've wanted a word with you this many a day."
+
+"With me, father?"
+
+The girl rose to her feet. There was a look of uneasiness in her face.
+
+"You've lost your spirits--what's come of them?"
+
+"Me, father?"
+
+The assumed surprise was in danger of breaking down.
+
+"Not well, Mercy--is that it?"
+
+He took her head between his hard old hands, and stroked her hair as
+tenderly as a mother might have done.
+
+"Oh, yes, father; quite well, quite."
+
+Then there was a little forced laugh. The lucent eyes were full of a
+dewy wistfulness.
+
+"Any trouble, Mercy?"
+
+"What trouble, father?"
+
+"Nay, any trouble--trouble's common, isn't it?"
+
+The old man's voice shook slightly, and his hand trembled on the girl's
+head.
+
+"What have I to trouble me!" said Mercy, in a low voice nigh to
+breaking.
+
+"Well, you know best," said the charcoal-burner. Then he put his hand
+under the girl's chin and lifted her face until her unwilling eyes
+looked into his. The scrutiny appeared to console him, and a smile
+played over his battered features. "Maybe I was wrong," he thought.
+"Folk are allus clattering."
+
+Mercy made another forced little laugh, and instantly the Laird Fisher's
+face saddened.
+
+"They do say 'at you're not the same heartsome little lass," he said.
+
+"Do they? Oh, but I am quite happy! You always say people are
+busybodies, don't you, father?"
+
+The break-down was imminent.
+
+"Why, Mercy, you're crying."
+
+"Me--crying!" The girl tossed her head with, a pathetic gesture of gay
+protestation. "Oh, no; I was laughing--that was it."
+
+"There are tears in your eyes, anyways."
+
+"Tears? Nonsense, father! Tears? Didn't I tell you that your sight was
+failing you--- ey, didn't I, now?"
+
+It was of no use to struggle longer. The fair head fell on the heaving
+breast, and Mercy sobbed.
+
+The old man looked at her through a blinding mist in his hazy eyes.
+"Tell me, my little lassie, tell me," he said.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing," said Mercy. She had brushed away the tears and was
+smiling.
+
+The Laird Fisher shook his head.
+
+"It's nothing, father--only--"
+
+"Only--what?"
+
+"Only--oh, it's nothing!"
+
+"Mercy, my lass," said the Laird Fisher, and the tears stood now in his
+own dim eyes, "Mercy, remember if owt goes wrong with a girl, and her
+mother is under the grass, her father is the first she should come to
+and tell all."
+
+The old man had seated himself on a stout block cut from a trunk, and
+was opening the basket, when there was a light, springy step on the
+road.
+
+"So you fire to-night, Matthew?"
+
+An elderly man leaned over the stile and smiled.
+
+"Nay, Mr. Bonnithorne, there's ower much nastment in the weather yet."
+
+The gentleman took off his silk hat and mopped his forehead. His hair
+was thin and of a pale yellow, and was smoothed flat on his brow.
+
+"You surprise me! I thought the weather perfect. See how blue the sky
+is."
+
+"That doesn't argy. It might be better with never a blenk of blue. It
+was rayder airy yesterday, and last night the moon got up as blake and
+yellow as May butter."
+
+The smile was perpetual on the gentleman's face. It showed his teeth
+constantly.
+
+"You dalesmen are so weather-wise."
+
+The voice was soft and womanish. There was a little laugh at the end of
+each remark.
+
+"We go by the moon in firing, sir," the charcoal-burner answered, "Last
+night it rose sou'-west, and that doesn't mean betterment, though it's
+quiet enough now. There'll be clashy weather before nightfall."
+
+The girl strayed away into the thicket, and startled a woodcock out of a
+heap of dead oak leaves. The gentleman followed her with his eyes. They
+were very small and piercing eyes, and they blinked frequently.
+
+"Your daughter does not look very well, Matthew."
+
+"She's gayly, sir; she's gayly," said the charcoal-burner shortly, his
+mouth in his can of tea.
+
+The gentleman smiled from the teeth out. After a pause, he said: "I
+suppose it isn't pleasant when one of your hurdles is blown down, and
+the charcoal burning," indicating the wooden hurdles which had been
+propped about the half-built charcoal stack.
+
+"Ey, it's gay bad wark, to be sure--being dragged into the fire."
+
+The dog had risen with a startled movement. Following the upward
+direction of the animal's nose, the gentleman said, "Whose sheep are
+those on the ghyll yonder?"
+
+"Auld Mr. Ritson's, them herdwicks."
+
+The sheep were on a ridge of shelving rock.
+
+"Dangerous spot, eh?"
+
+"Ey, it's a bent place. They're verra clammersome, the black-faced
+sorts."
+
+"I'll bid you good-day, Matthew." The yellow-haired elderly gentleman
+was moving off. He walked with a jerk and a spring on his toes. "And
+mind you take your daughter to the new doctor at Keswick," he said at
+parting.
+
+"It's not doctoring that'll mend Mercy," the charcoal-burner muttered,
+when the other had gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Josiah Bonnithorne was quite without kinspeople or connections. His
+mother had been one of two sisters who lived by keeping a small
+confectioner's shop in Whitehaven, and were devoted Methodists. The
+sisters had formed views as to matrimony, and they enjoyed a curious
+similarity of choice. They were to be the wives of preachers. But the
+opportunity was long in coming, and they grew elderly. At length the
+younger sister died, and so solved the problem of her future. The elder
+sister was left for two years more alone with her confectionery. Then
+she married a stranger who had come to one of the pits as gangsman. It
+was a sad falling off. But at all events the gangsman was a local
+preacher, and so the poor soul who took him for husband had effected a
+compromise with her cherished ideal. It turned put that he was a
+scoundrel as well, and had a wife living elsewhere. This disclosure
+abridged his usefulness among the brethren, and he fled. Naturally, he
+left his second wife behind, having previously secured a bill of sale on
+her household effects. A few months elapsed, the woman was turned adrift
+by her husband's creditors, and then a child was born. It was a poor
+little thing--a boy. The good souls of the "connection" provided for it
+until it was two years old, and afterward placed it in a charity school.
+While the little fellow was there, his mother was struck down by a
+mortal complaint. Then for the first time the poor ruined woman asked to
+see her child. They brought the little one to her bedside, and it smiled
+down into her dying face. "Oh, that it may please the Lord to make him a
+preacher!" she said with a great effort. At a sign from the doctor the
+child was taken away. The face pinched by cruel suffering quivered
+slightly, the timid eyes worn by wasted hope softened and closed, and
+the mother bid farewell to everything.
+
+The boy lived. They christened him Josiah, and he took for surname the
+maiden name of his mother, Bonnithorne. He was a weakling, and had no
+love of boyish sports; but he excelled in scholarship. In spite of these
+tendencies, he was apprenticed to a butcher when the time came to remove
+him from school. An accident transferred him to the office of a
+solicitor, and he was articled. Ten years later he succeeded to his
+master's practice, and then he sailed with all sail set.
+
+He disappointed the "connection" by developing into a Churchman, but
+otherwise aroused no hostile feeling. It was obviously his cue to
+conciliate everybody. He was liked without being popular, trusted
+without being a favorite. Churchwarden, trustee for public funds,
+executor for private friends, he had a reputation for disinterested
+industry. And people said how well it was that one so unselfish as
+Josiah Bonnithorne should nevertheless prosper even as this world goes.
+
+But there was a man in Cumberland who knew Mr. Bonnithorne from the
+crown of his head to the sole of his foot. That man was Mr. Hugh Ritson.
+Never for an instant did either of these palter with the other.
+
+When Mr. Bonnithorne left the charcoal pit, he followed the road that
+crossed the Newlands Beck, and returned on the breast of the Eel Crags.
+This led him close to the booth where the sports were proceeding. He
+heard, as he passed, the gurgling laugh with which the dalesfolk
+received the peddler's story of how he saw Paul Ritson at Hendon. A
+minute afterward he encountered Hugh Ritson on the road. There was only
+the most meagre pretense at greeting when these men came face to face.
+
+"Your father sent for me," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"On what business?" Hugh Ritson asked.
+
+"I have yet to learn."
+
+They walked some steps without speaking. Then the lawyer turned with his
+constant smile, and said in his soft voice:
+
+"I have just seen your little friend. She looks pale, poor thing!
+Something must be done, and shortly."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face flushed perceptibly. His eyes were on the ground.
+
+"Let us go no further in this matter," he said, in a low tone. "I saw
+her yesterday. Then there is her father, poor, broken creature! Let it
+drop."
+
+"I did not believe it of you!" Mr. Bonnithorne spoke calmly and went on
+smiling.
+
+"Besides, I am ashamed. The thing is too mean," said Hugh Ritson. "In
+what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode occur?"
+
+"So, so! Or is it the story of the cat in the adage? You would and you
+wouldn't?"
+
+"My blood is not thick enough. I can't do it."
+
+"Then why did you propose it? Was it your suggestion or mine? I thought
+to spare the girl her shame. Here her trouble must fall on her in
+battalions, poor little being. Send her away, and you decimate them."
+
+"It is unnecessary. You know I am superior to prejudice." Hugh Ritson
+dropped his voice and said, as if speaking into his breast: "If the
+worst comes to the worst, I can marry her."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne laughed lightly.
+
+"Ho! ho! And in what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode
+occur?"
+
+Hugh Ritson drew up sharply.
+
+"Why not? Is she poor? Then what am I? Uneducated? What is education
+likely to do for me? A simple creature, all heart and no head? God be
+praised for that!"
+
+At this moment a girl's laugh came rippling through the air. It was one
+of those joyous peals that make the heart's own music. Hugh Ritson's
+pale face flushed a little, and he drew his breath hard.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head in the direction of the voice, and said
+softly: "So our friend Greta is here to-day?"
+
+"Yes," said Hugh Ritson very quietly.
+
+Then the friends walked some distance in silence.
+
+"It is scarcely worthy of you to talk in this brain-sick fashion," said
+Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a dull irritation in the tone. "You place
+yourself in the wrong point of view. You do not love the little being."
+
+Hugh Ritson's forehead contracted, and he said: "If I have wrecked my
+life by one folly, one act of astounding unwisdom, what matter? There
+was but little to wreck. I am a disappointed man."
+
+"Pardon me, you are a very young one," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"What am I in my father's house? He gives no hint of helping me to an
+independence in life."
+
+"There are the lands. Your father must be a rich man."
+
+"And I am a second son."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+Hugh Ritson glanced up quickly.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You say you are a second son."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Would it be so fearful a thing if you were not a second son?"
+
+"In the name of truth, be plain. My brother Paul is living."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head twice or thrice, and said calmly: "You
+know that your brother hopes to marry Greta?"
+
+"I have heard it."
+
+Again the flush came to Hugh Ritson's cheeks. His low voice had a
+tremor.
+
+"Did I ever tell you of her father's strange legacy?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"My poor friend Robert Lowther left a legacy to a son of his own, who
+was Greta's half-brother."
+
+"An illegitimate son?"
+
+"Not strictly. Lowther married the son's mother," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"Married her? Then his son was his heir?"
+
+"No."
+
+Hugh Ritson looked perplexed.
+
+"The girl was a Catholic, Lowther a Protestant. A Catholic priest
+married them in Ireland. That was not a valid marriage by English law."
+
+Hugh smiled grimly.
+
+"And Lowther had the marriage annulled?"
+
+"He had fallen in love," began Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"This time with an heiress?" There was a caustic laugh.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded. "Greta's mother. So he--"
+
+"Abandoned the first wife," Hugh Ritson interrupted again.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne shook his head with an innocent expression.
+
+"Wife? Well, he left her."
+
+"You talk of a son. Had they one?"
+
+"They had," said Mr. Bonnithorne, "and when the woman and child ...
+disappeared--"
+
+"Exactly," said Hugh Ritson, and he smiled. "What did Lowther then?"
+
+"Married again, and had a daughter--Greta."
+
+"Then why the legacy?"
+
+"Conscience-money," said Mr. Bonnithorne, pursing up his mouth.
+
+Hugh Ritson laughed slightly.
+
+"The sort of fools' pence the Chancellor of the Exchequer receives
+labeled 'Income Tax.'"
+
+"Precisely--only Lowther had no address to send it to."
+
+"He had behaved like a scoundrel," said Hugh Ritson.
+
+"True, and he felt remorse. After the second marriage he set people to
+find the poor woman and child. They were never found. His last days were
+overshadowed by his early fault. I believe he died broken-hearted. In
+his will--I drew it for him--he left, as I say, a sum to be paid to this
+son of his first wife--when found."
+
+Hugh Ritson laughed half mockingly.
+
+"I thought he was a fool. A scoundrel is generally a fool as well."
+
+"Generally; I've often observed it," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"What possible interest of anybody's could it be to go hunting for the
+son of the fool's deserted wife?"
+
+"The fool," answered Mr. Bonnithorne, "was shrewd enough to make an
+interest by ordering that if the son were not found before Greta came of
+age, a legacy of double the sum should be paid to an orphanage for
+boys."
+
+Hugh Ritson's respect for the dead man's intelligence experienced a
+sensible elevation.
+
+"So it is worth a legacy to the family to discover Greta's
+half-brother," he said, summing up the situation in an instant. "If
+alive--If not, then proof that he is dead."
+
+The two men had walked some distance, and reached the turning of a lane
+which led to a house that could be seen among the trees at the foot of a
+ghyll. The younger man drew up on his infirm foot.
+
+"But I fail to catch the relevance of all this. When I mentioned that I
+was a second son you--"
+
+"I have had hardly any data to help me in my search," Mr. Bonnithorne
+continued. He was walking on. "Only a medallion-portrait of the first
+wife." Mr. Bonnithorne dived into a breast-pocket.
+
+"My brother Paul is living. What possible--"
+
+"Here it is," said Mr. Bonnithorne, and he held out a small picture.
+
+Hugh Ritson took it with little interest.
+
+"This is the portrait of the nun," he said, as his eyes first fell on
+it, and recognized the coif and cape.
+
+"A novice--that's what she was when Lowther met her," said Mr.
+Bonnithorne.
+
+Then Hugh Ritson stopped. He regarded the portrait attentively; looked
+up at the lawyer and back at the medallion. For an instant the strong
+calm which he had hitherto shown seemed to desert him. The picture
+trembled in his hand. Mr. Bonnithorne did not appear to see his
+agitation.
+
+"Is it a fancy? Surely it must be fancy!" he muttered.
+
+Then he asked aloud what the nun's name had been.
+
+"Ormerod."
+
+There was a start of recovered consciousness.
+
+"Ormerod--that's strange!"
+
+The exclamation seemed to escape inadvertently.
+
+"Why strange?"
+
+Hugh Ritson did not answer immediately.
+
+"Her Christian name?"
+
+"Grace."
+
+"Grace Ormerod? Why, you must know that Grace Ormerod happened to be my
+own mother's maiden name!"
+
+"You seem to recognize the portrait."
+
+Hugh Ritson had regained his self-possession. He assumed an air of
+indifference.
+
+"Well, yes--no, of course not--no," he said, emphatically, at last.
+
+In his heart there was another answer. He thought for the moment when he
+set eyes on the picture that it looked like--a little like--his own
+mother's face.
+
+They walked on. Mr. Bonnithorne's constant smile parted his lips.
+Lifting his voice rather unnecessarily, he said:
+
+"By the way, another odd coincidence! Would you like to know the name of
+Grace Ormerod's child by Robert Lowther?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's heart leaped within him, but he preserved an outward show
+of indifference, and drawled:
+
+"Well, what was it?"
+
+"Paul."
+
+The name went through him like an arrow, then he said, rather languidly:
+
+"So the half-brother of Greta Lowther, wherever he is, is named--"
+
+"Paul Lowther," said Mr. Bonnithorne. "But," he added, with a quick
+glance, "he may--I say he may--be passing by another name--Paul
+something else, for example."
+
+"Assuredly--certainly--yes--yes," Hugh Ritson mumbled. His all but
+impenetrable calm was gone.
+
+They reached the front of the house, and stood in a paved court-yard. It
+was the home of the Ritsons, known as the Ghyll, a long Cumbrian
+homestead of gray stone and green slate. A lazy curl of smoke was
+winding up from one chimney through the clear air. A gossamer net of the
+tangled boughs of a slim brier-rose hung over the face of a broad porch,
+and at that moment a butterfly flitted through it. The chattering of
+geese came from behind.
+
+"Robert Lowther was the father of Grace Ormerod's child?" said Hugh
+Ritson, vacantly.
+
+"The father of her son Paul."
+
+"And Greta is his daughter? Is that how it goes?"
+
+"That is so--and half-sister to Paul."
+
+Hugh Ritson raised his eyes to Mr. Bonnithorne's face.
+
+"And of what age would Paul Lowther be now?"
+
+"Well, older than you, certainly. Perhaps as old as--yes, perhaps as
+old--fully as old as your brother."
+
+Hugh Ritson's infirm foot trailed heavily on the stones. His lips
+quivered. For a moment he seemed to be rapt. Then he swung about and
+muttered:
+
+"Tut! it isn't within belief. Thrusted home, it might betray a man,
+Heaven only knows how deeply."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne looked up inquiringly.
+
+"Pardon me; I fail, as you say, to catch the relevance."
+
+"Mr. Bonnithorne," said Hugh Ritson, holding out his hand, "you and I
+have been good friends, have we not?"
+
+"Oh, the best of friends."
+
+"At your leisure, when I have had time to think of this, let us discuss
+it further."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne smiled assent.
+
+"And meantime," he said, softly, "let the unhappy little being we spoke
+of be sent away."
+
+Hugh Ritson's eyes fell, and his voice deepened.
+
+"Poor little soul--I'm sorry--very."
+
+"As for Greta and her lover--well--"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head significantly, and left his words
+unfinished.
+
+"My father is crossing the stack-yard," said Hugh Ritson. "You shall see
+him in good time. Come this way."
+
+The shadows were lengthening in the valley. A purple belt was stretching
+across the distant hills, and a dark-blue tint was nestling under the
+eaves. A solitary crow flew across the sky, and cawed out its guttural
+note. Its shadow fell, as it passed, on two elderly people who were
+coming into the court-yard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+"It's time for that laal Mr. Bonnithorne to be here," said Allan Ritson.
+
+"Why did you send for him?" asked Mrs. Ritson, in the low tone that was
+natural to her.
+
+"To get that matter about the will off my mind. It'll be one thing less
+to think about, and it has boddert me sair and lang."
+
+Allan spoke with the shuffling reserve of a man to whose secret
+communings a painful idea had been too long familiar. In the effort to
+cast off the unwelcome and secret associate, there was a show of
+emancipation which, as an acute observer might see, was more assumed
+than real.
+
+Mrs. Ritson made no terms with the affectation of indifference. Her
+grave face became yet more grave, and her soft voice grew softer as she
+said:
+
+"And if when it is settled and done the cloud would break that has hung
+over our lives, then all would be well. But that can never be."
+
+Allan tossed his head aside, and made pretense to smile; but no gleam of
+sunshine on his cornfields was ever chased so closely by the line of
+dark shadow as his smile by the frown that followed.
+
+"Come, worrit thysel' na' mair about it! When I've made my will, and put
+Paul on the same footing with t'other lad, who knows owt mair nor we
+choose to tell?"
+
+Mrs. Ritson glanced into his face with a look of sad reproach.
+
+"Heaven knows, Allan," she said; "and the dark cloud still gathers for
+us there."
+
+The old man took a step or two on the gravel path, and dropped his gray
+head. His voice deepened:
+
+"Tha says reet, mother," he said, "tha says reet. Ey, it saddens my auld
+days--and thine forby!" He took a step or two more, and added: "And na
+lawyer can shak' it off now. Nay, nay, never now. Weel, mother, our sky
+has been lang owerkessen; but, mind ye," lifting his face and voice
+together, "we've had gude crops if we tholed some thistles."
+
+"Yes, we've had happy days, too," said Mrs. Ritson.
+
+At that moment there came from across the vale the shouts of the
+merrymakers and the music of a fiddle. Allan Ritson lifted his head,
+nodded it aside jauntily, and smiled feebly through the mist that was
+gathering about his eyes.
+
+"There they are--wrestling and jumping. I mind me when there was scarce
+a man in Cummerlan' could give me the cross-buttock. That's many a lang
+year agone, though. And now our Paul can manish most on 'em--that he
+can."
+
+The fiddle was playing a country dance. The old man listened; his face
+broadened, he lifted a leg jauntily, and gave a sweep of one arm.
+
+Just then there came through the air a peal of happy laughter. It was
+the same heart's music that Hugh Ritson and Mr. Bonnithorne had heard in
+the road. Allan's face brightened, and his voice had only the faintest
+crack in it as he said:
+
+"That's Greta's laugh! It is for sure! What a heartsome lass yon is! I
+like a heartsome lassie--a merrie touch, and gone!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Ritson, soberly; "Greta is a winsome girl."
+
+It was hardly spoken when a young girl bounded down upon them, almost
+breathless, yet laughing in gusts, turning her head over her shoulder
+and shouting:
+
+"Hurrah! Beaten, sir! Hurrah!"
+
+It was Greta Lowther; twenty years of age, with fair hair, quick brown
+eyes, a sunny face lighted up with youthful animation, a swift smile on
+her parted lips--an English wild white rose.
+
+"I've beaten him," she said. "He challenged me to cross Windybrowe while
+he ran round the Bowder stone, but I got to the lonnin before he had
+crossed the bridge."
+
+Then, running to the corner of the lane, she plucked off her straw hat,
+waved it about her head, and shouted again in an accent of triumph:
+
+"Hurrah! hurrah! beaten, sir, beaten!"
+
+Paul Ritson came running down the fell in strides of two yards apiece.
+
+"Oh, you young rogue--you cheated!" he cried, coming to a stand and
+catching his breath.
+
+"Cheated?" said Greta, in a tone of dire amazement.
+
+"You bargained to touch the beacon on the top of Windybrowe, and you
+didn't go within a hundred yards of it."
+
+"The beacon? On Windybrowe?" said the girl, and wondrous perplexity
+shone in her lovely eyes.
+
+Paul wiped his brow, and shook his head and his finger with mock gravity
+at the beautiful cheat.
+
+"Now, Greta, now--now--gently--"
+
+Greta looked around with the bewildered gaze of a lost lambkin.
+
+"Mother," said Paul, "she stole a march on me."
+
+"He was the thief, Mrs. Ritson; you believe me, don't you?"
+
+"Me! why I never stole anything in my life--save one thing."
+
+"And what was that, pray?" said Greta, with another mighty innocent
+look.
+
+Paul crept up to her side and whispered something over her shoulder,
+whereupon she eyed him largely, and said with a quick smile:
+
+"You don't say so! But please don't be too certain of it. I'm sure I
+never heard of that theft."
+
+"Then here's a theft you shall hear of," said Paul, throwing one arm
+about her neck and tipping up her chin.
+
+There was a sudden gleam of rosy, roguish lips. Old Allan, with mischief
+dancing in his eyes, pretended to recover them from a more distant
+sight.
+
+"Er--why, what's that?" he said; "the sneck of a gate, eh?"
+
+Greta drew herself up.
+
+"How can you--and all the people looking--they might really think that
+we were--we were--"
+
+Paul came behind, put his head over one shoulder, and said:
+
+"And we're not, are we?"
+
+"They're weel matched, mother, eh?" said Allan, turning to his wife.
+"They're marra-to-bran, as folks say. Greta, he's a girt booby, isn't
+he?"
+
+Greta stepped up to the old man, and with a familiar gesture laid a hand
+on his arm. At the same moment Paul came to his side. Allan tapped his
+son on the back.
+
+"Thou girt lang booby," he said, and laughed heartily. All the shadows
+that had hung over him were gone. "And how's Parson Christian?" he asked
+in another tone.
+
+"Well, quite well, and as dear an old soul as ever," said Greta.
+
+"He's father and mother to thee baith, my lass. I never knew thy awn
+father. He was dead and gone before we coom't to these parts. And thy
+mother, too, God bless her! she's dead and gone now. But if this lad of
+mine, this Paul, this girt lang--Ah, and here's Mr. Bonnithorne, and
+Hughie, too."
+
+The return of the lawyer and Hugh Ritson abridged the threat of
+punishment that seemed to hang on the old man's lips.
+
+Hugh Ritson's lifted eyes had comprehended everything. The girl leaning
+over his father's arm; the pure, smooth cheeks close to the swarthy,
+weather-beaten, comfortable old face; the soft gaze upward full of
+feeling; the half-open lips and the teeth like pearls; then the glance
+round, half of mockery, half of protest, altogether of unconquerable
+love, to where Paul Ritson stood, his eyes just breaking into a smile;
+the head, the neck, the arms, the bosom still heaving gently after the
+race; the light loose costume--Hugh Ritson saw it all, and his heart
+beat fast. His pale face whitened at that moment, and his infirm foot
+trailed heavily on the gravel.
+
+Allan shook hands with Mr. Bonnithorne, and then turned to his sons.
+"Come, you two lads have not been gude friends latterly, and that's a
+sair grief baith to your mother and me. You're not made in the same mold
+seemingly. But you must mak' up your fratch, my lads, for your auld
+folks' sake, if nowt else."
+
+At this he stretched out both arms, as if with the intention of joining
+their hands. Hugh made a gesture of protestation.
+
+"I have no quarrel to make up," he said, and turned aside.
+
+Paul held out his hand. "Shake hands, Hugh," he said. Hugh took the
+proffered hand with unresponsive coldness.
+
+Paul glanced into his brother's face a moment, and said:
+
+"What's the use of breeding malice? It's a sort of live stock that's not
+worth its fodder, and it eats up everything."
+
+There was a scarcely perceptible curl on Hugh Ritson's lip, but he
+turned silently away. With head on his breast, he walked toward the
+porch.
+
+"Stop!"
+
+It was old Allan's voice. The deep tone betrayed the anger that was
+choking him. His face was flushed, his eyes were stern, his lips
+trembled.
+
+"Come back and shak' hands wi' thy brother reet."
+
+Hugh Ritson faced about, leaning heavily on his infirm foot.
+
+"Why to-day more than yesterday or to-morrow?" he said, calmly.
+
+"Come back, I tell thee!" shouted the old man more hotly.
+
+Hugh maintained his hold of himself, and said in a quiet and even voice,
+"I am no longer a child."
+
+"Then bear thysel' like a man--not like a whipped hound."
+
+The young man shuddered secretly from head to foot. His eyes flashed for
+an instant. Then, recovering his self-control, he said:
+
+"Even a dog would resent such language, sir."
+
+Greta had dropped aside from the painful scene, and for a moment Hugh
+Ritson's eyes followed her.
+
+"I'll have no sec worriment in my house," shouted the old man in a
+broken voice. "Those that live here must live at peace. Those that want
+war must go."
+
+Hugh Ritson could bear up no longer.
+
+"And what is your house to me, sir? What has it done for me? The world
+is wide."
+
+Old Allan was confounded. Silent, dumb, with great staring eyes, he
+looked round into the faces of those about him. Then in thick, choking
+tones he shouted:
+
+"Shak' thy brother's hand, or thou'rt no brother of his."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Hugh very quietly.
+
+"Shak' hands, I tell thee." The old man's fists were clinched. His body
+quivered in every limb.
+
+His son's lips were firmly set; he made no answer.
+
+The old man snatched from Mr. Bonnithorne the stick he carried. At this
+Hugh lifted his eyes sharply until they met the eyes of his father.
+Allan was transfixed. The stick fell from his hand. Then Hugh Ritson
+halted into the house.
+
+"Come back, come back ... my boy ... Hughie ... come back!" the old man
+sobbed out. But there was no reply.
+
+"Allan, be patient, forgive him; he will ask your pardon," said Mrs.
+Ritson.
+
+Paul and Greta had stolen away. The old man was now speechless, and his
+eyes, bent on the ground, swam with tears.
+
+"All will be well, please God," said Mrs. Ritson. "Remember, he is
+sorely tried, poor boy. He expected you to do something for him.'"
+
+"And I meant to, I meant to--that I did," the father answered in a
+broken cry.
+
+"But you've put it off, and off, Allan--- like everything else."
+
+Allan lifted his hazy eyes from the ground, and looked into his wife's
+face. "If it had been t'other lad I could have borne it maybe," he said,
+feelingly.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne, standing aside, had been plowing the gravel with one
+foot. He now raised his eyes, and said: "And yet, Mr. Ritson, folk say
+that you have always shown most favor to your eldest son."
+
+The old man's gaze rested on the lawyer for a moment, but he did not
+speak at once, and there was an awkward silence.
+
+"I've summat to say to Mr. Bonnithorne, mother," said the statesman. He
+was quieter now. Mrs. Ritson stepped into the house.
+
+Allan Ritson and the lawyer followed her, going into a little parlor to
+the right of the porch. It was a quaint room, full of the odor of a
+by-gone time. The floor was of polished black oak covered with skins;
+the ceiling was paneled oak and had a paneled beam. Bright oak
+cupboards, their fronts carved with rude figures, were set into the
+walls, which were whitened, and bore one illuminated text and three
+prints in black and white. The furniture was heavy and old. There was a
+spinning-wheel under the wide window-board. A bluebottle buzzed about
+the ceiling; a slant of sunlight crossed the floor. The men sat down.
+
+"I sent for thee to mak' my will, Mr. Bonnithorne," said the old man.
+
+The lawyer smiled.
+
+"It is an old maxim that delay in affairs of law is a candle that burns
+in the daytime; when the night comes it is burned to the socket."
+
+Old Allan took little heed of the sentiment.
+
+"Ey," he said, "but there's mair nor common 'casion for it in my case."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne was instantly on the alert.
+
+"And what is your especial reason?" he asked.
+
+Allan's mind seemed to wander. He stood silent for a moment, and then
+said slowly, as if laboring with thought and phrase:
+
+"Weel, tha must know ... I scarce know how to tell thee ... Weel, my
+eldest son, Paul, as they call him--"
+
+The old man stopped, and his manner grew sullen. Mr. Bonnithorne came to
+his help.
+
+"Yes, I am all attention--your eldest son--"
+
+"He is--he is--"
+
+The door opened and Mrs. Ritson entered the room, followed close by the
+Laird Fisher.
+
+"Mr. Ritson, your sheep, them black-faced herdwicks on Hindscarth, have
+broke the fences, and the red drift of 'em is down in the barrowmouth of
+the pass," said the charcoal-burner.
+
+The statesman got on his feet.
+
+"I must gang away at once," he said. "Mr. Bonnithorne, I must put thee
+off, or maybe I'll lose fifty head of sheep down in the ghyll."
+
+"I made so bold as to tell ye, for I reckon we'll have all maks of
+weather yet."
+
+"That's reet, Mattha; and reet neighborly forby. I'll slip away after
+thee in a thumb's snitting."
+
+The Laird Fisher went out.
+
+"Can ye bide here for me until eight o'clock to-neet, Mr. Bonnithorne?"
+
+There was some vexation written on the lawyer's face, but he answered
+with meekness:
+
+"I am always at your service, Mr. Ritson. I can return at eight."
+
+"Verra good" Then, turning to Mrs. Ritson, "Give friend Bonnithorne a
+bite o' summat," said Allan, and he followed the charcoal-burner. Out in
+the court-yard he called the dogs. "Hey howe! hey howe! Bright! Laddie!
+Come boys; come, boys, te-lick, te-smack!"
+
+He put his head in at the door of an out-house and shouted, "Reuben,
+wheriver ista? Come thy ways quick, and bring the lad!"
+
+In another moment a young shepherd and a cowherd, surrounded by three or
+four sheep-dogs, joined Allan Ritson in the court-yard.
+
+"Dusta gang back to the fell, Mattha?" said the statesman.
+
+"Nay; I's done for the day. I'm away home."
+
+"Good-neet, and thank."
+
+Then the troop disappeared down the lonnin--the men calling, the dogs
+barking.
+
+In walking through the hall Mr. Bonnithorne encountered Hugh Ritson, who
+was passing out of the house, his face very hard, his head much bent.
+
+"Would you," said the lawyer, "like to know the business on which I have
+been called here?"
+
+Hugh Ritson did not immediately raise his eyes.
+
+"To make his will," added Mr. Bonnithorne, not waiting for an answer.
+
+Then Hugh Ritson's eyes were lifted; there was one flash of
+intelligence; after that the young man went out without a word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Hugh Ritson was seven-and-twenty. His clean-shaven face was long, pale,
+and intellectual; his nose was wide at the bridge and full at the
+nostrils; he had firm-set lips, large vehement eyes, and a broad
+forehead, with hair of dark auburn parted down the middle and falling in
+thin waves on the temples. The expression of the physiognomy in repose
+was one of pain, and, in action, of power; the effect of the whole was
+not unlike that which is produced by the face of a high-bred horse, with
+its deep eyes and dilated nostrils. He was barely above medium height,
+and his figure was almost delicate. When he spoke his voice startled
+you--it was so low and deep to come from that slight frame. His
+lameness, which was slight, was due to a long-standing infirmity of the
+hip.
+
+As second son of a Cumbrian statesman, whose estate consisted chiefly of
+land, he expected but little from his father, and had been trained in
+the profession of a mining engineer. After spending a few months at the
+iron mines of Cleator, he had removed to London at twenty-two, and
+enrolled himself as a student of the Mining College in Jermyn Street.
+There he had spent four years, sharing the chambers of a young barrister
+in the Temple Gardens. His London career was uneventful. Taciturn in
+manner, he made few friends. His mind had a tendency toward
+contemplative inactivity. Of physical energy he had very little, and
+this may have been partly due to his infirmity. Late at night he would
+walk alone in the Strand: the teeming life of the city, and the mystery
+of its silence after midnight, had a strong fascination for him. In
+these rambles he came to know some of the strangest and oddest of the
+rags and rinsings of humanity: among them a Persian nobleman of the late
+shah's household, who kept a small tobacco-shop at the corner of a
+by-street, and an old French exile, once of the court of Louis
+Phillippe, who sold the halfpenny papers. At other times he went out
+hardly at all, and was rarely invited.
+
+Only the housemate, who saw him at all times and in many moods, seemed
+to suspect that beneath that cold exterior there lay an ardent nature.
+But he himself knew how strong was the tide of his passion. He could
+never look a beautiful woman in the face but his pulse beat high, and he
+felt almost faint. Yet strong as his passion was, his will was no less
+strong. He put a check on himself, and during his four years in London
+contrived successfully to dam up the flood that was secretly
+threatening him.
+
+At six-and-twenty he returned to Cumberland, having some grounds for
+believing that his father intended to find him the means of mining for
+himself. A year had now passed, and nothing had been done. He was
+growing sick with hope deferred. His elder brother, Paul, had spent his
+life on the land, and it was always understood that in due course he
+would inherit it. That at least was the prospect which Hugh Ritson had
+in view, though no prospective arrangement had been made. Week followed
+week, and month followed month, and his heart grew bitter. He had almost
+decided to end this waiting. The day would come when he could bear it
+not longer, and then he would cut adrift.
+
+An accidental circumstance was the cause of his irresolution. He used to
+walk frequently on the moss where the Laird Fisher sunk his shaft. In
+the beck that ran close to the disused headgear he would wade for an
+hour early in the summer morning. One day he saw the old laird's
+daughter washing linen at the beck-side. He remembered her as a pretty,
+prattling thing of ten or eleven. She was now a girl of eighteen, with a
+pure face, a timid manner, and an air that was neither that of a woman
+nor of a child. Her mother was lately dead, her father spent most of his
+days on the fell (some of his nights also when the charcoal was
+burning), and she was much alone. Hugh Ritson liked her gentle replies
+and her few simple questions. So it came about that he would look for
+her in the mornings, and be disappointed if he did not catch sight of
+her good young face. Himself a silent man, he liked to listen to the
+girl's modest, unconnected talk. His stern eyes would soften at such
+times to a sort of caressing expression. This went on for months, and in
+that solitude no idle tongue was set to wag. At length Hugh Ritson
+perceived that the girl's heart was touched. If he came late he found
+her leaning over the gate, her eyes bent down among the mountain grasses
+at her feet, and her cheeks colored by a red glow. It is unnecessary to
+go further. The girl gave herself up to him with her whole heart and
+soul, and he--well, he found the bulwarks with which he had surrounded
+himself were ruined and down.
+
+Then the awakening came, and Hugh learned too late that he had not loved
+the simple child, by realizing that with all the ardor of his restrained
+but passionate nature he loved another woman.
+
+So much for the first complication in the tragedy of this man's life.
+
+The second complication was new to his consciousness, and it was at this
+moment conspiring with the first to lure him to consequences that are
+now to be related. The story which Mr. Bonnithorne had told of the
+legacy left by Greta's father to a son by one Grace Ormerod had come to
+him at a time when, owing to disappointment and chagrin, he was
+peculiarly liable to the temptation of any "honest trifle" that pointed
+the way he wished to go. If the Grace Ormerod who married Lowther had
+indeed been his own mother, then--a thousand to one--Paul was Lowther's
+son. If Paul was Lowther's son he was also half brother of Greta. If
+Paul was not the son of Allan Ritson, then he himself, Hugh Ritson, was
+his father's heir.
+
+In the present whirlwind of feeling he did not inquire too closely into
+the pros and cons of probability. Enough that evidence seemed to be with
+him, and that it transformed the world in his view.
+
+Perhaps the first result of this transformation was that he
+unconsciously assumed a different attitude toward the unhappy passage in
+his life wherein Mercy Fisher was chiefly concerned. What his feeling
+was before Mr. Bonnithorne's revelation, we have already seen. Now the
+sentiment that made much of such an "accident" was fit only for a
+"turgid melodrama," and the idea of "atonement" by "marriage" was the
+mock heroic of those "great lovers of noble histories," the spectators
+who applaud it from the pit.
+
+When he passed Mr. Bonnithorne in the hall at the Ghyll he was on his
+way to the cottage of the Laird Fisher. He saw in the road ahead of him
+the group which included his father and the charcoal-burner, and to
+avoid them he cut across the breast of the Eel Crags. After a sharp
+walk of a mile he came to a little white-washed house that stood near
+the head of Newlands, almost under the bridge that crosses the fall. It
+was a sweet place in a great solitude, where the silence was broken only
+by the tumbling waters, the cooing of pigeons on the roof, and the
+twittering of ringouzels by the side of the torrent. The air was fresh
+with the smell of new peat. There was a wedge-shaped garden in front,
+and it was encompassed by chestnut-trees. As Hugh Ritson drew near he
+noticed that a squirrel crept from the fork of one of these trees. The
+little creature rocked itself on the thin end of a swaying branch,
+plucking sometimes at the drooping fan of the chestnut, and sometimes at
+the prickly shell of its pendulous nut. When he opened the little gate
+Hugh Ritson observed that a cat sat sedately behind the trunk of that
+tree, glancing up at intervals at the sporting squirrel in her moving
+seat.
+
+As he entered the garden Mercy was crossing it with a pail of water just
+raised from the well. She had seen him, and now tried to pass into the
+house. He stepped before her and she set down the pail. Her head was
+held very low, and her cheeks were deeply flushed.
+
+"Mercy," he said, "it is all arranged. Mr. Bonnithorne will see you into
+the train this evening, and when you get to your journey's end the
+person I spoke of will meet you."
+
+The girl lifted her eyes beseechingly to his face.
+
+"Not to-day, Hugh," she said in a broken whisper; "let me stay until
+to-morrow."
+
+He regarded her for a moment with a steadfast look, and when he spoke
+again his voice fell on her ear like the clank of a chain.
+
+"The journey has to be made. Every week's delay increases the danger."
+
+The girl's eyes fell again, and the tears began to drop from them on to
+the brown arms that she had clasped in front.
+
+"Come," he said in a softer tone, "the train starts in an hour. Your
+father is not yet home from the pit, and most of the dalespeople are at
+the sports. So much the better. Put on your cloak and hat and take the
+fell path to the Coledaie road-ends. There Mr. Bonnithorne will meet
+you."
+
+The girl's tears were flowing fast, though she bit her lip and struggled
+to check them.
+
+"Come, now, come; you know this was of your own choice."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I never thought it would be so hard to go," she said at length.
+
+He smiled feebly, and tried a more rallying tone.
+
+"You are not going for life. You will come back safe and happy."
+
+The words thrilled her through and through. Her clasped hands trembled
+visibly, and her fingers clutched them with a convulsive movement. After
+awhile she was calmer, and said quietly:
+
+"No, I'll never come back--I know that quite well." And her head dropped
+on her breast and she felt sick at heart. "I'll have to say good-bye to
+everything. There were Betsy Jackson's children--I kissed them all this
+morning, and never said why--little Willy, he seemed to know, dear
+little fellow, and cried so bitterly."
+
+The memories of these incidents touched to overflowing the springs of
+love in the girl's simple soul, and the bubbling child-voice was drowned
+in sobs.
+
+The man stood with a smile of pain on his face. He came close, and
+brushed away her tears, and touched her drooping head with a gesture of
+protestation.
+
+Mercy regained her voice.
+
+"And then there's your mother," she said, "and I can't say good-bye to
+her, and my poor father, and I daren't tell him--"
+
+Hugh stamped on the path impatiently.
+
+"Come, come, Mercy, don't be foolish."
+
+The girl lifted to his the good young face that had once Been bonny as
+the day and was now pale with weeping and drawn down with grief. She
+took him by the coat, and then, by an impulse which she seemed unable to
+resist, threw one arm about his neck, and raised her face to his until
+their lips all but touched, and their eyes met in a steadfast gaze.
+
+"Hugh," she said, passionately, "are you sure that you love me well
+enough to think of me when I am gone?--are you quite, quite sure?"
+
+"Yes, yes; be sure of that," he said, gently.
+
+He disengaged her arm.
+
+"And will you come and fetch me after--after--"
+
+She could not say the word. He smiled and answered, "Why, yes, yes."
+
+Her fingers trembled and clung together; her head fell; her cheeks were
+aglow.
+
+"Why, of course." He smiled again, as if in deprecation of so much
+child-like earnestness; then put his arm about the girl's shoulder,
+dropped his voice to a tone of mingled compassion and affection, and
+said, as he lifted the brightening face to his, "There, there--now go
+off and make ready."
+
+The girl brushed her tears away vigorously, and looked half ashamed and
+half enchanted.
+
+"I'm going."
+
+"That's a good little girl."
+
+How the sunshine came back at the sound of his words!
+
+"Good-bye for the present, Mercy--only for the present, you know."
+
+But how the shadow pursued the sunshine after all!
+
+Hugh saw the tears gathering again in the lucent eyes, and came back a
+step.
+
+"There--a smile--just one little smile!" She smiled through her tears.
+"There--there--that's a dear little Mercy. Good-day; good-bye."
+
+Hugh turned on his heel and walked sharply away. As he passed out
+through the gate he could not help observing that the cat from the foot
+of the chestnut-tree was walking stealthily off, with something like a
+dawning smile on its whiskered face, and the brush of the squirrel
+between its teeth.
+
+Hugh Ritson had gained his end, and yet he felt more crushed than at the
+darkest moment of defeat. He had conquered his own manhood; and now he
+crept away from the scene of his triumph with a sense of utter
+abasement. When he had talked with Mr. Bonnithorne it was with a
+feeling of the meanness of the folly in which he was involved; and if
+any sentiment touching the girl's situation was strong upon him it was
+closely bound up with a personal view of the degradation that might come
+of a man's humiliating unwisdom. The very conventionality of his folly
+had irked him. But its cowardice was now uppermost. That a man should
+enter into warfare with a woman on unequal terms, and win by cajolery
+and deceit, was more than cruel; it was brutal. He could have borne even
+this hard saying so far as it concerned the woman's suffering, but for
+the reflection that it made the man something worse than a coxcomb in
+his own eyes.
+
+The day was now far spent; the brilliant sun had dipped behind
+Grisedale, and left a ridge of dark fells in the west. On the east the
+green sides of Cat Bells and the Eel Crags were yellow at the summit,
+where the hills held their last commerce with the hidden sun. Not a
+breath of wind; not the rustle of a leaf; the valley lay still, save for
+the echoing voices of the merrymakers in the booth below. The sky
+overhead was blue, but a dark cloud, like the hulk of a ship, had
+anchored lately to the north.
+
+Hugh Ritson took the valley road back to Ghyll. He was visibly
+perturbed; he walked with head much bent, stopped suddenly at times,
+then snatched impetuously at the trailing bushes, and passed on. When he
+was under Hindscarth, the sharp yap of dogs, followed by the bleat of
+unseen sheep, caused him to look up, and he saw a group of men, like
+emmets creeping on a dark bowlder, moving over a ridge of shelving rock.
+
+There was a slight spasm of his features at that moment, and his foot
+trailed more heavily as he went on. At a twist of the road he passed the
+Laird Fisher. The old man looked less melancholy than usual. It was as
+if the familiar sorrow sat a little more lightly to-night on the
+half-ruined creature.
+
+"Good-neet to you, sir, and how fend ye?" he said almost cheerily.
+
+Hugh Ritson responded briefly.
+
+"So you're not sleeping on the fell to-night, Matthew?" and as he spoke
+his eyes wandered toward the fell road.
+
+"Nay; I's not firing to-neet, for sure; my daughter is expecting me."
+
+Hugh's eyes were now fixed intently on the road that crossed the foot of
+the fell to the west. The charcoal-burner was moving off, and, following
+at the same moment the upward direction of Hugh Ritson's gaze, he said:
+
+"It's a baddish place yon, where your father is with Reuben and the lad,
+and it's baddish weather that is coming, too--look at yon black cloud
+over Walna Scar."
+
+Then for an instant there was embarrassment in Hugh Ritson's eyes, and
+he answered in a faltering commonplace.
+
+"Ways me; but I must slip away home, sir; my laal lass will be weary
+waiting. Good-neet to you, sir; good-neet."
+
+"Good-night, Matthew, and God help you," said Hugh in a tone of
+startling earnestness, his eyes turned away.
+
+He had walked half a mile further, and reached the lonnin that led to
+the Ghyll, when he was almost overrun by Greta Lowther, who came
+tripping out of the gate of a meadow, her bonnet swinging over her arm,
+her soft, wavy hair floating over her white forehead, her cheeks colored
+with a warm glow, a roguish light in her eyes, and laughter on the point
+of bubbling out of her lips.
+
+Greta had just given Paul Ritson the slip. There was a thicket in the
+field she had crossed, and it was covered with wild roses, white and
+red. Through the heart of it there rippled a tiny streak of water that
+was amber-tinted from the round shingle in its bed. The trunk of an old
+beech lay across it for ford or bridge. Underfoot were the sedge and
+moss; overhead the thick boughs and the roses; in the air, the odor of
+hay and the songs of birds. And Paul, the cunning rascal, would have
+tempted Greta into this solitude; but she was too shrewd, the wise
+little woman, to-be so easily trapped. Pretending to follow him in
+ignorance of his manifest design, she tripped back on tiptoe, and fled
+away like a lapwing over the noiseless grass.
+
+When Greta met Hugh Ritson she was saying to herself, of Paul in
+particular, and of his sex in general: "What dear, simple, unsuspecting,
+trustful creatures they are!" Then she drew up sharply, "Ah, Hugh!"
+
+"How happy you look, Greta!" he said, fixing his eyes upon her.
+
+A new light brightened her sunny face. "Not happier than I feel," she
+answered. She swung the arm over which the bonnet hung; the heaving of
+her breast showed the mold of her early womanhood.
+
+Hugh Ritson's mind had for the last half hour brooded over many a good
+purpose, but not one of them was now left.
+
+"You witnessed a painful scene to-day," he said, with some hesitation.
+"Be sure it was no less painful to me because you were there to see it."
+
+"Oh, I was so sorry," said Greta, impetuously. "You mean with your
+father?"
+
+Hugh bent his head slightly. "It was inevitable--I know that full
+well--but for my share in it I ask your pardon."
+
+"That is nothing," she said; "but you took your father too seriously."
+
+"I took him at his word--that was all."
+
+"But the dear old man meant nothing, and you meant very much. He only
+wanted to abuse you a little, and perhaps frighten you, and shake his
+stick at you, and then love you all the better for it."
+
+"You may be right, Greta. Among the whims of nature there is that of
+making such human contradictions; but, as you say, I take things
+seriously--everything--life itself."
+
+He paused, and there was a slight trembling of the lip.
+
+"Besides," he went on in another tone, "it has been always so. Since our
+childhood--my brother's and mine--there has not been much paternal
+tenderness wasted on me. I can hardly expect it now."
+
+"Surely that must be a morbid fancy," Greta said in a distressed tone.
+The light was dying out of her eyes. She made one quick glance downward
+to where Hugh Ritson's infirm foot trailed on the road, and then, in an
+instant of recovered consciousness, she glanced up, now confused and
+embarrassed, into his face.
+
+She was too late; he had read her thought. A faint smile parted her
+lips; and the light of his own eyes was cold.
+
+"No; not that," he said; "I ask no pity in that regard--and need none.
+Nature has given my brother a physique that would shame a Greek statue,
+but he and I are quits--perhaps more than quits."
+
+He made a hard smile, and she flushed deep with shame of having her
+thought read.
+
+"I am sorry if I conveyed that," she said, slowly. "It must have been
+quite unwittingly. I was thinking of your mother. She is so good and
+tender to everybody. Why, she is the angel of the country-side. Do you
+know what name they've given her?"
+
+Hugh shook his head.
+
+"Saint Grace! Parson Christian told me--it seems it was my own dear
+mother who christened her."
+
+"Nevertheless, there has not been much to sweeten my life, Greta," he
+said.
+
+His voice arrested her; it was charged with unusual feeling. She made no
+answer, and they began to walk toward the house.
+
+After a few steps Greta remembered the trick that she had played on
+Paul, and craned her beautiful neck to see over the stone cobble-hedge
+into the field where she had left him.
+
+Hugh observed her intently.
+
+"I hear that you have decided. Is it so, Greta?" he said.
+
+"Decided what?" she asked, coloring again.
+
+He also colored slightly, and answered with a strained quietness.
+
+"To marry my brother."
+
+"If he wishes it--I suppose he does--he says so, you know."
+
+Hugh looked earnestly into the girl's glowing face, and said with
+deliberation:
+
+"Greta, perhaps there are reasons why you should not marry Paul."
+
+"What reasons?"
+
+He did not reply at once, and she repeated her question. Then he said in
+a strange tone:
+
+"Just and lawful impediments, as they say."
+
+Greta's eyes opened wide in undisguised amazement.
+
+"Impossible--you cannot mean it," she said with her customary
+impetuosity. She glanced into Hugh's face, and misread what she saw
+there. Then she began to laugh; at first lightly, afterward rather
+boisterously, and said with head averted, and almost as if talking to
+herself, "No, no; he is nothing to me but the man I love."
+
+"Do you then love him?"
+
+Greta started.
+
+"Do you ask?" she said. The amazement in the wide eyes had deepened to a
+look of rapture. "Love him?" she said; "better than all the world
+beside." The girl was lifted out of herself. "You are to be my brother,
+Hugh, and I need not fear to speak so."
+
+She swung her bonnet on her arm, just to preserve composure by some
+distracting exercise.
+
+Hugh Ritson stopped, and his face softened. It was a perplexing smile
+that sat on his features. While he had talked with Greta there had run
+through his mind, as a painful undertone, the thought of Mercy Fisher.
+He had now dismissed the last of his qualms respecting her. To be tied
+down for life to a mindless piece of physical prettiness--what man of
+brains could bear it? He had yielded to a natural impulse--true! That
+moment of temptation threatened painful consequences--still true! What
+then? Nothing! Was the dead fruit to hang about his neck forever?
+Tut!--all natural law was against it. Had he not said that he was above
+prejudice? So was he above the maudlin sentiment of the "great lovers of
+noble histories." The sophistry grew apace with Greta's beautiful
+countenance before him. Catching at her last word, he said:
+
+"Your brother--yes. But did you never guess that I could have wished
+another name?"
+
+The look of amazement returned to her eyes; he saw it and went on:
+
+"Is it possible that you have not read my secret?"
+
+"What secret?" she said in a half-smothered voice.
+
+"Greta, if your love had been great love, you must have read my secret
+just as I have read yours." In a low tone he continued: "Long ago I knew
+that you loved, or thought you loved, my brother. I saw it before he had
+seen it--before you had realized it."
+
+The red glow colored her cheeks more deeply than before. She had
+stopped, and he was tramping nervously backward and forward.
+
+"Greta," he said again, and he fixed his eyes entreatingly upon her,
+"what is the love that scarcely knows itself?--that is the love with
+which you love my brother. And what is the tame, timid passion of a man
+of no mind?--that is the love which he offers you. What is your love for
+him, or his for you?--what is it, can it be? Love is not love unless it
+is the love of true minds. That was said long ago, Greta, and how true
+it is!" He went on quickly, in a tone of dull irritation: "All other
+love is no better than lust. Greta, I understand you. It is not for a
+rude man like my brother to do so." Then in an eager voice he said:
+"Dearest, I bring you a love undreamed of among these country boors."
+
+"Country boors!" she repeated in a half-stifled whisper.
+
+He did not hear her. His vehement eyes swam, and he was dizzy.
+
+"Greta, dearest, I said there has been little in my life to sweeten it.
+Yet I am a man made to love and to be loved. My love for you has been
+mute for months; but it can be mute no longer. Perhaps I have had my own
+impediment, apart from our love for Paul. But that is all over now."
+
+His cheeks quivered, his lips trembled, his voice swelled, his nervous
+fingers were riveted to his palm. He approached her and took her hand.
+She seemed to be benumbed by strong feeling. She had stood as one
+transfixed, a slow paralysis of surprise laying hold of her faculties.
+But at his touch her senses regained their mastery. She flung away his
+hand. Her breast heaved. In a voice charged with indignation, she said:
+
+"So this is what you mean! I understand you at last!"
+
+Huge Ritson fell back a pace.
+
+"Greta, hear me--hear me again!"
+
+But she had found her voice indeed.
+
+"Sir, you have outraged your brother's heart as surely as if at this
+moment I had been your brother's wife!"
+
+"Greta, think before you speak--think, I implore you!"
+
+"I have thought! I have thought of you as your sister might think, and
+spoken to you as my brother. Now I know how mean of soul you are!"
+
+Hugh broke in passionately:
+
+"For God's sake, stop! I am an unforgiving man."
+
+His nostrils quivered, every nerve vibrated.
+
+"Love? You never loved. If you knew what the word means you would die of
+shame where you stand this instant."
+
+Hugh lost all control.
+
+"I bid you beware!" he said in wrath and dismay.
+
+"And I bid you be silent!" said Greta, with an eloquent uplifting of the
+hand. "You offer your love to a pledged woman. It is only base love that
+is basely offered. It is bad coin, sir, and goes back dishonored."
+
+Hugh Ritson regained some self-command. The contractions were deep about
+his forehead, but he answered in an imperturbable voice:
+
+"You shall never marry my brother!"
+
+"I will--God willing!"
+
+"Then you shall marry him to your lifelong horror and disgrace."
+
+"That shall be as Heaven may order."
+
+"A boor--a hulking brute--a bas--"
+
+"Enough! I would rather marry a plowboy than such a gentleman as you!"
+
+Face to face, eye to eye, with panting breath and scornful looks, there
+they stood for one moment. Then Greta swung about and walked down the
+lonnin.
+
+Hugh Ritson's natural manner returned instantly. He looked after her
+without the change of a feature, and then turned quietly into the
+house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+There was a drowsy calm in the room where Mr. Bonnithorne sat at lunch.
+It was the little oak-bound parlor to the right, in which he had begun
+the conversation with old Allan Ritson that had been interrupted by the
+announcement of the Laird Fisher. Half of the window was thrown up, and
+the landscape framed by the sash lay still as a picture. The sun that
+had passed over Grisedale sent a deep glow from behind, and the woods
+beneath took a restful tone. Only the mountain-head was white where it
+towered into the sky and the silence.
+
+Mrs. Ritson entered and sat down. Her manner was meek almost to
+abjectness. She was elderly, but her face bore traces of the beauty she
+had enjoyed in youth. The lines had grown deep in it since then, and now
+the sadness of its expression was permanent. She wore an old-fashioned
+lavender gown, and there was a white silk scarf about her neck. Her
+voice was low and tremulous, yet eager, as if it were always
+questioning.
+
+With downcast head, and eyes bent on her lap, where her fingers twitched
+nervously as she knitted without cessation, she sat silent, or put meek
+questions to her guest.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne answered in smiles and speeches of six words apiece.
+Between each sparse reply he addressed himself afresh to his lunch with
+an appetite that was the reverse of sparse. All the while a subdued hum
+of many voices came up from the booth in the fields below.
+
+At length Mrs. Ritson's anxiety overcame the restraint of her manner.
+
+"Mr. Bonnithorne," she said, "do let the will be made to-night. Urge Mr.
+Ritson, when he returns, to admit of no further delay. He has many noble
+qualities, but procrastination is his fault. It has been ever so."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne paused with a glass half raised to his lips, and lifted
+his eyes instead.
+
+"Pardon me, madame," he said, with the customary smile which failed to
+disarm his words; "this is for certain reasons a subject I can hardly
+discuss with--with--- with a woman."
+
+And just then a peacock strutted through the court-yard, startling the
+still air with its empty scream.
+
+Mrs. Ritson colored deeply. Even modesty like hers had been put to a
+severe strain. But she dropped her eyes again, finished a row of
+stitches, rested the steel needle on her lip, and answered quietly:
+
+"Surely a woman may talk of what concerns her husband and her children."
+
+The great man had resumed his knife and fork.
+
+"Not necessarily," he said. "It is a strange and curious fact that there
+is one condition in which the law does not recognize the right of a
+woman to call her son her own."
+
+During this prolonged speech, Hugh Ritson, fresh from his interview with
+Greta Lowther, entered the room, and stretched himself on the couch.
+
+Mrs. Ritson, without shifting the determination of her gaze from the
+nervous fingers in her lap, said:
+
+"What condition?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne twisted slightly, and glanced significantly at Hugh as
+he answered:
+
+"The condition of illegitimacy."
+
+Something supercilious in the tone jarred on Mrs. Ritson's ear. She
+looked up from her knitting, and said:
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Bonnithorne placed his knife and fork with precision over his empty
+plate, used his napkin with deliberation, coughed slightly, and said: "I
+mean that the law denies the name of son to offspring that has been
+bastardized."
+
+Mrs. Ritson's face grew crimson, and she rose to her feet.
+
+"If so, the law is cruel and wicked," she said in a voice more tremulous
+with emotion.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne leaned languidly back in his chair, ejected a long "hem"
+from his overburdened chest, inserted his fingers in the armpits of his
+waistcoat, looked up, and said: "Odd, isn't it?"
+
+Unluckily for the full effect of Mr. Bonnithorne's subtle witticism,
+Paul Ritson, with Greta at his side, appeared in the door-way at the
+moment of its delivery. The manner more than the words had awakened his
+anger, and the significance of both he interpreted by his mother's
+agitated face. In two strides he stepped up to where the great man sat,
+even now all smiles and white teeth, and laid a powerful hand on his
+arm.
+
+"My friend," said Paul, lustily, "it might not be safe for you to speak
+to my mother again like that!"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne rose stiffly, and his shifty eyes looked into Paul's
+wrathful face.
+
+"Safe?" he echoed with emphasis.
+
+Paul, his lips compressed, bent his head, and at the same instant
+brought the other hand down on the table.
+
+Without speaking, Mr. Bonnithorne shuffled back into his seat. Mrs.
+Ritson, letting fall her knitting into her lap, sat and dropped her face
+into her hands. Paul took her by the arm, raised her up, and led her out
+of the room. As he did so, he passed the couch on which Hugh Ritson lay,
+and looked down with mingled anger and contempt into his brother's
+indifferent eyes.
+
+When the door closed behind them, Hugh Ritson and Mr. Bonnithorne rose
+together. There was a momentary gleam of mutual consciousness. Then
+instantly, suddenly, by one impulse, the two men joined hands across the
+table.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+The cloud that had hung over Walna Scar broke above the valley, and a
+heavy rain-storm, with low mutterings of distant thunder, drove the
+pleasure-people from the meadow to the booth. It was a long canvas tent
+with a drinking-bar at one end, and stalls in the corners for the sale
+of gingerbreads and gimcracks. The grass under it was trodden flat, and
+in patches the earth was bare and wet beneath the trapesing feet of the
+people. They were a mixed and curious company. In a ring that was
+cleared by an athletic plowman the fiddler-postman of Newlands, Tom o'
+Dint, was seated on a tub turned bottom up. He was a little man with
+bowed legs and feet a foot long.
+
+"Now, lasses, step forret! Dunnot be blate. Come along with ye, any as
+have springiness in them!"
+
+The rough invitation was accepted without too much timidity by several
+damsels dressed in gorgeous gowns and bonnets. Then up and down, one,
+two, three, cut and shuffle, cross, under, and up and down again.
+
+"I'll be mounting my best nag and comin' ower to Scara Crag and tappin'
+at your window some neet soon," whispered a young fellow to the girl he
+had just danced with.
+
+She laughed a little mockingly.
+
+"Your best nag, Willy?"
+
+"Weel--the maister's."
+
+She laughed again, and a sneer curled her lip. "You Colebank chaps are
+famous sweethearts, I hear. Fare-te-weel, Willy."
+
+And she twisted on her heel. He followed her up.
+
+"Dunnet gowl, Aggy. Mappen I'll be maister man mysel' soon."
+
+Aggy pushed her way through the crowd and disappeared.
+
+"She's packed him off wi' a flea in his ear," said an elderly man
+standing near.
+
+"Just like all the lave of them," said another, "snurling up her neb at
+a man for lack of gear. Why didna he brag of some rich uncle in
+Austrilly?"
+
+"Ey, and stuff her with all sorts of flaitchment and lies. Then all the
+lasses wad be glyming at him."
+
+The dance spun on.
+
+"Why, it's a regular upshot, as good as Carel fair," said one of the
+girls.
+
+"Bessie, you're reet clipt and heeled for sure," responded her
+companion.
+
+Bessie's eyes sparkled with delight at the lusty compliment paid to her
+dancing, and she opened her cloak to cool herself, and also to show the
+glittering locket that hung about her neck.
+
+"It's famish, this fashion," muttered the elderly cynic. "It must tak' a
+brave canny fortune."
+
+"Shaf, man, the country's puzzen'd round with pride," answered his
+gossip. "Lasses worked in the old days. Now they never do a hand's turn
+but washin' and bleachin' and starchin' and curlin' their polls."
+
+"Ey, ey, there's been na luck in the country since the women-folk began
+to think shame of their wark."
+
+The fiddler made a squeak on two notes that sounded like kiss-her, and
+from a corner of the booth there came a clamorous smack of lips.
+
+"I saw you sweetheartin' laal Bessie," said one of the fellows to
+another.
+
+"And I saw you last night cutteran sa soft in the meadow. Nay, dunnot
+look sa strange. I never say nowt, not I. Only yon mother of Aggy's,
+she's a famous fratcher, and dunnot you let her get wind. She brays the
+lasses, and mappen she'll bray somebody forby."
+
+While the dancing proceeded there was a noisy clatter of glasses and a
+mutter of voices in the neighborhood of the bar.
+
+"The varra crony one's fidgin to see! Gie us a shak' of thy daddle!"
+shouted a fellow with a face like a russet apple.
+
+"Come, Dick, let's bottom a quart together. Deil tak' the expense."
+
+"Why, man, and wherever hasta been since Whissen Monday?"
+
+"Weel, you see, I went to the fair and stood with a straw in my mouth,
+and the wives all came round, and one of them said, 'What wage do you
+ask, canny lad?' 'Five pounds ten,' I says. 'And what can you do?' she
+says. 'Do?' I says, 'anything from plowing to threshing and nicking a
+nag's tail,' I says. 'Come, be my man,' she says. But she was like to
+clem me, so I packed up my bits of duds and got my wage in my reet-hand
+breek pocket, and here I am."
+
+The dancing had finished, and a little group was gathered around the
+fiddler's tub.
+
+"Come thy ways; here's Tom o' Dint conjuring, and telling folk what they
+are thinking."
+
+"That's mair nor he could do for the numskulls as never think."
+
+"He bangs all the player-folk, does Tom."
+
+"Who's yon tatterdemalion flinging by the newspaper and bawling, 'The
+country's going to the dogs?'"
+
+"That's Grey Graham, setting folk by the lug with his blusteration."
+
+"Mess, lads, but he'd be a reet good Parli'ment man to threep about the
+nation."
+
+"Weel, I's na pollytishun, but if it's tearin' and snappin' same as a
+terrier that mak's a reet good Parli'ment man, I reckon not all England
+could bang him."
+
+"And that's not saying nowt, Sim. I've heard Grey Graham on the ballot
+till it's wet him through to the waistcoat."
+
+"Is that Mister Paul Ritson and Mistress Lowther just run in for
+shelter?"
+
+"Surely; and a reet bonny lass she is."
+
+"And he's got larnin' and manners too."
+
+"Ey, he's of the bettermer sort, is Paul."
+
+"Does she live at the parson's--Parson Christian's?"
+
+"Why, yes, man; it's only naturable--he's her guardian."
+
+"And what a man he is, to be sure."
+
+"Ey, we'll never see his like again when he's gone."
+
+"Nay, not till the water runs up bank and trees grow down bank."
+
+"And what a scholar, and no pride neither, and what's mair in a parson,
+no greed. Why, the leal fellow values the world and the world's gear not
+a flea."
+
+"Contentment's a kingdom, as folk say, and religion is no worse for a
+bit o' charity."
+
+There was a momentary pressure of the company toward the mouth of the
+booth, where Gubblum Oglethorpe reappeared with his pack swung from his
+neck in front of him. The girls gathered eagerly around.
+
+"What have you to-day, Gubblum?"
+
+"Nay, nowt for you, my dear. You're one of them that allus looks best
+with nothing on."
+
+"Oh, Gubblum!"
+
+The compliment was certainly a dubious one.
+
+"Only your bits of shabby duds--that's all that pretty faces like yours
+wants."
+
+"Oh, Gubblum!"
+
+The peddler was evidently a dear, simple soul.
+
+"Lord bless you, yes; what's in here," slapping his pack contemptuously,
+"it's only for them wizzent old creatures up in London--them 'at have
+faces like the map of England when it shows all the lines of the
+railways--just to make them a bit presentable, you know. And there is no
+knowing what some of these things won't do to mak' a body smart--what
+with brooches and handkerchers and collars, and I don't know what."
+
+Gubblum's air of indifference had the extraordinary effect of bringing a
+dozen pairs of gloating eyes on the strapped pack. The face of the
+peddler wore an expression of bland innocence as he continued:
+
+"But bless you, I'm such a straightforward chap, or I'd make my fortune
+with the like of what's here."
+
+"Open your pack, Gubblum," said one of the fellows, Geordie Moore,
+prompted by sundry prods from the elbow of a little damsel by his side.
+
+The "straightforward chap" made a deprecatory gesture, and then yielded
+obligingly. While loosening the straps he resumed his discourse on his
+own general ignorance of business tactics, his ruinous honesty, and
+demoralizing sense of honor.
+
+"I'm not cute enough, that's my fault. I know the way to my mouth with a
+spoonful of poddish, and that's all. If I go further in the dark, I'm
+lost."
+
+Gubblum opened his pack and drew forth a red and green shawl of a
+hideous pattern.
+
+"Now, just to give you a sample. Here's a nice neat shawl that I never
+had no more nor two of. Well, I actually sold the fellow of that shawl
+for seven-and-sixpence."
+
+The look of amazement at his own shortcomings which sat on the
+child-like face of the peddler was answered by the expression of mock
+surprise in the face of Paul Ritson, who came up at the moment, took the
+shawl from Gubblum's outstretched arms, and said in a hushed whisper:
+
+"No, did you now?"
+
+Geordie Moore thereupon dived into his pocket, and brought out three
+half-crowns.
+
+"Here's for you, Gubblum; let's have it."
+
+"'Od bless me!" cried the elderly cynic, "but that Gubblum will never
+mak' his plack a bawbee."
+
+And Grey Graham, having disposed of the affairs of the nation and
+witnessed Geordie snap at the peddler's bait, cried out in a bitter
+laugh:
+
+   "'There's little wit within his powe
+   That lights a candle at the lowe.'"
+
+Just then a tumult arose in the vicinity of the bar. The two cronies
+were at open war.
+
+"Deuce take it! I had fifteen white shillin' in my reet-hand breek
+pocket, and where are they now?"
+
+"'Od dang thee! what should I know about your brass? You're kicking up a
+stour to waken a corp!"
+
+"I had fifteen white shillin' in my reet-hand breek pocket, I tell
+thee!"
+
+"What's that to me, thou poor shaffles? You're as drunk as muck. Do you
+think I've taken your brass? You've got a wrong pig by the lug if you
+reckon to come ower me!"
+
+"They were in my reet-hand breek pocket, I'll swear on it!"
+
+"What a fratchin'--try your left-hand breek pocket."
+
+The russet-faced plowman thrust his hand where directed and instantly a
+comical smile of mingled joy and shame overspread his countenance. There
+was a gurgling laugh, through which the voice of the peddler could be
+heard saying:
+
+"We'll mak' thee king ower the cockers, my canny lad."
+
+The canny lad was slinking away amid a derisive titter, when a great
+silence fell on the booth. Those in front fell back, and those behind
+craned their necks to see over the heads of the people before them.
+
+At the mouth of the booth stood the old Laird Fisher, his face ghastly
+pale, his eyes big and restless, the rain dripping from his long hair
+and beard.
+
+"They've telt me," he began in a strange voice, "they've telt me that my
+Mercy has gone off in the London train. I reckon they're mistook as to
+the lass, but I've come to see for mysel'. Is she here?"
+
+None answered. Only the heavy rain-drops that pattered on the canvas
+overhead broke the silence. Paul Ritson pushed his way through the
+crowd.
+
+"Mercy?--London? Wait, Matthew; I'll see if she's here."
+
+The Laird Fisher looked from face to face of the people about him.
+
+"Any on you know owt about her?" he asked in a low voice. "Why don't you
+speak, some on you? You shake your heads--what does that mean?"
+
+The old man was struggling to control the emotion that was surging in
+his throat.
+
+"No, Matthew, she's not here," said Paul Ritson.
+
+"Then maybe it's true," said Matthew, with a strange quiet.
+
+There was a pause. Paul was the first to shake off his surprise.
+
+"She might be at Little Town--in Keswick--twenty places."
+
+"She might be, Master Paul, but she's nowt o' the sort. She's on her way
+to London, Mercy is."
+
+It was Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll, who spoke.
+
+At that the old man's trance seemed to break.
+
+"Gone! Mercy gone! Gone without a word! Why? Where?"
+
+"She'd her little red bundle aside her; and she cried a gay bit to
+hersel' in the corner. I saw her mysel'."
+
+Paul's face became rigid with anger.
+
+"There's villainy in this--be sure of that!" he said, hotly.
+
+The laird rocked his head backward and forward, and his eyes swam with
+tears; but he stood in the middle as quiet as a child.
+
+"My laal Mercy," he said, faintly, "gone from her old father."
+
+Paul stepped to the old man's side, and put a great hand on his shoulder
+as softly as a woman might have soothed her babe. Then turning about,
+and glancing wrathfully in the faces around them, he said:
+
+"Some waistrel has been at work here. Who is he? Speak out. Anybody
+know?"
+
+No one spoke. Only the laird moaned feebly, and reeled like a drunken
+man. Then, with the first shock over, the old man began to laugh. What a
+laugh it was!
+
+"No matter," he said; "no matter. Now I've nowt left, I've nowt to lose.
+There's comfort in that, anyways. Ha! ha! ha! But my heart is like to
+choke for all. You say reet, Mr. Ritson, there's villainy in it."
+
+The old man's eyes wandered vacantly.
+
+"Her own father," he mumbled; "her lone old father--broken-hearted--him
+'at loved her--no matter, I've nowt left to--Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+He tried to walk away jauntily, and with a ghastly smile on his battered
+face, but he stumbled and fell insensible into Paul's outstretched arms.
+They loosened his neckerchief and bathed his forehead.
+
+Just then Hugh Ritson strode into the tent, stepped up to the group, and
+looked down over the bent heads at the stricken father lying in his
+brother's arms.
+
+Paul's lips trembled and his powerful frame quivered.
+
+"Who knows but the scoundrel is here now?" he said; and his eyes
+traversed the men about him. "If he is, let him look at his pitiless
+work; and may the sight follow him to his death!"
+
+At that moment Hugh Ritson's face underwent an awful change. Then the
+old man opened his eyes in consciousness, and Hugh knelt before him and
+put a glass of water to his lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+In the homestead of the Ritsons the wide old ingle was aglow with a
+cheerful fire, and Mrs. Ritson stood before it baking oaten cake on a
+"griddle." The table was laid for supper with beef and beer and milk and
+barley-bread. In the seat of a recessed window, Paul Ritson and Greta
+Lowther sat together.
+
+At intervals that grew shorter, and with a grave face that became more
+anxious, Mrs. Ritson walked to the door and looked out into the
+thickening sky. The young people had been too much absorbed to notice
+her increasing perturbation, until she opened a clothes-chest and took
+out dry flannels and spread them on the hearth to air.
+
+"Don't worrit yourself, mother," said Paul. "He'll be here soon. He had
+to cross the Coledale Pass, and that's a long stroke of the ground, you
+know."
+
+"It's an hour past supper-time," said Mrs. Ritson, glancing aside at the
+old clock that ticked audibly from behind the great arm-chair. "The rain
+is coming again--listen!" There was a light patter of rain-drops against
+the window-panes. "If he's on the fells now he'll be wet to the skin."
+
+"I wish I'd gone in place of him," said Paul, turning to Greta. "A bad
+wetting troubles him nowadays. Not same as of old, when he'd follow the
+fells all day long knee-deep in water and soaked to the skin with rain
+or snow."
+
+The thunder-clap shook the house. The windows rattled, and the lamp that
+had been newly lighted and put on the table flickered slightly and
+burned red.
+
+"Mercy, me, what a night! Was that a flash of lightning?" said Mrs.
+Ritson, and she walked to the door once more and opened it.
+
+"Don't worrit, mother," repeated Paul. "Do come in. Father will be here
+soon, and if he gets a wetting there's no help for it now."
+
+Paul had turned aside from an animated conversation with Greta to
+interpolate this remonstrance against his mother's anxiety. Resuming the
+narrative of his wrestling match, he described its incidents as much by
+gesture as by words.
+
+"John Proudfoot took me--so--and tried to give me the cross-buttock, but
+I caught his eye and twisted him on my hip--so--and down he went in a
+bash!"
+
+A hurried knock came to the outer door. In an instant it was opened, and
+a white face looked in.
+
+"What's now, Reuben?" said Paul, rising to his feet.
+
+"Come along with me--leave the women-folk behind--master's down--the
+lightning has struck him--I'm afeart he's dead!"
+
+"My father!" said Paul, and stood for a moment with a bewildered look.
+"Go on, Reuben, I'll follow." Paul picked up his hat and was gone in an
+instant.
+
+Mrs. Ritson had been stooping over the griddle when Reuben entered. She
+heard what he said, and rose up with a face of death-like pallor. But
+she said nothing, and sunk helplessly into a chair. Then Greta stepped
+up to her and kissed her.
+
+"Mother--dear mother!" she said, and Mrs. Ritson dropped her head on the
+girl's breast.
+
+Hugh had been sitting over some papers in his own room off the first
+landing. He overheard the announcement, and came into the hall.
+
+"Your father has been struck by the lightning," said Greta.
+
+"They will fetch him home," said Hugh.
+
+At the next moment there was the sound from without of burdened
+footsteps. They were bearing the injured man. Through the back of the
+house they carried him to his room.
+
+"That is for my sake," said Mrs. Ritson, raising her tear-stained face
+to listen.
+
+Paul entered. His ruddy cheeks had grown ashy white. His eyes, that had
+blinked with pleasure a minute ago, now stared wide with fear.
+
+"Is he alive?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Thank God! oh, thank God forever and ever! Let me go in to him."
+
+"He is unconscious--he breathes--but no more."
+
+Mrs. Ritson, with Paul and Greta, went into the room in which they had
+placed the stricken man. He lay across the bed in his clothes, just as
+he had fallen. They bathed his forehead and applied leeches to his
+temples. He breathed heavily, but gave no sign of consciousness.
+
+Paul sat at his father's side with his face buried in his hands. He was
+recalling his boyish days, when his father would lift him in his arms
+and throw him on the bare back of the pony that he gave him on his
+thirteenth birthday. Could it be possible that the end was at hand!
+
+He got up and led Greta out of the room.
+
+"This house of mourning is no place for you," he said; "the storm is
+over: you must leave us; Natt can put the mare into the trap and drive
+you home."
+
+"I will not go," said Greta; "this shall be my home to-night. Don't send
+me away from you, Paul. You are in trouble, and my place is here."
+
+"You could do no good, and might take some harm."
+
+Mrs. Ritson came out.
+
+"Where is Mr. Bonnithorne?" she asked. "He was to be here at eight. Your
+father might recover consciousness."
+
+"The lawyer could do nothing to help him."
+
+"If he is to leave us, may it please God to give him one little hour of
+consciousness."
+
+"Yes, knowing us again--giving us a farewell word."
+
+"There is another reason--a more terrible reason!"
+
+"You are thinking of the will. Let that go by. Come, mother--and Greta,
+too--- come, let us go back."
+
+Half an hour later the house was as still as the chamber of death. With
+hushed voices and noiseless steps the women-servants moved to and from
+the room where lay the dying man. The farming men sat together in an
+outer kitchen, and talked in whispers.
+
+The storm had passed away; the stars struggled one by one through a rack
+of flying cloud, and a silver fringe of moonlight sometimes fretted the
+black patches of the sky.
+
+Hugh Ritson sat alone in the old hall, that was now desolate enough. His
+face rested on his hand, and his elbow on his knee. There was a strange
+light in his eyes. It was not sorrow, and it was not pain; it was
+anxiety, uncertainty, perturbation. Again and again he started up from a
+deep reverie, and then a half-smothered cry escaped him. He walked a few
+paces to and fro, and sat down once more.
+
+A servant crossed the hall on tiptoe. Hugh raised his head.
+
+"How is your patient now?" he said, quietly.
+
+"Just breathing, sir; still quite unconscious."
+
+Hugh got up uneasily. A mirror hung on the wall in front of him, and he
+stood and looked vacantly into it. His thoughts wandered, and when a
+gleam of consciousness returned the first object that he saw was the
+reflection of his own face. It was full of light and expression. Perhaps
+it wore a ghostly smile. He turned away from the sight impatiently.
+
+Sitting down again he tried to compose himself. Point by point he
+revolved the situation. He thought of what the lawyer had said of his
+deserted wife and lost son of Lowther. Then, taking out of an inner
+pocket the medallion that Mr. Bonnithorne had lent him, he looked at it
+long and earnestly.
+
+The inspection seemed to afford a grim satisfaction. There could be no
+doubt now of the ghostly smile that played upon his face.
+
+There was a tall antique clock in the corner of the hall. It struck
+eight. The slow beats of the bell echoed chillily in the hushed
+apartment. The hour awakened the consciousness of the brooding man. At
+eight o'clock Mr. Bonnithorne was appointed to be there to make the
+will.
+
+Hugh Ritson touched gently a hand-bell that stood on the table. A
+servant entered.
+
+"Send Natt to me," said Hugh.
+
+A moment later the stableman shambled into the hall. He was a thick-set
+young fellow with a short neck and a full face, and eyelids that hung
+deep over a pair of cunning eyes. At first sight one would have said
+that the rascal was only half awake; at the second glance, that he was
+never asleep.
+
+Hugh received him with a show of cordiality.
+
+"Ah, Natt, come here--closer."
+
+The man walked across. Hugh dropped his voice.
+
+"Go down to Little Town and find Mr. Bonnithorne. You may meet him on
+the way. If not, he will be at the Flying Horse. Tell him I sent you to
+say that Adam Fallow lies dying at Bigrigg, and must see him at once.
+You understand?"
+
+The man lifted his slumberous eyelids. A suspicious twinkle lurked
+beneath them. He glanced around, then down at his big, grimy boots,
+measured with one uplifted hand the altitude of the bump on the top of
+his bullet head, and muttered, "I understand."
+
+Hugh's face darkened.
+
+"Silence!" he said, sternly; and then he met Natt's upward glance with a
+faint smile. "When you come back, get yourself out of the way--do you
+hear?"
+
+The heavy eyelids went up once more. "I hear."
+
+"Then be off!"
+
+The fellow was shuffling away.
+
+"Natt," said Hugh, following him a step, "you fancied that new whip of
+mine; take it. You'll find it in the porch."
+
+A smile crossed Natt's face from ear to ear. He stumbled out.
+
+Hugh Ritson returned to the hearth. That haunting mirror caught the
+light of his eyes again and showed that he too was smiling. At the same
+instant there came from the inner room the dull, dead sound of a deep
+sob. It banished the smile and made him pause. He looked at the
+reflection of his face--could it be the face of a scoundrel? Was he
+playing a base part? No, he was merely asserting his rights; his plain
+legal rights--nothing more.
+
+He opened a cupboard in the wall and took down a bunch of keys.
+Selecting one key, he stepped up to a cabinet and opened it. In a
+compartment were many loose papers. Now to see if by chance there
+existed a will already. He glanced at the papers one by one and threw
+them aside. When he had finished his inspection he took a hasty turn
+about the room. No trace--he had been sure of it!
+
+Again the deep sob came from within. Hugh Ritson walked noiselessly to
+the inner door, opened it slightly, bent his head, and listened. He
+turned away with an expression of pain, picked up his hat, and went out.
+
+The night was very dark. He strode a few paces down the lonnin and then
+back to the porch. Uncovering his head, he let the night wind cool his
+hot temples. His breath came audibly and hard. He was turning again
+into the house when his eye was arrested by a light near the turning of
+the high-road. The light was approaching; he walked toward it, and met
+Josiah Bonnithorne. The lawyer was jouncing along toward the house with
+a lantern in his hand.
+
+"Didn't you meet the stableman?" said Hugh in an eager whisper.
+
+"No."
+
+"The blockhead must have taken the old pack-horse road on the fell-side.
+One would be safe in that fool's stupidity. You have heard what has
+happened?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"There is no will already."
+
+"And your father is insensible?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then none shall be made."
+
+There was a pause, in which the darkness itself seemed full of speech.
+The lantern cast its light only on an open cart-shed in the lane.
+
+"If your mother is the Grace Ormerod who married Robert Lowther and had
+a son by him, then Paul was that son--the heir to Lowther's
+conscience-money."
+
+"Bonnithorne," said Hugh Ritson--his voice trembled and broke--"if it is
+so, then it is so, and we need do nothing. Remember, he is my father. It
+is not within belief that he wants to disinherit his own son for the son
+of another man."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne broke into a half-smothered laugh, and stepped close
+into the cobble-hedge, keeping the lantern down.
+
+"Your father--yes. But you have seen to-day what that may come to. He
+has always held you under his hand. Paul has been the old man's
+favorite."
+
+"No doubt of that." Hugh crept close to the lawyer. He was wrestling in
+the coil of a tragic temptation.
+
+"If he recovers consciousness, he may be tempted to recognize as his own
+his wife's illegitimate son. That"--the low tone was one of withering
+irony--"will keep her from dishonor, and you from the estates."
+
+"At least he is my brother--my mother's son. If my father wishes to
+provide for him, God forbid that we should prevent."
+
+Once more the half-smothered laugh came through the darkness.
+
+"You have missed your vocation, Mr. Ritson. Believe me, the Gospel has
+lost a fervent advocate. Perhaps you would like to pray for this good
+brother; perhaps you would consider it safe to drop on your knee and
+say, 'My good brother that should be, who has ever loved me, whom I have
+ever loved, take here my fortune, and leave me until death a penniless
+dependent on the lands that are mine by right of birth.'"
+
+Hugh Ritson's breath came in gusts through his quivering, unseen lips.
+
+"Bonnithorne, it cannot be--it is mere coincidence, seductive, damning
+coincidence. My mother knows all. If it were true that Paul was the son
+of Lowther, she would know that Paul and Greta must be half-brother and
+half-sister. She would stop their unnatural union."
+
+"And do you think I have waited until now to sound that shoal water with
+a cautious plummet? Your mother is as ignorant of the propinquity as
+Greta herself. Lowther was dead before your family settled in Newlands.
+The families never once came together while the widow lived. And now not
+a relative survives who can tell the story."
+
+"Parson Christian?" said Hugh Ritson.
+
+"A great child just out of swaddling-clothes!"
+
+"Then the secret rests with you and me, Bonnithorne?"
+
+"Who else? The marriage must not come off. Greta is Paul's half-sister,
+but she is no relative of yours--"
+
+"You are right, Bonnithorne," Hugh Ritson broke in; "the marriage is
+against nature."
+
+"And the first step toward stopping it is to stop the will."
+
+"Then why are you here?"
+
+"To make sure that there is no will already. You have satisfied me, and
+now I go."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Who shall say that I am acting a base part?" said Hugh, in an eager
+tone.
+
+"Who indeed?"
+
+"Nature itself is on my side."
+
+The man was conquered. He was in the grip of his temptation.
+
+"I am off, Mr. Ritson. Get back into the house. It is not safe for you
+to be out of sight and sound."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne was moving off in the darkness, the lamp before his
+breast; its light fell that instant on Hugh Ritson's haggard face.
+
+"Wait; put out your lamp."
+
+"It's done."
+
+All was now dark.
+
+"Good-night."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+With slow whispers the two men parted.
+
+The springy step of Josiah Bonnithorne was soon lost in the road below.
+
+Hugh Ritson stood for awhile where the lawyer left him, and then turned
+back into the house. He found the cabinet open. In the turmoil of
+emotion he had forgotten to close it. He returned to it, and shuffled
+with the papers to put them back in their place. At that moment the door
+opened, and a heavy footstep fell on the floor. Hugh glanced up
+startled. It was Paul. His face was plowed deep with lines of pain. But
+the cloud of sorrow that it wore was not so black as the cloud of anger
+when he saw what his brother was doing and guessed his purpose.
+
+"What are you about?" Paul asked, mastering his wrath.
+
+There was no response.
+
+"Shut up that cabinet!"
+
+Hugh turned about with a flushed face.
+
+"I shall do as I please!"
+
+Paul took two strides toward him.
+
+"Shut it up!"
+
+The cabinet was closed. At the same moment Mrs. Ritson came from the
+inner room. Paul turned on his heel.
+
+"He is thinking of the will," said the elder brother. "Perhaps it is
+natural that he should distrust me; but when the time comes he is
+welcome to the half of everything, and ten thousand wills would hardly
+give him more."
+
+Mrs. Ritson was strongly agitated. Her eyes, red with weeping, were
+aflame with expression.
+
+"Paul, he is conscious," she cried in a voice that her anxiety could not
+subdue. "He is trying to speak. Where is the lawyer?"
+
+Hugh had been moving toward the outer door.
+
+"Conscious!" he repeated, and returned to the hearth.
+
+"Send for Mr. Bonnithorne at once!" said Mrs. Ritson, addressing Hugh.
+
+Her manner was feverish. Hugh touched the bell. When the servant
+appeared, he said:
+
+"Tell Natt to run to the village for Mr. Bonnithorne."
+
+Paul had walked to the door of the inner room. His hand was on the
+handle, when the door opened and Greta came out. She stepped up to Mrs.
+Ritson and tried to quiet her agitation.
+
+The servant returned.
+
+"I can't find Natt," she said. "He is not in the house."
+
+"You'll find him in the stable," said Hugh, composedly.
+
+The servant went out hurriedly.
+
+Paul returned to the middle of the room.
+
+"I'll go myself," he said, and plucked his hat from the settle, but Mrs.
+Ritson rose to prevent him.
+
+"No, no, Paul," she said in a tremulous voice, "you must never leave his
+side."
+
+Paul glanced at his brother with a perplexed look. The calmness of
+Hugh's manner disturbed him.
+
+The servant reappeared.
+
+"Natt is not in the stable, sir."
+
+Paul's face was growing crimson. Mrs. Ritson turned to Hugh.
+
+"Hugh, my dear son, do you go for the lawyer."
+
+A faint smile that lurked at the corners of Hugh's mouth gave way to a
+look of injury.
+
+"Mother, my place, also, is here. How can you ask me to leave my
+father's side at a moment like this?"
+
+Greta had been looking fixedly at Hugh.
+
+"I'll go," she said, resolutely.
+
+"Impossible," said Paul. "It is now dark--the roads are wet and lonely."
+
+"I'll go, nevertheless," said Greta, firmly.
+
+"God bless you, my darling, and love you and keep you forever!" said
+Paul. Wrapping a cloak about her shoulders, he whispered: "My brave
+girl--that's the stuff of which an English woman may be made."
+
+He opened the door and walked out with her across the court-yard. The
+night was now clear and calm; the stars burned; the trees whispered; the
+distant ghylls, swollen by the rain, roared loud through the thin air; a
+bird on the bough of a fir-tree whistled and chirped. The storm was
+gone; only its wreckage lay in the still room within.
+
+"A safe journey to you, dear girl, and a speedy return," whispered Paul,
+and in another moment Greta had vanished in the dark.
+
+When he returned to the hall, his brother was passing into the room
+where the sick man lay. Paul was about to follow when his mother, who
+was walking aimlessly to and fro in yet more violent agitation than
+before, called on him to remain. He turned about and stepped up to her,
+observing as he did so that Hugh had paused on the threshold, and was
+regarding them with a steadfast look.
+
+Mrs. Ritson took Paul's hand with a nervous grasp. Her eyes, that bore
+the marks of recent tears, had the light of wild excitement.
+
+"God be praised that he is conscious at last!" she said.
+
+Paul shook his head as if in censure of his mother's feelings.
+
+"Let him die in peace," he said; "let his soul pass quietly to its rest.
+Don't vex it now with thoughts of the cares it leaves behind."
+
+Mrs. Ritson let go his hand, and dropped into a chair. A slight shudder
+passed over her. Paul looked down with a puzzled expression. Then there
+was a low sobbing. He leaned over his mother and smoothed her hair
+tenderly.
+
+"Come, let us go in," he said in a broken voice.
+
+Mrs. Ritson rose from her seat and went down on her knees. Her eyes,
+still wet, but no longer weeping, were raised to heaven.
+
+"Almighty Father, give me strength!" she said beneath her breath, and
+then more quietly she rose to her feet.
+
+Paul regarded her with increasing perturbation. Something even more
+serious than he yet knew of was amiss. Hardly knowing why, his heart
+sunk still deeper.
+
+"What are we doing?" he said, scarcely realizing his own words.
+
+Mrs. Ritson threw herself on his neck.
+
+"Did I not say there was a terrible reason why your father should make a
+will?"
+
+Paul's voice seemed to die within him.
+
+"What is it, mother?" he asked feebly, not yet gathering the meaning of
+his fears.
+
+"God knows, I never dreamed it would be my lips that must tell you,"
+said Mrs. Ritson. "Paul, my son, my darling son, you think me a good
+mother and a pure woman. I am neither. I must confess all--now--and to
+you. Oh, how your love will turn from me!"
+
+Paul's face turned pale. His eyes gazed into his mother's eyes with a
+fixed look. The clock ticked audibly. Not another sound broke the
+silence. At last Paul spoke.
+
+"Speak, mother," he said; "is it something about my father?"
+
+Mrs. Ritson's face fell on to her son's breast. A strong shudder ran
+over her shoulders, and she sobbed aloud.
+
+"You are not your father's heir," she said; "you were born before we
+married.... But you will try not to hate me, ... your own mother.... You
+will try, will you not?"
+
+Paul's great frame shook visibly. He tried to speak. His tongue cleaved
+to his mouth.
+
+"Do you mean that I am--a bastard?" he said in a hoarse whisper.
+
+The word seemed to sting his mother like a poisoned arrow. She clung yet
+closer about his neck.
+
+"Pity me and love me still, though I have wronged you before God and
+man. I whom the world thought so pure--I am but a whited sepulcher--a
+dishonored woman dishonoring her dearest son!"
+
+The door opened gently, and Hugh Ritson stood in the door-way. Neither
+his brother nor his mother realized his presence. He remained a moment,
+and then withdrew, leaving the door ajar.
+
+Beneath the two whom he left behind, the world at that moment reeled.
+
+Paul stood with great, wide eyes, that had never tear to soften them,
+gazing vacantly into the weeping eyes before him. His lips quivered, but
+he did not speak.
+
+"Paul, speak to me--speak to me--only speak--only let me hear your
+voice! See, I am at your feet--your mother kneels to you--forgive her as
+God has forgiven her!"
+
+And loosing her grasp, she flung herself on the ground before him, and
+covered her face with her hands.
+
+Paul seemed not at first to know what was happening. Then he stooped and
+raised his mother to her feet.
+
+"Mother, rise up," he said in a strange, hollow tone. "Who am I that I
+should presume to pardon you? I am your son--you are my mother!"
+
+His vacant eyes gathered a startled expression. He glanced quickly
+around the room, and said in a deep whisper:
+
+"How many know of this?"
+
+"None besides ourselves."
+
+The frightened look disappeared. In its place came a look of
+overwhelming agony.
+
+"But I know of it; oh, my God!" he cried; and into the chair from which
+his mother had risen he fell like a wounded man.
+
+Mrs. Ritson dried her eyes. A strange quiet was coming upon her now. Her
+voice gathered strength. She laid a hand on the head of her son, who sat
+before her with buried face.
+
+"Paul," she said, "it is not until now that the day of reckoning has
+waited for me. When you were a babe, and knew nothing of your mother's
+grief, I sorrowed over the shame that might yet be yours; and when you
+grew to be a prattling child, I thought if God would look into your
+innocent eyes they would purchase grace for both of us."
+
+Paul lifted his head. At that moment of distress God had sent him the
+gracious gift of tears. His eyes were wet, and looked tenderly at his
+mother.
+
+"Paul," she continued, quite calmly now, "promise me one thing."
+
+"What is it?" he asked, softly.
+
+"That if your father should not live to make the will that must
+recognize you as his son, you will never reveal this secret."
+
+Paul rose to his feet. "That is impossible. I cannot promise it," he
+said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Honor and justice require that my brother Hugh, and not I, should be my
+father's heir--he, at least, must know."
+
+"What honor, and what justice?"
+
+"The honor of a true man--the justice of the law of England."
+
+Mrs. Ritson dropped her head. "So much for your honor," she said. "But
+what of mine?"
+
+"Mother, what do you mean?"
+
+"That if you allow your younger brother to inherit, the world by that
+act will be told all--your father's sin, your mother's shame."
+
+Mrs. Ritson raised her hands to her face, and turned aside. Paul stepped
+up to her and kissed her forehead reverently.
+
+"You are right," he said. "Forgive me--I thought only of myself. The
+world that loves to tarnish a pure name would like to gloat over your
+sorrow. That it shall never! Man's law may have been outraged, but God's
+law is still inviolate. Whatever my birth, I am as much your son in the
+light of Heaven as Jacob was the son of Isaac, or David of Jesse. Come,
+let us go to him--he may yet live to acknowledge me."
+
+It had been a terrible moment, but it was past. To live to manhood in
+ignorance of the dishonor of his birth, and then to learn the truth
+under the shadow of death--this had been a tragic experience. The love
+he had borne his father--the reverence he had learned at his mother's
+knee--to what bitter test had they been put! Had all the past been but
+as the marble image of a happy life! Was all the future shattered before
+him! Pshaw! he was the unconscious slave of a superstition--a phantasm,
+a gingerbread superstition!
+
+And a mightier touch awoke his sensibilities--the touch of nature.
+Before God at that moment he was his father's son. If the world, or the
+world's law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving
+to be damned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly
+ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim to his
+father's name?
+
+Paul took in love the hand of his mother. "Let us go in to him," he
+repeated, and together they walked across the room.
+
+The outer door was flung open, and Greta entered, flushed and with
+wide-open eyes. At the same instant the inner door swung noiselessly
+back, and Hugh Ritson stood on the threshold. Greta was about to speak,
+but Hugh motioned her to silence. His face was pale, his hand trembled.
+"Too late," he said, huskily; "he is dead!"
+
+Greta sunk on to the settle in the window recess. Hugh walked to the
+hearth and paused with rigid features before the haunting mirror.
+
+Paul stood for a moment hand in hand with his mother, motionless,
+speechless, cold at his heart. Then he hurried into the inner room. Mrs.
+Ritson followed him, closing the door behind him.
+
+The little oak-bound room was dusky; the lamp that burned low was
+shaded. Across the bed lay Allan Ritson, in his habit as he lived. But
+his lips were white and cold.
+
+Paul stood and looked down. There lay his father--his father still! His
+father by right of nature--of love--of honor--let the world say what it
+would.
+
+And he knew the truth at last: too late to look into those glassy eyes
+and read the secret of their long years of suffering love.
+
+"Father," Paul whispered, and fell to his knees by the deaf ear.
+
+Mrs. Ritson, strangely quiet, strangely calm, stepped to the opposite
+side of the bed, and placed one hand on the dead man's breast.
+
+"Paul," she said, "come here."
+
+He rose to his feet and walked to her side.
+
+"Lay your hand with mine, and pledge to me your solemn word never to
+speak of what you have heard to-night until that great day when we three
+shall stand together before the great white throne."
+
+Paul placed his hand side by side with hers, and lifted his eyes to
+heaven.
+
+"On my father's body, by my mother's honor--never to reveal to any human
+soul, by word or deed, his act or her shame--always to bear myself as
+their lawful son before man, even as I am their rightful son before
+God--I swear it! I swear it!"
+
+His voice was cold and clear, but the words were scarcely uttered when
+he fell to his knees again, with a subdued cry of overwrought feeling.
+
+Mrs. Ritson staggered back, caught the curtains of the bed, and covered
+her face. All was still.
+
+Then a shuffling footfall was heard on the floor. Hugh Ritson was in the
+darkened room. He lifted the shaded lamp from the table, approached the
+bedside, and held the lamp with one hand above his head. The light fell
+on the outstretched body of his father and the bowed head of his
+brother.
+
+
+
+
+_BOOK II._
+
+
+THE COIL OF THE TEMPTATION.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+It was late in November, and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay
+on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with
+mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and
+gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only
+a fibrous vagueness was visible.
+
+In an old pasture field by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an
+elderly man, sturdy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun.
+There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar
+and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over
+his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed the
+expression of gentleness and easy good-nature. It was a fine old face,
+with the beauty of simplicity and the sweetness of content.
+
+A boy in front led the horses, and whistled. The parson hummed a tune as
+he turned his furrows. Sometimes he sung in a drawling tone--
+
+   "Bonny lass, canny lass, wilta be mine?
+   Thou's nowder wesh dishes nor sarra the swine."
+
+At the turn-rows he paused, and rested on his plow handles. He rested
+longest at the turn-rows on the roadside of the field. Like the
+shivering mists that grouped about the open doors, he was held there by
+light and warmth.
+
+The smithy stood at the opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of
+the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the
+fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a
+long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations
+of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin
+clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's
+sledge echoed in unseen recesses of the hills beyond.
+
+This smithy of Newlands filled the function which under a higher
+propitiousness of circumstance is answered by a club. Girded with his
+leather apron, his sleeves rolled tightly over his knotty arms, the
+smith, John Proudfoot, stood waiting for his heat. His striker, Geordie
+Moore, had fallen to at the bellows. On the tool chest sat Gubblum
+Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the
+gate. The miller, Dick of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o'
+Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the
+grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point by many similar
+applications.
+
+"Nay, I can make nowt of him. He's a changed man for sure," said the
+blacksmith.
+
+Gubblum removed his pipe and muttered sententiously:
+
+"It's die-spensy, I tell thee."
+
+"Dandering and wandering about at all hours of the day and night,"
+continued the blacksmith.
+
+"It's all die-spensy," repeated the peddler.
+
+"And as widderful and wizzent as a polecat nailed up on a barn door,"
+said Tom o' Dint, lifting his grating knife from the grindstone and
+speaking with a voice as hoarse.
+
+"Eh, and as weak as watter with it," added the blacksmith.
+
+"His as was as strong as rum punch," rejoined the fiddler.
+
+"It's die-spensy, John--nowt else," said Gubblum.
+
+The miller broke in testily.
+
+"What's die-spensy?"
+
+"What ails Paul Ritson?" answered Gubblum.
+
+"Shaf on your balderdash," said Dick of the Syke; "die-spensying and
+die-spensying. You've no' but your die-spensy for everything. Tommy's
+rusty throat, and John's big toe, and lang Geordie's broken nose, as
+Giles Raisley gave him a' Saturday neet at the Pack Horse--it's all
+die-spensy."
+
+The miller was a blusterous fellow, who could swear in lusty anger and
+laugh in boisterous sport in a single breath.
+
+Gubblum puffed placidly.
+
+"It is die-spensy. I know it by exper'ence," he observed, persistently.
+
+The blacksmith's little eyes twinkled mischievously.
+
+"To be sure you do, Gubblum. You had it bad the day you crossed in the
+packet from Whitehebben. That was die-spensy--a cute bout too."
+
+"I've heard as it were amazing rough on the watter that day," said Tom,
+in a pause of the wheel, glancing up knowingly at the blacksmith.
+
+"Heard, had you? Must have been tolerable deaf else. Rough? Why, them do
+say as the packet were wrecked, and only two planks saved. Gubblum was
+washed ashore cross-legged on one of them, and his pack on the other."
+
+The long, labored breathings of the bellows ended, the iron was thrown
+white hot out of the glowing coals on to the anvil, and the clank of the
+hand-hammer and thud of the sledge were all that could be heard. Then
+the iron cooled, and was lifted back into the palpitating blaze. The
+blacksmith stepped to the door, wiped his streaming forehead with one
+hand and waved the other to the parson plowing in the opposite field.
+
+"A canny morning, Mr. Christian," he shouted. "Bad luck for the parson's
+young lady, anyhow--her sweetheart is none to keen for the wedding," he
+said, turning again to the fire.
+
+"She's a fine like lass, yon," said Tom o' Dint.
+
+An old man, iron gray, with a pair of mason's mallets swung front and
+back across his shoulders, stepped into the smithy.
+
+"How fend ye, John?" he said.
+
+"Middling weel, Job," answered the blacksmith; "and what's your errand
+now?"
+
+"A chisel or two for tempering."
+
+"Cutting in the church-yard to-day, Job? Cold wark, eh?"
+
+"Ey, auld Ritson's stone as they've putten over him."
+
+The blacksmith tapped the peddler on the arm.
+
+"Gubblum, shall I tell you what's a-matter with Paul?"
+
+"Never you bother, John, it's die-spensy."
+
+"It's fretting--that's it--fretting for his father."
+
+"Fretting for his fiddlesticks!" shouted Dick, the miller; "Allan's dead
+this half a year."
+
+"John's reet," said Job, the stone-cutter; "it is fretting."
+
+Dick of the Syke got up off the iron rods.
+
+"Because a young fellow has given you a job of wark to cut his father's
+headstone and tell a lie or two in letters half an inch deep and two
+shillings a dozen--does that show 'at he's fretting?"
+
+"He didn't do nowt of the sort," said Job, hotly.
+
+"Dusta mean as it were the other one--Hugh?" inquired the miller.
+
+"Maybe that's reet," said Job.
+
+Dick of the Syke was not to be beaten for lack of the logic of
+circumlocution.
+
+"Then what for do you say as Paul is weeping his insides out about his
+father, when he leaves it to other folks to put a bit of stone over him
+and a few scrats on it?"
+
+"Because I do say so," said Job, conclusively.
+
+"And maybe you've got your reasons, Job," said the blacksmith with
+insinuating suavity.
+
+"Maybe I have," said the mason. Then softening, he added, "I don't mind
+telling you, neither. Yesterday morning when I went to wark I found Paul
+Ritson lying full length across his father's grave. His clothes were
+soaking with dew, and his face was as white as a Feb'uary mist, and
+stiff and set like, and his hair was frosted over same as a pane in the
+church window."
+
+"Never!"
+
+"He was like to take no note of me, but I gave him a shake, and called
+out, 'What, Mr. Paul! why, what, man! what's this?'"
+
+"And what ever did he say?"
+
+"Say! Nowt. He get hissel' up--and gay stiff in the limbs he looked, to
+be sure--and walked off without a word."
+
+Gubblum on the tool chest had removed his pipe from between his lips
+during the mason's narrative, and listened with a face of blank
+amazement.
+
+"Weel, that is a stiffener," he said, drawing a long breath.
+
+"What's a stiffener?" said Job, sharply.
+
+"That 'at you're telling for gospel truth." Then, turning to the
+blacksmith, the peddler pointed the shank of his pipe at the mason, and
+said: "What morning was it as he found Paul Ritson taking a bath to
+hissel' in the kirk-yard?"
+
+"Why, yesterday morning," said the smith.
+
+"Well, he bangs them all at lying!" said Gubblum.
+
+"What dusta say?" shouted Job, with sudden fury.
+
+"As you've telt us a lie," answered Gubblum.
+
+"Sista, Gubblum, if you don't take that word back I'll--I'll throw you
+into the water-butt!"
+
+"And what would I do while you were thrang at that laal job?" asked the
+peddler.
+
+The blacksmith interposed.
+
+"Sec a rumpus!" he said; "you're too sudden in your temper, Job."
+
+"Some folks are ower much like their namesakes in the Bible," said
+Gubblum, resuming his pipe.
+
+"Then what for did he say it worn't true as I found young Ritson
+yesterday morning wet to the skin in the church-yard?" said Job,
+ignoring the peddler.
+
+"Because he warn't there," said Gubblum.
+
+Job lost all patience.
+
+"Look here," he said, "if you're not hankering for a cold bath on a
+frosty morning, laal man, I don't know as you've got any call to say
+that again!"
+
+"He warn't there," the "laal man" muttered doggedly.
+
+The blacksmith had plunged his last heat into the water trough to cool,
+and a cloud of vapor filled the smithy.
+
+"Lord A'mighty!" he said, laughing, "that's the way some folks go
+off--all of a hiss and a smoke."
+
+"He warn't there," mumbled the peddler again, impervious to the homely
+similitude.
+
+"How are you so certain sure?" said Dick of the Syke. "You warn't there
+yourself, I reckon."
+
+"No; but I was somewhere else, and so was Paul Ritson. I slept at the
+Pack House in Kezzick night afore last, and he did the same."
+
+"Did you see him there?" said the blacksmith.
+
+"No; but Giles Raisley saw him, and he warn't astir when Giles went on
+his morning shift at eight o'clock."
+
+The blacksmith broke into a loud guffaw.
+
+"Tell us how he was at the Hawk and Heron in London at midsummer."
+
+"And so he was," said Gubblum, unabashed.
+
+"Willy-nilly, ey?" said the blacksmith, pausing over the anvil with
+uplifted hammer, the lurid reflection of the hot iron on his face.
+
+"Maybe he had his reasons for denying hisself," said Gubblum.
+
+The blacksmith laughed again, tapped the iron with the hand-hammer, down
+came the sledge, and the flakes flew.
+
+Two miners entered the smithy.
+
+"Good-morning, John; are ye gayly?" said one of them.
+
+"Gayly, gayly! Why, it's Giles hissel'!"
+
+"Giles," said the peddler, "where was Paul Ritson night afore last?"
+
+"Abed, I reckon," chuckled one of the new-comers.
+
+"Where abed?"
+
+"Nay, don't ax me. Wait--night afore last? That was the night he slept
+at Janet's, wasn't it?"
+
+Gubblum's eyes twinkled with triumph.
+
+"What, did I tell you?"
+
+"What call had he to sleep at Keswick?" said the blacksmith; "it's
+no'but four miles from his own bed at the Ghyll."
+
+"Nay, now, when ye ax the like o' that--"
+
+Tom, the postman, stopped his grindstone and snuckered huskily:
+
+"Maybe he's had a fratch with yon brother--yon Hugh."
+
+"I'm on the morning shift this week, and Mother Janet she said: 'Giles,'
+she said, 'the brother of your young master came late last night for a
+bed.'"
+
+"Job, what do you say to that?" shouted the blacksmith above the
+pulsating of the bellows, and with the sharp white lights of the leaping
+flames on his laughing face.
+
+"Say! That they're a pack of liars!" said the mason, catching up his
+untempered chisels and flinging out of the smithy.
+
+When he had gone, Gubblum removed his pipe and said calmly: "He's ower
+much like his Bible namesake in temper--that's the on'y fault of Job."
+
+The parson, in the field outside, had stood in the turn-rows, resting on
+his plow-handles. He had been drawling "Bonny lass, canny lass;" but,
+catching the sound of angry words, he had paused and listened. When Job,
+the mason, flung away, he returned to his plowing, and disappeared down
+the furrow, the boy whistling at his horse's head.
+
+"Why, Mattha, it is thee?" said the blacksmith, observing for the first
+time the second of the new-comers; "and how fend ye?"
+
+"Middling weel, John, middling weel," said Matthew, in a low voice,
+resting on the edge of the trough.
+
+It was Laird Fisher, more bent than of old, with deeper lines in his
+grave face and with yet more listless eyes. He had brought two picks for
+sharpening.
+
+"Got your smelting-house at wark down at the pit, Mattha?" asked the
+blacksmith.
+
+"Ey, John, it's at wark--it's at wark."
+
+The miller had turned to go, but he faced about with ready anger.
+
+"Lord, yes, and a pretty pickle you and your gaffer's like to make of
+me. Wad ye credit it, John? they've built their smelting-house within
+half a rod of my mill. Half a rod; not a yard mair. When your red-hot
+rubbish is shot down your bank, where's it going to go, ey? That's what
+I want to know--where's it going to go?"
+
+"Why, into your mill, of course," said Gubblum, with a wink, from the
+tool-chest. "That'll maybe help you to go by fire when you can't raise
+the wind."
+
+"Verra good for thee, Gubblum," laughed the blacksmith.
+
+"I'll have the law on them safe enough," said the miller.
+
+"And where's your damages to come from?"
+
+"From the same spot as all the rest of the brass--that's good enough for
+me."
+
+Matthew's voice followed the insinuating guffaw.
+
+"I spoke to Master Hugh yesterday. I telt him all you said about a
+wall."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He won't build it."
+
+"Of course not. Why didsta not speak to Paul?"
+
+"No use in that," said Matthew, faintly.
+
+"Nay, young Hugh is a gaffer," exclaimed the blacksmith.
+
+"And Paul has no say in it except finding the brass, ey?"
+
+"I mak' no doubt as you're reet, Dick," said Matthew, meekly.
+
+"It's been just so since the day auld Allan died," said the blacksmith.
+"He hadn't been a week in his grave before Hugh bought up Mattha's
+royalty in the Hammer Hole, and began to sink for iron. He's never found
+much ore, as I've heard tell on, but he goes ahead laying down his
+pumping engines, and putting up his cranes, and boring his mill-races,
+just as if he was proper-ietor of a royal mine."
+
+"Hugh is the chain-horse, and Paul's no'but the mare in the shafts,"
+said Gubblum.
+
+"And the money comes somehow," said Tom o' Dint, who had finished the
+knife and was testing its edge in whittling a stick.
+
+Matthew got up from his seat.
+
+"I'll come again for the picks, John," he said quietly; and the old man
+stepped out of the bright glow into the chill haze.
+
+"Mattha has never been the same since laal Mercy left him," said the
+blacksmith.
+
+"Any news of her?" asked the peddler.
+
+"Ax Tom o' Dint; he's the postman, and like to know if anybody in
+Newlands gets the scribe of a line from the wench," said the miller.
+
+Tom shakes his head. "You could tell summat, an' you would, ey, Tom?"
+said the blacksmith, showing his teeth.
+
+"Don't you misliken me," said the rural messenger in his husky tones;
+"I'm none of your Peeping Toms." And the postman drew up his head with
+as much pride of office as could be assumed by a gentleman of bowed legs
+and curtailed stature.
+
+"It baffles me as Mattha hisself could make nowt of his royalty in the
+Hammer Hole, if there was owt to make out of it," said the miller from
+the gate, buttoning his coat up to his ears.
+
+"I've heard as he had a mind to try his luck again," said Giles Raisley.
+
+"Nay, nay, nowt of the sort," said the blacksmith. "When the laal lass
+cut away and left the auld chap he lost heart and couldn't bear the
+sight of the spot where she used to bide. So he started back to his bit
+place on Coledale Moss. But Hugh Ritson followed him and bought up his
+royalty--for nowt, as they say--and set him to wark for wage in his own
+sinking--the same that ruined the auld man lang ago."
+
+"And he's like to see a fortun' come out of it yet," said Giles.
+
+"It won't be Mattha's fortun', then."
+
+"Nay, never fear," said the miner.
+
+Gubblum shook the ashes out of his pipe, and said meditatively,
+"Mattha's like me and the cuckoo."
+
+"Why, man, how's that?" said the blacksmith, girding his leather apron
+in a band about his waist. A fresh heat was in the fire; the bellows
+were belching; the palpitating flames were licking the smoky hood. A
+twinkle lurked in the blacksmith's eye. "How's that?" he repeated.
+
+"He's allus stopping short too soon," said Gubblum. "My missis, she said
+to me last back end, 'Gubblum,' she said, 'dusta mind as it's allus
+summer when the cuckoo is in the garden?' 'That's what is is,' I said.
+'Well,' she said, 'dusta not think it wad allus be summer if the cuckoo
+could allus be kept here?' 'Maybe so,' I says; 'but easier said nor
+done.' 'Shaf on you for a clothead!' says she; 'nowt so simple. When you
+get the cuckoo into the garden, build a wall round and keep it in.' And
+that's what I did; and I built it middling high, too, but it warn't high
+enough, for, wad ye think it, one day I saw the cuckoo setting off, and
+it just skimmed the top of that wall by a bare inch. Now, if I'd no'but
+put another stone--"
+
+A loud peal of laughter was Gubblum's swift abridgment. The peddler
+tapped the mouth of his pipe on his thumb-nail, and smiled under his
+shaggy brows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+When Parson Christian finished his plowing, the day was far spent. He
+gave the boy a shilling as day's wage for leading the horses, drove the
+team back to their owner, Robert Atkinson, paid five shillings for the
+day's hire of them, and set out for home. On the way thither he called
+at Henry Walmsley's, the grocery store in the village, and bought half a
+pound of tea, a can of coffee, and a stone of sugar; then at Randal
+Alston's, the shoemaker's, and paid for the repairing of a pair of
+boots, and put them under his arm; finally, he looked in at the Flying
+Horse and called for a pot of ale, and drank it, and smoked a pipe and
+had a crack with Tommy Lowthwaite, the publican.
+
+The mist had risen as the day wore on, and now that the twilight was
+creeping down the valley, the lane to the vicarage could be plainly seen
+in its yellow carpeting of fallen leaves. An outer door of the house
+stood open, and a rosy glow streamed from the fire into the porch. Not
+less bright was the face within that was waiting to welcome the old
+vicar home.
+
+"Back again, Greta, back again!" shouted the parson, rolling into the
+cozy room with his ballast under either arm. "There--wait--fair play,
+girl--ah, you rogue!--now that's what I call a mean advantage!"
+
+There was a smack of lips, a little laugh in a silvery voice with a
+merry lilt in it, and then a deep-toned mutter of affected protestation
+breaking down into silence and a broad smile.
+
+At arms-length Greta glanced at the parson's burdens, and summoned an
+austere look.
+
+"Now, didn't I tell you never to do it again?" she said, with an
+uplifted finger and an air of stern reproof.
+
+"Did you now?" said the parson, with an expression of bland
+innocence--adding, in an accent of wonderment: "What a memory I have, to
+be sure!"
+
+"Leave such domestic duties to your domestic superiors," said the girl,
+keeping a countenance of amazing severity. "Do you hear me, you dear old
+darling?"
+
+"I hear, I hear," said the old man, throwing his purchases on the floor
+one by one. "Why, bless me, and here's Mr. Bonnithorne," he added,
+lifting his eyes to the chimney-corner, where the lawyer sat toasting
+his toes. "Welcome, welcome."
+
+"Peter, Peter!" cried Greta, opening an inner door.
+
+A gaunt old fellow, with only one arm, shambled into the room.
+
+"Peter, take away these things to the kitchen," said Greta.
+
+The old man glanced down at the parson's purchases with a look of
+undisguised contempt.
+
+"He's been at it again, mistress," he said.
+
+The parson had thrown off his coat, and was pushing away his long boots
+with the boot-jack.
+
+"And how's Mr. Bonnithorne this rusty weather? Wait, Peter, give me the
+slippers out of the big parcel. I got Randal Alston to cut down my old
+boots into clock sides, and make me slippers out of the feet. Only
+sixpence, and see what a cozy pair. Thank you, Peter. So you're well,
+Mr. Bonnithorne. Odd, you say? Well, it is, considering the world of
+folk who are badly these murky days."
+
+Peter lifted the boots and fixed them dexterously under the stump of his
+abridged member. The tea and coffee he deposited in his trousers'
+pockets, and the sugar he carried in his hand.
+
+"There'll be never no living with him," he muttered in Greta's ear as he
+passed out. "Don't know as I mind his going to plow--that's a job for a
+man with two hands--but the like o' this isn't no master's wark."
+
+"Dear me!" exclaimed the parson, who was examining his easy-chair
+preparatory to sitting in it, "a new cushion--and a bag on the wall for
+my specs--and a shelf for my pipes--and a--a--what do you call this?"
+
+"An antimacassar, Mr. Christian," the lawyer said.
+
+"I wondered was he ever going to see any difference," said Greta, with
+dancing eyes.
+
+"Dear me, and red curtains on the windows, and a clean print counterpane
+on the settle--"
+
+"A chintz--a chintz," interposed Greta, with a mock whimper.
+
+"And the old rosewood clock in the corner as bright as a looking-glass,
+and the big oak cabinet all shiny with oil--"
+
+"Varnish, sir, varnish."
+
+"And all the carvings on it as fresh as a new pin--St. Peter with his
+great key, and the rich man with his money-bag trying to defy the fiery
+furnace."
+
+"Didn't I say you would scarcely know your own house when you came home
+again?" said Greta.
+
+She was busying herself at spreading the cloth on the round table and
+laying the parson's supper.
+
+Parson Christian was revolving on his slippered toes, his eyes full of
+child-like amazement, and a maturer twinkle of knowingness lurking in
+that corner of his aged orbs that was not directly under the fire of
+the girl's sharp, delighted gaze.
+
+"Deary me, have you a young lady at home, Mr. Bonnithorne?"
+
+"You know I am a bachelor, Mr. Christian," said the lawyer, demurely.
+
+"So am I--so am I. I never knew any better--not until our old friend
+Mrs. Lowther died and left me to take charge of her daughter."
+
+"Mother should have asked me to take charge of Mr. Christian, shouldn't
+she, Mr. Bonnithorne?" said Greta, with roguish eyes.
+
+"Well, there's something in that," said the parson, with a laugh. "Peter
+was getting old and a bit rusty in the hinges, you know, and we were
+likely to turn out a pair of old crows fit for nothing but to scare good
+Christians from the district. But Greta came to the musty old house,
+with its dust and its cobwebs, and its two old human spiders, like a
+slant of sunlight on a muggy day. Here's supper--draw up your chair, Mr.
+Bonnithorne, and welcome. It's my favorite dish--she knows it--barley
+broth and a sheep's head, with boiled potatoes and mashed turnips. Draw
+up your chair--but where's the pot of ale, Greta?"
+
+"Peter! Peter!"
+
+The other spider presently appeared, carrying a quart jug with a little
+mountain of froth--a crater bubbling over and down the sides.
+
+"Been delving for potatoes to-day, Peter?" said the parson.
+
+Peter answered with a grumpy nod of his big head.
+
+"How many bushels?"
+
+"Maybe a matter of twelve," muttered Peter, shambling out.
+
+Then the parson and his guest fell to.
+
+"You're a happy man, Mr. Christian," said Mr. Bonnithorne, as Greta left
+the room on some domestic errand.
+
+Parson Christian shook his head.
+
+"No call for grace," he said, "with all the luxuries of life thrown into
+one's lap--that's the worst of living such a happy life. No trials, no
+cross--nothing to say but 'Soul, take thine ease'--and that's bad when
+you think of it.... Have some sheep's head, Mr. Bonnithorne; you've not
+got any tongue--here's a nice sweet bit."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Christian. I came round to pay the ten shillings for
+Joseph Parkinson's funeral sermon last Sunday sennight, and the one
+pound two half-yearly allowance from the James Bolton charity for poor
+clergy-men."
+
+"Well, well! they may well say it never rains but it pours," said the
+parson. "I called at Henry Walmsley's and Robert Atkinson's on my way
+home from the crossroads, and they both paid me their Martinmas
+quarterage--Henry five shillings, and Robert seven shillings--and when I
+dropped in on Randal Alston to pay for the welting and soling of my
+shoes he said they would come to one and sixpence, but that he owed me
+one and seven-pence for veal that Peter sold him, so he paid me a penny,
+and we are clear from the beginning of the world to this day."
+
+"I also wanted to speak about our young friend Greta," said Mr.
+Bonnithorne, softly. "I suppose you are reconciled to losing her?"
+
+"Losing her?--Greta!" said the parson, laying down his knife. Then
+smiling, "Oh, you mean when Paul takes her--of course, of course--only
+the marriage will not be yet awhile--he said so himself."
+
+"Marriage with Paul--no," said Mr. Bonnithorne, clearing his throat and
+looking grave.
+
+Parson Christian glanced into the lawyer's face uneasily and lapsed into
+silence.
+
+"Mr. Christian, you were left guardian of Greta Lowther by our dear
+friend, her mother. It becomes your duty to see that she does the best
+for her future welfare and happiness."
+
+"Surely, surely!" said the parson.
+
+"You are an old man, Mr. Christian, and she is a young girl. When you
+and I are gone, Greta Lowther will still have the battle of life before
+her."
+
+"Please God--please God!" said the parson, faintly.
+
+"Isn't it well that you should see that she shall have a husband that
+can fight it with her side by side?"
+
+"So she shall, so she shall--Paul is a manly fellow, and as fond of her
+as of his own soul--nay, as I tell him, it's idolatry and a sin before
+God, his love of the girl."
+
+"You're wrong, Mr. Christian. Paul Ritson is no fit husband for Greta.
+He is a ruined man. Since his father's death he has allowed the Ghyll to
+go to wreck. It is mortgaged to the last blade of grass. I know it."
+
+Parson Christian shifted his chair from the table and gazed into the
+fire with bewildered eyes.
+
+"I knew he was in trouble," he said, "but I didn't guess that things
+wore so grave a look."
+
+"Don't you see that he is shattered in mind as well as purse?" said the
+lawyer.
+
+"No, no; I can't say that I do see that. He's a little absent sometimes,
+but that's all. When I talk of Matthew Henry and discuss his
+commentaries, or recite the story of dear Adam Clarke, he is a
+little--just a little forgetful--that's all--yes, that is all."
+
+"Compared with his brother--what a difference!" said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"Well, there is a difference," said the parson.
+
+"Such spirit, such intelligence--he'll be the richest man in Cumberland
+one of these days. He has bought up a royalty that is sweating ore, and
+now he is laying down pumping engines and putting up smelting-houses,
+and he is getting standing orders to fix a line of railway for the ore
+he is fetching up."
+
+"And where did the money come from?" asked the parson; "the money to
+begin?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne glanced up sharply.
+
+"It was his share of his father's personalty."
+
+"A big tree from such a little acorn," said the parson, meditatively,
+"and quick growth, too."
+
+"There's no saying what intelligence and enterprise will not do in this
+world, Mr. Christian," said the lawyer, who seemed less certain of the
+next. "Hugh Ritson is a man of spirit and brains. Now, that's the
+husband for Greta--that is, if you can get him--and I don't know that
+you can--but if it were only possible--"
+
+Parson Christian faced about.
+
+"Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, gravely, "the girl is not up for sale, and
+the richest man in Cumberland can't buy her. The thirty pieces of silver
+for which Judas sold his master may have been smelted and coined afresh,
+but not a piece of that money shall touch fingers of mine!"
+
+"You mistake me, Mr. Christian, believe me, you do," protested the
+lawyer, with an aggrieved expression. "I was speaking in our young
+friend's interests. Whatever occurs, I beg of you, as a friend and
+well-wisher of the daughter of Robert Lowther, now in his grave, never
+to allow her to marry Paul Ritson."
+
+"That shall be as God wills it," said the parson quietly.
+
+The lawyer had risen and drawn on his great-coat.
+
+"She can stay here with me," continued the parson.
+
+"No, she should marry now," said Mr. Bonnithorne, stepping to the door.
+"She's all but of age. It is hardly fair to keep her."
+
+"Why, what do you mean?" asked the parson, a puzzled look on his face.
+
+"She is rich and she is young. Her wealth can buy comforts, and her
+youth win pleasures."
+
+The good old Christian opened wide his great gray eyes with a blank
+expression. He glanced vacantly about the simple room, rose to his feet,
+and sat down again.
+
+"I never thought of that before," he said, faintly, and staring long
+into the fire.
+
+There was a heavy foot on the path outside. The latch was lifted, and
+Paul Ritson stepped into the room. At the sound of his step Greta
+tripped through the inner door, all joy and eagerness, to welcome him.
+The parson got up and held out both hands, the clouds gone from his
+beaming face.
+
+"Well, good-night," said the lawyer, opening the door. "I've four long
+miles before me. And how dark! how very dark!"
+
+Paul Ritson was in truth a changed man.
+
+His face was pale and haggard, and his eyes were bleared and heavy. He
+dropped with a listless weariness into the chair that Greta drew up to
+the fire. When he smiled the lips lagged back to a gloomy repose, and
+when he laughed the note of merriment rang hollow and fell short.
+
+"Just in time for a game with me, my lad!" said the parson. "Greta,
+fetch the chessboard and box."
+
+The board was brought, the pieces fixed; the parson settled himself at
+his ease, with slippers on the hearth-rug and a handkerchief across his
+knee.
+
+"Do you know, Paul, I heard a great parl about you to-day?"
+
+"About me! Where?" asked Paul, without much curiosity in his tone.
+
+"At Mr. Proudfoot's smithy, while I was turning the fallows in the
+meadow down at the crossroads. Little Mr. Oglethorpe was saying that you
+slept at the Pack Horse, in Keswick, the night before last; but Mr. Job
+Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, said nay, and they had high words
+indeed, wherein Job called Mr. Oglethorpe all but his proper name, and
+flung away in high dudgeon."
+
+Paul moved his pawn and said, "I never slept at the Pack Horse in my
+life, Mr. Christian."
+
+Greta sat knitting at one side of the ingle. The kitten, with a bell
+attached to a ribbon about its neck, sported with the bows of her dainty
+slippers. Only the click of the needles, and the tinkle of the bell, and
+the hollow tick of the great clock in the corner broke the silence.
+
+At last Parson Christian drew himself up in his chair.
+
+"Well, Paul, man, Paul--deary me, what a sad move! You're going back,
+back, back; once you could beat me five games to four. Now I can run
+away with you."
+
+The game soon finished, amid a chuckle from the parson, a bantering word
+from Greta, and a loud, forced laugh from Paul.
+
+Parson Christian lifted from a shelf a ponderous tome bound in leather
+and incased in green cloth.
+
+"I must make my day's entry," he said, "and get off to bed. I was astir
+before day-break this morning."
+
+Greta crept up behind the old man, and looked over his shoulder as he
+wrote:
+
+   "Nov. 21.--Retired to my lodging-room last night, and commended my
+   all to God, and lay down, and fell asleep; but Peter minded the
+   heifer that was near to calving; so he came and wakened me, and we
+   went down and sealed her, and foddered her, and milked her. Spent all
+   day plowing the low meadow, Peter delving potatoes. Called at the
+   Flying Horse, and sat while I drank one pot of ale and no more, and
+   paid for it. Received ten shillings from Lawyer Bonnithorne for
+   funeral sermon, and one pound two from Bolton charity; also five
+   shillings quarterage from Henry Walmsley, and seven from Robert
+   Atkinson, and a penny to square accounts from Randal Alston, and so
+   retired to my closet at peace with all the world. Blessed be God."
+
+The parson returned to its shelf the ponderous diary "made to view his
+life and actions in," and called through the inner door for his bedroom
+candle. A morose voice answered "Coming," and presently came.
+
+"Thank you, Peter; and how's the meeting-house, and who preaches there
+next Sunday, Peter?"
+
+Peter grumbled out:
+
+"I don't know as it's not yourself. I passed them my word as you'd
+exhort 'em a' Sunday afternoon."
+
+"But nobody has ever asked me. You should have mentioned the matter to
+me first, Peter, before promising. But never mind, I'm willing, though
+it's a poor discourse they can get from me."
+
+Turning to Paul, who sat silent before the fire:
+
+"Peter has left us and turned Methodist," said the parson; "he is now
+Brother Peter Ward, and wants me to preach at the meeting-house. Well, I
+won't say nay. Many a good ordained clergyman has been dissenting
+minister as well. Good-night to you.... Peter, I wish you to get some
+whipcord and tie up the reel of my fishing-rod--there it is, on the
+rafters of the ceiling; and a bit more cord to go round the handle of my
+whip--it leans against the leads of the neuk window; and, Peter, I'm
+going to go to the mill with the oats to-morrow, and Robin Atkinson has
+loaned me his shandry and mare. Robin always puts a bushel of grain into
+the box, but it's light and only small feeding. I wish you to get a
+bushel of better to mix with it, and make it more worth the mare's labor
+to eat it. Good-night all; good night."
+
+Peter grumbled something beneath his breath and shambled out.
+
+"God bless him!" said Greta presently; and Paul, without lifting his
+eyes from the fire, said quietly:
+
+   "'Christe's lore, and His apostles twelve
+   He taught; but first he followed it himselve.'"
+
+Then there was silence in the little vicarage. Paul sat without
+animation until Greta set herself to bewitch him out of his moodiness.
+Her bright eyes, dancing in the rosy fire-light that flickered in the
+room; her high spirits bubbling over with delicious teasing and joyous
+sprightliness; her tenderness, her rippling laughter, her wit, her
+badinage--all were brought to the defeat and banishment of Paul's
+heaviness of soul. It was to no purpose. The gloom of the grave face
+would not be conquered. Paul smiled slightly into the gleaming eyes, and
+laughed faintly at the pouting lips, and stroked tenderly the soft hair
+that was glorified into gold in the glint of the fire-light; but the old
+sad look came back once and again.
+
+Greta gave it up at last. She rose from the hassock at his feet.
+
+"Sweetheart," she said, "I will go to bed. You are not well to-night, or
+you are angry, or out of humor."
+
+She waited a moment, but he did not speak. Then she made a feeble feint
+of leaving the room.
+
+At last Paul said:
+
+"Greta, I have something to say."
+
+She was back at her hassock in an instant. The laughter had gone from
+her eyes, and left a dewy wistfulness.
+
+"You are unhappy. You have been unhappy a long, long time, and have
+never told me the cause. Tell me now."
+
+The heavy face relaxed.
+
+"What ever put that in your head, little one?" he asked, in a playful
+tone, patting the golden hair.
+
+"Tell me now," she said more eagerly. "Think of me as a woman fit to
+share your sorrows, not as a child to be pampered and played with, and
+never to be burdened with a man's sterner cares. If I am not fit to
+know your troubles, I am not fit to be your wife. Tell me, Paul, what it
+is that has taken the sunshine out of your life."
+
+"The sunshine has not been taken out of my life yet, little woman--here
+it is," said Paul, lightly, and he drew his fingers through the
+glistening hair.
+
+The girl's lucent eyes fell.
+
+"You are playing with me," she said gravely; "you are always playing
+with me. Am I so much a child? Are you angry with me?"
+
+"Angry with you, little one? Hardly that, I think," said Paul, and his
+voice sunk.
+
+"Then tell me, sweetheart. You have something to say--what is it?"
+
+"I have come to ask--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+He hesitated. His heart was too full to speak. He began again.
+
+"Do you think it would be too great a sacrifice to give up--"
+
+"What?" she gasped.
+
+"Do you remember all you told me about my brother Hugh--that he said he
+loved you?"
+
+"Well?" said Greta, with a puzzled glance.
+
+"I think he spoke truly," said Paul, and his voice trembled.
+
+She drew back with agony in every line of her face.
+
+"Would it be ... do you think ... supposing I went away, far away, and
+we were not to meet for a time, a long time--never to meet again--could
+you bring yourself to love him and marry him?"
+
+Greta rose to her feet in agitation.
+
+"Him--love him!--you ask me that--you!"
+
+The girl's voice broke down into sobs that seemed to shake her to the
+heart's core.
+
+"Greta, darling, forgive me; I was blind--I am ashamed."
+
+"Oh, I could cry my eyes out!" she said, wiping away her tears. "Say you
+were only playing with me, then; say you were only playing; do say so,
+do!"
+
+"I will say anything--anything but the same words again--and they nearly
+killed me to say them."
+
+"And was this what you came to say?" Greta inquired.
+
+"No, no," he said, lifted out of his gloom by the excitement; "but
+another thing, and it is easier now--ten times easier now--to say it.
+Greta, do you think if I were to leave Cumberland and settle in another
+country--Australia or Canada, or somewhere far enough away--that you
+could give up home, and kindred, and friends, and old associations, and
+all the dear past, and face a new life in a new world with me? Could you
+do it?"
+
+Her eyes sparkled. He opened his arms, and she flew to his embrace.
+
+"Is this your answer, little one?" he said, with choking delight. And a
+pair of streaming eyes looked up for a brief instant into his face.
+"Then we'll say no more now. I'm to go to London to-morrow night, and
+shall be away four days. When I return we'll talk again, and tell the
+good soul who lies in yonder. Peace be with him, and sweet sleep, the
+dear old friend!"
+
+Paul lifted up his hat and opened the door. His gloom was gone; his eyes
+were alive with animation. The worn cheeks were aflame. He stood erect,
+and walked with the step of a strong man.
+
+Greta followed him into the porch. The rosy fire-light followed her. It
+flickered over her golden hair, and bathed her beauty in a ruddy glow.
+
+"Oh, how free the air will breathe over there," he said, "when all this
+slavery is left behind forever! You don't understand, little woman, but
+some day you shall. What matter if it is a land of rain, and snow, and
+tempest? It will be a land of freedom--freedom, and life, and love. And
+now, Master Hugh, we shall soon be quits--very soon!"
+
+His excitement carried him away, and Greta was too greedy of his joy to
+check it with questions.
+
+They stood together at the door. The night was still and dark; the trees
+were noiseless, their prattling leaves were gone. Silent and empty as a
+vacant street was the unseen road.
+
+Paul held forth his hand to feel if it rained. A withered leaf floated
+down from the eaves into his palm.
+
+Then a footstep echoed on the path. It went on toward the village.
+Presently the postman came trudging along from the other direction.
+
+"Good-night, Tom o' Dint!" cried Paul, cheerily.
+
+Tom stopped and hesitated.
+
+"Who was it I hailed on the road?" he asked.
+
+"When?"
+
+"Just now."
+
+"Nay, who was it?"
+
+"I thought it was yourself."
+
+The little man trundled on in the dark.
+
+"My brother, no doubt," said Paul, and he pulled the door after him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The next morning a bright sun shone on the frosty landscape. The sky was
+blue and the air was clear.
+
+Hugh Ritson sat in his room at the back of the Ghyll, with its window
+looking out on the fell-side and on the river under the leafless trees
+beneath. The apartment had hardly the appearance of a room in a Cumbrian
+homestead. It was all but luxurious in its appointments. The character
+of its contents gave it something of the odor of a by-gone age. Besides
+books on many shelves, prints, pictures in water and oil, and mirrors of
+various shapes, there was tapestry on the inside of the door, a bust of
+Dante above a cabinet of black oak, a piece of bas-relief in soapstone,
+a gargoyle in wood, a brass censer, a mediaeval lamp with open mouth,
+and a small ivory crucifix nailed to the wall above the fire.
+
+Hugh himself sat at an organ, his fingers wandering aimlessly over the
+keys, his eyes gazing vacantly out at the window. There was a knock at
+the door.
+
+"Come in," said the player. Mr. Bonnithorne entered and walked to a
+table in the middle of the floor. Hugh Ritson finished the movement he
+was playing, and then arose from the organ and drew an easy-chair to the
+fire.
+
+"Brought the deed?" he asked, quietly, Mr. Bonnithorne still standing.
+
+"I have, my dear friend, and something yet more important."
+
+Hugh glanced up: through his constant smile Mr. Bonnithorne was
+obviously agitated. Dropping his voice, the lawyer added, "Copies of the
+three certificates."
+
+Hugh smiled faintly. "Good; we will discuss the certificates first," he
+said, and drew his dressing-gown leisurely about him.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne began to unfold some documents. He paused; his eye was
+keen and bright; he seemed to survey his dear friend with some
+perplexity; his glance was shadowed by a certain look of distrust; but
+his words were cordial and submissive, and his voice was, as usual, low
+and meek. "What a wonderful man you are. And how changed! It is only a
+few months since I had to whip up your lagging spirits at a great
+crisis. And now you leave me far behind. Not the least anxious! How
+different I am, to be sure. It was this very morning my correspondent
+sent me the copies, and yet I am here, five miles from home. And when
+the post arrived I declare to you that such was my eagerness to know if
+our surmises were right that--"
+
+Hugh interrupted in a quick, cold voice: "That you were too nervous to
+open his letter, and fumbled it back and front for an hour--precisely."
+
+Saying this, Hugh lifted his eyes quickly enough to encounter Mr.
+Bonnithorne's glance, and when they fell again a curious expression was
+playing about his mouth.
+
+"Give me the papers," said Hugh, and he stretched forward his hand
+without shifting in his seat.
+
+"Well, really, you are--really--"
+
+Hugh raised his eyes again. Mr. Bonnithorne paused, handed the
+documents, and shuffled uneasily into a seat.
+
+One by one Hugh glanced hastily over three slips of paper. "This is
+well," he said, quietly.
+
+"Well? I should say so, indeed. What could be better? I confess to you
+that until to-day I had some doubts. Now I have none."
+
+"Doubts? So you had doubts?" said Hugh, dryly "They disturbed your
+sleep, perhaps?"
+
+The lurking distrust in Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes openly displayed itself,
+and he gazed full into the face of Hugh Ritson with a searching look
+that made little parley with his smile. "Then one may take a man's
+inheritance without qualm or conviction?"
+
+Hugh pretended not to hear, and began to read aloud the certificates in
+his hand. "Let me see, this is first--Registration of Birth."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "Luckily, very luckily, the registration of
+birth is first."
+
+Hugh read:
+
+"Name, Paul. Date of birth, August 14, 1845. Place of birth, Russell
+Square, London. Father's name, Robert Lowther. Mother's name, Grace
+Lowther; maiden name, Ormerod."
+
+"Then this comes second--Registration of Marriage."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne rose in his eagerness and rubbed his hands together at
+the fire. "Yes, second," he said, with evident relish.
+
+Hugh read calmly:
+
+"Allan Ritson--Grace Ormerod--Register's office, Bow Street, Strand,
+London--June 12, 1847."
+
+"What do you say to that?" asked Mr. Bonnithorne, in an eager whisper.
+
+Hugh continued without comment. "And this comes last--Registration of
+Birth."
+
+"Name, Hugh--March 25, 1848--Holme, Ravenglass, Cumberland--Allan
+Ritson--Grace Ritson (Ormerod)."
+
+"There you have the case in a nutshell," said Mr. Bonnithorne, dropping
+his voice. "Paul is your half-brother, and the son of Lowther. You are
+Allan Ritson's heir, born within a year of your father's marriage. Can
+anything be clearer?"
+
+Hugh remained silently intent on the documents. "Were these copies made
+at Somerset House?" he asked.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded.
+
+"And your correspondent can be relied upon?"
+
+"Assuredly. A solicitor in excellent practice."
+
+"Was he told what items he had to find, or did he make a general
+search?"
+
+"He was told to find the marriage or marriages of Grace Ormerod and to
+trace her offspring."
+
+"And these were the only entries?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded again.
+
+Hugh twirled the papers in his fingers, and then placed two of them side
+by side. His face wore a look of perplexity. "I am puzzled," he said.
+
+"What puzzles you?" said Mr. Bonnithorne. "Can anything be plainer?"
+
+"Yes. By these certificates I am two and a half years younger than Paul.
+I was always taught that there was only a year between us."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne smiled, and said in a superior tone:
+
+"An obvious ruse."
+
+"You think a child is easily deceived--true!"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne preserved a smiling face.
+
+"Now, I will proceed to the payment of the legacy, and you, no doubt, to
+the institution of your claim."
+
+"No," said Hugh Ritson, with emphasis, rising to his feet.
+
+"You know that if a bastard dies seized of an estate, the law justifies
+his title. He is then the bastard eigne. You must eject this man."
+
+"No," said Hugh Ritson again. The lawyer glanced up inquiringly, and
+Hugh added: "That shall come later. Meantime the marriage must be
+brought about."
+
+"Your own marriage with Greta?"
+
+"Paul's."
+
+"Paul's?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, the very suppression of his tone giving
+it additional emphasis.
+
+"Paul's," repeated Hugh with grim composure. "He shall marry her."
+
+The lawyer had risen once more, and was now face to face with Hugh
+Ritson, glancing into his eyes with eager scrutiny.
+
+"You cannot mean it?" he said at length.
+
+"And why not?" said Hugh, placidly.
+
+"Because Paul is her brother--at least, her half-brother."
+
+"They don't know that."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne's breath seemed to be arrested.
+
+"But we know it, and we can't stand by and witness their marriage!" he
+said at length.
+
+Hugh Ritson leaned with his back to the fire. "We can, and shall," he
+said, and not a muscle of his face moved.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne surveyed his friend from head to foot, and then his own
+countenance relaxed.
+
+"You are trifling; but it will be no trifle to them when they learn that
+their billing and cooing must end. And from such a cause, too. It will
+be a terrible shock. The only question is, whether it would not be more
+humane to say nothing of the impediment until we have brought about
+another match. Last night, at Parson Christian's, I did what I could for
+you."
+
+Hugh smiled in return; a close observer might have seen that his was a
+cold mockery of the lawyer's own smile.
+
+"Yes, you were always humane, Bonnithorne, and now your sensibilities
+are shocked. But when I spoke of marriage I meant the ceremony. Nothing
+more."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes twinkled.
+
+"I think I understand. You intend to separate them at the church
+door--perhaps at the altar rail. It is a shocking revenge. My very skin
+creeps!"
+
+Hugh laughed lightly, and walked to the window. A slant of sunshine fell
+on his upturned face. When he turned his head and broke silence he spoke
+in a deep, harsh voice.
+
+"I was humane, too. When she spoke of marriage with Paul, I hinted at an
+impediment. She ridiculed the idea; scoffed at it." Another light laugh,
+and then a stern solemnity. "She insulted me--palpably, grossly,
+brutally. What did she say? Didn't I tell you before? Why, she said--ha!
+ha! would you believe it?--she said she'd rather marry a plowboy than
+such a gentleman as me. That was her very word."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face was now dark with passion, while laughter was on his
+lips.
+
+"She shall marry her plowboy, to her lifelong horror and disgrace. I
+promised her as much, and I will keep my word!"
+
+"A terrible revenge!" muttered the lawyer, twitching uneasily at his
+finger-nails.
+
+"Tut! You don't know to what lengths love may go. Even the feeble infant
+hearts of men whose minds are a blank can carry them any length in the
+devotion or the revenge of love!" He paused, and then added in a low
+tone, "She has outraged my love!"
+
+"Surely not past forgiveness?" interrupted Mr. Bonnithorne, nervously.
+"It would be a lifelong injury. And she is a woman, too."
+
+Hugh faced about.
+
+"But he is a man; and I have my reckoning with him also." Hugh Ritson
+strode across the room, and then stopped suddenly. "Look you,
+Bonnithorne, you said that with all your confidence on the night of my
+father's death, you had your doubts until to-day. But I had never a
+moment's doubt. Why? Because I had assurance from my mother's own lips.
+To me? No, but worse; to him. He knows well he is not my father's heir.
+He has known it since the hour of my father's death. He knows that I
+know it. Yet he has kept the lands to this day." Another uneasy
+perambulation. "Do you think of that when you talk of revenge?
+Manliness? He has none. He is a pitiful, truculent, groveling coward,
+ready to buy profit at any price. He has robbed me of my inheritance. He
+stands in my place. He is a living lie. Revenge? It will be
+retribution!"
+
+Hugh Ritson's composure was gone. Mr. Bonnithorne, not easily cowed,
+dropped his eyes before him. "Terrible, terrible!" he muttered again,
+and added with more assurance: "But you know I have always urged you to
+assert your right to the inheritance."
+
+Hugh was striding about the room, his infirm foot trailing heavily after
+him.
+
+"Bonnithorne," he said, pausing, "when a woman has outraged the poor
+weak heart of one of the waifs whom fate flings into the gutter, he
+sometimes throws a cup of vitriol into her face, saying, 'If she is not
+for me, she is not for another;' or 'Where she has sinned, there let her
+suffer.' That is revenge; it is the feeble device of a man who thinks in
+his simple soul that when beauty is gone loathing is at hand." Another
+light trill of laughter.
+
+"But the cup of retribution is not to be measured by the cup of
+vitriol."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne fumbled his papers nervously, and repeated beneath his
+breath, "Terrible, terrible!"
+
+"She has wronged me, Bonnithorne, and he has wronged me. They shall
+marry and they shall separate; and henceforward they shall walk together
+and yet apart, a gulf dividing them from each other, yet a wider gulf
+dividing both from the world; and so on until the end, and he and I and
+she and I are quits."
+
+"Terrible, terrible!" Mr. Bonnithorne mumbled again. "All nature rises
+against it."
+
+"Is it so? Then be it so," said Hugh, the flame subsiding from his
+cheek, and a cold smile creeping afresh about his lips. "Your sense of
+justice would have been answered, perhaps, if I had turned this bastard
+adrift penniless and a beggar, stopped the marriage, and taken by
+strategy the woman I could not win by love." The smile faded away. "That
+would have been better than the cup of vitriol, but not much better. You
+are a man of the world."
+
+"It is a terrible revenge," the lawyer muttered again--this time with a
+different intonation.
+
+"I repeat, they shall marry. No more than that," said Hugh. "I would
+outrage nature as little as I would shock the world."
+
+The sun had crept round to where the organ stood in one corner of the
+room. Hugh's passion had gradually subsided. He sidled on to the stool
+and began to play softly. A knock came to the door, and old Laird Fisher
+entered.
+
+"The gentleman frae Crewe is down at the pit about t' engine in the
+smelting-mill," said the old man.
+
+"Say I shall be with him in half an hour," said Hugh, and Laird Fisher
+left the room. Then Hugh put the papers in his pocket.
+
+"We have wasted too much time over the certificates--they can
+wait--where's the deed of mortgage?--I must have the money to pay for
+the new engine."
+
+"It is here," said the lawyer, and he spread a parchment on the table.
+
+Hugh glanced hastily over it, and touched a hand-bell. When the maid
+appeared he told her to go to Mr. Paul, who was thatching in the
+stack-yard, and say he wished to see him at once. Then he returned to
+the organ and played a tender air. His touch was both light and
+strenuous.
+
+"Any news of his daughter?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, sinking his voice to a
+whisper.
+
+"Whose daughter?" said Hugh, pausing and looking over his shoulder.
+
+"The old man's--Laird Fisher's."
+
+"Strangely enough--yes. A letter came this morning."
+
+Hugh Ritson stopped playing and thrust his hand into an inner pocket.
+But Mr. Bonnithorne hastened to show that he had no desire to pry into
+another man's secrets.
+
+"Pray don't trouble. Perhaps you'd rather not--just tell me in a word
+how things are shaping."
+
+Hugh laughed a little, unfolded a sheet of scented writing-paper, with
+ornamented border, and began to read:
+
+"'I am writing to thank you very much--' Here," tossing the letter to
+the lawyer, "read it for yourself." Then he resumed his playing.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne fixed his nose-glasses, and read:
+
+   "I am writing to thank you very much for your kind remembrance of me,
+   it was almost like having your company, I live in hopes of seeing you
+   soon, when are you coming to me? Sometimes I think you will never,
+   never come, and then I can't help crying though I try not to, and I
+   don't cry much. I don't go out very often London is far away, six
+   miles, there are nice people here and nice children. Only think when
+   my trouble is over and you come and take me home. How is poor
+   father, does he look much older does he fret for me now? I wonder
+   will he know me. I am quite well, only there is something the matter
+   in my eyes. Sometimes when I wake up I can't see plain. Don't be long
+   writing. My eyes are very sore and red to-day, and it is oh so lonely
+   in this strange place. Mrs. Drayton is kind to me. Good-bye. She has
+   a son, but he is always at meets, that is races, and I have never
+   seen him. Write soon to your loving Mercy. The time is near."
+
+Hugh played on while Mr. Bonnithorne read. The lawyer, when he came to
+the end, handed the letter back with the simple comment:
+
+"Came this morning, you say? It was written last Tuesday--nearly a week
+ago."
+
+Hugh nodded his head over his shoulder, and continued to play. He swayed
+to and fro with an easy grace to the long sweeps of the music until the
+door opened sharply, and Paul entered with a firm step. Then he rose,
+picked a pen from the inkstand, and dipped it in the ink.
+
+Paul wore a suit of rough, light cloth, with leggins, and a fur cap,
+which he did not remove. His face was pale; decision sat on every line
+of it.
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Bonnithorne, if I don't shake hands," he said in his
+deep voice; "I'm at work, and none too clean."
+
+"This," said Hugh Ritson, twiddling the pen in his fingers, "this is the
+deed I spoke of yesterday. You sign there," pointing to a blank space in
+front of a little wafer.
+
+Then he placed one hand firmly on the upper part of the parchment, as if
+to steady it, and held out the pen.
+
+Paul made no approach to accepting it. He stretched forward, took hold
+of the document, and lifted it, casting Hugh's hand aside.
+
+Hugh watched him closely.
+
+"The usual formality," he said, lightly; "nothing more."
+
+Paul passed his eye rapidly over the deed. Then he turned to the lawyer.
+
+"Is this the fourth or fifth mortgage that has been drawn?" he inquired,
+still holding the parchment before him.
+
+"Really, I can't say--I presume it is the--really, I hardly remember--"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne's suavity of tone and customary smile broke down into
+silence and a look of lowering anxiety.
+
+Paul glanced steadfastly into his face.
+
+"But I remember," he said, with composure more embarrassing than
+violence. "It is the fifth. The Holme farm was first, and then came
+Goldscope. Hindscarth was mortgaged to the last ear of corn, and then it
+was the turn for Coledale. Now, it's the Ghyll itself, I see, house and
+buildings."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face underwent a change, but his tone was unruffled as he
+said:
+
+"If you please, we will come to business." Then with a sinister smile,
+"You resemble the French counsel--you begin every speech at the
+Creation. 'Let us go on to the Deluge,' said the judge."
+
+"To the Deluge!" said Paul; and he turned his head slowly to where Hugh
+stood, holding the pen in one hand and rapping the table with the
+knuckles of the other. "Rather unnecessary. We're already under water."
+
+The passion in Hugh Ritson's face dropped to a look of sullen anger. But
+he mastered his voice, and said quietly:
+
+"The engineer from Crewe is waiting for me at the pit. I have wasted the
+whole morning over these formalities. Come, come, let us have done. Mr.
+Bonnithorne will witness the signature."
+
+Paul had not shifted his steadfast gaze from his brother's face. Hugh
+dodged his glance at first, and then met it with an expression of
+audacity.
+
+Still holding the parchment before him, Paul said quietly:
+
+"To-night I leave home for London, and shall be absent four days. Can
+this business wait until my return?"
+
+"No, it can't," said Hugh with emphasis.
+
+Paul dropped his voice.
+
+"Don't take that tone with me, I warn you. Can this business wait?"
+
+"I mean what I say--it can not."
+
+"On my return I may have something to tell you that will affect this and
+the other deeds. Once more, can it wait?"
+
+"Will you sign--yes or no?" said Hugh.
+
+Paul looked steady and straight into his brother's eyes.
+
+"You are draining away my inheritance--you are--"
+
+At this word Hugh's smoldering temper was afire.
+
+"Your inheritance?" he broke out in his bitterest tones. "It is late in
+the day to talk of that. Your inheritance--"
+
+But he stopped. The expression of audacity gave place to a look of blank
+bewilderment. Paul had torn the parchment from top to bottom, and flung
+it on the table, and in an instant was walking out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Paul Ritson returned to the stack-yard, and worked vigorously three
+hours longer. A stack had been stripped by a recent storm, and he
+thatched it afresh with the help of a laborer and a boy. Then he stepped
+indoors, changed his clothes, and filled a traveling-bag. When this was
+done he went in search of the stableman. Natt was in his stable,
+whistling as he polished his harness.
+
+"Bring the trap round to the front at seven," he said, "and put my bag
+in at the back; you'll find it in the hall."
+
+By this time the night had closed in, and the young moon showed faintly
+over the head of Hindscarth. The wind was rising.
+
+Paul returned to the house, ate, drank, and smoked. Then he rose and
+walked upstairs and knocked at the door of his mother's room.
+
+Mrs. Ritson was alone. A lamp burned on the table and cast a sharp white
+light on her face. The face was worn and very pale. Lines were plowed
+deep on it. She was kneeling, but she rose as Paul entered. He bent his
+head and kissed her forehead. There was a book before her; a rosary was
+in her hand. The room was without fire. It was chill and cheerless, and
+only sparsely furnished--sheep-skin rugs on the floor, texts on the
+walls, a carved oak clothes-chest in one corner, two square high-backed
+chairs and a small table, a bed, and no more.
+
+"I'm going off, mother," said Paul; "the train leaves in an hour."
+
+"When do you return?" said Mrs. Ritson.
+
+"Let me see--this is Saturday; I shall be back on Wednesday evening."
+
+"God be with you!" she said in a fervent voice.
+
+"Mother, I spoke to Greta last night, and she promised. We shall soon be
+free of this tyranny. Already the first link of the chain is broken. He
+called me into his room this morning to sign a mortgage on the Ghyll,
+and I refused."
+
+"And yet you are about to go away and leave everything in his hands!"
+
+Mrs. Ritson sat down and Paul put his hand tenderly on her head.
+
+"Better that than to have it wrested from me inch by inch--to hold the
+shadow of an inheritance while he grasps the substance. He knows all.
+His dark hints are not needed to tell me that."
+
+"Yet he is silent," said Mrs. Ritson, and her eyes fell on to her book.
+"And surely it is for my sake that he is so--if in truth he knows all.
+Is he not my son? And is not my honor his honor?"
+
+Paul shook his head.
+
+"If the honor of twenty mothers, as true and dear as you, were the
+stepping-stones to his interest, over those stones he would go. No, no;
+it is not honor, whether yours or his, that keeps him silent."
+
+Mrs. Ritson glanced up.
+
+"Are you not too hard on him? He is guiltless in the eye of the world,
+and that at least should plead for him. Forgive him. Do not leave your
+brother in anger!"
+
+"I have nothing to forgive," said Paul. "Even if he knew nothing, I
+should still go away and leave everything. I could not live any longer
+under the shadow of this secret, bound by an oath. I would go, as I go
+now, with sealed lips, but a free heart. He should have his own before
+man--and I mine, before God."
+
+Mrs. Ritson sat in silence; her lips trembled perceptibly, and her
+eyelids quivered.
+
+"I shall soon leave you, my dear son," she said in a tremulous voice.
+
+"Nay, nay, you shall not," he answered in an altered tone, half of
+raillery, half of tenderness; "you are coming with us--with Greta and
+me--and over there the roses will bloom again in your white cheeks."
+
+Mrs. Ritson shook her head.
+
+"I shall soon leave you, dearest," she repeated, and told her beads.
+
+He tried to dispel her sadness; he laughed, and she smiled feebly; he
+patted her head playfully. But she came back to the same words: "I shall
+soon leave you."
+
+The moon was shining at the full when he lifted his hat to go. It was
+sailing through a sky of fibrous cloud. The wind was high, and rattled
+the empty boughs of the tree against the window. Keen frost was in the
+air.
+
+"I shall see my father's old friend in London on Monday, and be back on
+Wednesday. Good-bye. Keep a good heart. Good-bye."
+
+She wept on his breast and clung to him.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye!" he repeated, and triad to disengage himself from
+her embrace.
+
+But she clung closer. It was as if she was to see him no more.
+
+"Good-bye!" she sobbed, and with the tears in his own eyes he laughed at
+her idle fears.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! one would think I was going for life--ha! ha--"
+
+There was a scream on the frosty air without. His laugh died on his
+lips.
+
+"What was that?" he said, and drew a sharp breath.
+
+She lifted her face, whiter now than ever, and with tearless eyes.
+
+"It was the cry of the bird that foretells death," she said in a
+whisper.
+
+He laughed a little--boisterously.
+
+"Nay, nay; you will be well and happy yet." Then he broke away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Natt was sitting in the trap, and it was drawn up in the court-yard to
+the door. He was looking through the darkness at some object in the
+distance, and when Paul came up he was not at first conscious of his
+master's presence.
+
+"What were you looking at, Natt?" said Paul, pulling on his gloves.
+
+"I war wond'rin' whether lang Dick o' the Syke had kindled a fire
+to-night, or whether yon lowe on the side of the Causey were frae the
+new smelting-house."
+
+Paul glanced over the horse's head. A deep glow stood out against the
+fell. All around was darkness.
+
+"The smelting-house, I should say," said Paul, and jumped to his seat
+beside Natt.
+
+By one of the lamps that the trap carried, he looked at his watch.
+
+"A quarter past seven. It will be smart driving, but you can give the
+mare her own time coming back."
+
+Then he took the reins, and in another moment they were gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+At eight o'clock that night the sky was brilliantly lighted up, and the
+sound of many voices was borne on the night wind. The red flare came
+from the Syke; the mill was afire. Showers of sparks and sheets of flame
+were leaping and streaming into the sky. Men and women were hurrying to
+and fro, and the women's shrill cries mingled with the men's shouts. At
+intervals the brightness of the glare faded, and then a column of
+choking smoke poured out and was borne away on the wind. Dick, the
+miller, was there, with the scorching heat reddening his wrathful face.
+John Proudfoot had raised a ladder against the mill, and, hatchet in
+hand, was going to cut away the cross-trees; but the heat drove him
+back. The sharp snap of the flames told of timbers being ripped away.
+
+"No use--it's gone," said the blacksmith, dragging the ladder behind
+him.
+
+"I telt them afore what their damned smelting-house would do for me!"
+said the miller, striding about in his impotent rage.
+
+Parson Christian was standing by the gate on the windward side of the
+mill-yard, with Laird Fisher beside him, looking on in silence at the
+leaping flames.
+
+"The wind is from the south," he said, "and a spark of the hot refuse
+shot down the bank has been blown into the mill."
+
+The mill was a wooden structure, and the fire held it like a serpent in
+its grip. People were coming and going from the darkness into the red
+glare, and out of the glare into the darkness. Among them was one
+stalwart figure that none noticed in the general confusion.
+
+"Have you a tarpaulin?" said this man, addressing those about him.
+
+"There's a big one on the stack at Coledale," answered another.
+
+"Run for it!"
+
+"It's of no use."
+
+"Damme, run for it!"
+
+The tone of authority was not to be ignored. In three minutes a huge
+tarpaulin was being dragged behind a dozen men.
+
+"Lay hold of the ropes and let us dip it into the river," shouted the
+same voice above the prevailing clangor. It was done. Dripping wet, the
+tarpaulin was pulled into the mill-yard.
+
+"Where's your ladder? Quick!"
+
+The ladder was raised against the scorching wooden walls.
+
+"Be ready to throw me the ropes," shouted the deep voice.
+
+A firm step was set on the lowest rung. There was a crackle of glass,
+and then a cloud of smoke streamed out of a broken window. For an
+instant the bright glare was obscured. But it burst forth afresh, and
+leaped with great white tongues into the sky.
+
+"The sheets are caught!" shouted the miller.
+
+They were flying around with the wind. A line of flame seemed to be
+pursuing them.
+
+"Who's the man on the ladder--dusta know?" cried John Proudfoot.
+
+"I dunnot," answered the miller.
+
+At that instant Hugh Ritson came up. The smoke was gone, and now a dark
+figure could be dimly seen high up on the mill-side. He seized the
+cross-trees with both hands and swung himself on to the raking roof.
+
+"Now for the ropes!" he shouted.
+
+The flames burst out again and illumined the whole sky; the dark mass of
+the fells could be seen far overhead, and the waters of the river in the
+bed of the valley glowed like amber. The stalwart figure stood out in
+the white light against the red glare, holding on to the cross-trees on
+the top of the mill, and with a wheel of crackling fire careering beside
+him.
+
+There could be no doubt of his identity, with the light on his strong
+face and tawny hair.
+
+"It's Paul Ritson!" shouted many a voice.
+
+"Damme, the ropes--quick!"
+
+The ropes were thrown and caught, and thrown again to the other side.
+Then the dripping tarpaulin was drawn over the mill until it covered the
+top and half the sides. The wheel burned out, and the iron axle came to
+the ground with a plunge.
+
+The fire was conquered; the night sky grew black; the night wind became
+voiceless. Then the busy throng had time for talk.
+
+"Where's Paul?" asked Parson Christian.
+
+"Ay, where is he?" said the miller.
+
+"He's a stunner, for sure--where is he?" said the blacksmith.
+
+None knew. When the flames began to fade he was missed. He had
+gone--none knew where.
+
+"Nine o'clock," said Parson Christian, turning his face toward home.
+"Sharp work, while it lasted, my lads!"
+
+Then there was the sound of wheels, and Natt drove his trap to the gate
+of the mill-yard.
+
+"You've just missed it, Natt," said John Proudfoot; "where have you
+been?"
+
+"Driving the master to the train."
+
+Hugh Ritson was standing by. Every one glanced from him to Natt.
+
+"The train?--master? What do you mean? Who?"
+
+"Who? Why, Master Paul," said Natt, with a curl of the lip. "I reckon it
+could scarce be Master Hugh."
+
+"When? What train?" said Parson Christian.
+
+"The eight o'clock to London."
+
+"Eight o'clock? London?"
+
+"Don't I speak plain?"
+
+"And has he gone?"
+
+"I's warrant he's gone."
+
+Consternation sat on every face but Natt's.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Next day was Sunday, and after morning service a group of men gathered
+about the church porch to discuss the events of the night before. In the
+evening the parlor of the Flying Horse was full of dalespeople, and many
+a sapient theory was then and there put forth to account for the
+extraordinary coincidence of the presence of Paul Ritson at the fire and
+his alleged departure by the London train.
+
+Hugh Ritson was not seen abroad that day. But early on Monday morning he
+hastened to the stable, called on Natt to saddle a horse, sprung on its
+back and galloped away toward the town.
+
+The morning was bitterly cold, and the rider was buttoned up to the
+throat. The air was damp; a dense veil of vapor lay on the valley and
+hid half the fells; the wintery dawn, with its sunless sky, had not the
+strength to rend it asunder; the wind had veered to the north, and was
+now dank and icy. A snow-storm was coming.
+
+The face of Hugh Ritson was wan and jaded. He leaned heavily forward in
+the saddle; the biting wind was in his eyes; he had a fixed look, and
+seemed not to see the people whom he passed on the road.
+
+Dick o' the Syke was grubbing among the fallen wreck of the charred and
+dismantled mill. When Hugh rode past him he lifted his eyes and muttered
+an oath beneath his breath. Old Laird Fisher was trundling a wheelbarrow
+on the bank of the smelting-house. The headgear of the pit-shaft was
+working. As Hugh passed the smithy, John Proudfoot was standing, hammer
+in hand, by the side of a wheelless wagon upheld by poles. John was
+saying, "Wonder what sec a place Mister Paul slept a' Saturday neet--I
+reckon that wad settle all;" and a voice from inside the smithy
+answered: "Nowt of the sort, John; it's a fate, I tell, tha." The
+peddler's pony was standing by the hasp of the gate.
+
+Never once lifting his eyes, with head bent and compressed lips, Hugh
+Ritson rode on in the teeth of the coming storm. There was another storm
+within that was uprooting every emotion of his soul. When he came to the
+vicarage he drew up sharply and rapped heavily on the gate. Brother
+Peter came shambling out at the speed of six steps a minute.
+
+"Mr. Christian at home?" asked Hugh.
+
+"Don't know as he is," said Peter.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Don't know as I've heard."
+
+"Tell him I'll call as I come back, in two hours."
+
+"Don't know as I'll see him."
+
+"Then go and look for him!" shouted Hugh, impatiently bringing down the
+whip on the flank of the horse.
+
+Brother Peter Ward turned about sulkily.
+
+"Don't know as I will," he grumbled, and trudged back into the house.
+
+Then Hugh Ritson rode on. A thin sleet began to fall, and it drove hard
+into his face. The roads were crisp, and the horse sometimes stumbled;
+but the rider pressed on.
+
+In less than half an hour he was riding into the town. The people who
+were standing in groups in the market-place parted and made space for
+him. They hailed him with respectful salutations. He responded curtly or
+not at all. Notwithstanding his long ride, his face was still pale, and
+his lips were bloodless. He stopped at the court-yard leading to the
+front of the Pack Horse. Old Willie Calvert, the innkeeper, stood there,
+and touched his cap when Hugh approached him.
+
+"My brother Paul slept here a few nights ago, I hear?" said Hugh.
+
+"So he did," said the innkeeper.
+
+"What night was it?"
+
+"What night? Let me see--it were a week come Wednesday."
+
+"Did you see him yourself?"
+
+"Nay; I were lang abed."
+
+"Who did--Mistress Calvert?"
+
+"Ey--she did for sure--Janet" (calling up the court). "She'll tell ye
+all the ins and oots."
+
+A comfortable-looking elderly body in a white cap and print apron came
+to the door.
+
+"You saw my brother--Paul, you know--when he slept at your house last
+Wednesday night?"
+
+"Yes, surely," said Janet.
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Nay, nowt. It was verra late--maybe twelve o'clock--and I was bolting
+up and had the cannel in my hand to get me to bed, and a rap came, and
+when I opened the door who should it be but Mister Paul. He said he
+wanted a bed, but he seem't to be in the doldrums and noways keen for a
+crack, so I ax't na questions, but just took him to the little green
+room over the snug and bid him good-night."
+
+"And next morning--did you see him then?" said Hugh.
+
+"No, but a morning when he paid for his bed for he had nowther bite nor
+sup in the house."
+
+"Did he look changed?--anything different about him?"
+
+"Nay, nowt but in low feckle someways, and maybe summat different
+dressed."
+
+"How different? What did he wear that night?"
+
+Pale as Hugh Ritson's face had been before, it was now white as a face
+in moonlight.
+
+"Maybe a pepper and salt tweed coat, but I can't rightly call to mind at
+the minute."
+
+Hugh's great eyes stared out of his head. His tongue cleaved to his
+mouth, and for the moment denied him speech.
+
+"Thank you, Mistress Calvert. Here, Willie, my man, drink my health with
+the missis."
+
+So saying, he tossed a silver coin to the innkeeper, wheeled about, and
+rode off.
+
+"I can not mak' nowther head nor tail o' this," said the old man.
+
+"Of what--the brass?" said Janet.
+
+"Nay, but that's soond enough, for sure, auld lass."
+
+"Then just thoo leave other folks's business to theirselves, and come
+thy ways in with thee. Thoo wert allus thrang a-meddlin'."
+
+The innkeeper had gone indoors and drawn himself a draught of ale.
+
+"I allus like to see the ins and oots o' things," he observed, with a
+twinkle in his eye, and the pot to his mouth.
+
+"Mind as you're not ower keen at seein' the ins and oots o' that
+pewter."
+
+"I'll be keerful, auld lass."
+
+Hugh Ritson's horse went clattering over the stones of the streets until
+it came to the house of Mr. Bonnithorne. Then Hugh drew up sharply,
+jumped from the saddle, tied the reins to the loop in the gate-pier, and
+rang the bell. In another minute he was standing in the breakfast-room,
+which was made comfortable by a glowing fire. Mr. Bonnithorne, in
+dressing-gown and slippers, rose from his easy-chair with a look of
+surprise.
+
+"Did you hear of the fire at the mill on Saturday night?" asked Hugh in
+a faltering voice.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head.
+
+"Very unlucky, very," said the lawyer. "The man will want recompense,
+and the law will support him."
+
+"Tut!--a bagatelle!" said Hugh, with a gesture of impatience.
+
+"Of course, if you say so--"
+
+"You've heard nothing about Paul?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne answered with a shake of his yellow head, and a look of
+inquiry.
+
+Then Hugh told him of the man at the fire, and of Natt's story when he
+drove up in the trap. He spoke with visible embarrassment, and in a
+voice that could scarcely support itself. But the deep fear that had
+come over him had not yet taken hold of the lawyer. Mr. Bonnithorne
+listened with a bland smile of amused incredulity. Hugh stopped with a
+shudder.
+
+"What are you thinking?" he asked, nervously.
+
+"That Natt lied."
+
+"As well say that the people at the fire lied."
+
+"No; you yourself saw Paul there."
+
+"Bonnithorne, like all keen-eyed men, you are short-sighted. I have
+something more to tell you. The people at the Pack Horse say that Paul
+slept at their house last Wednesday night. Now I know that he slept at
+home."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne smiled again.
+
+"A mistake as to the night," he said; "what can be plainer?"
+
+"Don't wriggle; look the facts in the face."
+
+"Facts?--a coincidence in evidence--a common error."
+
+"Would to God it were!" Hugh strode about the room in obvious
+perturbation, his eyes bent on the ground. "Bonnithorne, what is the
+place where the girl Mercy lives?"
+
+"An inn at Hendon."
+
+"Do they call it the Hawk and Heron?"
+
+"They do. The old woman Drayton keeps it."
+
+Hugh Ritson's step faltered. He listened with a look of stupid
+consternation.
+
+"Did I never tell you that the peddler, Oglethorpe, said he saw Paul at
+the Hawk and Heron in Hendon?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne dropped back into his seat without a word. Conviction
+was taking hold of him.
+
+"What do the folks say?" he asked at length.
+
+"Say? That it was a ghost, a wraith, twenty things--the idiots!"
+
+"What do you say, Mr. Ritson?"
+
+"That it was another man."
+
+The lawyer remained sitting, his eyes fixed and vacant.
+
+"What then? What if it is another man? Resemblances are common. We are
+all brothers. For example, there are numbers of persons like myself in
+the world. Odd, isn't it?"
+
+"Very," said Hugh, with a hard laugh.
+
+"And what if there exists a man resembling your half-brother, Paul, so
+closely that on three several occasions he has been mistaken for him by
+competent witnesses--what does it come to?"
+
+Hugh paused.
+
+"Come to. God knows! I want to find out. Who is this man? What is he?
+Where does he come from? What is his business here? Why, of all places
+on this wide earth, does he, of all men alive, haunt my house like a
+shadow?"
+
+Hugh Ritson was still visibly perturbed.
+
+"There's more in this matter than either of us knows," he said.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne watched him for a moment in silence.
+
+"I think you draw a painful inference--what is it?" he asked.
+
+"What?" repeated Hugh, and added, absently, "who can tell?"
+
+Up and down the room he walked restlessly, his eyes bent on the floor,
+his face drawn down into lines. At length he stood and picked up the hat
+he had thrown on the couch.
+
+"Bonnithorne," he said, "you and I thought we saw into the heart of a
+mystery. Heaven pity us for blind moles! I fear we saw nothing."
+
+"Why--what--how so--when--" Mr. Bonnithorne stammered, and then stopped
+short.
+
+Hugh had walked out of the room and out of the house. He leaped into the
+saddle and rode away.
+
+The wind had risen yet higher; it blew an icy blast from behind him as
+he cantered home. Through the hazy atmosphere a cloud of dun, vaporish
+red could be seen trailing over the dim fells. It poised above the ball
+crown of the Eel Crags like a huge supernatural bird with outstretched
+wings.
+
+Hugh held the reins with half-frozen hands. He barely felt the biting
+cold. His soul was in a tumult, and he was driven on by fears that were
+all but insupportable. For months a thick veil had overspread his
+conscience, and now, in an instant, and by an accident, it was being
+rent asunder. He had lulled his soul to sleep. But no opiate of
+sophistry could keep the soul from waking. His soul was waking now. He
+began to suspect that he had been acting like a scoundrel.
+
+At the vicarage he stopped, dismounted, and entered. Standing in the
+hall, he overheard voices in the kitchen. They were those of Brother
+Peter and little Jacob Berry, the tailor, who had been hired to sew by
+the day, and was seated on the dresser.
+
+"I've heard of such sights afore," the little tailor was saying. "When
+auld Mother Langdale's son was killed at wrustlin' down Borrowdale way,
+and Mother Langdale was abed with rheumatis, she saw him come to the
+bed-head a-dripping wet with blood, as plain as plain could be, and in
+less nor an hour after they brought him home to the auld body on a
+shutter--they did, for sure."
+
+"Shaf on sec stories! I don't know as some folks aren't as daft as
+Mother Langdale herself!" Peter muttered in reply.
+
+Hugh Ritson beat the door heavily with his riding-whip.
+
+"Parson Christian at home now?" he asked, when Peter opened it.
+
+"Been and gone," said Peter.
+
+"Did you tell him I meant to come back?"
+
+"Don't know as I did."
+
+Hugh's whip came down impatiently on his leggins.
+
+"Do you know anything?" he asked. "Do you know that you are now talking
+to a gentleman?"
+
+"Don't know as I do," mumbled Peter, backing in again.
+
+"If Miss Greta is at home tell her I should be glad to speak with
+her--do you hear?" Peter disappeared.
+
+Hugh was left alone in the hall. He waited some minutes, thinking that
+Peter was carrying his message. Presently he overheard that worthy
+reopening the discussion on Mother Langdale's sanity with little Jacob
+in the kitchen. The deep damnation he desired just then for Brother
+Peter was about to be indicated by another lusty rap on the kitchen
+door, when the door of the parlor opened, and Greta herself stood on
+the threshold with a smile and an outstretched hand.
+
+"I thought it was your voice," she said, and led the way in.
+
+"Your cordial welcome heaps coals of fire on my head, Greta. I cannot
+forget in what spirit we last talked and parted."
+
+"Let us think no more about it," said Greta, and she drew a chair for
+him to the fire.
+
+He remained standing, and as if benumbed by strong feeling.
+
+"I have come to speak of it--to ask pardon for it--I was in the wrong,"
+he said, falteringly.
+
+She did not respond, but sat down with drooping eyes. He paused, and
+there was an ominous silence.
+
+"You don't know what I suffered, or what I suffer still. You are very
+happy. I am a miserable man. Greta, do you know what it is to love
+without being loved? How can you know? It is torture beyond the gift of
+words--misery beyond the relief of tears. It is not jealousy; that is no
+more than a vulgar kind of envy. It is a nameless, measureless torment."
+
+He paused again. She did not speak. His voice grew tremulous.
+
+"I'm not one of the fools who think that the souls that are created for
+each other must needs come together--that destiny draws them from the
+uttermost parts of the earth--that, trifle as they will with their best
+hopes, fate is stronger than they are, and true to the pole-star of
+ultimate happiness. I know the world too well to believe nonsense like
+that. I know that every day, every hour, men and women are casting
+themselves away--men on the wrong women, women on the wrong men--and
+that all this is a tangle that will never, never be undone."
+
+He stepped up to where she sat and dropped his voice to a whisper.
+
+"Greta--permit me to say it--I loved you dearly. Would to Heaven I had
+not! My love was not of yesterday. It was you and I, I and you. That was
+the only true marriage possible to either of us from world's end to
+world's end. But Paul came between us; and when I saw you give yourself
+to the wrong man--"
+
+Greta had risen to her feet.
+
+"You say you come to ask pardon for what you said, but you really come
+to repeat it." So saying, she made a show of leaving the room.
+
+Hugh stood awhile in silence. Then he threw off his faltering tone and
+drew himself up.
+
+"I have come," he said, "to warn you before it is too late. I have come
+to say, while it is yet time, never marry my brother, for as sure as God
+is above us, you will repent it with unquenchable tears if you do."
+
+Greta's eyes flashed with an expression of disdain.
+
+"No," she said; "you have come to threaten me--a sure sign that you
+yourself have some secret cause for fear."
+
+It was a home-thrust, and Hugh was hit.
+
+"Greta, I repeat it, you are marrying the wrong man."
+
+"What right have you to say so?"
+
+"The right of one who could part you forever with a word."
+
+Greta was sore perplexed. Like a true woman, she would have given half
+her fortune at that moment to probe this mystery. But her indignation
+got the better of her curiosity.
+
+"It is false!" she said.
+
+"It is true!" he answered. "I could speak the word that would part you
+wider than the poles asunder."
+
+"Then I challenge you to speak it," she exclaimed.
+
+They faced each other, pale, and with quivering lips.
+
+"It is not my purpose. I have warned you," he said.
+
+"You do not believe your own warning," she answered.
+
+He winced, but said not a word.
+
+"You have come to me with an idle threat, and fear is written on your
+own face."
+
+He drew his breath sharply, and did not reply.
+
+"Whatever it is, you do not believe it."
+
+He was making for the door. He came back a step.
+
+"Shall I speak the word?" he said. "Can you bear it?"
+
+"Leave me," she said, "and carry your falsehood with you!"
+
+He was gone in an instant. Then her anger cooled directly, and her
+woman's curiosity came back with a hundred-fold rebound.
+
+"Gracious Heaven! what did he mean?" she thought, and the hot flush
+mounted to her eyes. She had half a mind to call him back. "Could it be
+true?" The tears were now rolling down her cheeks. "He has a secret
+power over Paul--what is it?" She ran to the door. "Hugh! Hugh!" He was
+gone. The galloping feet of his horse were heard faint in the distance.
+She went back into the house and sat down, and wept galling tears of
+pride and vexation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+At midday Parson Christian came home from the fields to dinner.
+
+"I've been away leading turf," he said, "from Cole Moss, for Robin
+Atkinson, to pay him for loaning me his gray mare on Saturday when I
+fetched my grain to the mill. Happen most of it is burned up,
+though--but that's no fault of Robin's. So now we neither owe t'other
+anything, and we're straight from the beginning of the world."
+
+Greta was bustling about with the very efficient hindrance of Brother
+Peter's assistance, to get the dinner on the table. She smiled, and
+sometimes tossed her fair head mighty jauntily, and laughed out loud
+with a touch of rattling gayety. But there were rims of red around her
+bleared eyes, and her voice, beneath all its noisy merriment, had a
+tearful lilt.
+
+The parson observed this, but said nothing about it.
+
+"Coming round by Harras End I met John Lowthwaite," he said, "and John
+would have me go into his house and return thanks for his wife's
+recovery from childbed. So I went in, and warmed me, and drank a pot of
+ale with them, and assisted the wife and family to return praise to
+God."
+
+Dinner was laid, little Jacob Berry came in from the kitchen, and all
+sat down together--Parson Christian and Greta, Brother Peter, and the
+tailor hired to sew.
+
+"Dear me! I'm Jack-of-all-trades, Greta, my lass," said the parson,
+after grace. "Old Jonathan Truesdale came running after me at the
+bridge, to say that Mistress Truesdale wanted me to go and taste the
+medicine that the doctor sent her from Keswick, and see if it hadn't
+opium in it, because it made her sleep. I sent word that I had business
+to take me the other way, but would send Miss Greta if she would go.
+Jonathan said his missus would be very thankful, for she was lonesome at
+whiles."
+
+"I'll go, and welcome," said Greta. The rims about her eyes were growing
+deeper; the parson chattered on, to banish the tempest of tears that he
+saw was coming.
+
+"Well, Peter, and how did the brethren at the meeting house like the
+discourse yesterday afternoon?"
+
+"Don't know as they thought you were varra soond on the point of
+'lection," muttered Peter from the inside of his bowl of soup.
+
+"Well, you're right homely folk down there, and I'd have no fault to
+find if you were not a little too disputatious. What's the use of
+wrangling over doctrine? Right or wrong, it will matter very little to
+any of us in a hundred years. We're on our way to heaven, and, please
+God, there'll be no doctrine there."
+
+Greta could not eat. She had no appetite for food. Another appetite--the
+appetite of curiosity--was eating at her heart. She laid down her knife.
+The parson could hide his concern no longer.
+
+"Dear me, my lass, you and that braw lad of yours are like David and
+Jonathan, and" (with a stern wag of his white head) "I'm not so sure
+that I won't turn myself into Saul and fling my javelin at him for
+envy."
+
+The parson certainly did not look too revengeful at that moment, with
+the mist gathering in his eyes.
+
+"Talking of Saul," said little Jacob, "there's that story of the witch
+of Endor, and Saul seein' Sam'el when he was dead. I reckon as that's
+no'but another version of what happened at the fire a' Saturday neet."
+
+Parson Christian glanced furtively at Greta's drooping head, and then
+meeting the tailor's eye, he put his finger to his lips.
+
+When dinner was over the parson lifted from the shelf the huge tome,
+"made to view his life and actions in." He drew his chair to the fire
+and began to turn over the earliest leaves. Greta had thrown on her
+cloak and was fixing her hat.
+
+"I'm going to see poor Mrs. Truesdale," she said. Then, coming behind
+the old man, and glancing over his shoulder at the book on his knees,
+"What are you looking for?" she asked, and smiled; "a prescription for
+envy?"
+
+The parson shook his old head gravely. "You must know I met young Mr.
+Ritson this morning?"
+
+"Hugh?"
+
+"Yes; he was riding home from his iron pits, but stopped and asked me if
+I could tell him when his father, who is dead and gone, poor fellow,
+came first to these parts, and how old his brother Paul might be at that
+time."
+
+"Why did he ask?" said Greta, eagerly.
+
+"Nay, I scarce can say. I told him I could not tell without looking at
+my book. Let me see; it must be a matter of seven-and-twenty years ago.
+How old is your sweetheart, Greta?"
+
+"Paul is twenty-eight."
+
+"And this is the year seventy-five. Twenty-eight from
+seventy-five--that's forty-seven. Paul was a wee toddle, I remember.
+I'll look for forty-seven. Eighteen forty-four, forty-five,
+forty-six--here it is--forty-seven. And, bless me, the very page! Look,
+here we have it."
+
+Then the parson read this entry in his diary:
+
+"'Nov. 18th.--Being promised to preach at John Skerton's church, at
+Ravenglass, I got ready to go thither. I took my mare and set forward
+and went direct to Thomas Storsacre's, where I was to lodge. It rained
+sore all the day, and I was wet, and took off my coat and let it run an
+hour. Then we supped and sat discoursing by the fire till near ten
+o'clock of one thing and another, and, among the rest, of one Allan
+Ritson, who had newly settled at Ravenglass. Thomas said Allan was fresh
+from Scotland, being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and
+that they had a child, called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet
+walking.'
+
+"The very thing! Wait, here's something more:
+
+"'Nov. 19th (Lord's day).--Went to church, and many people came to
+worship. Parson Skerton read the prayers and Thomas Storsacre the
+lessons. I prayed, and preached from Matt. vii. 23, 24; then ceased, and
+dismissed the people. After service, Thomas brought his new neighbor,
+Allan Ritson, who asked me to visit him that day and dine. So I went
+with him, and saw his wife and child--an infant in arms. Mrs. Ritson is
+a woman of some education and much piety. Her husband is a rough, blunt
+dalesman, of the good old type.'
+
+"The very thing," the parson repeated, and he put a pipe spill in the
+page.
+
+"I wonder why he wants it?" said Greta.
+
+She left Parson Christian still looking at his book, and went out on her
+errand.
+
+She was more than an hour gone, and when she returned, the winter's day
+had all but closed in. Only a little yellow light still lingered in the
+sky.
+
+"Greta, they have sent for you from the Ghyll," said the parson, as she
+entered. "Mrs. Ritson wants to see you to-night. Natt, the stableman,
+came with the trap. But he has gone again."
+
+"I will follow him at once," said Greta.
+
+"Nay, my lass; the day is not young enough," said the parson.
+
+"I was never afraid of the dark," said Greta.
+
+She took down a lantern and lighted it, drew her cloak more closely
+about her, and prepared to go.
+
+"Then take this paper to young Mr. Hugh. It's a copy of what is written
+in my book."
+
+Greta hesitated. But she could not tell Parson Christian what had passed
+between Hugh and herself. She took the paper and hastened away.
+
+The parson sat for a while before the fire. Then he rose, walked to the
+door and opened it. "Heaven bless the girl, it's snowing! What a night
+for the child to be abroad!" He returned in disturbed humor to the
+fireside.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+When Greta set out, the atmosphere was yellow and vaporish. The sky grew
+rapidly darker. As she reached the village, thin flakes of snow began to
+fall. She could feel them driven by the wind against her face, and when
+she came by the inn she could see them in the dull, yellow light.
+
+The laborers were leaving the fields, and, with their breakfast cans
+swung on their fork handles, they were drifting in twos and threes into
+the Flying Horse. It looked warm and snug within.
+
+She passed the little cluster of old houses, and scarcely saw them in
+the deepening night. As she went by the mill she could just descry its
+ruined roof standing out like a dark pyramid against the dun sky. The
+snow fell faster. It was now lying thick on her cloak in front, and on
+the windward face of the lantern in her hand.
+
+The road was heavier than before, and she had still fully a quarter of a
+mile to go. She hastened on. Passing the little church--Parson
+Christian's church--she met Job Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, coming
+out of the shed in the church-yard. "Bad night for a young lady to be
+from home, begging your pardon, miss," said Job, and went on toward the
+village, his bunch of chisels clanking over his shoulder.
+
+The wind soughed in the leafless trees that grew around the old roofless
+barn at the corner of the road that led to the fells. The gurgle of a
+half-frozen waterfall came from the distant Ghyll. Save for these sounds
+and the dull thud of Greta's step on the snow-covered road, all around
+was still.
+
+How fast the snow fell now. Yet Greta heeded it not at all. Her mind was
+busy with many thoughts. She was thinking of Paul as Parson Christian's
+great book had pictured him--Paul as a child, a little, darling babe,
+not yet able to walk. Could it be possible that Paul, her Paul, had once
+been that? Of course, to think like this was foolishness. Every one must
+have been young at some time. Only it seemed so strange. It was a sort
+of mystery.
+
+Then she thought of Paul the man--Paul as he had been, gay and
+heartsome; Paul as he was, harassed by many cares. She thought of her
+love for him--of his love for her--of how they were soon, very soon, to
+join hands and face the unknown future in an unknown land. She had
+promised. Yes, and she would go.
+
+She thought of Paul in London, and how soon he would be back in
+Newlands. This was Monday, and Paul had promised to come home on
+Wednesday. Only two days more! Yet how long it would be, after all!
+
+Greta had reached the lonnin that went up to the Ghyll. She would soon
+be there. How thick the trees were in the lane! They shut out the last
+glimmer of light from the sky. The lantern burned yellow amidst the snow
+that lay on it like a crust.
+
+Then Greta thought of Mrs. Ritson. It was strange that Paul's mother had
+sent for her. They were friends, but there had never been much intimacy
+between them. Mrs. Ritson was a grave and earnest woman, a saintly soul,
+and Greta's lightsome spirit had always felt rebuked in her presence.
+Paul loved his mother, and she herself must needs love as well as
+reverence the mother of Paul. It was Paul first and Paul last. Paul was
+the center of her world. She was a woman, and love was her whole
+existence.
+
+Here in the lonnin she was in pitch darkness. She stumbled once into the
+dike; then laughed and went on again. At one moment she thought she
+heard a noise not far away. She stood and listened. No, it was nothing.
+Only a hundred yards more! Bravely!
+
+Then, by a swift rebound--she knew not why--her mind went back to the
+events of the morning. She thought of Hugh Ritson and his mysterious
+threat. What did he mean? What harm could he do them? Oh! that she had
+been calmer, and asked. Her heart fluttered. It flashed upon her that
+perhaps it was he and not his mother who had sent for her to-night. Her
+pulse quickened.
+
+At that instant the curlew shot over her head with its deep, mournful
+cry. At the same moment she heard a step approaching her. It came on
+quickly. She stopped. "Who is it?" she asked.
+
+There was no answer. The sound of the footstep ceased.
+
+"Who are you?" she called again.
+
+Then with heavy thuds in the darkness and on the snow, some one
+approached. She trembled from head to foot, but advanced a step and
+stopped again. The footstep was passing her. She brought the light of
+the lantern full on the retreating figure.
+
+It was the figure of a man. Going by hastily, he turned his head over
+his shoulder and she saw his face. It was the face of Paul, colorless,
+agitated, with flashing eyes.
+
+Every drop of Greta's blood stood still.
+
+"Paul!" she cried, thrilled and immovable.
+
+There was an instant of unconsciousness. The earth reeled beneath her.
+When she came to herself she was standing alone in the lane, the lantern
+half buried in the snow at her feet.
+
+Had it been all a dream?
+
+She was but twenty yards from the house. The door of the porch stood
+open. Chilled with fear to the heart's core, she rushed in. No one was
+in the hall. Not a sound, but the faint mutter of voices in the kitchen.
+
+She ran through the passage and threw open the kitchen door. The farm
+laborers were at supper, chatting, laughing, eating, smoking.
+
+"Didn't you hear somebody in the house?" she cried.
+
+The men got up and turned about. There was dead silence in a moment.
+
+"When?"
+
+"Now."
+
+"No. What body?"
+
+She flew off without waiting to explain. The kitchen was too far away.
+Hugh Ritson's room opened from the first landing of the stairs. The
+stairs went up almost from the porch. Darting up, she threw open the
+door of Hugh's room. Hugh was sitting at the table, examining papers by
+a lamp.
+
+"Have you seen Paul?" she cried, in an agonized whisper, and with a
+panic-stricken look.
+
+Hugh dropped the papers and rose stiffly to his feet.
+
+"Great God! Where?"
+
+"Here--this moment!"
+
+Their eyes met. He did not answer. He was very pale. Had she dreamed?
+She looked down at the snow-crusted lantern in her hand. It must have
+been all a dream.
+
+She stepped back on to the landing, and stood in silence. The serving
+people had come out of the kitchen, and, huddled together, they looked
+at her in amazement. Then a low moan reached her ear. She ran to Mrs.
+Ritson's room. The door to it stood wide open; a fire burned in the
+grate, a candle on the table.
+
+Outstretched on the floor lay the mother of Paul, cold, still, and
+insensible.
+
+When Mrs. Ritson regained consciousness she looked about with the empty
+gaze of one who is bending bewildered eyes on vacancy. Greta was
+kneeling beside her, and she helped to lift her into the bed. Mrs.
+Ritson did not speak, but she grasped Greta's hand with a nervous
+twitch, when the girl whispered something in her ear. From time to time
+she trembled visibly, and glanced with a startled look toward the door.
+But not a word did she utter.
+
+Thus hour after hour wore on, and the night was growing apace. A painful
+silence brooded over the house. Only in the kitchen was any voice raised
+above a whisper. There the servants quaked and clucked--every tongue
+among them let loose in conjecture and the accents of surprise.
+
+Hugh Ritson passed again and again from his own room to his mother's. He
+looked down from time to time at the weary, pale, and quiet face. But he
+said little. He put no questions.
+
+Greta sat beside the bed, only less weary, only less pale and quiet,
+only less disturbed by horrible imaginings than the sufferer who lay
+upon it. Toward midnight Hugh came to say that Peter had been sent for
+her from the vicarage. Greta rose, put on her cloak and hat, kissed the
+silent lips, and followed Hugh out of the room.
+
+As they passed down the stairs Greta stopped at the door of Hugh
+Ritson's room, and beckoned him to enter it with her. They went in
+together, and she closed the door.
+
+"Now tell me," she said, "what this means."
+
+Hugh's face was very pale. His eyes had a wandering look, and when he
+spoke his voice was muffled. But by an effort of his unquenchable energy
+he shook off this show of concern.
+
+"It means," he said, "that you have been the victim of a delusion."
+
+Greta's pale face flushed. "And your mother--has she also been the
+victim of a delusion?"
+
+Hugh shrugged his shoulders, showed his teeth slightly, but made no
+reply.
+
+"Answer me--tell me the truth--be frank for once--tell me, can you
+explain this mystery?"
+
+"If I could explain it, how would it be a mystery?"
+
+Greta felt the blood tingle to her finger-tips.
+
+"Do you believe I have told you the truth?" she asked.
+
+"I am sure you have."
+
+"Do you believe I saw Paul in the lane?"
+
+"I am sure you think you saw him."
+
+"Do you know for certain that he went away?"
+
+Hugh nodded his head.
+
+"Are you sure he has not got back?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"In short, you think what I saw was merely the result of woman's
+hysteria?"
+
+Hugh smiled through his white lips, and his staring eyes assumed a
+momentary look of amused composure. He stepped to the table and fumbled
+some papers.
+
+This reminded Greta of the paper the parson had asked her to deliver. "I
+ought to have given you this before," she said. "Mr. Christian sent it."
+
+He took it without much apparent interest, put it on the table unread,
+and went to the door with Greta.
+
+The trap was standing in the court-yard, with Natt in the driver's seat,
+and Brother Peter in the seat behind. The snow had ceased to fall, but
+it lay several inches deep on the ground. There was the snow's dumb
+silence on the earth and in the air.
+
+Hugh helped Greta to her place, and then lifted the lamp from the trap,
+and looked on the ground a few yards ahead of the horse. "There are no
+footprints in the snow," he said, with a poor pretence at a
+smile--"none, at least, that go from the house."
+
+Greta herself had begun to doubt. She lacked presence of mind to ask if
+there were any footprints at all except Peter's. The thing was done and
+gone. It all happened three hours ago, and it was easy to suspect the
+evidence of the senses.
+
+Hugh returned the lamp to its loop. "Did you scream," he asked, "when
+you saw--when you saw--it?"
+
+Greta was beginning to feel ashamed. "I might have done. I can not
+positively say--"
+
+"Ah, that explains everything. No doubt mother heard you and was
+frightened. I see it all now. Natt, drive on--cold journey--good-night."
+
+Greta felt her face burn in the darkness. Before she had time or
+impulse to reply, they were rolling away toward home.
+
+At intervals her ear caught the sound of suppressed titters from the
+driver's seat. Natt was chuckling to himself with great apparent
+satisfaction. Since the fire at the mill he had been putting two and two
+together, and he was now perfectly confident as to the accuracy of his
+computation. When folks said that Paul had been at the fire he laughed
+derisively, because he knew that an hour before he had left him at the
+station. But an idea works in a brain like Natt's pretty much as the hop
+ferments. When it goes to the bottom it leaves froth and bubbles at the
+top. Natt knew that there was some grave quarrel between the brothers.
+He also knew that there were two ways to the station and two ways back
+to Newlands--one through the town, the other under Latrigg. Mr. Paul
+might have his own reasons for pretending to go to London, and also his
+own reasons for not going. Natt had left him stepping into the station
+at the town entrance. But what was to prevent him from going out again
+at the entrance from Latrigg? Of course that was what he had done. And
+he had never been out of the county. Deary me, how blind folks were, to
+be sure! Thus Natt's wise head chuckled and clucked.
+
+At one moment Natt twisted his sapient and facetious noddle over his
+shoulder to where Brother Peter sat huddled into a hump and in gloomy
+silence. "Mercy me, Peter!" he cried, in an affrighted whisper, and with
+a mighty tragical start, "and is that thee? Dusta know I thowt it were
+thy ghost?"
+
+"Don't know as it's not--dragging a body frae bed a cold neet like
+this," mumbled Peter, numbed up to his tongue, but still warm enough
+there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Hugh Ritson was content that Greta should think she had been the victim
+of a delusion. He was not unwilling that she should be tortured by
+suggestions of the supernatural. If she concluded that Paul had deceived
+her as to his departure from Newlands, he would not be unlikely to
+foster the delusion. The one thing of all others which Hugh Ritson was
+anxious to prevent was that Greta should be led to draw the purely
+matter-of-fact inference that when she thought she saw Paul she had
+really seen another man.
+
+But that was his own conviction. He was now sure beyond the hope of
+doubt that there was a man alive who resembled Paul Ritson so closely
+that he had thrice before, and now once again, been mistaken for him by
+unsuspecting persons. That other man was to be the living power in his
+own life, in his brother's life, in his mother's life, in Greta's life.
+Who was he?
+
+Left alone in the court-yard when the trap drove away, Hugh Ritson
+shuddered and looked round. He had laughed with the easy grace of a man
+no longer puzzled as he bid Greta good-night, but suspense was gnawing
+at his heart. He returned hastily to his room, sat down at the table,
+picked up the paper which Parson Christian had sent him, and read it
+with eager eyes.
+
+He read it and reread it; he seemed to devour it line by line, word by
+word. When he would have set it down his fingers so trembled that he let
+it fall, and he rose from his chair with rigid limbs.
+
+What he had dreaded he now knew for certainty. He had stumbled into an
+empty grave. He opened a drawer and took out three copies of
+certificates that Mr. Bonnithorne had brought him. Selecting the
+earliest of these in order of date, he set it side by side with the copy
+of the extract from Parson Christian's diary.
+
+By the one--Paul, the son of Grace Ormerod, by her husband Robert
+Lowther, was born August 14, 1845.
+
+By the other--Paul, the reputed son of Grace Ormerod by her husband,
+Allan Ritson, was an infant still in arms on November 19, 1847.
+
+Paul Ritson could not be Paul Lowther.
+
+Paul Ritson could not be the half-brother of Greta Lowther.
+
+Hugh Ritson fell back as one who had been dealt a blow. For months he
+had been idly hatching an addled villainy. The revenge that he had
+promised himself for spurned and outraged love--the revenge that he had
+named retribution--was but an impotent mockery.
+
+For an hour he strode up and down the room with flushed face and limbs
+that shook beneath him. Natt came home from the vicarage, put in his
+horse, and turned into the kitchen--now long deserted for the night. He
+heard the restless footstep backward and forward, and began to wonder if
+anything further had gone wrong. At last he ventured upstairs, opened
+noiselessly the door, and found his master with a face aflame and a look
+of frenzy. But the curious young rascal with the sleepy eyes had not
+time to proffer his disinterested services before he was hunted out with
+an oath. He returned to the kitchen with a settled conviction that
+somewhere in that mysterious chamber his master kept a capacious
+cupboard for strong drink.
+
+Like master, like man: Natt brewed himself an ample pint of hot ale,
+pulled off his great boots, and drew up to warm himself before the
+remains of a huge fire.
+
+Hugh Ritson's bedroom opened off his sitting-room. He went to bed; he
+tried to sleep, but no sleep came near him; he tossed about for an hour,
+rose, walked the room again, then went to bed once more.
+
+He was feeling the first pangs of honest remorse. A worse man would have
+accommodated himself more speedily to the altered conditions when he
+found that he had pursued a phantasm. To do this erring man justice, he
+writhed under it. A better man would have fled from it. If, at the
+outset, if when the first step in the descent had been taken, he had
+seen clearly that villainy lay that way, he would not have gone
+further. But now he had gone too far. To go on were as easy as to go
+back; and go on he must.
+
+While he honestly believed that Greta was half-sister to the man known
+to the world as Paul Ritson and his brother, he could have stood aside
+and witnessed without flinching the ceremony that was to hold them
+forever together and apart. Then without remorse he could have come down
+and separated them, and seen that woman die of heart's hunger who had
+starved to death the great love he bore her. There would have been a
+stern retribution in that, and the voice of nature would have whispered
+him that he did well.
+
+But when it was no longer possible to believe that Greta and Paul were
+anything to each other, the power of sophistry collapsed, and
+retribution sunk to revenge.
+
+He might go on, but there could be no self-deception. The blind
+earthworms of malice might delude themselves if they liked, but he could
+see, and he must face the truth. If ever he did what he had proposed to
+do, then he was a scoundrel, and a conscious scoundrel!
+
+Hugh Ritson leaped out of his bed. The perspiration rolled in big beads
+from his forehead. His tongue grew thick and stiff in his mouth. The
+great veins in his neck swelled.
+
+Without knowing whither he went, he walked out of his own into his
+mother's room. A candle still burned on the table. The fire had
+smoldered out. A servant-maid sat by the bedside with head aslant,
+sleeping the innocent sleep. He approached the bed. His mother was
+breathing softly. She had fallen into a doze; the pale face was very
+quiet; the weary look of the worn cheeks was smoothed out; the absent
+eyes were lightly closed. Closed, too, on the rough world was the poor
+soul that was vexed by it.
+
+Hugh Ritson was touched. Somewhere deep down in that frozen nature the
+angel of love troubled the still waters.
+
+Bending his head, he would have touched the cold forehead with his
+feverish lips. But he drew back. No, no, no! Tenderness was not for
+him. The good God gave it to some as manna from heaven. But here and
+there a man, stretched on the rack of life, had not the drop of water
+that would cool his tongue.
+
+With stealthy steps, as of one who had violated the chamber of chastity,
+Hugh Ritson crept back to his own room. He took brandy from a cupboard
+and drank a glass of it. Then he lay down and composed himself afresh to
+sleep. Thoughts of Greta came back to him. Even his love for her was
+without tenderness. It was a fiery passion. It made him weep,
+nevertheless. Galling tears, hot, bitter, smarting tears, rolled from
+his eyes. And down in that deep and hidden well of feeling, where he,
+too, was a man like other men, Hugh Ritson's strong heart bled. He would
+have thought that love like his must have subdued the whole world to its
+will; that when a woman could reject it the very stones must cry out.
+Pshaw!
+
+Would sleep never come? He leaped up, and laughed mockingly, drank
+another glass of brandy, and laughed again. His door was open, and the
+hollow voice echoed through the house.
+
+He put on a dressing-gown, took his lamp in his hand, and walked
+down-stairs and into the hall. The wind had risen. It moaned around the
+house, then licked it with hissing tongues. Hugh Ritson walked to the
+ingle, where no fire burned. There he stood, scarcely knowing why. The
+lamp in his hand cast its reflection into the mirror on the wall. Behind
+it was a flushed face, haggard, with hollow eyes and parted lips.
+
+The sight recalled another scene. He stepped into the little room at the
+back. It was in that room his father died. Now it was empty; a bare
+mattress, a chair, a table--no more.
+
+Hugh Ritson lifted the lamp above his head and looked down. He was
+enacting the whole terrible tragedy afresh. He crept noiselessly to the
+door, opened it slightly, and looked cautiously out. Then, leaving it
+ajar, he stood behind it with bent head and inclining ear. His face wore
+a ghastly smile.
+
+The wind soughed and wept without.
+
+Hugh Ritson threw the door open and stepped back into the hall. There he
+stood some minutes with eyes riveted on one spot. Then he hurried away
+to his room. As he went up the stairs he laughed again.
+
+Back at his bedside he poured himself another glass of brandy, and once
+more lay down to sleep. He certainly slept this time, and his sleep was
+deep.
+
+Natt's dreamy ear heard a voice in the hall. He had drunk his hot ale,
+and from the same potent cause as his master, he also had slept, but
+with somewhat less struggle. Awakened in his chair by the unaccustomed
+sound, he stole on tiptoe to the kitchen door. He was in time to see
+from behind the figure of a man ascending the stairs carrying a lamp
+before him. Natt's eyes were a shade hazy at the moment, but he was
+cock-sure of what he saw. Of course it was Mister Paul, sneaking off to
+bed after more "straitforrad" folk had got into their nightcaps and
+their second sleep. That was where Natt soon put himself.
+
+When all was still in that troubled house, the moon's white face peered
+through a rack of flying cloud and looked in at the dark windows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Next morning, Tuesday morning, Hugh Ritson found this letter on his
+table:
+
+   "Dearest,--I do not know what is happening to me, but my eyes get
+   worse and worse. To-day and yesterday I have not opened them. Oh,
+   dear, I think I am losing my sight; and I have had such a fearful
+   fright. The day after I wrote to you, Mrs. Drayton's son came home,
+   and I saw him. Oh, I thought it was your brother Paul, and his name
+   is Paul, too, but I think now it must be my eyes--they were very bad,
+   and perhaps I did not see plain. He asked me questions, and went away
+   next morning. Do not be long writing, I am, oh, so very lonely. When
+   are you coming to me? Write soon.
+
+   Your loving,
+
+   Mercy."
+
+Hugh Ritson had risen in a calmer mood. He was prepared for a disclosure
+like this. Last night he had been overwhelmed by the discovery that Paul
+Ritson was not the son of Robert Lowther. With the coming of daylight a
+sterner spirit of inquiry came upon him. The question that now agitated
+him was the identity of the man who had been mistaken for Paul.
+
+After Mercy's letter the mystery was in a measure dispelled. There could
+hardly be the shadow of a doubt that the man who had slept at the Pack
+Horse--the man who had been seen by many persons at the fire--the man
+who Greta had encountered in the lane--was one and the same with the man
+whom Mercy knew for Paul Drayton, the innkeeper at Hendon.
+
+But so much light on one small spot only made the surrounding gloom more
+dark. Far more important than any question of who this man was by repute
+was the other question of why he was there. Wherefore had he come? Why
+did he not come openly? What hidden reason had he for moving like a
+shadow where he knew no one and was known of none?
+
+Hugh thought again of the circumstance of his mother's strange seizure.
+Last night he had formulated his theory respecting it. And it was simple
+enough. The second man, whoever he was, had, for whatever reason, come
+to the house, and, failing to attract attention in the hall, had
+wandered aimlessly upstairs to the first room in which he heard a noise.
+That room happened to be his mother's, and when the stranger, with the
+fatal resemblance to her absent son, presented himself before her in
+that strange way, at that strange hour, in that strange place, the fear
+had leaped to her heart that it was his wraith warning her of his death,
+and she had fainted and fallen.
+
+The theory had its serious loop-holes for incredulity, but Hugh Ritson
+minded them not at all. Another and a graver issue tortured him.
+
+But this morning, by the light of Mercy's letter, his view was clearer.
+If the man who resembled Paul had come secretly to Newlands, he must
+have had his reasons for not declaring himself. If he had wandered when
+none was near into Mrs. Ritson's room, it must have been because he had
+a purpose there. And his mother's seizure might not have been due to
+purely superstitious fears, or her silence to shattered nerves.
+
+There was one thing to do, and that was to get at the heart of this
+mystery. Whoever he was, this second man was to be the living influence
+in all their lives.
+
+Thus far, one thing only was plain--that Paul Ritson was not the
+half-brother of Greta.
+
+Hugh determined to travel south forthwith. If the other man was still
+beating about Newlands, so much the better. Hugh would be able to see
+the old woman, his mother, and talk with her undisturbed by the
+suspicions of a cunning man.
+
+Hugh spent most of that day in his office at the pit-head, settling up
+such business as could not await his return. On Wednesday morning early
+he dispatched Natt on foot with a letter to Mr. Bonnithorne, explaining
+succinctly, but with shrewd reservations, the recent turn of events.
+Then he stepped for a moment into his mother's room.
+
+Mrs. Ritson had risen, and was sitting by the fire writing. Hugh
+observed, as she rose, that there were tears in her eyes, and that the
+paper beneath her pen was stained with great drops that had fallen as
+she wrote. A woman was busy on her knees on the floor sorting linen into
+a trunk. This garrulous body, old Dinah Wilson, was talking as Hugh
+entered.
+
+"It caps all--you niver heard sec feckless wark," she was saying. "And
+Reuben threept me down, too. There he was in the peat loft when I went
+for the peats, and he had it all as fine as clerk after passon. 'It was
+Master Paul at the fire, certain sure,' he says, ower and ower again.
+'What, man, get away wi' thy botheration--Mister Paul was off to
+London!' I says. 'Go and see if tha can leet on a straight waistcoat any
+spot,' I says. But he threept and he threept. 'It was Master Paul or his
+own birth brother,' he says."
+
+"Hush, Dinah!" said Mrs. Ritson.
+
+Hugh told his mother, in a quiet voice, that business was taking him
+away. Then he turned about and said "Good-day" without emotion.
+
+She held out her hand to him and looked him tenderly in the eyes.
+
+"Is this our parting?" she said, and then leaned forward and touched his
+cheek with her lips.
+
+He seemed surprised, and turned pale; but he went out calmly and without
+speaking. In half an hour he was walking rapidly over the snow-crusted
+road to the station.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+When Paul parted from Natt at the station on Saturday night, he had told
+the stableman to meet him with the trap at the same spot and at the same
+hour on Wednesday. Since receiving these instructions, however, Natt
+had, as we have seen, arrived at conclusions of his own respecting
+certain events. The futility of doing as he had been bidden began to
+present itself to his mind with peculiar force. What was the good of
+going to the station for a man who was not coming by the train? What was
+the use of pretending to bring home a person who had never been away?
+These and other equivocal problems defied solution when Natt essayed
+them.
+
+He revolved the situation fully on his way home from Mr. Bonnithorne's,
+and decided that to go to the station that night at eight o'clock would
+be only a fine way of making a fool of a body. But when he reached the
+stable, and sat down to smoke, and saw the hour approaching, his
+instinct began to act automatically, and in sheer defiance of the thing
+he called his reason. In short, Natt pulled off his coat and proceeded
+to harness the mare.
+
+Then it was that, relieved of the weight of abstract questions, he made
+two grave discoveries. The first was that the horse bore marks of having
+been driven in his absence; the next, that the harness was not hanging
+precisely on those hooks where he had last placed it. And when he drew
+out the trap he saw that the tires of the wheels were still crusted with
+unmelted snow.
+
+These concrete issues finally banished the discussion of general
+principles. Natt had not entirely accounted for the strange
+circumstances when he jumped into his seat and drove away. But the old
+idea of Paul's dubious conduct was still fermenting; the froth and
+bubbles were still rising.
+
+Natt had not gone half-way to the station when he almost leaped out of
+the trap at the sudden advent of an original thought: The trap had been
+driven out before! He had not covered a mile more before that thought
+had annexed another: And along this road, too! After this the sequence
+of ideas was swift. In less than half a league, Natt had realized that
+Paul Ritson himself had driven the mare to the station in order that he
+might be there to come home at eight o'clock, and thus complete the
+deception which he had practiced on gullible and slow-witted persons.
+But in his satisfaction at this explanation Natt overlooked the trifling
+difficulty of how the trap had been got home again.
+
+Driving up into the station, he was greeted by a flyman waiting for
+hire.
+
+"Bad on the laal mare, ma man--two sec journeys in ya half day. I reckon
+tha knows it's been here afore?"
+
+Natt's face broadened into a superior smile, which seemed to desire his
+gratuitous informant to tell him something he didn't know. This unspoken
+request was about to be gratified.
+
+"Dusta ken who came down last?"
+
+Natt waved his hand in silent censure of so much unnecessary zeal, and
+passed on.
+
+Promptly as the clock struck eight, the London train drew up at the
+station, and a minute afterward Paul Ritson came out. "Here he be, of
+course," thought Natt.
+
+Paul was in great spirits. His face wore the brightest smile, and his
+voice had the cheeriest ring. His clothes, seen by the lamp, looked a
+little draggled and dirty.
+
+He swung himself into the trap, took the driver's seat and the reins and
+rattled along with cheerful talk.
+
+It was months since Natt had witnessed such an access of geniality on
+Paul's part.
+
+"Too good to be true," thought Natt, who, in his own wise way, was
+silently making a study in histrionics.
+
+"Anything fresh while I've been away?" asked Paul.
+
+"Humph!" said Natt.
+
+"Nothing new? Nobody's cow calved? The mare not lost her hindmost
+shoe--nothing?" asked Paul, and laughed.
+
+"I know no more nor you," said Natt, in a grumpy tone.
+
+Paul looked at him and laughed again. Not to-night were good spirits
+like his to be quenched by a servant's ill humor.
+
+They drove some distance without speaking, the silence being broken only
+by Paul's coaxing appeals to the old mare to quicken the pace that was
+carrying him to somebody who was waiting at the vicarage.
+
+Natt recovered from his natural dudgeon at an attempt to play upon him,
+and began to feel the humor of the situation. It was good sport, after
+all--this little trick of Master Paul. And the best of it was that
+nobody saw through it but Natt himself. Natt began to titter and look up
+significantly out of his sleepy eyes into Paul's face. Paul glanced back
+with a look of bewilderment; but of course that was only a part of the
+game.
+
+"Keep it up," thought Natt; "how we are doing 'em!"
+
+The landscape lying south was a valley, with a double gable of mountains
+at the top; the mill stood on a knoll two miles further up, and on any
+night but the darkest its black outlines could be dimly seen against the
+sky that crept down between these fells. There was no moon visible, but
+the moon's light was behind the clouds.
+
+"What has happened to the mill?" said Paul, catching sight of the
+dismantled mass in the distance.
+
+"Nowt since Saturday neet, as I've heard on," said Natt.
+
+"And what happened then?"
+
+"Oh, nowt, nowt--I's warrant not," said Natt, with a gurgling titter.
+
+Paul looked perplexed. Natt had been drinking, nothing surer.
+
+"Why, lad, the wheel is gone--look!"
+
+"I'll not say but it is. We know all about that, we do!"
+
+Paul glanced down again. Liquor got into the brains of some folk, but it
+had gone into Natt's face. With what an idiotic grin he was looking into
+one's eyes!
+
+But Paul's heart was full of happiness. His bosom's lord sat lightly on
+its throne. Natt's face was excruciatingly ridiculous, and Paul laughed
+at the sight of it. Then Natt laughed, and they both laughed together,
+each at, neither with, the other. "I don't know nothing, I don't. Oh,
+no!" chuckled Natt, inwardly. Once he made the remark aloud.
+
+When they came to the vicarage Paul drew up, threw the reins to Natt,
+and got down.
+
+"Don't wait for me," he said; "drive home."
+
+Natt drove as far homeward as the Flying Horse, and then turned in there
+for a crack, leaving the trap in the road. Before he left the inn, a
+discovery yet more astounding, if somewhat less amusing, was made by his
+swift and subtle intellect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+An itinerant mendicant preacher had walked through the valley that day,
+and when night fell in he had gravitated to the parson's door.
+
+"Seeing the sun low," he said, "and knowing it a long way to Keswick,
+and I not being able to abide the night air, but sure to catch a cold, I
+came straight to your house."
+
+Like other guests of high degree, the shoeless being made a virtue of
+accepting hospitality.
+
+"Come in, brother, and welcome," said Parson Christian; and that night
+the wayfarer lodged at the vicarage. He was a poor, straggle-headed
+creature, with a broken brain as well as a broken purse, but he had the
+warm seat at the ingle.
+
+Greta heard Paul's step on the path and ran to meet him.
+
+"Paul, Paul! thank God you are here at last!"
+
+Her manner was warm and impulsive to seriousness, but Paul was in no
+humor to make nice distinctions.
+
+Parson Christian rose from his seat before the fire and shook hands with
+feeling and gravity.
+
+"Right glad to see you, good lad," he said. "This is Brother Jolly," he
+added, "a fellow-soldier of the cross, who has suffered sore for
+neglecting Solomon's injunction against suretyship."
+
+Paul took the flaccid hand of the fellow-soldier, and then drew Greta
+aside into the recess of the square window.
+
+"It's all settled," he said, eagerly; "I saw my father's old friend, and
+agreed to go out to his sheep runs as steward, with the prospect of
+farming for myself in two years' time. I have been busy, I can tell you.
+Only listen. On Monday I saw the good old gentleman--he's living in
+London now, and he won't go back to Victoria, he tells me--wants to lay
+his bones where they were got, he says--funny old dog, rather--says he
+remembers my father when he wasn't as solemn as a parish clerk on Ash
+Wednesday. Well, on Monday I saw the old fellow, and settled terms and
+things--liberal old chap, too, if he has got a hawk beak--regular
+Shylock, you know. Well--where was I? Oh, of course--then on Tuesday I
+took out our berths--yours, mother's, and mine--the ship is called the
+'Ballarat'--queer name--a fine sea-boat, though--she leaves the London
+docks next Wednesday--"
+
+"Next Wednesday?" said Greta, absently, and with little interest in her
+tone.
+
+"Yes, a week to-day--sails at three prompt--pilot comes on at a quarter
+to--everybody aboard at twelve. But it didn't take quite four-and-twenty
+hours to book the berths, and the rest of the day I spent at a lawyer's
+office. Can't stomach that breed, somehow; they seem to get all the
+clover--maybe it's because they're a drift of sheep with tin cans about
+their necks, and can never take a nibble without all the world knowing.
+Ha! ha! I wish I'd thought of that when I saw old Shylock."
+
+Paul was rattling on with a glib tongue, and eyes that danced to the
+blithe step of an emancipated heart.
+
+In the slumberous fire-light the parson and the itinerant preacher
+talked together of the dust and noise in the great world outside these
+sleepy mountains.
+
+Greta drew back into the half-light of the window recess, too greedy of
+Paul's good spirits to check them.
+
+"Yes, I went to the lawyer's office," he continued, "and drew out a
+power of attorney in Hugh's name, and now he can do what he likes with
+the Ghyll, just as if it were his own. Much luck to him, say I, and some
+bowels, too, please God! But that's not all--not half. This morning--ah,
+now, you wise little woman, who always pretend to know so much more than
+other folks, tell me what I did in London before leaving it this
+morning?"
+
+Greta had hardly listened. Her eyes had dropped to his breast, her arms
+had crept about his neck, and her tears were falling fast. But he was
+not yet conscious of the deluge.
+
+"What do you think? Why, I went to Doctors' Commons and bought the
+license--dirt cheap, too, at the price--and now it can be done any
+day--any day--- think of that! So ho! so ho! covering your face,
+eh?--up, now, up with it--gently. Do you know, they asked me your
+complexion, the color of your eyes, or something--that old Shylock or
+somebody--and I couldn't tell for the life of me--there, a peep, just
+one wee peep! Why, what's this--what the d---- What villain--what in the
+name of mischief is the ma--Why, Greta, you're cry--yes, you are--you
+are crying!"
+
+Paul had forced up Greta's face with gentle violence, and now he held
+her at arm's length, surveying her with bewildered looks.
+
+Parson Christian twisted about in his chair. He had not been so much
+immersed in wars and rumors of wars as to be quite ignorant of what was
+going on around him. "Greta is but in badly case," he said, pretending
+to laugh. "She has fettled things in the house over and over again, and
+she has if't and haffled over everything. She's been longing, surely."
+The deep voice had a touch of tremor in it this time, and the twinkling
+old eyes looked hazy.
+
+"Ah, of course!" shouted Paul, in stentorian tones, and he laughed about
+as heartily as the parson.
+
+Greta's tears were gone in an instant.
+
+"You must go home at once, Paul," she said; "your mother must not wait a
+moment longer."
+
+He laughed and bantered and talked of his dismissal. She stopped him
+with a grave face and a solemn word. At last his jubilant spirit was
+conquered; he realized that something was amiss. Then she told him what
+happened at the Ghyll on Monday night. He turned white, and at first
+stood tongue-tied. Next he tried to laugh it off, but the laughter fell
+short.
+
+"Must have been my brother," he said; "it's true, we're not much alike,
+but then it was night, dark night, and you had no light but the dim
+lamp--and at least there's a family resemblance."
+
+"Your brother Hugh was sitting in his room."
+
+Paul's heart sickened with an indescribable sensation.
+
+"You found the door of my mother's room standing open?"
+
+"Wide open."
+
+"And Hugh was in his own room?" said Paul, his eyes flashing and his
+teeth set.
+
+"I saw him there a moment later."
+
+"My features, my complexion, my height, and my build, you say?"
+
+"The same in everything."
+
+Paul lifted his face, and in that luminous twilight it were an
+expression of peculiar horror: "In fact, myself--in a glass?"
+
+Greta shuddered and answered, "Just that, Paul; neither more nor less."
+
+"Very strange," he muttered. He was shaken to the depths. Greta crept
+closer to his breast.
+
+"And when my mother recovered she said nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You did not question her?"
+
+"How could I? But I was hungering for a word."
+
+Paul patted her head with his tenderest touch.
+
+"Have you seen her since?"
+
+"Not since. I have been ill--I mean, rather unwell."
+
+Parson Christian twisted again in his chair. "What do you think, my lad?
+Greta in a dream last night rose out of bed, went to the stair-head, and
+there fell to the ground."
+
+"My poor darling," said Paul, the absent look flying from his eyes.
+
+"But, blessed be God, she has no harm," said the parson, and turned once
+more to his guest.
+
+"Paul, you must hurry away now. Good-bye for the present, dearest. Kiss
+me good-bye."
+
+But Paul stood there still.
+
+"Greta, do you ever feel that what is happening now has happened
+before--somehow--somewhere--and where?--when?--the questions keep
+ringing in your brain and racking your heart--but there is no
+answer--you are shouting into a voiceless cavern."
+
+His face was as pale as ashes, his eyes were fixed, and his gaze was far
+away. Greta grew afraid of the horror she had awakened.
+
+"Don't think too seriously about it," she said. "Besides, I may have
+been mistaken. In fact, Hugh said--"
+
+"Well, what did he say?"
+
+"He made me ashamed. He said I had imagined I saw you and screamed, and
+so frightened your mother."
+
+"There are men in the world who would see the Lord of Hosts come from
+the heavens in glory and say it was only a water-spout."
+
+"But, as you said yourself, it was in the night, and very dark. I had
+nothing but the feeble oil-lamp to see by. Don't look like that, Paul."
+
+The girl lifted a nervous hand and covered his eyes, and laughed a
+little, hollow laugh.
+
+Paul shook himself free of his stupor.
+
+"Good-night, Greta," he said, tenderly, and walked to the door. Then the
+vacant look returned.
+
+"The answer is somewhere--somewhere," he said, faintly. He shook himself
+again, and shouted, in his lusty tones:
+
+"Good-night, all--good-night, good-night!"
+
+The next instant he was gone.
+
+Out in the road, he began to run; but it was not from exertion alone
+that his breath came and went in gusts. Before he reached the village
+his nameless sentiment of dread of the unknown had given way to anxiety
+for his mother. What was this strange illness that had come upon her in
+his absence? Her angel-face had been his beacon in darkness. She had
+lifted his soul from the dust. Tortured by the world and the world's
+law, yet Heaven's peace had settled on her. Let the world say what it
+would, into her heart the world had not entered.
+
+He hurried on. What a crazy fool he had been to let Natt go off with the
+trap! Why had not that coxcomb told him what had occurred? He would
+break every bone in the blockhead's skin.
+
+How long the road was, to be sure! A hundred fears suggested themselves
+on the way. Would his mother be worse? Would she be still conscious?
+Why, in God's name, had he ever gone away?
+
+He came by the Flying Horse, and there, tied to the blue post, stood the
+horse and trap. Natt was inside. There he was, the villain, in front of
+the fire, laughing boisterously, a glass of hot liquor in his hand.
+
+Paul jumped into the trap and drove away.
+
+It was hardly in human nature that Natt should resist the temptation to
+show his cronies by ocular demonstration what a knowing young dog he
+could be if he liked. Natt never tried to resist it.
+
+"Is it all die-spensy?" he asked, with a wink, when, with masterly
+circumlocution, he had broached his topic.
+
+"It's a fate, I tell tha'," said Tom o' Dint, taking a churchwarden from
+between his lips; and another thin voice, from a back bench--it was
+little Jacob Berry's--corroborated that view of the mystery.
+
+A fine scorn sat on the features of Natt as he exploded beneath their
+feet this mine of supernaturalism.
+
+"Shaf on your bogies and bodderment, say I," he cried; "there are folks
+as won't believe their own senses. If you'll no' but show me how yon
+horse of mine can be in two places at once, I'll maybe believe as Master
+Paul Ritson can be here and in London at the same time. Nowt short o'
+that'll do for me, I can tell you."
+
+And at this conclusive reasoning Natt laughed, and crowed, and stirred
+his steaming liquor. It was at that moment that Paul whipped up into the
+trap and drove away.
+
+"Show me as my horse as I've tied to the post out there is in his stable
+all the time, and I's not be for saying as maybe I won't give in."
+
+Gubblum Oglethorpe came straggling into the room at that instant, and
+caught the words of Natt's clinching argument.
+
+"What see a post?" he asked.
+
+"Why, the post afore the house, for sure!"
+
+"Well, I wudna be for saying but I's getten a bit short-sighted, but if
+theer's a horse tied to a post afore this house, I's not be for saying
+as I won't be domd!"
+
+Natt ran to the door, followed by a dozen pairs of quizzing eyes. The
+horse was gone. Natt sat down on the post and looked around in blank
+astonishment.
+
+"Well, I will be domd!" he said.
+
+At last the bogies had him in their grip.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+By the time that Paul had got to the Ghyll his anxiety had reached the
+point of anguish. Perhaps it had been no more than a fancy, but he
+thought as he approached the house that a mist hung about it. When he
+walked into the hall his footsteps sounded hollow to his ear, and the
+whole place seemed empty as a vault. The spirit-deadening influence of
+the surroundings was upon him, when old Dinah Wilson came from the
+kitchen and looked at him with surprise. Clearly he had not been
+expected. He wanted to ask twenty questions, but his tongue cleaved to
+his mouth. The strong man trembled and his courage oozed away.
+
+Why did not the woman speak? How scared she looked, too! He was brushing
+past her, and up the stairs, when she told him, in faltering tones, that
+her mistress was gone.
+
+The word coursed through his veins like poison. "Gone! how gone?" he
+said. Could it be possible that his mother was dead?
+
+"Gone away," said Dinah.
+
+"Away! Where?"
+
+"Gone by train, sir, this afternoon."
+
+"Gone by train," Paul repeated, mechanically, with absent manner.
+
+"There's a letter left, sir; it's on the table in her room."
+
+Recovering his self-possession, Paul darted upstairs at three steps a
+stride. His mother's room was empty; no fire in the grate; the pictures
+down from the walls; the table coverless; the few books gone from the
+shelf; all chill, voiceless, and blind.
+
+What did it mean? Paul stood an instant on the threshold, seeing all in
+one swift glance, yet seeing nothing. Then, with the first return of
+present consciousness, his eye fell on the letter that lay on the table.
+He took it up with trembling fingers. It was addressed in his mother's
+hand to him. He broke the seal. This is what he read:
+
+   "I go to-day to the shelter of the Catholic Church. I had long
+   thought to return to this refuge, though I had hoped to wait until
+   the day your happiness with Greta was complete. That, in Heaven's
+   purposes, was not to be, and I must leave you without a last
+   farewell. Good-bye, dear son, and God bless and guide you. If you
+   love me, do not grieve for me. It is from love of you I leave you.
+   Think of me as one who is at peace, and I will bless you even in
+   heaven. If ever the world should mock you with your mother's name,
+   remember that she is your mother still, and that she loved you to
+   the last. Good-bye, dear Paul; you may never know the day when this
+   erring and sorrowing heart will be allowed, in His infinite pity, to
+   join the choirs above. Then, dearest, from the hour when you read
+   this letter, think of me as dead, for I shall be dead to the world."
+
+Paul held the letter before him, and looked at it long with vacant eyes.
+Feeling itself seemed gone. Not a tear came from him, not a sigh, not
+one moan of an overwrought heart escaped him. All was blind, pulseless
+torpor. He stood there crushed and overwhelmed, a shaken, shattered man.
+A thousand horrors congealed within him to one deep, dead stupor.
+
+He turned away in silence, and walked out of the house. The empty
+chambers seemed, as he went, to echo his heavy footsteps. He took the
+road back toward the vicarage, turning neither to the right nor the
+left, looking straight before him, and never once shifting his gaze. The
+road might be long, but now it fretted him no more. The night might be
+cold, but colder far was the heart within him. The moon might fly behind
+the cloud floes, and her light burst forth afresh; but for him all was
+blank night.
+
+In the vicarage the slumberous fire was smoldering down. The
+straggle-brained guest had been lighted to his bed, and the good parson
+himself was carrying to his own tranquil closet a head full of the great
+world's dust and noise. Greta was still sitting before the dying fire,
+her heart heavy with an indefinable sensation of dread.
+
+When Paul opened the door his face was very pale and his eyes had a
+strange look; but he was calm, and spoke quietly. He told what had
+occurred, and read aloud his mother's letter. The voice was strong in
+which he read it, and never a tremor told of the agony his soul was
+suffering. Then he sat some time without speaking, and time itself had
+no reckoning.
+
+Greta scarcely spoke, and the old parson said little. What power had
+words to express a sorrow like this? Death had its solace; but there
+was no comfort for death in life.
+
+At last Paul told Parson Christian that he wished the marriage to take
+place at once--- to-morrow, or, at latest, the day after that. He told
+of their intention to leave England, of his father's friend, and, in
+answer to questions, of the power of attorney drawn up in the name of
+his brother.
+
+The old man was deeply moved, but his was the most unselfish of souls.
+He understood very little of all that was meant by what had been done,
+and was still to do. But he said, "God bless you and go with you!"
+though his own wounded heart was bleeding. Greta knelt at his chair, and
+kissed the tawny old face lined and wrinkled and damp now with a furtive
+tear. It was agreed that the marriage should take place on Friday. This
+was Wednesday night.
+
+Paul rose and stepped to the door, and Greta followed him to the porch.
+
+"It is good of you to leave all to your brother," she said.
+
+"We'll not speak of it," he answered.
+
+"Is there not something between you?" she asked.
+
+"Another time, darling."
+
+Greta recalled Hugh Ritson's strange threat. Should she mention it to
+Paul? She had almost done so, when she lifted her eyes to his face. The
+weary, worn expression checked her. Not now; it would be a cruelty.
+
+"I knew the answer to that omen was somewhere," he said, "and it has
+come."
+
+He stepped over the threshold and stood one pace outside. The snow still
+lay under foot, crusted with frost. The wind blew strongly, and soughed
+in the stiff and leafless boughs. Overhead the flying moon at that
+moment broke through a rack of cloud. At the same instant the red glow
+of the fire-light found its way through the open door, and was reflected
+on Paul's pallid face.
+
+Greta gasped; a thrill passed through her. There, before her, eye to eye
+with her once again, was the face she saw at the Ghyll!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Paul went back home, carrying with him a crushed and broken spirit He
+threw himself into a chair in a torpor of dejection. When the servants
+spoke to him, he lifted to their faces two clouded eyes, heavy with
+suffering, and answered their questions in few words. The maid laid the
+supper, and told him it was ready. When she returned to clear the cloth,
+the supper was untouched. Paul stepped up to his mother's room, and sat
+down before the cold grate. The candle he carried with him burned out.
+
+In the kitchen the servants of the farm and house gossipped long and
+bickered vigorously. "Whatever ails Master Paul?" "Crossed in love,
+maybe." "Shaf on sec woman's wit!" "Wherever has mistress gone?" "To buy
+a new gown, mayhap." "Sista now how a lass's first thowt runs on
+finery!" "Didsta hear nowt when you drove mistress to the rail, Reuben?"
+"Nay, nowt." "Dusta say it war thee as drove to the station this
+afternoon." "I wouldn't be for saying as it warn't." "Wilta be meeting
+Master Hugh in the forenoon, Natt?" "Nay, ax Natt na questions. He's
+fair tongue-tied to-neet, Natt is. He's clattering all of it to
+hisself--swearing a bit, and sec as that."
+
+When the servants had gone to bed, and the house was quiet, Paul still
+sat in his mother's abandoned room. No one but he knew what he suffered
+that night. He tried to comprehend the disaster that had befallen him.
+Why had his mother shut herself in a convent? How should her love for
+him require that she should leave him? To demand answers to these
+questions was like knocking at the door of a tomb; the voice was silent
+that could reply; there came no answer save the dull, heavy, hollow echo
+of his own uncertain knock. All was blind, dumb, insensate torpor. No
+outlook; no word; no stimulating pang.
+
+His stupor was broken by a vision that for long hours of that dead
+night burned in his brain like molten lead. The face which Greta had
+seen, and which his mother must also have seen, seemed to rise up before
+him as he sat in that deserted chamber. He saw his own face as he might
+have seen it in a glass. Not even the blackness of night could conceal
+it. Clear as a face seen in the day it shone and burned in that dark
+room. He closed his eyes to shut it out, but it was still before him. It
+was within him. It was imprinted in features of fire on his brain. He
+trembled with fear, never until that hour knowing what fear was. It
+acted upon him like his own ghost.
+
+He knew it was but a phantasy, but no phantasy was ever more horrible.
+He got up to banish it, and it stood before him face to face. He sunk
+down again, and it sat beside him eye to eye.
+
+Then it changed. For a moment it faded away into a palpitating mist, and
+the tension of his gaze relaxed. How blessed was that moment's respite!
+His thought returned to his mother. "If ever the world should mock you
+with your mother's name, remember that she is your mother still, and
+that she loved you to the last." Dear, sacred soul. Little fear that he
+should forget it! Little fear that the wise world should tarnish the
+fair shrine of that holy love! Tears of tenderness rose to his eyes, and
+in the midst of them he thought his mother sat before him. Her head was
+bent; an all-eating shame was crimsoning her pale cheek. Then he knew
+that other eyes were upon her, looking into her heart, prying deep down
+into her dead past, keeping open the heavy eyelids that could never
+sleep. He looked up; his own shadow was silently gazing down upon both
+of them.
+
+Paul leaped to his feet and ran out of the room. Surely the spirit of
+his mother still inhabited the deserted chamber. Surely this was the
+shadow that had driven her away. Big drops of sweat rolled in beads from
+his forehead. He went out of the house. Heavy black clouds were adrift
+in a stormy sky; behind them, the bright moon was scudding.
+
+He walked among the naked trees of the gaunt wood at the foot of
+Coledale, and listened to the short breathings of the wind among the
+frost-covered boughs. At every second step he gave a quick glance
+backward. But at last he saw the thing he looked for--it was walking
+with him side by side, pace for pace.
+
+He passed slowly out of the wood, not daring now to run. The white fell
+rose sheer up to the grim, gray crags that hung in shaggy, snowy masses
+over the black seams of the ravines; and the moon's light rested on them
+for an instant. Without thought or aim he began to climb. The ascent was
+perilous at any hour to any foot save that of a mountaineer. The
+exertion and the watchfulness banished the vision, and his liberated
+mind turned to Greta. What was life itself now without Greta's love?
+Nothing but a succession of days. She was the savior of his outcast
+state; she was his life's spring, whence the waters of content might
+flow. And a flood of emotion came over him, and in his heart he blessed
+her. It was then that on that gaunt headland he seemed to see her at his
+side. But between them, and dividing them, stalked the spectre of
+himself.
+
+All to the east was dense gloom, save where the pulsating red of the
+smelting house burned in the distance. With no rest for his foot, Paul
+walked in the direction of the light, and the shadow of his face walked
+with him. As the wind went by him it whistled in his ear, and it sounded
+in that solitude like the low cry of the thing at his side.
+
+Old Laird Fisher was at his work of wheeling the refuse of the ore from
+the mouth of the furnace, and shooting it down the bank. The glow of the
+hot stone in the iron barrow that he trundled was reflected in sharp
+white lights on his wrinkled face.
+
+"Ista theer, Mister Paul?" he said, catching his breath and coughing
+amid the smoke, and shouting between the gusts of wind.
+
+The slow beat of the engine and the clank of the chain of the cage in
+the shaft deadened the wind's shrill whistle. The smoke from the bank
+shot up and swirled away like a long flight of swallows.
+
+Standing there, the vision troubled him no longer. It had been merely a
+waking phantasy, bred of what Greta said she saw in the snow, and
+heightened by the shock to his nerves caused by his mother's departure.
+The sight of Matthew helped to beat it off. His submissive face was the
+sign of his broken spirit. A tempest had torn up his only hold on the
+earth. He was but a poor naked trunk flung on the ground, without power
+of growth or grip of the soil. He was old and he had no hope. Yet he
+lived on and worked submissively. Paul's own case was different. Destiny
+had dashed him in unknown seas against unseen rocks. But he was young,
+he had the power of life, and the stimulus of love. Yet here he was, the
+prey to an idle fancy, tortured by an agony of fear.
+
+"Good-night to you, Matthew!" he shouted cheerily above the wind, and
+went away into the night.
+
+He would go home and sleep the fever out of his blood; he took the road;
+and as he went, the monotonous engine-throb died off behind him. He
+passed through the village; the street was empty, and it echoed loud to
+the sound of his footfall. Large shadows fell about him when for an
+instant the moon shot clear of a cloud. A light burned in a cottage
+window. Poor Mrs. Truesdale's sick life was within that sleepless
+chamber lingering out its last days. The wind fell to silence at one
+moment, and then a child's little cry came out to him in the night.
+
+He walked on, and plunged again into the darkness of the road beyond.
+The dogs were howling at the distant Ghyll. A sable cloud floated in the
+sky, and at its back the moon sailed. It was like black hair silvered
+with gray. But on one spot on the road before him the moon shone clear
+and white. The place fascinated him like a star. He quickened his pace
+until he came into the moon's open light. Then it turned to an ashy
+tint; it lay over the church-yard. His father's grave was only a few
+paces from the road.
+
+What unseen power had drawn him there? Was it meant that he should
+understand that all the stings that fate had in store for him were to be
+in some unsearchable way the refuse of his father's deed? His mind went
+back to the night of his father's death. He thought of his mother's
+confession--a confession more terrible to make more fearful to listen
+to, than a mother ever made before or a son ever heard. And now again,
+was the disaster of this very night a link in the chain of destiny?
+
+Let no man compare the withering effects of a father's curse with the
+blasting influence of a father's sin. If the wrath of Providence should
+fail in its stern and awful retribution, the world in its mercy would
+not forget that the sins of the fathers must be visited upon the
+children.
+
+Paul entered the lych-gate and entered the church-yard. The night dew on
+his cheeks was not colder than his tears as he knelt by his father's
+grave. At one instant he cursed the world and the world's cruel law.
+Then there stole into his heart a poison that corroded its dearest
+memory: he thought of his father with bitterness.
+
+At that moment a strange awe crept over him. He knew, though still only
+by the eyes of his mind, that the vision had returned. He knew it was
+standing against the night-sky as a ghastly headstone to the grave. But
+when he raised his eyes what he saw was more terrible. The face was
+before him, but it was a dead face now. He saw his own corpse stretched
+out on his father's grave.
+
+His head fell on the cold sod. He lay like the dead on the grave of the
+dead. Then he knew that it was ordered above that the cloud of his
+father's sin should darken his days; that through all the range and
+change of life he was to be the lonely slave of a sin not his own. His
+fate was sin-inherited, and the wages of sin is death.
+
+Was it strange that at that moment, when all the earth seemed gloomed by
+the shadow of a curse that lay blackest over him--when reverence for a
+father's memory and love learned at a mother's knee were deadened by a
+sense of irremediable wrong--was it strange that there and then peace
+fell on him like a dove from heaven?
+
+Orphaned in one hour--now, and not till now--foredoomed to writhe like a
+worm amid the dust of the world--the man in him arose and shook off its
+fear.
+
+It was because he came to know--rude man as he was, unlettered, but
+strong of soul--that there is a Power superior to fate, that the
+stormiest sea has its Master, that the waif that is cast by the roughest
+wave on the loneliest shore is yet seen and known.
+
+And the voice of an angel seemed to whisper in his heart the story of
+Hagar and her son; how the boy was the first-born of his father; how the
+second-born became the heir; how the woman and son were turned away; how
+they were nigh to death in the desert; and how, at last, the cry came
+from heaven, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is."
+
+The horror of the vision had gone. It would come back no more. Paul
+walked home, went up to his own room, and slept peacefully.
+
+When he awoke the pink and yellow rose of a wintery sunrise bloomed over
+the head of the Eel Crags. The tinkle of the anvil came from across the
+vale. Sheep were bleating high up on the frost-nipped side of the fell.
+The echo of the ax could be heard from the wood, and the muffled lowing
+of the kine from the shippon in the yard behind. The harsh scrape of
+Natt's clogs was on the gravel. A robin with full throat perched on the
+window-ledge and warbled cheerily.
+
+Last night was gone from him for all eternity. Before him was the day,
+the world, and life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+That day--the day before the wedding--all the gossiping tongues in
+Newlands were cackling from morning till night. Natt had been sent round
+the dale with invitations addressed to statesmen, their wives, sons and
+daughters. Parson Christian himself made the round of the homes of the
+poor.
+
+"'The poor ye have always with you,' but not everywhere, and not often
+in Cana of Galilee," he said to Greta on setting out.
+
+And the people of the highways and hedges were nothing loath to come in
+to the feast. "God luck to the weddiners!" they said, "and may they
+never lick a lean poddish-stick."
+
+There was not much work done in the valley that day. The richest heiress
+on the country-side was about to be married to the richest statesman in
+the dale. On the eve of such an event it was labor enough to drop in at
+the Flying Horse and discuss mathematics. The general problem was one in
+simple addition, namely, how much Paul Ritson would be worth when he
+married Greta Lowther. And more than once that day twice two made a
+prodigious five.
+
+The frost continued and the roads were crisp. Heavy rains had preceded
+the frost, and the river that ran down the middle of the valley had
+overflowed the meadows to the width of a wide carriage-way. This was now
+a road of ice five miles long, smooth as glass, and all but as straight
+as an arrow.
+
+Abraham Strong, the carpenter, had been ordered to take the wheels off a
+disused landau and fix instead two keels of wood beneath the axles. This
+improvised sledge, after it had been shod in steel by the blacksmith,
+was to play a part in to-morrow's ceremony.
+
+Early in the day Brother Peter was dispatched to the town to fetch Mr.
+Bonnithorne. The four miles' journey afoot seemed to him a bigger candle
+than the entire game was worth.
+
+"Don't know as I see what the lass wants mair nor she's got," he told
+himself, grumpily, as he plodded along the road. "What call has she for
+a man? Hasn't she two of 'em as she is? I made her comfortable enough
+myself. But lasses are varra ficklesome."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne gathered enough from Brother Peter's "Don't know as
+there's not a wedding in t' wind," to infer what was afoot. Hugh Ritson
+was away from home, and his brother Paul was availing himself of his
+absence to have the marriage ceremony performed.
+
+This was the inference with which Mr. Bonnithorne had walked from the
+town; but before reaching the vicarage he encountered Paul himself, who
+was even then on the way to his office. Few words passed between them.
+Indeed, the young dalesman was civil, and no more. He gave scant
+courtesy, but then he also gave something that was more substantial, and
+the severity of the lawyer's cynicism relaxed. Paul handed Mr.
+Bonnithorne, without comment, the deed drawn up in London. Mr.
+Bonnithorne glanced at it, pocketed it, and smiled. His sense of Paul's
+importance as a dangerous man sunk to nothing at that moment. They
+parted without more words.
+
+Parson Christian got home toward evening, dead beaten with fatigue. He
+found the lawyer waiting for him. The marriage had been big in his eyes
+all day, and other affairs very little.
+
+"So you shall give her away, Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, without
+superfluous preface of any kind.
+
+"I--I?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, with elevated brows.
+
+"Who has more right?" said the parson.
+
+"Well, you know, you--you--"
+
+"Me! Nay, I must marry them. It is you for the other duty."
+
+"You see, Mr. Christian, if you think of it, I am--I am--"
+
+"You are her father's old friend. There, let us look on it as settled."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne looked on it as awkward. "Well, to say the truth, Mr.
+Christian, I'd--I'd rather not."
+
+The old parson lifted two astonished eyes, and gazed at Mr. Bonnithorne
+over the rims of his spectacles. The lawyer's uneasiness increased. Then
+Parson Christian remembered that only a little while ago Mr. Bonnithorne
+had offered reasons why Paul should not marry Greta. They were rather
+too secular, those same reasons, but no doubt they had appealed honestly
+to his mind as a friend of Greta's family.
+
+"Paul and Greta are going away," said the parson.
+
+"So I judged."
+
+"They go to Victoria to farm there," continued the parson.
+
+"On Greta's money," added the lawyer.
+
+Parson Christian looked again over the rims of his spectacles. Then for
+once his frank and mellow face annexed a reflection of the curl on the
+lawyer's lip. "Do you know," he said, "it never once came into my
+simple old pate to ask which would find the dross and which the honest
+labor?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne winced. The simple old pate could, on occasion, be more
+than a match for his own wise head.
+
+"Seeing that I shall marry her, I think it will be expected that you
+should give her to her husband; but if you have an objection--"
+
+"An objection?" Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "I don't know that my
+feeling is so serious as that."
+
+"Then let us leave it there, and you'll decide in the morning," said
+Parson Christian.
+
+So they left it there, and Mr. Bonnithorne, the dear friend of the
+family, made haste to the telegraph office and sent this telegram to
+Hugh Ritson in London: "They are to be married to-morrow. If you have
+anything imperative to say, write to-night, or come."
+
+Paul and Greta saw each other only for five minutes that day amid the
+general hubbub; but their few words were pregnant with serious issues.
+Beneath the chorus of their hearts' joy there was an undersong of
+discord; and neither knew of the other's perplexity.
+
+Greta was thinking of Hugh Ritson's mysterious threat. Whether or not
+Hugh had the power of preventing their marriage was a question of less
+consequence to Greta at this moment than the other question of whether
+or not she could tell Paul what Hugh had said. As the day wore on, her
+uncertainty became feverish. If she spoke, she must reveal--what
+hitherto she had partly hidden--the importunity and unbrotherly
+disloyalty of Hugh's love. She must also awaken fresh distress in Paul's
+mind, already overburdened with grief for the loss of his mother.
+Probably Paul would be powerless to interpret his brother's strange
+language. And if he should be puzzled, the more he must be pained.
+Perhaps Hugh Ritson's threat was nothing but the outburst of a
+distempered spirit--the noise of a bladder that is emptying itself.
+Still, Greta's nervousness increased; no reason, no sophistry could
+allay it. She felt like a blind man who knows by the current of air on
+his face that he has reached two street crossings, and can not decide
+which turn to take.
+
+Paul, on his part, had a grave question to revolve. He was thinking
+whether it was the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in
+ignorance of the fact that he was not his father's legitimate son. Yet
+he could never tell her. The oath he had taken over his father's body
+must seal his lips forever. His mother's honor was wrapped up in that
+oath. Break the one, and the other was no longer inviolate. True, it
+would be to Greta, and Greta alone, and she and he were one. True, too,
+his mother was now dead to the world. But the oath was rigid:
+
+"Never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act, or her
+shame." He had sworn it, and he must keep it. The conflict of emotion
+was terrible. Love was dragging him one way, and love the other. Honor
+said yes, and honor said no. His heart's first thought was to tell Greta
+everything, to keep nothing back from her whose heart's last thought was
+his. But the secret of his birth must lie as a dead and speechless thing
+within him.
+
+If it was not the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in
+ignorance of his birth, there was only one escape from the dishonor--not
+to let her marry him at all. If they married, the oath must be kept. If
+the oath were kept, the marriage might be dishonored--it could not be
+the unreserved and complete union of soul with soul, heart with heart,
+mind with mind, which true marriage meant. It would be laying the
+treasure at the altar and keeping back part of the price.
+
+Paul was not a man of subtle intellect, or perhaps such reflections
+would have troubled him too deeply. Love was above everything, and to
+give up Greta was impossible. If Circumstance was the evil genius of a
+man's life, should it be made the god of it also?
+
+At all hazards Paul meant to marry Greta. And after all, what did this
+question of honor amount to? It was a mere phantasm. What did it matter
+to Greta whether he were high or basely born? Should he love her less or
+more? Would he be less or more worthy of her love? And how was his
+birth base? Not in God's eyes, for God had heard the voice of Hagar's
+son. Only in the eyes of the world. And what did that mean? It meant
+that whether birth was high or base depended one part on virtue and nine
+hundred and ninety-nine parts on money. Where had half the world's
+titled great ones sprung from? Not--like him--from their father and
+their father's fathers, but from a monarch's favorite.
+
+Thus Paul reasoned with himself at this juncture. Whether he was wholly
+right or wholly wrong, or partly right and partly wrong, concerns us not
+at all. It was natural that such a man, in such a place, at such an
+hour, should decide once for all to say not a word to Greta. It was just
+as natural that his reticence should produce the long series of
+incidents still to be recorded.
+
+Thus it was not a word was said between them of what lay nearest to the
+hearts of both.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+The morning was brilliant--a vigorous, lusty young day, such as can
+awake from the sleep of the night only in winter and in the north. The
+sun shone on the white frost; the air was hazy enough to make the
+perspective of the fells more sharp, and leave a halo of mystery to hang
+over every distant peak and play about every tree.
+
+The Ghyll was early astir, and in every nook and corner full of the buzz
+of gossip.
+
+"Well, things is at a pass, for sure!" "And never no axings nowther."
+"And all cock-a-hoop, and no waiting for the mistress to come back."
+"Shaf, what matter about the mistress--she's no' but a kill-joy. There'd
+be no merry neet an' she were at home." "Well, I is fair maizelt 'at he
+won't wait for Master Hugh--his awn brother, thoo knows." "What, lass,
+dusta think as he wad do owt at the durdum to-neet? Maybe tha's
+reckoning on takin' a step wi' him, eh?" "And if I is, it's nowt sa
+strange." "Weel, I wadna be for saying tha's aiming too high, for I mind
+me of a laal lass once as they called Mercy Fisher, and folks did say
+as somebody were partial to her." "Hod thy tongue about the bit thing;
+don't thoo misliken me to sec a stromp!"
+
+Resplendent in a blue cloth coat, light check trousers, a flowered
+yellow silk waistcoat, and a white felt hat, Natt was flying up and down
+the stairs to and from Paul's room. Paul himself had not yet been seen.
+Rumor in the kitchen whispered that he had hardly taken the trouble to
+dress, and had not even been at the pains to wash. Natt had more than
+once protested his belief that his master meant to be married in his
+shirt-sleeves. Nothing but "papers and pens and sealing-wax and things"
+had he asked for.
+
+Outside the vicarage a motley group had gathered. There was John
+Proudfoot, the blacksmith, uncommonly awkward in a frock coat and a pair
+of kid gloves that sat on his great hands like a clout on a pitchfork.
+Dick, the miller, was there, too, with Giles Raisley, the miner; and Job
+Sheepshanks (by the way of treaty of peace) stood stroking the tangled
+mane of Gubblum Oglethorpe's pony. Children hung on the fence, women
+gathered about the gate, dogs capered on the path. Gubblum himself had
+been in the house, and now came out accompanied by Brother Peter Ward
+and a huge black jug. The jug was passed round with distinct
+satisfaction.
+
+"Is the laal man ever coming?" said Gubblum, smacking his lips and
+taking a swift survey of the road.
+
+"Why, here he is at sec a skufter as'll brak' his shins!"
+
+At the top of his speed, and breathless, clad in a long coat whose tails
+almost swept the ground, grasping a fiddle in one hand and a paper in
+the other, Tom o' Dint came hurrying up.
+
+"Tha's here at last, Tom, ma man. Teem a glass into him, Peter, and
+let's mak' a start."
+
+"Ye see, I's two men, I is," said the small man, apologetically. "I had
+my rounds with my letters to do first, and business afore pleasure, you
+knows."
+
+"Pleasure afore business, say I," cried Gubblum. "Never let yer wark get
+the upper hand o' yer wages--them's my maxims."
+
+Two coaches came up at the moment, having driven four miles for the
+purpose of driving four furlongs.
+
+John Proudfoot, without needless courtesy, took the fiddler-postman by
+the neck of his coat and the garment beneath its tails, and slung him,
+fiddle and all, on to the saddle of the pony, and held him there a
+moment, steadying him like a sack with an open mouth.
+
+"Sit thee there as steady as a broody hen; and now let's mak' shift,"
+said the blacksmith.
+
+"But I must go inside first," said the fiddler; "I've a letter for
+Lawyer Bonnithorne."
+
+"Shaf on thee and thy letter! Away with thee! Deliver it at the church
+door."
+
+The men dropped into a single file, with Tom o' Dint riding at their
+head, and Gubblum walking by the pony's side and holding the reins.
+
+"Strike up!" shouted Job Sheepshanks. "Ista ever gaen to begin?"
+
+Then the fiddler shouldered his fiddle, and fell to, and the first long
+sweeps of his wedding-march awoke the echoes of the vale.
+
+The women and children followed the procession a few hundred yards, and
+then returned to see the wedding-party enter the coaches.
+
+Inside the vicarage all was noise and bustle. Greta was quiet enough,
+and ready to set out at any time, but a bevy of gay young daleswomen
+were grouped about her, trying to persuade her to change her brown
+broche dress for a pale-blue silk, to have some hothouse plants in her
+hair, and at least to wear a veil.
+
+"And mind you keep up heart, darling, and speak out your responses; and,
+dearest, don't cry until the parson gets to 'God bless you!'"
+
+Greta received all this counsel with equal thanks. She listened to it,
+affected to approve of it, and ignored it. Her face betrayed anxiety.
+She hardly understood her own fears, but whenever the door opened, and a
+fresh guest entered, she knew that her heart leaped to her mouth.
+
+Parson Christian stood near her in silk gaiters and a coat that had been
+old-fashioned even in his youth. But his Jovian gray head and fine old
+face, beautiful in its mellowness and child-like simplicity, made small
+demand of dress. He patted Greta's hair sometimes with the affectionate
+gesture that might be grateful to a fondled child.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne arrived early, in a white waistcoat and coat adorned by
+a flower. His brave apparel was scarcely in keeping with the anxiety
+written on his face. He could not sit down for more than a moment in the
+same seat. He was up and down, walking to and fro, looking out of the
+window, and diving for papers into his pocket.
+
+The procession, headed by Tom o' Dint, had not long been gone, when word
+was given, and the party took to the coaches and set off at a trot. Then
+the group of women at the gate separated with many a sapient comment.
+
+"Weel, he's getten a bonny lass, for sure."
+
+"And many a sadder thing med happen to her, too."
+
+The village lay midway between the vicarage and the church, and the
+fiddler and his company marched through it to a brisk tune, bringing
+fifty pairs of curious eyes to the windows and the doors. Tom o' Dint
+sat erect in the saddle, playing vigorously, and when a burst of
+cheering hailed the procession as it passed a group of topers gathered
+outside the Flying Horse, Tom accepted it as a tribute to his playing,
+and bowed his head with becoming dignity, and without undue familiarity,
+always remembering that courtesy comes after art, as a true artist is in
+loyalty bound to do.
+
+Once or twice the pony slipped its foot on the frosty road, and then Tom
+was fain to abridge a movement in music and make a movement in
+gymnastics toward grasping the front of the saddle.
+
+But all went well until the company came within fifty paces of the
+church door, and there a river crossed the road. Being shallow and very
+swift, the river head escaped the grip of the frost, and slipped through
+its fingers. There was a foot-bridge on one side, and the men behind the
+fiddler fell out of line to cross by it.
+
+Gubblum dropped the reins and followed them; but, as bridges are not
+made for the traffic of ponies, Tom o' Dint was bound to go through the
+water. Never interrupting the sweep and swirl of the march he was
+playing, he gave the pony a prod with his foot, and it plunged in. But
+scarcely had it taken two steps and reached the depth of its knees,
+when, from the intenser cold, or from coming sharply against a submerged
+stone, or from indignation at the fiddler's prod, or from the occult
+cause known as pure devilment, it shied up its back legs, and tossed
+down its tousled head, and pitched the musician head-foremost into the
+stream.
+
+Amid a burst of derisive cheers, Tom o' Dint was drawn, wet as a sack,
+to the opposite bank, and his fiddle was rescued from a rapid voyage
+down the river.
+
+Now, the untoward adventure had the good effect of reducing the
+fiddler's sense of the importance of his artistic function, and bringing
+him back to consciousness of his prosaic duties as postman. He put his
+hand into his pocket, feeling as if he had dipped it into a bag of eels,
+and drew out the lawyer's letter. It was wet, and the ink of the
+superscription was beginning to run.
+
+Tom o' Dint also began to run. Fearing trouble, he left his
+unsympathetic cronies, hurried on to the church, went into the vestry,
+where he knew there would be a fire, and proceeded to dry the letter.
+The water had softened the gum, and the envelope had opened.
+
+"So much the mair easier dried," thought Tom, and, nothing loath, he
+drew out the letter, unfolded it, and held it to the fire.
+
+The paper was smoking with the heat, and so was Tom, when he heard
+carriage-wheels without, and then a mighty hubbub, and loud voices
+mentioning his own name without reverence: "Where's that clothead of a
+fiddler?" and sundry other dubious allusions.
+
+Tom knew that he ought to be at the gate striking up a merry tune to
+welcome the bride. But then the letter was not dry. There was not a
+moment to lose. Tom spread the paper and envelope on the fender,
+intending to return for them, and dashed off with his fiddle to the
+discharge of his artistic duty.
+
+As Tom o' Dint left the vestry, Parson Christian entered it. The parson
+saw the papers on his fender, picked them up, and in all innocence read
+them. The letter ran as follows:
+
+     "Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square, Nov. 28.
+
+   "Dear Bonnithorne,--The man who was in Newlands is Paul Lowther,
+   Greta's half-brother. Paul Ritson is my own brother, my father's son.
+   Keep this to yourself as you value your salvation, your pride, or
+   your purse, or whatever else you hold most dear. Send me by wire
+   to-day the name of their hotel in London, the time of their train
+   south, and who, if any, are with them.
+
+     Yours,
+
+     "HUGH RITSON."
+
+     "P.S.--The girl Mercy will be troublesome."
+
+The parson had scarcely time to understand the words he read, when he,
+too, was compelled to leave the vestry. The bride and bridegroom had met
+at the church door. It was usual to receive them at the altar with
+music. The fiddler's function was at an end for the present. Parson
+Christian could not allow the fiddle to be heard in church. There a less
+secular instrument was required. The church was too poor for an organ;
+it had not yet reached the dignity of a harmonium; but it had an
+accordion, and among the parson's offices was the office of
+accordionist. So, throwing his gown over his head, he walked into the
+church, stepped into the pulpit, whipped up his instrument from the
+shelf where he kept it, and began to play.
+
+Now it chanced that Mr. Bonnithorne in his legal capacity held certain
+documents for signature, and having accompanied the bride to the altar
+rail, he hurried to deposit them in the vestry. The gloom had still hung
+heavy on his brow as he entered the church. He was brooding over a
+letter that he had expected and had not received. Perhaps it was his
+present hunger for a letter that made his eye light first on the one
+which the fiddler-postman had left to dry. The parson had dropped it on
+the mantel-shelf. At a glance Mr. Bonnithorne saw it was his own.
+
+Tom o' Dint had been compelled to come up the aisle at the tail of the
+wedding-party. He saw Mr. Bonnithorne, who was at the head of it, go
+into the vestry. Dripping wet as he was, and with chattering teeth, the
+sweat stood on his forehead. "Deary me, what sec a character will I
+have!" he muttered. He elbowed and edged his way through the crowd, and
+got into the vestry at last. But he was too late. With an eye that
+struck lightning into the meek face of the fiddler, Mr. Bonnithorne
+demanded an explanation.
+
+The request was complied with.
+
+"And who has been in the room since you left it?"
+
+"Nay, nobody, sir."
+
+"Sure of that?"
+
+"For sure," said Tom.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne's countenance brightened. He had read the letter, and,
+believing that no one else had read it, he was satisfied. He put it in
+his pocket.
+
+"Maybe I may finish drying it, sir?" said Tom o' Dint.
+
+The lawyer gave a contemptuous snort, and turned on his heel.
+
+When Paul walked with a firm step up the aisle, he looked fresh and
+composed. His dress was simple; his eyes were clear and bright, and his
+wavy brown hair fell back from a smooth and peaceful brow.
+
+Greta, at Paul's side, looked less at ease. The clouds still hung over
+her face. Her eyes turned at intervals to the door, as if expecting some
+new arrival.
+
+The service was soon done, and then the parson delivered a homily. It
+was short and simple, telling how the good bishop had said marriage was
+the mother of the world, filling cities and churches, and heaven itself,
+whose nursery it was. Then it touched on the marriage rite.
+
+"I do not love ceremonies," said the parson, "for they are too often
+'devised to set a gloss on faint deeds,' and there are such of them as
+throw the thing they celebrate further away than the wrong end of a
+telescope."
+
+Then he explained that though the marriage ceremony was unknown to the
+early Christians, and never referred to in the old Bible, where Abraham
+"took" Sarah to wife, and Jacob "took" Rachel, yet that the marriage of
+the Church was a most holy and beautiful thing, symbolizing the union of
+Christ with His people. Last of all, he spoke of the stainless and pious
+parentage of both bride and bridegroom, and warned them to keep their
+name and fame unsullied, for "What is birth to man or woman," said the
+teacher, "if it shall be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such
+offspring?"
+
+Greta bowed her head meekly, and Paul stood, while the parson spoke,
+with absent eyes fixed on the tablets on the wall before him, spelling
+out mechanically the words of the commandments.
+
+In a few moments the signatures were taken, the bell in the little
+turret was ringing, and the company were trooping out of the church. It
+was a rude old structure, with great bulges in the walls, little square
+lead lights, and open timbers untrimmed and straight from the tree.
+
+The crowd outside had gathered about the wheelless landau which the
+carpenter and blacksmith had converted into a sledge. On the box seat
+sat Tom o' Dint, his fiddle in his hand, and icicles hanging in the
+folds of his capacious coat. The bride and bridegroom were to return in
+this conveyance, which was to be drawn down the frozen river by a score
+of young dalesmen shod in steel. They took their seats, and had almost
+set off, when Greta called for the parson.
+
+"Parson Christian, Parson Christian!" echoed twenty voices. The good
+parson was ringing the bell, being bell-ringer also. Presently the
+brazen tongue ceased wagging, and Parson Christian reappeared.
+
+"Here's your seat, parson," said Paul, making space.
+
+"In half a crack," replied Parson Christian, pulling a great key out of
+his pocket and locking the church door. He was sexton as well.
+
+Then he got up into the sledge, word was called, the fiddle broke out,
+and away they went for the river-bank. A minute more and they were
+flying over the smooth ice with the morning sunlight chasing them, and
+the music of fifty lusty voices in their ears.
+
+They had the longer journey, but they reached the vicarage as early as
+the coaches that had returned by the road. Then came the breakfast--a
+solid repast, fit for appetites sharpened by the mountain air. Parson
+Christian presided in the parlor, and Brother Peter in the kitchen, the
+door between being thrown open. The former radiated smiles like April
+sunshine; the latter looked as sour as a plum beslimed by the
+earthworms, and "didn't know as he'd ever seen sec a pack of hungry
+hounds."
+
+After the breakfast the toasts, and up leaped Mr. Bonnithorne. That
+gentleman had quite cast off the weight of his anxiety. He laughed and
+chaffed, made quips and cranks.
+
+"Our lawyer is foreclosing," whispered a pert young damsel in Greta's
+ear. "He's getting drunk."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne would propose "Mr. and Mrs. Ritson." He began with a few
+hoary and reverend quotations--"Men are April when they woo, December
+when they wed." This was capped by "Maids are May when they are maids,
+but the sky changes when they are wives." Mr. Bonnithorne protested that
+both had been true, only with exceptions.
+
+Paul thanked the company in a dozen manly and well-chosen phrases, and
+then stepped to the kitchen door and invited the guests over whom
+Brother Peter presided to spend the evening at the Ghyll.
+
+The ladies had risen and carried off Greta to prepare for her journey,
+when Gubblum Oglethorpe got on his feet and insisted on proposing "the
+lasses." What Gubblum had to say on the subject it is not given to us to
+record. By some strange twist of logic, he launched out on a very
+different topic. Perhaps he sat in the vicinity of Nancy Tantarum, for
+he began with the story of a funeral.
+
+"It minds me," he said, "of the carriers at Adam Strang's funeral, at
+Gosforth, last back-end gone twelvemonth. There were two sets on 'em,
+and they'd a big bottle atween 'em--same as that one as auld Peter, the
+honey, keeps to hissel at yon end of the table. Well, they carried Adam
+shoulder high from the house to the grave-yard, first one set and then
+t'other, mile on mile apiece, and when one set got to the end of their
+mile they set down the coffin and went on for t'other set to pick it
+up. It were nine mile from Branthet Edge to Gosforth, so they had nine
+shifts atween 'em, and at every shift they swigged away at the big
+bottle--this way with it, Peter. Well, the mourners they crossed the
+fields for shortness, but the bearers, they had to keep the corpse road.
+All went reet for eight mile, and then one set with Adam were far ahead
+of the other with the bottle. They set the coffin on a wall at the
+roadside and went on. Well, when the second set came up they didn't see
+it--they couldn't see owt, that's the fact--same as I expect I'll be
+afore the day's gone, but not with Peter's good-will, seemingly. Well,
+they went on, too. And when all of 'em coom't up to the church togither,
+there was the parson in his white smock and his bare poll and big book
+open to start. But, you see, there warn't no corpse. Where was it? Why,
+it was no' but resting quiet all by itsel' on the wall a mile away."
+
+Gubblum was proceeding to associate the grewsome story with the
+incidents of Paul's appearance at the fire while he was supposed to be
+in London; but Greta had returned to the parlor, muffled in furs, Paul
+had thrown on a long frieze ulster, and every one had risen for the last
+leave-taking. In the midst of the company stood the good old Christian,
+his wrinkled face wet with silent tears. Greta threw herself into his
+arms and wept aloud. Then the parson began to cast seeming merry glances
+around him, and to be mighty jubilant all at once.
+
+The improvised sledge was at the door, laden with many boxes.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!"
+
+A little cheer, a little attempt at laughter, a suppressed sigh, then a
+downright honest cry, and away they were gone. The last thing seen by
+Greta's hazy eyes was a drooping white head amid many bright girl faces.
+
+How they flew along. The glow of sunset was now in their faces. It
+crimsoned the west, and sparkled like gold on the eastern crags. Between
+them and the light were the skaters drawing the sledge, sailing along
+like a flight of great rooks, their voices echoing in unseen caverns of
+the fells.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne sat with Paul and Greta.
+
+"Where did you say you would stay in London?" he asked.
+
+"At Morley's Hotel," said Paul.
+
+With this answer the lawyer looked unreasonably happy.
+
+The station was reached in twenty minutes. The train steamed in. Paul
+and Greta got into the last carriage, all before it being full. A moment
+more, and they were gone.
+
+Then Mr. Bonnithorne walked direct to the telegraph office. But the
+liquor he had taken played him false. He had got it into his stupefied
+head that he must have blundered about Morley's Hotel. That was not
+Paul's, but Hugh's address. So he sent this telegram:
+
+"Left by train at one. Address, Hawk and Heron."
+
+Then he went home happy.
+
+That night there was high revel at the Ghyll. First, a feast in the
+hall: beef, veal, mutton, ham, haggis, and hot bacon pie. Then an
+adjournment to a barn, where tallow candles were stuck into cloven
+sticks, and hollowed potatoes served for lamps. Strong ale and trays of
+tobacco went round, and while the glasses jingled and the smoke wreathed
+upward, a song was sung:
+
+     "A man may spend
+     And God will send,
+   If his wife be good to owt;
+     But a man may spare
+     And still be bare,
+   If his wife be good to nowt."
+
+Then blindman's buff. "Antony Blindman kens ta me, sen I bought butter
+and cheese o' thee? I ga' tha my pot, I ga' tha my pan, I ga' all I had
+but a rap ho' penny I gave a poor auld man."
+
+Last of all, the creels were ranged round the hay-mows, and the floor
+was cleared of everything except a beer-barrel. This was run into the
+corner, and Tom o' Dint and fiddle were seated on top of it. Dancing was
+interrupted only by drinking, until Tom's music began to be irregular,
+whereupon Gubblum remonstrated; and then Tom, with the indignation of an
+artist, broke the bridge of his fiddle on Gubblum's head, and Gubblum
+broke the bridge of Tom's nose with his fist, and both rolled on to the
+floor and lay there, until Gubblum extricated himself with difficulty,
+shook his lachrymose noddle, and said:
+
+"The laal man is as drunk as a fiddler."
+
+The vicarage was quiet that night. All the guests save one were gone.
+Parson Christian sat before the smoldering fire. Old Laird Fisher sat
+with him. Neither spoke. They passed a long hour in silence.
+
+
+
+
+_BOOK III._
+
+
+THE DECLIVITY OF CRIME.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+A way-side hostelry, six miles from London, bearing its swinging sign of
+the silver hawk and golden heron. It was a little, low-roofed place,
+with a drinking-bar in front as you entered, and rooms opening from it
+on either hand.
+
+The door of the room to the left was shut. One could hear the voices of
+children within, and sometimes a peal of their merry laughter. The room
+to the right stood open to the bar. It was a smoky place, with a few
+chairs, a long deal table, a bench with a back, a form against the wall,
+pipes that hung on nails, and a rough beam across the low ceiling.
+
+A big fire burned in an open grate on a hearth without a fender. In
+front of it, coiled up in a huge chair like a canoe, that had a look of
+having been hewn straight from the tree, sat the only occupant of the
+room. The man wore a tweed suit of the indefinite pattern known as
+pepper and salt. His hat was drawn heavily over his face to protect his
+eyes from the glare of the fire-light. He gave satisfactory evidence
+that he slept.
+
+Under any light but that of the fire, the place must have looked
+cheerless to desolation, but the comfortless room was alive with the
+fire's palpitating heart. The rosy flames danced over the sleeper's
+tawny hair, over the sanded floor, over the walls adorned with gaudy
+prints. They threw shadows and then caught them back again; flashed a
+ruddy face out of the little cracked window, and then lay still while
+the blue night looked in.
+
+An old woman, with a yellow face deeply wrinkled, served behind the bar.
+Two or three carriers and hawkers sat on a bench before it. One of these
+worthies screwed up the right side of his face with an expression of
+cutting irony.
+
+"Burn my body, though, but what an inwalable thing to have a son wot
+never need do no work!"
+
+The old woman lifted her eyes.
+
+"There, enough of that," she said, and then jerked her head toward the
+room from whence came measured snores. "He'll be working at throwing you
+out, some of you, same as he did young Bobby on Sunday sennight."
+
+"Like enough. He don't know which side his bread is buttered, he don't."
+
+"His bread?" said another, an old road-mender, with a scornful dig of
+emphasis. "His old mother's, you mean. Don't you notice as folks as eat
+other folks' bread, and earn none for theirselves, never knows no more
+nor babbies which side the butter is on?"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Luke Sturgis!" said the old woman. "Mayhap you think
+it's you're pint of half-and-half as keeps us all out of the union."
+
+"Now you're a-goin' to get wexed, Mrs. Drayton. So wot's to prevent me
+having another pint, just to get that fine son of yourn an extra cigar
+or so. Hold hard with the pewter, though. I'll drain off what's left, if
+convenient."
+
+A drowsy-eyed countryman, with a dog snoring at his feet, said:
+
+"Been to Lunnon again," and pointed the shank of his pipe in the
+direction of the sleeping man. "Got the Lunnon smell on his clothes. I
+allus knows it forty perches off."
+
+"You're wrong, then, Mr. Wiseman," said the old woman, "and he ain't got
+no smell of no Lunnon on his clothes this day, anyways. For he's been
+where there ain't no smell no more nor in Hendon, leastways unless the
+mount'ins smells and the cataracks and the sheeps."
+
+"The mount'ins? And has Master Paul been along of the mount'ins?"
+
+"Yes; Cummerland, that's the mountains, and fur off, too, I've heerd."
+
+"Cummerland? Ain't that the part as the young missy comes from?"
+
+"Mayhap it is; I wouldn't be for saying no to that."
+
+"So that's the time o' day, is it?" The speaker gave a prolonged whistle
+and turned a suggestive glance into the faces of his companions. "Well,
+I allus says to my old woman, 'Bide quiet,' I says, 'and it'll leak
+out,' and sure enough, so it has."
+
+The landlady fired up.
+
+"And I allus says to your missus, 'Mistress Sturgis,' I says, 'it do
+make me that wexed to see a man a-prying into other people's business
+and a-talking and a-scandalizing, which it is bad in a woman, where you
+expects no better, as the saying is, but it ain't no ways bearsome in a
+man--and I wish you'd keep him,' I says, 'from poking his nose, as you
+might say, into other people's pewters.' There--that's what I allus says
+to your missis."
+
+"And very perwerse of you, too," said the worthy addressed, speaking
+with the easy good-nature of one who could afford to be rated. "And
+wot's to prevent me having a screw of twist on the strength of it,"
+putting a penny on the counter.
+
+The landlady threw down the paper of tobacco, picked up the penny, and
+cast it into the till.
+
+"On'y, as I say, there's no use denying now as Mister Paul Drayton has a
+finger in the young missy's pie."
+
+"There, that's enough o' that. I told you afore she never set eyes on
+him till a fortnight come Sunday."
+
+Two women came into the bar with jugs.
+
+"And how is the young missy?" asked the elder of the two, catching up
+the conversation as the landlady served her.
+
+"She's there," said the landlady, rather indefinitely, indicating with a
+sidelong nod the room to the left with the closed door.
+
+At that moment the laughter of the children could be heard from within.
+
+"She's merry over it, at any rate, though I did hear a whisper," said
+the woman, "as she feeds two when she eats her wittals, as the saying
+is."
+
+The men laughed.
+
+"That's being overcur'ous, mistress," said one, as the woman passed out
+sniggering.
+
+"Such baggage oughtn't to be taken in to live with respectable people,"
+said the other woman, the younger one, who wore a showy bonnet and a
+little gay ribbon at her neck.
+
+"And that's being overcharitable," said another voice. "It's the women
+for charity, especially to one of themselves."
+
+"It's cur'osity as is the mischief i' this world," said the drowsy-eyed
+countryman. "People talk o' the root o' all evil, and some says drink,
+and some says money, and some says rheumatis, but I says cur'osity. Show
+me the man as ain't cur'ous, and he don't go a-poking his nose into
+every stink-pot, as you might say."
+
+"Of course not," said the gentleman addressed as Luke Sturgis. "And show
+me the man as ain't cur'ous" he said, with a wink, "and I'll show you
+the man as is good at a plough and inwalable at a ditch, and wery near
+worth his weight in gold at gapping a hedge, and mucking up a
+horse-midden, and catching them nasty moles wot ruin the county worse
+nor wars and publicans and parsons."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It was Mercy Fisher who sat in the room to the left of the bar, and
+played with the children, and laughed when they laughed, and tried to
+forget that she was not as young as they were, and as happy and as free
+from thought, living as they lived, from hour to hour, with no past, and
+without a future, and all in the living present. But she was changed,
+and was now no longer quite a child, though she had a child's heart that
+would never grow old, but be a child's heart still, all the same that
+the weight of a woman's years lay upon it, and the burden of a woman's
+sorrow saddened it. A little older, a little wiser, perhaps, a little
+graver of face, and with eyes a little more wistful.
+
+A neighbor who had gone to visit a relative five miles away had brought
+round her children, begging the "young missy" to take care of them in
+her absence. A curly-headed boy of four sat wriggling in Mercy's lap,
+while a girl of six stood by her side, watching the needles as she
+knitted. And many a keen thrust the innocent, prattling tongues sent
+straight as an arrow to Mercy's heart. The little fellow was revolving a
+huge lozenge behind his teeth.
+
+"And if oo had a little boy would oo give him sweets ery often--all
+days--sweets and cakes--would oo?"
+
+"Yes, every day, darling; I'd give him sweets and cakes every day."
+
+"I 'ikes oo. And would oo let him go out to play with the big boys, and
+get birds' nests and things, would oo?"
+
+"Yes, bird's nests, and berries, and everything."
+
+"I 'ikes oo, I do. And let him go to meet daddy coming home at night,
+and ride on daddy's back?"
+
+A shadow shot across the girl's simple face, and there was a pause.
+
+"Would oo? And lift him on daddy's shoulder, would oo?"
+
+"Perhaps, dear."
+
+"Oh!" the little chap's delight required no fuller expression.
+
+"Ot's oo doing?"
+
+"Knitting, darling--there, rest quiet on my knee."
+
+"Ot is it--knitting--stockings for oo little boy?"
+
+"I have no little boy, sweetheart. They are mittens for a gentleman."
+
+"How pooty! Ot's a gentleman?"
+
+"A man, dear. Mr. Drayton is a gentleman, you know."
+
+"Oh!" Then after a moment's sage reflection, "Me knows--a raskill."
+
+"Willy!"
+
+"'At's what daddy says he is."
+
+All this time the little maiden at Mercy's side had been pondering her
+own peculiar problem. "What would you do if you had a little girl?"
+
+"Well, let me see; I'd teach her to knit and to sew, and I'd comb her
+hair so nice, and make her a silk frock with flounces, and, oh! such a
+sweet little hat."
+
+"How nice! And would you take her to market and to church, and to see
+the dolls in Mrs. Bicker's window?"
+
+"Yes, dearest, yes."
+
+"And never whip her?"
+
+"My little girl would be very, very good, and oh! so pretty."
+
+"And let her go to grandma's whenever she liked, and not tell grandpa
+he's not to give her ha'pennies, would you?"
+
+"Yes ... dear ... yes ... perhaps."
+
+"Are your eyes very sore to-day, Mercy, they are so red?"
+
+But the little one of all was not interested in this turn of the
+conversation: "Well, why don't oo have a little boy?"
+
+A dead silence.
+
+"Wont oo, eh?"
+
+Willy was put to the ground. "Let us sing something. Do you like
+singing, sweetheart?"
+
+The little fellow climbed back to her lap in excitement. "Me sing, me
+sing. Mammy told I a song--me sing it oo."
+
+And without further ceremony the little chap struck up the notes of a
+lullaby.
+
+Mercy had learned that same song, as her mother crooned it long ago by
+the side of her cot. A great wave of memory and love and sorrow and
+remorse, in one, swept over her. It cost her a struggle not to break
+into a flood of tears. And the little innocent face looked up at the
+ceiling as the sweet child-voice sung the familiar words.
+
+There was a new-comer in the bar outside. It was Hugh Ritson, clad in a
+long ulster, with the hood drawn over his hat. He stepped up to the
+landlady, who courtesied low from behind the counter. "So he has
+returned?" he said, without greeting of any kind.
+
+"Yes, sir, he is back, sir; he got home in the afternoon, sir."
+
+"You told him nothing of any one calling?"
+
+"No, sir--that is to say, sir--not to say told him, sir--but I did
+mention--just mention, sir, that--"
+
+Hugh Ritson smiled coldly. "Of course--precisely. Were you more prudent
+with the girl?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, being as you told me not to name it to the missy--"
+
+"He is asleep, I see."
+
+"Yes, sir; he'd no sooner taken bite and sup than he dropped off in his
+chair, same as you see, sir; and never a word since. He must have
+traveled all night."
+
+"He did not explain?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir; he on'y called for his cold meat and his ale, sir, and--"
+
+"You see, his old mother ain't noways in his confidence, master," said
+one of the countrymen on the bench.
+
+"Nor you in mine, my friend," said Hugh Ritson, facing about. Then
+turning again to the landlady, he said: "Tell him some one wants to
+speak with him. Or, wait, I'll tell him myself."
+
+He stepped into the room with the sleeping man, and closed the door
+after him.
+
+"Luke Sturgis," said the landlady, with sudden austerity, "I'll have you
+know as it's none of your business saying words what's onpleasant--and
+me his mother, too. What's it you say? Cloven hoof? He's a personable
+gentleman, if he has got summat a matter with a foot, and a clever face
+how-an'-ever!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Alone with the sleeping man, Hugh Ritson stood and looked down at him
+intently. The fire had burned to a steady glow of red coal without
+flame. There was no other light in the room.
+
+The sleeper began to stir with the uneasy movement of one who is
+struggling against the effect of a fixed gaze bent upon him. Then, with
+a shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders, he sat up in his
+chair. He tossed his hat back from his forehead, and a tuft of wavy
+brown hair tumbled over it. His head was held down, and his eyes were on
+the fire. Hugh Ritson took a step toward him and put one hand on his
+arm.
+
+"Paul Drayton," he said, and the man shrunk under his touch and slowly
+turned his face full upon him.
+
+When their eyes met Hugh Ritson saw what he had expected to see--the
+face of Paul Ritson. In that low, red light, every feature was the same.
+By the swift impulse of sense it seemed as if it could be the same man
+and no other; as if Paul Drayton and Paul Ritson were one man.
+
+Drayton got on to his feet with an uncertain shuffle, and then in a
+moment the hallucination was dispelled. He kicked, with a heavy boot, at
+the slumbering coals, and the fire broke into a sharp crackle and bright
+blaze. The white light fell on his face. It was a fine face brutalized
+by excess. The features were strong, manly, and impressive. What God had
+done was very good; but the eyes were bleared, and the lips discolored,
+and the expression, which might have been frank, was sullen.
+
+"I don't wonder that you were tired after your journey; it was a long
+one," said Hugh Ritson. He affected an easy manner, but there was a
+tremor in his voice. "You caught the early Scotch mail from Penrith," he
+added, and drew a bench nearer to the fire and sat down.
+
+Drayton made a half-dazed scrutiny of his visitor, and said:
+
+"Damme, if you're not the fence as was here afore, criss-crossing at our
+old woman! Tell us your name."
+
+The voice was husky, but it had, nevertheless, a note or two of the
+voice of Paul Ritson.
+
+"That will be unnecessary," said Hugh Ritson, with complete
+self-possession. "We've met before," he added, smiling.
+
+"The deuce we have--where?"
+
+"You slept at the Pack Horse at Keswick rather more than a week ago,"
+said Hugh.
+
+Drayton betrayed no surprise.
+
+"Last Saturday night you were active at the fire that almost destroyed
+the old mill at Newlands."
+
+Drayton's sullen face was immovable.
+
+"By the way," said Hugh, elevating his voice and affecting a sudden flow
+of spirits, "I owe you my personal thanks for your exertions. What do
+you drink--brandy?"
+
+Going to the door, he called for a bottle of brandy and glasses.
+
+"Then, again, on Monday night," he added, turning into the room, "you
+did me the honor to visit my own house."
+
+Drayton was still standing.
+
+"I know you," he said. "Shall I tell you your name?"
+
+Hugh smiled with undisturbed humor. "That also will be unnecessary," he
+said; and leisurely drew off his gloves.
+
+"What d'ye want? I ain't got no time to waste--that's flat."
+
+"Well, let me see, it's just ten o'clock," said Hugh Ritson, taking out
+his watch. "I want you to earn twenty pounds before twelve."
+
+Mr. Drayton gave vent to a grim laugh.
+
+"I'll pound it as I'm fly to what that means! You're looking to earn two
+hundred before midnight."
+
+Mr. Drayton gave Hugh a sidelong glance of great astuteness.
+
+Hugh lifted his eyebrows and shook his head.
+
+"Money is not my object."
+
+"Oh, it ain't, eh? Well, I'm not afraid for you to know as it's
+mine--very much so." And Mr. Drayton gave vent to another grim laugh.
+
+Mrs. Drayton entered the room at this moment, and set down the brandy,
+two glasses, and a water-bottle on the deal table.
+
+"Let me offer you a little refreshment," and Hugh took up the brandy and
+poured out half a tumbler.
+
+"Thankee, thankee!"
+
+"Water? Say when."
+
+But Mr. Drayton stopped the dilution by snatching up his tumbler. His
+manner had undergone a change. The watchfulness of a ferocious creature
+dogged and all but trapped gave way to reckless abandonment, bravado and
+audacity.
+
+"What's the lay?" he said, with a chuckle.
+
+"To accompany a lady to Kentish Town Junction, and see her safe into the
+midnight train--that's all."
+
+Drayton laughed outright.
+
+"Of course it is," he said.
+
+"The lady will be here shortly before midnight."
+
+"Of course she will."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face lost its smiles.
+
+"Don't laugh like that--I won't have it!"
+
+Mr. Drayton made another application to the spirit bottle, and then
+leaned toward Hugh Ritson over the arm of his chair.
+
+"Look here," he said, "it's just a matter o' thirty years gone August
+since my mother put me into swaddling clothes, and deng my buttons if
+I'm wearing 'em yet!"
+
+"What do you mean, my friend?" said Hugh.
+
+Drayton chuckled contemptuously.
+
+"Speak out plain," he said. "Give the work its right name. I ain't
+afraid for you to say it. A man don't give twenty pounds for the like o'
+that. Not if he works for it honest, same as me. I'm a licensed
+victualer, and a gentleman--that's what I am, if you want to know."
+
+Hugh Ritson repudiated all unnecessary curiosity, whereupon Mr. Drayton
+again had recourse to the spirit bottle, mentioned afresh his profession
+and pretensions, and wound up by a relative inquiry, "And what do you
+call yourself?"
+
+Hugh did not immediately gratify Mr. Drayton's curiosity.
+
+"Quite right, Mr. Drayton," he said; "I know all about you. Shall I tell
+you why you went to Cumberland?"
+
+Remarking that it was easy to repeat an old woman's gossip, Mr. Drayton
+took out of his pocket a goat-skin tobacco-pouch, and proceeded to
+charge a discolored meerschaum pipe.
+
+"Thirty years ago," said Hugh Ritson, "a young lady tried to drown
+herself and her child. She was rescued and committed to an asylum. Her
+child, a son, was given into the care of the good woman with whom she
+had lodged."
+
+Mr. Drayton interrupted. "Thankee; but, as the wice-chairman says,
+'we'll take it as read,' so we will."
+
+Hugh Ritson nodded his head, and continued, while Mr. Drayton smoked
+vigorously: "You have never heard of your mother from that hour to this;
+but one day you were told by the young girl whom circumstances had cast
+on your foster-mother's care, that among the mountains of Cumberland
+there lived another man who bore you the most extraordinary resemblance.
+That excited your curiosity. You had reasons for thinking that if your
+mother were alive she might be rich. Now, you yourself had the
+misfortune to be poor."
+
+"And I'm not afraid for anybody to know it," interrupted Mr. Drayton.
+"Come to the point honest. Look here, we are like two hyenas I saw one
+day at the Zoo. One got a bone in his tooth at feeding time, and blest
+if the other didn't fight for that bone I don't know how long and all."
+
+"Well," continued Hugh Ritson, with a dubious smile that the cloud of
+smoke might have hidden from a closer observer, "being a man of spirit,
+and not without knowledge of the world, having inherited brains, in
+short, from the parents who bequeathed you nothing else--"
+
+Mr. Drayton puffed volumes, then poured himself half a tumbler of the
+raw spirit and tossed it off.
+
+--"You determined on seeing if, after all, this were only a fortuitous
+resemblance."
+
+Mr. Drayton raised his hand. "I am a licensed victualer, that's what I
+am, and I ain't flowery," he said, in an apologetic tone; "I hain't had
+the chance of it, being as I'd no schooling--but, deng me, you've just
+hit it!" And the gentleman who could not be flowery shook hands
+effusively with the gentleman who could.
+
+"Precisely, Mr. Drayton, precisely," said Hugh Ritson. He paused and
+watched Drayton closely. That worthy had removed his pipe, and was
+staring, with stupid eyes and open mouth, into the fire.
+
+"But you found nothing."
+
+"How d'ye know?"
+
+"Your face at this moment says so."
+
+"Pooh! Don't you go along trusting this here time-piece for the time o'
+day. It ain't been brought up in habits o' truthfulness same as yours."
+
+Hugh Ritson laughed.
+
+"You and I are meant to be friends, Mr. Drayton," he said. "But let us
+first understand each other. Your idea that you could find your parents
+in Cumberland was a pure fallacy."
+
+"Eh! Why?"
+
+"Because your mother is dead."
+
+Drayton shook off the stupor of liquor, and betrayed a keen if momentary
+interest.
+
+"The book of the asylum in which she was confined, after the attempted
+suicide, contains the record--"
+
+"But she escaped," interrupted Drayton.
+
+"Contains the record of her escape and subsequent recovery--dead. The
+body was picked out of the river, recognized by the authorities as that
+of the unknown woman, and buried in the name she gave."
+
+"What name?" said Drayton.
+
+Hugh Ritson's face underwent a momentary change.
+
+"That is indifferent," he said; "I forget."
+
+"Sure you forget?" said Drayton. "Couldn't be Ritson, eh?"
+
+Hugh struck the table.
+
+"Assuredly not--the name was not Ritson."
+
+The tone irritated Mr. Drayton. He glanced down with a look that seemed
+to say that Hugh Ritson had his Maker to thank for giving him the
+benefit of an infirm foot.
+
+Hugh Ritson mollified him by explaining that if he had any curiosity as
+to the name, he could discover it for himself. "Besides," said Hugh,
+"what matter about the name if your mother is dead?"
+
+"That's true," said Drayton, who, being now appeased, began to see that
+his anger had been puerile.
+
+"Depend upon it, your father, wherever he is, is a cipher," said Hugh
+Ritson.
+
+Drayton got on to his feet and trudged the floor uneasily. An idea had
+occurred to him. "The person picked out of the river may have been
+another woman. I've heard of such."
+
+"Possibly; but the chance of error is worth little to you." Hugh looked
+uncomfortable as he said this, but Drayton saw nothing.
+
+"Bah! What matter?" said Drayton, and, determined to cudgel his brains
+no longer, he reached for the brandy and drank another half glass. There
+was then an interchange of deep amity.
+
+"Tell me," said Hugh, "what passed at the Ghyll on Monday night?"
+
+"The Ghyll? Monday? That was the night of the snow. What passed?
+Nothing."
+
+"Why did you go?"
+
+"Wanted to see your mother. Saw your brother one night late at the door
+of the parson's house. Saw you at the fire. At the fire?--certainly.
+Stood a matter of a dozen yards away when that young buck of a stableman
+drove up with the trap. What excuse for going? Blest if I
+remember--summat or other; knocked, and no one came. I don't know how
+long and all I stood cooling my heels at the door. Then I saw a light
+coming from a room on the first floor, and up I went and knocked. 'Come
+in,' says somebody. I went in. Withered old party got up. Black crape
+and beads, you know. But, afore I could speak, she reeled like a top and
+fell all of a heap. Blest if the old girl didn't take me for a ghost!"
+Mr. Drayton elevated his eyebrows, and added with emphasis, "I got out."
+
+"And on the way back you frightened a young lady in the lane, who, like
+my mother, mistook you for the ghost of my brother Paul. Well, that
+young lady was married to my brother this morning. They are now on their
+way to London. They intend to leave England on Wednesday next, and they
+mean to pass to-night in your house."
+
+Mr. Drayton's eyebrows went up again.
+
+"It is certainly hard to understand--but look," and Hugh Ritson handed
+to Drayton the telegram he had received from Bonnithorne. That worthy
+examined it minutely, back and front, with bleared and bewildered eyes,
+and then looked to his visitor for explanation.
+
+"The lady must not leave England," said Hugh.
+
+Drayton steadied himself, and tried hard to look appalled.
+
+"Upon my soul, you make my flesh creep!" he said. "What do you want for
+your twenty pounds? Speak out plain. I'm not flowery, I'm not. I'm a
+licensed victualer and a gentleman--"
+
+"What do I want? Only that you should send the lady home again by the
+first train."
+
+Drayton began to laugh.
+
+"You see, there was no cause for alarm," said Hugh, with an innocent
+smile.
+
+Drayton's laughter became boisterous.
+
+"I am to decoy the young thing away by making her believe as I'm her
+husband, eh?"
+
+"Mr. Drayton, you are a shrewd fellow."
+
+"And what about the husband--ain't he another shrewd fellow?"
+
+"Leave him to me. When the time comes, make no delay. Don't expose
+yourself unnecessarily. Wear that ulster you have on at present. Say as
+little as possible--nothing if practicable. Get the lady into the fly
+that shall be waiting at the door; drive to the station; book her to
+Keswick; put her into the carriage at the last moment; then clear away
+with all expedition. The midnight train never stops this side of
+Bedford."
+
+Drayton was shuffling across the room, chuckling audibly. "He, he, he!
+haw! haw!--so I'm to leave her at the station, eh? Poor young thing; I
+hain't got the heart--I hain't got it in me to be so cruel. No, no, I
+couldn't be such a vagabond of a husband--he, he! haw, haw!--and on the
+poor thing's wedding day, too."
+
+Hugh Ritson rose to his feet.
+
+"If you go an inch further than the station, you'll repent it to your
+dying day!" he said, once more bringing down his fist heavily on the
+table.
+
+At this Drayton chuckled and crowed yet louder, and declared that it
+would be necessary to have another half glass in order to take the taste
+of the observation out of his mouth.
+
+Then his laughter ceased.
+
+"Look here: you want me to do a job as can only be done by one man
+alive. And what do you offer me--twenty pounds? Keep it," he said; "it
+won't pass, sir!"
+
+The fire had burned very low, the cheerless room was dense with smoke
+and noisome with the smell of dead tobacco. Drayton buttoned up to the
+throat the long coat he wore.
+
+"I've summat on," he said; "good-night."
+
+The sound of children's voices came from the bar. The little ones were
+going home.
+
+"Good-night, missy, and thank you." It was a woman's voice.
+
+"Good-night, Mercy," cried the children.
+
+Drayton was opening the door.
+
+"Think again," said Hugh Ritson. "You run no risk. Eleven forty-five
+prompt will do."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+When Drayton went out, Hugh Ritson walked into the bar. The gossips had
+gone. Only the landlady was there. The door to the room opposite now
+stood open.
+
+"Mrs. Drayton," said Hugh, "have you ever seen this face before?"
+
+He took a medallion from his pocket and held it out to her.
+
+"Lor's a mercy me!" cried the landlady; "why, it's her herself as plain
+as plain--except for the nun's bonnet."
+
+"Is that the lady who lodged with you at Pimlico--the mother of Paul?"
+
+"As sure as sure! Lor's, yes; and to think the poor young dear is dead
+and gone! It's thirty years since, but it do make me cry, and my
+husband--he's gone, too--my husband he said to me, 'Martha,' he said,
+'Martha--'"
+
+The landlady's garrulity was interrupted by a light scream: "Hugh,
+Hugh!"
+
+Mercy Fisher stood in the door-way, with wonder-stricken eyes and
+heaving breast.
+
+In an instant the poor little soul had rushed into Hugh Ritson's arms
+with the flutter of a frightened bird.
+
+"Oh, I knew you would come--I was sure you would come!" she said, and
+dried her eyes, and then cried again, and then dried them afresh, and
+lifted her pouting lips to be kissed.
+
+Hugh Ritson made no display. A shade of impatience crossed his face at
+first, but it was soon gone. He tried to look pleased, and bent his head
+and touched the pale lips slightly.
+
+"You look wan, you poor little thing," he said, quietly. "What ails
+you?"
+
+"Nothing--nothing, now that you have come. Only you were so long in
+coming, so very long."
+
+He called up a brave word to answer her.
+
+"But you see I keep my word, little woman," he said, and smiled down at
+her and nodded his head cheerfully.
+
+"And you have come to see me at last! All this way to see poor little
+me!"
+
+The mute weariness that had marked her face fled at that moment before a
+radiant smile.
+
+"One must do something for those who risk so much for one," he said, and
+laughed a little.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The first surprise over, the joy of that moment was beyond the gift of
+speech. Her arms encircled his neck, and she looked up at his face in
+silence and with brightening eyes.
+
+"And so you found the time long and tedious?" he said.
+
+"I had no one to talk to," she said, with a blank expression.
+
+"Why, you ungrateful little thing! you had good Mrs. Drayton here, and
+her son, and all the smart young fellows of Hendon who came to drink at
+the bar and say pretty things to the little bar-maid, and--"
+
+"It's not that--I had no one who knew you," she said, and dropped her
+voice to a whisper.
+
+"But you go out sometimes--into the village--to London?" he said.
+
+"No, I never go out--never now."
+
+"Then your eyes are really worse?"
+
+"It's not my eyes. But, never mind. Oh, I knew you would not forget me.
+Only sometimes of an evening, when the dusk fell in, and I sat by the
+fire all alone, something would say, 'He doesn't want me,' 'He won't
+come for me.' But that was not true, was it?"
+
+"Why, no; of course not."
+
+"And then when the children came--the neighbor's children,--and I put
+the little darlings to bed, and they said their prayers to me, and I
+tried to pray, too--sometimes I was afraid to pray--and then, and then,"
+(she glanced round watchfully and dropped her voice) "something would
+say, 'Why didn't he leave me alone? I was so happy!'"
+
+"You morbid little woman! You shall be happy again--you are happy now,
+are you not?" he said.
+
+Her eyes, bleared and red, but bright with the shafts of love, looked up
+at him in the dumb joy that is perfect happiness.
+
+"Ah!" she said, and dropped her comely head on his breast.
+
+"But you should have taken walks--long, healthy, happy walks," he said.
+
+"I did--while the roses bloomed and the dahlias and things, and I saved
+so many of them against you would come, moss roses and wild white roses;
+but you were so long coming and they withered. And then I couldn't throw
+them away, because, you know, they were yours; so I pressed them in the
+book you gave me. See, let me show you."
+
+She stepped aside eagerly to pick up a little gilt-edged book from the
+table in the inner room. He followed her mechanically, hardly heeding
+her happy prattle.
+
+"And was there no young fellow in all Hendon to make those lonely walks
+of yours more cheerful?"
+
+She was opening her book with nervous fingers, and stopped to look up
+with blank eyes.
+
+"Eh? No handsome young fellow who whispered that you were a pretty
+little thing, and had no right to go moping about by yourself? None?
+Eh?"
+
+Her old look of weariness was creeping back.
+
+"Come, Mercy, tell the truth, you sly little thing--eh?"
+
+She was fumbling his withered roses with nervous fingers. Her throat
+felt parched.
+
+He looked down at her saddening face, and then muttered, as if speaking
+to himself: "I told that Bonnithorne this hole and corner was no place
+for the girl. He should have taken her to London."
+
+The girl's heart grew sick. The book was closed and dropped back on to
+the table.
+
+"And now, Mercy," said Hugh Ritson, "I want you to be a good little
+woman, and do as I bid you, and not speak a word. Will you?"
+
+The child-face brightened, and Mercy nodded her head, a little tear
+rolling out of one gleaming eye. At the same moment she put her hand in
+the pocket of her muslin apron, and took out a pair of knitted mittens,
+and tried to draw them on to Hugh's wrists.
+
+He looked at the gift, and smiled, and said: "I won't need these--not
+to-day, I mean. See, I wear long gloves, with fur wristbands--there,
+I'll store your mittens away in my pocket. What a sad little
+soul--crying again?"
+
+Mercy's pretty dreams were dying one by one. She lifted now a timid hand
+until it rested lightly on his breast.
+
+"Listen. I'm going out, but I'll soon be back. I must talk with Mrs.
+Drayton, and I've something to pay her, you know."
+
+The timid hand fell to the girl's side.
+
+"When I return there may be some friends with me--a lady and a
+gentleman--but I want to see them alone, quite alone, and I don't want
+them to see you--do you understand?"
+
+A great dumb sadness was closing in on Mercy's heart.
+
+"But they will soon be gone, and then to-morrow you and I must talk
+again, and try to arrange matters so that you won't be quite so lonely,
+but will stir about, and see the doctor for your eyes, and get well
+again, and try to forget--"
+
+"Forget!" said the girl, faintly. Her parched throat took away her
+voice.
+
+"I mean--that is to say--I was hoping--of course, I mean forget all the
+trouble in Cumberland. And now get away to bed like a good little girl.
+I must be off. Ah, how late!--see, a quarter to eleven, and my watch is
+slow."
+
+He walked into the bar, buttoning up his coat to his ears. The girl
+followed him listlessly. Mrs. Drayton was washing glasses behind the
+counter.
+
+"Mind you send this little friend of mine to bed very soon," said Hugh
+to the landlady. "Look how red her eyes are! And keep a good fire in
+this cozy parlor on the left--you are to have visitors--you need not
+trouble about a bedroom--they won't stay long. Let me see, what do they
+say is the time of your last up-train?"
+
+"To London? The last one starts away at half past twelve," said the
+landlady.
+
+"Very good. I'll see you again, Mrs. Drayton. Good-night, Mercy, and do
+keep a brighter face. There--kiss me. Now, good-night--what a silly,
+affectionate little goose--and mind you are in bed and asleep before I
+return, or I shall be that angry--yes, I shall. You never saw me angry.
+Well, never mind. Good-night."
+
+The door opened and closed. Mercy went back into the room. It was
+cheerless and empty, and the children's happy voices lived in it no
+more. The girl's heart ached with a dull pain that had never a pang at
+all, but was dumb and dead and cold; and Mercy was all alone.
+
+"Perhaps he was only in fun when he said that about walking out with
+somebody and trying to forget, and not being seen," she thought. "Yes;
+he must have been only in fun," she thought, "because he knew how I
+waited and waited."
+
+Then she took up again the book that he had hardly glanced at. It fell
+open at a yellow, dried-up rose that had left the stain of its heart's
+juice on the white leaf.
+
+"Yes, he was only in fun," she said, and then laughed a little; and then
+a big drop fell on to the open page and on to the dead flower.
+
+Then she tried to be very brave.
+
+"I must not cry; it makes my eyes, oh! so sore. I must get them well and
+strong--oh, yes! I must be well and strong against--against--then."
+
+She lifted her head slowly where she stood alone, and a smile, like a
+summer breeze on still water, rippled over her mouth.
+
+"He kissed me," she thought, "and he came to see me--all this long, long
+way."
+
+A lovely dream shone in her face now.
+
+"And if he does not come again until--until then--he will be glad--oh,
+he will be very glad!"
+
+The thought of a future hour when the poor little soul should be rich
+with something of her own that would be dearest of all because not all
+her own, shone like a sleeping child's vision in her face. She went out
+into the bar and lighted a candle.
+
+"So that's your sweetheart--not the lawyer man, eh?" said Mrs. Drayton,
+bustling about.
+
+"I've no call to hide my face now--not now that he has come--have I?"
+said Mercy.
+
+"Well, he is free of his money, and I'se just been hoping you get some
+of it, for, as I says, you want things bad, and them as has the looking
+to it should find 'em, as is only reasonable."
+
+Mercy did as she had been bidden: she went off to her bedroom. But her
+head was too full of thoughts for sleep. She examined her face in the
+glass, and smiled and blushed at it because he called it pretty. It was
+prettier than ever to her own eyes now. After half an hour she
+remembered that she had left the book on the table in the parlor, and
+crept down-stairs to recover it. When she was on the landing at the
+bottom, she heard a hurried knock at the outer door.
+
+Thereafter all her dreams died in an instant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+When Hugh Ritson stepped out into the road, the night was dark. Fresh
+from the yellow light of the inn, his eyes could barely descry the
+footpath or see the dim black line of the hedge. The atmosphere was
+damp. The moisture in the air gathered in great beads on his eyebrows
+and beard, stiffening them with frost. It was bitterly cold. The mist
+that rose from the river spread itself over the cold, open wastes of
+marshy ground that lay to the right and to the left. The gloomy road was
+thick with half-frozen mud.
+
+Hugh Ritson buttoned his coat yet closer and started at a brisk pace.
+
+"No time to lose," he thought, "if I've to be at the station when the
+north train goes through. Would have dearly liked to keep an eye on my
+gentleman. Should have done it, but for the girl. 'Summat on,' eh? What
+is it, I wonder? It might be useful to know."
+
+With a cutting wind at his back he walked faster as his eyes grew
+familiar with the darkness. He was thinking that Bonnithorne's telegram
+might be an error. Perhaps it had even been tampered with. It was barely
+conceivable that Paul and Greta had ever so much as heard of the Hawk
+and Heron. And what possible inducement could they have to sleep in
+Hendon when they would be so near to London?
+
+His mind went back to Mercy Fisher. At that moment she was dreaming
+beautiful dreams of how happy she was very soon to make him. He was
+thinking, with vexation, that the girl was a connecting link with the
+people in Cumberland. Yes--and the only link, too. Could it be that
+Mercy--No; the idea of Mercy's disloyalty to him was really too
+ridiculous. If he could get to the station before the train from the
+north was due to stop there, he would see for himself whether Paul and
+Greta alighted. If they did not, as they must be in that train, he would
+get into it also, and go on with them to London. Bonnithorne might have
+blundered.
+
+The journey was long, and the roads were heavy for walking. It seemed a
+far greater distance than he had thought. At the angle of a gate and a
+thick brier hedge he struck a match and read the time by his watch.
+Eleven o'clock. Too late, if the watch were not more than a minute slow.
+
+At that moment he heard the whistle of a train, and between the whirs of
+the wind he heard the tinkle of the signal bell. Too late, indeed. He
+was still a quarter of a mile from the station.
+
+Still he held on his way, without hope for his purpose, yet quickening
+his pace to a sharp run.
+
+He had come within three hundred yards of the station when he heard an
+unearthly scream, followed in an instant by a great clamor and tumult of
+human voices. Shrieks, shouts, groans, sobs, wails--all were mingled
+together in one agonized cry that rent the thick night air asunder.
+
+Hugh Ritson ran faster.
+
+Then he saw haggard men and women appearing and disappearing before him
+in the light of a fire that panted on the ground like an overthrown
+horse.
+
+The north train had been wrecked.
+
+Within a dozen yards from the station the engine and three of the front
+carriages had broken from their couplings and plunged on to the bank.
+The last four carriages, free of the fatal chain, had kept the rails and
+were standing unharmed above.
+
+Women who had been dragged through the tops of the overturned carriages
+fled away with white faces into the darkness of the fields. Men, too,
+with panic-stricken eyes, sat down on the grass, helpless and useless.
+Some resolute souls, roused to activity, were pulling at the carriages
+to set them right. Men from the station came with lanterns, and rescued
+the injured, and put them to lie out of harm's way.
+
+The scene was harrowing, and only two of its incidents are material to
+this history. Over all the rest, the clamor, the tumult, the agony, the
+abject fear, and the noble courage, let a veil be drawn.
+
+Fate had brought together, in that hour of disaster, three men whose
+lives, hitherto apart, were henceforth to be bound up as one life for
+good or ill.
+
+Hugh Ritson rushed here and there like a man distraught. He peered into
+every face. He caught up a lantern that some one had set down, and ran
+to and fro in the darkness, stooping to let the light fall on those on
+the ground, holding up the red glare to the windows of the uninjured
+carriages.
+
+At that moment all his frozen soul seemed to melt. Face to face with the
+pitiless work of destiny, his own heartless schemes disappeared. At last
+he saw the face he looked for. Then he dropped the lantern to his side,
+and turned the glass of it from him.
+
+"Stay here, Greta," said a voice he knew. "I shall be back with you
+presently. Let me lend them a hand over yonder." The man went by him in
+the darkness.
+
+Hark!
+
+Hugh Ritson heard a cry from the field beyond the bank. It was there
+that they had placed the injured.
+
+"Help! help! I am robbed--- help!" came out of the darkness.
+
+"Where are you?" asked another voice.
+
+"Here! Help! help!"
+
+Hugh Ritson ran toward the place whence the first voice came, and saw
+the figure of a man stooping over something that lay on the ground. At
+the same moment another man rushed up and laid strong hold of the
+stooping figure. There was a short, sharp struggle. The two men were of
+one stature, one strength. There was a sound as of cloth ripped asunder.
+
+At the next moment one of the men went by like the wind and was lost in
+the blackness of the fields. But Hugh Ritson had held up the lantern as
+the man passed, and caught one swift glimpse of his face. He knew him.
+
+A group had gathered about the injured person on the ground and about
+the other man who had struggled to defend him.
+
+"Could you not hold the scoundrel?" said one.
+
+"I held him till his coat came to pieces in my hand. See here," said the
+other.
+
+Hugh Ritson knew the voice.
+
+"A piece of Irish frieze, I should say" (feeling it).
+
+"You must have gripped him by the lappel of his ulster. Let me keep
+this. I am a police sergeant. What is your name, sir?"
+
+"Paul Ritson."
+
+"And your address?"
+
+"I was on my way to Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square. What place is
+this?"
+
+"Hendon."
+
+"Could one get accommodation here for the night? A lady is with me."
+
+"Best go up by the twelve-thirty, sir."
+
+"The lady is too much worn and excited. Any hotel, inn, lodging-house?"
+
+A porter came up.
+
+"The Hawk and Heron's handiest. A mile, sir. Drayton--it's him as keeps
+it--he's here somewhere. Drayton!" (calling).
+
+"Can you get me a fly, my good fellow?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The police sergeant moved off.
+
+"Then I may look for you at the Hawk and Heron?" he said.
+
+Hugh Ritson heard all. He kept the lantern down. In the darkness not a
+face of that group was seen of any man.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, Hugh Ritson, panting for breath, was
+knocking at the door of the inn. The landlady within fumbled with the
+iron bar behind it.
+
+"Come, quick!" said Hugh.
+
+The door opened, and he stepped in sharply, bathed in perspiration.
+
+"Is your son back?" he said, catching his breath.
+
+"Back, sir? No, sir; it's a mercy if he gets home afore morning, sir;
+he's noways--"
+
+"Stop your clatter. The girl is in her room. Go and turn the key on
+her!"
+
+It was at that moment that Mercy, having stood an instant at the bottom
+of the stairs, had ventured nervously into the bar. Turning about, Hugh
+Ritson came face to face with her. At the sight of her his crimsoning
+cheeks became white with wrath.
+
+"Didn't I tell you to be in bed?" he muttered, in a low, hoarse whisper.
+
+"I've only come for ... I came down for ... Hugh, don't be angry with
+me."
+
+"Come, get back, then; don't stand there. Quick--and mind you lock your
+door."
+
+"Yes, I'm going. You wouldn't be angry with me, would you?"
+
+"Well, no, perhaps not; only get off--and quick! Do you hear? Why don't
+you go?"
+
+"I only came down for ... I only came...."
+
+"God! what foolery is this? The girl's fainting. Never mind. Here,
+landlady, bring a light! Lead the way. She's not too heavy to carry.
+Upstairs with you. What a snail you are, old woman! Which room?"
+
+Another knock at the outer door. Another and another in rapid
+succession.
+
+"I'm a-coming, I'm a-coming!" cried the landlady from the floor above.
+
+She bustled down the stairs as fast as her stiff joints would let her,
+but the knock came again.
+
+"Mercy me, mercy me! and whoever is it?"
+
+"Damme, move your bones, and let me in!"
+
+The door flew open with pressure from without. Ghastly white, yet
+dripping with perspiration, his breath coming in short, thick gusts, his
+neck bare, his shirt-collar torn aside, the lappel of the frieze ulster
+gone, and the rent of the red flannel lining exposed, Paul Drayton
+entered. He was sober now.
+
+"Where is he?" with an oath.
+
+"I'm here," said Hugh Ritson, walking through the bar and into the
+bar-room to the right, and candle in hand.
+
+Drayton followed him, trying to laugh.
+
+"Am I in time?"
+
+"Of course you are," with a hard smile.
+
+"Fearing I might be late."
+
+"Of course you were."
+
+"Ran all the way."
+
+"Of course you did."
+
+"What are you sniggering and mocking at?" with another oath.
+
+Hugh Ritson dropped his banter, and pointed without a word to the torn
+ulster and the disordered shirt-collar. Drayton glanced down at his
+dress in the light of the candle.
+
+"Crossed the fields for shortness, and caught in a bramble-bush," he
+said, muttering.
+
+"Drop it," said Hugh. "There's no time for it. Look here, Drayton, I'm a
+downright man. Don't try it on with me. As you say, it won't pass. Shall
+I tell you where the collar of that coat is now? It's at the
+police-station."
+
+Drayton made an uneasy movement and glanced up furtively. There was no
+mistaking what he saw in Hugh Ritson's face.
+
+"I've my own suspicions as to what caused that accident," said Hugh.
+
+Drayton shuddered and shrunk back.
+
+"No, damme! That shows what you are, though. Show me the man as allus
+suspects others of lying, and I'll show you a liar. Show me the man as
+allus suspects others of stealing, and I'll show you a thief. You
+suspect me of that, d'ye? I know you now!"
+
+"No matter," said Hugh, impatiently; "your sense of the distinction
+between crimes is a shade too nice. One crime I do not suspect you of--I
+saw you commit it. Is that enough?"
+
+Drayton was silent.
+
+"You'll go to the station with the lady. The gentleman will go to London
+with me. They are to come here, after all, though my first advice was a
+blunder."
+
+"I'll take the twenty," Drayton mumbled.
+
+"Will you now? We'll discuss that matter afterward."
+
+Drayton seemed stupefied for a moment. Then he lifted his haggard face
+and grinned. Hugh Ritson understood him in an instant.
+
+"No tricks, I tell you. If you don't put the lady in the train--the
+right train--and be back here at half past one to-morrow, you shall
+improve your acquaintance with the Old Bailey."
+
+Drayton carried his eyes slowly up to Hugh Ritson's face, then dropped
+them suddenly.
+
+"If I'm lagged, it will be a lifer!" he muttered. He fumbled his torn
+ulster. "I must change my coat," he said.
+
+"No."
+
+"She'll see the rent."
+
+"So much the better."
+
+"But the people at the junction will see it."
+
+"What matter?--you will be there as Paul Ritson, not Paul Drayton."
+
+Drayton began to laugh, to chuckle, to crow.
+
+"Hush!"
+
+The sound of carriage-wheels came from the road.
+
+"They're here," said Hugh Ritson. "Keep you out of sight, as you value
+your liberty. Do you hear? Take care that he doesn't see you, and that
+she doesn't see you until he is gone."
+
+Drayton was tramping about the floor in the intensity of his energy.
+
+"Here's the bar-slide. I'll just lift it an inch."
+
+"Not half an inch," said Hugh, and he blew out the candle.
+
+Then he took the key out of the inside of the lock, and put it on the
+outside.
+
+"What! am I to be a prisoner in my own house?" said Drayton.
+
+"I'll put the key on the bar-slide," whispered Hugh. "When you hear the
+door close after us, let yourself out--not a moment sooner."
+
+The carriage-wheels stopped outside. There was a sound as of the driver
+jumping from the box. Then there came a knock.
+
+Hugh Ritson stepped back to Drayton and whispered:
+
+"This is the very man who tried to hold you--keep you close."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+"This way, sir; this way, my lady; we knew you was a-coming, so we kep'
+a nice warm fire in the parlor. This way, my lady, and mind the step up.
+Yes, it air dark, but it's clean, sir; yes, it is, sir; but there's a
+light in here, sir."
+
+Paul and Greta followed the landlady through the dark bar.
+
+"We'll find our way, my good woman. Ah, and how cozy you are here! As
+warm as toast on a cold night. Thank you, thank you--and--why, surely
+we've--we've surprised you. Did you say you were expecting somebody? Ah,
+I see!"
+
+Mrs. Drayton was backing out of the room with a pallid face, and
+twitching at the string of her apron. When she got to the bar she was
+trembling from head to foot.
+
+"I don't believe in ghosts," she muttered to herself, "but if so be as I
+did believe in ghosts, and afeart of 'em, I don't know as ... Lor's a
+mercy me! Who was a-saying as our Paul was like some one? And now here's
+some one as is like our Paul. And as much a match as two pewters, on'y
+one more smarter, mayhap, and studdier."
+
+"Whatever ails the old lady?" said Greta, faintly.
+
+Paul stood a moment and laughed.
+
+"Strange, but we can't trouble now. What a mercy we're safe and
+unharmed."
+
+"A fearful sight--I'll never, never forget it," said Greta, and she
+covered her face.
+
+Paul stepped to the door. The flyman was bringing in the luggage.
+
+"Leave the boxes in the bar, driver--there, that will do. Many of them,
+eh? Rather. Here's for yourself. Why, bless my soul, who's this? What,
+Hugh!"
+
+Hugh Ritson walked into the room calm and smiling, and held out his hand
+to Greta and then to his brother.
+
+"I came up to meet your train," he said, in answer to the look of
+inquiry.
+
+"Well, that was good of you. Of course, you know of the accident. How
+did you find us here?"
+
+"I heard at the station that a lady and gentleman had gone to the Hawk
+and Heron."
+
+"And you followed? Well, Hugh, I must say that was brotherly of you,
+after all. Wasn't it, Greta?"
+
+"Yes, dear," said Greta, faintly, her voice trembling.
+
+Paul observed her agitation.
+
+"My poor girl, you are upset. I don't wonder at it. You must get off for
+the night. Hugh, you must excuse her. It was a terrible scene, you know.
+Our new life begins with a great shock to you, Greta. Never mind; that
+only means that the bright days are before us."
+
+Paul stepped to the door again, and called to Mrs. Drayton.
+
+"Here, my good landlady, take my wife to her room."
+
+The landlady hobbled up.
+
+"Room, sir, room? The gentleman didn't say nothing--"
+
+"Take the lady to your best room upstairs," said Hugh, with a
+significant look.
+
+Greta was going. Her step was slow and uncertain.
+
+"Won't you say good-night, Greta?" said Hugh.
+
+"Good-night," she said, so faintly as hardly to be heard.
+
+The brothers looked after her.
+
+"God bless her!" said Paul, fervently. "The days before her shall be
+brighter, if I can make them so."
+
+Hugh Ritson closed the door.
+
+"Paul," he said, "you and your wife must never meet again."
+
+Paul Ritson turned red, and then ashy pale. A scarcely perceptible
+tremble of the eyelids, then a jaunty laugh, and then an appalling
+solemnity.
+
+"What d'ye mean, man?" he said, with a vacant stare.
+
+"Sit down and listen," said Hugh, seating himself, and lifting the poker
+to draw the fire together.
+
+"Quick, tell me what it, is!" said Paul again.
+
+"Paul, don't chafe. We are hot-tempered men, both, at bottom," said
+Hugh, and his eye perused his brother with searching power.
+
+"Don't look at me like that," said Paul. "Don't try to frighten me.
+Speak out, and quickly."
+
+"Be calm," said Hugh.
+
+"Bah! you take me blindfold to the edge of a precipice, and tell be to
+'be calm.'"
+
+"You are wrong. I find you there, and remove the bandage," said Hugh.
+
+"Quick! what is it? In another moment I shall cry out!"
+
+Hugh Ritson rose stiffly to his feet.
+
+"Paul, did you tell Greta she was marrying a bastard?"
+
+With one look of anguish Paul fell back mute and trembling.
+
+"Did you tell her?" said Hugh, with awful emphasis.
+
+Paul's eyes were on the ground, his head bent forward. He was silent.
+
+"I thought you did not mean to tell her," said Hugh, coldly. His eyes
+looked steadfastly at Paul's drooping head. "I think so still."
+
+Paul said nothing, but drew his breath hard. Hugh watched him closely.
+
+"To marry a woman under a false pretense--is it the act of an honorable
+man? Is it a cheat? Give it what name you will."
+
+Paul drew himself up; his lips were compressed, and he smiled.
+
+"Is this all?" he asked.
+
+"Why did you not tell her?" said Hugh.
+
+"Because I had sworn to tell no one. You will read that secret, as you
+have read the other."
+
+Hugh smiled.
+
+"Say, rather, because you dare not do so; because, had you told her, she
+had never become your wife."
+
+Paul laughed vacantly.
+
+"We shall see. My own lips are sealed, but yours are free. You shall
+tarnish the memory of our father and blacken the honor of our mother.
+You shall humble me, and rob me of my wife's love--if you will and
+can."
+
+Saying this, Paul stepped hastily to the door, flung it open, and cried:
+"Greta! Greta!"
+
+Hugh followed him and caught him arm.
+
+"What are you doing?" he said, in a hoarse whisper; "be quiet, I tell
+you--be quiet."
+
+Paul turned about.
+
+"You say I am afraid to tell her. You charge me with trapping her into
+marrying me. You shall tell her yourself, now, here, and before my very
+face!"
+
+"Come in and shut the door," said Hugh.
+
+"It would do no good, and perhaps some harm. No matter, you shall tell
+her. I challenge you to tell her."
+
+"Come in, and listen to me," said Hugh, sullenly; and putting himself
+between Paul and the door, he closed it. "There is more to think of than
+what Greta may feel," he added. "Have you nothing to say to me?"
+
+Paul's impetuous passion cooled suddenly.
+
+"I have made you atonement," he said, faintly, and dropped into a seat.
+
+"Atonement!"
+
+Hugh Ritson smiled bitterly.
+
+"When you return you will see," said Paid, his eyes once more on the
+ground.
+
+"You are thinking of the deed of attorney--I have heard of it already,"
+said Hugh. A cold smile played on his compressed lips.
+
+"It was all that was left to do," said Paul, his voice hardly stronger
+than a whisper. His proud spirit was humbled, and his challenge dead.
+
+"Paul, you have robbed me of my inheritance, consciously, deliberately.
+You have stood in my place. You stand there still. And you leave me your
+pitiful deed by way of amends!"
+
+A black frown crossed Hugh Ritson's face.
+
+"Atonement! Are you not ashamed of such mockery? What atonement is there
+for a wrong like that?"
+
+"I did it for the best; God knows I did!" said Paul, his head fell on
+the table.
+
+Hugh Ritson stood over him, pale with suppressed wrath.
+
+"Was it best to hold my place until my place was no longer worth
+holding, and then to leave it with an empty show of generosity? Power of
+attorney! What right have you to expect that I will take that from you?
+Take my own from the man who robbed me of it, and to receive it back on
+my knees! To accept it as a gift, whereof the generosity of giving is
+yours, and the humility of receiving is mine!"
+
+A strong shudder passed over Paul's shoulders.
+
+"I was helpless--I was helpless!" he said.
+
+"Understand your true position--your legal position. You were your
+mother's illegitimate son--"
+
+"I did it to protect her honor!"
+
+"You mean--to hide her shame!"
+
+"As you will. I was helpless, and I did it for the best."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face grew dark.
+
+"Was it best to be a perjured liar?" he said.
+
+Paul gasped, but did not reply.
+
+"Was it best to be a thief?"
+
+Paul leaped to his feet.
+
+"God, give me patience!" he muttered.
+
+"Was it best to be an impostor?"
+
+"Stop, for God's sake, stop!"
+
+"Was it best to be a living lie--and all for the sake of honor? Honor,
+forsooth! Is it in perjury and robbery that honor lies?"
+
+Paul strode about the room in silence, ashy pale, his face convulsed and
+ugly. Then his countenance softened, and his voice was broken as he
+said:
+
+"Hugh, I have done you too much wrong already. Don't drive me into more;
+don't, don't, I beseech you!"
+
+Hugh laughed lightly--a little trill that echoed in the silent room.
+
+At that heartless sound all the soul in Paul Ritson seemed to freeze. No
+longer abashed, he lifted his head and put his foot down firmly.
+
+"So be it," he said, and the cloud of anguish fell from his face. "I say
+it was to save our mother's good name that I consented to do what I
+did."
+
+"Consented?" said Hugh, elevating his eyelids.
+
+"You don't believe me? Very well; let it pass. You say my atonement is a
+mockery. Very well, let us say it is so. You say I have kept your place
+until it is no longer worth keeping. You mean that I have impoverished
+your estate. That is not true. And you know it is not true. If the land
+is mortgaged, you yourself have had the money!"
+
+"And who had a better right to it?" said Hugh, and he laughed again.
+
+Paul waved his hand, and gulped down the wrath that was rising.
+
+"You have led me the life of the damned. You know well what bitter cup
+you have made me drink. If I have stood to the world as my father's
+heir, you have eaten up the inheritance If my father's house was mine, I
+was no more than a cipher in it. I have had the shadow, and you the
+substance. You have undermined me inch by inch!"
+
+"And, meantime, I have been as secret as the grave," said Hugh, and once
+more he laughed lightly.
+
+"God knows your purpose--you do nothing without one," said Paul. "But it
+is not I alone that have suffered. Do you think that all this has been
+going on under our mother's eyes without her seeing it?"
+
+Hugh Ritson dropped the bantering tone.
+
+Paul's face grew to an awful solemnity.
+
+"When our father died, it was to be her honor or mine to die with him.
+That was the legacy of his sin, Heaven forgive him. I did not hesitate.
+But since that hour she has wasted away."
+
+"Is this my fault?" Hugh asked.
+
+"Heaven knows, and Heaven will judge between you," said Paul. "She could
+bear it no longer." Paul's voice trembled as he added, "She's gone!"
+
+There was a moment's silence. It was as if an angel went by weeping.
+
+"I know it," said Hugh, coldly. "She has taken the veil. I have since
+seen her."
+
+Paul glanced up.
+
+"She is in the Catholic Convent at Westminster," said Hugh.
+
+Paul's face quivered.
+
+"Miserable man! but for you, how happy she might have been!"
+
+"You are wrong," said Hugh. "It came of her own misdeed--and yours."
+
+Paul strode toward his brother with uplifted hand.
+
+"Not another word of that," he said, and his voice was low and deep.
+
+"How could she examine her conscience and be happy? She had put an
+impostor in the place of my father's heir," said Hugh.
+
+"She had put there your father's first-born son," said Paul.
+
+"It is false! She had put there her bastard by another man!"
+
+Silent and awful, Paul stood a moment, with an expression of agony so
+horrible that for an instant even Hugh Ritson quailed before it.
+
+"Go on," he said, huskily, and crouched down into his seat.
+
+"Your mother was married before," said Hugh, "and her marriage was
+annulled. It was invalid. A child was born of that union."
+
+Paul lifted his head.
+
+"I won't believe it!"
+
+"It is true, and you shall believe it!"
+
+Paul's heart sickened with dread.
+
+"Your father married again, and had a daughter. Your mother married
+again, and had a son. Your father's daughter is now living. Shall I tell
+you who she is? She is your wife--the woman you have married to-day!"
+
+Paul sprung to his feet.
+
+"It is a lie!" he cried.
+
+"See for yourself," said Hugh Ritson; and taking three papers from his
+pocket, he threw them on to the table. They were the copies of
+certificates which Bonnithorne had given him.
+
+Paul glanced at them with vacant and wandering eyes, fell back in his
+chair, dropped his head on to the table, and groaned.
+
+"Oh, God! can this thing be?"
+
+"When your mother told you that you were an illegitimate son, she
+omitted to say by what father. That was natural in her, but cruel to
+you. I knew the truth from the first."
+
+"Then you are a scoundrel confessed!" cried Paul.
+
+Hugh rolled his head slightly, and made a poor pretense to smile.
+
+"I knew how she had passed from one man to another; I knew what her
+honor counted for. And yet I was silent--silent, though by silence I
+lost my birthright. Say, now, if you will, which of us--you or I--has
+been the true guardian of our mother's name?"
+
+Paul got up again, abject, crushed, trembling in every limb.
+
+"Man, man, don't gnaw my heart away! Unsay your words! Have pity on me,
+and confess that it is a lie--a black, foul lie! Think of the horror of
+it--only think of it, and have pity!"
+
+"It is true!"
+
+Then Paul fell on his knees and caught his brother by the arm.
+
+"Hugh, Hugh! my brother, confess it is false! Don't let my flesh consume
+away with horror! Don't let me envy the very dead who lie at peace in
+their graves! Pity her, if you have no pity left for me!"
+
+"I would save you from a terrible sin."
+
+Paul rose to his feet.
+
+"Now I know it is a lie!" he said, and all the abject submission of his
+bearing fell away in one instant.
+
+Hugh Ritson's face flushed.
+
+"There is that here," said Paul, throwing up his head and striking his
+breast, "that tells me it is false!"
+
+Hugh smiled coldly, and regained his self-possession.
+
+"My mother knew all. If Greta had been my half-sister, would she have
+stood by and witnessed our love?"
+
+Hugh waved his hand deprecatingly.
+
+"Your mother was as ignorant of the propinquity as you were. Robert
+Lowther was dead before she settled at Newlands. The survivors knew
+nothing of each other. The secret of that early and ill-fated marriage
+was buried with him."
+
+"Destiny itself would have prevented it, for destiny shapes its own
+ends, and shapes them for the best," said Paul.
+
+"Yes, destiny is shaping them now," said Hugh, "here, and in me. This is
+the point to which the pathways of your lives have tended. They meet
+here--and part."
+
+Paul's ashy face smiled.
+
+"Then nature would have prevented it," he said. "If this thing had been
+true, do you think we should not have known it--she and I--in the
+natural recoil of our own hearts? When true hearts meet, there is that
+within which sanctions their love, and says it is good. That is Heaven's
+own license. No sanction of the world or the world's law, no earthly
+marriage is like to that, for it is the marriage first made by nature
+itself. Our hearts have met, hers and mine, and the same nature has
+sanctioned our love and sanctified it. And against that last, that
+first, that highest arbiter, do you ask me to take the evidence of these
+poor, pitiful papers? Away with them!" Paul's eyes were bright, his face
+had lost its shadows.
+
+"That is very beautiful, no doubt," said Hugh, and he smiled deeply.
+"But I warn you to beware."
+
+"I have no fear," said Paul.
+
+"See to it, I tell you. These lofty emotions leave a void that only a
+few homely facts can fill. Verify them."
+
+"I will, please God!"
+
+"Accept my statements and these papers, or--disprove both."
+
+"I will disprove them."
+
+"Meantime, take care. Leave your wife in this house until morning, but
+do you go elsewhere."
+
+"What!"
+
+Paul's anger was boiling up.
+
+"If you have wronged Greta--"
+
+"I have done her no wrong," said Paul, growing fiercer.
+
+"I say, if you have wronged her, and would have it in your power to
+repair the injury, you must pass this night apart."
+
+"Hugh!" cried Paul, in white rage, rising afresh to his feet, "you have
+tortured me and broken the heart of my mother; you have driven me from
+my home and from the world; you have thrust yourself between me and the
+woman who loves me, and now, when I am stripped of all else but that
+woman's love, and am going out to a strange land, a stranger and with
+empty hands, you would take her from me also and leave me naked!"
+
+"I would save you from a terrible sin," said Hugh Ritson, once again.
+
+"Out of my way!" cried Paul, in a thick voice, and he lifted his
+clinched fist.
+
+"Take care, I tell you," said Hugh.
+
+Paul looked dangerous; his forehead contracted into painful lines; his
+quick breathing beat on Hugh's face.
+
+"For the love of Heaven, get out of my way!"
+
+But with awful strength and fury his fist fell at that moment, and Hugh
+Ritson was dashed to the ground.
+
+In an instant Paul had lifted his foot to trample him, but he staggered
+back in horror at the impulse, his face ghastly white, his eyes red like
+the sun above snow. Then there was silence, and then Paul gasped in a
+flood of emotion:
+
+"Get up! get up! Hugh, Hugh! get up!"
+
+He darted to the door and threw it open.
+
+"Come in, come in! will nobody come?" he cried.
+
+The landlady was in the room at a stride. She had been standing,
+listening and quivering, behind the door.
+
+In another moment Greta hurried down-stairs, and hastened to Paul's
+side.
+
+Paul was leaning against the wall, his face buried in his hands.
+
+"Take him away," he groaned, "before I rue the day that I saw him!"
+
+Hugh Ritson rose to his feet.
+
+"Paul, what has happened?" cried Greta.
+
+"Take him away."
+
+And still Paul covered his eyes from the sight of what he had done and
+had been tempted to do.
+
+"Hugh, what is it?"
+
+Hugh Ritson stepped to the door.
+
+"Ask your husband," he said, with emphasis, and an appalling calmness.
+"And remember this night. You shall never forget it!"
+
+Then he halted out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Hugh Ritson walked to the bare room opposite. The handle of the door did
+not turn in his hand. Drayton held it at the other side, and with head
+bent low he crouched there and listened.
+
+"Who is it?" he whispered, when Hugh Ritson unlocked the door and pushed
+at it.
+
+"Let me in," said Hugh, sullenly.
+
+"Does he suspect?" whispered Drayton, when the door closed again. "Did
+he follow me? What are you going to do for a fellow? Damme, but I'll be
+enough for him!"
+
+And Drayton groped in the dark room among the dead cinders on the
+hearth, and picked up the poker.
+
+"You fool!" said Hugh, in a low voice. "Put that thing down."
+
+"Isn't he after me? D'ye think I'm going to be taken? Let him come here
+and see!"
+
+Drayton tramped the room, and the floor creaked beneath his heavy tread.
+
+"Speak lower, you poltroon!" Hugh whispered, huskily. "He knows nothing
+about you. He has never heard of you. Be quiet. Do you hear?"
+
+There was a light, nervous knock at the door.
+
+"Who's there?" said Hugh.
+
+"It's only me, sir," said Mrs. Drayton, from without, breathing audibly,
+and speaking faintly amid gusts of breath.
+
+Hugh Ritson opened the door, and the landlady entered.
+
+"Lor's a mercy me! whatever ails the gentleman? Oh, is it yourself in
+the dark, Paul? I'm that fearsome, I declare I shiver and quake at
+nothing. And the gentleman so like you, too! I never did see nothing
+like it, I'm sure!"
+
+"Hush! Stop your clatter. What does he say?" said Hugh.
+
+"The gentleman? He says and says and says as nothing and nothing and
+nothing will make him leave the lady this night."
+
+"He'll think better of that."
+
+"And wherever can I put them? And me on'y one room, forby Paul's. And no
+cleaning and airing, and nothing. That's what worrits me."
+
+"Hold your tongue! Put the lady in your son's room. Your son won't need
+it to-night."
+
+"That's where I did put her."
+
+"Very well; leave her there."
+
+"And the gentleman, too, belike?"
+
+"The gentleman will go back with me. Come, get away!"
+
+"Quite right; on'y there's no airing and cleaning; and I declare I'm
+that fearsome--"
+
+Hugh Ritson had taken the landlady by the shoulders and was pushing her
+out of the room.
+
+"One moment," he whispered, and drew her back. "Anything doing
+upstairs?"
+
+"Upstairs?--the bed--airing--"
+
+"The girl? Has she made any noise yet? Is she conscious?"
+
+"Not as I know of. I went up and listened, and never a sound. Deary me,
+deary me! I'm that fearsome--"
+
+"Go up again, and put your ear to the door."
+
+"I'm afeart she'll never come round, and her in that way, and weak, too,
+and--"
+
+At that instant there came from the dark road the sound of
+carriage-wheels approaching. Hugh Ritson thrust the landlady out of the
+room, slammed the door to, and locked it.
+
+"What's that?" said Drayton, in a husky whisper. "Who do they want?
+You've not rounded on a fellow, eh?"
+
+"It's the carriage that is to take you and the lady to Kentish Town,"
+said Hugh. "Hush! Listen!"
+
+The driver rapped at the door with the end of his whip, and shouted from
+his seat: "Heigho, heigho--ready for Kentish Town? Eleven o'clock struck
+this half hour!" Then he could be heard beating his crossed arms under
+his armpits to warm his hands.
+
+"The fool!" muttered Hugh, "can't he keep his tongue in his mouth?"
+
+"Quite right," shouted Mrs. Drayton, in a shrill voice, putting her face
+to the window-pane. "Belike it's for the gentleman," she explained to
+herself, and then, with candle in hand, she began to mount the stairs.
+
+The door of the room to the left opened, and Paul Ritson came out. His
+great strength seemed to be gone--he reeled like a drunken man.
+
+"Landlady," he said, "when does your last train go up to London?"
+
+"At half past twelve," said Mrs. Drayton, from two steps up the stairs.
+
+"Can I get a fly, my good woman, at this hour of the night?"
+
+"The fly's at the door, sir--just come, sir."
+
+Paul went back into the room where he had left his wife.
+
+The two men in the dark room opposite listened intently.
+
+"Be quiet," whispered Hugh Ritson. "I knew he must think better of it.
+He is going. Keep still. Five minutes more, and you start away with the
+lady for Kentish Town. He shall walk to the station with me. The instant
+we leave the house, you go to the lady and say, 'I have changed my mind,
+Greta. We must go together. Come.' Not a word more; hurry her into the
+fly, and away."
+
+"Easier said nor done, say I."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Alone with Greta, Paul kissed her fervently, and his head fell on her
+shoulder. The strong man was as feeble as a child now. He was prostrate.
+"The black lie is like poison in my veins!" he said.
+
+"What is it?" said Greta, and she tried to soothe him.
+
+"A lie more foul than man ever uttered before--more cruel, more
+monstrous."
+
+"What is it, dearest?" said Greta again, with her piteous, imploring
+face close to his.
+
+"I know it's a lie. My heart tells me it is a lie. The very stones cry
+out that it is a lie!"
+
+"Tell me what it is," said Greta, and she embraced him tenderly.
+
+But even while he was struggling with the poison of one horrible word,
+it was mastering him. He put his wife from him with a strong shudder, as
+if her proximity stung him.
+
+Her bosom heaved. She looked appealingly into his face.
+
+"If it is false," she said, "whatever it is, why need it trouble you?"
+
+"That is true, my darling," he said, gulping down his fear and taking
+Greta in his arms, and trying to laugh lightly. "Why, indeed? Why need
+it trouble me?"
+
+"Can you not tell me?" she said, with an upward look of entreaty. She
+was thinking of what Hugh Ritson had said of an impediment to their
+marriage.
+
+"Why should I tell you what is false?"
+
+"Then let us dismiss the thought of it," she said, soothingly.
+
+"Why, yes, of course, let us dismiss the thought of it, darling," and he
+laughed a loud, hollow laugh. His forehead was damp. She wiped away the
+cold sweat. His temples burned. She put her cool hand on them. He was
+the very wreck of his former self--the ruin of a man. "Would that I
+could!" he muttered to himself.
+
+"Then tell me," she said. "It is my right to know it. I am your wife
+now--"
+
+He drew himself away. She clung yet closer. "Paul, there can be no
+secrets between you and me--nothing can be kept back."
+
+"Heavenly Father!" he cried, uplifting a face distorted with agony.
+
+"If you can not dismiss it, let it not stand between us," said Greta.
+Could it be true that there had been an impediment?
+
+"My darling, it would do no good to tell you. When I took you to be my
+wife, I vowed to protect and cherish you. Shall I keep my vow if I
+burden you with a black lie that will drive the sunshine out of your
+life? Look at me--look at me!"
+
+Greta's breast heaved heavily, but she smiled with a piteous sweetness
+as she laid her head on his breast, and said, "No, while I have you, no
+lie can do that!"
+
+Paul made no answer. An awful burden of speech was on his tongue. In the
+silence they heard the sound of weeping. It was as if some poor woman
+were sobbing her heart out in the room above.
+
+"Dearest, when two hearts are made one in marriage they are made one
+indeed," said Greta, in a soft voice. "Henceforth the thought of the one
+is the thought of both; the happiness of one is the happiness of both,
+the sorrow of one is the sorrow of both. Nothing comes between. Joy is
+twofold when both share it, and only grief is less for being borne by
+two. Death itself, cruel, relentless death itself, even death knits that
+union closer. And in sunshine and storm, in this world and in the next,
+the bond is ever the same. The tie of the purest friendship is weak
+compared with this tie, and even the bond of blood is less strong!"
+
+"Oh, God of heaven, this is too much!" said Paul.
+
+"Paul, if this union of thought and deed, of joy and grief, begins with
+marriage and does not end even with death, shall we now, here, at the
+threshold of our marriage, do it wrong?"
+
+A great sob choked Paul's utterance. "I can not tell you," he cried; "I
+have sworn an oath."
+
+"An oath! Then, surely, this present trouble was not that which Hugh
+Ritson has threatened?"
+
+"Greta, if our union means anything, it means trust. Trust me, my
+darling. I am helpless. My tongue is sealed. I dare not speak. No, not
+even to you. Scarcely to God Himself!"
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"That is enough," she said, very tenderly, and now the tears coursed
+down her own cheeks. "I will not ask again. I do not wish to know. You
+shall forget that I asked you. Come, dearest, kiss me. Think no more of
+this. Come, now." And she drew his head down to hers.
+
+Paul threw himself into a chair. His prostration was abject.
+
+"Come, dearest," said Greta, soothingly, "be a man."
+
+"There is worse to come," he said.
+
+"What matter," said Greta, and smiled. "I shall not fear if I have you
+beside me."
+
+"I can bear it no more," said Paul. "The thing is past cure."
+
+"No, dearest, it is not. Only death is that."
+
+"Greta, you said death would bind us closer together, but this thing
+draws us apart."
+
+"No, dearest, it does not. That it can not do."
+
+"Could nothing part us?" said Paul, lifting his face.
+
+"Nothing. Though the world divided us, yet we should be together."
+
+Again the loud sobs came from overhead.
+
+Paul rose to his feet, a shattered man no more. His abject mien fell
+from him like a garment. "Did I not say it was a lie?" he muttered,
+fiercely. "Greta, I am ashamed," he said; "your courage disgraces me.
+See what a pitiful coward you have taken for your husband. You have
+witnessed a strange weakness. But it has been for the last time. Thank
+God, I am now the man of yesterday!"
+
+Her tears were rolling down her cheeks, but her eyes were very bright.
+"What do you wish me to do?" she whispered. "Is it not something for me
+to do?"
+
+"It is, darling. You said rightly that the thought of one is the thought
+of both."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"A terrible thing!"
+
+"No matter. I am here to do it. What?"
+
+"It is to part from me to-night--only for to-night--only until
+to-morrow."
+
+Greta's face broke into a perfect sunshine of beauty. "Is that all?" she
+asked.
+
+"My darling!" said Paul, and embraced her fervently and kissed the
+quivering lips, "I am leading you through dark vaults, where you can see
+no single step before you."
+
+"But I am holding your hand, my husband," Greta whispered.
+
+Speech was too weak for that great moment. Again the heart-breaking sobs
+fell on the silence. Then Paul drew a cloak over Greta's shoulders and
+buttoned up his ulster. "It is a little after midnight," he said with
+composure. "There is a fly at the door. We may catch the last train up
+to London. I have a nest for you there, my darling."
+
+Then he went out into the bar. "Landlady," he said, "I will come back
+to-morrow for our luggage. Meantime, let it lie here, if it won't be in
+your way. We've kept you up late, old lady. Here, take this--and thank
+you."
+
+"Thankee! and the boxes are quite safe, sir--thankee!"
+
+He threw open the door to the road, and hailed the driver of the fly,
+cheerily. "Cold, sleety night, my good fellow. You'll have a sharp
+drive."
+
+"Yes, sir; it air cold waiting, very, specially inside, sir, just for
+want of summat short."
+
+"Well, come in quick and get it, my lad."
+
+"Right, sir."
+
+When Paul returned to the room to call Greta, he found her examining
+papers. She had picked them up off the table. They were the copies of
+certificates which Hugh Ritson had left there. Paul had forgotten them
+during the painful interview. He tried to recover them unread, but he
+was too late.
+
+"This," she said, holding out one of them, "is not the certificate of
+your birth. This person, Paul Lowther, is no doubt my father's lost
+son."
+
+"No doubt," said Paul, dropping his head.
+
+"But he is thirty years of age--see! You are no more than twenty-eight."
+
+"If I could but prove that, it would be enough," he said.
+
+"I can prove it, and I will!" she said.
+
+"You! How?"
+
+"Wait until to-morrow, and see," she said.
+
+He had put one arm about her waist, and was taking her to the door.
+
+She stopped. "I can guess what the black lie has been," she whispered.
+
+"Now, driver, up and away."
+
+"Right, sir. Kentish Town Junction?"
+
+"The station, to catch the 12:30."
+
+The carriage door was opened and closed. Then the bitter weeping from
+the upper room came out to them in the night.
+
+"Poor girl! whatever ails her? I seem to remember her voice," said
+Greta.
+
+"We can't wait," Paul answered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The clocks of London were striking one when Paul and Greta descended the
+steps in front of St. Pancras Station. The night was dark and bitterly
+cold. Dense fog hung in the air, and an unaccustomed silence brooded
+over the city. A solitary four-wheeled cab stood in the open square. The
+driver was inside, huddled up in his great-coat, and asleep. A porter
+awakened him, and he made way for Greta and Paul. He took his apron from
+the back of his horse, wrapped it about his waist, and snuffed the wicks
+of his lamps--they burned low and red, and crackled in the damp
+atmosphere.
+
+"What hotel, sir?"
+
+"The convent, Westminster."
+
+"Convent, sir? Did you say the convent, sir? St. Margaret's,
+Westminster, sir?"
+
+"The Catholic convent."
+
+Greta's hand pressed Paul's arm.
+
+The cabman got on to his box, muttering something that was inaudible. As
+he passed the gate lodge he drew up while the porter on duty came out
+with a lamp, and took the number of the cab.
+
+The fog grew more dense at every step, and the pace at which they
+traveled was slow. To avoid the maze of streets that would have helped
+them to a shorter cut on a clearer night, the driver struck along Euston
+Road to Tottenham Court Road, and thence south toward Oxford Street.
+This straighter and plainer course had the disadvantage of being more
+frequented. Many a collision became imminent in the uncertain light.
+
+The cabman bought a torch from a passer-by, and stuck it in his
+whip-barrel. As they reached the busier thoroughfares he got down from
+his box, took the torch in one hand and the reins in the other, and
+walked at his horse's head.
+
+The pace was now slower than before. It was like a toilsome passage
+through the workings of an iron mine. Volumes of noisome vapor rolled
+slowly past them. The air hung close over their heads like an unseen,
+vaulted roof. Red lights gleamed like vanishing stars down the elastic
+vista. One light would turn out to be a coffee-stall, round which a
+group of people gathered--cabmen muffled to the throat, women draggled
+and dirty, boys with faces that were old. Another would be a
+potato-engine, with its own volumes of white vapor, and the clank of its
+oven door like the metallic echo of the miner's pick. The line of
+regular lamps was like the line of candles stuck to the rock, the cross
+streets were like the cross-workings, the damp air settling down into
+streaks of moisture on the glass of the cab window was like the ceasless
+drip, drip of the oozing water from overhead.
+
+And to the two laden souls sitting within in silence and with clasped
+hands, the great city, nay, the world itself, was like a colossal mine,
+which human earthworms had burrowed underground, while the light and
+the free air were both above.
+
+At one point, where a patch of dry pavement indicated a bake-house under
+the street, three or four squalid creatures crouched together and slept.
+The streets were all but noiseless. It would be two hours yet before the
+giant of traffic would awake. The few cabmen hailed each other as they
+passed unrecognized, and their voices sounded hoarse. When the many
+clocks struck two, the many tones came muffled through the dense air.
+
+The journey was long and wearisome, but Paul and Greta scarcely felt it.
+They were soon to part; they knew not when they were to meet again.
+Perhaps soon, perhaps late; perhaps not until a darkness deeper than
+this should cover the land.
+
+Turning into Oxford Street, the cabman struck away to the west, in order
+to come upon Westminster by the main artery of Regent Street. The great
+thoroughfare was quiet enough now. Fashion was at rest, but even here,
+and in its own mocking guise, misery had its haunt. A light laugh broke
+the silence of the street, and a girl, so young as to be little more
+than a child, dressed in soiled finery, and reeling with unsteady step
+on the pavement, came up to the cab window and peered in.
+
+At the open door of a hotel, from whence a shaft of light came out into
+the fog, the cabman drew up. "Comfortable hotel, sir; think you'd like
+to put up, sir?"
+
+Paul dropped the window. "We want the Catholic convent at Westminster,
+my man."
+
+The cabman had put up his torch and was flapping his arms under his
+armpits. "Cold job, sir. Think I've had enough of it. Ha'past two, and a
+mile from St. Margaret's yet, sir. Got a long step home, sir, and the
+missis looking out for me this hour and more."
+
+The night porter of the hotel had opened the cab door, but not for an
+instant did Paul's purpose waver. "I'm sorry, my good fellow, but we
+must reach the convent, as I tell you."
+
+"Won't to-morrow do, sir? Comfortable quarters, sir. Can recommend 'em,"
+with a tip of his hand over his shoulder.
+
+"We must get to the convent to-night, my man."
+
+The cabman returned to his horse's head with a grunt of dissatisfaction.
+"Porter, can you keep a bed for me here? I shall be back in an hour,"
+said Paul. The porter signified assent, and once again the cab moved off
+on its slow journey.
+
+As it passed out of Trafalgar Square by way of Charing Cross, the air
+suddenly lightened. It was as if waves of white mist rolled over the
+yellow vapor. The cabman threw away his torch, mounted his box, and set
+off at a trot. When he reached Parliament Square the fog was gone. The
+great clock of Westminster was striking three; the sky was a dun gray
+behind the clocktower, and the dark mass of the abbey could be dimly
+seen.
+
+The cab drew up on the south-west of Abbey Gardens and before a portico
+railed in by an iron gate. The lamp burning on the sidewalk in front
+cast a hazy light on what seemed to be a large brick house plain in
+every feature.
+
+"This is Saint Margaret's, sir. Eight shillings, sir, if you please."
+
+Paul dismissed the cabman and rang the bell; the hollow tongue sent out
+a startling reverberation into the night. The sky to the east was
+breaking; thin streaks of a lighter gray foretold the dawn.
+
+The door opened and the iron gate swung back. A sister carrying an open
+oil lamp motioned them to enter.
+
+"Can I see the superior?" said Paul.
+
+"She is newly risen," said the sister, and she fixed the lamp to a
+bracket in the wall and went away. They were left in a bare, chill,
+echoing hall.
+
+The next moment a line of nuns in their coifs passed close by them with
+quick and silent steps. At that gray hour they had risen for matins.
+Some of them were pale and emaciated, and one that was palest and most
+worn went by with drooping head and hands that inlaced her rosary. Paul
+stepped back a pace. The nun moved steadily onward with the rest. Never
+a sign of recognition, never an upward glance, only the quivering of a
+lip--but it was his mother!
+
+He, too, dropped his head, and his own lips trembled. The mother
+superior was standing with them before he was aware. For an instant his
+voice was suspended, but he told her at length that a great calamity had
+befallen them, and begged her to take his wife for a time into her care.
+
+"Charity is our office," said the mother, when she had heard his story.
+"Come, my sister, the Church is peace. Your poor laden soul may put off
+its load while you are here."
+
+Paul begged to be allowed a moment to say farewell, and the good mother
+left them together.
+
+Then from an inner chamber came the solemn tones of an organ and the
+full voices of a choir. The softened harmonies seemed to float into
+their torn hearts, and they wept. The gray dawn was creeping in. It
+blurred the red light of the lamp.
+
+"Good-bye, darling, good-bye!" Paul whispered; but even while he spoke
+he clung the closer.
+
+"Good-bye for the present, dear husband," said Greta, and smiled.
+
+"Who would have thought that this calamity could wait for you at the
+very steps of God's altar?"
+
+"A day will turn all this evil into good."
+
+"At the threshold of our life together to be torn apart!"
+
+"Think of it no more, dearest. Our lives will yet be the brighter for
+this calamity. Do you remember what Parson Christian used to say? The
+happiest life is not that which is always in the sunlight, but rather
+that over which a dark cloud has once lowered and passed away."
+
+Paul shook his head. "My lips are sealed. You do not know all. It is a
+cruel lie that separates us. But what if it can not be disproved?"
+
+Greta's eyes were full of a radiant hopefulness. "It can, and shall!"
+
+Paul bent his head and touched her forehead with his lips. "The past is
+a silence that gives back no answer," he said. "My mother alone could
+disprove it, and she is dead to the world."
+
+"Not alone, dearest. I can disprove it. Wait and see!"
+
+Paul smiled coldly, and once more shook his head. "You don't know all,"
+he said again, and kissed her reverently. "What if to-morrow, and
+to-morrow, and to-morrow brings no light to unravel this mystery?"
+
+"Never fear it. The finger of Heaven is in this," said Greta.
+
+"Say, rather, the hand of destiny. And how little we are in the presence
+of that pitiless power!"
+
+"God sees all," said Greta. "He has led me in here, and He will guide me
+out again."
+
+"What if I brought you for a day, and you remain for a year, for life?"
+
+"Then think that God Himself has taken your wife at your hands."
+
+Paul's face, that had worn a look of deep dejection, became distorted
+with pain. "Oh, it is horrible! And this cloister is to be your
+marriage-bed!"
+
+"Hush! All is peace here. Good-bye, dearest Paul. Be brave, my husband."
+
+"Brave? Before death a man may be brave; but in the face of a calamity
+like this, what man could be brave?"
+
+"God will turn it away."
+
+"God grant it. But I tremble to ask for the truth. The future is not
+more awful to me now than the past."
+
+"Keep up heart, dear Paul. You know how pleasant it is to fall asleep
+amid storms that shake the trees, and to awake in the stillness and the
+sunshine, and amid the songs of the birds. To-morrow the falsehood will
+be outfaced, and you will return to fetch me."
+
+"Yes," said Paul, "or else drag out my days as an outcast in the world."
+
+"No, no, no. Good-bye, dearest." Then the voice of the comforter failed
+her, and she dropped her head on his breast.
+
+The choir within chanted the matin service. Paul removed the iron bar
+that crossed the door, and opened it. The opposite side of the street
+was a blank wall, with gaunt boughs of leafless trees behind it and
+above it, and beyond all was the dim sanctuary. Traffic's deep buzz
+flowed in the distance. The dawn had reddened the eastern sky, and the
+towers of the abbey were black against the glory of the coming day.
+
+"It may be that there is never a sunrise on this old city but it awakens
+some one to some new calamity," said Paul; "yet surely this is the
+heaviest stroke of all Good-bye, my darling!"
+
+"Good-bye, my husband!"
+
+"Yonder gray old fabric has looked on the scarred ruins of many a life,
+but never a funeral that has passed down its aisles was so sad as this
+parting. Good-bye, dearest wife, good-bye!"
+
+"Good-bye, Paul!"
+
+He struck his breast and drew his breath audibly, "I must go. The thing
+is not to be thought of and endured!"
+
+"Good-bye, Paul!" Her face was buried in his breast, to hide it from his
+eyes.
+
+"They say that the day a dear friend is lost to us is purer and calmer
+in remembrance than the day before. May it be so with us!"
+
+"Hush! You will soon be back to take me away." And Greta nestled closer
+to his breast.
+
+"If not--if not"--his hot breathing beat fast on her drooping head--"if
+not, then--as the world is dead to both without the other's love--remain
+here--in this house--forever. Good-bye! Good-bye!"
+
+He disengaged her clinging arms. He pressed her cold brow with his
+quivering lips. Her fears conquered her brave heart at last. A mist was
+fast hiding her from him.
+
+"Good-bye! good-bye!"
+
+A moment's silence, a breaking sigh, a rising sob, a last lingering
+touch of the inlaced fingers, and then the door closed behind him. She
+was alone in the empty hall; her lips were cold; her eyes were shut. The
+rosy hues of morning were floating in the air, now rich and sweet and
+balmy and restful, with the full, pure, holy harmonies of the choir.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+It was merely a momentary vexation which Hugh Ritson felt when the
+course that Paul had taken falsified his prescience. "No matter," he
+said, "it is only a question of a day, more or less. The thing must be
+done."
+
+Drayton made no attempt to conceal his relief when the door closed and
+the fly drove off. "I ain't sorry the fence is gone, and that's flat!"
+
+"Only, being gone, you will have a bigger risk to run now, my friend,"
+said Hugh Ritson, with undisguised contempt.
+
+Drayton looked up with a glance half of fear, half of suspicion. "You
+ain't gone and rounded on a fellow, after all? You ain't told him as I'm
+here?"
+
+"Don't be a fool! Get off to bed. Wait, you must put me up for the
+night. You'll take care of yourself if you're wise. The police will be
+here in the morning; take my word for that."
+
+"Here? In the morning? No!"
+
+"When they asked for his address, he gave them the name of this house.
+They'll not forget it. Men of that sort don't forget."
+
+"I'll pound if they don't."
+
+"They have memories for other things besides addresses. Consider if they
+have any other reason to remember the landlord of your house."
+
+"No criss-crossing! you don't do me the same as the old woman."
+
+"No matter. You know best. Take care of yourself, Mr. Drayton."
+
+Drayton buttoned his coat as near to the throat as the torn lapel would
+allow. "That's what I mean to do. I ain't going to be lagged. It's a
+lifer this time, and that would take the stiff'ning out of a man."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"No criss-crossing, I say."
+
+"Leave this house, and they'll have you in twenty-four hours."
+
+"Stay here, and they'll lag me in twelve. Being as that's twelve to the
+good, I'm off."
+
+Drayton's hand was on the door-handle. Hugh Ritson snatched it away. "An
+idiot like you deserves to be taken. Such men ought to be put away."
+
+Drayton lifted his fist. "Damme, but I'll put you away if--if--"
+
+Hugh Ritson did not flinch. "What if I show you how to escape the
+consequences of to-night's work altogether?"
+
+Drayton's uplifted hand fell. "I ain't objecting to that," he growled.
+"How?"
+
+"By putting another man in your place."
+
+Drayton's eyes opened in a stare of blank amazement.
+
+"And what about me?" he asked.
+
+"You," said Hugh Ritson, and a scarcely perceptible sneer curled his
+lip--"you shall stand in his shoes."
+
+A repulsive smile crossed Drayton's face. He fumbled the torn lapel with
+restless fingers. His eyes wandered to the door. There was a moment's
+silence.
+
+"Him?" he said, with an elevation of the eyebrows.
+
+Hugh Ritson bent his head slightly. Drayton stood with mouth agape.
+
+Old Mrs. Drayton was pottering around the bar preparatory to going to
+bed.
+
+"I'll be a-bidding you good-night, sir. Paul, you'll lock up after the
+gentleman."
+
+"Good-night, Mrs. Drayton."
+
+The landlady hobbled away. But from midway up the stairs her querulous
+voice came again. "The poor young thing--I declare she's a-crying her
+eyes out."
+
+"Why d'ye mean to do?" asked Drayton.
+
+"To get him here."
+
+"How'll ye track him? He's gone to London, ain't he? That's a big
+haystack to find a needle in, ain't it?"
+
+"London is not a haystack, Mr. Drayton. It's a honey-comb, and every
+cell is labeled. On getting out of the train at St. Pancras Station they
+will either hire a cab or they will not. If they hire one, then the
+number will be taken at the lodge. By that number the cabman can be
+found. He will know where he drove his fare. If my brother left his wife
+at one place, and settled himself at another, the cabman will know that
+also. If they do not hire a cab, then, as the hour is late, and one of
+them is a lady, they must be somewhere in the vicinity of the station.
+Thus, in that vast honey-comb, their particular cells are already marked
+out for us. That's enough for the present. Who sleep in this house
+beside yourselves--and the girl?"
+
+"Nobody but a lad--a pot-boy."
+
+"Where is he now--in bed?"
+
+"Four hours agone."
+
+"Where does he sleep?"
+
+"Up in the attic."
+
+"Don't let that lad see you. On which side of the house does the attic
+lie?"
+
+"In the gable, this end."
+
+"Is there an attic in the other gable?"
+
+"Yes, a bad one."
+
+"No matter. Get a mattress and sleep there yourself, and lie close all
+day to-morrow. Take food, but no liquor, mind that. I'll come for you
+when all is clear. And now show me to your room."
+
+After some preparation the two men went upstairs, carrying the only
+remaining light.
+
+"Give me the candle. You had best go up to your attic in the dark. Here,
+put this key in the girl's door and unlock it. She's quiet enough now.
+Hush--! No; it was only the wind. Good-night--and mind what I say, don't
+let that boy see you--and, listen, no liquor!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The day had not yet dawned, and all lay still in that house when Mercy
+Fisher opened noiselessly the door of her room and crept stealthily down
+the stairs. It was very dark in the bar below, and she had no light. The
+sickening odor of dead tobacco was in the air. She carried a little
+bundle in one hand, and with the other she felt her way around the walls
+until she came to the outer door. A heavy chain fastened it, and with
+nervous fingers she drew it out of the slide. When free of its groove,
+it slipped from her hand, and fell against the door-jamb with a clang.
+The girl's heart leaped to her throat. At first she crouched in fear,
+then lifted the latch, opened the door, and fled away into the gloom
+without, leaving the door wide open.
+
+Never to the last day of her life did she know what purpose guided her
+in that hour. She had no object, no aim. Only to fly away from a broken
+heart. Only to lie down on the earth and know no more, with all the
+heartache over. But she was drifting in her blind misery to that
+reservoir of life, London.
+
+She hurried down the road, never once looking back. The leafless trees
+were surging in the night-wind; their gaunt branches were waving grimly
+over her head. The hedges took fantastic shapes before her, and beside
+her. Her limbs trembled and her teeth chattered, yet she hastened on.
+Her head ached. She felt suffocated. The world was so cruel to her. If
+only she could fly from it and forget--only forget!
+
+The day was dawning; the deep blue of the sky to the left of her was
+streaked with thin bars. All before her was a blank void of dun gray. A
+veil of vapor beat against her cheeks. The wide marshy lands lay in mist
+around her. Not a sound but her own footstep on the road. Not a bird in
+the empty air, not a cloud in the blank sky. It was a dreary scene;
+neither day nor night.
+
+And through this grim realm that is aloof from all that is human, one
+poor, broken-hearted girl hurried on, her little bundle in her hand, a
+shawl wrapped about her shoulders, her red, tearless eyes fixed in front
+of her.
+
+Like the spirit of unrest, the wind moaned and soughed. Now and then a
+withered leaf of last year went by her with a light rustle and stealthy
+motion. Desolate as the heart within her was the waste ground.
+
+Bit by bit the gray sky lightened; the east was fretted over with pink,
+and a freshness was breathed into the air. Then she began to run. Behind
+her were all her pretty dreams, and they were dead. Behind her was the
+love she had cherished, and that was dead, too. From a joyful vision she
+had awakened to find the idol cold at her breast.
+
+Running hard along the gloomy road, under the empty sky, through the
+surging wind, the outcast girl cried in her tearless grief as a little
+child cries for the mother who is in her grave--never knowing its loss
+until it has grown tired, and weary, and sick, and the night is very
+near.
+
+She came to a brick-kiln that stood back from the road. Its wreathing
+smoke coiled slowly upward in the smoke-like atmosphere. The red haze
+drew her to it, as it drew the shivering waifs of the air. Cold and
+tired, she crept up and stood some minutes in the glow; but a step fell
+on her ear from behind the kiln, and she stole away like a guilty thing.
+
+Away, away, she knew not where. On, on, she knew not why.
+
+The day had dawned now. In the brightness of morning her heart sunk
+lower. Draggled and soiled, her hair still damp with the dew, and the
+odor of night in her dress, she walked on in the golden radiance of the
+risen sun.
+
+Oh, to bury herself forever, and yet not to die--no, no, not to die!
+
+At a cross-road there was a finger-post, and it read, "To Kilburn."
+Beyond it there was a wood, and the sunlight played on the pine-trees
+and reddened the dead leaves that still clung to an oak. She was warm
+now, but, oh! so tired. Behind the ambush of a holly-bush, close to the
+road, Mercy crouched down on a drift of withered leaves at the foot of a
+stout beech. She dozed a little and started. All was quiet. Then weary
+nature conquered fear, and overcame sorrow, and she slept.
+
+And sleep--that makes kings and queens of us all--gracious sleep, made a
+queen of the outcast girl, a queen of love; and she dreamed of her home
+among the mountains.
+
+Mercy was still sleeping when a covered wagon, such as carriers use,
+came trundling along the road. The driver, a bright-eyed man, with the
+freshness of the fields in his face, sat on the front rail and
+whistled. His horse shied at something, and this made him get up. He was
+at that moment in front of the holly-bush, and he saw Mercy lying behind
+it.
+
+Her face was worn and pale, her bonnet fallen back from her forehead,
+her head leaning against the trunk of the tree, one hand on her breast,
+the other straying aside on the drift of yellow leaves, where a little
+bundle covered by a red handkerchief had fallen from her graspless
+fingers, and the radiant morning sunlight over all.
+
+The driver of the wagon jumped to the ground. At the same moment Mercy
+awoke with a frightened look. She rose to her feet, and would have
+hurried away.
+
+"Young to be wagranting about, ain't ye, miss?" said the driver. His
+tone was kindlier than his words.
+
+"Let me go, please," said Mercy, and she tried to pass.
+
+"Coorse, coorse; if yer wants to."
+
+Mercy thanked him, her eyes on the ground. She was already on the road.
+
+"Being as you're going my way, I ain't objecting to giving you a lift."
+
+"No, thank you. I have no--I've no money. I must run."
+
+"You'll wait till I ax for it, won't ye, missy? Come, get up."
+
+"And will you let me go down whenever I like?"
+
+"Coorse I will; why not? Up with ye! There, easy, kneel on the shaft,
+that's the size of it. Now, go set yourself down on them sacks. Them's
+apples, them is. Right? Very well. We're off, then."
+
+The wagon was about half full of sacks, and Mercy crept down in the
+furthest corner.
+
+"I ain't in the apple line reg'lar. I'm a fern-gatherer, that's wot I
+am. On'y nature don't keep ferning all the year round, so I'se forced to
+go fruiting winter times--buying apples same as them from off'n the
+farmers down the country, and bringing 'em up to Covent Garden. That's
+where I'm going now, that is. And got to be there afore the sales
+starts."
+
+Mercy listened, but said nothing.
+
+"You know Covent Garden--not fur from Leicester Square and the
+Haymarket?"
+
+Mercy shook her head.
+
+"What! Never been there--and that near?"
+
+Mercy shook her head again and dropped her eyes.
+
+The driver twisted about to look at her. "Let a be, she's feeling it
+bad," he thought, and was silent for a moment. Then he twisted about for
+another look.
+
+"I say, missy, got bad eyes?"
+
+"They're sore, and a little dim," said Mercy.
+
+"Blest if you don't look the spitting image of a friend of mine--'boutn
+the eyes, I mean--red and swelled up and such. It was Tom Crow, a
+partner of mine, in fact. Tom caught cold sleeping out one night as we
+was ferning down Roger Tichborne's estates--him as was the claimant for
+'em, you know, on'y he didn't get 'em. The cold flew to Tom's eyes
+straight, and blest if he ain't gone blind as a mole."
+
+Mercy's lips quivered. The driver stopped his chatter, conscious that he
+had gone too far, and then, with somewhat illogical perversity, he
+proceeded to express his vexation at himself by punishing his horse.
+
+"Get along, you stupid old perwerse old knacker's crutch!"
+
+The horse set off at a trot. They passed through a village, and Mercy
+read the name "Child's Hill" printed on the corner of a house.
+
+"Is it London you are going to?" said Mercy, timidly; "Covent Garden--is
+that London?"
+
+"Eh?" The driver opened his eyes very wide in a blank stare.
+
+Mercy trembled and held down her head. They jogged on awhile in silence,
+and then the driver, who had cast furtive glances at the girl, drew
+rein, and said: "I'm wexed as I said Tom Crow was as blind as a mole.
+How-and-ever, a mole ain't blind, and it's on'y them coster chaps as
+think so, but I've caught a many of 'em out ferning. Besides, Tom was
+a-worrited with his missus, Tom was, and happen that was worse nor his
+cold.
+
+("Git along, you old perwerse old file!)
+
+"You see, Tom's missus cut away and left him. As young as you, and
+maybe as good to look at, but a bad 'un; and she broke Tom's heart, as
+the saying is. So Tom left the ferning. He hadn't no heart for it.
+Ferning's a thing as wants heart, it do. He started costering first, and
+now Tom's got a 'tater-ingine, on'y being as he's blind he has a boy to
+wheel it. And that woman, she done it all. 'Jim Groundsell,' he says to
+me--that's my name--'Jim,' he says, 'don't fix your heart on nothing,'
+he says, 'and keep to your sight and the ferning.'
+
+("Well, you perwerse old crutch! Get along with you!)
+
+"But I went and done it myself. And now my missus, she's a invalide, as
+they say, and she ain't out o' bed this twelvemonth come Christmas, and
+she gets lonesome lying all by herself, and frets a bit maybe, and--
+
+("Git along, will you, you wexing old fence!")
+
+There was a long silence this time. They were leaving the green fields
+behind them, and driving through longer streets than Mercy had ever seen
+before. Though the sun was shining feebly, the lamps on the pavement
+were still burning. They passed a church, and Mercy saw by the clock
+that it was hard on eight. They drove briskly through Camden Town into
+St. Giles's, and so on to Long Acre.
+
+The streets were thronged by this time. Troops of people were passing to
+and fro. Cabs and omnibuses were rattling hither and thither. At every
+turn the crowd became denser and the noise louder. Mercy sat in her
+corner, bewildered. The strange city frightened her. For the time it
+drove away the memory of her sorrow.
+
+When they reached Covent Garden, Jim, the driver, drew up with a jerk,
+and nodded to some of the drivers of similar wagons, and hailed others
+with a lusty shout. All was a babel to the girl's dazed sense: laughter,
+curses, yelling, whooping, quarreling.
+
+Mercy's head ached. She got down, hardly knowing what to do next. Where
+was she to go? In that wilderness of London, more desolate than the
+trackless desert, what was she?
+
+She stood a moment on the pavement, her little bundle in her hand, and
+all the bewildering scene went round and round. The tears rose to her
+eyes, and the glare and noise and the tumult were blotted out.
+
+The next instant she felt herself being lifted back into the wagon, and
+then she remembered nothing more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Two days later Hugh Ritson entered the convent church of St. Margaret.
+It was evening service, and the nave was thronged from chancel to porch.
+The aisles, which were bare of seats, were filled only half-way down,
+the rest of the pavement being empty save for a man here and there who
+leaned lightly against the great columns of the heavy colonnade.
+
+The sermon had already begun. Hugh Ritson walked up the aisle
+noiselessly until he came close behind the throng of people standing
+together. Then he stood at the side of a column and looked around on
+those in the nave.
+
+He was within range of the preacher's voice, but he hardly listened. His
+eyes traversed the church until at last they rested on one spot in the
+south transept, where a company of nuns sat with downcast eyes half
+closed. The face of one of them was hidden beneath her drooping coif;
+the rosary held to her breast was gripped with nervous fingers. Near at
+hand there was another face that riveted Hugh Ritson's gaze. It was the
+face of Greta, radiant in its own beauty, and tender with the devotional
+earnestness of parted lips and of lashes wet with the dew of a bruised
+spirit.
+
+From these two his eyes never wandered for longer than a minute!
+Languidly he listened to the words that floated over the people, and
+held them mute. The preacher was a slight young man, emaciated, pale,
+with lustrous eyes, and a voice that had a thin, meek pipe. But the
+discourse was in a strain of feverish excitement, a spirit of hard
+intolerance, a tone of unrelenting judgment, that would have befitted
+the gigantic figure and thunderous accents of the monk Jerome.
+
+"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is
+death." This was the text, twenty times repeated. Men talked of the
+rights of conscience, as if conscience were God's law. They babbled of
+toleration, as if any heresy were to be endured, if only it were
+believed. Conscience! It was the slave of Circumstance. Toleration! It
+was the watchword at the gate of hell.
+
+Hugh Ritson listened with a vague consciousness, his eyes fixed
+alternately on the nun with the drooping coif and on the fair, upturned
+face beside her. At last a word struck him, and made his whole soul to
+vibrate. Men, women, the great mute throng, pillars, arches, windows of
+figured saints, altar aflame with candles, the surpliced choir, and the
+pale, thin face with the burning eyes in the pulpit above--all vanished
+in an instant.
+
+What was true, said the preacher, in the realm of thought, could not be
+false in the world of life. Men did evil deeds, and justified them to
+their own enslaved minds. No way so dark but it had appeared to be the
+path of light; none so far wrong but it had seemed to be right. Let man
+beware of the lie that he told to his own heart. The end thereof is
+death.
+
+Staring from a bloodless face, Hugh Ritson reeled a step backward, and
+then clung with a trembling hand to the pillar against which he had
+leaned. The harsh scrape of his foot was heard over the hushed church,
+and here and there a neck was craned in his direction. His emotion was
+gone in an instant. A light curl of the hard lip told that the angel
+within him had once again been conquered.
+
+The sermon ended with a rapturous declaration of the immutability of
+God's law, and the eternal destinies of man. The world was full of
+change, but man, who seemed to change most, changed least. The stars
+that hung above had seen the beginning and the end of ages. Before man
+was, they were. The old river that flowed past the old city that night
+had flowed there centuries ago, and generations of men had lived and
+died in joy and sorrow, and still the same waters washed the same
+shore. But the stars that measure time itself, and the sea that recorded
+it, would vanish away, and man should be when time would be no more.
+"They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. They shall wax old as doth a
+garment.... But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."
+
+The preacher finished, and the buzz and rustle of the people shifting in
+their seats told of the tension that had been broken. Faces that had
+been distorted with the tremors of fear, or contracted with the
+quiverings of remorse, or glorified with the lights of ecstasy, resumed
+their normal expression.
+
+The vesper hymn was sung by the whole congregation, standing. It floated
+up to the blue roof, where the lights that burned low over the people's
+heads left in the gloom the texts written on the open timbers and the
+imaged Christ hung in the clerestory. There was one voice that did not
+sing the vesper hymn; and the close-locked lips of Hugh Ritson were but
+the symbol of the close-locked heart.
+
+He was asking himself, was it true that when the fire of the stars
+should be burned to ashes, still man would endure? Pshaw! What was man?
+These throngs of men, whose great voice swelled like the sea, what were
+they? In this old church where they sung, other men had sung before
+them, and where were they now? Who should say they had not perished?
+Living, believing, dying, they were gone: gone with their sins and
+sorrows; gone with their virtues and rewards; gone from all sight and
+all memory; and no voice came from them, pealing out of the abyss of
+death to join this song of hope. Hope! It was a dream. A dream that
+great yearning crowds like these, filling churches and chapels, dreamed
+age after age. But it was a dream from which there would be no awakening
+to know that it was not true.
+
+The priest and choir left the church. Then the congregation broke up and
+separated. Hugh Ritson stood awhile, still leaning against the column of
+the colonnade. The nuns in the south transept rose last, and went out by
+a little aperture opening from the south aisle. Hugh watched them pass
+at the distance of the width of the nave. Greta walked a few paces
+behind them. When the people had gone, and she rose from her seat, her
+eyes fell on Hugh. Then she dropped her head, and walked down the aisle
+with a hurried step. Hugh saw her out; the church was now empty, and the
+voluntary was done. He followed her through the door, and entered into
+the sacristy.
+
+Before him was another door; it led into the convent. The last of the
+line of nuns was passing through it. Greta stood in the sacristy, faint,
+with a scared face, one hand at her breast, the other on the base of a
+crucifix that stood by the wall. When she saw that he had followed her,
+her first impulse was to shrink away; her second was to sink to her
+knees at his feet. She did neither. Conquering her faintness, but still
+quivering from head to foot, she turned upon him with a defiant look.
+"Why do you come here? I do not wish to speak with you. Let me pass,"
+she said.
+
+Hugh Ritson made no effort to detain her. He stood before her with
+downcast eyes, his infirm foot bent under him. "I come to bid you
+farewell," he said, calmly; "I come to say that we meet no more."
+
+"Would that we had parted forever before we met the last time!" said
+Greta, fervently.
+
+"Would that we had never met!" said Hugh, in a low voice.
+
+"That was a lie with which you parted me from my husband," she said.
+
+"It was--God forgive me."
+
+"And you knew it was a lie?" said Greta.
+
+"I knew it was a lie."
+
+"Then where is your shame, that you can look me in the face? Have you no
+shame?" she said.
+
+"Have you no pity?" said Hugh.
+
+"What pity had you for me? Have you not done me wrong enough already?"
+
+"God knows it is true. And He knows I am a miserable man. Have pity and
+forgive me, and say farewell!"
+
+Something of contrition in the tone touched her. She was silent.
+
+"The preacher was wrong," he said. "There is no spirit of evil. We are
+betrayed by our own passions, and the chief of those passions is love.
+It is the Nemesis that stalks through the world, haunting all men, and
+goading some to great wrong."
+
+"It was of your doing that I came here," said Greta.
+
+"Would to God it may be of my doing that you remain here," said Hugh.
+
+"That is a prayer He will not hear. I am leaving this house to-night.
+There is some one coming who can unmask your wicked falsehood."
+
+"Parson Christian?" said Hugh.
+
+Greta made no answer, and Hugh continued, "His journey is needless. A
+word from my mother would have done all. She is in this house."
+
+"Yes, Heaven forgive you, she is here!" said Greta.
+
+"You are wrong; you do not know all. Where is your husband?"
+
+Greta shook her head. "I have neither seen him nor heard from him since
+we parted at these doors," she said.
+
+"And when you leave them to-night, do you leave him behind you?" said
+Hugh.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said Greta, passionately.
+
+Hugh Ritson's bloodless face was awful to look upon. "Greta," he said,
+in a tone of anguish, "give up the thought. Look on that false union as
+broken forever, and all this misery will end. It was I and you--you and
+I. But that is over now. I do not come between you. It is useless to
+think of that. I do not offer you my love; you refused it long ago. But
+I can not see you my brother's wife. That would be too much for me to
+endure. I will not endure it. Have pity upon me. If I have no claim to
+your love, have I no right to your pity? What have I suffered for your
+love? A life's misery. What have I sacrificed to it? My name--my
+place--my inheritance."
+
+Greta lifted her eyes with a look of inquiry.
+
+"What? Has he not even yet told you all?" said Hugh. "No matter. What
+has he done to earn your love that I have not done? What has he
+suffered? What has he sacrificed?"
+
+"If this is love, it is selfish love," said Greta, in a broken voice.
+
+"Selfish?--be it so. All love is selfish."
+
+"Leave me--leave me!"
+
+Hugh Ritson paused; the warmth of his manner increased. "I will leave
+you," he said, "and never seek you again; I will go from you forever,
+and crush down the sorrow that must be with me to the end, if you will
+promise me one thing."
+
+"What is it?" said Greta, her eyes on the ground.
+
+"It is much," said Hugh, "but it is not all. If the price is great,
+think of the misery that it buys--and buries. You would sacrifice
+something for me, would you not?"
+
+His voice swelled as he spoke, and his pale face softened, and the light
+of hopeless love was in his great eyes.
+
+"Say that you would--for me--me!" He held out his arms toward her as if
+soul and body together yearned for one word, one look of love.
+
+Greta stood there, silent and immovable. "What is it?" she repeated.
+
+"Let me think that you would do something for my sake--mine," he
+pleaded. "Let me carry away that solace. Think what I have suffered for
+you, and all in vain. Think that perhaps it was no fault of mine that
+you could not love me; that another woman might have found me worthy to
+be loved who had not been unworthy of love from me."
+
+"What is it?" repeated Greta, coldly, but her drooping lashes were wet
+with tears.
+
+"Think that I am of a vain, proud, stubborn spirit; that in all this
+world there is neither man nor woman, friend nor enemy, to whom I have
+sued for grace or favor; that since I was a child I have never even
+knelt in prayer in God's house that man might see or God might hear.
+Then think that I am at your feet, a miserable man."
+
+"What is it?" said Greta, again.
+
+Hugh Ritson paused, and then added, more calmly: "That you should take
+the vows and the veil, and stay here until death."
+
+Greta lifted her eyes. Hugh's eyes were bent upon her.
+
+"No, I can not. I should be false to my marriage vows," she said,
+quietly.
+
+"To be true to them is to be false to yourself, to your husband, and to
+me," said Hugh.
+
+"I love my husband," said Greta, with an eloquent glance. "To be true to
+them is to be true to him."
+
+There was a pause. Hugh Ritson's manner underwent a change. It was the
+white heat of high passion that broke the silence when he spoke again.
+
+"Greta," he said, and his deep voice had a strong tremor, "if there is
+any truth in what that priest told us to-night--if it is not a dream and
+a solemn mockery made to enchant or appal the simple--if there is a God
+and judgment--my soul is already too heavily burdened with sins against
+you and yours. I would have eased it of one other sin more black than
+these; but it was not to be."
+
+"What do you mean?" said Greta. Her face was panic-stricken.
+
+Hugh Ritson came a step nearer.
+
+"That your husband is in my hands--that one word from me would commit
+him to a doom more dreadful than death--that if he is to be saved as a
+free man, alive, you must renounce him forever."
+
+"Speak plain. What do you mean?" said Greta.
+
+"Choose--quick! Which shall it be? You for this convent, or your husband
+for lifelong imprisonment?"
+
+Greta's mind was in a whirl. She was making for the door in front of
+them. He stepped before her.
+
+"I parted you with a lie," he said, "but to me it was not always a lie.
+I believed it once. Do you think I should have denied my self my
+inheritance, and let a bastard stand in my place, if I had not believed
+it?"
+
+"What further lie is this?" said Greta.
+
+"No matter. Heaven knows. And all I did was for love of you. Is it so
+guilty a thing that I have loved you--to all lengths and ends of love? I
+meant to put a hemisphere between you--to send him to Australia, and
+you back home to Cumberland. What if the lie had then been outfaced? I
+should have parted you, and that would have been enough."
+
+"And now, when your revenge falls idle at your feet, you come to me on
+your knees," said Greta.
+
+"Revenge? That was but a feeble revenge," said Hugh. "He would have
+learned the truth and come back to claim you. There would have been no
+peace for me while he was alive and free. Do I come to you on my knees?
+Yes; but it is to pray of you to save your husband. Is it so much that I
+ask of you? Think what is earned by it. If you have no pity for me, have
+you none for him?"
+
+She was struggling to pass him.
+
+"Greta," he said, "choose, and at once. It is now or never.
+To-night--to-morrow will be too late. You for a holy life of
+self-renouncement, or your husband to drag out his miserable days in
+penal servitude."
+
+"This is only another lie. Let me pass," she said.
+
+"It is the truth, as sure as God hears us," said Hugh.
+
+"I shall never believe it."
+
+"I will swear it." He laid a strong hand on her wrist. "I will swear it
+at the very foot of God's altar."
+
+He tried to draw her back into the church. She resisted.
+
+"Let me go; I will cry for help."
+
+He dropped her wrist, and fell back from her. She drew herself up in
+silence, and walked slowly away.
+
+He stood a moment alone in the sacristy. Then he went out through the
+church. It was empty and all but dark. The sacristan, with a long rod,
+was putting out the lights one by one. He turned, with arm uplifted, to
+look after the halting figure that passed down the aisle and out at the
+west porch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Abbey Gardens, the street in front, was dark and all but deserted. Only
+a drunken woman went reeling along. But the dull buzz in the distance,
+and the white sheet in the sky, told that, somewhere near, the wild
+heart of the night beat high.
+
+Hugh Ritson looked up at the heavy mass of the convent building as he
+crossed the street. The lights were already out, and all was dark
+within. He went on, but presently stopped by a sudden impulse, and
+looked again.
+
+It was then he was aware that something moved in the deep portico. The
+lamp on the pavement sent a shaft of light on to the door, and there,
+under the gas-light, with the face turned from him, was the figure of a
+woman. She seemed to cast cautious and stealthy glances around, and to
+lift a trembling hand to the bell that hung above her. The hand fell to
+her side, but no ring followed. Once again the hand was lifted, and once
+again it fell back. Then the woman crept totteringly down the steps and
+turned to go.
+
+Hugh Ritson recrossed the street. Amid all the turmoil of his soul, the
+incident had arrested him.
+
+The woman was coming toward him. He put himself in her path. The light
+fell full upon her, and he saw her face.
+
+It was Mercy Fisher.
+
+With a low cry, the girl sunk back against the railings of the convent,
+and covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Is it you, Mercy?" said Hugh.
+
+She made no answer. Then she tried to steal away, but he held her with
+gentle force.
+
+"Why did you leave Hendon?" he asked.
+
+"You did not want me," said the girl, in a tone of unutterable pain. And
+still her face was buried in her hands.
+
+He did not reply. He let her grief spend itself.
+
+Just then a drunken woman reeled back along the pavement and passed them
+close, peering into their midst, and going by with a jarring laugh.
+
+"What's he a-doing to ye, my dear, eh?" she said, jeeringly. "Sarve ye
+right!" she added, and laughed again. She was a draggled, battered
+outcast--a human ruin, such as night, the pander, flings away.
+
+Mercy lifted her head. A dull, weary look was in her eyes.
+
+"You know how I waited and waited," she said, "and you were so long in
+coming, so very long." She turned her eyes aside. "You did not want me;
+in your heart you did not want me," she said.
+
+The wave of bitter memory drowned her voice. Not unmoved, he stood and
+looked at her, and saw the child-face wet with tears, and the night
+breeze of the city drift in her yellow hair.
+
+"Where have you been since?" he said.
+
+"A man going to market brought me up in his wagon. I fainted, and then
+he took me to his home. He lives close by, in the Horse and Groom Yard.
+His wife is bedridden, and such a good creature, and so kind to me. But
+they are poor, and I had no money, and I was afraid to be a burden to
+them; and besides--besides--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She saw that I was--she saw what was going to--being a woman, she knew
+I was soon--"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Hugh, stopping another flood of tears with a light
+touch of the hand. "How red your eyes look. Are they worse?"
+
+"The man was very good; he took me to the doctors at a hospital, and
+they said--oh, they said I might lose my sight!"
+
+"Poor little Mercy!" said Hugh.
+
+He was now ashamed of his own sufferings. How loud they had clamored
+awhile ago; yet, what were they side by side with this poor girl's
+tangible sorrows! Mere things of the air, with no reality.
+
+"But no matter!" she burst out. "That's no matter."
+
+"You must keep up heart, Mercy. I spoke angrily to you the other night,
+but it's over now, is it not?"
+
+"Oh, why didn't you leave me alone?" said the girl.
+
+"Hush, Mercy; it will be well with you yet." His own eyes were growing
+dim, but even then his heart was bitter. Had he not said in his wrath
+that passion was the demon of the world? He might say it in his sorrow,
+too. The simple heart of this girl loved him, even as his own lustier
+soul loved Greta. He had wronged her. But that was only a tithe of the
+trouble. If she could but return him hate for wrong, how soon everything
+would be right with her! "What brought you here, Mercy?"
+
+"One of the sisters--they visit the sick--one of them visited the house
+where they gave me lodgings, and I heard that they sometimes took
+homeless girls into the convent. And I thought I was homeless, now,
+and--and--"
+
+"Poor little woman!"
+
+"I came the night before last, but saw your brother Paul walking here in
+front. So I went away."
+
+"Paul?"
+
+"Then I came last night, and he was here again. So I went away once
+more, and to-night I came earlier, and he wasn't here, but just as I was
+going to ring the bell, and say that I had no home, and that my eyes
+were growing worse, something seemed to say they would ask if I had a
+father, and why I had left him; and then I couldn't ring--and then I
+thought if only I could die--yes, if only I could die and forget, and
+never wake up again in the morning--"
+
+"Hush, Mercy. You shall go back home to your father."
+
+"No, no, no!"
+
+"Yes; and I shall go with you."
+
+There was silence. The bleared eyes looked stealthily up into his face.
+A light smile played there.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+A bright vision came to her of a fair day when, hand in hand with him
+she loved, she should return to her forsaken home in the mountains, and
+hold up her head, and wipe away her father's tears. She was in the dark
+street of the city, then; she and her home were very far apart.
+
+He laughed inwardly at a different vision. In a grim spirit of humor he
+saw all his unquenchable passion conquered, and he saw himself the
+plain, homely, respectable husband of this simple wife.
+
+"Was Paul alone when you saw him?" said Hugh.
+
+"Yes. And would you tell them all?"
+
+The girl's sidelong glance was far away.
+
+"Mercy, I want you to do something for me."
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+Again the sidelong glance.
+
+Hugh lifted the girl's head with his hand to recall her wandering
+thoughts.
+
+"Paul will come again to-night. I want you to wait for him and speak to
+him."
+
+"Yes, yes; but won't he ask me questions?"
+
+"What if he does? Answer them all. Only don't say that I have told you
+to speak to him. Tell him--will you remember it?--are you
+listening?--look me in the face, little woman."
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"Tell him that Mr. Christian--Parson Christian, you know--has come to
+London and wishes to see him at once. Say he has looked for him at the
+hotel in Regent Street and not found him there, and is now at the inn in
+Hendon. Will you remember?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where were you going, Mercy--back to your poor friends?"
+
+"No. But will he be sure to come to-night?"
+
+"No doubt. At what time was he here last night?"
+
+"Ten o'clock."
+
+"It is now hard on nine. Tell him to go to Hendon at once, and when he
+goes, you go with him. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't forget--to-night; to-morrow night will not do. If he does not
+come, you must follow me to Hendon and tell me so. I shall be there.
+Don't tell him that--do you hear?"
+
+The girl gave a meek assent.
+
+"And now good-bye for an hour or two, little one."
+
+He turned away, and she was left alone before the dark convent. But, she
+was not all alone. A new-born dream was with her, and her soul was
+radiant with light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Hugh Ritson walked rapidly through Dean's Yard in the direction of the
+sanctuary. As he turned into Parliament Street the half moon rose above
+the roof of Westminster Hall. But the night was still dark.
+
+He passed through Trafalgar Square and into the Haymarket. The streets
+were thronged. Crowds on crowds went languidly by. Dim ghosts of men and
+women, most of them, who loitered at this hour in these streets. Old
+men, with the souls long years dead within them, and the corruption
+reeking up with every breath to poison every word, or lurking like
+charnel lights in the eyes to blink contagion in every glance. Young
+girls hopping like birds beside them, the spectres of roses in their
+cheeks, but the real thorns at their hearts. There had been no way for
+them but this--this and one other way: either to drift into the Thames
+and be swallowed up in the waters of death, or to be carried along for a
+brief minute on the froth of the waves of life.
+
+Laughing because they might not weep; laughing because their souls were
+dead; laughing in their conscious travesty of the tragedy of
+pleasure--they tripped and lounged and sauntered along. And the lamps
+shone round them, and above them was the glimmering moon.
+
+As Hugh Ritson went up the steep Haymarket, his infirmity became more
+marked, and he walked with a sliding gait. Seeing this, a woman who
+stood there halted and limped a few paces by his side, and pretending
+not to see him, shouted with a mocking laugh, "What is it--a man or a
+bat?"
+
+How the wild, mad heart of the night leaped up!
+
+A man passed through the throng with eyes that seemed to see nothing of
+its frantic frenzy and joyless joy--a stalwart man, who strode along
+like a giant among midgets, his vacant eyes fixed before him, his strong
+white face expressionless. Hugh Ritson saw him. They passed within two
+paces, but without recognition. The one was wandering aimlessly in his
+blind misery toward the Convent of St. Margaret, the other was making
+for the old inn at Hendon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later Hugh Ritson was standing in the bar of the Hawk and Heron.
+His mind was made up; his resolve was fixed; his plan was complete.
+
+"Anybody with him?" he said to the landlady, motioning toward the
+stairs.
+
+"Not as I knows on, sir, but he do seem that restless and off his
+wittals, and I don't know as I quite understands why--"
+
+Hugh Ritson stopped her garrulous tongue. "I have found the girl. She
+will come back to you to-night, Mrs. Drayton. If she brings with her the
+gentleman who left these boxes in your care, take him to your son's
+bedroom and tell him the person he wishes to see has arrived, and will
+be with him directly."
+
+With this he went up the stairs. Then, calling down, he added: "The
+moment he is in the room come up and tell me."
+
+A minute later he called again: "Where's the key to this door? Let me
+have it."
+
+The landlady hobbled up with the key to Drayton's bedroom; the room was
+empty and the door stood open. Hugh Ritson tried the key in the lock and
+saw that the wards moved freely. "That will do," he said, in a satisfied
+tone.
+
+The old woman was hobbling back. Hugh was standing in thought, with head
+bent, and the nail of his forefinger on his cheek.
+
+"By the way, Mrs. Drayton," he said, "you should get the girl to help
+you a little sometimes."
+
+"Lor's, sir, I never troubles her, being as she's like a visitor."
+
+"Nonsense, Mrs. Drayton. She's young and hearty, and your own years are
+just a little past their best, you know. How's your breathing
+to-day--any easier?"
+
+"Well, I can't say as it's a mort better, neither, thanking you the
+same, sir," and a protracted fit of coughing bore timely witness to the
+landlady's words.
+
+"Ah! that's' a bad bout, my good woman."
+
+"Well, it is, sir; and I get no sympathy, neither--leastways not from
+him as a mother might look to--in a manner of speaking."
+
+"Bethink you. Is there nothing the girl can do for you when she comes?
+Nothing wanted? No errand?"
+
+"Well, sir, taking it kindly, sir, there's them finings in the cellar
+a-wants doing bad, and the boy as ought to do 'em, he's that grumpysome,
+as I declare--"
+
+"Quite right, Mrs. Drayton. Send the girl down to them the moment she
+comes in, and keep her down until bed-time."
+
+"Thank you, sir! I'm sure I takes it very kind and thoughtful of a
+gentleman to say as much, and no call, neither."
+
+The landlady shuffled down-stairs, wagging gratefully her dense old
+noddle; the thoughtful gentleman left the key of Drayton's room in the
+lock on the outside of the door, and ascended a ladder that went up from
+the end of the passage. He knocked at a door at the top. At first there
+was no answer. A dull shuffling of feet could be heard from within.
+"Come, open the door," said Hugh, impatiently.
+
+The door was opened cautiously. Drayton stood behind it. Hugh Ritson
+entered. There was no light in the room; the red, smoking wick of a
+tallow candle, newly extinguished, was filling the air with its stench.
+
+"You take care of yourself," said Hugh. "Let us have a light."
+
+Drayton went down on his knees in the dark, fumbled on the floor for a
+box of lucifers, and relighted the candle. He was in his shirt-sleeves.
+
+"Cold without your coat, eh?" said Hugh. A sneer played about his lips.
+
+Without answering, Drayton turned to a mattress that lay in the gloom of
+one corner, lifted it, took up a coat that lay under it, and put it on.
+It was the ulster with the torn lapel.
+
+Hugh Ritson followed Drayton's movements, and laughed slightly. "Men
+like you are always cautious in the wrong place," he said. "Let them lay
+hands on you, and they won't be long finding your--coat." The last word
+had a contemptuous dig of emphasis.
+
+"Damme if I won't burn it, for good and all," muttered Drayton. His
+manner was dogged and subdued.
+
+"No, you won't do that," said Hugh, and he eyed him largely. The garret
+was empty save for the mattress and the blanket that lay on it, and two
+or three plates, with the refuse of food, on the floor. It was a low
+room, with a skylight in the rake of the roof, which sloped down to a
+sharp angle. There was no window. The walls were half timbered, and had
+once been plastered, but the laths were now bare in many places.
+
+"Heard anything?" said Drayton, doggedly.
+
+"Yes; I called and told the police sergeant that I thought I was on the
+scent."
+
+"What? No!"
+
+The two men looked at each other--Drayton suspicious, Hugh Ritson with
+amused contempt.
+
+"Tell you what, you don't catch me hobnobbing with them gentry," said
+Drayton, recovering his composure.
+
+Hugh Ritson made no other answer than a faint smile. As he looked into
+the face of Drayton, he was telling himself that no man had ever before
+been at the top of such a situation as that of which he himself was then
+the master. Here was a man who was the half-brother of Greta, and the
+living image of her husband. Here was a man who, despite vague
+suspicions, did not know his own identity. Here was a man over whom hung
+an inevitable punishment. Hugh Ritson smiled at the daring idea he had
+conceived of making this man personate himself.
+
+"Drayton," he said, "I mean to stand your friend in this trouble."
+
+"Tell you again, the best friend to me is the man as helps me to make my
+lucky."
+
+"You shall do it, Drayton, this very night. Listen to me. That man, my
+brother, as they call him--Paul Ritson, as his name goes--is not my
+father's son. He is the son of my mother by another man, and his true
+name is Paul Lowther."
+
+"I don't care what his true name is, nor his untrue, neither. It ain't
+nothing to me, say I, and no more is it."
+
+"Would it be anything to you to inherit five thousand pounds?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Paul Lowther is the heir to as much. What would you say if I could put
+you in Paul Lowther's place, and get you Paul Lowther's inheritance?"
+
+"Eh? A fortune out of hand--how?"
+
+"The way I described before."
+
+There was a slight scraping sound, such as a rat might have made in
+burrowing behind the partition.
+
+"What's that?" said Drayton, his face whitening, and his watchful eyes
+glancing toward the door. "A key in the lock?" he whispered.
+
+"Tut! isn't your own key on the inside?" said Hugh Ritson.
+
+Drayton hung his head in shame at his idle fears.
+
+"I know--I haven't forgot," he muttered, covering his discomfiture.
+
+"It's a pity to stay here and be taken, when you might as easily be
+safe," said Hugh.
+
+"So it is," Drayton mumbled.
+
+"And go through penal servitude for life, when another man might do it
+for you," added Hugh, with a ghostly smile.
+
+"I ain't axing you to say it over. What's that?" Drayton cowered down.
+The bankrupt garret had dropped a cake of its rotten plaster. Hugh
+Ritson moved not a muscle; only the sidelong glance told of his contempt
+for the hulking creature's cowardice.
+
+"The lawyer who has charge of this legacy is my friend and comrade," he
+said, after a moment's silence. "We should have no difficulty in that
+quarter. My mother is--Well, she's gone. There would be no one left to
+question you. If you were only half shrewd the path would be clear."
+
+"What about her?"
+
+"Greta? She would be your wife."
+
+"My wife?"
+
+"In name. You would go back, as I told you, and say: 'I, whom you have
+known as Paul Ritson, am really Paul Lowther, and therefore the
+half-brother of the woman with whom I went through the ceremony of
+marriage. This fact I learned immediately on reaching London. I bring
+the lady back as I found her, and shall ask that the marriage--which is
+no marriage--be annulled. I deliver up to the rightful heir, Hugh
+Ritson, the estates of Allan Ritson, and make claim to the legacy left
+me by my father, Robert Lowther.' This is what you have to say and do,
+and every one will praise you for an honest and upright man."
+
+"Very conscientious, no doubt; but what about him?"
+
+"He will then be Paul Drayton, and a felon."
+
+Drayton chuckled. "And what about her?"
+
+"If he is in safe keeping, she will count for nothing."
+
+"So I'm to be Paul Lowther."
+
+"You are to pretend to be Paul Lowther."
+
+"I told you afore, as it won't go into my nob, and no more it will,"
+said Drayton, scratching his head.
+
+"You shall have time to learn your lesson; you shall have it pat," said
+Hugh Ritson. "Meantime--"
+
+At that instant Drayton's eyes were riveted on the skylight with an
+affrighted stare.
+
+"Look yonder!" he whispered.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The face on the roof!"
+
+Hugh Ritson plucked up the candle and thrust it over his head and
+against the glass. "What face?" he said, contemptuously.
+
+Again Drayton's head fell in shame at his abject fear.
+
+There was a shuffling footstep on the ladder outside. Drayton held his
+head aside, and listened. "The old woman," he mumbled. "What now?
+Supper, I suppose."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+At that moment there was a visitor in the bar down-stairs. He was an
+elderly man, with shaggy eyebrows and a wizened face; a diminutive
+creature with a tousled head of black and gray. It was Gubblum
+Oglethorpe. The mountain peddler had traveled south to buy chamois
+leather, and had packed a great quantity of it into a bundle, like a
+panier, which he carried over one arm.
+
+Since the wedding at Newlands, three days ago, Gubblum's lively
+intelligence had run a good deal on his recollection of the man
+resembling Paul Ritson, whom he had once seen in Hendon. He had always
+meant to settle for himself that knotty question. So here, on his first
+visit to London, he intended to put up at the very inn about which the
+mystery gathered.
+
+"How's ta rubbun on?" he said, by way of salute on entering. When Mrs.
+Drayton had gone upstairs she had left the pot-boy in charge of the bar.
+He was a loutish lad of sixteen, and his name was Jabez.
+
+Jabez slowly lifted his eyes from the pewters he was washing, and a
+broad smile crossed his face. Evidently the new-comer was a countryman.
+
+"Cold neet, eh? Sharp as a step-mother's breath," said Gubblum, throwing
+down the panier and drawing up to the fire.
+
+The smile on the face of Jabez broadened perceptibly, and he began to
+chuckle.
+
+"What's ta snertan at, eh?" said Gubblum. "I say it's hot weather varra.
+Hasta owt agenn it?"
+
+Jabez laughed outright. Clearly the countryman must be crazy.
+
+"What's yon daft thingamy aboot?" thought Gubblum. Then aloud, "Ay, my
+lad, gie us a laal sup o' summat."
+
+Jabez found his risible faculties sorely disturbed by this manner of
+speech. But he proceeded to fill a pewter. The pot-boy's movements
+resembled those of a tortoise in celerity.
+
+"He's a stirran lad, yon," thought Gubblum. "He's swaddering like a duck
+in a puddle."
+
+"Can I sleep here to-neet?" he asked, when Jabez had brought him his
+beer.
+
+Then the sapient smile on the pot-boy's face ripened into speech.
+
+"I ain't answering for the sleeping," said Jabez, "but happen you may
+have a bed--he, he, he! I'll ask the missis--he, he, haw!"
+
+"The missis? Hasta never a master, then?" said Gubblum.
+
+Now, Jabez had been warned, with many portentous threats, that in the
+event of any one asking for the master he was to be as mute as the
+grave. So in answer to the peddler's question he merely shook his wise
+head and looked grave and astonishingly innocent.
+
+"No? And how lang hasta been here?"
+
+"Three years come Easter," said Jabez.
+
+"And how lang dusta say 'at missis has been here?"
+
+"Missis? I heard father say as Mistress Drayton has kep' the Hawk and
+Heron this five-and-twenty year."
+
+"Five-and-twenty! Then I reckon that master would be no'but a laal wee
+barn when she coomt first," said Gubblum.
+
+"Happen he were," said Jabez. Then, recovering the caution so
+unexpectedly disturbed, Jabez protested afresh that he had no master.
+
+"It's slow wark suppen buttermilk wi' a pitchfork," thought Gubblum, and
+he proceeded to employ a spoon.
+
+"Sista, my lad, wadsta like me to lend thee a shilling?"
+
+Jabez grinned, and closed his fat fist on the coin thrust into his palm.
+
+"I once knew a man as were the varra spitten picter of your master,"
+said Gubblum. "In fact, his varra sel', upsett'n and doon thross'n. I
+thowt it were hissel', that's the fact. But when I tackled him he
+threept me down, and I was that vexed I could have bitten the side out
+of a butter-bowl."
+
+"But I ain't got no master," protested Jabez.
+
+"I were riding by on my laal pony that day, but now I'm going shankum
+naggum," continued Gubblum, unmindful of the pot-boy's mighty innocent
+look. "'A canny morning to you, Master Paul,' I shouted, and on I went."
+
+"Then you know his name?" said Jabez, opening wide his drowsy eyes.
+
+"'Master Paul's half his time frae home,' says the chap on t'road.
+'Coorse he is,' I says: 'it's me for knowing that,' Ah, I mind it same
+as it were yesterday. I looked back, and there he was standing at the
+door, and he just snitit his nose wi' his finger and thoom. Ey, he did,
+for sure."
+
+Jabez found his conscience abnormally active at that moment. "But I
+ain't got none," he protested afresh.
+
+"None what?"
+
+"No master."
+
+"That's a lie, my lad, for I see he's been putten a swine ring on yer
+snout to keep ye frae rooting up the ground."
+
+After this Gubblum sat a good half-hour in silence. Mrs. Drayton came
+down-stairs and arranged that Gubblum should sleep that night in the
+house. His bedroom was to be a little room at the back, entered from the
+vicinity of the ladder that led to the attics.
+
+Gubblum got up, said he was tired, and asked to be shown to his room.
+Jabez lighted a candle, and they went off together.
+
+"Whereiver does that lead to?" said Gubblum, pointing to the ladder near
+his bedroom door.
+
+"I dunno," said Jabez, moodily. He had been ruminating on Gubblum's
+observation about the swine ring.
+
+"He's as sour as vargis," thought Gubblum.
+
+There was the creak of a footstep overhead.
+
+"Who sleeps in the pigeon loft?" Gubblum asked, tipping his finger
+upward.
+
+"I dunno," repeated Jabez.
+
+"His dander's up," thought Gubblum.
+
+Just then the landlady in the bar heard the sound of wheels on the road,
+and the next moment a carriage drew up at the open door.
+
+"I say there, lend a hand here, quick!" shouted the driver.
+
+Mrs. Drayton hobbled up. The flyman was leaning through the door of the
+fly, helping some one to alight.
+
+"Take a' arm, missy; there, that's the size of it. Now, sir, down,
+gently."
+
+The person assisted was a man. The light from the bar fell on his face,
+and the landlady saw him clearly. It was Paul Ritson. He was flushed,
+and his eyes were bloodshot. Behind him was Mercy Fisher, with recent
+tears on her cheeks.
+
+"Oh, he's ill, Mrs. Drayton," said Mercy.
+
+Paul freed one of his arms from the grasp of the girl, waved with a
+gesture of deprecation, smiled a jaunty smile, and said:
+
+"No, no, no; let me walk; I'm well--I'm well."
+
+With this he made for the house, but before he had taken a second step
+he staggered and fell against the door-jamb.
+
+"Deary me, deary me, the poor gentleman's taken badly," said Mrs.
+Drayton, fussing about.
+
+Paul Ritson laughed a little, lifted his red eyes, and said:
+
+"Well, well! But it's nothing. Just dizzy, that's all. And
+thirsty--very--give me a drink, good woman."
+
+"Bring that there bench up, missy, and we'll put him astride it," said
+the driver. "Right; that's the time o' day. Now, sir, down."
+
+"Deary me, deary me, drink this, my good gentleman. It'll do you a mort
+o' good. It's brandy."
+
+"Water--bring me water," said Paul Ritson, feebly; "I'm parched."
+
+"How hot his forehead is," said Mercy.
+
+"And no light 'un to lift, neither," said the driver. "Does he live
+here, missis?"
+
+Mrs. Drayton brought a glass of water. Paul drained it to the last drop.
+
+"No, sir; I mean yes, driver," said the landlady, confusedly.
+
+"He warn't so bad getting in," the driver observed.
+
+"Oh, dear, oh, dear! where is Mr. Christian--Parson Christian?" said
+Mercy, whose distracted eyes wandered around.
+
+"The gentleman's come, sir; he's upstairs, sir," said the landlady, and,
+muttering to herself, Mrs. Drayton hobbled away.
+
+Paul Ritson's head had fallen on his breast. His hat was off, and his
+hair tumbled over his face. The strong man sat coiled up on the bench.
+Then he shook himself and threw up his head, as if trying to cast off
+the weight of stupor that sat on him.
+
+"Well, well! who'd have thought of this? Water--more water!" he mumbled
+in a thick voice.
+
+Mercy stood before him with a glass in her hand.
+
+"Is it good for him, I wonder?" she said. "Oh, where is Mr. Christian?"
+
+Paul Ritson saw the glass, clutched at it with both hands, then smiled a
+poor, weak smile, as if to atone for his violence, and drank every drop.
+
+"Well, well!--so hot--and dizzy--and cold!" he muttered, incoherently.
+
+Then he relapsed into silence. After a moment, the driver, who was
+supporting him at the back, looked over at his face. The eyes were
+closed, and the lips were hanging.
+
+"He's gone off unconscious," said the flyman. "Ain't ye got a bed
+handy?"
+
+At that moment Mrs. Drayton came hastily down-stairs, in a fever of
+agitation.
+
+"You've got to get him up to his room," she said, between gusts of
+breath.
+
+"That's a job for two men, ain't it, missis?" said the driver.
+
+Mercy had loosened Paul's collar, and with a nervous hand she was
+bathing his burning forehead.
+
+"Oh, tell Mr. Christian," she said; "say he has fainted."
+
+Mrs. Drayton hobbled back. In another instant there was a man's step
+descending the stairs. Hugh Ritson entered the bar. He looked down at
+the unconscious man and felt his pulse. "When did this happen?" he
+asked, turning to Mercy.
+
+"He said he was feeling ill when I met him; then he was worse in the
+train, and when we reached Hendon he was too dizzy to stand," said
+Mercy.
+
+"His young woman, ain't it?" said the flyman, aside, to Hugh.
+
+Hugh nodded his head slightly. Then, turning toward Mrs. Drayton, with a
+significant glance, "Your poor son is going to be ill," he said.
+
+The landlady glanced back with a puzzled expression, and began in a
+blundering whimper, "The poor gentleman--"
+
+"The old lady's son?" said the flyman, tipping his finger in the
+direction of the landlady.
+
+"Paul Drayton," said Hugh.
+
+Mercy saw and heard all. The tears suddenly dried in her eyes, which
+opened wide in amazement. She said nothing.
+
+Hugh caught the altered look in her face.
+
+"Mrs. Drayton," he said, "didn't you say you had something urgent for
+Mercy to do? Let her set about it at once. Now, driver, lend a
+hand--upstairs; it's only a step."
+
+They lifted Paul Ritson between them, and were carrying him out of the
+bar.
+
+"Where's the boy?" asked Hugh. "Don't let him get in the way. Boys are
+more hindrance than help," he added, in an explanatory tone.
+
+They had reached the foot of the stair. "Now, my man, easy--heavy, eh?
+rather."
+
+They went up. Mercy stood in the middle of the floor with a tearless and
+whitening face.
+
+Half a minute later Hugh Ritson and the flyman had returned to the bar.
+The phantom of a smile lurked about the flyman's mouth. Hugh Ritson's
+face was ashen, and his lips quivered.
+
+The boxes and portmanteaus which Paul and Greta had left in the bar
+three nights ago still lay in one corner. Hugh pointed them out to the
+driver. "Put them on top of the cab," he said. The flyman proceeded to
+do so.
+
+When the man was outside the door, Hugh Ritson turned to Mrs. Drayton.
+The landlady was fussing about, twitching her apron between nervous
+fingers. "Mrs. Drayton," said Hugh, "you will go in this fly to the
+Convent of St. Margaret, Westminster. There you will ask for Mrs.
+Ritson, the lady who was here on Friday night. You will tell her that
+you have her luggage with you, and that she is to go with you to St.
+Pancras Station to meet her husband, and return to Cumberland by the
+midnight train. You understand?"
+
+"I can't say as I do, sir, asking pardon, sir. If so be as the lady axes
+why her husband didn't come for her hisself--what then?"
+
+"Then say what is true--nothing more, Mrs. Drayton."
+
+"And happen what may that be, sir?"
+
+"That her husband is ill--but mind--not seriously."
+
+"Oh, well, I can speak to that, sir, being as I saw the poor gentleman."
+
+Mrs. Drayton was putting on her bonnet and shawl. The flyman had fixed
+the luggage on top of the cab, and was standing in the bar, whip in
+hand.
+
+"A glass for the driver," said Hugh. Mrs. Drayton moved toward the
+counter. "No, you get into the cab, Mrs. Drayton; Mercy will serve."
+
+Mercy went behind the counter and served the liquor in an absent manner.
+
+"It's now ten-thirty," said Hugh, looking at his watch. "You will drive
+first to the convent, Westminster, and from there to St. Pancras, to
+catch the train at twelve."
+
+Saying this, he walked to the door and put his head through the window
+of the cab. The landlady was settling herself in her seat. "Mrs.
+Drayton," he whispered, "you must not utter a syllable about your son
+when you see the lady. Mind that. You understand?"
+
+"Well, sir, I can't say--being as I saw the gentleman--wherever's Paul?"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+The driver came out. He leaped to his seat. In another moment the cab
+rattled away.
+
+Hugh Ritson walked back into the house. The boy Jabez had come
+down-stairs. "When do you close the house?" Hugh asked.
+
+"Eleven o'clock, sir," said Jabez.
+
+"No one here--you might almost as well close now. No matter--go behind
+the bar, my lad. Mercy, your eyes are more inflamed than ever; get away
+to bed immediately."
+
+Mercy's eyes were not more red than their expression was one of
+bewilderment. She moved off mechanically. When she reached the foot of
+the stairs she turned and tried to speak. The words would not come. At
+length she said, in a strange voice: "You did not tell me the truth."
+
+"Mercy!"
+
+"Where's Parson Christian?" said Mercy, and her voice grew stern.
+
+"You must not use that tone to me. Come, get away to bed, little one."
+
+Her eyes dropped before his. She turned away. He watched her up the
+stairs. So sure of hand was he that not even at that moment did he doubt
+his hold of her. But Mercy did not go to bed. She turned in at the open
+door of Drayton's room. The room was dark; only a fitful ray of bleared
+moonlight fell crosswise on the floor; but she could see that the
+unconscious figure of Paul Ritson lay stretched upon the bed.
+
+"And I have led you here with a lie!" she thought. Then her head swam
+and fell on to the counterpane. Some minutes passed in silence. She was
+aroused by footsteps in the passage outside. They were coming toward
+this room. The door, which stood ajar, was pushed open. There was no
+time for Mercy to escape, so she crept back into the darkness of a
+narrow space between the foot of the bed and the wall.
+
+Two men entered. Mercy realized their presence in the dark room rather
+by the sense of touch than by the sense of hearing or sight. They walked
+lightly, the darkness hid them, but the air seemed heavy with their hot
+breath. One of them approached the bedside; Mercy felt the bed quiver.
+The man leaned over it, and there was a pause. Only the scarcely
+perceptible breathing of the insensible man fell on the silence.
+
+"He's safe enough still," said a voice that thrilled her through and
+through. "Now for it--there's no time to lose!"
+
+The girl crouched down and held her breath.
+
+"Damme if I ain't wishing myself well out of it!" muttered another
+voice.
+
+Mercy knew both men. They were Hugh Ritson and Paul Drayton.
+
+Hugh closed the door. "What simpleton says fortune favors the brave?"
+he said, in a low, derisive tone. "Here is fortune at the feet of a man
+like you!"
+
+Drayton growled, and Mercy heard the oath that came from beneath his
+breath. "I'm wanting to be out of this, and I ain't ashamed for you to
+know it."
+
+Hugh Ritson's light laugh came from the bedside. He was still standing
+by Paul Ritson's head. "If the lord mayor came for you in his carriage,
+with a guard of flunkies, you would leave this house in less safety," he
+said. Then he added, impatiently: "Come, waste no words; strip off that
+tell-tale coat."
+
+With this he leaned over the bed, and there was a creak of the spring
+mattress.
+
+"What's that?" said Drayton, in an affrighted tone.
+
+"For God's sake, be a man!" said Hugh, bitterly.
+
+"D'ye call this a man's work?" muttered Drayton.
+
+The light laugh once more. "Perhaps not so manly as robbing the dead and
+dying," said Hugh Ritson, and his voice was deep and cold.
+
+Mercy heard another muttered oath. Dear God! what was about to be done?
+Could she escape? The door was closed. Still, if she could but reach it,
+she might open it and fly away.
+
+At that instant, Hugh Ritson, as if apprehending her thought, said,
+"Wait," and then stepped back to the door and drew the snap bolt. Mercy
+leaned against the wall, and heard the beating of her heart. In the
+darkness she knew that Paul Drayton had thrown off his coat. "A good
+riddance!" he muttered, and the heavy garment fell with a thud.
+
+Hugh Ritson had returned to the bed-head. "Give me a hand," he said;
+"raise him gently--there, I'll hold him up--now draw off his
+coat--quietly, one arm at a time. Is it free? Then, lift--away."
+
+Another heavy garment fell with a thud.
+
+"What's the fence got in his other pockets, eh?"
+
+"Come, lend your hand again--draw off the boots--they're Cumberland
+make, and yours are cockney style--quick!"
+
+Drayton stepped to the bottom of the bed and fumbled at the feet of the
+insensible man. He was then within a yard of the spot where the girl
+stood. She could feel his proximity, and the alcoholic fumes of his
+breath rose to her nostrils. She was dizzy, and thought she must have
+fallen. She stretched out one hand to save herself, and it fell on to
+the bed-rail. It was within a foot of Drayton's arm.
+
+"Take off his stockings--they're homespun--while I remove the cravat.
+The pin was a present; it has his name engraved on the plate behind."
+
+The slant of the moonlight had died off the floor, and all was dark.
+
+Drayton's craven fears seemed to leave him. He laughed and crowed. "How
+quiet the fence is--very obliging, I'm sure--just fainted in the nick of
+time. Will it last?"
+
+"Quick! strip off your own clothes and put them where these have come
+from. The coat with the torn lapel--where is it? Make no mistake about
+that."
+
+"I'll pound it, no!" Drayton laughed a short, hoarse laugh.
+
+There was some shuffling in the darkness. Then a pause.
+
+"Hush!"
+
+Mercy knew that Hugh Ritson had grasped the arm of Drayton, and that
+both held their breath. At that moment the moonlight returned, and the
+bleared shaft that had once crossed the floor now crossed the bed. The
+light fell on the face of the prostrate man. His eyes were open.
+
+"Water--water!" said Paul Ritson, very feebly.
+
+Hugh Ritson stepped out of the moonlight and went behind his brother.
+Then Mercy saw a hand before Paul's face, putting a spirit flask to his
+mouth.
+
+When the hand was raised the face twitched slightly, the eyes closed
+with a convulsive tremor, and the half-lifted head fell back on to the
+pillow.
+
+"He'll be quieter than ever now," said Hugh Ritson, softly. Mercy
+thought she must have screamed, but the instinct of self-preservation
+kept her still. She stirred not a limb. Her head rested against the
+wall, her eyes peered into the darkness, her parched tongue and parted
+lips burned like fire.
+
+"Quick! put his clothes on to your own back, and let us be gone."
+
+Drayton drew on the garments and laughed hoarsely. "And a good fit,
+too--same make of a man to a T--ex--act--ly!"
+
+The window and the door stood face to face; the bed was on the left of
+the door, with the head at the door-end. The narrow alcove in which the
+girl stood was to the left of the window, and in front of the window
+there was a dressing-table. Drayton stepped up to this table to fix the
+cravat by the glass. The faint moonlight that fell on his grinning face
+was reflected dimly into the mirror.
+
+At that moment Mercy's sickening eyes turned toward the bed. There, in
+repose that was like death itself, lay the upturned face of Paul Ritson.
+Two faces cast by nature in the same mold--one white and serene and
+peaceful, the other bloated, red, smirking, distorted by passion, with
+cruel eyes and smoking lips.
+
+"The very thing--the very thing--damme if his own mother wouldn't take
+me for her son!"
+
+Hugh Ritson stepped to Drayton's side. When he spoke his voice was like
+a cold blast of wind.
+
+"Now listen: From this moment at which you change your coat for his you
+cease to be Paul Drayton, and become Paul Ritson."
+
+"Didn't you say I was to be Paul Lowther?"
+
+"That will come later."
+
+"As I say, it won't go into my nob."
+
+"No matter; say nothing to yourself but this, 'I am to pretend to be
+Paul Ritson.'"
+
+"Well, now for it!"
+
+"Ready?" asked Hugh. He returned to the bed-head.
+
+"Ready."
+
+"Then give a hand here. We must put him up into your garret. When the
+police come for him he must seem to be in hiding and in drink. You
+understand?"
+
+A low, hoarse laugh was the only answer.
+
+Then they lifted the unconscious man from the bed, opened the door, and
+carried him into the passage.
+
+Mercy recovered her stunned senses. When the men were gone she crept out
+on tiptoe and tripped down the passage to her own room. At the door she
+reeled and fell heavily. Then, in a vague state of consciousness, she
+heard these words passed over her--"Carry her back into her room and
+lock her in." At the same instant she felt herself being lifted in a
+strong man's arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Before Gubblum Oglethorpe parted with Jabez, he tried to undo the
+mischief he had done. "Give us a shak' o' thy daddle," he said, holding
+out his hand. But Jabez had not forgotten the similitude of the swine
+ring. He made no response.
+
+"Dang him for a fool!" thought Gubblum. "He's as daft as a besom." Then
+Gubblum remembered with what lavish generosity he had bribed the pot-boy
+to no purpose. "He cover't a shilling dammish," he thought; "I'll dang
+his silly head off!"
+
+Jabez put down the candle and backed out of the room, his eyes fixed on
+the peddler with a ghostly stare.
+
+"You needn't boggle at me. I'll none hurt ye," said Gubblum. Jabez
+pulled the door after him. "His head's no'but a lump of puddin' and a
+daub o' pancake," thought Gubblum.
+
+Then the peddler sat on the bed and began to wonder what possible reason
+there might be for the lad's sudden change of temper. He sat long, and
+many crude notions trotted through his brain. At last he recalled the
+fact that he had said something about Jabez's snout carrying a swine
+ring. That was the rub, sure enough. "I mak' no doobt he thowt it was a
+by-wipe," thought Gubblum.
+
+Just as the peddler had arrived at this sapient conclusion, he heard
+heavy footsteps ascending and descending the ladder that stood in the
+passage outside. Gubblum understood the sounds to mean that the inn was
+so full of visitors that some of them had to be lodged even in the
+loft. "Ey, I shouldn't wonder but this is a bonny paying consarn," he
+thought.
+
+He undressed, got into bed, and blew out his light. He lay awhile
+waiting for sleep, and thinking of the failure of his plummets to sound
+the depths of Jabez. Then he remembered with vexation that the lad had
+even laughed at him in spite of the "shilling dammish."
+
+"Shaf, it was no'but his guts crowkin'," thought Gubblum; and he rolled
+over, face to the wall, and began to pay nasal tribute to sleep.
+
+From the slowly tightening grip of unconsciousness Gubblum was roused to
+sudden wakefulness. There was a noise as of heavy shuffling feet outside
+his door. The peddler raised himself and listened.
+
+"Too dark in this corner," said a voice. "Get a light."
+
+Gubblum crept out of bed, held his head to the door, and listened.
+
+There were retreating steps. Then the man who had spoken before spoke
+again. "Quick, there! we must catch the train at eleven fifteen."
+
+The voice pealed in Gubblum's memory. He knew it. It was the voice of
+the last man he should have looked for in this house--Hugh Ritson.
+
+Presently the footsteps approached, and thin fingers of light shot over
+Gubblum's head into his dark room. He looked up at the door. Three small
+round holes had been pierced into the styles for ventilation.
+
+"Put the candle on the floor and take the feet--I'll go up first," said
+the same voice.
+
+Gubblum raised himself on tiptoe and tried to peer through the
+perforations. He was too small a man to see through. There was a chair
+by the side of his bed, and his extinguished candle stood on it. He
+removed the candlestick, lifted the chair cautiously, placed its back to
+the door, and mounted it. Then he saw all.
+
+There were two men, and he knew both--the brothers Ritson. Ah! had he
+not said that Paul Ritson kept this inn? "I'll shut up the whole boilin'
+of 'em next time," thought the peddler, "Wait! what are they lugging
+into the pigeon loft?"
+
+"Easy!--damme, but the fence is a weight!"
+
+It was the hoarse voice of the other man. The candle was behind him and
+on the floor. It cast its light on his back. "If I could no'but get a
+blink frae the cannel, I'd see what's atween them," thought Gubblum.
+
+The men with their burden were now at the top of the ladder.
+
+"Twist about, and go in sideways," muttered the voice first heard.
+
+The man below twisted. This movement brought the full light of the
+candle on to the faces of all three.
+
+"Lord A'mighty, whativer's this?" Gubblum thought.
+
+The burden was a man's body. But it was the face that startled the
+peddler--the face of Paul Ritson.
+
+Gubblum's eyes passed over the group in one quick glance. He saw two
+Paul Ritsons there, and one of them lay as still as the dead.
+
+A minute more of awful tension, and the door of the loft above was
+slammed and shut, the heavy feet of the two men descended the ladder
+quickly, and went down the stairs into the bar.
+
+Gubblum listened as if with every sense. He knew that the outer door to
+the road had opened and closed. He heard footsteps dying away in the
+distance without. All was silent within the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two men hastening in the night to the Hendon railway station paused at
+that turn of the road which leads to the police offices and jail.
+
+"You go on and take care of yourself--I'll follow in five minutes," said
+one.
+
+"You ain't going to give a man away?" said the other.
+
+There was only a contemptuous snort for answer. The first speaker had
+turned on his heel. When he reached the police offices, he rang the
+bell. The door was answered by a sergeant in plain clothes. "I've found
+your man for you," said Hugh Ritson.
+
+"Where, sir?"
+
+"At the Hawk and Heron."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Paul Drayton. You'll find him lying in the garret at the west end of
+the gable--drunk. Lose not an hour. Go at once."
+
+"Is the gentleman who struggled with him still staying there--Mr. Paul
+Ritson?"
+
+"No; he goes back home to-night."
+
+"What's his address in the country?"
+
+"The Ghyll, Newlands, Cumberland."
+
+"And yours, sir?"
+
+"I am his brother, Hugh Ritson, and my address is the same."
+
+"We'll go this instant."
+
+"Well, take your piece of frieze with you and see if it fits. It was by
+the torn ulster that I recognized your man. Good-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+As soon as the noise of the retiring steps had died away on Gubblum's
+ear, he dressed himself partially, opened the door of his bedroom
+cautiously, and stepped into the passage. He was still in the dark, and
+groping with one hand, he felt for the ladder by which the two men had
+carried their burden to the loft above. He had grasped the lowest rungs
+of it, and was already some steps up, when he heard a singular noise. It
+was something between the cry of a child and the deep moan of a sick
+man. Did it come from the loft? Gubblum held his head in that direction
+and listened. No; the sound was from the other end of the passage. Now
+it was gone, and all was quiet. What a strange house was this!
+
+"Can't see a styme," thought Gubblum. "I'll away for the cannel."
+
+Back in his bedroom he struck a match, and then stepped afresh into the
+passage, guarding the newly lighted candle with the palm of his hand.
+Then there came a shrill cry. It seemed to be before him, above him,
+behind him, everywhere about him. Gubblum's knees gave way, but the
+stubborn bit of heart in him was not to be shaken.
+
+"A rayder queerly sort of a house," he thought; and at that instant
+there were heavy lunges at a door at the further end of the passage, and
+a cry of "Help! help!"
+
+Gubblum darted in the direction of the voice.
+
+"Let me out!" cried the voice from within.
+
+Gubblum tried the door. It was locked.
+
+"Help! help!" came again.
+
+"In a sniffer; rest ye a bit!" shouted Gubblum, and putting the light on
+the floor, he planted his shoulder against the door, and one foot
+against the opposite wall.
+
+"Help! help! let me out! quick, quick!" came once more from within.
+
+"Sec a skrummidge!" shouted Gubblum, panting for breath.
+
+Then the lock gave way and the door flew open. In the midst of the bad
+light Gubblum saw nothing at first. Then a woman with wild eyes and a
+face of anguish came out on him from the dark room. It was Mercy Fisher.
+
+When they recognized each other there was a moment of silence. But it
+was only a moment, and that moment was too precious to be lost. In a
+flood of tears the girl told him what had happened.
+
+Gubblum understood no more than that villainy had been at work. Mercy
+saw nothing but that she had been deceived and had been herself the
+instrument of deception. This was enough.
+
+"The raggabrash! I'd like to rozzle their backs with an ash stick," said
+Gubblum.
+
+"Oh, where have they taken him--where, where?" cried Mercy, wringing her
+hands.
+
+"Don't put on wi' thee--I know," said Gubblum. "I questit them up the
+stairs. Come along wi' me, lass, and don't slobber and yowl like a
+barn."
+
+Gubblum whipped up his candle, and hurried along the passage and up the
+ladder like a monkey, Mercy following at his heels.
+
+"Belike they've locked this door forby," he said.
+
+But no, the key was in the lock. Gubblum turned it and pushed it open.
+Then he peered into the garret, holding the candle above his head. When
+the light penetrated the darkness, they saw a man's figure outstretched
+on a mattress that lay on the bare floor of the empty room. They ran up
+to it, and raised the head.
+
+"It's his fadder's son, I'll uphod thee," said Gubblum. "And yon
+riff-raff, his spitten picter, is no'but some wastrel merry-begot."
+
+Mercy was down on her knees beside the insensible man, chafing his
+hands. There was a tremulous movement of the eyelids.
+
+"Sista, he's coming tul't. Slip away for watter, lass," said Gubblum.
+
+Mercy was gone and back in an instant.
+
+"Let a be, let a be--he'll come round in a crack. Rub his forehead--stir
+thy hand, lass--pour the watter--there, that's enough--plenty o' butter
+wad sto a dog. Sista, he's coming tul't fast."
+
+Paul Ritson had opened his eyes.
+
+"Slip away for mair watter, lass--there, that's summat like--rest ye, my
+lad--a drink?--ey, a sup o' watter."
+
+Paul looked around him. His filmy eyes were full of questions. But at
+first his tongue would not speak. He looked up at the bare skylight and
+around at the bleached walls, and then back into the face of the
+peddler. He noticed Mercy, and smiled.
+
+"Where are we, my girl?" he said, faintly.
+
+"This is the Hawk and Heron," she answered.
+
+"How do I come to be here?" he asked.
+
+Mercy covered her face, and sobbed.
+
+"I brought you," she said, at length.
+
+Paul looked at her a moment with bewildered eyes. Then the tide of
+memory flowed back upon his mind.
+
+"I remember," he said, quietly; "I was feeling dizzy--hadn't slept two
+nights--not even been in bed--walked the streets the long hours
+through."
+
+Everything had rushed over him in a moment, and he closed his eyes with
+a deep groan. At his feet Mercy buried her face and sobbed aloud.
+
+Paul drew himself feebly up on his elbow.
+
+"Where is Parson Christian?" he asked, and gazed around, with a faint
+smile.
+
+The girl's anguish overflowed.
+
+"That was a lie I told you," she sobbed.
+
+The smile fled away.
+
+"A lie! Why a lie?"
+
+He was struggling with a dazed sense.
+
+"I told you that Parson Christian was here and wanted you. He is not
+here."
+
+And Mercy's weeping seemed to choke her.
+
+"My good girl, and why?"
+
+"They brought you to this room and left you, and now they are gone."
+
+"They! Who?"
+
+"Your brother Hugh and Mr. Drayton."
+
+Paul looked deadly sick at heart.
+
+"Who is this Drayton?"
+
+"The spitten picter of yourself, my lad," said Gubblum; "the man I telt
+ye of lang ago--him as keeps this house."
+
+Paul's eyes wandered vacantly. His nervous fingers twitched at the
+ulster that he wore.
+
+"What's this?" he said, and glanced down at his altered dress.
+
+"When you were insensible they stripped you of your clothes and put
+others on you," said Mercy.
+
+"Whose clothes are these?"
+
+"Mr. Drayton's."
+
+Paul Ritson rose to his feet.
+
+"Where are the men?" he said, in a husky voice.
+
+"Gone."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To the station--that was all I heard."
+
+Paul gazed about with hazy eyes. Mercy flung herself at his feet and
+wept bitterly.
+
+"Forgive me! oh, forgive me!"
+
+He looked down at her with a confused expression. His brain was
+benumbed. He drew one arm across his face as though struggling to
+recover some lost link of memory.
+
+"Why, my good lass, what's this?" he said, and then smiled faintly and
+made an attempt to raise her up.
+
+"Who is at the convent at Westminster?" she asked.
+
+Then all his manner changed.
+
+"Why?--what of that?" he said.
+
+"Mrs. Drayton was sent there in a cab to tell Mrs. Ritson to be at St.
+Pancras Station at midnight to meet her husband and return to
+Cumberland."
+
+The face that had been pale became suddenly old and ghastly. There was
+an awful silence.
+
+"Is this the truth?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, yes," cried the girl.
+
+"I think I see it all now--I think I understand," he faltered.
+
+"Forgive me!" cried the girl.
+
+He seemed hardly to see her.
+
+"I have been left in this room insensible, and the impostor who
+resembles me--where is he now?"
+
+He struggled with the sickness that was mastering him. His brain reeled.
+The palms of his hands became damp. He staggered and leaned against the
+wall.
+
+"Rest ye a bit, my lad," said Gubblum. "You'll be gitten stanch agen
+soon."
+
+He recovered his feet. His face was charged with new anger.
+
+"And the wicked woman who trapped me to this house is still here," he
+said, in a voice thick with wrath.
+
+"Forgive me! forgive me!" wept the girl at his feet.
+
+He took her firmly by the shoulders, raised her to her knees, and turned
+her face upward till her eyes met his.
+
+"Let me look at her," he said, hoarsely. "Who would have believed it?"
+
+"Forgive me! forgive me!" cried the girl.
+
+"Woman, woman! what had I done to you--what, what?"
+
+The girl's sobs alone made answer.
+
+In his rage he took her by the throat. A fearful purpose was written in
+his face.
+
+"And this is the woman who bowed down the head of her old father nigh to
+the grave," he said, bitterly, and flung her from him.
+
+Then he staggered back. His little strength had left him. There was
+silence. Only the girl's weeping could be heard.
+
+The next instant, strangely calm, without a tear in his sad eyes, he
+stepped to her side and raised her to her feet.
+
+"I was wrong," he said; "surely I was wrong. You could not lie to me
+like that, and know it. No, no, no!"
+
+"They told me what I told you," said the girl.
+
+"And I blamed you for it all, poor girl."
+
+"Then you forgive me?" she said, lifting her eyes timidly.
+
+"Forgive you?--ask God to forgive you, girl. I am only a man, and you
+have wrecked my life."
+
+There was a foot on the ladder, and Jabez, the boy, stepped up, a candle
+in his hand. He had been waiting for the landlady, when he heard voices
+overhead.
+
+"The varra man!" shouted Gubblum. "Didsta see owt of thy master
+down-stairs?"
+
+Jabez grinned, and glanced up at Paul Ritson.
+
+"Hark ye, laal man, didsta see two men leaving the house a matter of
+fifteen minutes ago?"
+
+"Belike I did," said Jabez. "And to be sure it were the gentleman that
+come here afore--and another one."
+
+"Another one--your master, you mean?"
+
+Jabez grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"Didsta hear owt?"
+
+"I heard the gentleman say they had to be at St. Pancras at midnight."
+
+Paul fumbled at his breast for his watch. It was gone.
+
+"What's o'clock?" he asked.
+
+"Fifteen after eleven, master," said Jabez. "I've just bolted up."
+
+Paul's face was full of resolution.
+
+"I'll follow," he said; "I've lost time enough already."
+
+"What, man! you'll never manish it--and you as weak as watter forby.
+You'll be falling swat in the road like a wet sack."
+
+Paul had pulled the door open. Excitement lent him strength. The next
+moment he was gone.
+
+"Where's the master off to? St. Pancras?" asked Jabez.
+
+"Fadge-te-fadge, gang out of my gate! Away, and lig down your daft head
+in bed!" said Gubblum.
+
+Jabez did not act on the peddler's advice. He returned to the bar to
+await the return of Mrs. Drayton, whose unaccustomed absence gave rise
+to many sapient conjectures in the boy's lachrymose noddle. He found
+the door to the road open, and from this circumstance his swift
+intelligence drew the conclusion that his master had already gone. His
+hand was on the door to close and bolt it, when he heard rapid footsteps
+approaching. In an instant two men pushed past him and into the house.
+
+"Where's Mr. Drayton," said one, panting from his run.
+
+"He's this minute gone," said Jabez.
+
+"Is that true, my lad?" the man asked, laying a hand on the boy's
+shoulder.
+
+"He's gone to St. Pancras, sir. He's got to be there at midnight," said
+Jabez.
+
+The boy had recognized the visitors, and was trembling.
+
+The men glanced into each other's faces.
+
+"That was Drayton--the man that ran past us down the road," said one.
+
+"Make sure of it," said the other. "Search the place; I'll wait for you
+here."
+
+In two minutes more the men had left the house together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A quarter of an hour later the night porter at the Hendon railway
+station saw a man run across the platform and leap into the up train
+just as the carriages were moving away. He remarked that the man was
+bareheaded, and wore his clothes awry, and that a rent near the collar
+of his long frieze ulster exposed a strip of red flannel lining. He
+thought he knew him.
+
+The train had barely cleared the platform when two men ran up and came
+suddenly to a stand in front of the porter.
+
+"Gone!" said one of them, with vexation.
+
+"That would be the 11:35," said the other, "to King's Cross. Did any one
+get into it here, porter?"
+
+"Yes, sergeant--Drayton, of the Hawk and Heron," said the porter.
+
+"Your next up is 11:45 to St. Pancras?"
+
+"Yes, sir, due at twelve."
+
+"Is it prompt?"
+
+"To the second."
+
+The two men faced about.
+
+"Time enough yet," said one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+The cab that drove Mrs. Drayton into London carried with it a world of
+memories. Thought in her old head was like the dip of a sea-bird in the
+sea--now here, now there, now a straight flight, and now a backward
+swirl. As she rattled over the dark roads of Child Hill and the New End,
+she puzzled her confused brain to understand the business on which she
+had been sent. Why had the gentleman been brought out to Hendon? Why,
+being ill, was he so soon to be removed? Why, being removed, was he not
+put back into this cab, and driven to the station for Cumberland? What
+purpose could be served by sending her to the convent for the
+gentleman's wife, when the gentleman himself might have been driven
+there? Why was the lady in a convent? The landlady pursed up her lips
+and contracted her wrinkled brows in a vain endeavor to get light out of
+the gloom of these mysteries.
+
+The thought of the gentleman lying ill at her house suggested many
+thoughts concerning her son. Paul was not her son, and his name was not
+Drayton. Whose son he was she never knew, and what his name was she had
+never heard. But she had fixed and done for him since he was a baby, and
+no mother could have loved a son more than she had loved her Paul. What
+a poor, puling little one he was, and how the neighbors used to shake
+their heads and say:
+
+"You'll never rear it; there's a fate on it, poor, misbegotten mite!"
+
+That was thirty long years ago, and now Paul was the lustiest young man
+in Hendon. Ah! it was not Hendon then, but London, and her husband, the
+good man, was alive and hearty.
+
+"It'll thrive yet, Martha," he would say, and the little one would seem
+to know him, and would smile and crow when he cracked his fingers over
+its cot.
+
+Then the landlady thought of the dark days that followed, when bread was
+scarce and the gossips would say:
+
+"Serve you right. What for do you have an extra mouth to feed?--take the
+brat to the foundling."
+
+But her husband, God bless him, had always said:
+
+"What's bite and sup for a child? Keep him, Martha; he'll be a comfort
+to ye yet, old woman."
+
+Mrs. Drayton wiped her eyes as she drove in the dark.
+
+Then the bad times changed, and they left the town and took the inn at
+Hendon, and then the worst times of all came on them, for as soon as
+they were snug and comfortable the good man himself died. He lay dying a
+week, and when the end came he cried for the child.
+
+"Give me the boy," he said, and she lifted the child into his arms in
+bed. Then he raised his thin white hand to stroke the wavy hair, but the
+poor hand fell into the little one's face.
+
+Mrs. Drayton shifted in her seat, and tried to drive away the memories
+that trod on the heels of these recollections; but the roads were still
+dark, and nothing but an empty sky was to be seen, and the memories
+would not be driven away. She recalled the days when young Paul grew to
+be a lusty lad--daring, reckless, the first in mischief, the deepest in
+trouble. And there was no man's hand to check him, and people shook
+their heads and whispered, "He'll come to a bad end; he has the
+wickedness in his blood." Poor lad, it was not his fault if he had
+turned out a little wild and wayward and rough, and cruel to his own
+mother, as you might say, jostling her when he had a drop to drink, and
+maybe striking her when he didn't know what he was doing, and never
+turning his hand to honest work, but always dreaming of fortunes coming
+some day, and betting and racing, and going here and there, and never
+resting happy and content at home. It was not his fault: he had been led
+astray by bad companions. And then she didn't mind a blow--not she.
+Every woman had to bear the like of that. You want a world of patience
+if you have men creatures about you--that's all.
+
+Thinking of bad companions suggested to the landlady's mind, by some
+strange twist of which she was never fully conscious, the idea of Hugh
+Ritson. The gentleman who had come so strangely among them appeared to
+have a curious influence over Paul. He seemed to know something of
+Paul's mother. Paul himself rummaged matters up long ago, and found that
+the lady had escaped from the asylum, and been lost. And now the strange
+gentleman came with her portrait and said she was dead.
+
+Poor soul, how well Mrs. Drayton remembered her! And that was thirty
+years ago! She had never afterward set eyes on the lady, and never heard
+of her but once, and even that once must be five-and-twenty years since.
+One day she went for coal to the wharf at Pimlico, and there she met an
+old neighbor, who said: "Mrs. Drayton, your lodger, she that drowned
+herself, came back for the babby, but your man and you were shifted
+away." And to think that the poor young thing was dead and gone now, and
+she herself, who had thought she was old even in those days, was alive
+and hearty still!
+
+By this time the cab was rattling through the busy streets of London,
+and the train of the landlady's thoughts was broken. Only in a vague way
+did she know where she was going. The cab was taking her there, and it
+would take her back again. When they reached the convent she had to ask
+for Mrs. Ritson, and say she was sent to take her to St. Pancras Station
+to meet her husband there, and return to Cumberland by the train at
+midnight. That was all.
+
+The clock of the abbey was marking the half-hour after eleven as the cab
+passed into Parliament Square. In another minute they drew up before the
+convent in Abbey Gardens.
+
+The cabman jumped from the box, rang the bell, and helped Mrs. Drayton
+to alight. The iron gate and the door in the portico swung open
+together, and a nun stood on the threshold, holding a lamp in her hand.
+Mrs. Drayton hobbled up the steps and entered the hall. A deep gloom
+pervaded the wide apartment, in which there were but two wicker chairs
+and a table. The nun wore a gray serge gown, with a wimple cut square
+on her chest, a girdle about her waist, and a rosary hanging by her
+side.
+
+"Can I see a lady boarder--Mrs. Ritson?" said the landlady.
+
+The nun started a little, and then answered in a low, melancholy voice,
+in which the words she spoke were lost. Mrs. Drayton's eyes were now
+accustomed to the gloom, and she looked into the nun's face. It was a
+troubled and clouded face, and when it was lifted for an instant to her
+own, Mrs. Drayton felt chilled, as if a death's-hand had touched her.
+
+It was the face of the mother of Paul! Older, sadder, calmer, but the
+same face still.
+
+The nun dropped her eyes, and made the sign of the cross. Then she
+walked with a quick and noiseless step to the other end of the hall, and
+sounded a deep gong. In a moment this summoned a sister--a novice,
+dressed like the first, except all in white. Mrs. Drayton was now
+trembling from head to foot, but she repeated her question, and was led
+into a bare, chill room, and left alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+When Greta parted from Hugh Ritson three hours before, she was in an
+agony of suspense. Another strange threat had terrified her. She had
+been asked to make choice of one of two evils; refusing to believe in
+Hugh Ritson's power, she had rejected both. But the uncertainty was
+terrible. To what lengths might not passion, unrequited passion,
+defeated passion, outraged passion, lead a man like Hugh Ritson? Without
+pity, without remorse, with a will that was relentless and a heart that
+never knew truth, he was a man to flinch at no extremity. What had he
+meant?
+
+Greta's first impulse had been to go in search of her husband, but this
+was an idle and a foolish thought. Where should she look? Besides this,
+she had promised to remain in the convent until her husband should come
+for her, and she must keep her word. She did not go to supper when the
+gong sounded, but crept up to her room. The bell rang for vespers, and
+Greta did not go to the chapel. She lay down in anguish and wept
+scalding tears. The vesper hymn floated up to her where she lay, and she
+was still weeping. There was no light in this dark place; there was no
+way out of this maze but to wait and suffer.
+
+And slowly the certainty stole upon her that Hugh Ritson had made no
+idle threat. He was a resolute man; he had given her a choice of two
+courses, and had she not taken a selfish part? If Paul, her husband,
+were indeed in danger, no matter from what machination of villainy--was
+it much to ask that she, his wife, should rescue him by a sacrifice that
+fell heaviest upon herself? Hugh Ritson had been right--her part had
+been a selfish one. Oh, where was Mr. Christian? She had telegraphed for
+him, and he had answered that he would come; yet hour had followed hour,
+and still he had not arrived.
+
+Three hours she tossed in agony. She heard the sisters pass up the
+echoing stone staircase to their dormitories, and then the silent house
+became as dumb as a vault. Not a ripple flowed into this still tarn from
+the great stream of the world that rushed and surged and swelled with
+the clangor of a million voices around its incrusted sides.
+
+Her window overlooked the Abbey Gardens. All was quiet beneath. Not a
+step sounded on the pavement. Before her the blank wall was black, and
+the dark, leafless trees stood out from the vague green of the grass
+beyond. Against the sky were the dim outlines of the two towers of the
+old abbey--by day a great rock for the pigeons that wheeled above the
+tumbling sea of the city, by night a skull of stone from which the voice
+of the bell told of the flight of time.
+
+Out of the calm of a moment's stupefaction Greta was awakened by a knock
+at her door. The novice entered and told her that a woman waited below
+to speak with her. Greta betrayed no surprise, and she was beyond the
+reach of fresh agitation. Without word or question she followed the
+novice to the room where Mrs. Drayton sat.
+
+She recognized the landlady and heard her story. Greta's heart leaped up
+at the thought of rejoining her husband. Here was the answer to the
+prayer that had gone up she knew not how often from her troubled heart.
+Soon she would be sure that Hugh Ritson's threat was vain. Soon she
+would be at Paul's side and hold his hand, and no earthly power should
+separate them again. Ah, thank God, the merciful Father, who healed the
+wounded hearts of His children, she should very soon be happy once more,
+and all the sorrows of these past few days would fade away into a dim
+memory.
+
+"Twelve o'clock at St. Pancras, and you have the luggage in a cab at the
+door, you say?"
+
+"Yes; and there's no time to lose, for, to be sure, the night is going
+fast," said Mrs. Drayton.
+
+"And he will be there to meet me?" asked Greta. Her eyes, still wet with
+recent tears, danced with a new-found joy.
+
+"Yes, at St. Pancras," said the landlady.
+
+Greta's happiness overflowed. She took the old woman in her arms and
+kissed her wizened cheeks.
+
+"Wait a minute--only a minute," she said, and tripped off with the swift
+glide of a lapwing. But when she was half-way up the stairs her ardor
+was arrested, and she returned with drooping face and steps of lead.
+
+"But why did he not come for me himself?" she asked.
+
+"The gentleman is not well--he is ill," said Mrs. Drayton.
+
+"Ill? You say he is ill? Then he could not come. And I blamed him for
+not coming!"
+
+"The gentleman is weak, but noways worse; belike he will go straight off
+and meet you at the station."
+
+Greta turned away once again, and went upstairs slowly. At a door on the
+first landing she tapped lightly, and when a voice answered from within
+she entered the room.
+
+The superior was on her knees at a table. She lifted a calm and
+spiritual face as Greta approached.
+
+"Reverend mother," said Greta, "I am leaving you this moment."
+
+"So soon, my daughter?"
+
+"My husband has sent for me; he will meet me at the railway station at
+twelve."
+
+"Why did he not come himself?"
+
+"He is ill; he has gone direct."
+
+"The hour is late and the message is sudden. Are you satisfied?"
+
+"I am anxious, reverend mother--"
+
+"What is it, my daughter?"
+
+"An old gentleman, a clergyman, Mr. Christian, is coming from
+Cumberland. I have expected him hourly, but he is not yet arrived. I
+cannot wait; I must rejoin my husband. Will you order that a message be
+left for the clergyman?"
+
+"What is the message, my child?"
+
+"Simply that I have returned with my husband by the train leaving St.
+Pancras at midnight."
+
+"The lay sister in the hall shall deliver it."
+
+"Who is the sister?"
+
+"Sister Grace."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Reverend mother, has Sister Grace ever spoken of the past?"
+
+The superior told a few beads.
+
+"The past is as nothing to us here, my daughter. Within these walls the
+world does not enter. In the presence of the Cross the past and the
+future are one."
+
+Greta drew a long breath. Then she stooped and kissed the hand of the
+superior, and turned softly away.
+
+Greta and the landlady passed out through the deep portico, and the same
+nun who had opened the door closed it behind them. Mrs. Drayton clung to
+Greta's arm as they went through, and her hand trembled perceptibly.
+
+"Who is she?" whispered the landlady, when they were seated in a cab.
+
+"Sister Grace," said Greta, and turned her head aside.
+
+"I could ha' sworn as she were the mother of my Paul," murmured Mrs.
+Drayton.
+
+Greta faced about, but the landlady saw nothing of the look of inquiry;
+her eyes, like her thoughts, were far away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+Though the hour was late, the streets were thronged. The people were
+trooping home from the theaters; and the Strand, as Greta and the
+landlady crossed it, was choked with cabs and omnibuses. The cab drove
+through the Seven Dials, and there the public-houses were disgorging at
+every corner their poor ruins of men and women. Shouts, curses,
+quarreling, and laughter struck upon the ear above the whir of the
+wheels. Unshaven men and unwashed women, squalid children running here
+and there among the oyster and orange stalls, thieves, idlers, vagabonds
+of all conditions, not a few honest people withal, and among them the
+dark figures of policemen.
+
+Greta's heart beat high that night. Her spirit was full of a new
+alacrity. Every inch of the way, as they flew over the busy streets,
+seemed to awake in her soul some fresh sensibility. She wondered where
+the multitudes of people came from, and whither they were going--vast
+oceans on oceans of humanity, flowing and ebbing without tide.
+
+She wanted to alight a hundred times, and empty her pockets of all her
+money. A blind man, playing a tin whistle, and leading a small dog held
+by a long string, awoke her special pity; the plaintive look in the eye
+of the cur was an object of peculiar sympathy. A filthy woman, reeling
+drunk and bareheaded across the street, almost under the feet of the
+horses, her discolored breast hanging bare, and a puny infant crying
+feebly in her arms, was another occasion for solicitude. A tiny mite
+that might have been a dirty boy, coiled up in a ball on a doorstep like
+a starved cat, was an object of all but irresistible attraction. But she
+dare not stop for an instant; and, at last, with this certainty, she lay
+back and shut her eyes very resolutely, and wondered whether, after all,
+it were not very selfish to be very happy.
+
+The cab stopped with a jolt; they were at St. Pancras station.
+
+"Has he come?" asked Greta, eagerly, and looked about her with eyes that
+comprehended everything at a glance.
+
+She could not see Paul, and when a porter opened the cab and helped her
+to alight, it was on her tongue to ask the man if he had seen her
+husband. But no, she would not do that. She must look for him herself,
+so that she might be the first to see him. Oh, yes, she must be the very
+first to see him, and she was now obstinately determined to ask no one.
+
+The porter brought round the truck, and wheeled the luggage onto the
+platform, and Greta and Mrs. Drayton followed it. Then the wide eyes
+that half smiled and looked half afraid beneath their trembling lids
+glanced anxiously around. No, Paul was not there.
+
+"What is the time?" she asked, her eyes still wandering over the
+bustling throng about her.
+
+"Ten to twelve, miss," announced the porter.
+
+"Oh," she said, with a sigh of relief, "then he will soon be here."
+
+"Will you sit in the waiting-room, miss?" asked the porter; and almost
+unconsciously she followed him when he led the way. Mrs. Drayton hobbled
+behind her.
+
+"What did he say about being ill?" she asked, when they were left
+together.
+
+"That he was only a bit dizzy. Mayhap he's noways 'customed to illness,"
+said the landlady.
+
+"That is true. And what did you say then?"
+
+"I coaxed him to rest him a bit, and take a drop o' summat, and he
+smiled and said, 'Thank you, my good woman.'
+
+"You were in the right, you dear old soul," said Greta. And she put her
+arms about the landlady and hugged her. "I'm sure you've been very good
+to my husband, and watched him tenderly, while I, who should have nursed
+him, have been away. Thank you, thank you!"
+
+Mrs. Drayton was feeling uneasy. "Well, d'ye know, I can't bear to see a
+fellow creatur' suffer. It goes agen me someways."
+
+Greta had risen to her feet. "Stay here, Mrs. Drayton--Drayton, isn't
+it?--stay here while I go on to the platform. He might come and not see
+me. Ah, yes, he may be looking everywhere for me now."
+
+She went out and elbowed her way among the people who were hurrying to
+and fro; she dodged between the trucks that were sliding luggage on to
+the weighing machine and off to the van. The engines were puffing
+volumes of smoke and steam up to the great glass roof, where the whistle
+of the engine-man echoed sharp and shrill. Presently she returned to the
+waiting-room.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Drayton," she said, "I dreamed a fearful dream last night.
+What do you think? Will he be well enough to come?"
+
+"Coorse, coorse, my dear. 'Tell her to meet her husband at twelve.'
+Them's the gentleman's own words."
+
+"How happy I shall be when we are safe at home! And if he is ill, it
+will be for me to nurse him then."
+
+The light in the dove-like eyes at that moment told plainly that to the
+poor soul even illness might bring its compensating happiness.
+
+"And as to dreams, to be sure, they are on'y dreams; and what's dreams,
+say I?"
+
+"You are right, Mrs. Drayton," said Greta, and once more she shot away
+toward the platform. Her mind had turned to Parson Christian. Could it
+be possible that he had arrived? The porter who had brought in her
+luggage was still standing beside it, and with him there was another
+porter. Their backs were toward Greta as she came out of the
+waiting-room, and, tripping lightly behind them, she overheard a part of
+their conversation before they were aware that she was near.
+
+"See the old file in the gaiters by the eleven up?" said one.
+
+"Rather. A reg'lar grandmother's great-grandfather just out of the year
+one. Talk about swallows, eh?--and the buckles--and the stockings!"
+
+"Good sort, how-an'-ever."
+
+"Good for a tip, eh? Wouldn't ha' thought it."
+
+"No, but a real good-hearted 'un an' if he is a Pape."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"To be sure. Got me to put him in a fly for the Catholic Convent up
+Westminster way."
+
+Greta could restrain herself no longer, but burst in upon them with
+twenty questions. When had the parson arrived? When had he left? Was it
+in a fly? Would it go quickly? Could there be time for it to get back?
+
+"What's your train, miss--twelve to the north?"
+
+"Yes; will he catch it?"
+
+"Scarce get back at twelve," said the porter. But, in spite of this
+discouraging prophecy, Greta was so elated at the fresh intelligence
+that she drew out her purse and gave the man five shillings. She had no
+other change than two half crowns and two pennies, and in her present
+elevation of soul there could be no choice, between the silver and the
+copper, as to which the bearer of such news deserved.
+
+The man stared, and then smiled, but he quickly reconciled himself to
+the unexpected. With extraordinary alacrity he labeled the luggage, and
+bowled off to the north train, which was already at the platform.
+
+It was now within three minutes of midnight, and Mrs. Drayton had joined
+Greta in the bustling throng on the platform.
+
+"Oh, I feel as if a thousand hearts were all swelling and beating in my
+breast at once," said Greta. "Mrs. Drayton, is it certain that he will
+come? Porter, have you put the luggage in the van? Which is the
+train--the left?"
+
+"No, miss, the left's going out to make room for the local train up from
+Kentish Town and Hendon. The right's your train, miss. Got your ticket,
+miss?"
+
+"Not yet. Must I get it, think you? Is the time short? Yes, I will get
+two tickets myself," she added, turning to the landlady. "Then when he
+comes he will have nothing to do but step into the carriage."
+
+"You'll have to be quick, miss--train's nigh due out--only a minute,"
+said the porter.
+
+Greta's luminous eyes were peering over the heads of the people that
+were about her. Then they brightened, with a flash more swift than
+lightning, and all her face wore in an instant a heavenly smile. "Ah, he
+is there--there at the back--at the booking-office--run to him, run my
+good, dear creature; run and tell him I am here! I'll find a compartment
+and have the door open."
+
+Greta tripped along the platform with the foot of a deer. In another
+moment she had a carriage door open, and she stood there with the handle
+in her hand. She saw him coming who was more than all the world to her.
+But she did not look twice. No, she would not look twice. She would wait
+until they were within, alone, together.
+
+Side by side with him walked Hugh Ritson. Could it be possible? And was
+it he who had brought her husband? Ah! he had repented, and it was only
+she who had been bitter to the end. How generous of him! how cruel of
+her!
+
+Her eyes fell, and a warm flush overspread her cheeks as he who came
+first stepped into the carriage. She did not look again at him, nor did
+he look again at her. She knew he did not, though her eyes were down.
+"Oh, when we are alone!" she thought, and then she turned to Hugh
+Ritson.
+
+The heavenly smile was still on her beautiful face, and the deep light
+in her eyes spoke of mingled joy and grief.
+
+"Hugh, I fear, I fear," she faltered, "I have been hard and cruel. Let
+us be friends; let me be your dearest sister."
+
+He looked at her in silence. His infirm foot trailed a pace. He saw what
+was in her heart, and he knew well what was in his own heart, too; he
+thought of the blow that he was about to strike her.
+
+She held out her hand, and took in hers his own unresisting fingers. Ay,
+he knew that there and then he was about to break that forgiving heart
+forever. He knew who had stepped into that carriage.
+
+She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. The man in him could bear up no
+longer. He broke down; he could not speak; he was choked with emotion.
+
+She turned to the landlady, who stood near, twitching at the ribbons of
+her bonnet and peering into the carriage.
+
+"Good-bye, Mrs. Drayton, and God bless you for what you have done for my
+husband!"
+
+The landlady muttered something that was inaudible; she was confused;
+she stammered, and then was silent.
+
+Greta stepped into the carriage. The guard was standing at the door. The
+bell had been rung. The train had been signaled. The whistle had
+sounded. The clocks were striking midnight.
+
+"Wait! Wait!"
+
+It was a voice from the end of the platform. The guard turned with a
+smile to see who called on a train to wait. An old gentleman in silk
+stockings and gaiters, with long white hair flowing under the broad brim
+of a low-crowned hat, came panting to the only door that was still open.
+
+"Quick, sir, it's moving; in with you!"
+
+"Mr. Christian!" cried Greta, and throwing her arms about him, she drew
+him into the carriage. Then the train began to move away.
+
+At that instant another train--the local train from Kentish Town and
+Hendon--steamed up to the opposite side of the platform. Before it had
+stopped two men leaped out. They were the two police-sergeants.
+Instantly--simultaneously--a man burst through the barrier and ran on to
+the platform from the street. He was bareheaded, and his face was
+ghastly white. In one moment the police-sergeants had laid hands upon
+him. The train to the north had not yet cleared the platform. He saw it
+passing out. He took hold of the hands by which he was held and threw
+them off, as if their grasp had been the grasp of a child. Then he
+bounded away toward the retreating train. It was now moving rapidly. It
+was gone; it was swallowed up in the dark mouth beyond, and the man
+stood behind, bareheaded, dripping with perspiration, yet white as
+ashes, his clothes awry, the collar of his frieze ulster torn away, and
+a strip of red flannel lining exposed.
+
+It was Paul Ritson.
+
+The police-sergeants hurried up with the re-enforcement of two porters
+to recover their man. But he was quiet enough now. He did not stir a
+muscle when they handcuffed him. He looked around with vague, vacant
+eyes, hardly seeming to realize where he was or what was being done with
+him. His frenzy was gone.
+
+They led him down the platform. Hugh Ritson was standing on the spot
+where Greta had left him one minute before. When the company neared that
+spot the prisoner stopped. He looked across at Hugh Ritson in silence,
+and for an instant the dazed look died off his face. Then he turned his
+head aside, and allowed himself to be led quietly away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+A morning paper, of November--, contained the following paragraph:
+
+   "It will be remembered that in the reports of the disastrous railway
+   collision, which occurred at Hendon on Friday last, it was mentioned
+   as a ghastly accessory to the story of horror that an injured
+   passenger, who had been lifted from the debris of broken carriages,
+   and put to lie out of harm's way in a field close at hand, was
+   brutally assaulted and (apparently) robbed by some unknown scoundrel,
+   who, though detected in the act itself, tore himself from the grasp
+   of Police-Sergeant Cox, of the Hendon division of the metropolitan
+   police force, and escaped in the darkness. The authorities were
+   determined that their vigilance should not be eluded, and a person
+   named Paul Drayton is now in custody, and will be brought up at Bow
+   Street this morning. It turns out that Drayton is an innkeeper at
+   Hendon, where he has long borne a dubious character. He was arrested
+   at midnight in St. Pancras Station, in a daring and mad attempt to
+   escape by the north-bound train, and it is understood that the
+   incident of his capture is such as reflects the highest credit on the
+   resolution, energy, and intrepidity of the force."
+
+The same paper, of the day after, contained this further paragraph:
+
+   "The man Drayton, who was yesterday formally committed to take his
+   trial at the Central Criminal Court, will be brought up at the Old
+   Bailey to-morrow; and as the evidence is said to be of a simple and
+   unconflicting character, it is not expected that the hearing will
+   extend over a single day. It is stated that the accused, who observed
+   a rigid silence during yesterday's proceedings, will, on his trial,
+   set up the extraordinary defense of mistaken identity."
+
+An evening paper of Friday, November--, contained the following remarks
+in the course of a leading note:
+
+   "It is a familiar legal maxim that a plea of alibi that breaks down
+   is the worst of all accusations. The scoundrel that attempted to rob
+   a dying man, who lay helpless and at his mercy amid the confusion of
+   Friday night's accident at Hendon, was audacious enough to put forth
+   the defense that he was not the man he was taken for. Cases of
+   mistaken identity are, of course, common enough in the annals of
+   jurisprudence, but we imagine the instances are rare indeed of
+   evidence of identity so exceptional and conclusive as that which
+   convicted the Hendon innkeeper being susceptible of error. The very
+   clothes he wore in the dock bore their own witness to his guilt, and
+   the court saw the police-sergeant produce a scrap of cloth torn from
+   the guilty man's back, which exactly fitted a rent in the prisoner's
+   ulster. The whole case would be a case of criminality too gross and
+   palpable to merit a syllable of comment but for the astounding
+   assurance with which the accused adhered to his plea in the face of
+   evidence that was so complete as to make denial little more than a
+   farce. He denied that he was Paul Drayton, and said his name was Paul
+   Ritson. He was identified as Drayton by several witnesses who have
+   known him from infancy; among others by his old mother, Martha
+   Drayton, whose evidence (given with reluctance, and with more tears
+   than a son so unnatural deserved) was at once as damning and as
+   painful as anything of the kind ever heard in a court of justice. The
+   claim to be Paul Ritson was answered by the evidence of Mr. Hugh
+   Ritson, mine-owner in Cumberland, and brother of the gentleman whom
+   the prisoner wished to personate. Mr. H. Ritson admitted a
+   resemblance, but had no hesitation in saying that the accused was not
+   his brother. The prisoner thereupon applied to the court that the
+   wife of Paul Ritson should be examined, but, as it was explained that
+   both husband and wife were at present ill in Cumberland, the court
+   wisely ruled against the application. As a final freak of defense,
+   the prisoner asked for the examination of one Mercy Fisher, who, he
+   said, would be able to say by what circumstances he came to wear the
+   clothes of the guilty man. The court adjourned for an hour in order
+   that this person might be produced, but on reassembling it was
+   explained that the girl, who turned out to be a mistress whom Drayton
+   had kept at his mother's house, had disappeared. Thus, with a
+   well-merited sentence of three years' penal servitude, ended a trial
+   of which the vulgarity of detail was only equalled by the audacity of
+   defense."
+
+A week passed, and the public had almost forgotten the incidents of the
+trial, when the following paragraph appeared in a weekly journal:
+
+   "I have heard that the man who was sentenced to three years' penal
+   servitude for robbery at the scene of the Hendon accident was seized
+   with an attack of brain fever immediately upon his arrival at
+   Millbank. The facts that transpire within that place of retirement
+   are whispered with as much reserve as guards the secrets of another
+   kind of confessional, but I do hear that since the admission of the
+   man who was known on his trial as Paul Drayton, and who is now
+   indicated by a numerical cognomen, certain facts have come to light
+   which favor the defense he set up of mistaken identity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+The chapter room of St. Margaret's Convent was a chill, bare chamber
+containing an oak table and four or five plain oak chairs. On the
+painted walls, which were of dun gray, there was an etching by a
+Florentine master of the flight into Egypt, and a symbolic print of the
+Sacred Heart. Besides these pictures there was but a single text to
+relieve the blindness of the empty walls, and it ran: "Where the tree
+falls, there it must lie."
+
+Four days after Greta's departure from the house wherein she had been
+received as a temporary boarder, the superior sat in the chapter room,
+and a sister knelt at her feet. The sister's habit was gray and her
+linen cape was plain. She wore no scapular, and no hood above the close
+cap that hid her hair and crossed her forehead. She was, therefore, a
+lay sister; she was Sister Grace.
+
+"Mother, hear my sin," she said in a trembling whisper.
+
+"Speak on, daughter."
+
+"We were both at Athlone in the year of the great famine. He was an
+officer in a regiment quartered there. I was a novice of the choir in
+the Order of Charity. We met in scenes sanctified by religion. Oh,
+mother, the famine was sore, and he was kind to the famished people!
+'The hunger is on us,' they would cry, as if it had been a plague of
+locusts. It was thus, with their shrill voices and wan faces, that the
+ragged multitudes followed us. Yes, mother, he was very, very kind to
+the people."
+
+"Well?"
+
+The penitent bowed her head yet lower. "My mother, I renounced the vows,
+and--we were married."
+
+The lips of the superior moved in silent prayer.
+
+"What was his name, my daughter?"
+
+"Robert Lowther. We came from Ireland to London. A child was born, and
+we called him Paul. Then my husband's love grew chill and died. I
+grieved over him. Perhaps I was but a moody companion. At last he told
+me--"
+
+The voice faltered; the whole body quivered.
+
+"Well, my child?"
+
+"Oh, mother, he told me I was not his wife; that I was a Catholic, but
+that he was a Protestant; that a Catholic priest had married us in
+Ireland without question or inquiry. That was not a valid marriage by
+English law."
+
+"Shame on the English law! But what do we know of the law at the foot of
+the Cross? Well?"
+
+"He left me. Mother, I flung God's good gift away. I tried to drown
+myself, and my little child with me; but they prevented me. I was placed
+in an asylum for the insane, and my baby--my Paul--was given into the
+care of a woman with whom I had lodged. Have I not sinned deeply?"
+
+"Your sins are great, my daughter, but your sufferings have also been
+great. What happened then?"
+
+"I escaped from the asylum and returned for my child. It was gone. The
+woman had removed to some other part of London, none knew where, and my
+Paul, my darling, was lost to me forever. My mother, it was then that I
+sinned deepest of all."
+
+Her head was bowed to her trembling knees, and her voice was all but
+suspended in an agony of shame.
+
+"Mother, I flung away God's better gift than life! Oh, how shall I tell
+you? Your foot trembles, reverend mother. You are a holy woman, and know
+nothing of the world's temptations."
+
+"Hush, my daughter; I am as great a sinner as yourself."
+
+"I cannot tell you. Mother, mother, you see I cannot."
+
+"It is for your soul's weal, my daughter."
+
+"I had tried to serve God, and He had seen my shame. What was left to me
+but the world, the world, the world! Perhaps the world itself would have
+more mercy. My kind mother, have I not told you yet?"
+
+The superior made the sign of the cross.
+
+"Ah, my daughter! the enemy of your soul was with you then. You should
+not have ceased to lift your hands to Heaven in supplication and prayer.
+You should have prostrated yourself three days and nights in the tribune
+before the Holy Sacrament."
+
+The penitent raised her pale face.
+
+"In less time I was a lost and abandoned woman."
+
+The superior told a few beads with trembling fingers. Then she lifted
+the cross that hung from her girdle, and held it out to the sister.
+
+"I thought of my child, and prayed that he might be dead. I thought of
+him who was not my husband, and my heart grew cold and hard. Mother, my
+redemption came. Yes, but with it came the meaning of the fearful
+words, too late. Amid the reeling madness of the life that is mocked
+with the name of gay, I met a good man. Yes, holy mother, a good man.
+Mother, he now sleeps there!"
+
+Her pale face, serene and solemn, was lifted again, and the hand that
+held the crucifix was raised above her head.
+
+"I loathed my life. He took me away from it--to the mountains--to
+Scotland, and a child was born. Mother, it was only then that I awoke as
+from a trance. It seemed as if a ring of sin begirt me. Tears--ah, me!
+what tears were shed. But rest and content came at last, and then we
+were married."
+
+"My daughter, my daughter, little did I think when I received your vows
+that the enemy of your soul had so mastered you."
+
+"Listen a little longer, holy mother. The child grew to be the image of
+my darling, my Paul--every feature, every glance the same. And partly to
+remind me of my lost one, and partly to make me forget him forever, I
+called the second child Paul. Mother, the years went by in peace. The
+past was gone from me. Only its memory lay like a waste in my silent
+heart. I had another son, and called him Hugh. After many years my
+husband died." The penitent paused.
+
+"Mother, another thing comes back to me; but I have confessed it
+already. Shall I repeat it?"
+
+"No, my daughter, not if it touches the oath that lay heavy on your
+heart."
+
+"I thought my first child was dead. For thirty years I had not seen him.
+But the pathways of our lives crossed at last, and the woman who nursed
+him came to this house four days ago."
+
+"Here?"
+
+"Mother, my son, the child of that first false union, my darling, for
+whom I wept scalding tears long, long years ago; my Paul, whose loss was
+all but the loss of his mother's soul, my son is a thief and an
+outcast."
+
+The lips of the superior moved again in prayer.
+
+"He is the man known to the world as Paul Drayton--to me as Paul
+Lowther."
+
+"My dear daughter, humble yourself in the midst of so awful a judgment.
+Do you say Drayton?--Drayton, who, as I hear, was to-day tried and
+sentenced?"
+
+"No--yes--how shall I tell you?--the same and not the same. Mother, the
+crime was committed by my son Paul Lowther, the sentence was pronounced
+on my son Paul Ritson."
+
+"My dear daughter--"
+
+"I was in the court and heard all; and I alone knew all--I alone, alone!
+Bear with me that I transgressed the law of this holy order. Think, oh!
+my kind mother, think that the nun was yet the woman, and, above all,
+the mother. Yes, I heard all. I heard the charge that convicted my son
+Paul Lowther. He was guilty before God and man. But the prisoner in the
+dock was my son Paul Ritson. I knew him, and believed him when he denied
+the name they gave him. Ah, me, my heart bled!"
+
+"What did you do, my daughter?"
+
+"Mother, I was weak, very weak. I could not see my duty clearly. An
+awful conflict was rife within me. I could not justify the one man
+without condemning the other. And both were the children of my bosom."
+
+"Fearful, fearful! But, my daughter, the one was guilty and the other
+innocent."
+
+"Yes, yes; a thousand times yes; but then there was myself. How could I
+punish the guilty without revealing the secret sin that had been thirty
+years hidden in my heart? And my poor, weak spirit shrunk within me, and
+I sat silent amid all."
+
+"My daughter, we must crucify our spiritual pride."
+
+"Yes, yes; but there was the love of my son, Paul Ritson--he thought me
+a good woman even yet. How could I confess to that sinful past and not
+loose the love of the only human soul that held me pure and true?
+Mother, it is very sweet to be loved."
+
+"Oh, my daughter, my daughter, a terrible situation, terrible,
+terrible!"
+
+"Mother, I have told you everything. Tell me now what hope is left. Give
+me your direction."
+
+"My daughter, let us humble ourselves before God, and pray that He may
+reveal the path of duty. Come."
+
+The superior rose, took her crozier in her hand, and walked out of the
+room. The sister followed her. They passed through the sacristy into the
+empty church.
+
+It was evening. The glow of a wintery sunset came through the windows to
+the west, and fell in warm gules on the altar. There was the hush of the
+world's awe here as day swooned into night. Without these walls were
+turmoil and strife. Within was the balm of rest--the rest that lies in
+the heart of the cyclone.
+
+And the good mother and the sister went down on their knees together,
+and prayed for light and guidance. The mother rose, but the sister knelt
+on; darkness fell, and she was still kneeling, and when the east was
+dabbled with the dawn, the gray light fell on her bowed head and
+uplifted hands.
+
+
+
+
+_BOOK IV._
+
+
+THE WATERS OF MARAH ARE BITTER.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IN THE YEAR 1877.
+
+
+The dale lay green in the morning sunlight; the river that ran through
+its lowest bed sparkled with purple and amber; the leaves prattled low
+in the light breeze that souched through the rushes and the long grass;
+the hills rose sheer and white to the smooth blue lake of the sky, where
+only one fleecy cloud floated languidly across from peak to peak. Out of
+unseen places came the bleating of sheep and the rumble of distant
+cataracts, and above the dull thud of tumbling waters far away was the
+thin caroling of birds overhead.
+
+But the air was alive with yet sweeter sounds. On the breast of the fell
+that lies over against Cat Bells a procession of children walked, and
+sung, and chattered, and laughed. It was St. Peter's Day, and they were
+rush-bearing: little ones of all ages, from the comely girl of fourteen,
+just ripening into maidenhood, who walked last, to the sweet boy of four
+in the pinafore braided with epaulets, who strode along gallantly in
+front. Most of the little hands carried rushes, but some were filled
+with ferns, and mosses, and flowers. They had assembled at the
+school-house, and now, on their way to the church, they were making the
+circuit of the dale.
+
+They passed over the road that crosses the river at the head of
+Newlands, and turned down into the path that follows the bed of the
+valley. At that angle there stands a little group of cottages
+deliciously cool in their white-wash, nestling together under the heavy
+purple crag from which the waters of a ghyll fall into a deep basin that
+reaches to their walls. The last of the group is a cottage with its end
+to the road, and its open porch facing a garden shaped like a wedge. As
+the children passed this house an old man, gray and thin and much bent,
+stood by the gate, leaning on a staff. A colly, with the sheep-dog's
+wooden bar suspended from its shaggy neck, lay at his feet. The hum of
+voices brought a young woman into the porch. She was bareheaded and wore
+a light print gown. Her face was pale and marked with lines. She walked
+cautiously, stretching one hand before her with an uncertain motion, and
+grasping a trailing tendril of honeysuckle that swept downward from the
+roof. Her eyes, which were partly inclined upward and partly turned
+toward the procession, had a vague light in their bleached pupils. She
+was blind. At her side, and tugging at her other hand, was a child of a
+year and a half--a chubby, sunny little fellow with ruddy cheeks, blue
+eyes, and fair curly hair.
+
+Prattling, laughing, singing snatches, and waving their rushes and ferns
+above their happy, thoughtless heads, the children rattled past. When
+they were gone the air was empty, as it is when the lark stops in its
+song.
+
+The church of Newlands stands in the heart of the valley, half hidden by
+a clump of trees. By the lych-gate Parson Christian stood that morning,
+aged a little, the snow a thought thicker on his bushy hair, the face
+mellower, the liquid eyes full of the sunlight behind which lies the
+shower. Greta stood beside him; quieter of manner than in the old days,
+a deeper thoughtfulness in her face, her blue eyes more grave and less
+restless, her fair hair no longer falling in waves behind her, but
+gathered up into a demure knot under her hat.
+
+"Here they come, bless their innocent hearts!" said Parson Christian,
+and at that moment the children turned an angle of the road.
+
+The pink and white of their frocks and pinafores were all but hidden by
+the little forest of green that they carried before and above them.
+
+"'Till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane," muttered Greta, smiling.
+
+When the rush-bearers came up to the front of the church, the lych-gate
+was thrown open and they filed through.
+
+"How tired he looks, the brave little boy!" said Greta, picking up the
+foremost of the company, the tiny man in the epaulets, now covered with
+the dust of the roads.
+
+"The little ones first, and you great girls afterward," said the parson.
+"Those with flowers go up to the communion and lay them on the form, and
+those with mosses put them on the font, and those with rushes and ferns
+begin under the pulpit and come down the aisle to the porch."
+
+The stalwart little tramp in Greta's arms wriggled his way to the
+ground. He had mosses in his hands and must go first. Then the children
+trooped into the church, and in an instant the rude old place was alive
+with the buzz of prattling tongues.
+
+The floor covered many a tomb. Graven on the plain slabs that formed the
+pathway down the middle of the church were the names of the men and
+women who had lived and died in the dale generations gone by. In their
+own day they were children themselves; and now other children--their own
+children's children's children--with never a thought about what lay
+beneath, with only love in their eyes, and laughter on their lips, and
+life in their limbs--were strewing rushes down the path above them.
+
+In ten minutes there was not an inch of the flagged aisle visible. All
+was green from the communion to the porch. Here and there an adventurous
+lad, turning to account the skill at climbing acquired at
+birds'-nesting, had clambered over the pews to the rude cross-trees, and
+hung great bunches of rushes from the roof.
+
+"Now, children, let us sing," said the parson, and taking up the
+accordion, he started a hymn.
+
+The leaded windows of the old church stood open, and the sweet young
+voices floated away, and far away, over the uplands and the dale. And
+the birds still sung in the blue sky, and the ghylls still rumbled in
+the distance, and the light wind still souched through the long grass,
+and the morning sunlight shone over all.
+
+There was a cloud of dust on the road, and presently there came trooping
+down from the village a company of men, surrounded by a whole circuit of
+dogs. Snarls, and yaps, and yelps, and squawks, and guffaws, and
+sometimes the cachinnation and crow of cocks, broke upon the clear air.
+The roystering set would be as many as a dozen, and all were more or
+less drunk. First came John Proudfoot, the blacksmith, in his
+shirt-sleeves, with his leathern apron wrapped in a knot about his
+waist, and a silver and black game-cock imprisoned under his arm. Lang
+Geordie Moore, his young helper, carried another fowl. Dick o' the Syke,
+the miller, in a brown coat whitened with flour, walked abreast of
+Geordie and tickled the gills of the fowl with a straw. Job Sheepshanks,
+the letter-cutter, carried a pot of pitch and a brush, and little Tom o'
+Dint hobbled along with a handful of iron files. Behind these came the
+landlord of the Flying Horse, with a basket over one arm, from which
+peeped the corks of many bottles, and Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll,
+carried a wicker cage, in which sat a red bantam-cock with spurs that
+glittered in the light.
+
+There was one other man who walked with the company, and he was the soul
+of the noisy crew; his voice was the loudest, his laugh the longest, and
+half of all that was said was addressed to him. He was a lusty man with
+a florid face; he wore a suit of tweeds plaided in wide stripes of buff
+and black.
+
+It was Paul Drayton.
+
+"Burn my body, and what's on now?" he said, as the gang reached the
+church.
+
+"Rush-bearing, I reckon," answered Tom o' Dint.
+
+"And what's rush-bearing?"
+
+"You know, Mister Paul," said the postman, "rush-bearing--the barns
+rush-bearing--St. Peter's Day, you know."
+
+"Oh, ay, I know--rush-bearing. Let me see, ain't it once a year?"
+
+"What, man, but you mind the days when you were a bit boy and went
+a-rushing yersel'?" said the blacksmith.
+
+"Coorse, coorse, oh, ay, I ain't forgotten them days. Let me see, it's a
+kind of a harvest-home, ain't it?"
+
+"Nowt o' the sort," said Dick, the miller, testily. "Your memory's
+failing fast, Mister Ritson."
+
+"And that's true, old fence. I'll never be the same man again after that
+brain fever I had up in London--not in the head-piece, you know."
+
+The group of men and dogs had drawn up in front of the church just as
+Brother Peter crossed the church-yard to the porch, carrying a red paper
+in his hand.
+
+"Who's that--the Methodee man?"
+
+"It's the Methodee, for sure," said the blacksmith.
+
+"Ey, it's the parson's Peter," added the postman, "and yon paper is a
+telegraph--it's like he's takin' it to somebody."
+
+"Hold hard, my boys," said Drayton; and, leaving his cronies he strode
+through the lych-gate and down the path, the dogs yapping around him.
+
+Brother Peter had drawn up at the door of the porch; the children were
+still singing.
+
+"If that telegram is for my wife, you may hand it over to me," said
+Drayton, and reached out his hand to take it.
+
+Brother Peter drew back.
+
+"It'll be all right, old fellow--I'll see she gets it."
+
+"Ey, thoo'll manish that, I's warn," said Peter, in a caustic voice.
+
+"Come, don't you know that what belongs to the wife belongs to the
+husband?"
+
+"Don't know as I do. I'se never been larn't sec daftness," said Peter.
+
+"Hand it over. Come, be quick!"
+
+"Get ower me 'at can," said Peter, with a decisive twinkle.
+
+"Gi'e him a slab ower the lug," shouted the miller from the road.
+
+"You hear what they say? Come, out with it."
+
+"Eh, you've rowth o' friends, you're a teeran crew, but I cares laal for
+any on you."
+
+Drayton turned away with a contemptuous snort.
+
+"Damme, what a clatter!" he shouted, and leaped on to the raised mound
+of a grave to look in at an open window. As he did so he kicked a glass
+for flowers that lay upon it, and the broken frame tumbled in many
+pieces. "I've done for somebody's money," he said with a loud guffaw.
+
+"What, man, but it were thy awn brass as bought it," said the
+blacksmith.
+
+"Ey, it's thy fadder's grave," said Job Sheepshanks.
+
+Drayton glanced down at the headstone.
+
+"Why, so it is!" he said; "d'ye see, I hain't been here since the day I
+buried him."
+
+"Nay, that's all stuff and nonsense," said Job. "I mind the morning I
+found ye lying wet and frostit on the top of that grave."
+
+"D'ye say so? Well, I ain't for denying it; and now I think of it, I
+was--yes, I was here that morning."
+
+"Nay, you warn't nowt o' the sort," said the blacksmith. "That were the
+varra morning as Giles Raisley saw you at the Pack Horse sleeping. I
+mind the fratch Job had with laal Gubblum about it long ago."
+
+"It's all stuff and nonsense," replied Job. "He were here."
+
+"The Pack Horse? Well, now, I remember, I was there, too."
+
+The singing had ceased, and Greta came out into the porch on tiptoe,
+carrying in her arms a tiny mite, who was crying. Peter handed her the
+telegram, and turned up the path.
+
+Drayton had rejoined his companions, and was in the act of knocking the
+neck off a bottle by striking it against the wall, when Peter walked
+through the lych-gate.
+
+"Tee a pint o' yal down the Methodee's back," shouted Dick, the miller,
+and in another moment Brother Peter was covered with the contents of the
+broken bottle.
+
+A loud, roystering laugh filled the air, and echoed from the hills.
+
+"What a breck!" tittered the postman.
+
+"What a breck!" shouted the blacksmith.
+
+"What a breck!" roared the miller.
+
+"Get ower me 'at can!" mimicked Natt.
+
+"He's got a lad's heart, has Mister Paul," said the landlord of the
+Flying Horse.
+
+"Ey, he's a fair fatch," echoed little Tom o' Dint.
+
+Leaving Peter to shake himself dry of the liquor that dripped from him
+in froth, the noisy gang reeled down the road, the yelping dogs
+careering about them, and the cocks squawking with the hugs they
+received from the twitching arms of the men convulsed with laughter.
+
+At the head of the Vale of Newlands there is a clearing that was made by
+the lead miners of two centuries ago. It lies at the feet of an
+ampitheater of hills that rise peak above peak, and die off depth beyond
+depth. Of the old mines nothing remains but the level cuttings in the
+sides of the fells, and here and there the washing-pits cut out of the
+rock at your feet. Fragments of stone lie about, glistening with veins
+of lead, but no sound of pick or hammer breaks the stillness, and no
+cart or truck trundles over the rough path. It is a solitude in which
+one might forget that the world is full of noise.
+
+To this spot Drayton and his cronies made their way. At one of the old
+washing troughs they drew up, and sat in a circle on its rocky sides.
+They had come for a cock fight. It was to be the bantam (carried by Natt
+and owned by his master) against all comers. Drayton and the blacksmith
+were the setters-on. The first bout was between the bantam and Lang
+Geordie's ponderous black Spanish. Geordie's bird soon squawked
+dolorously, and made off over the heads of the derisive spectators,
+whereupon Geordie captured it by one of its outstretched wings, and
+forthwith screwed its neck. Then came John Proudfoot's silver and black,
+and straightway steel gaffs were affixed to the spurs. When the cocks
+felt their feet they crowed, and then pecked the ground from side to
+side. An exciting struggle ensued. Up and down, over and under, now
+beating the breast, now trailing the comb, now pecking at the gills. And
+the two men at opposite sides of the pit--the one in his shirt-sleeves
+rolled up to the elbows, the other in his sporting plaid--stooped with
+every lunge and craned their necks at every fall, and bobbed their heads
+with every peck, their eyes flashing, their teeth set.
+
+At one moment they drew off their birds, called for the files, and
+sharpened up the spurs. Later on they seized the cocks by the necks,
+shouted for the pitch-pot and patched up the bleeding combs. The birds
+were equally matched, and fought long. At last their strength ebbed
+away. They followed each other feebly, stretching their long, lagging
+throats languidly, opening their beaks and hanging out their dry, white
+tongues, turning tail, then twisting about and fighting again, until
+both lay stretched out on the pit bottom.
+
+As the energy of the cocks subsided, the ardor of the men waxed
+sensibly. They yelled excitedly, protested, reviled, swore, laughed,
+jeered, and crowed.
+
+At length, when the bantam fell and gave no signs of speedy
+resurrection, the anger of Drayton could not be supported. He leaped
+across the pit, his face red as his cock's comb, and shouting, "Damme,
+what for did ye pick up my bird?" he planted a blow full on the
+blacksmith's chest.
+
+A fight of yet fiercer kind followed. Amid shouts, and in the thick of a
+general scuffle, the blacksmith closed with his powerful adversary,
+gripped him about the waist, twisted him on his loins, and brought him
+to the ground with a crash. Then he stood over him with fierce eyes.
+
+"I mak' no doubt you're not hankerin' for another of that sort!" he
+puffed.
+
+"John's given him the cross-buttock," said the miller.
+
+"The master's lost all his wrustling," said Natt, blinking out of his
+sleepy eyes.
+
+"I mind the day when he could have put John down same as a bit boy,"
+said the little postman.
+
+Natt helped Drayton to his feet. He was quiet enough, now, but as black
+in the face as a thunder-cloud.
+
+"This comes of a gentleman mixing with them as is beneath him," he
+muttered, and he mopped his perspiring forehead with a bandanna
+handkerchief.
+
+The miller snorted, the mason grunted, the little postman laughed in his
+thin pipe.
+
+Drayton's eyes flashed.
+
+"I'm a gentleman, I am, if you want to know," he said, defiantly.
+
+The blacksmith stood by, leisurely rolling down his shirt-sleeves.
+
+"Ey, for fault of wise folk we call you so," he said, and laughed. "But
+when I leet of a man, I's rather have him nor a hundred sec gentlemen as
+you!"
+
+"Thoo's reet for once, John!" shouted Dick o' the Syke, and there was
+some general laughter.
+
+"Gentleman! Ax the women-folk what they mak' of sec a gentleman,"
+continued the blacksmith with contemptuous emphasis. "Him as larn't
+folks to fill the public and empty the cupboard."
+
+There was a murmur among the men as they twisted about.
+
+"Ax them what they mak' of him 'at spent four days in Lunnon and came
+back another man--ax the women-folk; they're maistly reet, I reckon."
+
+Another uneasy movement among the men.
+
+"Burn my body! and what's the women to me?" said Drayton.
+
+"Nay, nowt," answered the blacksmith. "Your awn wife seems nowdays
+powerful keen for your company."
+
+Drayton's eyes were red, but the fire died out of them in an instant. He
+stepped up to the blacksmith and held out his hand.
+
+"You've licked me," he said, in another tone, "but I ain't the man to
+keep spite, I ain't; so come along, old fence, and let's wet it."
+
+"That's weel said," put in Tommy Lowthwaite, the landlord.
+
+"It's no'but fair," said Dick, the miller.
+
+"He's a reet sort, after all," said Job, the mason.
+
+"He's his awn fadder's son, is Paul Ritson," said Tom o' Dint.
+
+In two minutes more the soiled company were trampling knee-deep through
+rank beds of rushes on their way to the other side of the dale. They
+stopped a few yards from a pit shaft with its headgear and wheel.
+
+"Let's take my brother's ken for it," said Drayton, and they turned into
+a one-story house that stood near.
+
+It was a single capacious chamber, furnished more like a library than an
+office; carpets, rugs, a cabinet, easychairs, and a solid table in the
+middle of the floor. The cock-fighters filed in and sat down on every
+available chair, on the table, and at last on the floor.
+
+"Squat and whiff," said Drayton, "and, Tommy, you out with the corks,
+quick."
+
+"It must be a bonny money-making consarn to keep up the likes of this,"
+said the miller, settling himself uneasily in an easy-chair.
+
+Dick was telling himself what a fool he had been not to ask more than
+the fifty pounds he received for the damage once done by fire to his
+mill.
+
+"Have you never heard as it ain't all gold as glitters?" said Drayton;
+and he struck a lucifer match on the top of the mahogany table.
+
+"What, man, dusta mean as the pit's not paying?" said the blacksmith.
+
+Drayton gave his head a sidelong shake of combined astuteness and
+reserve.
+
+"I mak' no doubt now as you have to lend Master Hugh many a gay penny,"
+said Tom o' Dint in an insinuating tone.
+
+"Least said, soonest mended," said Drayton, sententiously, and smiled a
+mighty knowing smile.
+
+Then the men laughed, and the landlord handed the bottles round, and all
+drank out of the necks, and puffed dense volumes of smoke from their
+pipes, and spat on the carpet.
+
+And still the birds sung in the clear air without, and still the ghylls
+rumbled, and still the light wind souched through the grass, and still
+the morning sunlight shone over all.
+
+The door opened, and Hugh Ritson entered, followed by the lawyer, Mr.
+Bonnithorne. There was a steely glimmer in his eyes as he stood just
+inside the threshold and looked round.
+
+"Come, get out of this!" he said.
+
+The men shuffled to their feet and were elbowing their way out. Drayton,
+who sat on the table, removed his pipe from between his teeth and called
+on them to remain.
+
+Hugh Ritson stepped up to Drayton and touched him on the shoulder.
+
+"I want to speak with you," he said.
+
+"What is it?" demanded Drayton.
+
+"I want to speak with you," repeated Hugh.
+
+"What is it? Out with it. You've got the gift of the gab, hain't ye?
+Don't mind my friends."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face whitened, and a cold smile passed over it.
+
+"Your time is near," he muttered, and he turned on his heel.
+
+As he stepped out of the noisesome chamber, a loud, hoarse laugh
+followed him. He drew a long breath.
+
+"Thank God it will soon be over!" he said.
+
+Bonnithorne was at his side.
+
+"Is it to be to-morrow?" asked the lawyer.
+
+"To-morrow," said Hugh Ritson.
+
+"Have you told him?"
+
+"Tell him yourself, Bonnithorne. I can bear with the man no longer. I
+shall be doing something that I may repent."
+
+"Have you apprised Parson Christian?"
+
+Hugh Ritson bent his head.
+
+"And Greta?"
+
+"She won't come," said Hugh. "The girl could never breathe the same air
+as that scoundrel for five minutes together."
+
+"And yet he's her half-brother," said the lawyer, softly; and then he
+added, with the conventional smile: "Odd, isn't it?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+When the procession of children had passed the little cottage at the
+angle of the roads, the old man who leaned on his staff at the gate
+turned about and stepped to the porch.
+
+"Did the boy see them?--did he see the children?" said the young woman
+who held the child by the hand.
+
+"I mak' na doot," said the old man.
+
+He stooped to the little one and held out one long, withered finger. The
+soft baby hand closed on it instantly.
+
+"Did he laugh? I thought he laughed," said the young woman.
+
+A bright smile played on her lips.
+
+"Maybe so, lass."
+
+"Ralphie has never seen the children before, father. Didn't he look
+frightened--just a little frightened--at first, you know? I thought he
+crept behind my gown."
+
+"Maybe, maybe."
+
+The little one had dropped the hand of his young mother, and, still
+holding the bony finger of his grandfather, he toddled beside him into
+the house.
+
+Very cool and sweet was the kitchen, with white-washed walls and hard
+earthen floor. A table and a settle stood by the window, and a dresser
+that was an armory of bright pewter dishes, trenchers, and piggins
+crossed the opposite wall.
+
+"Nay, but sista here, laal man," said the old charcoal-burner, and he
+dived into a great pocket at his side.
+
+"Have you brought it? Is it the kitten? Oh, dear, let the boy see it!"
+
+A kitten came out of the old man's pocket, and was set down on the rug
+at the hearth. The timid creature sat dazed, then raised itself on its
+hind legs and mewed.
+
+"Where's Ralphie? Is he watching it, father? What is he doing?"
+
+The little one had dropped on hands and knees before the kitten, and was
+gazing up into its face.
+
+The mother leaned over him with a face that would have beamed with
+sunshine if the sun of sight had not been missing.
+
+"Is he looking? Doesn't he want to coddle it?"
+
+The little chap had pushed his nose close to the nose of the kitten, and
+was prattling to it in various inarticulate noises.
+
+"Boo--loo--lal-la--mamma."
+
+"Isn't he a darling, father?"
+
+"It's a winsome wee thing," said the old man, still standing with
+drooping head over the group on the hearth.
+
+The mother's face saddened, and she turned away. Then from the opposite
+side of the kitchen, where she was making pretense to take plates from a
+plate-rack, there came the sound of suppressed sobs. The old man's eyes
+followed her.
+
+"Nay, lass; let's have a sup of broth," he said in a tone that carried
+another message.
+
+The young woman put plates and a bowl of broth on the table.
+
+"To think that I can never see my own child, and everybody else can see
+him!" she said, and then there was another bout of tears.
+
+The charcoal-burner supped at his broth in silence. A glistening bead
+rolled slowly down his wizened cheek, and the interview on the hearth
+went on without interruption:
+
+"Mew--mew--mew." "Boo--loo--lal-la--mamma."
+
+There was a foot on the gravel in front.
+
+"How fend ye, Mattha?" said a voice from without.
+
+"Come thy ways, Gubblum," answered the old man.
+
+Gubblum Oglethorpe entered, dressed differently than of old. He wore a
+suit of canvas stained deeply with iron ore.
+
+"I's thinking maybe Mercy will let me warm up my poddish," said Gubblum.
+
+"And welcome," said Mercy, and took down from the dresser a saucepan and
+porridge thivel. "I'll make it for you while father sups his broth."
+
+"Nay, lass, you're as thrang as an auld peat wife, I's warn. I'll mak'
+it myself. I's rather partic'lar about my poddish, forby. Dusta know how
+many faults poddish may have? They may be sour, sooty, sodden, and
+savorless, soat, welsh, brocken, and lumpy--and that's mair nor enough,
+thoo knows."
+
+Gubblum had gone down on the hearth-rug.
+
+"Why, and here's the son and heir," he said. "Nay, laddie, mind my
+claes--they'll dirty thy brand-new brat for thee."
+
+"Is he growing, Gubblum?"
+
+"Growing?--amain."
+
+"And his eyes--are they changing color?--going brown?"
+
+"Maybe--I'll not be for saying nay."
+
+"Is he--is he very like me?"
+
+"Nay--weel--nay--I's fancying I see summat of the stranger in the laal
+chap at whiles."
+
+The young mother turned her head. Gubblum twisted to where Matthew sat.
+
+"That man and all his raggabrash are raking about this morning. It caps
+all, it does, for sure."
+
+The old charcoal-burner did not answer. He paused with the spoon half
+raised, glanced at Mercy, and then went on with his broth.
+
+"Hasta heard of the lang yammer in the papers about yon matter?" said
+Gubblum.
+
+"Nay," said Matthew, "I hears nowt of the papers."
+
+"He's like to hang a lang crag when he hears about it."
+
+"I mak' na doubt," said Matthew, showing no curiosity.
+
+"It's my belief 'at the auld woman at Hendon is turning tail. You mind
+she was down last back end, and he wadn't have nowt to say to her."
+
+"Ey, I mind her," said Matthew.
+
+"Every dog has his day, and I reckon yon dog's day is nigh amaist done.
+And it wad have been a vast shorter on'y Mercy hadn't her eyes."
+
+"Ey, ey," said Matthew, quietly.
+
+"If the lass had no'but been able to say, 'Yon man is Drayton, and yon
+as you've got in prison is Ritson, and I saw the bad wark done,' that
+would have settled it."
+
+"Na doot," said Matthew, his head in the bowl.
+
+"They warn't for hearing me. When the parson took me up to Lunnon mair
+nor a twelvemonth agone, they sent us baith home with our tails atween
+our legs. 'Bring us the young woman,' they said; 'your evidence will
+stand aside hers, but not alone. Bring the young woman to 'dentify,'
+they says. 'She's gone blind,' we says. 'We can't help that,' they says.
+And that's what they call justice up in Lunnon."
+
+"Ey, ey," said Matthew.
+
+"But then thoo has to mak' 'lowances for them gentry folk--they've never
+been larn't no better, thoo sees."
+
+Gubblum's porridge was bubbling, and the thivel worked vigorously.
+Matthew had picked up the child from the hearth. The little fellow was
+tugging at his white beard.
+
+"It were bad luck that me and Mercy didn't stay a day or so langer in
+Hendon yon time. She had her eyes then. But the lass was badly, and"
+(dropping his voice) "that way, thoo knows, and I warn't to prophesy
+what was to happen to poor Paul Ritson. So I brought her straight away
+home."
+
+"So thoo did, Gubblum," said Matthew, stroking the child's head.
+
+"It's that Hugh as is at the bottom of it all, I reckon. I'm not afraid
+to say it, if he is my master. I allus liked Paul Ritson--the reet one,
+thoo knows, not this taistrel that calls hisself Paul Ritson--but I
+cared so laal for Hugh that I could have taken him and wrowk't the fire
+with him."
+
+The porridge was ready, and Mercy set a wooden bowl on the table. "I's
+fullen thy bicker, my lass," said Gubblum. "I's only a laal man, but I's
+got a girt appetite, thoo sees." Then turning to Matthew he continued:
+"But he's like to pay for it. He brought his raggabash here, and now the
+rascal has the upper hand--that's plain to see."
+
+"So it be," said Matthew.
+
+"Deemoralizin' all the country-side, what with his drinkin' and
+cock-fightin' and terriers, an' I don't know what. Theer's Dick o' the
+Syke, he's a ruined man this day, and John, the blacksmith, he's never
+had a heat on the anvil for a week, and as for Job, the mason, he's
+shaping to be mair nor ever like his Bible namesake, for he won't have
+nowt but his dunghill to sit on soon."
+
+"Dusta think they dunnot ken he's the wrong man?" asked Matthew.
+
+"Nay, Mattha, but a laal bit of money's a wonderful thing, mind ye."
+
+"It is for sure."
+
+"One day he went to clogger Kit to be measur't for new shoes. 'What,
+Master Ritson,' says Kit, 'your foot's langer by three lines nor when I
+put the tape on it afore.'"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Next day Kit had an order for two pairs, forby a pair of leggins and
+clogs for Natt. That's the way it's manish'd."
+
+Mercy had taken her child from her father's knee, and was sitting on the
+sconce bench with it, holding a broken piece of a mirror before its
+face, and listening for its laugh when it saw itself in the glass.
+
+"But he's none Cummerland--hearken to his tongue," said Matthew.
+
+Gubblum put down his spoon on his plate, now empty.
+
+"That minds me," he said, laughing, "that I met him out one day all
+dressed in his brave claes--them as might do for a nigger that plays the
+banjo. 'Off for a spogue?' I says. 'What's a spogue?' he says, looking
+thunder. 'Nay,' I says, 'you're no'but a dalesman--ax folks up Hendon
+way,' I says. I was peddling then, but Master Hugh 'counters me another
+day, and he says, 'Gubblum,' he says, 'I's wanting a smart laal man,
+same as you, to weigh the ore on the bank-top--pund a week,' he says."
+
+"Ey, I mak' no doot they thowt to buy thee ower," said Matthew.
+
+"They've made a gay canny blunder if they think they've put a swine ring
+on Gubblum's snout. Buy or beat--that's the word. They've bought most of
+the folk and made them as lazy as libbed bitches. But they warn't able
+to buy the Ritson's bitch itself."
+
+"What dusta mean, Gubblum?"
+
+"What, man! thoo's heard how the taistrel killed poor auld Fan? No?
+Weel, thoo knows she was Paul Ritson's dog, Fan was; and when she saw
+this man coming up the lonnin, she frisk't and wag't her tail. But when
+she got close to him she found her mistake, and went slenken off. He
+made shift to coax her, but Fan wad none be coaxed; and folks were
+takin' stock. So what dusta think the taistrel does, but ups with a
+stone and brains her."
+
+"That's like him, for sure," said Matthew. "But don't the folk see that
+his wife as it might be, Miss Greta as was, won't have nowt to say to
+him?"
+
+"Nay, they say that's no'but a rue-bargain, and she found out her mind
+after she wedded--that's all the clot-heads think about it."
+
+"Hark!" said Mercy, half rising from the sconce. "It's Mrs. Ritson's
+foot."
+
+The men listened. "Nay, lass, there's no foot," said Gubblum.
+
+"Yes, she's on the road," said Mercy. Her face showed that pathetic
+tension of the other senses which is peculiar to the blind. A moment
+later Greta stepped into the cottage. The telegram which Brother Peter
+gave her at the church was still in her hand.
+
+"Good-morning, Matthew; good-morning, Gubblum; I have news for you,
+Mercy. The doctors are coming to-day."
+
+Mercy's face fell perceptibly. The old man's head drooped lower.
+
+"There, don't be afraid," said Greta, touching her hand caressingly. "It
+will soon be over. The doctors didn't hurt you before, did they?"
+
+"No; but this time it will be the operation," said Mercy. There was a
+tremor in her voice.
+
+Greta had lifted the child from the sconce. The little fellow cooed
+close to her ear, and babbled his inarticulate nothings.
+
+"Only think, when it's all over you will be able to see your darling
+Ralphie for the first time!"
+
+Mercy's sightless face brightened. "Oh, yes," she said, "and watch him
+play, and see him spin his tops and chase the butterflies. Oh, that will
+be very good!"
+
+"Dusta say to-day, Mistress Ritson?" asked Matthew, the big drops
+standing in his eyes.
+
+"Yes, Matthew; I will stay to see it over, and mind baby, and help a
+little."
+
+Mercy took the little one from Greta's arms and cried over it, and
+laughed over it, and then cried and laughed again. "Mamma and Ralphie
+shall play together in the garden, darling, and Ralphie shall see the
+horses--and the flowers--and the birdies--and mamma--yes, mamma shall
+see Ralphie. Oh, Mrs. Ritson, how selfish I am!--how can I ever repay
+you?"
+
+The tears were trickling down Greta's cheeks. "It is I who am selfish,
+Mercy," she said, and kissed the sightless orbs. "Your dear eyes shall
+give me back my poor husband."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Two hours later the doctors arrived. They had called at the vicarage in
+driving up the valley, and Parson Christian was with them. They looked
+at Mercy's eyes, and were satisfied that the time was ripe for the
+operation. At the sound of their voices, Mercy trembled and turned
+livid. By a maternal instinct she picked up the child, who was toddling
+about the floor, and clasped it to her bosom. The little one opened wide
+his blue eyes at sight of the strangers, and the prattling tongue became
+quiet.
+
+"Take her to her room, and let her lie on the bed," said one of the
+doctors to Greta.
+
+A sudden terror seized the young mother. "No, no, no!" she said, in an
+indescribable accent, and the child cried a little from the pressure to
+her breast.
+
+"Come, Mercy, dear, be brave for your darling's sake," said Greta.
+
+"Listen to me," said the doctor, quietly but firmly. "You are now quite
+blind, and you have been in total darkness for a year and a half. We may
+be able to restore your sight by giving you a few minutes' pain. Will
+you not bear it?"
+
+Mercy sobbed, and kissed the child passionately.
+
+"Just think, it is quite certain that without an operation you will
+never regain your sight," continued the doctor. "You have nothing to
+lose and everything to gain. Are you satisfied? Come, go away to your
+room quietly."
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Mercy.
+
+"Just imagine, only a few minutes' pain, and even of that you will
+scarcely be conscious. Before you know what is doing, it will be done."
+
+Mercy clung closer to her child, and kissed it again and yet more
+fervently.
+
+The doctors turned to each other. "Strange vanity!" muttered the one who
+had not spoken before. "Her eyes are useless, and yet she is afraid she
+may lose them."
+
+Mercy's quick ears caught the whispered words. "It is not that," she
+said passionately.
+
+"No, gentlemen," said Greta, "you have mistaken her thought. Tell her
+she runs no danger of her life."
+
+The doctors smiled and laughed a little. "Oh, that's it, eh? Well, we
+can tell her that with certainty."
+
+Then there was another interchange of half-amused glances.
+
+"Ah, we that be men, sirs, don't know the depth and tenderness of a
+mother's heart," said Parson Christian. And Mercy turned toward him a
+face that was full of gratitude. Greta took the child out of her arms
+and hushed it to sleep in another room. Then she brought it back and put
+it in its cradle that stood in the ingle.
+
+"Come, Mercy," she said, "for the sake of your boy." And Mercy permitted
+herself to be led from the kitchen.
+
+"So there will be no danger," she said. "I shall not leave my boy. Who
+said that? The doctor? Oh, good gracious, it's nothing. Only think, I
+shall live to see him grow to be a great lad!"
+
+Her whole face was now radiant.
+
+"It will be nothing. Oh, no, it will be nothing. How silly it was to
+think that he would live on, and grow up, and be a man, and I lie cold
+in the church-yard, and me his mother! That was very childish, wasn't
+it? But, then, I have been so childish since Ralphie came."
+
+"There, lie and be quiet, and it will soon be over," said Greta.
+
+"Let me kiss him first. Do let me kiss him! Only once. You know it's a
+great risk, after all. And if he grew up--and I wasn't here, if--if--"
+
+"There, dear Mercy, you must not cry again. It inflames your eyes, and
+that can't be good for the doctors."
+
+"No, no, I won't cry. You are very good; everybody is very good. Only
+let me kiss my little Ralphie--just for the last."
+
+Greta led her back to the side of the cot, and she spread herself over
+it with outstretched arms, as the mother-bird poises with outstretched
+wings over her brood. Then she rose, and her face was peaceful and
+resigned.
+
+The Laird Fisher sat down before the kitchen fire, with one arm on the
+cradle-head. Parson Christian stood beside him. The old charcoal-burner
+wept in silence, and the good parson's voice was too thick for the words
+of comfort that rose to his lips.
+
+The doctors followed into the bedroom. Mercy was lying tranquilly on her
+bed. Her countenance was without expression. She was busy with her own
+thoughts. Greta stood by the bedside; anxiety was written in every line
+of her beautiful, brave face.
+
+"We must give her the gas," said one of the doctors, addressing the
+other.
+
+Mercy's features twitched.
+
+"Who said that?" she asked, nervously.
+
+"My child, you must be quiet," said the doctor in a tone of authority.
+
+"Yes, I will be quiet, very quiet; only don't make me unconscious," she
+said. "Never mind me; I will not cry. No; if you hurt me I will not cry
+out. I will not stir. I will do everything you ask. And you shall say
+how quiet I have been. Only don't let me be insensible."
+
+The doctors consulted aside, and in whispers.
+
+"Who spoke about the gas? It wasn't you, Mrs. Ritson, was it?"
+
+"You must do as the doctors wish, dear," said Greta in a caressing
+voice.
+
+"Oh, I will be very good. I will do every little thing. Yes, and I will
+be so brave. I am a little childish sometimes, but I can be brave, can't
+I?"
+
+The doctors returned to the bedside.
+
+"Very well, we will not use the gas," said one. "You are a brave little
+woman, after all. There, be still--very still."
+
+One of the doctors was tearing linen into strips for bandages, while
+the other fixed Mercy's head to suit the light.
+
+There was a faint sound from the kitchen. "Wait," said Mercy. "That is
+father--he's crying. Tell him not to cry. Say it's nothing."
+
+She laughed a weak little laugh.
+
+"There, he will hear that; go and say it was I who laughed."
+
+Greta left the room on tiptoe. Old Matthew was still sitting over a
+dying fire, gently rocking the sleeping child. Parson Christian's eyes
+were raised in prayer.
+
+When Greta returned to the bedroom, Mercy called her, and said very
+softly--"Let me hold your hand, Greta--may I say Greta?--there," and her
+fingers closed on Greta's with a convulsive grasp.
+
+The operation began. Mercy held her breath. She had the stubborn
+north-country blood in her. Once only a sigh escaped. There was a dead
+silence.
+
+In two or three minutes the doctor said: "Just another minute, and all
+will be over."
+
+At the next instant Greta felt her hand held with a grasp of iron.
+
+"Doctor, doctor, I can see you!" cried Mercy, and her words came in
+gusts.
+
+"Be quiet," said the doctor in a stern voice. In half a minute more the
+linen bandages were being wrapped tightly over Mercy's eyes.
+
+"Doctor, dear doctor, let me see my boy," cried Mercy.
+
+"Be quiet, I say," said the doctor again.
+
+"Dear doctor, my dear doctor, only one peep--one little peep--I saw your
+face--let me see my Ralphie's!"
+
+"Not yet, it is not safe."
+
+"But only for a moment. Don't put the bandage on for one moment. Just
+think, doctor, I have never seen my boy; I've seen other people's
+children, but never once my own, own darling. Oh, dear doctor--"
+
+"You are exciting yourself. Listen to me; if you don't behave yourself
+now you may never see your child."
+
+"Yes, yes, I will behave myself; I will be very good. Only don't shut me
+up in darkness again until I see my boy. Greta, bring him to me.
+Listen: I hear his breathing. Go for my darling. The kind doctor won't
+be angry with you. Tell him that if I see my child it will cure me. I
+know it will."
+
+Greta's eyes were swimming in tears.
+
+"Rest quiet, Mercy. Everything may be lost if you disturb yourself now,
+my dear."
+
+The doctors were wrapping bandage over bandage, and fixing them firmly
+at the back of their patient's head.
+
+"Now listen again," said one of them. "This bandage must be kept over
+your eyes for a week."
+
+"A week--a whole week? Oh, doctor, you might as well say forever!"
+
+"I say a week. And if you should ever remove it--"
+
+"Not for an instant? Not raise it a little?"
+
+"If you ever remove it for an instant, or raise it ever so little, you
+will assuredly lose your sight forever. Remember that."
+
+"Oh, doctor, it is terrible! Why did you not tell me so before? Oh, this
+is worse than blindness! Think of the temptation, and I have never seen
+my boy!"
+
+The doctor had fixed the bandage, and his voice was less stern, but no
+less resolute.
+
+"You must obey me," he said; "I will come again this day week, and then
+you shall see your child, and your father, and this young lady, and
+everybody. But, mind, if you don't obey me you will never see anything.
+You will have one glance of your little boy, and then be blind forever,
+or perhaps--yes, perhaps die."
+
+Mercy lay quiet for a moment. Then she said in a low voice:
+
+"Dear doctor, you must forgive me. I am very willful, and I promised to
+be so good. I will not touch the bandage. No, for the sake of my little
+boy, I will never, never touch it. You shall come yourself and take it
+off, and then I shall see him."
+
+The doctors went away. Greta remained all night in the cottage.
+
+"You are happy now, Mercy?" said Greta.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Mercy. "Just think, only a week! And he must be so
+beautiful by this time."
+
+When Greta took the child to her at sunset, there was an ineffable joy
+in her pale face, and next morning, when Greta awoke, Mercy was singing
+softly to herself in the sunrise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+There was a gathering of miners near the pit-head that morning. It was
+pay day. The rule was that the miners on the morning shift should pass
+through the pay-office before going down the shaft at eight o'clock; and
+that those on the night shift should pass through on their way home a
+few minutes afterward. When the morning men passed through the office
+they had found the pay-door shut, and a notice posted over it, saying,
+"All wages due at eight o'clock to-day will be paid at the same hour
+to-morrow."
+
+Presently the men on the night shift came up in the cages, and after a
+brief explanation both gangs, with the banksmen and all top-ground
+hands, except the engine-man, trooped away to a place suitable for a
+conference. There was a worked-out open cutting a hundred yards away. It
+was a vast cleft dug into the side of the mountain, square on its base,
+vertical in its three gray walls, and sweeping up to a dizzy height,
+over which the brant sides of the green fell rose sheer into the sky. It
+was to this natural theatre that the two hundred miners made their way
+in groups of threes and fours, their lamps and cans in their hands,
+their red-stained clothes glistening in the morning sun.
+
+It was decided to send a deputation to the master, asking that the order
+might be revoked and payment made as usual. The body of the men remained
+in the clearing, conversing in knots, while two miners, buirdly fellows,
+rather gruffer of tongue than the rest, went to the office to act as
+spokesmen.
+
+The deputation were approaching the pit-head when the engine-man shouted
+that he had just heard the master's knock from below, and in another
+moment Hugh Ritson, in flannels and fustian, stepped out of the cage.
+
+He heard the request, and at once offered to go to the men and give his
+answer. The miners made way for him respectfully, and then closed about
+him when he spoke.
+
+"Men," he said, with a touch of his old resolution, "let me tell you
+frankly, as between man and man, that I can not pay you this morning,
+because I haven't got the money. I tried to get it, and failed. This
+afternoon I shall receive much more than is due to you, and to-morrow
+you shall be promptly paid."
+
+The miners twisted about and compared notes in subdued voices.
+
+"That's no'but fair," said one.
+
+"He cannut say na fairer," said another.
+
+But there were some who were not so easily appeased; and one of these
+crushed his way through the crowd, and said:
+
+"Mr. Ritson, we're not same as the bettermer folk, as can get credit for
+owt 'at they want. We ax six days' pay because we have to do six days'
+payin' wi' it. And if we're back a day in our pay we're a day back in
+our payin'; and that means clemmin' a laal bit--and the wife and barns
+forby."
+
+There were murmurs of approval from the crowd, and then another
+malcontent added:
+
+"Times has changed to a gay tune sin' we could put by for a rainy day.
+It's hand to mouth now, on'y the mouth's allus ready and the hand's
+not."
+
+"It's na much as we ha' gotten to put away these times," said the first
+speaker. "Not same as the days when a pitman's wife, 'at I ken on, flung
+a five-pound note in his face and axed him what he thowt she were to
+mak' o' that."
+
+"Nay, nay," responded the others in a chorus.
+
+"Men, I'm not charging you with past extravagance," said Hugh Ritson;
+"and it's not my fault if the pit hasn't done as well for all of us as I
+had hoped."
+
+He was moving away, when the crowd closed about him again.
+
+"Mates," shouted one of the miners, "there's another word as some on us
+wad like to say to the master, and that's about the timber."
+
+"What is it?" asked Hugh Ritson, facing about.
+
+"There be some on us 'at think the pit's none ower safe down the bottom
+working, where the seam of sand runs cross-ways. We're auld miners,
+maistly, and we thowt maybe ye wadna tak' it wrang if we telt ye 'at it
+wants a vast mair forks and upreets."
+
+"Thank you, my lads, I'll see what I can do," said Hugh Ritson; and then
+added in a lower tone: "But I've put a forest of timber underground
+already, and where this burying of money is to end God alone knows."
+
+He turned away this time and moved off, halting more noticeably than
+usual on his infirm foot.
+
+He returned to his office near the pit-bank, and found Mr. Bonnithorne
+awaiting him.
+
+"The day is young, but I'm no sluggard, you know," said the lawyer. "I
+thought we might want a word or two before the meeting at the Ghyll."
+
+Hugh Ritson did not notice the explanation. He looked anxious and
+disturbed. While stripping off his pit flannels, and putting on his
+ordinary clothes, he told Mr. Bonnithorne what had just occurred, and
+then added:
+
+"If anything had been necessary to prove that this morning's bad
+business is inevitable, I should have found it in this encounter with
+the men."
+
+"It comes as a fillip to your already blunted purpose," said the lawyer
+with a curious smile. "Odd, isn't it?"
+
+"Blunted!" said Hugh Ritson, and there was a perceptible elevation of
+the eyebrows.
+
+Presently he drew a long breath, and said with an air of relief:
+
+"Ah, well, if she suffers who has suffered enough already, he, at least,
+will be out of the way forever."
+
+Bonnithorne shifted slightly on his seat.
+
+"You think so?" he asked.
+
+Something cynical in the tone caught Hugh Ritson's ear.
+
+"It was a bad change, wasn't it?" added the lawyer; "this one is likely
+to be a deal more troublesome."
+
+Hugh Ritson went on with his dressing in silence.
+
+"You see, by the interchange your positions were reversed," continued
+the lawyer.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the other was in your hands,
+while you are in the hands of this one."
+
+Hugh Ritson's foot fell heavily at that instant, but he merely said,
+with suppressed quietness:
+
+"There was this one's crime."
+
+"Was--precisely," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+Hugh Ritson looked up with a look of inquiry.
+
+"When you gave the crime to the other, this one became a free man," the
+lawyer explained.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"What does it all come to?" said Hugh Ritson, sullenly.
+
+"That your hold of Paul Drayton is gone forever."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Because you can never incriminate him without first incriminating
+yourself," said the lawyer.
+
+"Who talks of incrimination?" said Hugh Ritson, testily. "To-day, this
+man is to take upon himself the name of Paul Lowther--his true name,
+though he doesn't know it, blockhead as he is. Therefore, I ask again:
+What does it all come to?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne shifted uneasily.
+
+"Nothing," he said, meekly, but the curious smile still played about his
+downcast face.
+
+Then there was silence again.
+
+"Do you know that Mercy Fisher is likely to regain her sight?" said
+Hugh.
+
+"You don't say so? Dear me, dear me!" said the lawyer, sincere at last.
+"In all the annals of jurisprudence there is no such extraordinary case
+of identity being conclusively provable by one witness only, and of that
+witness becoming blind. Odd, isn't it?"
+
+Hugh Ritson smiled coldly.
+
+"Odd? Say providential," he answered. "I believe that's what you church
+folk call it when the Almighty averts a disaster that is made imminent
+by your own short-sightedness."
+
+"A disaster, indeed, if her sight ceases to be so providentially short,"
+said the lawyer.
+
+"Get the man out of the way, and the woman is all right," said Hugh. He
+picked a letter out of a drawer, and handed it to Mr. Bonnithorne. "You
+will remember that the other was to have shipped to Australia."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne bowed his head.
+
+"This letter is from the man for whom he intended to go out--an old
+friend of my father. Answer it, Bonnithorne."
+
+"In what terms?" asked the lawyer.
+
+"Say that a long illness prevented, but that Paul Ritson is now prepared
+to fulfill his engagement."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"What then?" Hugh Ritson echoed. "Why, what do you think?"
+
+"Send him?" with a motion of the thumb over the shoulder.
+
+"Of course," said Hugh.
+
+Again the cynical tone caught Hugh Ritson's ear, and he glanced up
+quickly, but made no remark. He was now dressed.
+
+"I am ready," and on reaching the door and taking a last look round the
+room, he added: "I'll have the best of this furniture removed to the
+Ghyll to-morrow. The house has been unbearable of late, and I've been
+forced to spend most of my time down here."
+
+"Then you don't intend to give him much grace?" asked Bonnithorne.
+
+"Not an hour."
+
+The lawyer bent his forehead very low at that moment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The sun was high over the head of Hindscarth, but a fresh breeze was
+blowing from the north, and the walk to the Ghyll was bracing. Mr.
+Bonnithorne talked little on the way, but Hugh Ritson's spirits rose
+sensibly, and he chatted cheerfully on indifferent subjects. It was
+still some minutes short of nine o'clock when they reached the house.
+The servants were bustling about in clean aprons and caps.
+
+"Have the gentlemen arrived?" asked Hugh.
+
+"Not yet, sir," answered one of the servants--it was old Dinah Wilson.
+
+The two men stepped up to Hugh Ritson's room. There the table was spread
+for breakfast. The lawyer glanced at the chairs, and said:
+
+"Then you have invited other friends?"
+
+Hugh nodded his head, and sat down at the organ.
+
+"Three or four neighbors of substance," he said, opening the case. "In a
+matter like this it is well to have witnesses."
+
+Bonnithorne replied with phlegm:
+
+"But what about the feelings of the man who is so soon to be turned out
+of the house?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's fingers were on the keys. He paused and faced about.
+
+"I had no conception that you had such a delicate sense of humor,
+Bonnithorne," he said, with only the shadow of a smile. "Feelings! His
+feelings!"
+
+There was a swift glide up the notes, and other sounds were lost. The
+window was half open; the lawyer walked to it and looked out. At that
+moment the two men were back to back. Hugh Ritson's head was bent over
+the keyboard. Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes were on the tranquil landscape
+lying in the sun outside. The faces of both wore curious smiles.
+
+Hugh Ritson leaped from his seat.
+
+"Ah, I feel like another man already," he said, and took a step or two
+up and down the room, his infirm foot betraying no infirmity. There was
+the noise of fresh arrivals in the hall. A minute later a servant
+entered, followed by three gentlemen, who shook hands effusively with
+Hugh Ritson.
+
+"Delighted to be of service, I'm sure," said one.
+
+"Glad the unhappy connection is to be concluded--it was a scandal," said
+the other.
+
+"You could not go on living on such terms--life wasn't worth it, you
+know," said the first.
+
+The third gentleman was more restrained, but Hugh paid him marked
+deference. They had a short, muttered conference apart.
+
+"Get the other mortgages wiped off the deeds and I have no objection to
+lend you the money on the security of the house and land," said the
+gentleman. At that remark Hugh Ritson bowed his head and appeared
+satisfied.
+
+He rang for breakfast.
+
+"Ask Mr. Paul if he is ready," he said, when Dinah brought the tray.
+
+"Master Paul is abed, sir," said Dinah; and then she added for herself:
+"It caps all--sec feckless wark. It dudn't use to be so, for sure. I'll
+not say but a man may be that changed in a twelvemonth--"
+
+"Ah, I'll go to him myself," said Hugh; and begging to be excused, he
+left the room.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne followed him to the other side of the door.
+
+"Have you counted the cost?" he asked. "It will be a public scandal."
+
+Hugh smiled, and answered with composure:
+
+"Whose will be the loss?"
+
+"God knows!" said the lawyer, with sudden energy.
+
+Hugh glanced up quickly. There was the murmur of voices from within the
+room they had just left.
+
+"Is it that you are too jealous of your good name to allow it to be
+bruited abroad in a scandal, as you say?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne's face wore a curious expression at that moment.
+
+"It's not my good name that is in question," he said, quietly, and
+turned back to the door.
+
+"Whose then? His?"
+
+But the lawyer already held the door ajar, and was passing into the
+room.
+
+Hugh Ritson made his way to the bedroom occupied by Paul Drayton. He
+opened the door without knocking. It was dark within. Thin streaks of
+dusty sunlight shot from between a pair of heavy curtains. The air was
+noisome with dead tobacco smoke and the fumes of stale beer. Hugh's
+gorge rose, but he conquered his disgust.
+
+"Who's there?" said a husky voice from behind the dark hangings of a
+four-post bed that was all but hidden in the gloom.
+
+"The friends are here," said Hugh Ritson, cheerily. "How long will you
+be?"
+
+There was a suppressed chuckle.
+
+"All right."
+
+"We will begin breakfast," said Hugh. He was turning to go.
+
+"Is that lawyer man back from Scotland?" asked Drayton.
+
+"Bonnithorne? He's here--he didn't say that he'd been away," said Hugh.
+
+"All right."
+
+Hugh Ritson returned to the bed-head. "Have you heard," he said in a
+subdued voice, "that the doctors have operated on the girl Mercy, and
+that she is likely to regain her sight?"
+
+"Eh? What?" Drayton had started up in bed. Then rolling down his sleeves
+and buttoning them leisurely, he added: "But that ain't nothing to me."
+
+Hugh Ritson left the room. He was in spirits indeed, for he had borne
+even this encounter with equanimity. As he passed through the house,
+Brother Peter entered at the porch with a letter in his hand.
+
+"Is Parson Christian coming?" said Hugh.
+
+"Don't know 'at I've heard," said Peter. "He's boddered me to fetch ye a
+scribe of a line. Here 'tis."
+
+Hugh Ritson opened the envelope. The note ran:
+
+   "I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to break bread with one who
+   has broken the peace of my household; nor is it agreeable to my duty
+   as a minister of Christ to give the countenance of my presence to
+   proceedings which must be a sham, inasmuch as the person concerned is
+   an imposter--with the which name I yet hope to brand him when the
+   proper time and circumstances arrive."
+
+Hugh smiled as he read the letter; then he thrust a shilling into
+Peter's unyielding hand, and shot away.
+
+"The parson will not come," said Hugh, drawing Bonnithorne aside; "but
+that can not matter. If he is Greta's guardian, you are her father's
+executor." Then, raising his voice, "Gentlemen," he said, "my brother
+wishes us to begin breakfast; he will join us presently."
+
+The company was soon seated; the talk was brisk and cheerful.
+
+"Glorious prospect," said a gentleman sitting opposite the open window.
+"Often wonder you don't throw out a bay, Mr. Ritson."
+
+"I've thought of it," said Hugh, "but it's not worth while to spend such
+money until one is master of one's own house."
+
+"Ah, true, true!" said several voices in chorus.
+
+Drayton entered, his eyes red, his face sallow. "Morning, gents," he
+said in his thick guttural.
+
+Two of the gentlemen rose, and bowed with frigid politeness. "Good
+morning, Mr. Ritson," said the third.
+
+The servant had followed Drayton into the room with a beefsteak
+underdone. "Post not come?" he asked, shifting his plates.
+
+"It can't be long now," said Bonnithorne, consulting his watch.
+
+"Sooner the better," Drayton muttered. He took some papers from a
+breast-pocket and counted them; then fixed them in his waistcoat, where
+his watch would have been if he had worn one.
+
+When breakfast was done, Hugh Ritson took certain documents from a
+cabinet. "Be seated, gentlemen," he said. All sat except Drayton, who
+lighted a pipe, and rang to ask if the postman had come. He had not.
+"Then go and sharpen up his heels."
+
+"My duty would be less pleasant," said Hugh Ritson, "if some of the
+facts were not already known."
+
+"Then we'll take 'em as read, so we will," put in Drayton, perambulating
+behind a cloud of smoke.
+
+"Paul, I will ask you to be seated," said Hugh, in an altered tone.
+
+Drayton sat down with a snort.
+
+"I have to tell you," continued Hugh Ritson, "that my brother known to
+you as Paul Ritson, is now satisfied that he was not the heir of my
+father, who died intestate."
+
+There were sundry nods of the grave noddles assembled about the table.
+
+"Fearful shock to any man," said one. "No wonder he has lost heart and
+grown reckless," said another.
+
+"On becoming aware of this fact, he was anxious to relinquish the estate
+to the true heir."
+
+There were further nods, and some muttered comments on the requirements
+of honor.
+
+"I show you here a copy of the register of my father's marriage, and a
+copy of the register of my own birth, occurring less than a year
+afterward. From these, in the absence of extraordinary testimony, it
+must be the presumption that I am myself my father's rightful heir."
+
+The papers were handed about and returned with evident satisfaction.
+
+"So far, all is plain," continued Hugh Ritson. "But my brother has
+learned that he is not even my father's son."
+
+Three astonished faces were lifted from the table. Bonnithorne sat with
+head bent. Drayton leaned an elbow on one knee and smoked sullenly.
+
+"It turns out that he is the son of my mother by another man," said Hugh
+Ritson.
+
+The guests twisted about. "Ah, that explains all," they whispered.
+
+"You will be surprised to learn that my mother's husband by a former
+invalid marriage was no other than Robert Lowther, and that he who sits
+with us now as Paul Ritson is really Paul Lowther."
+
+At this, Hugh placed two further documents on the table.
+
+Drayton cleared his throat noisily.
+
+"Dear me, dear me! yet it's plain enough!" said one of the visitors.
+
+"Then what about Mrs. Ritson--Miss Greta, I mean?" asked another.
+
+"She is Paul Lowther's half-sister, and therefore his marriage with her
+must be annulled."
+
+The three gentlemen turned in their seats and looked amazed, Drayton
+still smoked in silence. Bonnithorne did not raise his head.
+
+"He will relinquish to me my father's estates, but he is not left
+penniless," continued Hugh Ritson. "By his own father's will he inherits
+five thousand pounds."
+
+Drayton snorted contemptuously, then spat on the floor.
+
+"Friends," said Hugh Ritson again, "there is only one further point, and
+I am loath to touch on it. My brother--I speak of Paul Lowther--on
+taking possession of the estates, exercised what he believed to be his
+legal right to mortgage them. I am sorry to say he mortgaged them
+deeply."
+
+There was an interchange of astute glances.
+
+"If I were a rich man, I should be content to be the loser, but I am a
+poor man, and am compelled to ask that those mortgages stand forfeit."
+
+"Is it the law?"
+
+"It is--and, as you will say, only a fair one," Hugh answered.
+
+"Who are the mortgagees?"
+
+"That is where the pity arises--the chief of them is no other than the
+daughter of Robert Lowther--Greta."
+
+Sundry further twists and turns. "Pity for her." "Well, she should have
+seen to his title. Who was her lawyer?"
+
+"Her father's executor, our friend Mr. Bonnithorne."
+
+"How much does she lose?"
+
+"I'm afraid a great deal--perhaps half her fortune," said Hugh.
+
+"No matter; it's but fair, Mr. Ritson is not to inherit an estate
+impoverished by the excesses of the wrong man."
+
+Drayton's head was still bent, but he scraped his feet restlessly.
+
+"I have only another word to say," said Hugh. "In affairs of this solemn
+nature, it is best to have witnesses, or perhaps I should have preferred
+to confer with Paul and Mr. Bonnithorne in private." He dropped his
+voice and added: "You see, there is my poor mother; and though, in a
+sense, she is no longer of this world, her good name must ever be sacred
+with me."
+
+The astute glances again, and two pairs of upraised hands. The lawyer
+had twisted toward the window.
+
+"But our friend Bonnithorne will tell you that the law in effect
+compelled me to evict my brother. You may not know that there is a
+condition of English law in which a bastard becomes a permanent heir;
+that is when he is called, in the language of the law, the bastard
+eigne." There was a tremor in his voice as he added softly: "Believe me,
+I had no choice."
+
+Drayton stamped his heavy foot, threw down his pipe, and jumped to his
+feet. "It's a lie, the lot of it!" he blurted. Then he fumbled at his
+watch-pocket, and pulled out a paper. "That's my register, straight and
+plain."
+
+He stammered it aloud:
+
+"Ritson, Paul; father, Allan Ritson; mother, Grace Ritson. Date of
+birth, April 6, 1847; place, Crieff, Scotland."
+
+Hugh Ritson, a little pale, smiled. The others turned to him in their
+amazement. In an instant he had regained an appearance of indifference.
+
+"Where does it come from?" he asked.
+
+"The registrar's at Edinburgh. D'ye say it ain't right?"
+
+"No; but I say, what is it worth? Gentlemen," said Hugh, turning to the
+visitors, "compare it with the register of my father's marriage.
+Observe, the one date is April 6, 1847; the other is June 12, 1847. Even
+if genuine, does it prove legitimacy?"
+
+Drayton laid his hand on the lawyer's arm. "Here you, speak up, will
+ye?" he said.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne rose, and then Hugh Ritson's pale face became ghastly.
+
+"This birth occurred in Scotland," he said. "Now, if the father happened
+to hold a Scotch domicile, and the mother lived with him as his wife,
+the child would be legitimate."
+
+"Without a marriage?"
+
+"Without a ceremony."
+
+Natt pushed into the room, his cap in one hand, a letter in the other.
+He had knocked twice, and none had heard. "The post, sir; one letter for
+Master Paul."
+
+"Good lad!" Drayton clutched it with a cry of delight.
+
+"But my father had no Scotch domicile," said Hugh, with apparent
+composure.
+
+"Oh, but he had," said Drayton, tearing open his envelope.
+
+"He was a Scotsman born," said Bonnithorne, taking another document from
+Drayton's hand. "See, this is his register. Odd, isn't it?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's eyes flashed. He looked steadily into the face of the
+lawyer, then he took the paper.
+
+The next moment he crushed it in his palm and flung it out of the
+window. "I shall want proof both of your facts and your law," he said.
+
+"Eh, and welcome," said Drayton, shouting in his agitation. "Listen to
+this," and he proceeded to read.
+
+"Wait! From whom?" asked Hugh Ritson. "Some pettifogger?"
+
+"The solicitor-general," said Bonnithorne.
+
+"Is that good enough?" asked Drayton, tauntingly.
+
+"Go on," said Hugh, rapping the table with his finger-tips.
+
+Drayton handed the letter to the lawyer. "Do you read it," he said; "I
+ain't flowery. I'm a gentleman, and--" He stopped suddenly and tramped
+the floor, while Bonnithorne read:
+
+   "If there is no reason to suppose the father lost his Scotch
+   domicile, the son is legitimate. If the husband recognized his wife
+   in registering his son's birth, the law of Scotland would presume
+   that there was a marriage, but whether of ceremony or consent would
+   be quite indifferent."
+
+There was a pause, Drayton took the letter from the lawyer's hands,
+folded it carefully, and put it in his fob-pocket. Then he peered into
+Hugh Ritson's face with a leer of triumph. Bonnithorne had slunk aside.
+The guests were silent.
+
+"D'ye hear?" said Drayton, "the son is legitimate." He gloated over the
+words, and tapped his pocket as he repeated them. "What d'ye say to it,
+eh?"
+
+At first Hugh Ritson struggled visibly for composure, and in an instant
+his face was like marble. Drayton came close to him.
+
+"You were going to give me the go-by, eh? Turn me out-o'-doors, eh?
+Damme, it's my turn now, so it is!"
+
+So saying, Drayton stepped to the door and flung it open.
+
+"This house is mine," he said; "go, and be damned to you!"
+
+At this unexpected blow, Hugh Ritson beat the ground with his foot. He
+looked round at the strangers, and felt like a wretch who was gagged and
+might say nothing. Then he halted to where Drayton stood with
+outstretched arm.
+
+"Let me have a word with you in private," he said in a voice that was
+scarcely audible.
+
+Drayton lifted his hand, and his fist was clinched.
+
+"Not a syllable!" he said. His accent was brutal and frenzied.
+
+Hugh Ritson's nostrils quivered, and his eyes flashed. Drayton quailed
+an instant, and burst into a laugh.
+
+There was a great silence. Bonnithorne was still before the window, his
+face down, his hands clasped behind him, his foot pawing the ground.
+Hugh Ritson walked to his side. He contemplated him a moment, and then
+touched him on the shoulder. When he spoke, his face was dilated with
+passion, and his voice was low and deep.
+
+"There is a Book," he said, "that a Churchman may know, which tells of
+an unjust steward. The master thought to dismiss him from his
+stewardship. Then the steward said within himself, 'What shall I do?'"
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"What did he do?" continued Hugh Ritson, and every word fell on the
+silence like the stroke of a bell. "He called his master's debtors
+together, and said to the first, 'How much do you owe?' 'One hundred
+measures.' Then he said, 'Write a bill for fifty.'"
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"What did that steward mean? He meant that when the master should
+dismiss him from his stewardship, the debtor should take him into his
+house."
+
+Hugh Ritson's manner was the white heat of calm. He turned half round to
+where Drayton stood, and raised his voice.
+
+"That debtor was henceforth bound hand and foot. Let him but parley with
+the steward, and the steward cried, 'Thief,' 'Forger,' 'Perjurer.'"
+
+Bonnithorne shuffled uneasily. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but
+the words would not come. At last he gulped down something that had
+seemed to choke him, smiled between his teeth a weak, bankrupt smile,
+and said:
+
+"How are we to read your parable? Are you the debtor bound hand and
+foot, and is your brother the astute steward?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's foot fell heavily.
+
+"Is it so?" he said, catching at the word. "Then be it so;" and his
+voice rose to a shrill cry. "That steward shall come to the ground, and
+his master with him!"
+
+At that he stepped back to where Drayton stood with eyes as full of
+bewilderment as frenzy.
+
+"Paul Lowther--" he said.
+
+"Call me Paul Ritson," interrupted Drayton.
+
+"Paul Lowther--"
+
+"Ritson!" Drayton shouted, and then, dropping his voice, he said,
+rapidly: "You gave it me, and by God I'll keep it!"
+
+Hugh Ritson leaned across the table and tapped a paper that lay on it.
+
+"That is your name," he said, "and I'll prove it."
+
+Drayton burst into another laugh.
+
+"You daren't try," he chuckled.
+
+Hugh turned upon him with eyes of fire.
+
+"So you measure my spirit by your own. Man, man!" he said, "do you know
+what you are doing?"
+
+There was another brutal laugh from Drayton, but it died suddenly on his
+lips.
+
+Then Hugh Ritson stepped to the door. He took a last look round. It was
+as if he knew that he had reached the beginning of the end--as if he
+realized that he was never again to stand in the familiar room. The
+future, that seemed so near an hour ago, was gone from him forever; the
+cup that he had lifted to his lips lay in fragments at his feet. He saw
+it all in that swift instant. On his face there were the lines of agony,
+but over them there played the smile of resolve. He put one hand to his
+forehead, and then said in a voice so low as to be no more than a
+whisper:
+
+"Wait and see."
+
+When the guests, who stood huddled together like sheep in a storm, had
+recovered their stunned senses, Hugh Ritson was gone from the room.
+Drayton had sunk into a chair near where Bonnithorne stood, and was
+whining like a whipped hound.
+
+"Go after him! What will he do? You know I was always against it!"
+
+But presently he stood up and laughed, and bantered and crowed, and
+observed that it was a pity if a gentleman could not be master in his
+own house, and that what couldn't be cured must be endured.
+
+"Precisely," interposed one of the guests, "and you have my entire
+sympathy, Mr. Ritson. A more cruel deception was never more manfully
+exposed."
+
+"I fully agree with you, neighbor," said another, "and such moral
+tyranny is fearful to contemplate. Paul Lowther, indeed! Now, that is a
+joke."
+
+"Well, it is rather, ain't it?" said Drayton. And then he laughed, and
+they all laughed and shook hands, and were excellent good friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Greta stayed with Mercy until noon that day, begging, entreating, and
+finally commanding her to lie quiet in bed, while she herself dressed
+and fed the child, and cooked and cleaned, in spite of the Laird
+Fisher's protestations. When all was done, and the old charcoal-burner
+had gone out on the hills, Greta picked up the little fellow in her
+arms and went to Mercy's room. Mercy was alert to every sound, and in an
+instant was sitting up in bed. Her face beamed, her parted lips smiled,
+her delicate fingers plucked nervously at the counterpane.
+
+"How brightsome it is to-day, Greta," she said. "I'm sure the sun must
+be shining."
+
+The window was open, and a soft breeze floated through the sun's rays
+into the room. Mercy inclined her head aside, and added, "Ah, you young
+rogue you; you are there, are you? Give him to me, the rascal!" The
+rogue was set down in his mother's arms, and she proceeded to punish his
+rascality with a shower of kisses. "How bonny his cheeks must be; they
+will be just like two ripe apples," and forthwith there fell another
+shower of kisses. Then she babbled over the little one, and lisped, and
+stammered, and nodded her head in his face, and blew little puffs of
+breath into his hair, and tickled him until he laughed and crowed and
+rolled and threw up his legs; and then she kissed his limbs and
+extremities in a way that mothers have, and finally imprisoned one of
+his feet by putting it ankle deep into her mouth. "Would you ever think
+a foot could be so tiny, Greta?" she said. And the little one plunged
+about and clambered laboriously up its mother's breast, and more than
+once plucked at the white bandage about her head. "No, no; Ralphie must
+not touch," said Mercy with sudden gravity. "Only think, Ralphie pet,
+one week--only one--ay, less--only six days now, and then--oh, then--" A
+long hug, and the little fellow's boisterous protest against the
+convulsive pressure abridged the mother's prophecy.
+
+All at once Mercy's manner changed. She turned toward Greta, and said:
+"I will not touch the bandage, no, never; but if Ralphie tugged at it,
+and it fell--would that be breaking my promise?"
+
+Greta saw what was in her heart.
+
+"I'm afraid it would, dear," she said; but there was a tremor in her
+voice.
+
+Mercy sighed audibly.
+
+"Just think, it would be only Ralphie. The kind doctors could not be
+angry with my little child. I would say, 'It was the boy,' and they
+would smile and say, 'Ah, that is different.'"
+
+"Give me the little one," said Greta with emotion.
+
+Mercy drew the child closer, and there was a pause.
+
+"I was very wrong, Greta," she said in a low tone. "Oh! you would not
+think what a fearful thing came into my mind a minute ago. Take my
+Ralphie. Just imagine, my own innocent baby tempted me."
+
+As Greta reached across the bed to lift the child out of his mother's
+lap, the little fellow was struggling to communicate, by help of a
+limited vocabulary, some wondrous intelligence of recent events that
+somewhat overshadowed his little existence. "Puss--dat," many times
+repeated, was further explained by one chubby forefinger with its
+diminutive finger-nail pointed to the fat back of the other hand.
+
+"He means that the little cat has scratched him," said Greta, "but bless
+the mite, he is pointing to the wrong hand."
+
+"Puss--dat," continued the child, and peered up into his mother's
+sightless face. Mercy was all tears in an instant. She had borne
+yesterday's operation without a groan, but now the scratch on her
+child's hand went to her heart like a stab.
+
+"Lie quiet, Mercy," said Greta; "it will be gone to-morrow."
+
+"Go-on," echoed the little chap, and pointed out at the window.
+
+"The darling, how he picks up every word!" said Greta.
+
+"He means the horse," explained Mercy.
+
+"Go-on--man--go-on," prattled the little one, with a child's
+indifference to all conversation except his own.
+
+"Bless the love, he must remember the doctor and his horse," said Greta.
+
+Mercy was putting her lips to the scratch on the little hand.
+
+"Oh, Greta, I am very childish; but a mother's heart melts like butter."
+
+"Batter," echoed the child, and wriggled out of Greta's arms to the
+ground, where he forthwith clambered on to the stool, and possessed
+himself of a slice of bread which lay on the table at the bedside. Then
+the fair curly head disappeared like a glint of sunlight through the
+door to the kitchen.
+
+"What shall I care if other mothers see my child? I shall see him, too,"
+said Mercy, and she sighed. "Yes," she added softly, "his hands and his
+eyes and his feet and his soft hair."
+
+"Try to sleep an hour or two, dear," said Greta, "and then perhaps you
+may get up this afternoon--only perhaps, you know, but we'll see."
+
+"Yes, Greta, yes. How kind you are."
+
+"You will be far kinder to me some day," said Greta, very tenderly.
+
+"No--ah, yes, I remember. How very selfish I am--I had quite forgotten.
+But then it is so hard not to be selfish when you are a mother. Only
+fancy, I never think of myself as Mercy now. No, never. I'm just
+Ralphie's mamma. When Ralphie came, Mercy must have died in some way.
+That's very silly, isn't it? Only it does seem true."
+
+"Man--go-on--batter," was heard from the kitchen, mingled with the
+patter of tiny feet.
+
+"Listen to him. How tricksome he is! And you should hear him cry, 'Oh!'
+You would say, 'That child has had an eye knocked out.' And then, in a
+minute, behold! he's laughing once more. There, I'm selfish again; but I
+will make up for it some day, if God is good."
+
+"Yes, Mercy, He is good," said Greta.
+
+Her arms rested on the door-jamb, and her head dropped on to it; her
+eyes swam. Did it seem at that moment as if God had been very good to
+these two women?
+
+"Greta," said Mercy, and her voice fell to a whisper, "do you think
+Ralphie is like--anybody?"
+
+"Yes, dear, he is like you."
+
+There was a pause. Then Mercy's hand strayed from under the bedclothes
+and plucked at Greta's gown.
+
+"Do you think," she asked, in a voice all but inaudible, "that father
+knows who it is?"
+
+"I can not say--we have never told him."
+
+"Nor I--he never asked, never once--only, you know, he gave up his work
+at the mine, and went back to the charcoal-pit when Ralphie came. But he
+never said a word."
+
+Greta did not answer. There was another pause. Then Mercy said, in a
+stronger voice, "Will it be soon--the trial?"
+
+"As soon as your eyes are better," said Greta, earnestly; "everything
+depends on your recovery."
+
+At that moment the bedroom door was pushed open with a little lordly
+bang, and the great wee man entered with his piece of bread stuck rather
+insecurely on one prong of a fork.
+
+"Toas," he explained complacently, "toas," and walked up to the empty
+grate and stretched his arm over the fender at the cold bars.
+
+"Why, there's no fire for toast, you darling goose," said Greta,
+catching him in her arms, much to his masculine vexation.
+
+Mercy had risen on an elbow, and her face was full of the yearning of
+the blind. Then she lay back.
+
+"Never mind," she said to herself in a faltering voice, "let me lie
+quiet and think of all his pretty ways."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Greta returned to the vicarage toward noon, and overtook Parson
+Christian and Peter in the lonnin, the one carrying a scythe over his
+shoulder, the other a bundle of rushes under his one arm. The parson was
+walking in silence under the noontide sun, his straw hat tipped back
+from his forehead and his eyes on the ground. He was busy with his own
+reflections. It was not until Greta had tripped up to his side and
+slipped his scythe-stone from its strap in the pole that the parson was
+awakened from his reverie.
+
+"Great news, Greta--great news, my lass!" he said in answer to her
+liberal tender in exchange for his thoughts. "How well it's said, that
+he that diggeth a pit for another should look that he fall not into it
+himself."
+
+"What news, Mr. Christian?" said Greta, and her color heightened.
+
+"Well, we've been mowing the grass in the church-yard, Peter and I, and
+the scythe is old like ourselves, and it wanted tempering. So away we
+went to the smithy to have it ground, and who should come up but Robbie
+Atkinson, leading hassocks from Longridge. And Robbie would fain have us
+go with him and be cheerful at the Flying Horse. Well, we'd each had a
+pot of ale and milk, when in came Natt, the stableman at Ritson's, all
+lather like one of his horses after his master has been astride her. And
+Natt was full of a great quarrel at the Ghyll, wherein young Mr. Hugh
+had tried to turn yonder man out of the house in the way I told you of
+before, but the man denied that he was what Hugh called him, and clung
+to it that he was Paul Ritson, and brought documents to show that Paul
+was his father's rightful heir, after all."
+
+"Well, well?" asked Greta, breathlessly.
+
+Peter had shambled on to the house.
+
+"Well, Natt is no very trustworthy chronicler, I fear, but one thing is
+plain, and that is, that Mr. Hugh, who thought to turn yon man out of
+the house, has been turned out of it himself."
+
+Greta stood in the road, trembling from head to foot.
+
+"My poor husband!" she said in a whisper. Then came a torrent of
+questions. "When did this happen? What think you will come of it? Where
+will Hugh go? What will he do? Ah, Mr. Christian, you always said the
+cruel instrument would turn in his hand!"
+
+There was a step behind them. In their anxiety they had not noticed it
+until it was close at their heels. They turned, and were face to face
+with Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+The lawyer bowed, but before they had exchanged the courtesies of
+welcome, a horse's tramp came from the road, and in a moment Drayton
+rode up the lonnin. His face was flushed, and his manner noisy as he
+leaped from the saddle into their midst.
+
+Greta lifted one hand to her breast, and with the other hand she clasped
+that of the parson. The old man's face grew rigid in an instant, and
+all the mellowness natural to it died away.
+
+Drayton made up to Greta and the parson with an air of braggadocio.
+
+"I've come to tell you once for all that my wife must live under my
+roof."
+
+No one answered. Drayton took a step near, and slapped his boot with his
+riding-whip.
+
+"The law backs me up in it, and I mean to have it out."
+
+Still there was no answer, and Drayton's braggadocio gathered assurance
+from the silence.
+
+"Not as I want her. None of your shrinking away, madame." A hoarse
+laugh. "Burn my body! if I wouldn't as soon have my mother for a wife."
+
+"What then?" said the parson in a low tone.
+
+"Appearances. I ain't to be a laughing-stock of the neighborhood any
+longer. My wife's my wife. A husband's a husband, and wants obedience."
+
+"And what if you do not get it?" asked the parson, his old face
+whitening.
+
+"What? Imprisonment--that's what." Drayton twisted about and touched the
+lawyer with the handle of his whip. "Here, you, tell 'em what's what."
+
+Thus appealed to, Mr. Bonnithorne explained that a husband was entitled
+to the restitution of connubial rights, and, in default, to the
+"attachment" of his spouse.
+
+"The law," said Mr. Bonnithorne, "can compel a wife to live with her
+husband, or punish her with imprisonment for not doing so."
+
+"D'ye hear?" said Drayton, slapping furiously at the sole of his boot.
+"Punish her with imprisonment."
+
+There was a pause, and then the parson said, quietly but firmly:
+
+"I gather that it means that you want to share this lady's property."
+
+"Well, what of it? Hain't I a right to share it, eh?"
+
+"You have thus far enjoyed the benefit of her mortgages, on the pretense
+that you are her husband; but now you are going too far."
+
+"We'll see. Here, you," prodding the lawyer, "take proceedings at once.
+If she won't come, imprison her. D'ye hear--imprison her!"
+
+He swung about and caught the reins from the horse's mane, laughing a
+hollow laugh. Greta disengaged her hand from the hand of the parson, and
+stepped up to Drayton until she stood before him face to face, her eyes
+flashing, her lips quivering, her cheeks pale, her whole figure erect
+and firm.
+
+"And what of that?" she said. "Do you think to frighten me with the
+cruelties of the law?--me?--me?" she echoed, with scorn in every
+syllable. "Have I suffered so little from it already that you dare to
+say, 'Imprison her,' as if that would drive me to your house?"
+
+Drayton tried to laugh, but the feeble effort died on his hot lips. He
+spat on the ground, and then tried to lift his eyes back to the eyes of
+Greta, but they fell to the whip that he held in his hand.
+
+"Imprison me, Paul Drayton! I shall not be the first you've imprisoned.
+Imprison me, and I shall be rid of you and your imposture!" she said,
+raising her voice.
+
+Drayton leaped to the saddle.
+
+"I'll do it!" he muttered; and now, pale, crushed, his braggadocio gone,
+he tugged his horse's head aside and brought down the whip on its flank.
+
+Parson Christian turned to Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"Follow him," he said, resolutely, and lifted his hand.
+
+The lawyer made a show of explanation, then assumed an air of authority,
+but finally encountered the parson's white face, and turned away.
+
+In another moment Greta was hanging on Parson Christian's neck, sobbing
+and moaning, while the good old Christian, with all the mellowness back
+in his wrinkled face, smoothed her hair as tenderly as a woman.
+
+"My poor Paul, my dear husband!" cried Greta.
+
+"Ah! thanks be to God, things are at their worst now, and they can't
+move but they must mend," said the parson.
+
+He took her indoors and bathed her hot forehead, and dried with his hard
+old hand the tears that fell from eyes that a moment before had flashed
+like a basilisk's.
+
+Toward five o'clock that evening a knock came to the door of the
+vicarage, and old Laird Fisher entered. His manner was more than usually
+solemn and constrained.
+
+"I's coom't to say as ma lass's wee thing is taken badly," he said, "and
+rayder sudden't."
+
+Greta rose from her seat and put on her hat and cloak. She was hastening
+down the road while the charcoal-burner was still standing in the middle
+of the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+When Greta reached the old charcoal-burner's cottage, the little one was
+lying in a drowsy state in Mercy's arms. Its breathing seemed difficult;
+sometimes it started in terror; it was feverish and suffered thirst. The
+mother's wistful face was bent down on it with an indescribable
+expression. There were only the trembling lips to tell of the sharp
+struggle that was going on within. But the yearning for a sight of the
+little flushed countenance, the tearless appeal for but one glimpse of
+the drowsy little eyes, the half-articulate cry of a mother's heart
+against the fate that made the child she had suckled at her breast a
+stranger, whose very features she might not know--all this was written
+in that blind face.
+
+"Is he pale?" said Mercy. "Is he sleeping? He does not talk now, but
+only starts and cries, and sometimes coughs."
+
+"When did this begin?" asked Greta.
+
+"Toward four o'clock. He had been playing, and I noticed that he
+breathed heavily, and then he came to me to be nursed. Is he awake now?
+Listen."
+
+The little one in its restless drowsiness was muttering faintly,
+"Man--go-on--batter--toas."
+
+"The darling is talking in his sleep, isn't he?" said Mercy.
+
+Then there was a ringing, brassy cough.
+
+"It is croup," thought Greta.
+
+She closed the window, lighted a fire, placed the kettle so that the
+steam might enter the room, then wrung flannels out of hot water, and
+wrapped them about the child's neck. She stayed all that night at the
+cottage, and sat up with the little one and nursed it. Mercy could not
+be persuaded to go to bed, but she was very quiet. It had not yet taken
+hold of her that the child was seriously ill. He was drowsy and a little
+feverish, his pulse beat fast and he coughed hard sometimes, but he
+would be better in the morning. Oh, yes, he would soon be well again,
+and tearing up the flowers in the garden.
+
+Toward midnight the pulse fell rapidly, the breathing become quieter,
+and the whole nature seemed to sink. Mercy listened with her ear bent
+down at the child's mouth, and a smile of ineffable joy spread itself
+over her face.
+
+"Bless him, he is sleeping so calmly," she said.
+
+Greta did not answer.
+
+"The 'puss' and the 'man' don't darken his little life so much now,"
+continued Mercy, cheerily.
+
+"No, dear," said Greta, in as strong a voice as she could summon.
+
+"All will be well with my darling boy soon, will it not?"
+
+"Yes, dear," said Greta, with a struggle.
+
+Happily Mercy could not read the other answer in her face.
+
+Mercy had put her sensitive fingers on the child's nose, and was
+touching him lightly about the mouth.
+
+"Greta," she said in a startled whisper, "does he look pinched?"
+
+"A little," said Greta, quietly.
+
+"And his skin--is it cold and clammy?"
+
+"We must give him another hot flannel," said Greta.
+
+Mercy sat at the bedside, and said nothing for an hour. Then all at
+once, and in a strange, harsh voice, she said:
+
+"I wish God had not made Ralphie so winsome."
+
+Greta started at the words, but made no answer.
+
+The daylight came early. As the first gleams of gray light came in at
+the window, Greta turned to where Mercy sat in silence. It was a sad
+face that she saw in the mingled yellow light of the dying lamp and the
+gray of the dawn.
+
+Mercy spoke again.
+
+"Greta, do you remember what Mistress Branthet said when her baby died
+last back-end gone twelvemonth?"
+
+Greta looked up quickly at the bandaged eyes.
+
+"What?" she asked.
+
+"Well, Parson Christian tried to comfort her, and said, 'Your baby is
+now an angel in Paradise,' and she turned on him with 'Shaf on your
+angels--I want none on 'em--I want my little girl.'"
+
+Mercy's voice broke into a sob.
+
+Toward ten o'clock the doctor came. He had been detained. Very sorry to
+disoblige Mrs. Ritson, but fact was old Mr. de Broadthwaite had an
+attack of lumbago, complicated by a bout of toothache, and everybody
+knew he was most exacting. Young person's baby ill? Feverish, restless,
+starts in its sleep, and cough?--Ah, croupy cough--yes, croup, true
+croup, not spasmodic. Let him see; how old? A year and a half? Ah, bad,
+very. Most frequent in second year of infancy. Dangerous, highly so.
+Forms a membrane that occludes air passages. Often ends in convulsions,
+and child suffocates. Sad, very. Let him see again. How long since the
+attack began? Yesterday at four. Ah, far gone, far. The great man soon
+vanished, leaving behind him a harmless preparation of aconite and
+ipecacuanha.
+
+Mercy had heard all, and her pent-up grief broke out in sobs.
+
+"Oh, to think I shall hear my Ralphie no more, and to know his white
+cold face is looking up from a coffin, while other children are playing
+in the sunshine and chasing the butterflies! No, no, it can not be; God
+will not let it come to pass; I will pray to Him and He will save my
+child. Why, He can do anything, and He has all the world. What is my
+little baby boy to Him? He will not let it be taken from me!"
+
+Greta's heart was too full for speech. But she might weep in silence,
+and none there would know. Mercy stretched across the bed and, tenderly
+folding the child in her arms, she lifted him up, and then went down on
+her knees.
+
+"Merciful Father," she said in a childish voice of sweet confidence,
+"this is my baby, my Ralphie, and I love him so dearly. You would never
+think how much I love him. But he is ill, and doctor says he may die.
+Oh, dear Father, only think what it would be to say, 'His little face is
+gone.' And then I have never seen him. You will not take him away until
+his mother sees him. So soon, too. Only five days more. Why, it is quite
+close. Not to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the next, but the day after
+that!"
+
+She put in many another child-like plea, and then rose with a smile on
+her pale lips and replaced the little one on his pillow.
+
+"How patient he is," she said. "He can't say 'Thank you,' but I'm sure
+his eyes are speaking. Let me feel." She put her finger lightly on the
+child's lids. "No, they are shut; he must be sleeping. Oh, dear, he
+sleeps very much. Is he gaining color? How quiet he is! If he would only
+say, 'Mamma!' How I wish I could see him!"
+
+She was very quiet for awhile, and then plucked at Greta's gown
+suddenly.
+
+"Greta," she said eagerly, "something tells me that if I could only see
+Ralphie I should save him."
+
+Greta started up in terror. "No, no, no; you must not think of it," she
+said.
+
+"But some one whispered it. It must have been God Himself. You know we
+ought to obey God always."
+
+"Mercy, it was not God who said that. It was your own heart. You must
+not heed it."
+
+"I'm sure it was God," said Mercy. "And I heard it quite plain."
+
+"Mercy, my darling, think what you are saying. Think what it is you wish
+to do. If you do it you will be blind forever."
+
+"But I shall have saved my Ralphie."
+
+"No, no; you will not."
+
+"Will he not be saved, Greta?"
+
+"Only our heavenly Father knows."
+
+"Well, He whispered it in my heart. And, as you say, He knows best."
+
+Greta was almost distraught with fear. The noble soul in her would not
+allow her to appeal to Mercy's gratitude against the plea of maternal
+love. But she felt that all her happiness hung on that chance. If Mercy
+regained her sight, all would be well with her and hers; but if she lost
+it the future must be a blank.
+
+The day wore slowly on, and the child sunk and sunk. At evening the old
+charcoal-burner returned, and went into the bedroom. He stood a moment,
+and looked down at the pinched little face, and when the child's eyes
+opened drowsily for a moment he put his withered forefinger into its
+palm; but there was no longer a responsive clasp of the chubby hand.
+
+The old man's lips quivered behind his white beard.
+
+"It were a winsome wee thing," he said, faintly, and then turned away.
+
+He left his supper untouched and went into the porch. There he sat on a
+bench and whittled a blackthorn stick. The sun was sinking over the head
+of the Eel Crag; the valley lay deep in a purple haze; the bald top of
+Cat Bells stood out bright in the glory of the passing day. A gentle
+breeze came up from the south, and the young corn chattered with its
+multitudinous tongues in the field below. The dog lay at the
+charcoal-burner's feet, blinking in the sun and snapping lazily at a
+buzzing fly.
+
+The little life within was ebbing away. No longer racked by the ringing
+cough, the loud breathing became less frequent and more harsh. Mercy
+lifted the child from the bed and sat with it before the fire. Greta saw
+its eyes open, and at the same moment she saw the lips move slightly,
+but she heard nothing.
+
+"He is calling his mamma," said Mercy, with her ear bent toward the
+child's mouth.
+
+There was a silence for a long time. Mercy pressed the child to her
+breast; its close presence seemed to soothe her.
+
+Greta stood and looked down; she saw the little lips move once more, but
+again she heard no sound.
+
+"He is calling his mamma," repeated Mercy, wistfully, "and, oh, he seems
+such a long way off!"
+
+Once again the little lips moved.
+
+"He is calling me," said Mercy, listening intently; and she grew
+restless and excited. "He is going away. I can hear him. He is far off.
+Ralphie, Ralphie!" She had lifted the child up to her face. "Ralphie,
+Ralphie!" she cried.
+
+"Give me the baby, Mercy," said Greta.
+
+But the mother clung to it with a convulsive grasp.
+
+"Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie!..."
+
+There was a sudden flash of some white thing. In an instant the bandage
+had fallen from Mercy's head, and she was peering down into the child's
+face with wild eyes.
+
+"Ralphie, Ralphie!... Hugh!" she cried.
+
+The mother had seen her babe at last, and in that instant she had
+recognized the features of its father.
+
+At the next moment the angel of God passed through that troubled house,
+and the child lay dead at the mother's breast.
+
+Mercy saw it all, and her impassioned mood left her. She rose to her
+feet quietly, and laid the little one in the bed. There was never a sigh
+more, never a tear. Only her face was ashy pale, and her whitening lips
+quivered.
+
+"Greta," she said, very slowly, "will you go for him?"
+
+Greta kissed the girl's forehead tenderly. Her own calm, steadfast,
+enduring spirit sunk. All the world was dead to her now.
+
+"Yes, dear," she whispered.
+
+The next minute she was gone from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The evening was closing in; now and then the shrill cries of the birds
+pealed and echoed in the still air; a long, fibrous streak of silver in
+the sky ebbed away over the head of Hindscarth. Greta hastened toward
+the pit-brow. The clank of the iron chain in the gear told that the cage
+in the shaft was working.
+
+It was a year and a half since her life had first been overshadowed by a
+disaster more black and terrible than death itself, and never for an
+instant had the clouds been lifted until three days ago. Then, in a
+moment, the light had pierced through the empty sky, and a way had been
+wrought for her out of the labyrinth of misery. But even that passage
+for life and hope and love seemed now to be closed by the grim
+countenance of doom.
+
+Mercy would be blind forever! All was over and done. Greta's strong,
+calm spirit sunk and sunk. She saw the impostor holding to the end the
+name and place of the good man; and she saw the good man dragging his
+toilsome way through life--an outcast, a by-word, loaded with ignominy,
+branded with crime. And that unhappy man was her husband, and he had no
+stay but in her love--no hope but in her faith.
+
+Greta stopped at the door of Hugh Ritson's office and knocked. A moment
+later he and she were face to face. He was dressed in his pit flannels,
+and was standing by a table on which a lamp burned. When he recognized
+her, he passed one hand across his brow, the other he rested on the
+mantel-piece. There was a momentary twitching of her lips, and he
+involuntarily remarked that in the time that had passed since they last
+met she had grown thinner.
+
+"Come with me," she said in a trembling whisper. "Mercy's child is dead,
+and the poor girl is asking for you in her great trouble."
+
+He did not speak at once, but shaded his eyes from the lamp. Then he
+said, in a voice unlike his own:
+
+"I will follow you."
+
+She had held the door in her hand, and now she turned to go. He took one
+step toward her.
+
+"Greta, have you nothing more to say to me?" he asked.
+
+"What do you wish me to say?"
+
+He did not answer; his eyes fell before her.
+
+There was a slight wave of her hand as she added:
+
+"The same room ought never to contain both you and me--it never should
+have done so--but this is not my errand."
+
+"I have deserved it," he said, humbly.
+
+"The cruel work is done--yes, done past undoing. You have not heard the
+last of it. Then, since you ask me what I have to say to you, it is
+this: That man, that instrument of your malice who is now your master,
+has been to say that he can compel me to live with him, or imprison me
+if I refuse. Can he do it?"
+
+Hugh Ritson lifted his eyes with a blind, vacant stare.
+
+"To live with him? Him? You to live with him?" he said, absently.
+
+"To live under his roof--those were his words. Can he do it? I mean if
+the law recognizes him as my husband?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's eyes wandered.
+
+"Do it? Your husband?" he echoed, incoherently.
+
+"I know well what he wants," said Greta, breathing heavily; "it is not
+myself he is anxious for--but he can not have the one without the
+other."
+
+"The one without the other?" echoed Hugh Ritson in a low tone. Then he
+strode across the room in visible agitation.
+
+"Greta, that man is--. Do you know who he is?"
+
+"Paul Drayton, the innkeeper of Hendon," she answered, calmly.
+
+"No, no; he is your--"
+
+He paused, his brows knit, his fingers interlaced. Her bosom swelled.
+
+"Would you tell me that he is my husband?" she said indignantly.
+
+Hugh Ritson again passed his hand across his brow.
+
+"Greta, I have deserved your distrust," he said, in an altered tone.
+
+"What is done can never be undone," she answered.
+
+His voice had regained its calmness, but his manner was still agitated.
+
+"I may serve you even yet," he said; "I have done you too much wrong; I
+know that."
+
+"What is your remorse worth now?" she asked. "It comes too late."
+
+Then he looked her steadily in the face, and replied:
+
+"Greta, it is well said that the most miserable man in all the world is
+he who feels remorse before he does the wrong. I was--I am--that man. I
+did what I did knowing well that I should repent it--ay, to the last
+hour of my life. But I was driven to it--I had no power to resist
+it--it mastered me then--it would master me now."
+
+The finger-tips of Greta's right hand were pressed close against her
+cheek. Hugh Ritson took a step nearer.
+
+"Greta," he said, and his voice fell to a broken whisper, "there are
+some men to whom love is a passing breath, a gentle gale that beats on
+the face and sports in the hair, and then is gone. To me it is a wound,
+a deep, corrosive, inward wound that yearns and burns."
+
+Greta shuddered; it was as if his words stung her. Then with an
+impatient gesture she turned again toward the door, saying:
+
+"This is the death-hour of your child, and, Heaven pardon you, it seems
+to be the death-hour of your brother's hopes too!" She faced about. "Do
+you think of him?" she added, lifting her voice. "When you see this man
+in his place, wasting his substance and mine, do you ever think of him
+where he is?"
+
+Her voice trembled and broke. There was a moment's silence. She had
+turned her head aside, and he heard the low sound of sobs.
+
+"Yes, I think of him," he answered, slowly. "At night, in the sleepless
+hours, I do think of him where he is; and I think of him as a happy man.
+Yes, a happy man! What if he wears a convict's dress?--his soul is yoked
+to no deadening burden. As for me--well, look at me!"
+
+He smiled grimly.
+
+"I have heard everything," said Greta; "you have sown the wind, and you
+are reaping the whirlwind."
+
+Something like a laugh broke from him. It came from the waters of
+bitterness that lay deep in his heart.
+
+"Not that," he said. "All that will pass away."
+
+She was on the threshold; a force of which she knew nothing held her
+there.
+
+"Greta, I am not so bad a man as perhaps I seem; I am a riddle that you
+may not read. The time is near when I shall trouble the world no more,
+and it will be but a poor wounded name I shall leave behind me, will it
+not? Greta, would it be a mockery to ask you to forgive me?"
+
+"There are others who have more to forgive," said Greta. "One of them
+is waiting for you at this moment; and, poor girl! her heart is broken."
+
+Hugh Ritson bent his head slightly, and Greta pulled the door after her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+The evening had closed in; the watery veil that goes between day and
+night was hanging in the air; the wind had risen, and the trees were
+troubled. When Hugh Ritson reached the cottage, all was dark about the
+house save for the red glow from the peat fire which came out into the
+open porch. The old Laird Fisher was sitting there, a blackthorn stick
+at his feet, his elbows on his knees, his cheeks rested on his hands.
+The drowsy glow fell on his drooping white head. As Hugh Ritson passed
+into the kitchen, the old man lifted to his a countenance on which grief
+and reproach were stamped together. Hugh Ritson's proud spirit was
+rebuked by the speechless sorrow of that look. It was such a look as a
+wounded hound lifts to the eyes of a brutal master.
+
+A sheep-dog was stretched at full length before the slumbering fire. The
+kitchen was empty, and silent too, except for the tick of the clock and
+the colly's labored breathing. But at the sound of Hugh's uncertain step
+on the hard earthen floor, the door of the bedroom opened, and Greta
+motioned him to enter.
+
+A candle burned near the bed. Before a fire, Mercy Fisher sat with
+Parson Christian. Her head lay on a table that stood between, her face
+buried in her encircled arms. One hand lay open beside the long loose
+tresses of yellow hair, and the parson's hand rested upon it
+caressingly. Parson Christian rose as Hugh Ritson entered, and bowing
+coldly, he left the room; Greta had already gone out, and he rejoined
+her in the kitchen.
+
+Mercy lifted her head and looked up at Hugh. There was not a tear in her
+weary, red, swollen eyes, and not a sigh came from her heaving breast.
+She rose quietly, and taking Hugh's hand in her own, she drew him to the
+bedside.
+
+"See where he is," she said in a voice of piercing earnestness, and with
+her other hand she lifted a handkerchief from the little white face.
+Hugh Ritson shuddered. He saw his own features as if memory had brought
+them in an instant from the long past.
+
+Mercy disengaged her hand, and silently hid her face. But she did not
+weep.
+
+"My little Ralphie," she said, plaintively, "how quiet he is now! Oh,
+but you should have seen him when he was like a glistening ray of
+morning light. Why did you not come before?"
+
+Hugh Ritson stood there looking down at the child's dead face, and made
+no answer.
+
+"It is better as it is," his heart whispered at that moment. The next
+instant his whole frame quivered. What was the thought that had risen
+unbidden within him? Better that his child should lie there cold and
+lifeless than that it should fill this desolate house with joy and love?
+Was he, then, so black a villain? God forbid! Yet it was better so.
+
+"All is over now," said Mercy, and her hands fell from her face. She
+turned her weary eyes full upon him, and added: "We have been punished
+already."
+
+"Punished?" said Hugh. "We?" There was silence for a moment; and then,
+dropping his voice until it was scarcely audible, he said: "Your burden
+is heavy to bear, my poor girl."
+
+Her slight figure swayed a little.
+
+"I could bear it no longer," she answered.
+
+"Many a one has thought that before you," he said; "but God alone knows
+what we can not bear until we are tried."
+
+"Well, all is over now," she repeated listlessly.
+
+She spoke of herself as if her days were already ended and past; as if
+her orb of life had been rounded by the brief span of the little
+existence that lay finished upon the bed. Hugh Ritson looked at her, and
+the muscles of his face twitched. Her weary eyes were still dry; their
+dim light seemed to come from far away.
+
+"How I prayed that I might see my Ralphie," she said. "I thought surely
+God had willed it that I should never see my child. Perhaps that was to
+be my punishment for--all that had taken place. But I prayed still. Oh,
+you would not think how much I pray! But it must have been a wicked
+prayer."
+
+She hid her face once more in her hands, and added, with unexpected
+animation:
+
+"God heard my prayer, and answered it--but see!" She pointed to the
+child. "I saw him--yes, I saw him--die!"
+
+Hugh Ritson was moved, but his heart was bitter. At that moment he
+cursed the faith that held in bondage the soul of the woman at his side.
+Would that he could trample it underfoot, and break forever the chains
+by which it held the simple.
+
+"Hugh," she said, and her voice softened, "we are about to part forever.
+Our little Ralphie--yours and mine--he calls me. I could not live
+without him. God would not make me do that. He has punished me already,
+and He is merciful. Only think, our Ralphie is in heaven!"
+
+She paused and bit her lip, and drew her breath audibly inward. Her face
+took then a death-like hue, and all at once her voice overflowed with
+anguish.
+
+"Do you know, something whispered at that instant that God had not
+punished us enough, that Ralphie was not in heaven, and that the sins of
+the fathers--Oh, my darling, my darling!"
+
+With a shrill cry she stopped, turned to the bed, threw her outspread
+arms about the child, and kissed it fervently.
+
+The tears came at length, and rained down on that little silent face.
+Hugh Ritson could support the strain no longer.
+
+"Mercy," he said, and his voice had a deep tremor--"Mercy, if there is
+any sin, it is mine, and if there is to be any punishment hereafter,
+that will be mine too. As for your little boy, be sure he is in heaven."
+He had stepped to the door, and his thumb was on the wooden latch. "You
+say rightly, we shall never meet again," he said in a muffled voice.
+"Good-bye."
+
+Mercy lifted her tearful face. "Give me your hand at parting," she said
+in an imploring tone. He was on the opposite side of the bed from where
+she stood, and she reached her hand across it. He took a step nearer,
+and his hand closed in hers. Between them and beneath their clasped
+hands lay the child. "Hugh, we could not love in this world--something
+went astray with us; but we shall meet again, shall we not?"
+
+He turned his eyes away.
+
+"Perhaps," he answered.
+
+"Promise me," she said--"promise me."
+
+He drew his breath hard.
+
+"If there is a God and a judgment, be sure we shall meet," he said.
+
+His voice broke. He turned abruptly aside and hurried out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The night was now dark; there was no moon, and there were no stars; the
+wind soughed mournfully through the trees. In the occasional lull the
+rumble of the cataracts drifted heavily through the air.
+
+Hugh Ritson walked in the darkness with drooping head. He was not making
+for the pit-brow; he had taken the opposite direction. When he reached
+the village, he stopped at the Flying Horse. Loud peals of laughter came
+from the parlor, hidden by red blinds from the road.
+
+He stood at the door that opened into the bar. The landlady, her face
+turned from him, was talking with obvious animation to a daleswoman who
+stood with a jug in her hand at the other side of the counter.
+
+"What, woman, thoo's surely heard what happen't at the Ghyll this
+morning?"
+
+"Nay, Bessie, I's been thrang as Throp wife, cleaning and tittivating."
+
+"Well, lass, they've telt me as it were shocking. Two brothers, and such
+a fratch! It coom't to blows at last, and they do say 'at Master Hugh is
+nigh amaist dead with a bash the girt fellow gave him."
+
+Hugh Ritson rapped sharply at the door.
+
+"Tell your husband I wish to see him," he said.
+
+The landlady looked up, fumbled with a napkin, and answered nervously,
+"Yes, sir." Then she hobbled to the door of the parlor and opened it. A
+wave of mingled noise, vapor, and foul odors came through the aperture.
+"Tommy!" she screamed above the babel.
+
+The landlord appeared.
+
+"Can you send me a dog-cart at half past four in the morning?" said
+Hugh.
+
+"Maybe--it's a gay canny hour, I reckon," said the landlord.
+
+He pulled at a long pipe as he spoke, and his face, which was flushed,
+wore an impudent smile.
+
+"I have to catch the five-o'clock train," Hugh answered.
+
+"To London?" One cheek was twisted into numerous wrinkles.
+
+"I said the five train," said Hugh, sternly. "Can you do it?"
+
+"I's niver said nay--it'll be three half-crowns."
+
+Hugh put half a sovereign on the counter.
+
+"Let it be sent at half past four promptly.
+
+"To the Ghyll?"
+
+The twist of the cheek was a shade less perceptible.
+
+"To the pit-brow."
+
+The parlor door opened again, and Natt stood on the threshold. The
+stableman's sleepy eyes awakened to a knowing twinkle. Then his flat
+face disappeared, and a thin titter mingled audibly with the clamor
+within. In another moment the door was thrown wide open, and Drayton
+came slouching out. His hair fell back over his forehead, from which his
+hat was tipped back. A cigar was perched between his teeth; the tips of
+his fingers were thrust into his waistcoat pockets.
+
+"Come in; I've summat to show you," he said.
+
+Hugh did not stir, but he lifted his head and looked into the room. Half
+a score of the riff-raff of the dale were seated amid clouds of smoke.
+On the wooden mantel-shelf above the wide ingle a large book stood
+open, and the leaves fluttered with the wind that came through the door.
+
+"I hain't forgotten what you said long ago about the parson's book,"
+said Drayton, "so here it is, and a mighty valuable thing I call it. You
+thought to frighten me with it, but bless yer soul, I like it, I do.
+Listen."
+
+Drayton stepped back into the room, turned the leaves, and began to read
+in a lusty tone:
+
+   "1847.--November 18.--Thomas said Allan was fresh from Scotland,
+   being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and that they had a
+   child called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet walking."
+
+It was the parson's diary.
+
+"That's good enough, ain't it, Master Hugh Ritson?" said Drayton, with
+an ungainly bow, and a vast show of civility, followed instantly by a
+sidelong leer at his cronies about him.
+
+Hugh Ritson held himself stiffly, and merely said:
+
+"Where did you get it?"
+
+At this question there were sundry snorts and titters and muttered
+responses from the men at the tables. Hugh's eyes passed over them with
+a steely glance.
+
+"Stolen it, I suppose," he said quietly.
+
+"Ay," said Drayton, "and a neat job too. Natt 'ticed away the Methodee
+man while I borrowed it."
+
+Drayton seemed to be proud of his share in the transaction, and his
+friends laughed loudly at the adroit turn he had given to the matter.
+Natt's drowsy eyes were preternaturally bright at that great moment.
+
+Hugh Ritson's forehead darkened with ire.
+
+"This is your gratitude to the clergyman," he said.
+
+Sundry further snorts and sniggers went round the tables.
+
+"There's not a man of you who is not beholden to Parson Christian," said
+Hugh, sternly. He twisted sharply round upon one graybeard whose laugh
+still rumbled between his teeth. "Reuben Rae, who nursed your sick wife?
+John Proudfoot," to the blacksmith, "what about your child down with the
+fever?" His quick eye traversed the parlor, and more than one lusty
+crony was fain to bury his face in his breast. "Yet you laugh, brave
+fellows as you are, when the good man's house is broken into by a
+thief."
+
+Drayton took a swift stride toward him.
+
+"Drop it, and quick!" he shouted.
+
+Hugh Ritson governed himself with an effort.
+
+"I'm not here to brawl," he said quietly.
+
+"Pigeon-livered blatherskite!--that's what I call ye--d'ye hear?" said
+Drayton.
+
+Hugh's face flinched, but he turned on his heel, and was on the road at
+the next instant.
+
+Drayton followed him out, laughing boisterously. Hugh made one quick
+step backward and shut the door; then he turned about on Drayton, whose
+cruel face could be dimly seen in the hazy red light that came through
+the blinds.
+
+"You have tried to torture me," he said, "just as you would hang a dog
+by its tail, or draw the teeth of a rat. You have threatened with worse
+torture a good and loyal woman. You are a scoundrel, and you know it!
+But even you would hesitate if you knew for certain who or what you are.
+Let me tell you again, now, when we are alone, and while I have no
+personal interest to serve: You are the man whose name I gave you--Paul
+Lowther, son of Robert Lowther--and that lady, my brother's wife, whom
+for reason of profit you would compel to live under the same roof with
+you, is your own sister!"
+
+Drayton's loud guffaw rang out above the wind's moan in the trees. His
+cronies within heard it and listened.
+
+"It's a rare old story, that is. Let me see; you've told it before, I
+fancy."
+
+"Then it was a lie; now it's God's truth!" said Hugh.
+
+Drayton laughed again.
+
+"And then it was believed, but now it's not. No, no, Master Hugh, it
+won't pass."
+
+"We will see."
+
+Hugh Ritson had swung about and was gone.
+
+Drayton went back to his friends.
+
+"Hasn't the pluck of a pigeon when it comes to the push," he muttered.
+
+"Ey, he wears a bonny white feather in his cap, for sure," said old
+Reuben Rae.
+
+"No fight in'im--no'but tongue lather," said John, the blacksmith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hugh Ritson walked through the darkness to the pit-brow. The glow of the
+furnace lighted up the air to the south, and showed vaguely the brant
+sides of the fell; the dull thud of the engine, the clank of the chain,
+and the sharp crack of the refuse tumbling down the bank from the
+banksman's barrow were the only sounds that rose above the wind's loud
+whistle.
+
+Gubblum was at the mouth of the shaft.
+
+"Oglethorpe," said Hugh, "how many of the gangs are below to-night?"
+
+"All but two--auld Reuben's and Jim South'et's."
+
+"Then they have chosen to work on?"
+
+"Ey, another fortnight--trusting to get their wage afore that, please
+God."
+
+"They shall not be disappointed."
+
+Hugh Ritson turned away. Gubblum trundled his last wheelbarrow to the
+edge of the bank, and then rested and said to himself, "He takes it cool
+enough onyway."
+
+But the outside tranquillity disappeared when Hugh Ritson reached his
+own room on the pit-brow. He bathed his hot forehead again and again.
+His fingers twitched nervously, and he plunged his perspiring hands into
+cold water above the wrists, holding them there for several minutes. Not
+for long did he sit in one seat. He tramped the room uneasily, his
+infirm foot trailing heavily. Then he threw himself on the couch, tossed
+from side to side, rose, and resumed his melancholy walk. Thus an hour
+passed drearily.
+
+His mind recalled one by one the events of the day. And one by one there
+came crowding back upon him the events of the two years that had passed
+since his father's death. A hurricane was upheaving every memory of his
+mind. And every memory had its own particular sting, and came up as a
+blight to fret his soul. He tried to guard himself from himself. What he
+had first thought to do was but in defense of his strict legal rights,
+and if he had gone further--if he had done more, without daring to think
+of it until it was done--then it was love that had led him astray. Was
+it so cruel a thing to be just? So foul a thing to love?
+
+But above the shufflings of remorse, above the stiflings of regret,
+above the plea of a maddening love, was the voice of revenge speaking
+loudly in his soul. That man, his instrument, now his master, Paul
+Lowther, must be brought down, and his time-serving sponsor with him.
+But how? There was but one way--by denouncing himself. Yes, that was the
+sole outlet for his outraged and baffled spirit. He must go to the
+proper quarter and say, "I have perjured myself, and sworn away my
+brother's liberty. The man who was condemned as Paul Drayton is Paul
+Ritson. I did it all."
+
+That would bring this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price!
+The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him.
+And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the
+impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What
+alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light
+dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the
+day of his life was done.
+
+What if he allowed everything to take its course? Well, he was a
+disgraced and ruined man, turned adrift from his father's house, and
+doomed to see a stranger living there. Did he lack gall to make such a
+climax bitter? Bitter, eh! and a thousand times the more bitter because
+he himself had, for ends of his own, first placed the scoundrel where he
+sat.
+
+No, no, no; Paul Lowther must be brought down, and with him must fall
+the poor ruins of a better man. Yes a better man, let the world say what
+it would.
+
+Could it occur that he would not be believed? that when he said "Take
+me, I am a perjurer," they would answer, "No, your self-denunciation is
+only a freak of revenge, a mad attempt to injure the relative who has
+turned you out of his house?" Hugh Ritson laughed as the grim irony of
+such a possible situation flashed upon him: a man self-condemned and
+saved from punishment by the defense of his enemy!
+
+There was a knock at his door. In his stupor he was not at first
+conscious of what the knock meant. At length he recalled himself and
+cried:
+
+"Come in."
+
+Gubblum Oglethorpe entered.
+
+"The men on the twelve o'clock shift are just about ganging down, and
+they want to tak' a few mair forks with them. They've telt me 'at the
+timber is splitting like matchwood under the sandy vein."
+
+Hugh Ritson made an effort to gather the purport of Gubblum's message.
+
+"Tell them to take the forks," he said in a low tone.
+
+Gubblum was backing out, and stopped.
+
+"I reckon thoo's not heard the last frae auld Mattha's," he said in
+another voice.
+
+"What is it, Oglethorpe?" said Hugh, his head bent over the table.
+
+"Robbie South'et's wife has been up to t' brow, and says that Mercy's
+laal thing is gone."
+
+Hugh did not lift his eyes.
+
+"Is that the last?" he said.
+
+"Nay, but warse. The lass herself tore the bandage frae her eyes, and
+she's gone stone blind, and that's foriver."
+
+Hugh's head bent closer over the table.
+
+"Good-night, Oglethorpe," he said.
+
+Gubblum backed out, muttering to himself as he returned to the shaft, "A
+cool hand, how-an'-iver."
+
+The moment the door closed, Hugh Ritson tramped the floor in restless
+perambulations. What had he thought of doing? Delivering himself to
+justice as a perjurer? Had he, then, no duty left in life that he must
+needs gratify his revenge in a kind of death? What of the woman who had
+suffered for him? What of the broken heart and the wretched home? Were
+these as nothing against the humiliation of a proud spirit?
+
+Never for an instant, never in his bitterest agony, did Hugh Ritson lie
+to his own soul and say that the resolution he had formed was prompted
+by remorse for what he had done to Paul Ritson; not revenge for what he
+had suffered from Paul Drayton. To be a saint when sick; to find the
+conscience active when defeat overwhelmed it--that was for the weak
+dregs of humanity. But such paltering was not for him.
+
+On the one hand revenge, on the other duty--which was he to follow? The
+wretched man could come to no decision; and when the fingers of his
+watch pointed to one o'clock he lay down on the couch to rest.
+
+It was not sleep that he wanted; sleep had of late become too full of
+terrors; but sleep overcame him, nevertheless. His face, when he slept,
+was the face of a man in pain; and dreams came that were the distorted
+reflections of his waking thoughts. He dreamed that he had died in
+infancy. Calm, serene, very sweet, and peaceful, his little innocent
+face of childhood looked up from the white pillow. He thought his mother
+bent over him, and shed many tears; but he himself belonged to another
+world of beings, and looked down on both.
+
+"It is better so," he thought, "and the tears she weeps are blest."
+
+At this he awoke, and rose to his feet. What soft nothings men had said
+of sleep! "Oh, sleep, it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole!"
+Gentle! More tyrannous than death. The melancholy perambulation ended,
+and he lay down once more. He slept and dreamed again. This time he had
+killed his own brother. A moment before they had stood face to
+face--vigorous, wrathful, with eyes that flashed, and hands uplifted.
+Now his brother lay quiet and awful at his feet, and the great silence
+was broken by a voice from heaven crying, "A fugitive and a vagabond
+shalt thou be on the earth!"
+
+He started to his feet in terror. "Mercy, mercy!" he cried.
+
+Then he drew his breath hard and looked about him. "A dream--only
+another dream," he said to himself, and laughed between his close-set
+teeth. The lamp still burned on the table. He rose, drew a key from his
+pocket, opened a cupboard, and took out a small bottle. It contained an
+opiate. "Since I must sleep, let my sleep at least be dreamless," he
+said, and he measured a dose. He was lifting the glass to his lips,
+when he caught sight of his face in the glass. "Pitiful! pitiful! A mere
+dream unnerves me. Pitiful enough, forsooth! And so I must needs hide
+myself from myself behind a bulwark like this!" He held the drug to the
+light, and while his hand trembled he laughed. Then he drank it off, put
+out the light, and sat on the couch.
+
+The dawn had fretted the sky, and the first streaks of day crept in at
+the window, when the lamp's yellow light was gone. Hugh Ritson sat in
+the gray gloom, his knees drawn close under his chin, his arms folded
+over his breast, his head bent heavily forward. He was crooning an old
+song. Presently the voice grew thick, the eye became clouded, and then
+the head fell back. He was asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed again. Or
+was it a vision, and not a dream, that came to him now? He thought he
+stood in a room which he had seen before. On the bed some white thing
+lay. It was a child, and the little soul had fled. Beside it a woman
+cowered, and moaned "Guilty, guilty!" Her eyes were fixed on the child,
+yet she saw nothing; the sightless orbs were bleached. But with her
+heart she saw the child; and she saw himself also as he entered. Then it
+seemed that she turned her blind face toward him, and called on him by
+name. The next instant she was gone. Her seat was vacant, the bed was
+empty; only a gray-bearded man sat by a cold grate. With an overpowering
+weight pressing him down, it seemed to Hugh that he threw up his head,
+and again he heard his name.
+
+He leaped to his feet. Big beads of cold sweat stood on his forehead.
+"Mercy is dead," he whispered with awe. "She has gone to put in her plea
+of guilty. She is in God's great hand!"
+
+The next moment a voice shouted, "Mr. Ritson!"
+
+He listened, and in the gray light his stony countenance smiled grimly.
+
+"Mr. Ritson!" once more, followed by the rap of a whip-handle against
+the door.
+
+"Tommy the landlord," said Hugh, and he broke into a harsh laugh. "So
+you were my angel, Tommy, eh?"
+
+Another harsh laugh. The landlord, sitting in the dog-cart outside,
+heard it, and thought to himself, "Some one with him."
+
+Hugh Ritson plunged his head into the wash-basin, and rubbed himself
+vigorously with a rough towel. "My last sleep is over," he said,
+glancing aside with fearful eyes at the couch. "I'll do this thing that
+I am bent upon; but no more sleep, and no more dreams!"
+
+He opened the door, threw a rug up to the landlord, put on an ulster,
+and leaped into the dog-cart. They started away at a quick trot. A chill
+morning breeze swept down the vale. The sun was rising above Cat Bells,
+but Hugh Ritson still felt as if he were traveling toward the deepening
+night. He sat with folded arms, and head bent on his breast.
+
+"Hasta heard what happened at auld Laird Fisher's this morning?" said
+the landlord.
+
+Hugh answered in a low voice:
+
+"I've heard nothing."
+
+"The lass has followed her barn rather sudden't. Ey, she's gone, for
+sure. Died a matter of half an hour ago. I heard it frae the parson as I
+coom't by."
+
+Hugh Ritson bent yet lower his drooping head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+At 2 o'clock that day Hugh Ritson arrived at Euston. He got into a cab
+and drove to Whitehall. At the Home Office he asked for the Secretary of
+State. A hundred obstacles arose to prevent him from penetrating to the
+head of the department. One official handed him over to another, the
+second to a third, the third to a fourth.
+
+Hugh Ritson was hardly the man to be balked by such impediments. His
+business was with the Secretary of State, and none other. Parliament was
+in session, and the Home Secretary was at the afternoon sitting of the
+House. Hugh Ritson sought and found him there. He explained his purpose
+in few words, and was listened to with a faint smile of incredulity.
+
+The secretary was a stolid Yorkshireman, who affected whatever measure
+of bluffness had not been natural to him from birth. He first looked at
+his visitor with obvious doubts of his sanity; and when this suspicion
+had been set at rest by Hugh's incisive explanation, with an equally
+obvious desire to feel his bumps.
+
+But the face of the Yorkshireman soon became complicated by other shades
+of expression than such as come of distrust of a man's reason or
+contempt of his sentimentality.
+
+"Hadn't you better sleep on it, and come to see me at Whitehall in the
+morning?" he said, with more respect than he had yet shown. "Then if you
+are still of the same mind, I will send for the Public Prosecutor."
+
+Hugh Ritson bowed his acquiescence.
+
+"And can I have the order for Portland?" he said.
+
+"Probably. It will be against the new regulation that none may visit a
+convict prison except prison officials and persons interested in prison
+discipline. But we'll see what can be done."
+
+That night, Hugh Ritson called at the Convent of St. Margaret. It was
+late when he entered, and when he came out again, half an hour
+afterward, the lamps were lighted in the Abbey Gardens. The light fell
+on the face of the lay sister who opened the door to him. She wore a
+gray gown, but no veil or scapular, and beneath the linen band that
+covered her hair her eyes were red and swollen.
+
+Hugh Ritson hailed a hansom in the Broad Sanctuary, and drove to Hendon.
+The bar of the Hawk and Heron was full of carriers, carters,
+road-menders, and farm-laborers, all drinking, and all noisy. But,
+despite this evidence of a thriving trade, the whole place had a
+bankrupt appearance as of things going to wreck. Jabez served behind the
+counter. He had developed a good deal of personal consequence, and held
+up his head, and repeatedly felt the altitude of a top-knot that curled
+there, and bore himself generally with the cockety air of the young
+rooster after the neck of the old one has been screwed. Mrs. Drayton sat
+knitting in the room where Mercy and the neighbor's children once played
+together. When Hugh Ritson went in to her, the old body started.
+
+"Lor's a mercy, me, sir, to think it's you! I'm that fearsome, that I
+declare I shiver and quake at nothing. And good for nowt i' the world
+neither, not since my own flesh and blood, as you might say, disowned
+me."
+
+"Do you mean at the trial?" asked Hugh Ritson.
+
+"The trial, sir!" said the landlady, lifting bewildered eyes, while the
+click of the needles ceased. "My Paul weren't there. Cummerland,
+sir--and you heard him yourself what he said of me." A corner of her
+house-wife's apron went up to her face. "Me as had brought him up that
+tender! Well," recovering composure, "I've lost heart, and serve him
+right. I just lets the house and things go, I do. I trusts to
+Providence; and that Jabez, he's no better nor a babby in the public
+line."
+
+When Hugh Ritson left the inn, the old body's agitation increased. She
+had set down the knitting, and was fidgeting, first with her cap and
+then her apron.
+
+"Listen to me," said Hugh. "To-day is Friday. On Monday you must go to
+the convent where you saw the mother of Paul. Ask for Sister Grace. Will
+you remember--Sister Grace? She will tell you all."
+
+It was hard on eleven o'clock when Hugh Ritson returned to town. The
+streets were thronged, and he walked for a long hour amid the crowds
+that passed through the Strand. In all that multitudinous sea of faces,
+there was not a countenance on which the mark of suffering was more
+indelibly fixed than on his own.
+
+His sensibilities were wrought up to an unwonted pitch. He was like a
+waif adrift in unknown waters, a cloud without anchor in a tempestuous
+sky; yet he felt that night as he had never felt before, that he had
+suddenly become possessed of another and most painful sense. Not a face
+in that sea of faces but he seemed to know its secret fear, its joy and
+sorrow, the watchful dread that seared the hidden heart, the fluttering
+hope that buoyed it up.
+
+It was an awful thing to be turned adrift in a world of sin and
+suffering with this agonizing sense. He could look, whether he would or
+not, beneath the smiling and rubicund countenance of the
+hail-fellow-well-met to that corrosive spot within where the trust of
+the widow and fatherless had been betrayed; or see beyond the stolid and
+heavy appearance proper to the ox the quivering features of the man who
+had stood long years ago above the dead body of the woman who had thrown
+her death at his door as sole reward for the life he had wrecked.
+
+Nay, not only did the past write its manual there, but the future wrote
+its sign. He knew that the young girl in pink ribbons who was hurrying
+along with a smile on her lips, from the shop in the west to that
+unknown home in the east where the child of her shame had laughed and
+crowed and climbed up her bosom to her chin, was doomed to find that the
+source of all her joy and half her sorrow lay cold and stiff in its
+crib.
+
+He grew fearful of himself; he shuddered as the unsuspected murderer
+brushed his elbow; he shuddered yet more as a mirror flashed back the
+reflection of his own hard face, and the idea came to him that perhaps
+other eyes could see what his eyes saw.
+
+He turned down Arundel Street and on to the Embankment. No! no! no! the
+merciful God had not willed it that any man should look so deeply into
+the heart of his fellow-man. That was indeed to know good and evil; and
+the thought stole over him that perhaps it was in degree as a man had
+eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of life that he was cursed with
+this bitter knowledge.
+
+Here, on the quiet pavement that echoed to his footsteps, the air was
+free. He uncovered his head, and the light west wind played in his hair
+and cooled his temples. Not a star shone overhead, and the river that
+flowed in the bed below was dark. More dark to him was the sea of
+humanity that flowed above.
+
+He had heard that the death-roll of the Thames was one of every day for
+the year, and he leaned over the granite wall and wondered if the old
+river had claimed its toll for the day that was now almost done. His
+hair seemed to rise from its roots as he thought that perhaps at that
+very instant, in the black waters beneath him, the day's sacrifice was
+washing past.
+
+He walked on, and the dull buzz of the Strand fell on his ear. What,
+after all, was the old god of the river to the Juggernaut of the city?
+And it was now, when the fret of the day had worn down, that Hugh Ritson
+thought of all that he had left behind him in the distant north. There
+in the darkness and the silence, amid the mountains, by the waving trees
+and the rumbling ghylls, lay half the ruins of his ruined life. The glow
+of old London's many lights could not reach so far, but the shadow of
+that dark spot was here.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+The clocks struck midnight, and he returned to the hotel at which he had
+engaged a bed. He did not lie down to sleep, but walked to and fro the
+night through.
+
+Next morning at ten he was at the Home Office again. He saw the
+secretary and some of the law officers of the Crown. When he came out he
+carried in his pocket an order to visit a convict in Portland, and was
+attended by a police-sergeant in plain clothes. They took train from
+Waterloo at two in the afternoon, and reached Weymouth at six. When they
+crossed the strip of sea, the best of the day was gone, and a fresh
+breeze blew across the breakwater.
+
+The Saxon walls of the castle at the foot of the Vern Hill reflected the
+chill blue of the water; but far above, where the rocky coast dipped to
+the beach, the yellow stone, with the bluish clay in its crevices, shone
+in the glow of the sinking sun.
+
+Hugh Ritson and his companion put up for the night at the Portland Arms
+Inn. A ruddy, round-faced man in middle life, clean shaven and dressed
+youthfully, was smoking in the parlor. He exchanged a salutation with
+the cordiality of one who was nothing loath for a chat; then he picked
+up the old Reeve staff, and explained the ancient method of computing
+tithes. But Hugh Ritson was in no humor for conversation, and after
+dinner he set out for a solitary walk. He took the road that turns from
+the beach through the villages of Chiswell and Fortune's Well. When he
+reached the top of the hill the sea lay around him; and beneath him, to
+the right and left of the summit, were the quarries where the convicts
+labored, with two branches of an inclined railway leading down to the
+breakwater. On the summit itself, known as the Grove, was a long, high
+granite wall, with a broad gate-way, and the lancet lights of a lodge at
+one side of it. This was the convict prison, and the three or four
+houses in front of it were the residences of governor, chaplain, and
+chief warder. A cordon of cottages at a little distance were the homes
+of the assistant warders. There were a few shops amid this little group
+of cottages, and one public house, the Spotted Dog.
+
+Hugh Ritson strolled into the tavern and sat down in a little
+"snuggery," which was separated from a similar apartment by a wooden
+partition that stood no higher than a tall man's height, and left a
+space between the top stile and the ceiling. A company of men gossiped
+at the other side of the partition.
+
+"Talk of B 2001," said a guttural voice (Hugh Ritson started at the
+sound), "I took the stiff'ning out of him first go off. When he'd done
+he separates and come on from the moor; I saw he wasn't an old lag, so
+says I to 'im, 'Green 'un,' I says, 'if you're leary, you'll fetch a
+easy lagging, and if you're not, it'll be bellows to mend with you.'
+'What d'ye mean?' he says. 'It's bloomin' 'ard work here,' I says, 'and
+maybe you don't get shin-of-beef soup to do it on. Bread and water, for
+a word,' I says. 'You're in my gang, quarrying, and I won't work you
+'ard except I'm druv to it, but I want wide men in my gang,' I says,
+'and no putting the stick on agen the screw.' 'Don't understand,' he
+says. 'Then follow a straight tip,' I says; 'stand by your warder and
+he'll stand by you.' Blest if that lag as I'd give that good advice to
+didn't get me fined the very next day."
+
+"Never!" said sundry incredulous voices.
+
+"It was a hot afternoon, and I'd just whipped a quid in my mouth and
+leaned atop of my musket for forty winks after dinner. The second-timers
+was codding afront of me, and 2001 and the young chap as was dying of
+the consumption was wheeling and filling ahead. Well, up comes the
+governor right in front of 2001, and shouts, 'Warder,' he shouts,
+'you're fined for inattention.' Then off he goes. All right, Mr. 2001, I
+says, I'll not misremember."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"Do?" (a loud, hollow laugh). "That was when the barracks was building,
+and one day a bit of a newspaper blowed over from the officers'
+quarters, and 2001 came on it, and the botcher picked it up. He'd
+chucked hisself quick. 'Right about face--march.' He got seven stretch,
+a month's marks, and lost his bedding."
+
+A hearty laugh followed this account of a "screw's" revenge on a "green"
+convict. Hugh Ritson listened and shuddered.
+
+"I ain't surprised at anything from that luny," said another voice. "He
+was in my gang at the moor, and I know'd 'im. They put 'im in the
+soap-suds gang first, but he got hisself shifted. Then they sent 'im
+botching with the tailors, but he put out his broom for the governor,
+and said a big lusty man same as 'im wasn't for sitting on a board all
+day. The flat didn't want to fetch a easy lagging, that's the fact."
+
+There was a loud guffaw.
+
+"So they put 'im in my turf gang out on the moor, and one day a old
+clergyman come in gaiters and a broad-brimmer, and a face as if the
+master of the house were a-shaking at his hand, and the missis flopping
+down-stairs to give him a smack of the lips. Well, 2001 saw him in
+Principal Warder Rennell's office, and not afore the bars. So next day I
+says, 'Got anybody outside as would like to send you summat by the
+Underground?' 'The what?' he says, reg'lar black in the face. 'The
+underground railway,' I says, tipping him a wink. 'Get away from me, you
+bloodsucker!' he says. But I pinched 'im. The old lags were laughing at
+one of the grave-digger's oyster-openers, when up comes Rennell. 'Who's
+laughing?' he says. 'It's 2001,' I says; 'he's always idling and
+malingering.'"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! what did he get?"
+
+"Three days' bread and water, a week's marks, and loss of class
+privileges. He didn't mind the grub and the time, but Jack-in-the-box,
+who was warder on his landing, said he took it proper bad as he
+couldn't write home to the missis."
+
+"What's his dose?"
+
+"Three. One of the old lags would do it on his head, and fetch it easy,
+too. He's a scholar, and could get to be a wardsman in the infirmary, or
+medicine factotum for the croaker, or maybe book-keeper for the
+governor. But he's earned no remissions, and he'll fill his time afore
+he slings his hook again."
+
+Hugh Ritson could support the gossip no longer. He got up to leave the
+house, but before doing so he pushed open the door that led to the
+adjoining room, and stood a moment on the threshold, comprehending
+everything and everybody in one quick glance. The air breathed fresh
+outside. He walked in the gathering gloom of evening to the ruins of the
+church by the cliff, and, passing through the lych-gate, he came on the
+beaten track to the rocks. The rocks lay a hundred feet beneath, torn
+from the mainland in craggy masses that seemed ready to slide from their
+base to the deep chasm between. Could it be possible that men who were
+the slaves of hinds like those in yonder tavern could cling to their
+little lives while a deliverance like this beetling cliff stood near? A
+cold smile played on Hugh Ritson's face as he thought that, come what
+would, such slavery was not for him.
+
+The sycamore by the ruined chancel pattered in the breeze, and the
+wheatear's last notes came from its top-most bough. Far below the waves
+were rocking lazily. There were other waves at Hugh Ritson's feet--the
+graves of dead men. Some who were buried there long ago were buried in
+their chains. Under the earth the fettered men--on the ruins of the
+church the singing bird. Across the sea the light was every moment
+fading. In another hour the day would be done, and then the moon would
+look down peacefully on the fettered and the free.
+
+Hugh Ritson returned to the Portland Arms Inn. He found the
+police-sergeant in conversation with the ruddy-faced gentleman who had
+wished to explain to him the mysteries of the Reeve staff.
+
+"He is the doctor at the prison," whispered the sergeant aside.
+
+Presently Hugh turned to the doctor and said:
+
+"Do you happen to know the convict B 2001?"
+
+"Yes--Drayton," said the doctor; "calls himself Ritson. Are you a
+friend?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's face quivered slightly.
+
+"No," he answered, "I am not his friend." Then, after a pause, "But I
+have an order to see him. Besides, I have just heard him discussed by a
+company of wardens in a pot-house on the hill."
+
+"Who were they? What were they like?"
+
+"A tall man, one of them, fifty-five years of age, gray hair, grizzly
+beard, dark, vindictive eyes, a gash on one cheek, and a voice like a
+crow's."
+
+"Humph! Jim-the-ladder--a discharged soldier."
+
+"Another, a cadaverous fellow, with a plausible tongue."
+
+"Horrocks--an old second-classer; served his time at Dartmoor and got
+promotion--doubtful official discipline."
+
+"They both deserve one more and much higher promotion," said Hugh
+Ritson, with emphasis.
+
+"You mean this." The doctor laughed, and put the forefinger of one hand,
+held horizontally, to the tip of the other, held upright.
+
+"Can it be possible that the law is unable to maintain a fair stand-up
+fight with crime, and must needs call a gang of poltroons and
+blackmailers to its assistance?"
+
+"You heard a bad account of B 2001, I judge?"
+
+"I heard of nothing that he had done which the Pope of Rome might have
+feared to acknowledge."
+
+"You are right--he's as good a man as there's on Portland Bill," said
+the doctor, "and if he's not quite as immaculate as his holiness, he's
+in the right of it this time."
+
+Hugh Ritson glanced up.
+
+"You've heard he's in the punishment cells," said the doctor. "By the
+way, you'll not see him until Monday; he can't join his gang before, and
+he hasn't a class privilege left, poor devil."
+
+Hugh inquired the cause.
+
+"Since he came here he's been yoked to a young fellow dying of
+consumption. The lad didn't relish the infirmary--he lost his marks
+toward remission there. He knew the days he had to serve, and used to
+nick them off every night on his wooden spoon. It was a weary way from a
+thousand back, back, back to one. And that Jim-the-ladder took delight
+in keeping up the count by reports. The poor boy wanted to die in his
+mother's arms. He had got his time down to a week, when the 'screw'
+clapped as many marks on to him as added a month to his imprisonment.
+Then he lost heart, and dropped down like a flounder, and when they
+picked him up he was dead."
+
+"Was B 2001 with him as usual?"
+
+"He was; and he broke the strap, sprung on the warder, and tore his
+rifle out of his hands. Jim-the-ladder has been a prize-fighter in his
+day, and there was a tussle. He leaped back on B 2001 with a howl, and
+the blows fell like rain-drops. There was a fearful clamor, the convicts
+screaming like madmen."
+
+"B 2001 is a powerful man," said Hugh Ritson.
+
+The doctor nodded.
+
+"He closed with the warder, gripped him by the waist, twisted him on his
+loins, turned him heels overhead, and brought him down in a sweep that
+would have battered the life out of any other man. Up came the civil
+guard, and the convict was brought into the lodge covered with dust,
+sweat and blood, his eyes flashing like balls of fire. They had the
+lad's body on a stretcher beside him, the lips white, and the cheeks a
+mask of blue. It was a tremendous spectacle, I can tell you."
+
+Hugh Ritson's breast heaved, and somewhere deep down in his soul he
+surprised a feeling of pride. That man was a hero and his own brother!
+
+"And so the convict was punished?"
+
+"Fourteen days' penal class diet, and marks enough for six months. He'll
+be out on Monday, and then he'll wear the blue cap that denotes a
+dangerous man."
+
+Hugh Ritson shuddered.
+
+"Is it impossible to see him to-morrow?" he asked.
+
+"Come up before church in the morning and ask for me, and we'll speak to
+the governor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Early next morning Hugh Ritson showed his order at the prison gates, and
+was admitted to the doctor's quarters. Hugh and the doctor went in
+search of the governor, but learned that he was away from home for the
+day. The deputy-governor was abed with a raging tooth, and there was
+nothing to do but to wait until morning in order to speak with the
+convict.
+
+"You can stay here until to-morrow," said the doctor; "I can give you a
+shake-down. And now let us go off to church. But come this way first."
+
+They walked in the direction of that portion of the parade-ground which
+was marked, in great white letters, "34 gang," with the broad arrow
+beneath. Near to this stood a building composed chiefly of wood and
+iron, and marked in similar letters "E Hall." They entered a corridor
+that led to an open landing in the shape of a many-sided polygon, each
+side being a door. In the middle of the landing there was an iron
+circular staircase that led to landings above and below. A warder
+paraded the open space, which was lighted by gas-jets.
+
+"Hush! Look," said the doctor, standing by the peep-hole in one of the
+doors, and at the same time putting out the gas-jet that burned on the
+door-jamb.
+
+Hugh Ritson approached, and at first he could see nothing in the
+darkness. But he heard a curious clanking noise from within. Then the
+glimmer of a feeble candle came through the bars, and he saw a box-like
+apartment, some seven feet long by four feet broad and eight feet high.
+It was a punishment cell. There was a shelf at the opposite end, and a
+tin wash-basin stood on it.
+
+On the side of the door there must have been a similar shelf, on which
+the candle burned. A broom, a can, and a bowl were on the brick floor.
+There was no other furniture except a hammock swung from end to end,
+and the convict was lying in it at this moment. It could be seen that a
+heavy chain was fastened with riveted rings around each ankle, and
+linked about the waist by a strap. At every movement this chain clanked;
+night and day it was there; if the prisoner shifted in his sleep, its
+grating sound broke on the silence of the cell, and banished the only
+sunshine of his life, the sunshine of his dreams. His head was back to
+the door so that the light of the candle burning on the shelf might fall
+on a slate which rested on his breast. Though he occupied a punishment
+cell he was writing, and Hugh Ritson's quick eyes could decipher the
+words: "Oh, that it would please God to destroy me; that He would but
+loose His hand and cut me off! Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall
+deliver me from the body of this death?" He paused in his writing and
+pecked like a bird at a hard piece of bread beside him.
+
+Hugh Ritson fell back, and as his infirm foot grated along the floor,
+the convict started and turned his face. It was a blank, pale face, full
+of splendid resolution and the nobility of suffering, but without one
+ray of hope.
+
+"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.
+
+But Hugh Ritson's eyes were on the ground, and he made no answer.
+
+They went to church. The civil guard was drawn up under the gallery with
+loaded rifles. Eight hundred convicts attended service; some of them
+were penitent; most of them were trying to make a high profession of
+contrition as a bid for the good graces of the chaplain. The obtrusive
+reverence of one sinister gray-head near at hand attracted Hugh Ritson's
+especial attention. He knelt with his face to the gallery in which the
+choir sat. Beside him was a youth fresh from Millbank. The hoary sinner
+was evidently initiating the green hand into the mysteries of his new
+home. He was loud in his responses, but his voice had a trick of
+dropping suddenly to a whispered conference.
+
+"Who's the fat 'un in the choir? A chap as is doing his ten. His missis
+chared to keep the kids, and one morning early he popped the old girl's
+shoes."
+
+The voice of the chaplain interrupted further explanation; but after
+another loud response the old rascal's mouth was twisted awry with the
+words:
+
+"He's a wide 'un, he is--seat in the choir got comfortable cushions.
+Besides, he gets off Saturday morning's work for practicing--got no more
+voice nor a corn-crake."
+
+Evidently it was no disadvantage here to be the greatest of vagabonds.
+When a cadaverous old Jew came hobbling up the aisle with his gang, the
+gray-head whispered, with awe:
+
+"It's old Mo; he's in the stocking gang; but I did business with him
+when he could ha' sent old Rothschild home for a pauper."
+
+At one moment the attention of the green hand was arrested by a tall man
+in the black and gray that indicated a convict who had attempted to
+escape.
+
+"Says he's in for twenty thousand, but it's a lie," whispered the old
+man; "he only knocked a living out of the religious fake."
+
+The last of the conference that Hugh Ritson overheard was a piece of
+touching advice.
+
+"Them as 'as any pluck in 'em turns savage, same as B 2001; them as
+'asn't, knocks under, same as me; and I says to you, knock under."
+
+After service the sacrament was celebrated. There must have been many
+hundreds of communicants, all humble in their piety. It could be noticed
+that the chaplain had sometimes to keep a tight grip of the goblet
+containing the wine.
+
+That night Hugh Ritson lodged at the doctor's quarters. He did not lie,
+but, as on the night before, he walked the long hours through,
+steadfastly resisting every temptation to sleep. At five in the morning
+he heard the great bell at the gate ring for two minutes, and, shortly
+afterward, the tramp, tramp, tramp of many feet under his window. The
+convicts, to the number of fifteen hundred, were drawn up on the
+parade-ground. They looked chill in the cold light of early morning;
+their gray jackets lay loose on their spare shoulders; their hands hung
+inertly at their sides, and they walked with the oscillating motion of
+men whose feet were sore in their heavy boots. The civil guard was drawn
+up, the chief warder whistled, and then the men fell out into gangs of
+twenty-five each, attended by an assistant warder.
+
+"Rear rank, take two paces to the right--march."
+
+Then the tramp, tramp again. As the outside gangs passed through the
+gate, each officer in charge received his rifle, bayonet, belt, and
+cartridge-box from the armorer at the lodge. The stone-dressing gang
+passed close under the window, and Hugh Ritson reeled back as one of the
+men--a stalwart fellow in a blue cap, who was walking abreast of a
+misshapen creature with a face full of ferocity--lifted his eyes upward
+from the file.
+
+At eight o'clock the governor appeared at his receiving-office. He was a
+slight man with the face and figure of a greyhound. His military
+frock-coat was embossed with Crimean medals, and he was redolent of the
+odor of Whitehall. He received Hugh Ritson's papers with a curious
+mixture of easy courtesy and cold dignity--a sort of combination of the
+different manners in which he was wont to bow to a secretary of state
+and condemn a convict to the chain and bread and water.
+
+"The men are back to breakfast at nine," he said. "Watkins," to the
+chief warder, "have B 2001 brought round to the office immediately 34
+gang returns."
+
+Hugh Ritson had left the receiving-office and was crossing the
+parade-ground when a loud hubbub arose near the lodge.
+
+"The boat!" shouted twenty voices, and a covey of convicts ran in the
+direction of a shed where an eight-oar boat was kept on the chocks. "A
+man has mizzled--run a wagon into the sea and is drifting down the
+race."
+
+How the demons laughed, how they cursed in jest, how they worked, how
+luminous were their eyes and haggard faces at the prospect of
+recapturing one of their fellow-prisoners who had tried to make his
+escape! Every convict who helped to catch a fugitive was entitled to a
+remission of six days. The doctor took Hugh Ritson up on to the lead
+flat that covered his quarters. From that altitude they could see over
+the prison wall to the rocky coast beyond. Near the ruins of the old
+church a gang of convicts were running to and fro, waving their hands,
+and shouting in wild excitement.
+
+"It's gang 34," said the doctor, "Jim-the-ladder's gang."
+
+The sun had risen, the sea was glistening in its million facets, and
+into many a rolling wave a sea-bird dipped its corded throat. In the
+silvery water-way there was something floating that looked as if it
+might have been a tub. It was the wagon that the convict had driven into
+the water for a boat.
+
+"It will sink--it's shod with thick hoops of iron," said the doctor.
+
+The convict could be seen standing in it. He had thrown off his coat and
+cap, and his sleeveless arms were bare to the armpits. The civil guard
+ran to the cliff and fired. One shot hit. The man could be seen to tear
+the coarse linen shirt from his breast and bind it above the wrist.
+
+"Why does he not crouch down?" said Hugh Ritson: he did not know who
+this convict was, but in his heart there was a feverish desire that the
+prisoner should escape.
+
+"He's a doomed man--he's in the race--it's flowing hard, and he'll drift
+back to the island," said the doctor.
+
+Half an hour later a posse of the civil guard, with two assistant
+warders, brought the recaptured fugitive into the governor's
+receiving-office. The stalwart fellow strode between the warders with a
+firm step and head erect. He wore no jacket or cap, and on one bare arm
+a strip of linen was roughly tied. His breast was naked, his eyes were
+aflame, and save for a black streak of blood across the cheek, his face
+was ashy pale. But that man was not crushed by his misfortunes; he
+seemed to crush them.
+
+"Take that man's number," said the governor.
+
+"Ay, take it, and see you take it rightly," said the convict.
+
+"It's B 2001," said the chief warder.
+
+The governor consulted a paper that lay on his table.
+
+"Send for the gentleman," he said to an attendant. "It's well for you
+that you are wanted by the law officers of the Crown," he added, turning
+to the prisoner.
+
+The convict made no answer; he was neither humble nor sullen; his manner
+was frank but fierce, and made almost brutal by a sense of wrong.
+
+The next moment Hugh Ritson stepped into the office. His eyes dropped,
+and his infirm foot trailed heavily along the floor. He twitched at his
+coat with nervous fingers; his nostrils quivered; his whole body
+trembled perceptibly.
+
+"This is the man," said the chief warder, with a deferential bow.
+
+Hugh Ritson tried to raise his eyes, but they fell suddenly. He opened
+his lips to speak, but the words would not come. And meantime the wet,
+soiled, naked, close-cropped, blood-stained convict, flanked by armed
+warders, stood before him with head erect and eyes that searched his
+soul. The convict rested one hand on his hip and pointed with the other
+at Hugh Ritson's abject figure.
+
+"What does this man want with me?" he said, and his voice was deep.
+
+At that Hugh Ritson broke in impetuously:
+
+"Paul, I will not outrage your sufferings by offering you my pity."
+
+The officers looked into each other's faces.
+
+"I want none of your pity!" said the convict, bitterly.
+
+"No; it is I who need yours," said Hugh Ritson, in a low tone.
+
+The convict laughed a hard laugh, and turned to the warders.
+
+"Here, take me away--I've had enough of this."
+
+"Listen. I have something to say to you--something to do for you, too."
+
+The convict broke afresh into a laugh.
+
+"Take me away, will you?"
+
+"What if I say I am sorry for the past?" said Hugh.
+
+"Then you are a hypocrite!" the convict answered.
+
+Hugh Ritson drew himself up, and took his breath audibly. In one swift
+instant his face became discolored and his features pinched and rigid.
+There was silence, and then in a low, broken tone, he said:
+
+"Paul, you know well what sort of a man I am; don't drive me too hard. I
+have come here to do you a service. Remember your sufferings--"
+
+Once again the convict broke into a cold laugh.
+
+"Remember that others--one other--may be suffering with you."
+
+The convict's haughty look fled like a flash of light.
+
+"Here, take me out of this," he muttered in a low, hoarse voice. He took
+a step back, but the guard closed around him. "I won't stand to listen
+to this man. Do you hear? I won't listen," he said hotly; "he has come
+to torture me--that's all!"
+
+"I have come to undo what I have done," said Hugh. "Paul, let me undo
+it. Don't rouse the bad part of me at this crisis of your life and
+mine."
+
+The convict paused, and said more quietly:
+
+"Then it's your policy to undo it."
+
+Hugh Ritson flinched. The words had gone to his heart like a spear. If
+he had dared to mask his motive, that thrust would have left it naked.
+
+"I will not wrong the truth by saying I am a changed man," he answered
+meekly. "My motive is my own; but my act shall be all in all to you."
+
+The convict's face lightened.
+
+"You have used me for your vengeance," he said; "you shall not use me
+for your contrition also. Guards, let me out--let me out, I tell you!"
+
+The governor interposed:
+
+"When you leave this room you go direct to the cells."
+
+"Ay, take me to your cells, and let me lie there and die and rot," said
+the convict.
+
+"Take him away," said the governor.
+
+"Paul, I beseech you to hear me!" cried Hugh, amid the clanking of the
+arms of the guard.
+
+"Take him away!" the governor shouted again.
+
+An hour after, B 2001 was recalled to the receiving-office. He was quiet
+enough now.
+
+"We have an order respecting you from the Secretary of State," said the
+governor. "You are required to give evidence at a trial. At two o'clock
+you leave Portland for Cumberland, and your guard goes with you."
+
+The convict bent his head and went out in silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Paul Ritson--let him be known by his official number no more--was not
+taken to the punishment cells. He was set to work with the
+stone-dressing gang stationed near the gate of the prison. The news of
+his attempt to escape had not spread more rapidly than rumors of his
+approaching departure.
+
+"I say," shouted a hoary convict, "take a crooked message out?"
+
+"What's your message?"
+
+"On'y a word to the old girl telling her where she'll find a bunch of
+keys as she wants partic'lar."
+
+"Write her yourself, my man."
+
+"What, and the governor read it, and me get a bashing, and the crushers
+pinch the old moll? Well, I am surprised at ye; but I forgot, you're a
+straight man, you are."
+
+A mocking laugh followed this explanatory speech.
+
+A young fellow with a pale, meek face and the startled eyes of a hare
+crept close up to where Paul Ritson worked, and took a letter out of one
+of his boots.
+
+"This is the last I had from home," he said, quietly, and put the letter
+into Paul's hands.
+
+It was a soiled and crumpled paper, so greasy from frequent handlings
+and so much worn by many foldings that the writing could scarcely be
+deciphered. Home? It was dated from the Union of Liverpool, and had come
+from his invalid wife and his children, all living there.
+
+The poor fellow could not read, but he had somehow learned the letter
+by heart, and was able to point out each bit of family history in the
+exact place where it was recorded.
+
+He had lost his class privileges, and was not allowed to reply; and now
+he wanted to know if Paul Ritson could get down to Liverpool and see his
+wife and little ones, and tell them how well he was, and how lusty he
+looked, and what fine times he had of it--"just to keep up their
+spirits, you know."
+
+"I say, you sir," bawled a sinister gray-head--the same whose
+conversation was overheard in church--"I hear as you're a employer of
+labor when yer not lagged. Any chance? I wants to leave my sitivation.
+Long hours, and grub reg'lar onsatisfactory. Besides, my present
+employer insists on me wearing a collar with a number--same as a wild
+beast or a bobby. It's gettin' ridic'lus. So I've give notice, and I
+flit in September. Maybe ye see as I'm growing my wings to fly." The
+hoary sinner pointed upward to his grizzly hair, which was longer than
+the hair of his comrades. "On'y it's coming out another tint o' awrburn
+nor what it was ten years ago, and the old woman won't have the same
+pride in my pussonal appearance."
+
+At two o'clock the assistant warder known as Jim-the-ladder marched Paul
+Ritson to the chief warder's office. There the convict was handcuffed
+and the warder armed. Then they set out.
+
+On the steamboat that plied between the Portland Ferry and Weymouth the
+convict dress attracted much attention. The day was some sort of chapel
+festival, and great numbers of chapel people in holiday costume crowded
+the decks and climbed the paddle-boxes; the weather was brilliant; the
+sun danced on the waters like countless fairies on a floor of glass; a
+brass band played on the bridge.
+
+Again at the Weymouth railway station the people gathered in little
+groups, and looked askance at the convict. During the few minutes which
+elapsed before the train left the platform, a knot of spectators stood
+before the carriage and peered in at the window.
+
+Paul Ritson paid little heed to these attentions, but they were often
+unwelcome enough. "Keep clear of him--see the blue cap?" "What an
+ill-looking fellow--to be sure, his looks are enough to hang him."
+
+Paul laughed bitterly. His heart felt cold within him at that moment. If
+he had worn broadcloth and a smile, how different the popular verdict
+might have been. Who then would have said that he was a villain?
+Certainly not yonder sleek minister of Christ who was humming a psalm
+tune a moment ago, and paused to whisper, "Be sure your sin will find
+you out." The black-coated Pharisee was handing a lady into a
+first-class carriage.
+
+The train started. Paul threw himself back in his seat, and thought of
+all that had occurred since he made this journey before. He was
+traveling in the other direction then, and what an agony was that first
+experience of convict life! He had never thought of it from that day to
+this.
+
+Other and more poignant memories had day after day obliterated the
+recollection of that experience. But it came back now as freshly as if
+it had all occurred yesterday. He was one of a gang of twenty who were
+traveling from Millbank to Dartmoor. The journey to Waterloo in the
+prison van had been a terrible ordeal. He had thought in the cells that
+it would be nothing to him if people in the streets recognized him. The
+shameful punishment of an innocent man was not his, but the law's
+disgrace.
+
+Yet, when he was marched out into the prison grounds abreast of a
+cadaverous wretch with shrunken brows and the eyes of a hawk, an old
+thief in front of him, and a murderer convicted of manslaughter treading
+on his heels, the cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead.
+
+He had meant to hold up his head, and if people looked into his face to
+look frankly back into their faces. But when his turn came he leaped
+into the van, and his chin buried itself in his breast.
+
+Then the crowds drawn up on the pavement outside as the gates rolled
+back and the van passed through; the crush in a busy thoroughfare when
+the van stopped to let a line of crowded omnibuses go by; the horrible
+scene at the station when the convicts were marched down the platform,
+and every ear was arrested by the tramp, tramp of twenty fettered men!
+
+Above all, the jests and the laughter of the older hands who had served
+their time before, and were superior to all small considerations of
+public shame! "I say, you with the gig-lamps, toss a poor devil a bit o'
+'bacco." "Seen us afore? In coorse you have. You in the white choker,
+look hard while yer at it, and you'll know us again." "Oh, Mother
+Shipton, and is that yourself? and how pleased we is to see ye, and just
+tip us yer welwet purse, and we'll give it yer back when we're this way
+again." And not all the rigor of the attendant warders was enough to
+suppress such jesting.
+
+Paul Ritson could not forbear to laugh aloud when he remembered with
+what an agony of sweat he had that day crept back into his seat.
+
+Times had changed since then. He had spent a year and a half in a
+government school, and had been educated out of all torturing delicacy.
+
+The warder attempted to draw him into conversation. Jim-the-ladder
+repeatedly protested that he bore no malice. "I'm a good fellow at
+bottom," he said more than once, and Paul Ritson showed no malice. But
+he laughed bitterly at a grim and an obvious thought that the warder's
+dubious words suggested. Failing in his efforts at conciliation, the
+warder charged his pipe and relapsed into a long silence.
+
+They had a compartment to themselves. At a station where the train
+stopped a man opened the door and had already put one foot into the
+carriage when he recognized the caste of his traveling companions. He
+disappeared in a twinkling. Paul Ritson did his best to restrain the
+anger that well-nigh choked him. He merely sent a ringing laugh after
+the retreating figure. At another station a police inspector, dressed in
+a little brief authority, caught sight of the blue cap and gray jacket,
+and bustled up to examine the warder's papers. Then, with a lofty look,
+he strode through the group of spectators whom his presence had
+attracted.
+
+Arrived at Waterloo, the warder hailed a cab, and they drove to Scotland
+Yard to report themselves. There they supped on cocoa and brown bread,
+with the addition of a rasher of bacon and a pipe for the warder. Thence
+they were driven to Euston to catch the nine-o'clock train to Penrith.
+
+The journey north was uneventful. At Rugby, Stafford, and elsewhere, the
+train stopped, and little groups of people looked in at the convict, and
+made apposite comments on his appearance, crime, and condition. Paul
+Ritson often shut his eyes and said nothing. Sometimes a sneer curled
+his lip, sometimes he burst into a bitter laugh. He was thinking that
+this was a fitting close to the degradation of his prison life. If one
+feeling of delicacy, one tender sentiment, one impulse of humanity
+remained to him when the gates of Portland closed behind him; it only
+required this cruel torture to crush it forever.
+
+In spite of the risk of dismissal and the more immediate danger at the
+hands of Paul Ritson, the warder coiled himself up and fell asleep. It
+was after midnight when they reached Crewe, and from that point of the
+journey the worst of the torment ceased. Their merciful fellow-men were
+mostly in bed, dreaming of heroic deeds that they were doing. But the
+silence of night had its own torture. As the train rumbled on through
+the darkness, now rattling in a long tunnel, now sliding into open air
+like a boat into still water, Paul Ritson's mind went back to the day
+which seemed now to be so far away that it might have belonged to
+another existence, when he traveled this road with the dear soul who had
+trusted her young and cloudless life to his keeping. Where was she now?
+Peace be with her, wheresoever she was! He recalled her tenderest
+glance, he seemed to hear her softest tone; the light pressure of her
+delicate fingers was now on his hands--the hard hands that wore the
+irons. And even at that moment, when all his soul went out to the pure
+young wife who had shared his sufferings, and he felt as if time and
+space were nothing, as if he had drawn her to him by the power of his
+yearning love, it seemed to him that all at once there rang in his ears
+the shrill, sharp voices of the convicts rapping out their foul and
+frightful oaths.
+
+He leaped to his feet, with a muttered oath on his own lips, and when
+the imagined agony with which he surprised himself had given way to a
+new sense of his actual sufferings, his heart grew yet more cold and
+bitter. He thought of what he had been and of what he was. There could
+be no disguising the truth--he was a worse man. Yes; whatsoever had once
+been pure in him, whatsoever had once been generous, whatsoever had once
+been of noble aspiration, was now impure, and ungenerous, and ignoble.
+Above all else, he had lost that tenderness which is the top and crown
+of a strong man. He felt as if the world had lifted its hand against
+him, and as if he were ready and eager to strike back.
+
+They reached Penrith toward four in the morning, and then the carriage
+in which they traveled was shunted on to the branch line to await the
+first train toward Cockermouth. The day was breaking. From the window
+Paul Ritson could see vaguely the few ruins of the castle. That familiar
+object touched him strangely. He hardly knew why, but he felt that a
+hard lump at his heart melted away. By and by the brakeman shouted to
+the signalman in the gray silence of the morning. The words were
+indifferent--only some casual message--but they were spoken in the broad
+Cumbrian that for a year and a half had never once fallen on Paul
+Ritson's ear. Then the lump that had melted as his heart seemed to rise
+to his throat.
+
+The gray light become intermingled with red, and soon the sky to the
+east was aflame. Paul let down the carriage window, and long waves of
+sweet mountain air, laden with the smell of peat, flowed in upon him.
+His lips parted and his breast expanded. At five o'clock the engine was
+attached. A few carriages were added at the platform, and these
+contained a number of pitmen, in their red-stained fustian, going down
+for the morning shift. When the train moved westward, the sun had
+risen, and all the air was musical with the songs of the birds. Very
+soon the train ran in among the mountains, and then at last the
+bitterness of Paul Ritson's heart seemed to fall away from him like a
+garment. That quick thrill of soul which comes when the mountains are
+first seen after a long absence is a rapture known to the mountaineer
+alone. Paul saw his native hills towering up to the sky, the white mists
+flying off their bald crown, the torrents leaping down their brant
+sides, and the tears filled his eyes and blotted it all out. The
+sedge-warbler was singing with the wheatear, and, though he could not
+see them now, he knew where they were: the sedge-warbler was flitting
+among the rushes of the low-land mere; the wheatear was perched on the
+crevice of gray rock in which it had laid its pale-blue eggs; the sheep
+were bleating on the fells, and he knew their haunts by the lea of the
+bowlders and along the rocky ledges where grew the freshest grasses.
+Down the corries of Blencathra, long drifts of sheep were coming before
+the dogs, and he knew that the shepherds had been out on the fells
+during the short summer night, numbering the sheep for the washing in
+the beck below.
+
+Everything came back upon him like a memory of yesterday. He stood up
+and thrust out his head, and did not think of his gray jacket and blue
+cap until a carter who watered his horses at a pool near the railway
+lines started and stared as if he had seen a "boggle" at noonday.
+
+Then Paul Ritson remembered that he was still a convict, that his hands
+wore irons, that the man who lay sleeping on the seat of the carriage
+was his warder, and that the steely thing that peeped from the belt of
+the sleeping man was a revolver, to be promptly used if he attempted to
+escape.
+
+But not even these reflections sufficed to dissipate the emotion that
+had taken hold of him. He began at length to think of Hugh Ritson, and
+to wonder why he had been brought back home. Home!--home? It was a
+melancholy home-coming, but it was coming home, nevertheless.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Two days later the gray old town-hall that stands in the market-place of
+Keswick was surrounded by a busy throng. The Civil Court of the County
+Assize was sitting in this little place for the nonce to try a curious
+case of local interest. It was an action for ejectment brought by Greta,
+Mrs. Paul Ritson, against a defendant whose name was entered on the
+sheet as Paul Drayton, alias Paul Ritson, now of the Ghyll, in the
+Parish of Newlands.
+
+The court-room was crowded. It was a large, bare room, with a long table
+and two rows of chairs crossing the end, the one row occupied by the
+judge and a special jury, the other by the lawyers for the prosecution
+and defense. The rest of the chamber was not provided with seats, and
+there the dalespeople huddled together.
+
+A seat had been found for Greta at one end of the table. Her cheek
+rested on her hand. She dropped her eyes as the spectators craned their
+necks to catch a glimpse of her. Behind her, and with one hand on her
+chair-back, stood the old parson, his Jovian white head more white than
+of old, the tenderer lines in his mellow face drawn down to a look of
+pain. Immediately facing Greta, at the opposite end of the table, Hugh
+Ritson sat. One leg was thrown over the other knee, and the long,
+nervous fingers of the right hand played with the shoelace. His head was
+inclined forward, and the thin, pallid, clean-cut face with the great
+calm eyes and the full, dilated nostrils was more than ever the face of
+a high-bred horse. None would have guessed the purpose with which Hugh
+Ritson sat there. One would have said that indifference was in those
+eyes and on that brow--indifference or despair.
+
+Near where the rustle was loudest and most frequent among the
+spectators, Drayton sat by the side of Mr. Bonnithorne. He was dressed
+in his favorite suit of broad plaid, and had a gigantic orange-lily
+stuck jauntily in his buttonhole. His face was flushed and his eyes
+sparkled. Now and again he leaned back to whisper something to the
+blacksmith, the miller, and the landlord of the Flying Horse, who were
+grouped behind him. His remarks must have been wondrously facetious, for
+they were promptly followed by a low gurgle, which was as promptly
+suppressed.
+
+The counsel for the plaintiff opened his case. The plaintiff sued as the
+owner in succession to her husband, who was at present dead to the law.
+She contended that the man who now stood seized of the Ghyll was not her
+husband, Paul Ritson, but Paul Drayton, an innkeeper of Hendon, who bore
+him a strange personal resemblance, and personated him. The evidence of
+identity which should presently be adduced was full and complete in the
+essential particular of proving that the defendant was not Paul Ritson,
+by whose title alone the defense would maintain the right of present
+possession. Unhappily, the complementary evidence as to the actual
+identity of the defendant with Paul Drayton, the publican, had been
+seriously curtailed by the blindness, followed by the death, of an
+important witness. Still, if he, the counsel for the plaintiff, could
+prove to the satisfaction of the jury that the defendant was not the man
+he represented himself to be, they would have no course but to grant the
+ejectment for which the plaintiff asked. To this end he would call two
+witnesses whose evidence must outweigh that of all others--the wife of
+Paul Ritson, and the clergyman who solemnized the marriage.
+
+Greta's name was called, and she rose at the end of the table. Her bosom
+heaved under the small lace shawl that covered her shoulders, and was
+knotted like a sailor's scarf, on her breast. She stood erect, her eyes
+raised slightly and her drooping hands clasped in front. After the
+customary formalities, she was examined.
+
+"You are the only child of the late Robert Lowther?"
+
+"I am the daughter of Robert Lowther."
+
+Drayton threw back his head, and laughed a little.
+
+"You were married to Paul Ritson in 1875 at the parish church of
+Newlands, the minister being the Reverend Mr. Christian?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"On the day of your marriage you accompanied your husband to London, and
+the same night he left you at the Convent of St. Margaret, Westminster?"
+
+"That is quite true."
+
+There was a buzz of conversation in the court, accompanied by a
+whispered conference on the bench. Counsel paused to say that it was not
+a part of his purpose to trouble the court with an explanation of facts
+which were so extraordinary that they could only be credited on the oath
+of a person who, though present, would not be called. At this reference
+Hugh Ritson raised his languid eyes, and the examination proceeded.
+
+"Three days afterward you received a message from your husband,
+requesting you to meet him at St. Pancras Station, and return with him
+to Cumberland by the midnight train?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Who took you the message?"
+
+"Mrs. Drayton, the old person at the inn at Hendon."
+
+"You went to the station?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Tell the court what occurred there."
+
+"Just on the stroke of twelve, when the train was about to leave, a man
+whom at first sight I mistook for my husband came hurrying up the
+platform, and I stepped into the carriage with him."
+
+"Do you see that man in court?"
+
+"Yes; he sits two seats to your right."
+
+Drayton rose, smiled broadly, bowed to the witness, and resumed his
+seat.
+
+"Were you alone in the compartment?"
+
+"At first we were; but just as the train was moving away who should join
+us but Parson Christian."
+
+There was another buzz of conversation, and counsel paused again to say
+that he should not trouble the court with an explanation of the
+extraordinary circumstances by which Parson Christian came to be in
+London at that critical moment. These facts formed in themselves a
+chain of evidence which must yet come before a criminal court, involving
+as it did the story of a conspiracy more painful and unnatural perhaps
+than could be found in the annals of jurisprudence.
+
+"Tell the court what passed in the train."
+
+"I perceived at once that the man was not my husband, though strangely
+like him in face and figure, and when he addressed me as his wife I
+repulsed him."
+
+"Did Parson Christian also realize the mistake?"
+
+"Oh, yes, but not quite so quickly."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"We left the train at the first station at which it stopped."
+
+"Did the defendant offer any resistance?"
+
+"No; he looked abashed, and merely observed that perhaps a recent
+illness had altered him."
+
+Counsel for the defense, at whose left Mr. Bonnithorne sat as attorney
+for the defendant, cross-examined the witness.
+
+"You say that on the night following the morning of your marriage your
+husband left you at a convent?"
+
+"I do."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne dropped his twinkling eyes, and muttered something that
+was inaudible to the witness. There was a titter among the people who
+stood behind him.
+
+"And you say that Mrs. Drayton took you the message of which you have
+spoken. Did she tell you that your husband had been ill?"
+
+"She did."
+
+"We are to infer that you visited the house of the Draytons at Hendon?"
+
+"A railway accident drove us there."
+
+"Did any one accompany the defendant to St. Pancras that night?"
+
+"My husband's brother, Mr. Hugh Ritson, was with him."
+
+"Tell the jury where your husband now is, if he is not at this moment in
+court."
+
+No answer. Amid a profound silence the plaintiff's lawyer was understood
+to object to the question.
+
+"Well, we can afford to waive it," said counsel, with a superior smile.
+"One further question, Mrs. Ritson. Had you any misunderstanding with
+your husband?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"Will you swear that your voices were not raised in angry dispute while
+you were at the inn at Hendon?"
+
+Greta lifted her head and her eyes flashed. "Yes, I will swear it," she
+said in a soft voice but with impressive emphasis.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne reached up to the ear of counsel and was understood to
+say that perhaps the point was too delicate to be pressed.
+
+Parson Christian was next examined. The defendant in the present action
+was not the man whom he married to the plaintiff. He had since seen Paul
+Ritson. Where? In the convict prison of Dartmoor. In cross-examination
+he was asked by what name the convict was known to the directors of
+Dartmoor. Paul Drayton.
+
+"Then tell the court how you came to identify the defendant as Drayton."
+
+"There were many facts pointing that way."
+
+"Give us one."
+
+"On the morning of the marriage I found a letter lying open before the
+fire in my vestry. It was from Mr. Hugh Ritson to Mr. Bonnithorne, and
+it mentioned the name of Drayton in a connection which, by the light of
+later revelations, provoked many inferences."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne was unprepared for this answer. Counsel looked at him
+inquiringly, but the attorney glanced down and colored deeply.
+
+"Can you show us the letter?"
+
+"No; I left it where I found it."
+
+"Then it can hardly be received as evidence."
+
+The attorney smiled, and the tension of Drayton's face relaxed. There
+was a slight shuffle among the people; the witness had stepped back.
+
+Counsel for the defense opened his case. They were asked to believe that
+the defendant in the present action was Paul Drayton, in the teeth of
+the fact that Paul Drayton was at that moment a convict in a convict
+prison. The incredible statement was made that a newly married husband
+had placed his young wife in a convent on the night of their marriage,
+and that when they should have rejoined each other an interchange had
+been made, the husband going to prison in another man's name, the other
+man coming to Cumberland to claim the place of the woman's husband.
+Moreover, they were asked to believe that the husband's brother, Mr.
+Hugh Ritson, had either been fooled by the impostor or made a party to
+the imposture. Happily it was easy to establish identity by two
+unquestionable chains of evidence--resemblance and memory. It would be
+shown that the defendant could be none other than Paul Ritson, first,
+because he resembled him exactly in person; second, because he knew all
+that Paul Ritson ought to know; third, because he knew nothing that Paul
+Ritson might not know. No two men's lives had ever been the same from
+the beginning of the world, and as it would be seen that the defendant's
+life had been the same as Paul Ritson's, it followed that Paul Ritson
+and the defendant were one and the same man.
+
+Dick o' the Syke was the first witness examined for the defense. He
+swore that Paul Ritson was active in extinguishing a fire that broke out
+in the mill two years ago; that he had climbed to the cross-trees with a
+hatchet; and that within the past month the defendant had described to
+him the precise locality and shape of the gap made in the roof by the
+fire. No one could have known so much except himself and the man who
+stood on the cross-trees. That man was Paul Ritson, and he was there and
+then recognized by many spectators, among whom was Parson Christian.
+
+The next witness was Mistress Calvert, of the Pack Horse. Paul Ritson
+had slept at their house one night two years ago, and a few days since
+the present defendant had pointed out the bedroom he occupied, and
+recalled the few words of conversation which passed between them.
+
+Natt, the stableman, was called. His sleepy eyes blinked knowingly as he
+explained that one winter's night, when the snow fell heavily, Mrs.
+Ritson, then Miss Greta, was startled by what she mistook for the ghost
+of Paul Ritson. The witness had not been so easily deceived, and the
+defendant had since described to him the exact scene and circumstances
+of what the lady had thought to be the ghostly appearance.
+
+Then followed John Proudfoot, the blacksmith; Tom o' Dint, the postman;
+Giles Raisley, the pitman; Job Sheepshanks, the mason; and Tommy
+Lowthwaite, the landlord of the Flying Horse--all swearing to points of
+identity.
+
+One recalled the fact that Paul Ritson had a scar on his head that was
+caused by the kick of a horse when he was a boy. The defendant had just
+such a scar.
+
+Another remembered that Paul Ritson had a mark on the sole of his right
+foot which had been made by treading on a sharp piece of rock on
+Hindscarth. The defendant had exactly such a mark.
+
+A third had wrestled with Paul Ritson, and knew that he had a mole
+beneath the left shoulder-blade on the back. The defendant had a mole in
+that unusual place.
+
+Counsel for the defense smiled blandly at the special jury, the special
+jury smiled blandly at counsel for the defense. Was it really necessary
+that the defendant should be called? Surely it was a pity to occupy the
+time of the court. The whole case was in a nutshell--the lady had
+quarreled with her husband. State of affairs would be promptly gauged
+when it was explained that this action had been raised to anticipate a
+forthcoming suit in the divorce court for restitution of connubial
+rights.
+
+The counsel for the plaintiff smiled also, and his was a weak smile of
+conscious defeat. He stammered a desire to withdraw--said he had been
+promised more conclusive evidence when he undertook the case, and sat
+down with an apologetic air.
+
+There was a shuffle of feet in the court. Drayton had risen to receive
+the congratulations of his friends behind him and the cordial nods of
+some of the superior people who had been favored with seats at the right
+hand and left of the judge. He was answering in a loud tone, when there
+was a sudden lull of the buzz of gossip, and all eyes were directed
+toward one end of the table.
+
+Hugh Ritson had risen from his seat, and with a face that was very pale,
+but as firm as a rock, he was engaged in a whispered conference with the
+plaintiff's counsel. That gentleman's eager face betrayed the keenest
+possible interest in what he heard. Presently he lifted his arm with an
+impatient gesture, and said:
+
+"My lord, I have unexpectedly come into possession of new and most
+important evidence."
+
+"Of what nature?" asked the judge.
+
+"If it is conceivable," said counsel, "that in any question of personal
+identity the court will accept the evidence of all the tinkers and
+tailors, the riff-raff, the raggabash of the country-side, and reject
+that of the wife of the man whose estate is in question, perhaps it will
+be allowed that there are three persons who are essential to this
+examination--the brother of Paul Ritson, the defendant who claims to be
+Paul Ritson, and the convict who is suffering penal servitude in the
+name of Paul Drayton. I might name one other whose evidence might be yet
+more conclusive than that of any of these alone--the mother of Paul
+Ritson; but she is unhappily dead to the world."
+
+Drayton was still on his feet, riveted to the spot where he stood.
+Obtuse as he was, he saw at a glance what had occurred. In all his
+calculations this chance had never suggested itself--that Hugh Ritson
+would risk the personal danger to bring him down.
+
+"Can you put these persons into the witness-box?"
+
+"My lord, it is, I presume, within the liberties of the defendant to
+keep carefully out of that box, but the court will not refuse to hear
+the evidence of the two persons of whom I speak--the brother of Paul
+Ritson and the convict known as Paul Drayton."
+
+At this there was high commotion. Greta had leaned back in her chair,
+her bosom heaving, her face shadowed by lines of pain. Parson Christian
+stood behind her with a blank expression of bewilderment. Drayton's
+brows were tightened and his lips were drawn hard.
+
+"None of their criss-crossin' for me," he muttered.
+
+"You can ask for a new trial," said the judge.
+
+"My lord, another case is pending, and on the issue in this case the
+other case must largely depend."
+
+"How far has the present one proceeded?"
+
+"The defendant's case is not yet completed."
+
+During this scene Hugh Ritson had stood quietly by the table. He
+remained there with complete self-possession while counsel proceeded to
+explain that four days ago, in anticipation of this action and of
+another that had been threatened, a statutory declaration had been made
+in the presence of the Home Secretary and the law officers of the Crown.
+The first result of that statement was that the convict Drayton was now
+present in the court-house ready to appear at this trial.
+
+The judge signified his desire that the convict might be brought in and
+heard.
+
+Hugh Ritson motioned to a tall man who stood near, and immediately
+afterward a door was thrown open and another man stepped into the
+court-room.
+
+Every eye was fixed upon him. He wore a convict's gray jacket, with the
+round badge marked "3. B 2001. P S," and the broad arrow beneath. His
+face was pale and rigid; his large eyes glittered; he was in his full
+manhood, but his close-cropped hair was slightly tinged with gray. He
+pushed his way through the people, who fell back to let him pass. When
+he reached the table he tapped it impatiently with one of his hands,
+which were fettered, and threw up his head with a glance of defiance.
+His whole bearing was that of a strong man who believed that every man's
+hand was against him, and who intended to let it be seen that his own
+hand was against every man's.
+
+Counsel rose again, and asked that the defendant's witnesses might be
+recalled. This was done.
+
+"John Proudfoot, Job Sheepshanks, Thomas Lowthwaite, Giles Raisley,
+look this way. Who is this man?"
+
+There was a dead hush. Then, one by one, the men who had been named
+shook their heads. They did not know the convict. Indeed, he was
+terribly altered. The ordeal of the past two years had plowed strange
+lines in his face. At that moment he was less like himself than was the
+impostor who came there to personate him.
+
+Hugh Ritson's manner did not change. Only a slight curl of the lip
+betrayed his feelings.
+
+Counsel continued, "Is there any one in court who recognizes him?"
+
+Not a voice responded. All was silence.
+
+"Will the defendant stand side by side with him?"
+
+Drayton leaped up with a boisterous laugh, and swaggered his way to the
+opposite side of the table. As he approached, the convict looked at him
+keenly.
+
+"Will Mrs. Ritson come forward again?"
+
+Greta had already risen, and was holding Parson Christian's hand with a
+nervous grip. She stepped apart, and going behind the two men, she came
+to a stand between them. On the one side stood Drayton, with a smirking
+face half turned toward the spectators; on the other stood the convict,
+his hands bound before him, his defiant glance softened to a look of
+tenderness, and his lips parted with the unuttered cry that was ready to
+burst from them.
+
+"Greta," said Hugh Ritson, in a low tone of indescribable pathos, "which
+of these men is your husband?"
+
+Counsel repeated the question in form.
+
+Greta had slowly raised her eyes from the ground until they reached the
+convict's face. Then in an instant, in a flash of light, with the quick
+cry of a startled bird, she flung herself on his neck. Her fair head
+dropped on the frieze of the convict's jacket, and her sobs were all
+that broke the silence.
+
+Hugh Ritson's emotion surged in his throat, but he stood quietly at the
+table. Only his slight figure swayed a little and his face quivered. His
+work was not yet done.
+
+"This is the answer of nature," he said quietly.
+
+Hugh Ritson was put into the witness-box, and in a voice that was full
+and strong, and that penetrated every corner of the court, he identified
+the convict as his brother, Paul Ritson.
+
+Counsel for the defense had seemed to be stunned. Recovering himself, he
+tried to smile, and said:
+
+"After this melodramatic interlude, perhaps I may be allowed to ask our
+new witness a few questions. Did you, at the Central Criminal Court,
+held at the Old Bailey in 1875, swear that the person who stands here in
+the dress of a convict was not Paul Ritson?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Now for my second question. Did you also swear that the defendant was
+your brother, and therefore not Paul Drayton."
+
+"I did."
+
+"Then you were guilty of perjury at that time, or you are guilty of
+perjury now?"
+
+"I was guilty of perjury then."
+
+The judge interposed and asked if the witness was awakened to the
+enormity of the crime to which he confessed. Hugh Ritson bent his head.
+
+"Are you conscious that you are rendering yourself liable to penal
+servitude?"
+
+"I have signed a declaration of my guilt."
+
+The answers were given in perfect calmness, but a vein of pathos ran
+through every word.
+
+"Do you know that a few years back many a poor wretch whose crime was
+trifling compared with yours has gone from the dock to the gallows?"
+
+"My guilt is unmitigated guilt. I make a voluntary statement. I am not
+here to appeal for mercy."
+
+There was the hush of awe in the court.
+
+The face of the convict wore an expression of amazement.
+
+Counsel smiled again.
+
+"I presume you know that the effect of the law officers of the Crown,
+believing the story that you tell us now is that, if they do so, the man
+whom you call your brother will be put into possession of the estate of
+which your late father died seized?"
+
+"He is entitled to it."
+
+Counsel turned to the jury with a smile.
+
+"It is always necessary to find some standard by which to judge of human
+actions. The witness quarreled with the defendant four days ago, and
+this is his revenge. But I appeal to the court. Is this story credible?
+Is it not a palpable imposture?"
+
+The judge again interposed.
+
+"Men do not risk so much for a lie. The witness knows that when the
+court rises the sheriff may take him into custody."
+
+At this counsel rose again and asked the bench not to play into the
+hands of the witness by apprehending him.
+
+"Let the convict be examined," said the judge.
+
+Paul Ritson raised his head; Greta sunk into a chair beneath him. He was
+not sworn.
+
+The warder in charge put in an entry from the books of the prison. It
+ran: "Paul Drayton, five feet eleven inches, brown hair and eyes, aged
+thirty, licensed victualer, born in London, convicted of robbery at the
+scene of a railway accident."
+
+"Does that entry properly describe you?" asked the judge.
+
+The convict's eyes wandered.
+
+"What's going on?" he said, in a tone of bewilderment.
+
+"Attend, my man. Are you Paul Ritson, the eldest son of the late Allan
+Ritson?"
+
+"Why do you want to know?" said the convict.
+
+"It befits a witness who is permitted to come from the scene of a
+degrading punishment to give a prompt and decisive answer. What is your
+name, sir?"
+
+"Find it out."
+
+"My man," said the judge, more suavely, "we sit here in the name of the
+law, and the law could wish to stand your friend." (The convict laughed
+bitterly.) "Pray help us to a decision in the present perplexing case
+by a few frank answers. If you are Paul Drayton, you go back to Portland
+to complete the term of your imprisonment. If it can be proved that you
+are Paul Ritson, your case will be laid before the home officials, with
+the result that you will be liberated and re-established in your estate.
+First of all, which is your name--Paul Drayton or Paul Ritson?"
+
+The convict did not answer at first. Then he said in a low tone:
+
+"No law can re-establish me."
+
+The judge added:
+
+"Bethink you, if you are Paul Ritson, and an innocent man, the law can
+restore you to your young wife."
+
+Visibly moved by this reference, the convict's eyes wandered to where
+Greta sat beside him, and the tension of his gaze relaxed.
+
+The judge began again:
+
+"You have been recognized by two witnesses--one claiming to be your
+brother, the other to be your wife--as Paul Ritson. Are you that
+person?"
+
+The convict's face showed the agony he suffered. In a vague, uncertain,
+puzzled way he was thinking of the consequences of his answer. If he
+said he was Paul Ritson, it seemed to him that it must leak out that he
+was not the eldest legitimate son of his father. Then all the fabric of
+his mother's honor would there and then tumble to the ground. He
+recalled his oath; could he pronounce six words and not violate it? No,
+not six syllables. How those mouthing gossips would glory to see a good
+name trailed in the dust!
+
+"Are you Paul Ritson, the eldest son and heir of Allan Ritson?"
+
+The convict looked again at Greta. She rose to her feet beside him. All
+her soul was in her face, and cried:
+
+"Answer, answer!"
+
+"I can not answer," said the convict, in a loud, piercing voice.
+
+At that terrible moment his strength seemed to leave him. He sunk
+backward into the chair from which Greta had risen.
+
+She stood over him and put her hand tenderly on his head.
+
+"Tell them it is true," she pleaded, "tell them you are my husband; tell
+them so; oh, tell them, tell them!" she cried in a tone of piteous
+supplication.
+
+He raised to hers his weary eyes with a dumb cry for mercy from the
+appeal of love.
+
+Only Hugh Ritson, of all who were there present, understood what was in
+the convict's heart.
+
+"Paul Ritson is the rightful heir of his father and his mother's
+legitimate son," he muttered audibly.
+
+The convict turned to where his brother sat, and looked at him with a
+face that seemed to grapple for the missing links of a chain of facts.
+
+Counsel for the defense arose.
+
+"It will be seen that the unhappy convict witness will not be used as an
+instrument of deception," he said. "He is Paul Drayton, and can not be
+made to pretend that he is Paul Ritson."
+
+The hush of awe in the court was broken by the opening of a door behind
+the bench. Two women stood on the threshold. One of them was small,
+wrinkled, and old. She was Mrs. Drayton. The other was a nun in hood and
+cape. She was Sister Grace.
+
+Hugh Ritson leaned toward counsel for the plaintiff, who promptly rose
+and said:
+
+"The witness I spoke of as dead to the world is now present in the
+court."
+
+Amid a buzz of conversation the nun was handed to the table. She raised
+her long veil and showed a calm, pale face. After the usual formalities,
+counsel addressed her.
+
+"Mrs. Ritson," he said, "tell us which of the two men who sit opposite
+is your son."
+
+Sister Grace answered in a clear, soft voice:
+
+"Both are my sons. The convict is Paul Ritson, my son by Allan Ritson;
+the other is Paul Lowther, my son by an unhappy alliance with Robert
+Lowther."
+
+Drayton jumped to his feet.
+
+"There, that's enough of this!" he shouted, excitedly. "Damme, if I can
+stand any more of it!"
+
+Bonnithorne reached over and whispered:
+
+"Mad man, what are you doing? Hold your tongue!"
+
+"It's all up. There's the old woman, too, come to give me away. Here, I
+say, I'm Paul Drayton; that's what I am, if you want to know."
+
+"Let the sheriff take that man before a justice of the peace," said the
+judge.
+
+"It was you that led me into this mess!" shouted Drayton at Bonnithorne.
+"Only for you I would have been in Australia by this time."
+
+"Let the sheriff apprehend Mr. Bonnithorne also," said the judge. "As
+for you, sir," he continued, turning to Hugh Ritson, "I will report your
+evidence to the Public Prosecutor--who must be in possession of your
+statutory declaration--and leave the law officers to take their own
+course with regard to you."
+
+The action for ejectment was adjourned.
+
+Drayton and Bonnithorne did not trouble the world much longer. Within a
+month they were tried and condemned together--the one for personation;
+both for conspiracy.
+
+Paul Ritson was removed in charge of his warder, to be confined in the
+town jail pending the arrival of instructions from the Secretary of
+State. Hugh Ritson walked out of the court-room a free man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+Hugh Ritson returned to his room on the pit-brow. On his way there he
+passed a group of people congregated on the bridge at the town end. They
+fell apart as he walked through, but not an eye was raised to his, and
+not one glance of recognition came from his stony face. Toward the
+middle of the afternoon a solicitor came from Carlisle and executed a
+bill of sale on the machinery and general plant. The same evening, as
+the men on the day shift came up the shaft, and those on the night shift
+were about to go below, the wages were paid down to the last weights
+taken at the pit-mouth. Then Hugh Ritson closed his doors and began
+afresh his melancholy perambulation of the room.
+
+That night--it was Wednesday night--as darkness fell on the mountain and
+moorland, there was a great outcry in the Vale. It started at the
+pit-mouth, and was taken up on every side. In less than a quarter of an
+hour a hundred people--men, women, and children--were gathered about the
+head of the shaft. There had been a run of sand in the pit, and some of
+the hands were imprisoned in the blocked-up workings. Cries, moans, and
+many sounds of weeping arose on the air in one dismal chorus. "I knew it
+would come;" "I telt the master lang ago;" "Where's my man?" "And mine?"
+"And my poor barn--no'but fifteen." "Anybody seen my Willie?" "Is that
+thee, Robbie, ma lad?--No." As every cageful of men and boys came to the
+surface, there was a rush of mothers, wives, and fathers to recognize
+their own.
+
+Hugh Ritson went out and pushed his way through the people.
+
+"Where is the sand running?" he asked of a pitman just landed.
+
+"In the sandy vein, 2, 3, 1," answered the man.
+
+"Then the shaft is clear?"
+
+"Ay, but the water's blocked in the main working, and it's not safe to
+go down."
+
+Hugh Ritson had taken the man's candle out of his hand, and was fixing
+it with the putty in the front of his own hat.
+
+"Are you ready?" he shouted to the engine-man, above the babel of
+voices.
+
+In another moment he had stepped into the cage and looped down the iron
+rail in front of it. There was a moment's silence among the
+panic-stricken people as the cage began to move downward.
+
+At the bottom of the shaft a group of men waited to ascend. Their faces
+were lurid in the dim light. Before the cage grounded Hugh Ritson could
+hear their breathing. "How many of you are left?" he asked.
+
+"No'but two now--Giles Raisley and auld Reuben," answered one of the
+men. The others, without heeding the master's question, had scrambled
+into the cage, and were already knocking the signal for the ascent.
+
+Hugh Ritson turned toward the working known among the men as the sandy
+vein. The cage was now rising, and the pitman who had spoken found
+himself left on the pit bottom; the single moment that he had given to
+the master had lost him his chance of a place. He cast one stern glance
+upward, and a muttered oath was on his lips. At the next instant he had
+taken the direction followed by Hugh Ritson, and was walking one pace
+behind him.
+
+In the silence the dull thud of their footsteps on the rock beneath
+mingled with the drip, drip of the water overhead. When they had gone a
+hundred yards down the narrow working there came another and far more
+terrible sound. It was such a sound as the sea might have made if it had
+rushed through a thousand crevices in the rock. It was the sound of the
+thousands of tons of sand as they forced their way from the dense mass
+above. And over the hiss as of the sea was the harsh crack of great
+timbers splitting like matchwood.
+
+Toward the awful scene of this tumult Hugh Ritson quickened his steps.
+The man followed close at his heels. Presently their passage was blocked
+with sand like a wall. Then over their heads the cross-trees cracked,
+and the upright forks split and bent at the right and left of them. In
+another moment the ground beneath them shook under the new weight that
+lay on it. They stepped quickly back, and in an instant, with a groan
+such as the sea makes when it is sucked by the ebbing tide from a cave
+in a rock, the floor, with all its freight, went down a score of feet.
+It had fallen to an old working that lay below.
+
+Then the bent forks hung from the roof in empty air. Silence followed
+this shock, and through the silence there came a feeble cry for help.
+Hugh Ritson stepped out, plucked his candle from his hat, and held it
+before his feet.
+
+"Where are you?" he called, and his voice came back through the echoing
+depths beyond. Presently a man could be dimly seen clinging to a
+cross-piece in an alcove made for an air-shaft from the main working. To
+get to him the treacherous ground must be crossed, with its cracking
+roof, through which the sand slid even yet, and under the split timbers
+that still creaked.
+
+Hugh Ritson did not hesitate; he turned to leap down, saying, "Follow
+me." But the man clung to him from behind.
+
+"For God's sake, dunnot!" he cried. "I can not go there. It's mair nor
+my life is worth!"
+
+Hugh Ritson twisted about, and looked him steadily in the face.
+
+"What is your name, my man?"
+
+"Davey Braithwaite."
+
+"Then you are the young fellow whose wife died last week?"
+
+"Ey," with a drooping head.
+
+"Your child died before her, did it not?"
+
+"Ey, he did, poor laal thing!"
+
+"Your father and mother are gone, too?"
+
+"They're gone, for sure!"
+
+"And you have neither kith nor kin left in all the world?"
+
+"Nay, no'but mysel' left."
+
+Hugh Ritson said no more; a hard smile played on his white face, and at
+the next instant he had leaped down on to the bed of sand below.
+
+The man recoiled a pace or two and wrung his hands. Before he was aware
+of what had happened, Giles Raisley and the master were standing beside
+him.
+
+"Where were old Reuben and his gang stationed?" said Hugh Ritson.
+
+"In the main working; but the water is dammed up; we can never pass."
+
+They returned to the shaft bottom, and walked thence down the cutting
+that ran from it at right angles. A light burned far away in the dim
+vista of that long dark burrowing.
+
+It was a candle stuck to the rock. The men who worked by it had left it
+there when they rushed off for their lives. Through the bottom of this
+working there ran a deep trough, but it was now dry.
+
+This was the channel by which the whole pit was drained. Beyond the
+light the three men encountered another wall of sand, and from behind it
+and through it there came to them the dull thud and the plash of heavy
+water.
+
+"If auld Reuben's theer, he's a dead man," said Giles Raisley, and he
+turned to go.
+
+Hugh Ritson had struggled to the top of the heap, and was plowing the
+sand away from the roof with his hands. In a little while he had forced
+an opening, and could see into the dark space beyond. The water had
+risen to a reservoir of several feet deep. But it was still four or five
+feet from the roof, and over the black, surging, bubbling waves the
+imprisoned miner could be seen clinging to a ledge of rock. Half his
+body was already immersed. When the candle shot its streak of light
+through the aperture of sand, the poor creature uttered a feeble cry.
+
+In another moment the master had wormed his body through the hole and
+dropped slowly into the water. Wading breast deep, he reached the
+pitman, gave him his hand, and brought him safely through the closing
+seam.
+
+When the cage rose to the surface again, bringing back to life and the
+world the last of the imprisoned miners, a great cheer broke from many a
+lusty throat. Women who had never thought to bless the master, blessed
+him now with fervent tongues. Men who had thought little of the courage
+that could rest in that slight figure, fell aside at the sense of their
+own cowardice. Under the red glow that came from the engine fire many a
+hard face melted.
+
+Hugh Ritson saw little of this, and heeded it not at all. He plucked the
+candle, still burning, from his hat, and threw it aside. Then he walked
+through the people toward his room, and when he got there he shut the
+door, almost slamming it in the faces of those who followed. He pulled
+down the window-blinds, and began afresh his perambulation to and fro.
+
+He had grown paler and thinner. There was a somber light in his eyes,
+and his lips were whitening. His step, once quick and sure, despite his
+infirmity, was now less certain. He had not slept since the night of
+Mercy's death. Determined never to encounter again the pains and terrors
+of sleep, he had walked through the long hours of the four succeeding
+nights. He knew what the result must be, and did not shrink from it.
+Once only he had thought of a quicker way to the sure goal that was
+before him. Then he had opened a cupboard, and looked long and intently
+at a bottle that he took from its shelf. But he had put the bottle back.
+Why should he play the fool, and leap the life to come? Thus, night
+after night, he had walked and walked, never resting, never pausing,
+though the enfeebled limbs shook beneath him, and the four walls of the
+room reeled in his dazed eyes.
+
+Before returning to their homes, the people gathered in the darkness
+about the office on the pit-brow and gave one last cheer.
+
+The master heard them, and his lip curled.
+
+"Simpletons!--they don't understand," he muttered, beneath his breath,
+and continued his melancholy walk.
+
+Next morning, a banksman, who acted as personal attendant on Hugh
+Ritson, brought him his breakfast. It was not early.
+
+The sun had risen, but the blinds of the office were still drawn, and a
+candle burned on the table. The man would have put out the candle and
+let in the sunlight, but the master forbid him. He was a Methodist, and
+hummed psalm tunes as he went about his work. This morning he was more
+than usually fresh and happy when he entered with his tray; but at the
+sight of Hugh Ritson's pallid face his own face saddened.
+
+"You are a young man yet, Luke," said the master. "Let me see, how old
+are you?"
+
+"Seventy-nine, sir. I was born in ninety-eight. That was when auld
+Bonnypart was agate of us and Nelson bashed him up."
+
+"I dare say you have grandchildren by this time?"
+
+"Bless you, ey, and great-grandchilder, and ten of them, too; and all
+well and hearty, thank the Lord!"
+
+The sound of a bell, slowly tolling, came from across the dale. Hugh
+Ritson's face contracted, and his eyes fell.
+
+"What bell is that?" he asked, in an altered tone.
+
+"It's like to be the church bell. They're burying poor auld Matha's lass
+and her wee barn this morning."
+
+Hugh Ritson did not touch his breakfast.
+
+"Luke, close the shutters," he said, "and bring more candles."
+
+He did not go out that day, but continued to walk to and fro in the
+darkened room. Toward nightfall he grew feverish, and rang frequently
+the bell that summoned the banksman. He had only some casual order, some
+message, some unimportant explanation.
+
+At length the old man understood his purpose, and settled himself there
+for the night. They talked much during the early hours, and often the
+master laughed and jested. But the atmosphere that is breathed by a
+sleepless man is always heavy with sleep, and in spite of his efforts to
+keep awake, Luke dozed away in his chair. Then for hours there was a
+gloomy silence, broken only by the monotonous footfall within and the
+throb of the engine without.
+
+The next day, Friday, the sun shone brilliantly, but the shutters of the
+little house on the pit-brow remained closed, and the candle still
+burned on the table. Hugh Ritson had grown perceptibly feebler, yet he
+continued his dreary walk. The old banksman was forbidden to send for a
+doctor, but he contrived to dispatch a messenger for Parson Christian.
+That night he watched with the master again. When the conversation
+failed, he sung. First, a psalm of David, "The fool hath said in his
+heart, There is no God;" then a revival hymn of Charles Wesley about
+ransom by Christ's blood.
+
+It would have been a strange spectacle to strange eyes. The old
+man--young still, though seventy-nine, dear to troops of dear ones,
+encircled in his age by love and honor, living in poverty that was
+abundance, with faith that was itself the substance of things hoped for,
+his simple face ruddier and mellower than before--rocking his head and
+singing in the singleness of his heart. The other man--barely thirty,
+yet already old, having missed his youth, his thin cheeks pallid as
+linen, his eyes burning with a somber light--alone in the world,
+desolate, apart--walking with an uncertain step and a tremor of the
+whole frame, which seemed to lurch for poise and balance, yet swinging
+his arms with the sweep of the melody, and smiling a forced smile
+through his hard and whitened lips.
+
+When the singing ceased, Hugh Ritson paused suddenly and turned to the
+old banksman.
+
+"Luke," he said, abruptly, "I suppose there will be many to follow you
+when your time comes?"
+
+"Ey, please God," answered the banksman, dashing away a furtive drop
+that had rolled on to his cheek; "there'll be my childer, and my
+childer's childer, and their childer, forby. Maybe the barns will lay me
+behind the mother; poor auld body!"
+
+Hugh Ritson's face darkened, and he resumed his walk.
+
+"Tut! what matter?" he asked himself; "the night winds are enough to
+moan over a man's grave." And he laughed a little.
+
+Next morning--Saturday morning--he wrote a letter, and sent Luke to the
+village to post it. Then he attended to some business relating to the
+pit. After that, he shut the door and bolted it. When the old man
+brought the midday meal he knocked in vain, and had to go away.
+
+Night closed in, and still there came no answer to the old man's knock.
+When the sun had set the wind had risen. It threatened to be a
+tempestuous night.
+
+Toward ten o'clock Parson Christian arrived. He had wrestled long with
+his own heart as to what course it was his duty to take. He had come at
+last in answer to the banksman's summons, and now he knocked at the
+door. There was no answer. The wind was loud in the trees overhead, but
+he could hear the restless footfall within. He knocked again, and yet
+again.
+
+Then the bolt was drawn, and a voice at once strange and familiar cried,
+"Come in, Parson Christian."
+
+He had not called or spoken.
+
+The parson entered. When his eyes fell on Hugh Ritson's face he
+shuddered as he had never shuddered before. Many a time he had seen
+death in a living face, but never anything like this. The livid cheeks
+were stony, the white lips were drawn hard, the somber eyes burned like
+a deep, slow fire, the yellow hands were gaunt and restless. There was
+despair on the contracted brow, but no repentance. And the enfeebled
+limbs trembled, but still shuffled on--on, on, on, through their longer
+journey than from Gabbatha to Golgotha. The very atmosphere of the room
+breathed of death.
+
+"Let me pray with you," said the parson, softly, and without any other
+words, he went down on his knees.
+
+"Ay, pray for me--pray for me; but you lose your labor; nothing can save
+me."
+
+"Let us call on God," said the parson.
+
+A bitter laugh broke from Hugh Ritson's lips.
+
+"What! and take to him the dregs and rinsings of my life? No!"
+
+"The blood of Christ has ransomed the world. It can save the worst
+sinner of us all, and turn away the heavy wrath of God."
+
+Hugh Ritson broke again into a bitter laugh.
+
+"The end has come of sin, as of trouble. No matter." Then, with an awful
+solemnity, he added: "My soul is barren. It is already given over to the
+undying worm. I shall die to-morrow at sunrise."
+
+"No man knows the day nor the hour--"
+
+Hugh Ritson repeated, with a fearful emphasis, "I shall die as the sun
+rises on Sunday morning."
+
+Parson Christian remained with him the weary night through. The wind
+moaned and howled outside. It licked the walls as with the tongues of
+serpents. The parson prayed fervently, but Hugh Ritson's voice never
+once rose with his. To and fro, to and fro, the dying man continued his
+direful walk. At one moment he paused and said with a ghastly smile,
+"This dying is an old story. It has been going on every day for six
+thousand years, and yet we find it as terrible as ever."
+
+Toward three in the morning he threw open the shutters. The windows were
+still dark; it seemed as if the dawn were far away. "It is coming," he
+said calmly. "I knew it must come soon. Let us go out to meet it."
+
+With infinite effort he pulled his ulster over his shoulders, put on his
+hat, and opened the door.
+
+"Where are you going?" said the parson, and his voice broke.
+
+"To the top of the fell."
+
+"Why there?"
+
+Hugh Ritson turned his heavy eyes upon him. "To see the new day dawn,"
+he said, with an awful pathos.
+
+He had already stepped out into the gloom. Parson Christian followed
+him. They took the path that led through the moor end to the foot of Cat
+Bells. The old man offered his arm, but Hugh Ritson shook his head and
+walked one pace ahead. It was a terrible journey. The wind had dropped.
+In the air the night and day commingled. The dying man struggled along
+with the firm soul of a stricken lion. Step by step and with painful
+labor they ascended the bare side of the fell in the gray light of
+morning. They reached the top at last.
+
+Below them the moorland lay dark and mute. The mist was around them.
+They seemed to stand on an islet of the clouds. In front the day-break
+was bursting the confines of the bleak racks of cloud. Then the day came
+in its wondrous radiance, and flooded the world in a vast ocean of
+light.
+
+On the mountain brow Hugh Ritson resumed his melancholy walk. The old
+parson muttered, as if to himself, "Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and
+fro? Wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?" Hugh Ritson overheard the words,
+and all his manner changed. The stubborn lips softened, the somber eye
+melted, the contracted brow relaxed, and for the first time in all this
+length of years, he cried like a little child.
+
+At the same instant the sun swept up, and he fell. Parson Christian bent
+over him. The crimson of the east twas reflected on his white face. The
+new day had dawned.
+
+On the Tuesday following two mourners stood by an open grave in the
+church-yard of Newlands. One of them was white-headed; the other wore
+the jacket and cap, the badge and broad arrow of a convict. The sexton
+and his man had lowered the coffin to its last home, and then stepped
+aside. A tall man leaned on the lych-gate, and a group of men and women
+stood in silence by the porch of the church. The afternoon sun was low,
+and the shadows of the tombstones stretched far on the grass.
+
+The convict went down on his knees, and looked long into the grave. When
+he arose, the company that had gathered about the porch had gone, and
+voices singing a hymn came from within the old church. It was the
+village choir practicing. The world's work had begun again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Two days later the fell behind the Ghyll was a scene of unusual
+animation. It was the day of the shearing. The sheep, visibly whiter and
+more fleecy for a washing of some days before, had been gathered into
+stone folds. Clippers were seated on creels ranged about a turf fire,
+over which a pot of tar hung from a triangle of boughs. Boy "catchers"
+brought up the sheep, one by one, and girl "helpers" carried away the
+fleeces, hot and odorous, and hung them over the open barn doors. As the
+sheep were stripped, they were tugged to the fire and branded from the
+bubbling tar with the smet mark of the Ritsons. The metallic click of
+the shears was in the air, and over all was the blue sky and the
+brilliant sunshine.
+
+In a white overall, stained with patches of tar and some streaks of
+blood, smudged with soap and scraps of the clinging wool, Parson
+Christian moved among the shearers, applying plentiful doses of salve
+from a huge can to the snips made in the skin of the sheep by the
+accidents of the shears.
+
+"We might have waited for the maister afore shearing--eh?" said Reuben,
+from one of the creels.
+
+"He'll be here before we finish, please the Lord," answered the parson.
+
+"Is it to-day you're to gang for him?"
+
+"Yes, this afternoon."
+
+"A daub on this leg, parson, where she kicked--deuced take her!... It's
+like you'll bring him home in a car?"
+
+"Ay; Randal Alston has loaned me his mare."
+
+"Why, man, what a upshot we'll have, for sure--bacon pie and veal and
+haggis, and top stannin pie and puddings, I reckon.... Just a hand to
+her leg, parson, while I strip the coat and waistcoat off this
+black-faced herdwick.... Is the mistress to come home, too?"
+
+"Nay, Reuben, Mrs. Ritson has gone back to where she came from."
+
+"Weel, it's no'but naturable, after all that's happent.... Easy now ...
+be quiet, wilta ... dusta want another snip, eh?... And young Mistress
+Greta--it's like she'll be mistress now?"
+
+"It's very likely she'll come to the Ghyll with her husband, Reuben."
+
+"God bless her! And there's been no luck on the land since he left
+it--and everything a fault, too.... There, she's stripped. Away with
+her, Natt, man, and de'il tak' her."
+
+In the afternoon a vast crowd of men, women and children had gathered
+once more about the old town-hall at Keswick. They laughed and bantered
+and sung. Presently the door of the hall was thrown open, and two men
+came out. One was Paul Ritson, no longer clad as a convict; the other
+was Parson Christian. The people hailed them with a mighty shout, lifted
+them into a gig that was drawn up in the market-place, took out the
+horses and crowded into the shafts. Then they set off with a great cheer
+through the town and the country road, the dust rising in clouds behind
+them.
+
+They took the road to the west of the valley, and as they passed under
+the wood, an old man, much bent, was easing a smoking fire in the
+charcoal pit. He paused and raised himself, his iron rod in his hand,
+and lifted his heavy eyes toward the clamorous company. The gig flew
+past with its shouts, its cheers, and its noisy laughter, and the old
+man turned silently back to his work.
+
+When they came near to the vicarage, Paul leaped from the carriage over
+the heads of the men who pulled it, vaulted the gate, and bounded into
+the house. There was one who waited for him there, and in an instant she
+was locked close in his arms. "At last!" he whispered. Her heart
+overflowed; she dropped her fair young head on his heaving breast, and
+wept sweet tears.
+
+Parson Christian came rolling up the path surrounded by a tumultuous
+throng. Foremost and lustiest were the blacksmith and the miller, and
+close behind came the landlord and the postman. All were shouting as if
+their brassy throats might crack.
+
+There was high revel at the Ghyll that evening. First came the feasting
+in the old kitchen: huge rounds of beef, quarters of lamb, pease, and
+sweet puddings and pies. Then came the dancing in the barn, lighted by
+candles in cloven sticks, and lanterns of turnips that were scooped out
+hollow.
+
+But at the vicarage Paul and Greta sat alone in silence and with clasped
+hands. Parson Christian came in and out at intervals, gossiping cheerily
+of the odds and ends of daily life, as if its even tenor had never been
+disturbed. They supped together, and sat on till midnight; and then the
+old Christian took down his green tome and wrote:
+
+   "June 30.--So Paul being to return home after his long absence, I
+   spent the forenoon on the fell shearing, and earned a stone of wool
+   and a windle of rye. In the afternoon I set forward toward Keswick,
+   wherefor Randal Alston had loaned me his mare and gig. At the Flying
+   Horse I lighted not, but stood while I drank a pot of ale with John
+   Proudfoot and Richard Parkinson and a neighbor that comes to-morrow
+   to thatch the low barn for me. Then direct to Keswick, where there
+   was a great concourse, and a hearty welcome, and much rejoicings
+   that warmed me and came nigh to break me withal. Got son Paul at
+   last, and would have driven direct home, but the good folk were not
+   minded that it should be so, and naught would do but that they must
+   loose the mare and run in the shafts. So we reached home about six,
+   and found all well, and my love Greta, after long waiting in her
+   closet, very busy with Paul, who had run in ahead of me. So I went
+   out again and foddered and watered the mare, for Peter is sometimes a
+   sad fatch and will not always give a horse what is worth its trouble
+   in the eating. And being thrang this evening a-mending the heels of
+   my old clock boots with lath nails, whereof I bought a pennyworth at
+   Thomas Seed's shop in the market-place, I saw little of Paul, but
+   left him to Greta. Then supped, and read a psalm and prayed in my
+   family, and sat till full midnight. So I retire to my lodging-room,
+   at peace with all the world, and commend my all to God. The Lord
+   forgive the sins of me and mine that we have committed in these our
+   days of trial. Blessed be God who has wrought our victory, and
+   overcome our enemies and brought us out more than conquerors.
+
+   Amen."
+
+Parson Christian had put down the pen, and was sprinkling the writing
+with sand from a pepper-castor, when Brother Peter came in with candles
+in his hand and a letter under his abridged arm. "Laal Tom o' Dint gave
+me this for thee," he said to Paul, and dropped the letter on to his
+knees. "I was sa thrang with all their bodderments, that I don't know as
+I didna forget it."
+
+Parson Christian returned the green-clad book to its shelf, took up his
+candle, bid good-night, and went to bed.
+
+Brother Peter shambled out, and then Paul and Greta were left alone.
+
+Paul opened the letter. It was inclosed in a sheet of paper that bore
+the stamp of the Convent of St. Margaret, and these words only, "Sent on
+by Sister Grace." Paul began to read the letter aloud, Greta looking
+over his shoulder. But as he proceeded his voice faltered, and then he
+stopped. Then, in silence, the eyes of both traversed the written words.
+They ran:
+
+   "Mother, I have wronged you deeply, and yours is a wrong that may
+   never be repaired. The past does not return, and what is done is done
+   with. It is not allowed to us to raze out the sins and the sufferings
+   of the days that are gone; they stand and will endure. I am not so
+   bad a man as perhaps I seem; but of what avail is it to defend myself
+   now? and who would believe me? My life has been one long error, and
+   the threads of my fate have been tangled. Have I not passed before
+   our little world for a stern and callous man? Yet the blight of my
+   soul has been passion. Yearning for love where love could never be
+   returned, I am the ruins of what I might have been. If I did wrong
+   knowingly, it was not until passion mastered me; if I saw things as
+   they did not exist, it was because passion made me blind. Mother, if
+   there is One above to watch and judge our little lives, surely He
+   sees this, and reckons the circumstances with the deed.
+
+   "Tell her that I wish her peace. If I were a man used to pray,
+   perhaps I would ask Heaven to bless her. But my heart is barren of
+   prayer. And what, after all, boots my praying? I have given her back
+   at last to the love of a noble man. And now my wasted life is done,
+   and this is the end--a sorry end!
+
+   "Mother, I shall not live to suffer the earthly punishment of my
+   crime. Never fear--my hand shall not be lifted against myself. Be
+   sure of that, whatever else may seem doubtful. But very soon this
+   passionate and rebellious soul will stand for judgment before its
+   awaiting God.
+
+   "Farewell, my mother, farewell!"
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SON OF HAGAR***
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Son of Hagar, by Sir Hall Caine</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Son of Hagar, by Sir Hall Caine</h1>
+<pre>
+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 <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: A Son of Hagar</p>
+<p>       A Romance of Our Time</p>
+<p>Author: Sir Hall Caine</p>
+<p>Release Date: July 19, 2008  [eBook #26088]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SON OF HAGAR***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>A SON OF HAGAR.</h1>
+
+<h5><i>A ROMANCE OF OUR TIME</i></h5>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>HALL CAINE,</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><i>Author of "The Bondsman," "The Deemster," etc.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class='center' style="margin-top: 5em;">"God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class='center' style="margin-top: 5em;"><small>NEW YORK<br />
+
+HURST &amp; COMPANY<br />
+
+PUBLISHERS.</small></p>
+
+
+<p class='center' style="margin-top: 5em;">TO<br />
+
+R.D. BLACKMORE.</p>
+
+<p>It must be an exceeding great reward, beyond all the rewards of material
+success, to know that you have written a book that is deep, tranquil,
+strong and pure. Again and again you have nobly earned that knowledge.
+Across the more than thirty years that divide us, the elder from the
+younger brother, the veteran from the raw comrade, let me offer my hand
+to you as to a master of our craft.</p>
+
+<p>To the author, then, of a romance that has no equal save in Scott, I
+humbly dedicate this romance of mine.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 35em;">H.C.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+
+<p class='center' style="margin-top: 2em;">CUMBRIAN WORDS.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 17em;">
+barn=child; dusta=dost thou; hasta=hast thou.<br />
+<br />
+laal=little; leet=alight; girt=great.<br />
+<br />
+sista=se&euml;st thou.<br />
+<br />
+varra=very.<br />
+<br />
+wadsta=wouldst thou.<br />
+<br />
+wilta=wilt thou.<br />
+<br />
+Shaf!=<i>an expression of contempt</i>.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In my first novel, "The Shadow of a Crime," I tried to penetrate into
+the soul of a brave, unselfish, long-suffering man, and to lay bare the
+processes by which he raised himself to a great height of
+self-sacrifice. In this novel the aim has been to penetrate into the
+soul of a bad man, and to lay bare the processes by which he is tempted
+to his fall. To find a character that shall be above all common
+tendencies to guilt and yet tainted with the plague-spot of evil hidden
+somewhere; then to watch the first sharp struggle of what is good in the
+man with what is bad, until he is in the coil of his temptation; and
+finally, to show in what tragic ruin a man of strong passions, great
+will and power of mind may resist the force that precipitates him and
+save his soul alive&mdash;this is, I trust, a motive no less worthy, no less
+profitable to study, in the utmost result no less heroic and inspiring,
+than that of tracing the upward path of noble types of mind. For me
+there has been a pathetic, and I think purifying, interest in looking
+into the soul of this man and seeing it corrode beneath the touch of a
+powerful temptation until at the last, when it seems to lie spent, it
+rises again in strength and shows that the human heart has no depths in
+which it is lost. If this character had been equal to my intention, it
+might have been a real contribution to fiction, and far as I know it to
+fall short of the first deep blow of feeling in which it was conceived,
+it is, I think, new to the novel, though it holds a notable place in the
+drama&mdash;it would be presumptuous to say where&mdash;unnecessary, also, as I
+have made no disguise of my purpose.</p>
+
+<p>One of the usual disadvantages of choosing a leading character that is
+off the lines of heroic portraiture is that the author may seem to be in
+sympathy with a base part in life and with base opinions. In this novel
+I run a different risk. I shall not be surprised if I provoke some
+hostility in making the bad man justify his course by the gaunt and grim
+morality that masquerades as the morality of our own time, while the
+good man is made to justify his one dubious act by the full and sincere
+and just morality that too often wears now the garb of vice&mdash;the
+morality of the books of Moses. This novel relies, I trust, on the sheer
+humanities alone, but among its less aggressive purposes is that of a
+plea for the natural rights of the bastard. Those rights have been
+recognized in every country and by every race, except one, since the day
+when the outcast woman in the wilderness hearkened to the cry from
+heaven which said, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is." In
+England alone have the rights of blood been as nothing compared with
+the rights of property, and it is part of the business of this novel to
+exhibit these interests at a climax of strife. I have no fear that any
+true-hearted person will accuse me of a desire to cast reproach upon
+marriage as an ordinance. Recognizing the beauty and the sanctity of
+marriage, I have tried to show that true marriage is a higher thing than
+a ceremony, and that people who use the gibbet and stake for offenders
+against its forms are too often those who see no offense in the
+violation of its spirit.</p>
+
+<p>My principal scenes are again among the mountains of Cumberland; but in
+this second attempt I have tried to realize more completely their
+solitude and sweetness, their breezy healthfulness, and their scent as
+of new-cut turf, by putting them side by side with scenes full of the
+garrulous clangor and the malodor of the dark side of London.</p>
+
+<p>When I began, I thought to enlarge the popular knowledge of our robust
+north-country by the addition of some whimsical character and quaint
+folk-lore. If much of this quiet local atmosphere has had to make way
+before one strong current of tragic feeling, I trust some of it remains
+that is fresh and bracing in the incidents of the booth, the smithy, the
+dalesman's wedding, the rush-bearing, the cock-fighting, and the
+sheep-shearing. Those readers of the earlier book who found human nature
+and an element of humor in the patois, will regret with me the necessity
+so to modify the dialect in this book as to remove from it nearly all
+the race quality that comes of intonation.</p>
+
+<p>I ought to add that one of my characters, Parson Christian, is a
+portrait of a dear, simple, honest soul long gone to his account, and
+that the words here put into his mouth are oftener his own than mine.</p>
+
+<p>I trust this book may help to correct a prevailing misconception as to
+the morals and mind of the typical English peasantry. It is certain that
+the conventional peasant of literature, the broad-mouthed rustic in a
+smock-frock, dull-eyed, mulish, beetle-headed, doddering, too vacant to
+be vicious, too doltish to do amiss, does not exist as a type in
+England. What does exist in every corner of the country is a peasantry
+speaking a patois that is often of varying inflections, but is always
+full of racy poetry, illiterate and yet possessed of a vast oral
+literature, sharing brains with other classes more equally than
+education, humorous, nimble-witted; clear-sighted, astute, cynical, not
+too virtuous, and having a lofty, contempt for the wiseacres of the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>The manners and customs, the folk lore and folk-talk of Cumberland are
+far from exhausted in my two Cumberland novels; but it is not probable
+that I shall work in this vein again. In parting from it, may I venture
+to hope that here and there a reader grown tired of the life of the
+great cities has sometimes found it a relief to escape with me into
+these mountain solitudes and look upon a life as real and more true; a
+life that is humble and yet not low; a life in which men may be men, and
+the rude people of the soil need study the face of no master save nature
+alone?</p>
+
+
+<h1>A SON OF HAGAR.</h1>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><i>BOOK I.</i></h2>
+
+
+
+<p class='center'>RETRO ME, SATHANA!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PROLOGUE.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'>IN THE YEAR 1845.</p>
+
+
+<p>It was a chill December morning. The atmosphere was dense with fog in
+the dusky chamber of a London police court; the lights were bleared and
+the voices drowsed. A woman carrying a child in her arms had been half
+dragged, half pushed into the dock. She was young; beneath her
+disheveled hair her face showed almost girlish. Her features were
+pinched with pain; her eyes had at one moment a serene look, and at the
+next moment a look of defiance. Her dress had been rich; it was now torn
+and damp, and clung in dank folds to her limbs. The child she carried
+appeared to be four months old. She held it convulsively at her breast,
+and when it gave forth a feeble cry she rocked it mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>"Your worship, I picked this person out of the river at ha'past one
+o'clock this morning," said a constable. "She had throwed herself off
+the steps of Blackfriars Bridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Had she the child with her?" asked the bench.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your worship; and when I brought her to land I couldn't get the
+little one out of her arms nohow&mdash;she clung that tight to it. The
+mother, she was insensible; but the child opened its eyes and cried."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you not learned her name?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; she won't give us no answer when we ask her that."</p>
+
+<p>"I am informed," said the clerk, "that against all inquiries touching
+her name and circumstances she keeps a rigid silence. The doctor is of
+opinion, your worship, that the woman is not entirely responsible."</p>
+
+<p>"Her appearance in court might certainly justify that conclusion," said
+the magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>The young woman had gazed vacantly about her with an air of
+indifference. She seemed scarcely to realize that through the yellow
+vagueness the eyes of a hundred persons were centered on her haggard
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody here who knows her?" asked the bench.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your worship; I found out the old woman alonger she lodged."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hear the old person."</p>
+
+<p>A woman in middle life&mdash;a little, confused, aimless, uncomfortable
+body&mdash;stepped into the box. She answered to the name of Drayton. Her
+husband was a hotel porter. She had a house in Pimlico. A month ago one
+of her rooms on the first floor back had been to let. She put a card in
+her window, and the prisoner applied. Accepted the young lady as tenant,
+and had been duly paid her rent. Knew nothing of who she was or where
+she came from. Couldn't even get her name. Had heard her call the baby
+Paul. That was all she knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Her occupation, my good woman, what was it?</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing; she hadn't no occupation, your worship."</p>
+
+<p>"Never went out? Not at night?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; leastways not at night, sir. I hopes your worship takes me for
+an honest woman, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Did nothing for a living, and yet she paid you. Did you board her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your worship; she could cook her wittles, but the poor young thing
+seemed never to have heart for nothing, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Never talked to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; nothing but cried. She cried, and cried, and cried, 'cept when
+she laughed, and then it were awful, your worship. My man always did say
+as how there was no knowing what she'd be doing of yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she married, do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your worship; she wears her wedding-ring quite regular&mdash;only, once
+she plucked it off and flung it in the fire&mdash;I saw it with my own eyes,
+sir, or I mightn't ha' believed it; and I never did see the like&mdash;but
+the poor creature's not responsible at whiles&mdash;that's what my husband
+says."</p>
+
+<p>"What was her behavior to the child? Did she seem fond of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, your worship; she used to hug, and hug, and hug it, and call
+it her darling, and Paul, and Paul, and Paul, and all she had left in
+the world."</p>
+
+<p>"When did you see her last before to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday, sir; she put on her bonnet and cape and drew a shawl around
+the baby, and went out in the afternoon. 'It will do you a mort of
+good,' says I to her; 'Yes, Mrs. Drayton,' says she, 'it will do us both
+a world of good.' That was on the front doorsteps, your worship and it
+was a nice afternoon, but I had never no idea what she meant to be doing
+of; but she's not responsible, poor young thing, that's what my&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And when night came and she hadn't got home, did you go in search of
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your worship; for I says to my husband, says I, 'Poor young thing,
+I can't rest in my bed, and knowing nothing of what's come to her.' And
+my man, he says to me, 'Maggie,' he says, 'you go to the station and
+give the officers her description,' he says&mdash;'a tall young woman as
+might ha' been a lady, a-carrying a baby&mdash;- that'll be good enough,' he
+says, and I went. And this morning the officer came, and I knew by his
+face as something had happened, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hear the doctor. Is he in court?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your worship," said the constable.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton was being bustled out of the box. She stopped on the first
+step down&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And I do hope as no harm will come to her&mdash;she's not
+responsible&mdash;that's what my hus&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, we know all that; down with you; this way; don't bother his
+worship!"</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of the steps the woman stopped again with a handkerchief
+to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And it do make me cry to see her, poor thing, and the baby, too, and
+innocent as a kitten&mdash;and I hopes if anything is done to her as&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton's further hopes and fears were lost in the bustle of the
+court. The young woman in the dock still gazed about her vacantly. There
+was strength in her firmly molded lip, sensibility in her large dark
+eyes, power in her broad, smooth brow, and a certain stateliness in the
+outlines of her tall, slim figure.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor who had examined her gave his report in a few words; the
+woman should be under control, though she was dangerous to no one but
+herself. Her attempt at suicide was one of the common results of
+disaster in affairs of love. Perhaps she was a married woman, abandoned
+by her husband; more likely she was an unfortunate lady in whom the
+shame of pregnancy had produced insanity. She was obviously a person of
+education and delicacy of feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"She must have connections of some kind," said the magistrate; and,
+turning to the dock, he said quietly, "Give us your name, my good lady."</p>
+
+<p>The woman seemed not to hear, but she pressed her child yet closer to
+her breast, and it cried feebly.</p>
+
+<p>The magistrate tried again.</p>
+
+<p>"Your baby's name is Paul, isn't it? Paul&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked around, glanced at the magistrate and back at the people in
+the court, but said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Just then the door opposite the bench creaked slightly, and a gentleman
+entered. The woman's wondering eyes passed over him. In an instant her
+torpor was shaken off. She riveted her gaze on the new-comer. Her
+features contracted with lines of pain. She drew the child aside, as if
+to hide it from sight. Then her face twitched, and she staggered back
+into the arms of the constable behind her. She was now insensible.
+Through the dense folds of the fog the vague faces of the spectators
+showed an intent expression.</p>
+
+<p>It was observed that the gentleman who had entered the court a moment
+before immediately left it. The magistrate saw him pass out of the door
+merely as a distorted figure in the dusky shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"Let her be removed to the Dartford asylum," said the magistrate; "I
+will give an order at once."</p>
+
+<p>A voice came from the body of the court. It was Mrs. Drayton's voice,
+thick with sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"And if you please, your worship, may me and my husband take care of the
+child until the poor young thing is well enough to come for it? We've no
+children of our own, sir, and my husband and me, we'd like to have it,
+and no one would do no better by it, your worship."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are a good woman, Mrs. Drayton," said the magistrate. Then,
+turning to the clerk, he added: "Let inquiries be made about her, and,
+if all prove satisfactory, let the child be given into her care."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank your worship; it do make me cry&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, all right&mdash;never mind now&mdash;we know all about it&mdash;come along."</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner recovered consciousness in being removed from the dock; the
+constable was taking the child out of her arms. She clung to it with
+feverish hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me away," she said in a deep whisper, and her eyes wandered to the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop that man!" said the magistrate, pointing to the vague recesses
+into which the spectator had disappeared. An officer of the court went
+out hastily. Presently returning: "He is gone," said the officer.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me away, take me away!" cried the prisoner in a tense voice.
+"Paul, Paul, my own little Paul!" The woman's breath came and went in
+gusts, and her child cried from the convulsive pressure to her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Remove them," said the bench.</p>
+
+<p>There was a faint commotion. Among the people in the court, huddled like
+sheep, there was a harsh scraping of feet, and some suppressed
+whispering. The stolid faces on the bench turned and smiled slightly in
+the yellow gleam of the gas that burned in front of them. Then the
+momentary bustle ended, the woman and child were gone, and the calm
+monotony of the court was resumed.</p>
+
+<p>Six months later a handsome woman, still little more than a girl, yet
+with eyes of suffering, stepped up to the door of a house in Pimlico and
+knocked timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to see Mrs. Drayton," she said, when the door was opened by an
+elderly person.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless you, they're gone, Mrs. Drayton and her Husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Gone!" said the young woman, "gone! What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, gone&mdash;removed&mdash;shifted."</p>
+
+<p>"Removed&mdash;shifted?" The idea seemed to struggle its slow way into her
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>"In course&mdash;what else, when the big hotel fails and he loses his job?
+Rents can't be paid on nothing a week, and something to put in the mouth
+besides."</p>
+
+<p>"Gone? Are you mad? Woman, think what you're saying. Gone where?"</p>
+
+<p>"How do I know where? Mad, indeed! I'll not say but other folk look a
+mort madder nor ever I looked."</p>
+
+<p>The young woman took her by the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that&mdash;don't say you don't know where they're gone. They've
+got my child, I tell you; my poor little Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so you're the young party as drowned herself, are you? Well,
+they're gone anyways, and the little chit with them, and there's no
+saying where. You may believe me. Ask the neighbors else."</p>
+
+<p>The young woman leaned against the door-jamb with a white face and great
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, how hard she takes it. Deary me, deary me, she's not a bad
+sort, after all. Well, well, who'd ha' thought it! There, there, come in
+and sit awhile. It is cruel to lose one's babby&mdash;and me to tell her,
+too. Misbegotten or not, it's one's own flesh and blood, and that's what
+I always says."</p>
+
+<p>The young woman had been drawn into the house and seated on a chair. She
+got up again with the face of an old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm choking!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Rest awhile, do now, my dear&mdash;there&mdash;there."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, my good woman, let me go."</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven help you, child; how you look!"</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven has never helped me," said the young woman. "I was a Sister of
+Charity only two years ago. A man found me and wooed me; married me and
+abandoned me; I tried to die and they rescued me; they separated me from
+my child and put me in an asylum; I escaped, and have now come for my
+darling, and he is gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Deary me, deary me!" and the old woman stroked her consolingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go," she cried, starting up afresh. "If Heaven has done nothing
+for me, perhaps the world itself will have mercy."</p>
+
+<p>The ghastly face answered ill to the grating laugh that followed as she
+jerked her head aside and hurried away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'>IN THE YEAR 1875.</p>
+
+
+<p>It was Young Folks' Day in the Vale of Newlands. The summer was at its
+height; the sun shone brightly; the lake to the north lay flat as a
+floor of glass, and reflected a continent of blue cloud; the fells were
+clear to their summits, and purple with waves of heather. It was
+noontide, and the shadows were short. In the slumberous atmosphere the
+bees droned, and the hot air quivered some feet above the long, lush
+grass. The fragrance of new-mown hay floated languidly through a
+sub-current of wild rose and honeysuckle. In a meadow at the foot of the
+Causey Pike tents were pitched, flags were flying, and crowds of men,
+women, and children watched the mountain sports.</p>
+
+<p>In the center of a group of spectators two men, stripped to the waist,
+were wrestling. They were huge fellows, with muscles that stood out on
+their arms like giant bulbs, and feet that held the ground like the
+hoofs of oxen. The wrestlers were calm to all outward appearance, and
+embraced each other with the quiet fondling of lambs and the sinuous
+power of less affectionate creatures. But the people about them were
+wildly excited. They stopped to watch every wary movement of the foot,
+and craned their necks to catch the subtlest twist of the wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"Sista, Reuben, sista! He'll have enough to do to tummel John Proudfoot.
+John's up to the scat to-day, anyways."</p>
+
+<p>"Look tha! John's on for giving him the cross-buttock."</p>
+
+<p>John was the blacksmith, a big buirdly fellow with a larger blunt head.</p>
+
+<p>"And he has given it too, has John."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay, John's doon&mdash;ey, ey, he's doon, is John."</p>
+
+<p>One of the wrestlers had thrown the other, and was standing quietly over
+him. He was a stalwart young man of eight-and-twenty, brown-haired,
+clear-eyed, of a ruddy complexion, with a short, thick, curly beard, and
+the grace and bearing that comes of health and strength and a complete
+absence of self-consciousness. He smiled cheerfully, and nodded his head
+in response to loud shouts of applause. "Weel done! Verra weel done!
+That's the way to ding 'em ower! What sayst tha, Reuben?"</p>
+
+<p>"What a bash it was, to be sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"What dusta think you of yon wrestling, ey, man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay, it's verra middling."</p>
+
+<p>"Ever seen owt like it since the good auld days you crack on sa often,
+auld man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, he doont him verra neat, did Paul&mdash;I will allow it."</p>
+
+<p>"There's never a man in Cumberland need take a hand with young Paul
+Ritson after this."</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, ey; he's his father's son."</p>
+
+<p>The wrestler, surrounded by a little multitude of boys, who clung to his
+sparse garments on every side, made his way to a tent.</p>
+
+<p>At the same moment a ludicrous figure forced a passage through the
+crowd, and came to a stand in the middle of the green. It was a
+diminutive creature, mounted on a pony that carried its owner on a
+saddle immediately below its neck, and a pair of paniers just above its
+tail. The rider was an elderly man with shaggy eyebrows and beard of
+mingled black and gray. His swarthy, keen wizened face was twisted into
+grotesque lines beneath a pair of little blinking eyes, which seemed to
+say that anybody who refused to see that they belonged to a perfectly,
+wideawake son of old Adam made a portentous mistake. He was the mountain
+peddler, and to-day, at least, his visit was opportune.</p>
+
+<p>"Lasses, here's for you! Look you, here's Gubblum Oglethorpe, pony and
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, didsta ever see the like&mdash;Gubblum's getten hissel into a saddle!"</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum, from his seat on the pony, twisted one half of his wrinkled
+face awry, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"In course I have! But it's a vast easier getting into this saddle nor
+getting out of it, I can tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how's that, Gubblum?" cried a voice from the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"What, man, did you never hear of the day I bought it?"</p>
+
+<p>Sundry shakes of many heads were the response.</p>
+
+<p>"No?" said Gubblum, with an accent of sheer incredulity, and added,
+"Well, there is no accounting for the ignorance of some folks."</p>
+
+<p>"What happened to you, Gubblum?"</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum's expression of surprise gave place to a look of condescension.
+He lifted his bronzed and hairy hand to the rim of his straw hat to
+shade his eyes from the sun.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, when I got on to auld Bessy, here, I couldn't get off
+again&mdash;that's what happened."</p>
+
+<p>"No? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"You see, I'd got my clogs on when I went to buy the saddle in Kezzick,
+and they're middling wide in the soles, my clogs are. So when I put my
+feet into the stirrups, there they stuck."</p>
+
+<p>"Stuck!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, fast as nails! And when I got home to Branth'et Edge I couldn't get
+them out. So our Sally, she said to my auld woman, 'Mother,' she said,
+'we'll have to put father into the stable with the pony and fetch him a
+cup of tea.' And that's what they did, and when I had summat into me I
+had another fratch at getting out of the saddle; but I couldn't manish
+it; so I had&mdash;what you think I had to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, man, what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had to sleep all night in the stable on Bessy's back!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bless thee, Gubblum, and whatever didsta do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm coming to that, on'y some folks are so impatient. Next morning that
+lass of mine, she said to her mother, 'Mother,' she said, 'wouldn't it
+be best to take the saddle off the pony, and then father he'll sure come
+off with it?'"</p>
+
+<p>"And they did do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, they did. They took Bessy and me round to the soft bed as they
+keeps maistly at the back of a stable, and they loosened the straps and
+gave a push, and cried 'Away.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, man, weel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Weel! nowt of the sort! It wasn't weel at all! When I rolled over I was
+off the pony, for sure; but I was stuck fast to the saddle just the
+same."</p>
+
+<p>"What ever did they do with thee then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm coming to that, too, on'y some folks are so mortal fond of hearing
+theirselves talk. They picked me up, saddle and all, and set me on the
+edge of the kitchen dresser. And there I sat for the best part of a
+week, sleeping and waking, and carding and spinning, and getting fearful
+thin. But I got off at last, I did!" There was a look of proud content
+in Gubblum's face as he added, "What a thing it is to be eddicated! We
+don't vally eddication half enough!"</p>
+
+<p>A young fellow&mdash;it was Lang Geordie Moore&mdash;pushed a smirking face
+between the shoulders of two girls, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you take to reading and writing, then, Gubblum, when you were on
+the kitchen dresser?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a gurgling titter, but, disdaining to notice the interruption,
+Gubblum lifted his tawny face into the glare of the sun, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"It was my son as did it&mdash;him that is learning for a parson. He came
+home from St. Bees, and 'Mother,' he said, before he'd been in the house
+a minute, 'let's take fathers clogs off, and then his feet will come
+out of the stirrups."</p>
+
+<p>A loud laugh bubbled over the company. Gubblum sat erect in the saddle
+and added with a grave face:</p>
+
+<p>"That's what comes of eddication and reading the Bible and all o' that!
+If I had fifty sons I'd make 'em all parsons."</p>
+
+<p>The people laughed again, and crowed and exchanged nods and knowing
+winks. They enjoyed the peddler's talk, and felt an indulgent tenderness
+for his slow and feeble intellect. He on his part enjoyed no less to
+assume a simple and shallow nature. A twinkle lurked under his bushy
+brows while he "smoked the gonies." They laughed and he smiled slyly,
+and both were satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum Oglethorpe, peddler, of Branth'et Edge, got off his pony and
+stroked its tousled mane. He was leading it to a temporary stable, when
+he met face to face the young wrestler, Paul Ritson, who was coming from
+the tent in his walking costume. Drawing up sharply, he surveyed Paul
+rapidly from head to foot, and then asked him with a look of
+bewilderment what he could be doing there.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, when did you come back to these parts?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Come back! I've not been away."</p>
+
+<p>The old man looked slyly up into Paul's face and winked. Perceiving no
+response to that insinuating communication, his wrinkled face became
+more grave, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>"You were nigh to London three days ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Nigh to London three days ago!" Paul laughed, then nodded across at a
+burly dalesman standing near, and said: "Geordie, just pinch the old
+man, and see if he's dreaming."</p>
+
+<p>There was a general titter, followed by glances of amused inquiry. The
+peddler took off his hat, held his head aside, scratched it leisurely,
+glanced up again at the face of young Ritson, as if to satisfy himself
+finally as to his identity, and eventually muttered half aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm fair maizelt&mdash;that's what I am!"</p>
+
+<p>"Maizelt&mdash;why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I could ha' sworn I saw you at a spot near London three days ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Not been there these three years," said Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you wave your hand to me as we went by&mdash;me and Bessy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did I? Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, at the Hawk and Heron, in Hendon."</p>
+
+<p>"Never saw the place in my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure of that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure."</p>
+
+<p>The grave old head dropped once more, and the pony's head was held down
+to the withered hand that scratched and caressed it. Then the first idea
+of a possible reason on Paul's part for keeping his movements secret
+suggested itself afresh to Gubblum. He glanced soberly around, caught
+the eye of the young dalesman furtively, and winked again. Paul laughed
+outright, nodded his head good-humoredly, and rather ostentatiously
+winked in response. The company that had gathered about them caught the
+humor of the situation, and tittered audibly enough to provoke the
+peddler's wrath.</p>
+
+<p>"But I say you have seen it," shouted Gubblum in emphatic tones.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a slim young man walked slowly past the group. He was
+well dressed, and carried himself with ease and some dignity, albeit
+with an air of listlessness&mdash;a weary and dragging gait, due in part to a
+slight infirmity of one foot. When some of the dalesmen bowed to him his
+smile lacked warmth. He was Hugh Ritson, the younger brother of Paul.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum's manner gathered emphasis. "You were standing on the step of
+the Hawk and Heron," said he, "and I waved my hand and shouted 'A canny
+morning to you, Master Paul'&mdash;ey, that I did!"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so!" said Paul, with mock solemnity. His brother had
+caught the peddler's words, and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"But I do say so," said Gubblum, with many shakes of his big head. Let
+any facetious young gentleman who supposed that it was possible to make
+sport of him, understand once for all that it might be as well to throw
+a stone into his own garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Gubblum," said Paul, smothering a laugh, "what was I doing at
+Hendon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Doing! Well, a chap 'at was on the road along of me said that Master
+Paul had started innkeeper."</p>
+
+<p>"Innkeeper!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a prolonged burst of laughter, amid which one amused patriarch
+on a stick shouted: "Feel if tha's abed, Gubblum, ma man!"</p>
+
+<p>"And if I is abed, it's better nor being in bed-lam, isn't it?" shouted
+the peddler.</p>
+
+<p>Then Gubblum scratched his head again, and said more quietly: "It caps
+all. If it wasn't you, it must ha' been the old gentleman hissel'."</p>
+
+<p>"Are we so much alike? Come, let's see your pack."</p>
+
+<p>"His name was Paul, anyways."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had elbowed his way through the group, and was now at
+Gubblum's elbow listening intently. When the others had laughed, he
+alone preserved an equal countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul&mdash;what?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, don't ax me&mdash;I know nowt no mair&mdash;I must be an auld maizelin, I
+must, for sure!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson turned on his heel and walked off.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Vale of Newlands runs north and south. On its east banks rise the
+Cat Bell fells and the Eel Crags; on the west rise Hindscarth and
+Robinson, backed by Whiteless Pike and Grasmoor. A river flows down the
+bed of the valley, springing in the south among the heights of Dale
+Head, and emptying into Bassenthwaite on the north. A village known as
+Little Town stands about midway in the vale, and a road runs along each
+bank. The tents were pitched for the sports near the bed of the valley,
+on the east side of the Newlands Beck. On the west side, above the road,
+there was a thick copse of hazel, oak, and birch. From a clearing in
+this wood a thin column of pale blue smoke was rising through the still
+air. A hut in the shape of a cone stood a few yards from the road. It
+was thatched from the ground upward with heather and bracken, leaving
+only a low aperture as door. Near the hut a small fire of hazel sticks
+crackled under the pot that swung from a forked triangle of oak limbs.
+Fagots were stacked at one end of the clearing; a pile of loose bark lay
+near. It was a charcoal pit, and behind a line of hurdles that were
+propped with poles and intertwined with dead grass and gorse, an old man
+was building a charcoal fire.</p>
+
+<p>He was tall and slight, and he stooped. His eyes were large and heavy;
+his long beard was whitening. He wore a low-crowned hat with broad brim,
+and a loose flannel jacket without a waistcoat. Most of us convey the
+idea that to our own view we are centers of our circles, and that the
+universe revolves about us. This old man suggested a different feeling.
+To himself he might have been a thing gone somehow out of its orbit.
+There was a listless melancholy, a lonely weariness in his look and
+movements. An old misery seemed to sit on him.</p>
+
+<p>His name was Matthew Fisher; but the folk of the country-side called him
+Laird Fisher. The dubious dignity came of the circumstance that he was
+the holder of an absolute royalty on a few acres of land under
+Hindscarth. The royalty had been many generations in his family. His
+grandfather had set store by it. When the lord of the manor had worked
+the copper pits at the foot of the Eel Crags, he had tried to possess
+himself of the royalties of the Fishers. But the peasant family resisted
+the aristocrat. Luke Fisher believed there was a fortune under his feet,
+and he meant to try his own luck on his holding some day. That day never
+came. His son, Mark Fisher, carried on the tradition, but made no effort
+to unearth the fortune. They were a cool, silent, slow, and stubborn
+race. Matthew Fisher followed his father and his grandfather, and
+inherited the family faith. All these years the tenders of the lord of
+the manor were ignored, and the Fishers enjoyed their title of courtesy
+or badinage. When Matthew was a boy there was a rhyme current in the
+vale which ran:</p>
+
+<p class='center'>
+"There's t' auld laird, and t' young laird, and t' laird among t' barns.<br />
+If iver there comes another laird, we'll hang-him up by t' arms."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>There is a tough bit of Toryism in the grain of these northern
+dalesfolk. Their threat was idle; no other laird ever came. Matthew
+married, and had one daughter only. He farmed his few acres with poor
+results. The ground was good enough, but Matthew was living under the
+shadow of the family tradition. One day&mdash;it was Sunday morning, and the
+sun shone brightly&mdash;he was rambling by the Po Beck that rose on
+Hindscarth and passed through his land, when his eye glanced over a
+glittering stone that lay among the pebbles, at the bottom of the
+stream. It was ore, good full ore, and on the very surface. Then the
+Laird Fisher sunk a shaft and all his earnings with it in an attempt to
+procure iron or copper. The dalespeople derided him, but he held
+silently on his way.</p>
+
+<p>"How dusta find the cobbles to-day&mdash;any softer?" they would ask.</p>
+
+<p>"As soft as the hearts of most folk," he would answer, and then add in a
+murmur, "and maybe a vast harder nor their heads."</p>
+
+<p>The undeceiving came at length, and then the Laird Fisher was old and
+poor. His wife died broken-hearted. After that the laird never rallied.
+The breezy irony of the dalesfolk did not spare the old man's bent head.
+"He's brankan" (holding up his head) "like a steg swan," they would say
+as he went past. The shaft was left unworked, and the holding lay
+fallow. Laird Fisher took wage from the lord of the manor to burn
+charcoal in the copse.</p>
+
+<p>The old man had raised his vertical shaft, and was laying the oak limbs
+against it, when a girl of about eighteen came along the road from the
+south, and clambered over the stile that led to the charcoal pit. She
+was followed by a sheep-dog, small and wiry as a hill-fox.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that thee, Mercy?" said the charcoal-burner from the fire, without
+turning.</p>
+
+<p>The girl was a pretty little thing; yet there was something wrong with
+her prettiness. One saw at once that her cheeks should have been pink
+and white like the daisy, and that her hair, which was yellow as the
+primrose, should have tumbled in wavelets about them. There ought to
+have been sunshine in the blue eyes, and laughter on the red lips, and
+merry lilt in the soft voice. But the pink had faded from the girl's
+cheek; the shadow had chased the sunshine from her eyes; her lips had
+taken a downward turn, and a note of sadness had stolen the merriment
+from her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only your tea, father," she said, setting down a basket. Then
+taking up a spoon that lay on the ground, she stirred the mess that was
+simmering over the fire. The dog lay and blinked in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>A rabbit rustled through the coppice, and a jay screeched in the distant
+glade. But above all came the peals of merry laughter from below. The
+girl's eyes wandered yearningly to the tents over which the flags were
+flying.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear the sports, father?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, lass, there's gay carryin's-on. They're chirming and chirping like
+as many sparrows." The old man twisted about. "I should have thowt as
+thou'd have been in the thick of the thrang thysel', Mercy, carryin' on
+the war."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't care to go," said Mercy in an undertone.</p>
+
+<p>The old man looked at her silently for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ways me, but thoos not the same heartsome lass," he said, and went on
+piling the fagots around the shaft. "But I count nowt of sec wark," he
+added, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>Little Mercy's eyes strayed back from the bubbling pot to the tents
+below. There was a shout of applause.</p>
+
+<p>"That's Geordie Moore's voice," thought Mercy. She could see a circle
+with linked hands. "They're playing the cushion game," she said under
+her breath, and then drew a long sigh.</p>
+
+<p>Though she did not care to go to the sports to-day, she felt, oh! so
+sick at heart. Like a wounded hare that creeps into quiet ambush, and
+lies down on the dry clover to die, she had stolen away from all this
+noisy happiness; but her heart's joy was draining away. In her wistful
+eyes there was something almost cruel in this bustling merriment, in
+this flaunting gayety, in this sweet summer day itself.</p>
+
+<p>The old charcoal-burner had stepped up to where the girl knelt with
+far-away eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy," he said, "I've wanted a word with you this many a day."</p>
+
+<p>"With me, father?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl rose to her feet. There was a look of uneasiness in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"You've lost your spirits&mdash;what's come of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me, father?"</p>
+
+<p>The assumed surprise was in danger of breaking down.</p>
+
+<p>"Not well, Mercy&mdash;is that it?"</p>
+
+<p>He took her head between his hard old hands, and stroked her hair as
+tenderly as a mother might have done.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, father; quite well, quite."</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a little forced laugh. The lucent eyes were full of a
+dewy wistfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"Any trouble, Mercy?"</p>
+
+<p>"What trouble, father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, any trouble&mdash;trouble's common, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man's voice shook slightly, and his hand trembled on the girl's
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"What have I to trouble me!" said Mercy, in a low voice nigh to
+breaking.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know best," said the charcoal-burner. Then he put his hand
+under the girl's chin and lifted her face until her unwilling eyes
+looked into his. The scrutiny appeared to console him, and a smile
+played over his battered features. "Maybe I was wrong," he thought.
+"Folk are allus clattering."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy made another forced little laugh, and instantly the Laird Fisher's
+face saddened.</p>
+
+<p>"They do say 'at you're not the same heartsome little lass," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Do they? Oh, but I am quite happy! You always say people are
+busybodies, don't you, father?"</p>
+
+<p>The break-down was imminent.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mercy, you're crying."</p>
+
+<p>"Me&mdash;crying!" The girl tossed her head with, a pathetic gesture of gay
+protestation. "Oh, no; I was laughing&mdash;that was it."</p>
+
+<p>"There are tears in your eyes, anyways."</p>
+
+<p>"Tears? Nonsense, father! Tears? Didn't I tell you that your sight was
+failing you&mdash;- ey, didn't I, now?"</p>
+
+<p>It was of no use to struggle longer. The fair head fell on the heaving
+breast, and Mercy sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>The old man looked at her through a blinding mist in his hazy eyes.
+"Tell me, my little lassie, tell me," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's nothing," said Mercy. She had brushed away the tears and was
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>The Laird Fisher shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing, father&mdash;only&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Only&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only&mdash;oh, it's nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, my lass," said the Laird Fisher, and the tears stood now in his
+own dim eyes, "Mercy, remember if owt goes wrong with a girl, and her
+mother is under the grass, her father is the first she should come to
+and tell all."</p>
+
+<p>The old man had seated himself on a stout block cut from a trunk, and
+was opening the basket, when there was a light, springy step on the
+road.</p>
+
+<p>"So you fire to-night, Matthew?"</p>
+
+<p>An elderly man leaned over the stile and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, Mr. Bonnithorne, there's ower much nastment in the weather yet."</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman took off his silk hat and mopped his forehead. His hair
+was thin and of a pale yellow, and was smoothed flat on his brow.</p>
+
+<p>"You surprise me! I thought the weather perfect. See how blue the sky
+is."</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't argy. It might be better with never a blenk of blue. It
+was rayder airy yesterday, and last night the moon got up as blake and
+yellow as May butter."</p>
+
+<p>The smile was perpetual on the gentleman's face. It showed his teeth
+constantly.</p>
+
+<p>"You dalesmen are so weather-wise."</p>
+
+<p>The voice was soft and womanish. There was a little laugh at the end of
+each remark.</p>
+
+<p>"We go by the moon in firing, sir," the charcoal-burner answered, "Last
+night it rose sou'-west, and that doesn't mean betterment, though it's
+quiet enough now. There'll be clashy weather before nightfall."</p>
+
+<p>The girl strayed away into the thicket, and startled a woodcock out of a
+heap of dead oak leaves. The gentleman followed her with his eyes. They
+were very small and piercing eyes, and they blinked frequently.</p>
+
+<p>"Your daughter does not look very well, Matthew."</p>
+
+<p>"She's gayly, sir; she's gayly," said the charcoal-burner shortly, his
+mouth in his can of tea.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman smiled from the teeth out. After a pause, he said: "I
+suppose it isn't pleasant when one of your hurdles is blown down, and
+the charcoal burning," indicating the wooden hurdles which had been
+propped about the half-built charcoal stack.</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, it's gay bad wark, to be sure&mdash;being dragged into the fire."</p>
+
+<p>The dog had risen with a startled movement. Following the upward
+direction of the animal's nose, the gentleman said, "Whose sheep are
+those on the ghyll yonder?"</p>
+
+<p>"Auld Mr. Ritson's, them herdwicks."</p>
+
+<p>The sheep were on a ridge of shelving rock.</p>
+
+<p>"Dangerous spot, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, it's a bent place. They're verra clammersome, the black-faced
+sorts."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bid you good-day, Matthew." The yellow-haired elderly gentleman
+was moving off. He walked with a jerk and a spring on his toes. "And
+mind you take your daughter to the new doctor at Keswick," he said at
+parting.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not doctoring that'll mend Mercy," the charcoal-burner muttered,
+when the other had gone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Josiah Bonnithorne was quite without kinspeople or connections. His
+mother had been one of two sisters who lived by keeping a small
+confectioner's shop in Whitehaven, and were devoted Methodists. The
+sisters had formed views as to matrimony, and they enjoyed a curious
+similarity of choice. They were to be the wives of preachers. But the
+opportunity was long in coming, and they grew elderly. At length the
+younger sister died, and so solved the problem of her future. The elder
+sister was left for two years more alone with her confectionery. Then
+she married a stranger who had come to one of the pits as gangsman. It
+was a sad falling off. But at all events the gangsman was a local
+preacher, and so the poor soul who took him for husband had effected a
+compromise with her cherished ideal. It turned put that he was a
+scoundrel as well, and had a wife living elsewhere. This disclosure
+abridged his usefulness among the brethren, and he fled. Naturally, he
+left his second wife behind, having previously secured a bill of sale on
+her household effects. A few months elapsed, the woman was turned adrift
+by her husband's creditors, and then a child was born. It was a poor
+little thing&mdash;a boy. The good souls of the "connection" provided for it
+until it was two years old, and afterward placed it in a charity school.
+While the little fellow was there, his mother was struck down by a
+mortal complaint. Then for the first time the poor ruined woman asked to
+see her child. They brought the little one to her bedside, and it smiled
+down into her dying face. "Oh, that it may please the Lord to make him a
+preacher!" she said with a great effort. At a sign from the doctor the
+child was taken away. The face pinched by cruel suffering quivered
+slightly, the timid eyes worn by wasted hope softened and closed, and
+the mother bid farewell to everything.</p>
+
+<p>The boy lived. They christened him Josiah, and he took for surname the
+maiden name of his mother, Bonnithorne. He was a weakling, and had no
+love of boyish sports; but he excelled in scholarship. In spite of these
+tendencies, he was apprenticed to a butcher when the time came to remove
+him from school. An accident transferred him to the office of a
+solicitor, and he was articled. Ten years later he succeeded to his
+master's practice, and then he sailed with all sail set.</p>
+
+<p>He disappointed the "connection" by developing into a Churchman, but
+otherwise aroused no hostile feeling. It was obviously his cue to
+conciliate everybody. He was liked without being popular, trusted
+without being a favorite. Churchwarden, trustee for public funds,
+executor for private friends, he had a reputation for disinterested
+industry. And people said how well it was that one so unselfish as
+Josiah Bonnithorne should nevertheless prosper even as this world goes.</p>
+
+<p>But there was a man in Cumberland who knew Mr. Bonnithorne from the
+crown of his head to the sole of his foot. That man was Mr. Hugh Ritson.
+Never for an instant did either of these palter with the other.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Bonnithorne left the charcoal pit, he followed the road that
+crossed the Newlands Beck, and returned on the breast of the Eel Crags.
+This led him close to the booth where the sports were proceeding. He
+heard, as he passed, the gurgling laugh with which the dalesfolk
+received the peddler's story of how he saw Paul Ritson at Hendon. A
+minute afterward he encountered Hugh Ritson on the road. There was only
+the most meagre pretense at greeting when these men came face to face.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father sent for me," said Mr. Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>"On what business?" Hugh Ritson asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I have yet to learn."</p>
+
+<p>They walked some steps without speaking. Then the lawyer turned with his
+constant smile, and said in his soft voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I have just seen your little friend. She looks pale, poor thing!
+Something must be done, and shortly."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's face flushed perceptibly. His eyes were on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go no further in this matter," he said, in a low tone. "I saw
+her yesterday. Then there is her father, poor, broken creature! Let it
+drop."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not believe it of you!" Mr. Bonnithorne spoke calmly and went on
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, I am ashamed. The thing is too mean," said Hugh Ritson. "In
+what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode occur?"</p>
+
+<p>"So, so! Or is it the story of the cat in the adage? You would and you
+wouldn't?"</p>
+
+<p>"My blood is not thick enough. I can't do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why did you propose it? Was it your suggestion or mine? I thought
+to spare the girl her shame. Here her trouble must fall on her in
+battalions, poor little being. Send her away, and you decimate them."</p>
+
+<p>"It is unnecessary. You know I am superior to prejudice." Hugh Ritson
+dropped his voice and said, as if speaking into his breast: "If the
+worst comes to the worst, I can marry her."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne laughed lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho! ho! And in what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode
+occur?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson drew up sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Is she poor? Then what am I? Uneducated? What is education
+likely to do for me? A simple creature, all heart and no head? God be
+praised for that!"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment a girl's laugh came rippling through the air. It was one
+of those joyous peals that make the heart's own music. Hugh Ritson's
+pale face flushed a little, and he drew his breath hard.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head in the direction of the voice, and said
+softly: "So our friend Greta is here to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Hugh Ritson very quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Then the friends walked some distance in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"It is scarcely worthy of you to talk in this brain-sick fashion," said
+Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a dull irritation in the tone. "You place
+yourself in the wrong point of view. You do not love the little being."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's forehead contracted, and he said: "If I have wrecked my
+life by one folly, one act of astounding unwisdom, what matter? There
+was but little to wreck. I am a disappointed man."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, you are a very young one," said Mr. Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I in my father's house? He gives no hint of helping me to an
+independence in life."</p>
+
+<p>"There are the lands. Your father must be a rich man."</p>
+
+<p>"And I am a second son."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson glanced up quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"You say you are a second son."</p>
+
+<p>"And what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would it be so fearful a thing if you were not a second son?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of truth, be plain. My brother Paul is living."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head twice or thrice, and said calmly: "You
+know that your brother hopes to marry Greta?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard it."</p>
+
+<p>Again the flush came to Hugh Ritson's cheeks. His low voice had a
+tremor.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I ever tell you of her father's strange legacy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor friend Robert Lowther left a legacy to a son of his own, who
+was Greta's half-brother."</p>
+
+<p>"An illegitimate son?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not strictly. Lowther married the son's mother," said Mr. Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>"Married her? Then his son was his heir?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson looked perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>"The girl was a Catholic, Lowther a Protestant. A Catholic priest
+married them in Ireland. That was not a valid marriage by English law."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh smiled grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"And Lowther had the marriage annulled?"</p>
+
+<p>"He had fallen in love," began Mr. Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>"This time with an heiress?" There was a caustic laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne nodded. "Greta's mother. So he&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Abandoned the first wife," Hugh Ritson interrupted again.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne shook his head with an innocent expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Wife? Well, he left her."</p>
+
+<p>"You talk of a son. Had they one?"</p>
+
+<p>"They had," said Mr. Bonnithorne, "and when the woman and child ...
+disappeared&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," said Hugh Ritson, and he smiled. "What did Lowther then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Married again, and had a daughter&mdash;Greta."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why the legacy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Conscience-money," said Mr. Bonnithorne, pursing up his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson laughed slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"The sort of fools' pence the Chancellor of the Exchequer receives
+labeled 'Income Tax.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely&mdash;only Lowther had no address to send it to."</p>
+
+<p>"He had behaved like a scoundrel," said Hugh Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"True, and he felt remorse. After the second marriage he set people to
+find the poor woman and child. They were never found. His last days were
+overshadowed by his early fault. I believe he died broken-hearted. In
+his will&mdash;I drew it for him&mdash;he left, as I say, a sum to be paid to this
+son of his first wife&mdash;when found."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson laughed half mockingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought he was a fool. A scoundrel is generally a fool as well."</p>
+
+<p>"Generally; I've often observed it," said Mr. Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>"What possible interest of anybody's could it be to go hunting for the
+son of the fool's deserted wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"The fool," answered Mr. Bonnithorne, "was shrewd enough to make an
+interest by ordering that if the son were not found before Greta came of
+age, a legacy of double the sum should be paid to an orphanage for
+boys."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's respect for the dead man's intelligence experienced a
+sensible elevation.</p>
+
+<p>"So it is worth a legacy to the family to discover Greta's
+half-brother," he said, summing up the situation in an instant. "If
+alive&mdash;If not, then proof that he is dead."</p>
+
+<p>The two men had walked some distance, and reached the turning of a lane
+which led to a house that could be seen among the trees at the foot of a
+ghyll. The younger man drew up on his infirm foot.</p>
+
+<p>"But I fail to catch the relevance of all this. When I mentioned that I
+was a second son you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I have had hardly any data to help me in my search," Mr. Bonnithorne
+continued. He was walking on. "Only a medallion-portrait of the first
+wife." Mr. Bonnithorne dived into a breast-pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"My brother Paul is living. What possible&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," said Mr. Bonnithorne, and he held out a small picture.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson took it with little interest.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the portrait of the nun," he said, as his eyes first fell on
+it, and recognized the coif and cape.</p>
+
+<p>"A novice&mdash;that's what she was when Lowther met her," said Mr.
+Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>Then Hugh Ritson stopped. He regarded the portrait attentively; looked
+up at the lawyer and back at the medallion. For an instant the strong
+calm which he had hitherto shown seemed to desert him. The picture
+trembled in his hand. Mr. Bonnithorne did not appear to see his
+agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a fancy? Surely it must be fancy!" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>Then he asked aloud what the nun's name had been.</p>
+
+<p>"Ormerod."</p>
+
+<p>There was a start of recovered consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Ormerod&mdash;that's strange!"</p>
+
+<p>The exclamation seemed to escape inadvertently.</p>
+
+<p>"Why strange?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson did not answer immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Her Christian name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Grace."</p>
+
+<p>"Grace Ormerod? Why, you must know that Grace Ormerod happened to be my
+own mother's maiden name!"</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to recognize the portrait."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had regained his self-possession. He assumed an air of
+indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes&mdash;no, of course not&mdash;no," he said, emphatically, at last.</p>
+
+<p>In his heart there was another answer. He thought for the moment when he
+set eyes on the picture that it looked like&mdash;a little like&mdash;his own
+mother's face.</p>
+
+<p>They walked on. Mr. Bonnithorne's constant smile parted his lips.
+Lifting his voice rather unnecessarily, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, another odd coincidence! Would you like to know the name of
+Grace Ormerod's child by Robert Lowther?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's heart leaped within him, but he preserved an outward show
+of indifference, and drawled:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Paul."</p>
+
+<p>The name went through him like an arrow, then he said, rather languidly:</p>
+
+<p>"So the half-brother of Greta Lowther, wherever he is, is named&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Lowther," said Mr. Bonnithorne. "But," he added, with a quick
+glance, "he may&mdash;I say he may&mdash;be passing by another name&mdash;Paul
+something else, for example."</p>
+
+<p>"Assuredly&mdash;certainly&mdash;yes&mdash;yes," Hugh Ritson mumbled. His all but
+impenetrable calm was gone.</p>
+
+<p>They reached the front of the house, and stood in a paved court-yard. It
+was the home of the Ritsons, known as the Ghyll, a long Cumbrian
+homestead of gray stone and green slate. A lazy curl of smoke was
+winding up from one chimney through the clear air. A gossamer net of the
+tangled boughs of a slim brier-rose hung over the face of a broad porch,
+and at that moment a butterfly flitted through it. The chattering of
+geese came from behind.</p>
+
+<p>"Robert Lowther was the father of Grace Ormerod's child?" said Hugh
+Ritson, vacantly.</p>
+
+<p>"The father of her son Paul."</p>
+
+<p>"And Greta is his daughter? Is that how it goes?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is so&mdash;and half-sister to Paul."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson raised his eyes to Mr. Bonnithorne's face.</p>
+
+<p>"And of what age would Paul Lowther be now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, older than you, certainly. Perhaps as old as&mdash;yes, perhaps as
+old&mdash;fully as old as your brother."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's infirm foot trailed heavily on the stones. His lips
+quivered. For a moment he seemed to be rapt. Then he swung about and
+muttered:</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! it isn't within belief. Thrusted home, it might betray a man,
+Heaven only knows how deeply."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne looked up inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me; I fail, as you say, to catch the relevance."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bonnithorne," said Hugh Ritson, holding out his hand, "you and I
+have been good friends, have we not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the best of friends."</p>
+
+<p>"At your leisure, when I have had time to think of this, let us discuss
+it further."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne smiled assent.</p>
+
+<p>"And meantime," he said, softly, "let the unhappy little being we spoke
+of be sent away."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's eyes fell, and his voice deepened.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little soul&mdash;I'm sorry&mdash;very."</p>
+
+<p>"As for Greta and her lover&mdash;well&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head significantly, and left his words
+unfinished.</p>
+
+<p>"My father is crossing the stack-yard," said Hugh Ritson. "You shall see
+him in good time. Come this way."</p>
+
+<p>The shadows were lengthening in the valley. A purple belt was stretching
+across the distant hills, and a dark-blue tint was nestling under the
+eaves. A solitary crow flew across the sky, and cawed out its guttural
+note. Its shadow fell, as it passed, on two elderly people who were
+coming into the court-yard.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"It's time for that laal Mr. Bonnithorne to be here," said Allan Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you send for him?" asked Mrs. Ritson, in the low tone that was
+natural to her.</p>
+
+<p>"To get that matter about the will off my mind. It'll be one thing less
+to think about, and it has boddert me sair and lang."</p>
+
+<p>Allan spoke with the shuffling reserve of a man to whose secret
+communings a painful idea had been too long familiar. In the effort to
+cast off the unwelcome and secret associate, there was a show of
+emancipation which, as an acute observer might see, was more assumed
+than real.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson made no terms with the affectation of indifference. Her
+grave face became yet more grave, and her soft voice grew softer as she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"And if when it is settled and done the cloud would break that has hung
+over our lives, then all would be well. But that can never be."</p>
+
+<p>Allan tossed his head aside, and made pretense to smile; but no gleam of
+sunshine on his cornfields was ever chased so closely by the line of
+dark shadow as his smile by the frown that followed.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, worrit thysel' na' mair about it! When I've made my will, and put
+Paul on the same footing with t'other lad, who knows owt mair nor we
+choose to tell?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson glanced into his face with a look of sad reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven knows, Allan," she said; "and the dark cloud still gathers for
+us there."</p>
+
+<p>The old man took a step or two on the gravel path, and dropped his gray
+head. His voice deepened:</p>
+
+<p>"Tha says reet, mother," he said, "tha says reet. Ey, it saddens my auld
+days&mdash;and thine forby!" He took a step or two more, and added: "And na
+lawyer can shak' it off now. Nay, nay, never now. Weel, mother, our sky
+has been lang owerkessen; but, mind ye," lifting his face and voice
+together, "we've had gude crops if we tholed some thistles."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we've had happy days, too," said Mrs. Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there came from across the vale the shouts of the
+merrymakers and the music of a fiddle. Allan Ritson lifted his head,
+nodded it aside jauntily, and smiled feebly through the mist that was
+gathering about his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"There they are&mdash;wrestling and jumping. I mind me when there was scarce
+a man in Cummerlan' could give me the cross-buttock. That's many a lang
+year agone, though. And now our Paul can manish most on 'em&mdash;that he
+can."</p>
+
+<p>The fiddle was playing a country dance. The old man listened; his face
+broadened, he lifted a leg jauntily, and gave a sweep of one arm.</p>
+
+<p>Just then there came through the air a peal of happy laughter. It was
+the same heart's music that Hugh Ritson and Mr. Bonnithorne had heard in
+the road. Allan's face brightened, and his voice had only the faintest
+crack in it as he said:</p>
+
+<p>"That's Greta's laugh! It is for sure! What a heartsome lass yon is! I
+like a heartsome lassie&mdash;a merrie touch, and gone!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mrs. Ritson, soberly; "Greta is a winsome girl."</p>
+
+<p>It was hardly spoken when a young girl bounded down upon them, almost
+breathless, yet laughing in gusts, turning her head over her shoulder
+and shouting:</p>
+
+<p>"Hurrah! Beaten, sir! Hurrah!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Greta Lowther; twenty years of age, with fair hair, quick brown
+eyes, a sunny face lighted up with youthful animation, a swift smile on
+her parted lips&mdash;an English wild white rose.</p>
+
+<p>"I've beaten him," she said. "He challenged me to cross Windybrowe while
+he ran round the Bowder stone, but I got to the lonnin before he had
+crossed the bridge."</p>
+
+<p>Then, running to the corner of the lane, she plucked off her straw hat,
+waved it about her head, and shouted again in an accent of triumph:</p>
+
+<p>"Hurrah! hurrah! beaten, sir, beaten!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson came running down the fell in strides of two yards apiece.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you young rogue&mdash;you cheated!" he cried, coming to a stand and
+catching his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Cheated?" said Greta, in a tone of dire amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"You bargained to touch the beacon on the top of Windybrowe, and you
+didn't go within a hundred yards of it."</p>
+
+<p>"The beacon? On Windybrowe?" said the girl, and wondrous perplexity
+shone in her lovely eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Paul wiped his brow, and shook his head and his finger with mock gravity
+at the beautiful cheat.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Greta, now&mdash;now&mdash;gently&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Greta looked around with the bewildered gaze of a lost lambkin.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," said Paul, "she stole a march on me."</p>
+
+<p>"He was the thief, Mrs. Ritson; you believe me, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me! why I never stole anything in my life&mdash;save one thing."</p>
+
+<p>"And what was that, pray?" said Greta, with another mighty innocent
+look.</p>
+
+<p>Paul crept up to her side and whispered something over her shoulder,
+whereupon she eyed him largely, and said with a quick smile:</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so! But please don't be too certain of it. I'm sure I
+never heard of that theft."</p>
+
+<p>"Then here's a theft you shall hear of," said Paul, throwing one arm
+about her neck and tipping up her chin.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden gleam of rosy, roguish lips. Old Allan, with mischief
+dancing in his eyes, pretended to recover them from a more distant
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;why, what's that?" he said; "the sneck of a gate, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta drew herself up.</p>
+
+<p>"How can you&mdash;and all the people looking&mdash;they might really think that
+we were&mdash;we were&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Paul came behind, put his head over one shoulder, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"And we're not, are we?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're weel matched, mother, eh?" said Allan, turning to his wife.
+"They're marra-to-bran, as folks say. Greta, he's a girt booby, isn't
+he?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta stepped up to the old man, and with a familiar gesture laid a hand
+on his arm. At the same moment Paul came to his side. Allan tapped his
+son on the back.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou girt lang booby," he said, and laughed heartily. All the shadows
+that had hung over him were gone. "And how's Parson Christian?" he asked
+in another tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, quite well, and as dear an old soul as ever," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"He's father and mother to thee baith, my lass. I never knew thy awn
+father. He was dead and gone before we coom't to these parts. And thy
+mother, too, God bless her! she's dead and gone now. But if this lad of
+mine, this Paul, this girt lang&mdash;Ah, and here's Mr. Bonnithorne, and
+Hughie, too."</p>
+
+<p>The return of the lawyer and Hugh Ritson abridged the threat of
+punishment that seemed to hang on the old man's lips.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's lifted eyes had comprehended everything. The girl leaning
+over his father's arm; the pure, smooth cheeks close to the swarthy,
+weather-beaten, comfortable old face; the soft gaze upward full of
+feeling; the half-open lips and the teeth like pearls; then the glance
+round, half of mockery, half of protest, altogether of unconquerable
+love, to where Paul Ritson stood, his eyes just breaking into a smile;
+the head, the neck, the arms, the bosom still heaving gently after the
+race; the light loose costume&mdash;Hugh Ritson saw it all, and his heart
+beat fast. His pale face whitened at that moment, and his infirm foot
+trailed heavily on the gravel.</p>
+
+<p>Allan shook hands with Mr. Bonnithorne, and then turned to his sons.
+"Come, you two lads have not been gude friends latterly, and that's a
+sair grief baith to your mother and me. You're not made in the same mold
+seemingly. But you must mak' up your fratch, my lads, for your auld
+folks' sake, if nowt else."</p>
+
+<p>At this he stretched out both arms, as if with the intention of joining
+their hands. Hugh made a gesture of protestation.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no quarrel to make up," he said, and turned aside.</p>
+
+<p>Paul held out his hand. "Shake hands, Hugh," he said. Hugh took the
+proffered hand with unresponsive coldness.</p>
+
+<p>Paul glanced into his brother's face a moment, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the use of breeding malice? It's a sort of live stock that's not
+worth its fodder, and it eats up everything."</p>
+
+<p>There was a scarcely perceptible curl on Hugh Ritson's lip, but he
+turned silently away. With head on his breast, he walked toward the
+porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!"</p>
+
+<p>It was old Allan's voice. The deep tone betrayed the anger that was
+choking him. His face was flushed, his eyes were stern, his lips
+trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"Come back and shak' hands wi' thy brother reet."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson faced about, leaning heavily on his infirm foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Why to-day more than yesterday or to-morrow?" he said, calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Come back, I tell thee!" shouted the old man more hotly.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh maintained his hold of himself, and said in a quiet and even voice,
+"I am no longer a child."</p>
+
+<p>"Then bear thysel' like a man&mdash;not like a whipped hound."</p>
+
+<p>The young man shuddered secretly from head to foot. His eyes flashed for
+an instant. Then, recovering his self-control, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Even a dog would resent such language, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Greta had dropped aside from the painful scene, and for a moment Hugh
+Ritson's eyes followed her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have no sec worriment in my house," shouted the old man in a
+broken voice. "Those that live here must live at peace. Those that want
+war must go."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson could bear up no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"And what is your house to me, sir? What has it done for me? The world
+is wide."</p>
+
+<p>Old Allan was confounded. Silent, dumb, with great staring eyes, he
+looked round into the faces of those about him. Then in thick, choking
+tones he shouted:</p>
+
+<p>"Shak' thy brother's hand, or thou'rt no brother of his."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not," said Hugh very quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Shak' hands, I tell thee." The old man's fists were clinched. His body
+quivered in every limb.</p>
+
+<p>His son's lips were firmly set; he made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>The old man snatched from Mr. Bonnithorne the stick he carried. At this
+Hugh lifted his eyes sharply until they met the eyes of his father.
+Allan was transfixed. The stick fell from his hand. Then Hugh Ritson
+halted into the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Come back, come back ... my boy ... Hughie ... come back!" the old man
+sobbed out. But there was no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, be patient, forgive him; he will ask your pardon," said Mrs.
+Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>Paul and Greta had stolen away. The old man was now speechless, and his
+eyes, bent on the ground, swam with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"All will be well, please God," said Mrs. Ritson. "Remember, he is
+sorely tried, poor boy. He expected you to do something for him.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And I meant to, I meant to&mdash;that I did," the father answered in a
+broken cry.</p>
+
+<p>"But you've put it off, and off, Allan&mdash;- like everything else."</p>
+
+<p>Allan lifted his hazy eyes from the ground, and looked into his wife's
+face. "If it had been t'other lad I could have borne it maybe," he said,
+feelingly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne, standing aside, had been plowing the gravel with one
+foot. He now raised his eyes, and said: "And yet, Mr. Ritson, folk say
+that you have always shown most favor to your eldest son."</p>
+
+<p>The old man's gaze rested on the lawyer for a moment, but he did not
+speak at once, and there was an awkward silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I've summat to say to Mr. Bonnithorne, mother," said the statesman. He
+was quieter now. Mrs. Ritson stepped into the house.</p>
+
+<p>Allan Ritson and the lawyer followed her, going into a little parlor to
+the right of the porch. It was a quaint room, full of the odor of a
+by-gone time. The floor was of polished black oak covered with skins;
+the ceiling was paneled oak and had a paneled beam. Bright oak
+cupboards, their fronts carved with rude figures, were set into the
+walls, which were whitened, and bore one illuminated text and three
+prints in black and white. The furniture was heavy and old. There was a
+spinning-wheel under the wide window-board. A bluebottle buzzed about
+the ceiling; a slant of sunlight crossed the floor. The men sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"I sent for thee to mak' my will, Mr. Bonnithorne," said the old man.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"It is an old maxim that delay in affairs of law is a candle that burns
+in the daytime; when the night comes it is burned to the socket."</p>
+
+<p>Old Allan took little heed of the sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ey," he said, "but there's mair nor common 'casion for it in my case."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne was instantly on the alert.</p>
+
+<p>"And what is your especial reason?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Allan's mind seemed to wander. He stood silent for a moment, and then
+said slowly, as if laboring with thought and phrase:</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, tha must know ... I scarce know how to tell thee ... Weel, my
+eldest son, Paul, as they call him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The old man stopped, and his manner grew sullen. Mr. Bonnithorne came to
+his help.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am all attention&mdash;your eldest son&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He is&mdash;he is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The door opened and Mrs. Ritson entered the room, followed close by the
+Laird Fisher.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Ritson, your sheep, them black-faced herdwicks on Hindscarth, have
+broke the fences, and the red drift of 'em is down in the barrowmouth of
+the pass," said the charcoal-burner.</p>
+
+<p>The statesman got on his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I must gang away at once," he said. "Mr. Bonnithorne, I must put thee
+off, or maybe I'll lose fifty head of sheep down in the ghyll."</p>
+
+<p>"I made so bold as to tell ye, for I reckon we'll have all maks of
+weather yet."</p>
+
+<p>"That's reet, Mattha; and reet neighborly forby. I'll slip away after
+thee in a thumb's snitting."</p>
+
+<p>The Laird Fisher went out.</p>
+
+<p>"Can ye bide here for me until eight o'clock to-neet, Mr. Bonnithorne?"</p>
+
+<p>There was some vexation written on the lawyer's face, but he answered
+with meekness:</p>
+
+<p>"I am always at your service, Mr. Ritson. I can return at eight."</p>
+
+<p>"Verra good" Then, turning to Mrs. Ritson, "Give friend Bonnithorne a
+bite o' summat," said Allan, and he followed the charcoal-burner. Out in
+the court-yard he called the dogs. "Hey howe! hey howe! Bright! Laddie!
+Come boys; come, boys, te-lick, te-smack!"</p>
+
+<p>He put his head in at the door of an out-house and shouted, "Reuben,
+wheriver ista? Come thy ways quick, and bring the lad!"</p>
+
+<p>In another moment a young shepherd and a cowherd, surrounded by three or
+four sheep-dogs, joined Allan Ritson in the court-yard.</p>
+
+<p>"Dusta gang back to the fell, Mattha?" said the statesman.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay; I's done for the day. I'm away home."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-neet, and thank."</p>
+
+<p>Then the troop disappeared down the lonnin&mdash;the men calling, the dogs
+barking.</p>
+
+<p>In walking through the hall Mr. Bonnithorne encountered Hugh Ritson, who
+was passing out of the house, his face very hard, his head much bent.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you," said the lawyer, "like to know the business on which I have
+been called here?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson did not immediately raise his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"To make his will," added Mr. Bonnithorne, not waiting for an answer.</p>
+
+<p>Then Hugh Ritson's eyes were lifted; there was one flash of
+intelligence; after that the young man went out without a word.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson was seven-and-twenty. His clean-shaven face was long, pale,
+and intellectual; his nose was wide at the bridge and full at the
+nostrils; he had firm-set lips, large vehement eyes, and a broad
+forehead, with hair of dark auburn parted down the middle and falling in
+thin waves on the temples. The expression of the physiognomy in repose
+was one of pain, and, in action, of power; the effect of the whole was
+not unlike that which is produced by the face of a high-bred horse, with
+its deep eyes and dilated nostrils. He was barely above medium height,
+and his figure was almost delicate. When he spoke his voice startled
+you&mdash;it was so low and deep to come from that slight frame. His
+lameness, which was slight, was due to a long-standing infirmity of the
+hip.</p>
+
+<p>As second son of a Cumbrian statesman, whose estate consisted chiefly of
+land, he expected but little from his father, and had been trained in
+the profession of a mining engineer. After spending a few months at the
+iron mines of Cleator, he had removed to London at twenty-two, and
+enrolled himself as a student of the Mining College in Jermyn Street.
+There he had spent four years, sharing the chambers of a young barrister
+in the Temple Gardens. His London career was uneventful. Taciturn in
+manner, he made few friends. His mind had a tendency toward
+contemplative inactivity. Of physical energy he had very little, and
+this may have been partly due to his infirmity. Late at night he would
+walk alone in the Strand: the teeming life of the city, and the mystery
+of its silence after midnight, had a strong fascination for him. In
+these rambles he came to know some of the strangest and oddest of the
+rags and rinsings of humanity: among them a Persian nobleman of the late
+shah's household, who kept a small tobacco-shop at the corner of a
+by-street, and an old French exile, once of the court of Louis
+Phillippe, who sold the halfpenny papers. At other times he went out
+hardly at all, and was rarely invited.</p>
+
+<p>Only the housemate, who saw him at all times and in many moods, seemed
+to suspect that beneath that cold exterior there lay an ardent nature.
+But he himself knew how strong was the tide of his passion. He could
+never look a beautiful woman in the face but his pulse beat high, and he
+felt almost faint. Yet strong as his passion was, his will was no less
+strong. He put a check on himself, and during his four years in London
+contrived successfully to dam up the flood that was secretly
+threatening him.</p>
+
+<p>At six-and-twenty he returned to Cumberland, having some grounds for
+believing that his father intended to find him the means of mining for
+himself. A year had now passed, and nothing had been done. He was
+growing sick with hope deferred. His elder brother, Paul, had spent his
+life on the land, and it was always understood that in due course he
+would inherit it. That at least was the prospect which Hugh Ritson had
+in view, though no prospective arrangement had been made. Week followed
+week, and month followed month, and his heart grew bitter. He had almost
+decided to end this waiting. The day would come when he could bear it
+not longer, and then he would cut adrift.</p>
+
+<p>An accidental circumstance was the cause of his irresolution. He used to
+walk frequently on the moss where the Laird Fisher sunk his shaft. In
+the beck that ran close to the disused headgear he would wade for an
+hour early in the summer morning. One day he saw the old laird's
+daughter washing linen at the beck-side. He remembered her as a pretty,
+prattling thing of ten or eleven. She was now a girl of eighteen, with a
+pure face, a timid manner, and an air that was neither that of a woman
+nor of a child. Her mother was lately dead, her father spent most of his
+days on the fell (some of his nights also when the charcoal was
+burning), and she was much alone. Hugh Ritson liked her gentle replies
+and her few simple questions. So it came about that he would look for
+her in the mornings, and be disappointed if he did not catch sight of
+her good young face. Himself a silent man, he liked to listen to the
+girl's modest, unconnected talk. His stern eyes would soften at such
+times to a sort of caressing expression. This went on for months, and in
+that solitude no idle tongue was set to wag. At length Hugh Ritson
+perceived that the girl's heart was touched. If he came late he found
+her leaning over the gate, her eyes bent down among the mountain grasses
+at her feet, and her cheeks colored by a red glow. It is unnecessary to
+go further. The girl gave herself up to him with her whole heart and
+soul, and he&mdash;well, he found the bulwarks with which he had surrounded
+himself were ruined and down.</p>
+
+<p>Then the awakening came, and Hugh learned too late that he had not loved
+the simple child, by realizing that with all the ardor of his restrained
+but passionate nature he loved another woman.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the first complication in the tragedy of this man's life.</p>
+
+<p>The second complication was new to his consciousness, and it was at this
+moment conspiring with the first to lure him to consequences that are
+now to be related. The story which Mr. Bonnithorne had told of the
+legacy left by Greta's father to a son by one Grace Ormerod had come to
+him at a time when, owing to disappointment and chagrin, he was
+peculiarly liable to the temptation of any "honest trifle" that pointed
+the way he wished to go. If the Grace Ormerod who married Lowther had
+indeed been his own mother, then&mdash;a thousand to one&mdash;Paul was Lowther's
+son. If Paul was Lowther's son he was also half brother of Greta. If
+Paul was not the son of Allan Ritson, then he himself, Hugh Ritson, was
+his father's heir.</p>
+
+<p>In the present whirlwind of feeling he did not inquire too closely into
+the pros and cons of probability. Enough that evidence seemed to be with
+him, and that it transformed the world in his view.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the first result of this transformation was that he
+unconsciously assumed a different attitude toward the unhappy passage in
+his life wherein Mercy Fisher was chiefly concerned. What his feeling
+was before Mr. Bonnithorne's revelation, we have already seen. Now the
+sentiment that made much of such an "accident" was fit only for a
+"turgid melodrama," and the idea of "atonement" by "marriage" was the
+mock heroic of those "great lovers of noble histories," the spectators
+who applaud it from the pit.</p>
+
+<p>When he passed Mr. Bonnithorne in the hall at the Ghyll he was on his
+way to the cottage of the Laird Fisher. He saw in the road ahead of him
+the group which included his father and the charcoal-burner, and to
+avoid them he cut across the breast of the Eel Crags. After a sharp
+walk of a mile he came to a little white-washed house that stood near
+the head of Newlands, almost under the bridge that crosses the fall. It
+was a sweet place in a great solitude, where the silence was broken only
+by the tumbling waters, the cooing of pigeons on the roof, and the
+twittering of ringouzels by the side of the torrent. The air was fresh
+with the smell of new peat. There was a wedge-shaped garden in front,
+and it was encompassed by chestnut-trees. As Hugh Ritson drew near he
+noticed that a squirrel crept from the fork of one of these trees. The
+little creature rocked itself on the thin end of a swaying branch,
+plucking sometimes at the drooping fan of the chestnut, and sometimes at
+the prickly shell of its pendulous nut. When he opened the little gate
+Hugh Ritson observed that a cat sat sedately behind the trunk of that
+tree, glancing up at intervals at the sporting squirrel in her moving
+seat.</p>
+
+<p>As he entered the garden Mercy was crossing it with a pail of water just
+raised from the well. She had seen him, and now tried to pass into the
+house. He stepped before her and she set down the pail. Her head was
+held very low, and her cheeks were deeply flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy," he said, "it is all arranged. Mr. Bonnithorne will see you into
+the train this evening, and when you get to your journey's end the
+person I spoke of will meet you."</p>
+
+<p>The girl lifted her eyes beseechingly to his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Not to-day, Hugh," she said in a broken whisper; "let me stay until
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>He regarded her for a moment with a steadfast look, and when he spoke
+again his voice fell on her ear like the clank of a chain.</p>
+
+<p>"The journey has to be made. Every week's delay increases the danger."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's eyes fell again, and the tears began to drop from them on to
+the brown arms that she had clasped in front.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," he said in a softer tone, "the train starts in an hour. Your
+father is not yet home from the pit, and most of the dalespeople are at
+the sports. So much the better. Put on your cloak and hat and take the
+fell path to the Coledaie road-ends. There Mr. Bonnithorne will meet
+you."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's tears were flowing fast, though she bit her lip and struggled
+to check them.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, now, come; you know this was of your own choice."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought it would be so hard to go," she said at length.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled feebly, and tried a more rallying tone.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not going for life. You will come back safe and happy."</p>
+
+<p>The words thrilled her through and through. Her clasped hands trembled
+visibly, and her fingers clutched them with a convulsive movement. After
+awhile she was calmer, and said quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll never come back&mdash;I know that quite well." And her head dropped
+on her breast and she felt sick at heart. "I'll have to say good-bye to
+everything. There were Betsy Jackson's children&mdash;I kissed them all this
+morning, and never said why&mdash;little Willy, he seemed to know, dear
+little fellow, and cried so bitterly."</p>
+
+<p>The memories of these incidents touched to overflowing the springs of
+love in the girl's simple soul, and the bubbling child-voice was drowned
+in sobs.</p>
+
+<p>The man stood with a smile of pain on his face. He came close, and
+brushed away her tears, and touched her drooping head with a gesture of
+protestation.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy regained her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"And then there's your mother," she said, "and I can't say good-bye to
+her, and my poor father, and I daren't tell him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh stamped on the path impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, Mercy, don't be foolish."</p>
+
+<p>The girl lifted to his the good young face that had once Been bonny as
+the day and was now pale with weeping and drawn down with grief. She
+took him by the coat, and then, by an impulse which she seemed unable to
+resist, threw one arm about his neck, and raised her face to his until
+their lips all but touched, and their eyes met in a steadfast gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh," she said, passionately, "are you sure that you love me well
+enough to think of me when I am gone?&mdash;are you quite, quite sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; be sure of that," he said, gently.</p>
+
+<p>He disengaged her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"And will you come and fetch me after&mdash;after&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She could not say the word. He smiled and answered, "Why, yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>Her fingers trembled and clung together; her head fell; her cheeks were
+aglow.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course." He smiled again, as if in deprecation of so much
+child-like earnestness; then put his arm about the girl's shoulder,
+dropped his voice to a tone of mingled compassion and affection, and
+said, as he lifted the brightening face to his, "There, there&mdash;now go
+off and make ready."</p>
+
+<p>The girl brushed her tears away vigorously, and looked half ashamed and
+half enchanted.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a good little girl."</p>
+
+<p>How the sunshine came back at the sound of his words!</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye for the present, Mercy&mdash;only for the present, you know."</p>
+
+<p>But how the shadow pursued the sunshine after all!</p>
+
+<p>Hugh saw the tears gathering again in the lucent eyes, and came back a
+step.</p>
+
+<p>"There&mdash;a smile&mdash;just one little smile!" She smiled through her tears.
+"There&mdash;there&mdash;that's a dear little Mercy. Good-day; good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh turned on his heel and walked sharply away. As he passed out
+through the gate he could not help observing that the cat from the foot
+of the chestnut-tree was walking stealthily off, with something like a
+dawning smile on its whiskered face, and the brush of the squirrel
+between its teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had gained his end, and yet he felt more crushed than at the
+darkest moment of defeat. He had conquered his own manhood; and now he
+crept away from the scene of his triumph with a sense of utter
+abasement. When he had talked with Mr. Bonnithorne it was with a
+feeling of the meanness of the folly in which he was involved; and if
+any sentiment touching the girl's situation was strong upon him it was
+closely bound up with a personal view of the degradation that might come
+of a man's humiliating unwisdom. The very conventionality of his folly
+had irked him. But its cowardice was now uppermost. That a man should
+enter into warfare with a woman on unequal terms, and win by cajolery
+and deceit, was more than cruel; it was brutal. He could have borne even
+this hard saying so far as it concerned the woman's suffering, but for
+the reflection that it made the man something worse than a coxcomb in
+his own eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The day was now far spent; the brilliant sun had dipped behind
+Grisedale, and left a ridge of dark fells in the west. On the east the
+green sides of Cat Bells and the Eel Crags were yellow at the summit,
+where the hills held their last commerce with the hidden sun. Not a
+breath of wind; not the rustle of a leaf; the valley lay still, save for
+the echoing voices of the merrymakers in the booth below. The sky
+overhead was blue, but a dark cloud, like the hulk of a ship, had
+anchored lately to the north.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson took the valley road back to Ghyll. He was visibly
+perturbed; he walked with head much bent, stopped suddenly at times,
+then snatched impetuously at the trailing bushes, and passed on. When he
+was under Hindscarth, the sharp yap of dogs, followed by the bleat of
+unseen sheep, caused him to look up, and he saw a group of men, like
+emmets creeping on a dark bowlder, moving over a ridge of shelving rock.</p>
+
+<p>There was a slight spasm of his features at that moment, and his foot
+trailed more heavily as he went on. At a twist of the road he passed the
+Laird Fisher. The old man looked less melancholy than usual. It was as
+if the familiar sorrow sat a little more lightly to-night on the
+half-ruined creature.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-neet to you, sir, and how fend ye?" he said almost cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson responded briefly.</p>
+
+<p>"So you're not sleeping on the fell to-night, Matthew?" and as he spoke
+his eyes wandered toward the fell road.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay; I's not firing to-neet, for sure; my daughter is expecting me."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh's eyes were now fixed intently on the road that crossed the foot of
+the fell to the west. The charcoal-burner was moving off, and, following
+at the same moment the upward direction of Hugh Ritson's gaze, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"It's a baddish place yon, where your father is with Reuben and the lad,
+and it's baddish weather that is coming, too&mdash;look at yon black cloud
+over Walna Scar."</p>
+
+<p>Then for an instant there was embarrassment in Hugh Ritson's eyes, and
+he answered in a faltering commonplace.</p>
+
+<p>"Ways me; but I must slip away home, sir; my laal lass will be weary
+waiting. Good-neet to you, sir; good-neet."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Matthew, and God help you," said Hugh in a tone of
+startling earnestness, his eyes turned away.</p>
+
+<p>He had walked half a mile further, and reached the lonnin that led to
+the Ghyll, when he was almost overrun by Greta Lowther, who came
+tripping out of the gate of a meadow, her bonnet swinging over her arm,
+her soft, wavy hair floating over her white forehead, her cheeks colored
+with a warm glow, a roguish light in her eyes, and laughter on the point
+of bubbling out of her lips.</p>
+
+<p>Greta had just given Paul Ritson the slip. There was a thicket in the
+field she had crossed, and it was covered with wild roses, white and
+red. Through the heart of it there rippled a tiny streak of water that
+was amber-tinted from the round shingle in its bed. The trunk of an old
+beech lay across it for ford or bridge. Underfoot were the sedge and
+moss; overhead the thick boughs and the roses; in the air, the odor of
+hay and the songs of birds. And Paul, the cunning rascal, would have
+tempted Greta into this solitude; but she was too shrewd, the wise
+little woman, to-be so easily trapped. Pretending to follow him in
+ignorance of his manifest design, she tripped back on tiptoe, and fled
+away like a lapwing over the noiseless grass.</p>
+
+<p>When Greta met Hugh Ritson she was saying to herself, of Paul in
+particular, and of his sex in general: "What dear, simple, unsuspecting,
+trustful creatures they are!" Then she drew up sharply, "Ah, Hugh!"</p>
+
+<p>"How happy you look, Greta!" he said, fixing his eyes upon her.</p>
+
+<p>A new light brightened her sunny face. "Not happier than I feel," she
+answered. She swung the arm over which the bonnet hung; the heaving of
+her breast showed the mold of her early womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's mind had for the last half hour brooded over many a good
+purpose, but not one of them was now left.</p>
+
+<p>"You witnessed a painful scene to-day," he said, with some hesitation.
+"Be sure it was no less painful to me because you were there to see it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I was so sorry," said Greta, impetuously. "You mean with your
+father?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh bent his head slightly. "It was inevitable&mdash;I know that full
+well&mdash;but for my share in it I ask your pardon."</p>
+
+<p>"That is nothing," she said; "but you took your father too seriously."</p>
+
+<p>"I took him at his word&mdash;that was all."</p>
+
+<p>"But the dear old man meant nothing, and you meant very much. He only
+wanted to abuse you a little, and perhaps frighten you, and shake his
+stick at you, and then love you all the better for it."</p>
+
+<p>"You may be right, Greta. Among the whims of nature there is that of
+making such human contradictions; but, as you say, I take things
+seriously&mdash;everything&mdash;life itself."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and there was a slight trembling of the lip.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," he went on in another tone, "it has been always so. Since our
+childhood&mdash;my brother's and mine&mdash;there has not been much paternal
+tenderness wasted on me. I can hardly expect it now."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely that must be a morbid fancy," Greta said in a distressed tone.
+The light was dying out of her eyes. She made one quick glance downward
+to where Hugh Ritson's infirm foot trailed on the road, and then, in an
+instant of recovered consciousness, she glanced up, now confused and
+embarrassed, into his face.</p>
+
+<p>She was too late; he had read her thought. A faint smile parted her
+lips; and the light of his own eyes was cold.</p>
+
+<p>"No; not that," he said; "I ask no pity in that regard&mdash;and need none.
+Nature has given my brother a physique that would shame a Greek statue,
+but he and I are quits&mdash;perhaps more than quits."</p>
+
+<p>He made a hard smile, and she flushed deep with shame of having her
+thought read.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry if I conveyed that," she said, slowly. "It must have been
+quite unwittingly. I was thinking of your mother. She is so good and
+tender to everybody. Why, she is the angel of the country-side. Do you
+know what name they've given her?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Saint Grace! Parson Christian told me&mdash;it seems it was my own dear
+mother who christened her."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, there has not been much to sweeten my life, Greta," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>His voice arrested her; it was charged with unusual feeling. She made no
+answer, and they began to walk toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>After a few steps Greta remembered the trick that she had played on
+Paul, and craned her beautiful neck to see over the stone cobble-hedge
+into the field where she had left him.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh observed her intently.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear that you have decided. Is it so, Greta?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Decided what?" she asked, coloring again.</p>
+
+<p>He also colored slightly, and answered with a strained quietness.</p>
+
+<p>"To marry my brother."</p>
+
+<p>"If he wishes it&mdash;I suppose he does&mdash;he says so, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh looked earnestly into the girl's glowing face, and said with
+deliberation:</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, perhaps there are reasons why you should not marry Paul."</p>
+
+<p>"What reasons?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not reply at once, and she repeated her question. Then he said in
+a strange tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Just and lawful impediments, as they say."</p>
+
+<p>Greta's eyes opened wide in undisguised amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible&mdash;you cannot mean it," she said with her customary
+impetuosity. She glanced into Hugh's face, and misread what she saw
+there. Then she began to laugh; at first lightly, afterward rather
+boisterously, and said with head averted, and almost as if talking to
+herself, "No, no; he is nothing to me but the man I love."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you then love him?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta started.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ask?" she said. The amazement in the wide eyes had deepened to a
+look of rapture. "Love him?" she said; "better than all the world
+beside." The girl was lifted out of herself. "You are to be my brother,
+Hugh, and I need not fear to speak so."</p>
+
+<p>She swung her bonnet on her arm, just to preserve composure by some
+distracting exercise.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stopped, and his face softened. It was a perplexing smile
+that sat on his features. While he had talked with Greta there had run
+through his mind, as a painful undertone, the thought of Mercy Fisher.
+He had now dismissed the last of his qualms respecting her. To be tied
+down for life to a mindless piece of physical prettiness&mdash;what man of
+brains could bear it? He had yielded to a natural impulse&mdash;true! That
+moment of temptation threatened painful consequences&mdash;still true! What
+then? Nothing! Was the dead fruit to hang about his neck forever?
+Tut!&mdash;all natural law was against it. Had he not said that he was above
+prejudice? So was he above the maudlin sentiment of the "great lovers of
+noble histories." The sophistry grew apace with Greta's beautiful
+countenance before him. Catching at her last word, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Your brother&mdash;yes. But did you never guess that I could have wished
+another name?"</p>
+
+<p>The look of amazement returned to her eyes; he saw it and went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible that you have not read my secret?"</p>
+
+<p>"What secret?" she said in a half-smothered voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, if your love had been great love, you must have read my secret
+just as I have read yours." In a low tone he continued: "Long ago I knew
+that you loved, or thought you loved, my brother. I saw it before he had
+seen it&mdash;before you had realized it."</p>
+
+<p>The red glow colored her cheeks more deeply than before. She had
+stopped, and he was tramping nervously backward and forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta," he said again, and he fixed his eyes entreatingly upon her,
+"what is the love that scarcely knows itself?&mdash;that is the love with
+which you love my brother. And what is the tame, timid passion of a man
+of no mind?&mdash;that is the love which he offers you. What is your love for
+him, or his for you?&mdash;what is it, can it be? Love is not love unless it
+is the love of true minds. That was said long ago, Greta, and how true
+it is!" He went on quickly, in a tone of dull irritation: "All other
+love is no better than lust. Greta, I understand you. It is not for a
+rude man like my brother to do so." Then in an eager voice he said:
+"Dearest, I bring you a love undreamed of among these country boors."</p>
+
+<p>"Country boors!" she repeated in a half-stifled whisper.</p>
+
+<p>He did not hear her. His vehement eyes swam, and he was dizzy.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, dearest, I said there has been little in my life to sweeten it.
+Yet I am a man made to love and to be loved. My love for you has been
+mute for months; but it can be mute no longer. Perhaps I have had my own
+impediment, apart from our love for Paul. But that is all over now."</p>
+
+<p>His cheeks quivered, his lips trembled, his voice swelled, his nervous
+fingers were riveted to his palm. He approached her and took her hand.
+She seemed to be benumbed by strong feeling. She had stood as one
+transfixed, a slow paralysis of surprise laying hold of her faculties.
+But at his touch her senses regained their mastery. She flung away his
+hand. Her breast heaved. In a voice charged with indignation, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"So this is what you mean! I understand you at last!"</p>
+
+<p>Huge Ritson fell back a pace.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, hear me&mdash;hear me again!"</p>
+
+<p>But she had found her voice indeed.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir, you have outraged your brother's heart as surely as if at this
+moment I had been your brother's wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, think before you speak&mdash;think, I implore you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought! I have thought of you as your sister might think, and
+spoken to you as my brother. Now I know how mean of soul you are!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh broke in passionately:</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, stop! I am an unforgiving man."</p>
+
+<p>His nostrils quivered, every nerve vibrated.</p>
+
+<p>"Love? You never loved. If you knew what the word means you would die of
+shame where you stand this instant."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh lost all control.</p>
+
+<p>"I bid you beware!" he said in wrath and dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"And I bid you be silent!" said Greta, with an eloquent uplifting of the
+hand. "You offer your love to a pledged woman. It is only base love that
+is basely offered. It is bad coin, sir, and goes back dishonored."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson regained some self-command. The contractions were deep about
+his forehead, but he answered in an imperturbable voice:</p>
+
+<p>"You shall never marry my brother!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will&mdash;God willing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you shall marry him to your lifelong horror and disgrace."</p>
+
+<p>"That shall be as Heaven may order."</p>
+
+<p>"A boor&mdash;a hulking brute&mdash;a bas&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough! I would rather marry a plowboy than such a gentleman as you!"</p>
+
+<p>Face to face, eye to eye, with panting breath and scornful looks, there
+they stood for one moment. Then Greta swung about and walked down the
+lonnin.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's natural manner returned instantly. He looked after her
+without the change of a feature, and then turned quietly into the
+house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was a drowsy calm in the room where Mr. Bonnithorne sat at lunch.
+It was the little oak-bound parlor to the right, in which he had begun
+the conversation with old Allan Ritson that had been interrupted by the
+announcement of the Laird Fisher. Half of the window was thrown up, and
+the landscape framed by the sash lay still as a picture. The sun that
+had passed over Grisedale sent a deep glow from behind, and the woods
+beneath took a restful tone. Only the mountain-head was white where it
+towered into the sky and the silence.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson entered and sat down. Her manner was meek almost to
+abjectness. She was elderly, but her face bore traces of the beauty she
+had enjoyed in youth. The lines had grown deep in it since then, and now
+the sadness of its expression was permanent. She wore an old-fashioned
+lavender gown, and there was a white silk scarf about her neck. Her
+voice was low and tremulous, yet eager, as if it were always
+questioning.</p>
+
+<p>With downcast head, and eyes bent on her lap, where her fingers twitched
+nervously as she knitted without cessation, she sat silent, or put meek
+questions to her guest.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne answered in smiles and speeches of six words apiece.
+Between each sparse reply he addressed himself afresh to his lunch with
+an appetite that was the reverse of sparse. All the while a subdued hum
+of many voices came up from the booth in the fields below.</p>
+
+<p>At length Mrs. Ritson's anxiety overcame the restraint of her manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bonnithorne," she said, "do let the will be made to-night. Urge Mr.
+Ritson, when he returns, to admit of no further delay. He has many noble
+qualities, but procrastination is his fault. It has been ever so."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne paused with a glass half raised to his lips, and lifted
+his eyes instead.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, madame," he said, with the customary smile which failed to
+disarm his words; "this is for certain reasons a subject I can hardly
+discuss with&mdash;with&mdash;- with a woman."</p>
+
+<p>And just then a peacock strutted through the court-yard, startling the
+still air with its empty scream.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson colored deeply. Even modesty like hers had been put to a
+severe strain. But she dropped her eyes again, finished a row of
+stitches, rested the steel needle on her lip, and answered quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"Surely a woman may talk of what concerns her husband and her children."</p>
+
+<p>The great man had resumed his knife and fork.</p>
+
+<p>"Not necessarily," he said. "It is a strange and curious fact that there
+is one condition in which the law does not recognize the right of a
+woman to call her son her own."</p>
+
+<p>During this prolonged speech, Hugh Ritson, fresh from his interview with
+Greta Lowther, entered the room, and stretched himself on the couch.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson, without shifting the determination of her gaze from the
+nervous fingers in her lap, said:</p>
+
+<p>"What condition?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne twisted slightly, and glanced significantly at Hugh as
+he answered:</p>
+
+<p>"The condition of illegitimacy."</p>
+
+<p>Something supercilious in the tone jarred on Mrs. Ritson's ear. She
+looked up from her knitting, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Bonnithorne placed his knife and fork with precision over his empty
+plate, used his napkin with deliberation, coughed slightly, and said: "I
+mean that the law denies the name of son to offspring that has been
+bastardized."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson's face grew crimson, and she rose to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"If so, the law is cruel and wicked," she said in a voice more tremulous
+with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne leaned languidly back in his chair, ejected a long "hem"
+from his overburdened chest, inserted his fingers in the armpits of his
+waistcoat, looked up, and said: "Odd, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Unluckily for the full effect of Mr. Bonnithorne's subtle witticism,
+Paul Ritson, with Greta at his side, appeared in the door-way at the
+moment of its delivery. The manner more than the words had awakened his
+anger, and the significance of both he interpreted by his mother's
+agitated face. In two strides he stepped up to where the great man sat,
+even now all smiles and white teeth, and laid a powerful hand on his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," said Paul, lustily, "it might not be safe for you to speak
+to my mother again like that!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne rose stiffly, and his shifty eyes looked into Paul's
+wrathful face.</p>
+
+<p>"Safe?" he echoed with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Paul, his lips compressed, bent his head, and at the same instant
+brought the other hand down on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Without speaking, Mr. Bonnithorne shuffled back into his seat. Mrs.
+Ritson, letting fall her knitting into her lap, sat and dropped her face
+into her hands. Paul took her by the arm, raised her up, and led her out
+of the room. As he did so, he passed the couch on which Hugh Ritson lay,
+and looked down with mingled anger and contempt into his brother's
+indifferent eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When the door closed behind them, Hugh Ritson and Mr. Bonnithorne rose
+together. There was a momentary gleam of mutual consciousness. Then
+instantly, suddenly, by one impulse, the two men joined hands across the
+table.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The cloud that had hung over Walna Scar broke above the valley, and a
+heavy rain-storm, with low mutterings of distant thunder, drove the
+pleasure-people from the meadow to the booth. It was a long canvas tent
+with a drinking-bar at one end, and stalls in the corners for the sale
+of gingerbreads and gimcracks. The grass under it was trodden flat, and
+in patches the earth was bare and wet beneath the trapesing feet of the
+people. They were a mixed and curious company. In a ring that was
+cleared by an athletic plowman the fiddler-postman of Newlands, Tom o'
+Dint, was seated on a tub turned bottom up. He was a little man with
+bowed legs and feet a foot long.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, lasses, step forret! Dunnot be blate. Come along with ye, any as
+have springiness in them!"</p>
+
+<p>The rough invitation was accepted without too much timidity by several
+damsels dressed in gorgeous gowns and bonnets. Then up and down, one,
+two, three, cut and shuffle, cross, under, and up and down again.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be mounting my best nag and comin' ower to Scara Crag and tappin'
+at your window some neet soon," whispered a young fellow to the girl he
+had just danced with.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a little mockingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Your best nag, Willy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Weel&mdash;the maister's."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again, and a sneer curled her lip. "You Colebank chaps are
+famous sweethearts, I hear. Fare-te-weel, Willy."</p>
+
+<p>And she twisted on her heel. He followed her up.</p>
+
+<p>"Dunnet gowl, Aggy. Mappen I'll be maister man mysel' soon."</p>
+
+<p>Aggy pushed her way through the crowd and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"She's packed him off wi' a flea in his ear," said an elderly man
+standing near.</p>
+
+<p>"Just like all the lave of them," said another, "snurling up her neb at
+a man for lack of gear. Why didna he brag of some rich uncle in
+Austrilly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, and stuff her with all sorts of flaitchment and lies. Then all the
+lasses wad be glyming at him."</p>
+
+<p>The dance spun on.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's a regular upshot, as good as Carel fair," said one of the
+girls.</p>
+
+<p>"Bessie, you're reet clipt and heeled for sure," responded her
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>Bessie's eyes sparkled with delight at the lusty compliment paid to her
+dancing, and she opened her cloak to cool herself, and also to show the
+glittering locket that hung about her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"It's famish, this fashion," muttered the elderly cynic. "It must tak' a
+brave canny fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"Shaf, man, the country's puzzen'd round with pride," answered his
+gossip. "Lasses worked in the old days. Now they never do a hand's turn
+but washin' and bleachin' and starchin' and curlin' their polls."</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, ey, there's been na luck in the country since the women-folk began
+to think shame of their wark."</p>
+
+<p>The fiddler made a squeak on two notes that sounded like kiss-her, and
+from a corner of the booth there came a clamorous smack of lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw you sweetheartin' laal Bessie," said one of the fellows to
+another.</p>
+
+<p>"And I saw you last night cutteran sa soft in the meadow. Nay, dunnot
+look sa strange. I never say nowt, not I. Only yon mother of Aggy's,
+she's a famous fratcher, and dunnot you let her get wind. She brays the
+lasses, and mappen she'll bray somebody forby."</p>
+
+<p>While the dancing proceeded there was a noisy clatter of glasses and a
+mutter of voices in the neighborhood of the bar.</p>
+
+<p>"The varra crony one's fidgin to see! Gie us a shak' of thy daddle!"
+shouted a fellow with a face like a russet apple.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Dick, let's bottom a quart together. Deil tak' the expense."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, man, and wherever hasta been since Whissen Monday?"</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, you see, I went to the fair and stood with a straw in my mouth,
+and the wives all came round, and one of them said, 'What wage do you
+ask, canny lad?' 'Five pounds ten,' I says. 'And what can you do?' she
+says. 'Do?' I says, 'anything from plowing to threshing and nicking a
+nag's tail,' I says. 'Come, be my man,' she says. But she was like to
+clem me, so I packed up my bits of duds and got my wage in my reet-hand
+breek pocket, and here I am."</p>
+
+<p>The dancing had finished, and a little group was gathered around the
+fiddler's tub.</p>
+
+<p>"Come thy ways; here's Tom o' Dint conjuring, and telling folk what they
+are thinking."</p>
+
+<p>"That's mair nor he could do for the numskulls as never think."</p>
+
+<p>"He bangs all the player-folk, does Tom."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's yon tatterdemalion flinging by the newspaper and bawling, 'The
+country's going to the dogs?'"</p>
+
+<p>"That's Grey Graham, setting folk by the lug with his blusteration."</p>
+
+<p>"Mess, lads, but he'd be a reet good Parli'ment man to threep about the
+nation."</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, I's na pollytishun, but if it's tearin' and snappin' same as a
+terrier that mak's a reet good Parli'ment man, I reckon not all England
+could bang him."</p>
+
+<p>"And that's not saying nowt, Sim. I've heard Grey Graham on the ballot
+till it's wet him through to the waistcoat."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that Mister Paul Ritson and Mistress Lowther just run in for
+shelter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely; and a reet bonny lass she is."</p>
+
+<p>"And he's got larnin' and manners too."</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, he's of the bettermer sort, is Paul."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she live at the parson's&mdash;Parson Christian's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, man; it's only naturable&mdash;he's her guardian."</p>
+
+<p>"And what a man he is, to be sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, we'll never see his like again when he's gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, not till the water runs up bank and trees grow down bank."</p>
+
+<p>"And what a scholar, and no pride neither, and what's mair in a parson,
+no greed. Why, the leal fellow values the world and the world's gear not
+a flea."</p>
+
+<p>"Contentment's a kingdom, as folk say, and religion is no worse for a
+bit o' charity."</p>
+
+<p>There was a momentary pressure of the company toward the mouth of the
+booth, where Gubblum Oglethorpe reappeared with his pack swung from his
+neck in front of him. The girls gathered eagerly around.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you to-day, Gubblum?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nowt for you, my dear. You're one of them that allus looks best
+with nothing on."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Gubblum!"</p>
+
+<p>The compliment was certainly a dubious one.</p>
+
+<p>"Only your bits of shabby duds&mdash;that's all that pretty faces like yours
+wants."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Gubblum!"</p>
+
+<p>The peddler was evidently a dear, simple soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord bless you, yes; what's in here," slapping his pack contemptuously,
+"it's only for them wizzent old creatures up in London&mdash;them 'at have
+faces like the map of England when it shows all the lines of the
+railways&mdash;just to make them a bit presentable, you know. And there is no
+knowing what some of these things won't do to mak' a body smart&mdash;what
+with brooches and handkerchers and collars, and I don't know what."</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum's air of indifference had the extraordinary effect of bringing a
+dozen pairs of gloating eyes on the strapped pack. The face of the
+peddler wore an expression of bland innocence as he continued:</p>
+
+<p>"But bless you, I'm such a straightforward chap, or I'd make my fortune
+with the like of what's here."</p>
+
+<p>"Open your pack, Gubblum," said one of the fellows, Geordie Moore,
+prompted by sundry prods from the elbow of a little damsel by his side.</p>
+
+<p>The "straightforward chap" made a deprecatory gesture, and then yielded
+obligingly. While loosening the straps he resumed his discourse on his
+own general ignorance of business tactics, his ruinous honesty, and
+demoralizing sense of honor.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not cute enough, that's my fault. I know the way to my mouth with a
+spoonful of poddish, and that's all. If I go further in the dark, I'm
+lost."</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum opened his pack and drew forth a red and green shawl of a
+hideous pattern.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, just to give you a sample. Here's a nice neat shawl that I never
+had no more nor two of. Well, I actually sold the fellow of that shawl
+for seven-and-sixpence."</p>
+
+<p>The look of amazement at his own shortcomings which sat on the
+child-like face of the peddler was answered by the expression of mock
+surprise in the face of Paul Ritson, who came up at the moment, took the
+shawl from Gubblum's outstretched arms, and said in a hushed whisper:</p>
+
+<p>"No, did you now?"</p>
+
+<p>Geordie Moore thereupon dived into his pocket, and brought out three
+half-crowns.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's for you, Gubblum; let's have it."</p>
+
+<p>"'Od bless me!" cried the elderly cynic, "but that Gubblum will never
+mak' his plack a bawbee."</p>
+
+<p>And Grey Graham, having disposed of the affairs of the nation and
+witnessed Geordie snap at the peddler's bait, cried out in a bitter
+laugh:</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 17em;">
+"'There's little wit within his powe<br />
+That lights a candle at the lowe.'"<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Just then a tumult arose in the vicinity of the bar. The two cronies
+were at open war.</p>
+
+<p>"Deuce take it! I had fifteen white shillin' in my reet-hand breek
+pocket, and where are they now?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Od dang thee! what should I know about your brass? You're kicking up a
+stour to waken a corp!"</p>
+
+<p>"I had fifteen white shillin' in my reet-hand breek pocket, I tell
+thee!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's that to me, thou poor shaffles? You're as drunk as muck. Do you
+think I've taken your brass? You've got a wrong pig by the lug if you
+reckon to come ower me!"</p>
+
+<p>"They were in my reet-hand breek pocket, I'll swear on it!"</p>
+
+<p>"What a fratchin'&mdash;try your left-hand breek pocket."</p>
+
+<p>The russet-faced plowman thrust his hand where directed and instantly a
+comical smile of mingled joy and shame overspread his countenance. There
+was a gurgling laugh, through which the voice of the peddler could be
+heard saying:</p>
+
+<p>"We'll mak' thee king ower the cockers, my canny lad."</p>
+
+<p>The canny lad was slinking away amid a derisive titter, when a great
+silence fell on the booth. Those in front fell back, and those behind
+craned their necks to see over the heads of the people before them.</p>
+
+<p>At the mouth of the booth stood the old Laird Fisher, his face ghastly
+pale, his eyes big and restless, the rain dripping from his long hair
+and beard.</p>
+
+<p>"They've telt me," he began in a strange voice, "they've telt me that my
+Mercy has gone off in the London train. I reckon they're mistook as to
+the lass, but I've come to see for mysel'. Is she here?"</p>
+
+<p>None answered. Only the heavy rain-drops that pattered on the canvas
+overhead broke the silence. Paul Ritson pushed his way through the
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy?&mdash;London? Wait, Matthew; I'll see if she's here."</p>
+
+<p>The Laird Fisher looked from face to face of the people about him.</p>
+
+<p>"Any on you know owt about her?" he asked in a low voice. "Why don't you
+speak, some on you? You shake your heads&mdash;what does that mean?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man was struggling to control the emotion that was surging in
+his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Matthew, she's not here," said Paul Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"Then maybe it's true," said Matthew, with a strange quiet.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Paul was the first to shake off his surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"She might be at Little Town&mdash;in Keswick&mdash;twenty places."</p>
+
+<p>"She might be, Master Paul, but she's nowt o' the sort. She's on her way
+to London, Mercy is."</p>
+
+<p>It was Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll, who spoke.</p>
+
+<p>At that the old man's trance seemed to break.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone! Mercy gone! Gone without a word! Why? Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"She'd her little red bundle aside her; and she cried a gay bit to
+hersel' in the corner. I saw her mysel'."</p>
+
+<p>Paul's face became rigid with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"There's villainy in this&mdash;be sure of that!" he said, hotly.</p>
+
+<p>The laird rocked his head backward and forward, and his eyes swam with
+tears; but he stood in the middle as quiet as a child.</p>
+
+<p>"My laal Mercy," he said, faintly, "gone from her old father."</p>
+
+<p>Paul stepped to the old man's side, and put a great hand on his shoulder
+as softly as a woman might have soothed her babe. Then turning about,
+and glancing wrathfully in the faces around them, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Some waistrel has been at work here. Who is he? Speak out. Anybody
+know?"</p>
+
+<p>No one spoke. Only the laird moaned feebly, and reeled like a drunken
+man. Then, with the first shock over, the old man began to laugh. What a
+laugh it was!</p>
+
+<p>"No matter," he said; "no matter. Now I've nowt left, I've nowt to lose.
+There's comfort in that, anyways. Ha! ha! ha! But my heart is like to
+choke for all. You say reet, Mr. Ritson, there's villainy in it."</p>
+
+<p>The old man's eyes wandered vacantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Her own father," he mumbled; "her lone old father&mdash;broken-hearted&mdash;him
+'at loved her&mdash;no matter, I've nowt left to&mdash;Ha! ha! ha!"</p>
+
+<p>He tried to walk away jauntily, and with a ghastly smile on his battered
+face, but he stumbled and fell insensible into Paul's outstretched arms.
+They loosened his neckerchief and bathed his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>Just then Hugh Ritson strode into the tent, stepped up to the group, and
+looked down over the bent heads at the stricken father lying in his
+brother's arms.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's lips trembled and his powerful frame quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows but the scoundrel is here now?" he said; and his eyes
+traversed the men about him. "If he is, let him look at his pitiless
+work; and may the sight follow him to his death!"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Hugh Ritson's face underwent an awful change. Then the
+old man opened his eyes in consciousness, and Hugh knelt before him and
+put a glass of water to his lips.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the homestead of the Ritsons the wide old ingle was aglow with a
+cheerful fire, and Mrs. Ritson stood before it baking oaten cake on a
+"griddle." The table was laid for supper with beef and beer and milk and
+barley-bread. In the seat of a recessed window, Paul Ritson and Greta
+Lowther sat together.</p>
+
+<p>At intervals that grew shorter, and with a grave face that became more
+anxious, Mrs. Ritson walked to the door and looked out into the
+thickening sky. The young people had been too much absorbed to notice
+her increasing perturbation, until she opened a clothes-chest and took
+out dry flannels and spread them on the hearth to air.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worrit yourself, mother," said Paul. "He'll be here soon. He had
+to cross the Coledale Pass, and that's a long stroke of the ground, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"It's an hour past supper-time," said Mrs. Ritson, glancing aside at the
+old clock that ticked audibly from behind the great arm-chair. "The rain
+is coming again&mdash;listen!" There was a light patter of rain-drops against
+the window-panes. "If he's on the fells now he'll be wet to the skin."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I'd gone in place of him," said Paul, turning to Greta. "A bad
+wetting troubles him nowadays. Not same as of old, when he'd follow the
+fells all day long knee-deep in water and soaked to the skin with rain
+or snow."</p>
+
+<p>The thunder-clap shook the house. The windows rattled, and the lamp that
+had been newly lighted and put on the table flickered slightly and
+burned red.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, me, what a night! Was that a flash of lightning?" said Mrs.
+Ritson, and she walked to the door once more and opened it.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worrit, mother," repeated Paul. "Do come in. Father will be here
+soon, and if he gets a wetting there's no help for it now."</p>
+
+<p>Paul had turned aside from an animated conversation with Greta to
+interpolate this remonstrance against his mother's anxiety. Resuming the
+narrative of his wrestling match, he described its incidents as much by
+gesture as by words.</p>
+
+<p>"John Proudfoot took me&mdash;so&mdash;and tried to give me the cross-buttock, but
+I caught his eye and twisted him on my hip&mdash;so&mdash;and down he went in a
+bash!"</p>
+
+<p>A hurried knock came to the outer door. In an instant it was opened, and
+a white face looked in.</p>
+
+<p>"What's now, Reuben?" said Paul, rising to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along with me&mdash;leave the women-folk behind&mdash;master's down&mdash;the
+lightning has struck him&mdash;I'm afeart he's dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"My father!" said Paul, and stood for a moment with a bewildered look.
+"Go on, Reuben, I'll follow." Paul picked up his hat and was gone in an
+instant.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson had been stooping over the griddle when Reuben entered. She
+heard what he said, and rose up with a face of death-like pallor. But
+she said nothing, and sunk helplessly into a chair. Then Greta stepped
+up to her and kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother&mdash;dear mother!" she said, and Mrs. Ritson dropped her head on the
+girl's breast.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh had been sitting over some papers in his own room off the first
+landing. He overheard the announcement, and came into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father has been struck by the lightning," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"They will fetch him home," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>At the next moment there was the sound from without of burdened
+footsteps. They were bearing the injured man. Through the back of the
+house they carried him to his room.</p>
+
+<p>"That is for my sake," said Mrs. Ritson, raising her tear-stained face
+to listen.</p>
+
+<p>Paul entered. His ruddy cheeks had grown ashy white. His eyes, that had
+blinked with pleasure a minute ago, now stared wide with fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he alive?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God! oh, thank God forever and ever! Let me go in to him."</p>
+
+<p>"He is unconscious&mdash;he breathes&mdash;but no more."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson, with Paul and Greta, went into the room in which they had
+placed the stricken man. He lay across the bed in his clothes, just as
+he had fallen. They bathed his forehead and applied leeches to his
+temples. He breathed heavily, but gave no sign of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Paul sat at his father's side with his face buried in his hands. He was
+recalling his boyish days, when his father would lift him in his arms
+and throw him on the bare back of the pony that he gave him on his
+thirteenth birthday. Could it be possible that the end was at hand!</p>
+
+<p>He got up and led Greta out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"This house of mourning is no place for you," he said; "the storm is
+over: you must leave us; Natt can put the mare into the trap and drive
+you home."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not go," said Greta; "this shall be my home to-night. Don't send
+me away from you, Paul. You are in trouble, and my place is here."</p>
+
+<p>"You could do no good, and might take some harm."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson came out.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Mr. Bonnithorne?" she asked. "He was to be here at eight. Your
+father might recover consciousness."</p>
+
+<p>"The lawyer could do nothing to help him."</p>
+
+<p>"If he is to leave us, may it please God to give him one little hour of
+consciousness."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, knowing us again&mdash;giving us a farewell word."</p>
+
+<p>"There is another reason&mdash;a more terrible reason!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are thinking of the will. Let that go by. Come, mother&mdash;and Greta,
+too&mdash;- come, let us go back."</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later the house was as still as the chamber of death. With
+hushed voices and noiseless steps the women-servants moved to and from
+the room where lay the dying man. The farming men sat together in an
+outer kitchen, and talked in whispers.</p>
+
+<p>The storm had passed away; the stars struggled one by one through a rack
+of flying cloud, and a silver fringe of moonlight sometimes fretted the
+black patches of the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson sat alone in the old hall, that was now desolate enough. His
+face rested on his hand, and his elbow on his knee. There was a strange
+light in his eyes. It was not sorrow, and it was not pain; it was
+anxiety, uncertainty, perturbation. Again and again he started up from a
+deep reverie, and then a half-smothered cry escaped him. He walked a few
+paces to and fro, and sat down once more.</p>
+
+<p>A servant crossed the hall on tiptoe. Hugh raised his head.</p>
+
+<p>"How is your patient now?" he said, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Just breathing, sir; still quite unconscious."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh got up uneasily. A mirror hung on the wall in front of him, and he
+stood and looked vacantly into it. His thoughts wandered, and when a
+gleam of consciousness returned the first object that he saw was the
+reflection of his own face. It was full of light and expression. Perhaps
+it wore a ghostly smile. He turned away from the sight impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting down again he tried to compose himself. Point by point he
+revolved the situation. He thought of what the lawyer had said of his
+deserted wife and lost son of Lowther. Then, taking out of an inner
+pocket the medallion that Mr. Bonnithorne had lent him, he looked at it
+long and earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>The inspection seemed to afford a grim satisfaction. There could be no
+doubt now of the ghostly smile that played upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>There was a tall antique clock in the corner of the hall. It struck
+eight. The slow beats of the bell echoed chillily in the hushed
+apartment. The hour awakened the consciousness of the brooding man. At
+eight o'clock Mr. Bonnithorne was appointed to be there to make the
+will.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson touched gently a hand-bell that stood on the table. A
+servant entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Send Natt to me," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later the stableman shambled into the hall. He was a thick-set
+young fellow with a short neck and a full face, and eyelids that hung
+deep over a pair of cunning eyes. At first sight one would have said
+that the rascal was only half awake; at the second glance, that he was
+never asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh received him with a show of cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Natt, come here&mdash;closer."</p>
+
+<p>The man walked across. Hugh dropped his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Go down to Little Town and find Mr. Bonnithorne. You may meet him on
+the way. If not, he will be at the Flying Horse. Tell him I sent you to
+say that Adam Fallow lies dying at Bigrigg, and must see him at once.
+You understand?"</p>
+
+<p>The man lifted his slumberous eyelids. A suspicious twinkle lurked
+beneath them. He glanced around, then down at his big, grimy boots,
+measured with one uplifted hand the altitude of the bump on the top of
+his bullet head, and muttered, "I understand."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh's face darkened.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence!" he said, sternly; and then he met Natt's upward glance with a
+faint smile. "When you come back, get yourself out of the way&mdash;do you
+hear?"</p>
+
+<p>The heavy eyelids went up once more. "I hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Then be off!"</p>
+
+<p>The fellow was shuffling away.</p>
+
+<p>"Natt," said Hugh, following him a step, "you fancied that new whip of
+mine; take it. You'll find it in the porch."</p>
+
+<p>A smile crossed Natt's face from ear to ear. He stumbled out.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson returned to the hearth. That haunting mirror caught the
+light of his eyes again and showed that he too was smiling. At the same
+instant there came from the inner room the dull, dead sound of a deep
+sob. It banished the smile and made him pause. He looked at the
+reflection of his face&mdash;could it be the face of a scoundrel? Was he
+playing a base part? No, he was merely asserting his rights; his plain
+legal rights&mdash;nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>He opened a cupboard in the wall and took down a bunch of keys.
+Selecting one key, he stepped up to a cabinet and opened it. In a
+compartment were many loose papers. Now to see if by chance there
+existed a will already. He glanced at the papers one by one and threw
+them aside. When he had finished his inspection he took a hasty turn
+about the room. No trace&mdash;he had been sure of it!</p>
+
+<p>Again the deep sob came from within. Hugh Ritson walked noiselessly to
+the inner door, opened it slightly, bent his head, and listened. He
+turned away with an expression of pain, picked up his hat, and went out.</p>
+
+<p>The night was very dark. He strode a few paces down the lonnin and then
+back to the porch. Uncovering his head, he let the night wind cool his
+hot temples. His breath came audibly and hard. He was turning again
+into the house when his eye was arrested by a light near the turning of
+the high-road. The light was approaching; he walked toward it, and met
+Josiah Bonnithorne. The lawyer was jouncing along toward the house with
+a lantern in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you meet the stableman?" said Hugh in an eager whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"The blockhead must have taken the old pack-horse road on the fell-side.
+One would be safe in that fool's stupidity. You have heard what has
+happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no will already."</p>
+
+<p>"And your father is insensible?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then none shall be made."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, in which the darkness itself seemed full of speech.
+The lantern cast its light only on an open cart-shed in the lane.</p>
+
+<p>"If your mother is the Grace Ormerod who married Robert Lowther and had
+a son by him, then Paul was that son&mdash;the heir to Lowther's
+conscience-money."</p>
+
+<p>"Bonnithorne," said Hugh Ritson&mdash;his voice trembled and broke&mdash;"if it is
+so, then it is so, and we need do nothing. Remember, he is my father. It
+is not within belief that he wants to disinherit his own son for the son
+of another man."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne broke into a half-smothered laugh, and stepped close
+into the cobble-hedge, keeping the lantern down.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father&mdash;yes. But you have seen to-day what that may come to. He
+has always held you under his hand. Paul has been the old man's
+favorite."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt of that." Hugh crept close to the lawyer. He was wrestling in
+the coil of a tragic temptation.</p>
+
+<p>"If he recovers consciousness, he may be tempted to recognize as his own
+his wife's illegitimate son. That"&mdash;the low tone was one of withering
+irony&mdash;"will keep her from dishonor, and you from the estates."</p>
+
+<p>"At least he is my brother&mdash;my mother's son. If my father wishes to
+provide for him, God forbid that we should prevent."</p>
+
+<p>Once more the half-smothered laugh came through the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"You have missed your vocation, Mr. Ritson. Believe me, the Gospel has
+lost a fervent advocate. Perhaps you would like to pray for this good
+brother; perhaps you would consider it safe to drop on your knee and
+say, 'My good brother that should be, who has ever loved me, whom I have
+ever loved, take here my fortune, and leave me until death a penniless
+dependent on the lands that are mine by right of birth.'"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's breath came in gusts through his quivering, unseen lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Bonnithorne, it cannot be&mdash;it is mere coincidence, seductive, damning
+coincidence. My mother knows all. If it were true that Paul was the son
+of Lowther, she would know that Paul and Greta must be half-brother and
+half-sister. She would stop their unnatural union."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you think I have waited until now to sound that shoal water with
+a cautious plummet? Your mother is as ignorant of the propinquity as
+Greta herself. Lowther was dead before your family settled in Newlands.
+The families never once came together while the widow lived. And now not
+a relative survives who can tell the story."</p>
+
+<p>"Parson Christian?" said Hugh Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"A great child just out of swaddling-clothes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then the secret rests with you and me, Bonnithorne?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who else? The marriage must not come off. Greta is Paul's half-sister,
+but she is no relative of yours&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, Bonnithorne," Hugh Ritson broke in; "the marriage is
+against nature."</p>
+
+<p>"And the first step toward stopping it is to stop the will."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why are you here?"</p>
+
+<p>"To make sure that there is no will already. You have satisfied me, and
+now I go."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Who shall say that I am acting a base part?" said Hugh, in an eager
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Who indeed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nature itself is on my side."</p>
+
+<p>The man was conquered. He was in the grip of his temptation.</p>
+
+<p>"I am off, Mr. Ritson. Get back into the house. It is not safe for you
+to be out of sight and sound."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne was moving off in the darkness, the lamp before his
+breast; its light fell that instant on Hugh Ritson's haggard face.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait; put out your lamp."</p>
+
+<p>"It's done."</p>
+
+<p>All was now dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>With slow whispers the two men parted.</p>
+
+<p>The springy step of Josiah Bonnithorne was soon lost in the road below.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stood for awhile where the lawyer left him, and then turned
+back into the house. He found the cabinet open. In the turmoil of
+emotion he had forgotten to close it. He returned to it, and shuffled
+with the papers to put them back in their place. At that moment the door
+opened, and a heavy footstep fell on the floor. Hugh glanced up
+startled. It was Paul. His face was plowed deep with lines of pain. But
+the cloud of sorrow that it wore was not so black as the cloud of anger
+when he saw what his brother was doing and guessed his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you about?" Paul asked, mastering his wrath.</p>
+
+<p>There was no response.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up that cabinet!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh turned about with a flushed face.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall do as I please!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul took two strides toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut it up!"</p>
+
+<p>The cabinet was closed. At the same moment Mrs. Ritson came from the
+inner room. Paul turned on his heel.</p>
+
+<p>"He is thinking of the will," said the elder brother. "Perhaps it is
+natural that he should distrust me; but when the time comes he is
+welcome to the half of everything, and ten thousand wills would hardly
+give him more."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson was strongly agitated. Her eyes, red with weeping, were
+aflame with expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, he is conscious," she cried in a voice that her anxiety could not
+subdue. "He is trying to speak. Where is the lawyer?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh had been moving toward the outer door.</p>
+
+<p>"Conscious!" he repeated, and returned to the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>"Send for Mr. Bonnithorne at once!" said Mrs. Ritson, addressing Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Her manner was feverish. Hugh touched the bell. When the servant
+appeared, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Natt to run to the village for Mr. Bonnithorne."</p>
+
+<p>Paul had walked to the door of the inner room. His hand was on the
+handle, when the door opened and Greta came out. She stepped up to Mrs.
+Ritson and tried to quiet her agitation.</p>
+
+<p>The servant returned.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't find Natt," she said. "He is not in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find him in the stable," said Hugh, composedly.</p>
+
+<p>The servant went out hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>Paul returned to the middle of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go myself," he said, and plucked his hat from the settle, but Mrs.
+Ritson rose to prevent him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Paul," she said in a tremulous voice, "you must never leave his
+side."</p>
+
+<p>Paul glanced at his brother with a perplexed look. The calmness of
+Hugh's manner disturbed him.</p>
+
+<p>The servant reappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Natt is not in the stable, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Paul's face was growing crimson. Mrs. Ritson turned to Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh, my dear son, do you go for the lawyer."</p>
+
+<p>A faint smile that lurked at the corners of Hugh's mouth gave way to a
+look of injury.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, my place, also, is here. How can you ask me to leave my
+father's side at a moment like this?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta had been looking fixedly at Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go," she said, resolutely.</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible," said Paul. "It is now dark&mdash;the roads are wet and lonely."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go, nevertheless," said Greta, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you, my darling, and love you and keep you forever!" said
+Paul. Wrapping a cloak about her shoulders, he whispered: "My brave
+girl&mdash;that's the stuff of which an English woman may be made."</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door and walked out with her across the court-yard. The
+night was now clear and calm; the stars burned; the trees whispered; the
+distant ghylls, swollen by the rain, roared loud through the thin air; a
+bird on the bough of a fir-tree whistled and chirped. The storm was
+gone; only its wreckage lay in the still room within.</p>
+
+<p>"A safe journey to you, dear girl, and a speedy return," whispered Paul,
+and in another moment Greta had vanished in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned to the hall, his brother was passing into the room
+where the sick man lay. Paul was about to follow when his mother, who
+was walking aimlessly to and fro in yet more violent agitation than
+before, called on him to remain. He turned about and stepped up to her,
+observing as he did so that Hugh had paused on the threshold, and was
+regarding them with a steadfast look.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson took Paul's hand with a nervous grasp. Her eyes, that bore
+the marks of recent tears, had the light of wild excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"God be praised that he is conscious at last!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Paul shook his head as if in censure of his mother's feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him die in peace," he said; "let his soul pass quietly to its rest.
+Don't vex it now with thoughts of the cares it leaves behind."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson let go his hand, and dropped into a chair. A slight shudder
+passed over her. Paul looked down with a puzzled expression. Then there
+was a low sobbing. He leaned over his mother and smoothed her hair
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, let us go in," he said in a broken voice.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson rose from her seat and went down on her knees. Her eyes,
+still wet, but no longer weeping, were raised to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"Almighty Father, give me strength!" she said beneath her breath, and
+then more quietly she rose to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>Paul regarded her with increasing perturbation. Something even more
+serious than he yet knew of was amiss. Hardly knowing why, his heart
+sunk still deeper.</p>
+
+<p>"What are we doing?" he said, scarcely realizing his own words.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson threw herself on his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I not say there was a terrible reason why your father should make a
+will?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul's voice seemed to die within him.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, mother?" he asked feebly, not yet gathering the meaning of
+his fears.</p>
+
+<p>"God knows, I never dreamed it would be my lips that must tell you,"
+said Mrs. Ritson. "Paul, my son, my darling son, you think me a good
+mother and a pure woman. I am neither. I must confess all&mdash;now&mdash;and to
+you. Oh, how your love will turn from me!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul's face turned pale. His eyes gazed into his mother's eyes with a
+fixed look. The clock ticked audibly. Not another sound broke the
+silence. At last Paul spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak, mother," he said; "is it something about my father?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson's face fell on to her son's breast. A strong shudder ran
+over her shoulders, and she sobbed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not your father's heir," she said; "you were born before we
+married.... But you will try not to hate me, ... your own mother.... You
+will try, will you not?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul's great frame shook visibly. He tried to speak. His tongue cleaved
+to his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that I am&mdash;a bastard?" he said in a hoarse whisper.</p>
+
+<p>The word seemed to sting his mother like a poisoned arrow. She clung yet
+closer about his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Pity me and love me still, though I have wronged you before God and
+man. I whom the world thought so pure&mdash;I am but a whited sepulcher&mdash;a
+dishonored woman dishonoring her dearest son!"</p>
+
+<p>The door opened gently, and Hugh Ritson stood in the door-way. Neither
+his brother nor his mother realized his presence. He remained a moment,
+and then withdrew, leaving the door ajar.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath the two whom he left behind, the world at that moment reeled.</p>
+
+<p>Paul stood with great, wide eyes, that had never tear to soften them,
+gazing vacantly into the weeping eyes before him. His lips quivered, but
+he did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, speak to me&mdash;speak to me&mdash;only speak&mdash;only let me hear your
+voice! See, I am at your feet&mdash;your mother kneels to you&mdash;forgive her as
+God has forgiven her!"</p>
+
+<p>And loosing her grasp, she flung herself on the ground before him, and
+covered her face with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Paul seemed not at first to know what was happening. Then he stooped and
+raised his mother to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, rise up," he said in a strange, hollow tone. "Who am I that I
+should presume to pardon you? I am your son&mdash;you are my mother!"</p>
+
+<p>His vacant eyes gathered a startled expression. He glanced quickly
+around the room, and said in a deep whisper:</p>
+
+<p>"How many know of this?"</p>
+
+<p>"None besides ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>The frightened look disappeared. In its place came a look of
+overwhelming agony.</p>
+
+<p>"But I know of it; oh, my God!" he cried; and into the chair from which
+his mother had risen he fell like a wounded man.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson dried her eyes. A strange quiet was coming upon her now. Her
+voice gathered strength. She laid a hand on the head of her son, who sat
+before her with buried face.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul," she said, "it is not until now that the day of reckoning has
+waited for me. When you were a babe, and knew nothing of your mother's
+grief, I sorrowed over the shame that might yet be yours; and when you
+grew to be a prattling child, I thought if God would look into your
+innocent eyes they would purchase grace for both of us."</p>
+
+<p>Paul lifted his head. At that moment of distress God had sent him the
+gracious gift of tears. His eyes were wet, and looked tenderly at his
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul," she continued, quite calmly now, "promise me one thing."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" he asked, softly.</p>
+
+<p>"That if your father should not live to make the will that must
+recognize you as his son, you will never reveal this secret."</p>
+
+<p>Paul rose to his feet. "That is impossible. I cannot promise it," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Honor and justice require that my brother Hugh, and not I, should be my
+father's heir&mdash;he, at least, must know."</p>
+
+<p>"What honor, and what justice?"</p>
+
+<p>"The honor of a true man&mdash;the justice of the law of England."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson dropped her head. "So much for your honor," she said. "But
+what of mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"That if you allow your younger brother to inherit, the world by that
+act will be told all&mdash;your father's sin, your mother's shame."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson raised her hands to her face, and turned aside. Paul stepped
+up to her and kissed her forehead reverently.</p>
+
+<p>"You are right," he said. "Forgive me&mdash;I thought only of myself. The
+world that loves to tarnish a pure name would like to gloat over your
+sorrow. That it shall never! Man's law may have been outraged, but God's
+law is still inviolate. Whatever my birth, I am as much your son in the
+light of Heaven as Jacob was the son of Isaac, or David of Jesse. Come,
+let us go to him&mdash;he may yet live to acknowledge me."</p>
+
+<p>It had been a terrible moment, but it was past. To live to manhood in
+ignorance of the dishonor of his birth, and then to learn the truth
+under the shadow of death&mdash;this had been a tragic experience. The love
+he had borne his father&mdash;the reverence he had learned at his mother's
+knee&mdash;to what bitter test had they been put! Had all the past been but
+as the marble image of a happy life! Was all the future shattered before
+him! Pshaw! he was the unconscious slave of a superstition&mdash;a phantasm,
+a gingerbread superstition!</p>
+
+<p>And a mightier touch awoke his sensibilities&mdash;the touch of nature.
+Before God at that moment he was his father's son. If the world, or the
+world's law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving
+to be damned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly
+ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim to his
+father's name?</p>
+
+<p>Paul took in love the hand of his mother. "Let us go in to him," he
+repeated, and together they walked across the room.</p>
+
+<p>The outer door was flung open, and Greta entered, flushed and with
+wide-open eyes. At the same instant the inner door swung noiselessly
+back, and Hugh Ritson stood on the threshold. Greta was about to speak,
+but Hugh motioned her to silence. His face was pale, his hand trembled.
+"Too late," he said, huskily; "he is dead!"</p>
+
+<p>Greta sunk on to the settle in the window recess. Hugh walked to the
+hearth and paused with rigid features before the haunting mirror.</p>
+
+<p>Paul stood for a moment hand in hand with his mother, motionless,
+speechless, cold at his heart. Then he hurried into the inner room. Mrs.
+Ritson followed him, closing the door behind him.</p>
+
+<p>The little oak-bound room was dusky; the lamp that burned low was
+shaded. Across the bed lay Allan Ritson, in his habit as he lived. But
+his lips were white and cold.</p>
+
+<p>Paul stood and looked down. There lay his father&mdash;his father still! His
+father by right of nature&mdash;of love&mdash;of honor&mdash;let the world say what it
+would.</p>
+
+<p>And he knew the truth at last: too late to look into those glassy eyes
+and read the secret of their long years of suffering love.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," Paul whispered, and fell to his knees by the deaf ear.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson, strangely quiet, strangely calm, stepped to the opposite
+side of the bed, and placed one hand on the dead man's breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul," she said, "come here."</p>
+
+<p>He rose to his feet and walked to her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Lay your hand with mine, and pledge to me your solemn word never to
+speak of what you have heard to-night until that great day when we three
+shall stand together before the great white throne."</p>
+
+<p>Paul placed his hand side by side with hers, and lifted his eyes to
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"On my father's body, by my mother's honor&mdash;never to reveal to any human
+soul, by word or deed, his act or her shame&mdash;always to bear myself as
+their lawful son before man, even as I am their rightful son before
+God&mdash;I swear it! I swear it!"</p>
+
+<p>His voice was cold and clear, but the words were scarcely uttered when
+he fell to his knees again, with a subdued cry of overwrought feeling.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson staggered back, caught the curtains of the bed, and covered
+her face. All was still.</p>
+
+<p>Then a shuffling footfall was heard on the floor. Hugh Ritson was in the
+darkened room. He lifted the shaded lamp from the table, approached the
+bedside, and held the lamp with one hand above his head. The light fell
+on the outstretched body of his father and the bowed head of his
+brother.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><i>BOOK II.</i></h2>
+
+<p class='center'>THE COIL OF THE TEMPTATION.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was late in November, and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay
+on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with
+mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and
+gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only
+a fibrous vagueness was visible.</p>
+
+<p>In an old pasture field by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an
+elderly man, sturdy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun.
+There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar
+and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over
+his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed the
+expression of gentleness and easy good-nature. It was a fine old face,
+with the beauty of simplicity and the sweetness of content.</p>
+
+<p>A boy in front led the horses, and whistled. The parson hummed a tune as
+he turned his furrows. Sometimes he sung in a drawling tone&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 15em;">
+"Bonny lass, canny lass, wilta be mine?<br />
+Thou's nowder wesh dishes nor sarra the swine."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>At the turn-rows he paused, and rested on his plow handles. He rested
+longest at the turn-rows on the roadside of the field. Like the
+shivering mists that grouped about the open doors, he was held there by
+light and warmth.</p>
+
+<p>The smithy stood at the opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of
+the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the
+fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a
+long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations
+of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin
+clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's
+sledge echoed in unseen recesses of the hills beyond.</p>
+
+<p>This smithy of Newlands filled the function which under a higher
+propitiousness of circumstance is answered by a club. Girded with his
+leather apron, his sleeves rolled tightly over his knotty arms, the
+smith, John Proudfoot, stood waiting for his heat. His striker, Geordie
+Moore, had fallen to at the bellows. On the tool chest sat Gubblum
+Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the
+gate. The miller, Dick of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o'
+Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the
+grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point by many similar
+applications.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I can make nowt of him. He's a changed man for sure," said the
+blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum removed his pipe and muttered sententiously:</p>
+
+<p>"It's die-spensy, I tell thee."</p>
+
+<p>"Dandering and wandering about at all hours of the day and night,"
+continued the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all die-spensy," repeated the peddler.</p>
+
+<p>"And as widderful and wizzent as a polecat nailed up on a barn door,"
+said Tom o' Dint, lifting his grating knife from the grindstone and
+speaking with a voice as hoarse.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, and as weak as watter with it," added the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"His as was as strong as rum punch," rejoined the fiddler.</p>
+
+<p>"It's die-spensy, John&mdash;nowt else," said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>The miller broke in testily.</p>
+
+<p>"What's die-spensy?"</p>
+
+<p>"What ails Paul Ritson?" answered Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>"Shaf on your balderdash," said Dick of the Syke; "die-spensying and
+die-spensying. You've no' but your die-spensy for everything. Tommy's
+rusty throat, and John's big toe, and lang Geordie's broken nose, as
+Giles Raisley gave him a' Saturday neet at the Pack Horse&mdash;it's all
+die-spensy."</p>
+
+<p>The miller was a blusterous fellow, who could swear in lusty anger and
+laugh in boisterous sport in a single breath.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum puffed placidly.</p>
+
+<p>"It is die-spensy. I know it by exper'ence," he observed, persistently.</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith's little eyes twinkled mischievously.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure you do, Gubblum. You had it bad the day you crossed in the
+packet from Whitehebben. That was die-spensy&mdash;a cute bout too."</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard as it were amazing rough on the watter that day," said Tom,
+in a pause of the wheel, glancing up knowingly at the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"Heard, had you? Must have been tolerable deaf else. Rough? Why, them do
+say as the packet were wrecked, and only two planks saved. Gubblum was
+washed ashore cross-legged on one of them, and his pack on the other."</p>
+
+<p>The long, labored breathings of the bellows ended, the iron was thrown
+white hot out of the glowing coals on to the anvil, and the clank of the
+hand-hammer and thud of the sledge were all that could be heard. Then
+the iron cooled, and was lifted back into the palpitating blaze. The
+blacksmith stepped to the door, wiped his streaming forehead with one
+hand and waved the other to the parson plowing in the opposite field.</p>
+
+<p>"A canny morning, Mr. Christian," he shouted. "Bad luck for the parson's
+young lady, anyhow&mdash;her sweetheart is none to keen for the wedding," he
+said, turning again to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a fine like lass, yon," said Tom o' Dint.</p>
+
+<p>An old man, iron gray, with a pair of mason's mallets swung front and
+back across his shoulders, stepped into the smithy.</p>
+
+<p>"How fend ye, John?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Middling weel, Job," answered the blacksmith; "and what's your errand
+now?"</p>
+
+<p>"A chisel or two for tempering."</p>
+
+<p>"Cutting in the church-yard to-day, Job? Cold wark, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, auld Ritson's stone as they've putten over him."</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith tapped the peddler on the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Gubblum, shall I tell you what's a-matter with Paul?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never you bother, John, it's die-spensy."</p>
+
+<p>"It's fretting&mdash;that's it&mdash;fretting for his father."</p>
+
+<p>"Fretting for his fiddlesticks!" shouted Dick, the miller; "Allan's dead
+this half a year."</p>
+
+<p>"John's reet," said Job, the stone-cutter; "it is fretting."</p>
+
+<p>Dick of the Syke got up off the iron rods.</p>
+
+<p>"Because a young fellow has given you a job of wark to cut his father's
+headstone and tell a lie or two in letters half an inch deep and two
+shillings a dozen&mdash;does that show 'at he's fretting?"</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't do nowt of the sort," said Job, hotly.</p>
+
+<p>"Dusta mean as it were the other one&mdash;Hugh?" inquired the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe that's reet," said Job.</p>
+
+<p>Dick of the Syke was not to be beaten for lack of the logic of
+circumlocution.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what for do you say as Paul is weeping his insides out about his
+father, when he leaves it to other folks to put a bit of stone over him
+and a few scrats on it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I do say so," said Job, conclusively.</p>
+
+<p>"And maybe you've got your reasons, Job," said the blacksmith with
+insinuating suavity.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I have," said the mason. Then softening, he added, "I don't mind
+telling you, neither. Yesterday morning when I went to wark I found Paul
+Ritson lying full length across his father's grave. His clothes were
+soaking with dew, and his face was as white as a Feb'uary mist, and
+stiff and set like, and his hair was frosted over same as a pane in the
+church window."</p>
+
+<p>"Never!"</p>
+
+<p>"He was like to take no note of me, but I gave him a shake, and called
+out, 'What, Mr. Paul! why, what, man! what's this?'"</p>
+
+<p>"And what ever did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say! Nowt. He get hissel' up&mdash;and gay stiff in the limbs he looked, to
+be sure&mdash;and walked off without a word."</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum on the tool chest had removed his pipe from between his lips
+during the mason's narrative, and listened with a face of blank
+amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, that is a stiffener," he said, drawing a long breath.</p>
+
+<p>"What's a stiffener?" said Job, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"That 'at you're telling for gospel truth." Then, turning to the
+blacksmith, the peddler pointed the shank of his pipe at the mason, and
+said: "What morning was it as he found Paul Ritson taking a bath to
+hissel' in the kirk-yard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yesterday morning," said the smith.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he bangs them all at lying!" said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>"What dusta say?" shouted Job, with sudden fury.</p>
+
+<p>"As you've telt us a lie," answered Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>"Sista, Gubblum, if you don't take that word back I'll&mdash;I'll throw you
+into the water-butt!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what would I do while you were thrang at that laal job?" asked the
+peddler.</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Sec a rumpus!" he said; "you're too sudden in your temper, Job."</p>
+
+<p>"Some folks are ower much like their namesakes in the Bible," said
+Gubblum, resuming his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what for did he say it worn't true as I found young Ritson
+yesterday morning wet to the skin in the church-yard?" said Job,
+ignoring the peddler.</p>
+
+<p>"Because he warn't there," said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>Job lost all patience.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," he said, "if you're not hankering for a cold bath on a
+frosty morning, laal man, I don't know as you've got any call to say
+that again!"</p>
+
+<p>"He warn't there," the "laal man" muttered doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith had plunged his last heat into the water trough to cool,
+and a cloud of vapor filled the smithy.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord A'mighty!" he said, laughing, "that's the way some folks go
+off&mdash;all of a hiss and a smoke."</p>
+
+<p>"He warn't there," mumbled the peddler again, impervious to the homely
+similitude.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you so certain sure?" said Dick of the Syke. "You warn't there
+yourself, I reckon."</p>
+
+<p>"No; but I was somewhere else, and so was Paul Ritson. I slept at the
+Pack House in Kezzick night afore last, and he did the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see him there?" said the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"No; but Giles Raisley saw him, and he warn't astir when Giles went on
+his morning shift at eight o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith broke into a loud guffaw.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell us how he was at the Hawk and Heron in London at midsummer."</p>
+
+<p>"And so he was," said Gubblum, unabashed.</p>
+
+<p>"Willy-nilly, ey?" said the blacksmith, pausing over the anvil with
+uplifted hammer, the lurid reflection of the hot iron on his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe he had his reasons for denying hisself," said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith laughed again, tapped the iron with the hand-hammer, down
+came the sledge, and the flakes flew.</p>
+
+<p>Two miners entered the smithy.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning, John; are ye gayly?" said one of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Gayly, gayly! Why, it's Giles hissel'!"</p>
+
+<p>"Giles," said the peddler, "where was Paul Ritson night afore last?"</p>
+
+<p>"Abed, I reckon," chuckled one of the new-comers.</p>
+
+<p>"Where abed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, don't ax me. Wait&mdash;night afore last? That was the night he slept
+at Janet's, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum's eyes twinkled with triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"What, did I tell you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What call had he to sleep at Keswick?" said the blacksmith; "it's
+no'but four miles from his own bed at the Ghyll."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, now, when ye ax the like o' that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Tom, the postman, stopped his grindstone and snuckered huskily:</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe he's had a fratch with yon brother&mdash;yon Hugh."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm on the morning shift this week, and Mother Janet she said: 'Giles,'
+she said, 'the brother of your young master came late last night for a
+bed.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Job, what do you say to that?" shouted the blacksmith above the
+pulsating of the bellows, and with the sharp white lights of the leaping
+flames on his laughing face.</p>
+
+<p>"Say! That they're a pack of liars!" said the mason, catching up his
+untempered chisels and flinging out of the smithy.</p>
+
+<p>When he had gone, Gubblum removed his pipe and said calmly: "He's ower
+much like his Bible namesake in temper&mdash;that's the on'y fault of Job."</p>
+
+<p>The parson, in the field outside, had stood in the turn-rows, resting on
+his plow-handles. He had been drawling "Bonny lass, canny lass;" but,
+catching the sound of angry words, he had paused and listened. When Job,
+the mason, flung away, he returned to his plowing, and disappeared down
+the furrow, the boy whistling at his horse's head.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mattha, it is thee?" said the blacksmith, observing for the first
+time the second of the new-comers; "and how fend ye?"</p>
+
+<p>"Middling weel, John, middling weel," said Matthew, in a low voice,
+resting on the edge of the trough.</p>
+
+<p>It was Laird Fisher, more bent than of old, with deeper lines in his
+grave face and with yet more listless eyes. He had brought two picks for
+sharpening.</p>
+
+<p>"Got your smelting-house at wark down at the pit, Mattha?" asked the
+blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, John, it's at wark&mdash;it's at wark."</p>
+
+<p>The miller had turned to go, but he faced about with ready anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, yes, and a pretty pickle you and your gaffer's like to make of
+me. Wad ye credit it, John? they've built their smelting-house within
+half a rod of my mill. Half a rod; not a yard mair. When your red-hot
+rubbish is shot down your bank, where's it going to go, ey? That's what
+I want to know&mdash;where's it going to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, into your mill, of course," said Gubblum, with a wink, from the
+tool-chest. "That'll maybe help you to go by fire when you can't raise
+the wind."</p>
+
+<p>"Verra good for thee, Gubblum," laughed the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have the law on them safe enough," said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"And where's your damages to come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"From the same spot as all the rest of the brass&mdash;that's good enough for
+me."</p>
+
+<p>Matthew's voice followed the insinuating guffaw.</p>
+
+<p>"I spoke to Master Hugh yesterday. I telt him all you said about a
+wall."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"He won't build it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. Why didsta not speak to Paul?"</p>
+
+<p>"No use in that," said Matthew, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, young Hugh is a gaffer," exclaimed the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"And Paul has no say in it except finding the brass, ey?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mak' no doubt as you're reet, Dick," said Matthew, meekly.</p>
+
+<p>"It's been just so since the day auld Allan died," said the blacksmith.
+"He hadn't been a week in his grave before Hugh bought up Mattha's
+royalty in the Hammer Hole, and began to sink for iron. He's never found
+much ore, as I've heard tell on, but he goes ahead laying down his
+pumping engines, and putting up his cranes, and boring his mill-races,
+just as if he was proper-ietor of a royal mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh is the chain-horse, and Paul's no'but the mare in the shafts,"
+said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>"And the money comes somehow," said Tom o' Dint, who had finished the
+knife and was testing its edge in whittling a stick.</p>
+
+<p>Matthew got up from his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come again for the picks, John," he said quietly; and the old man
+stepped out of the bright glow into the chill haze.</p>
+
+<p>"Mattha has never been the same since laal Mercy left him," said the
+blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"Any news of her?" asked the peddler.</p>
+
+<p>"Ax Tom o' Dint; he's the postman, and like to know if anybody in
+Newlands gets the scribe of a line from the wench," said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>Tom shakes his head. "You could tell summat, an' you would, ey, Tom?"
+said the blacksmith, showing his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you misliken me," said the rural messenger in his husky tones;
+"I'm none of your Peeping Toms." And the postman drew up his head with
+as much pride of office as could be assumed by a gentleman of bowed legs
+and curtailed stature.</p>
+
+<p>"It baffles me as Mattha hisself could make nowt of his royalty in the
+Hammer Hole, if there was owt to make out of it," said the miller from
+the gate, buttoning his coat up to his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard as he had a mind to try his luck again," said Giles Raisley.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay, nowt of the sort," said the blacksmith. "When the laal lass
+cut away and left the auld chap he lost heart and couldn't bear the
+sight of the spot where she used to bide. So he started back to his bit
+place on Coledale Moss. But Hugh Ritson followed him and bought up his
+royalty&mdash;for nowt, as they say&mdash;and set him to wark for wage in his own
+sinking&mdash;the same that ruined the auld man lang ago."</p>
+
+<p>"And he's like to see a fortun' come out of it yet," said Giles.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't be Mattha's fortun', then."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, never fear," said the miner.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum shook the ashes out of his pipe, and said meditatively,
+"Mattha's like me and the cuckoo."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, man, how's that?" said the blacksmith, girding his leather apron
+in a band about his waist. A fresh heat was in the fire; the bellows
+were belching; the palpitating flames were licking the smoky hood. A
+twinkle lurked in the blacksmith's eye. "How's that?" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"He's allus stopping short too soon," said Gubblum. "My missis, she said
+to me last back end, 'Gubblum,' she said, 'dusta mind as it's allus
+summer when the cuckoo is in the garden?' 'That's what is is,' I said.
+'Well,' she said, 'dusta not think it wad allus be summer if the cuckoo
+could allus be kept here?' 'Maybe so,' I says; 'but easier said nor
+done.' 'Shaf on you for a clothead!' says she; 'nowt so simple. When you
+get the cuckoo into the garden, build a wall round and keep it in.' And
+that's what I did; and I built it middling high, too, but it warn't high
+enough, for, wad ye think it, one day I saw the cuckoo setting off, and
+it just skimmed the top of that wall by a bare inch. Now, if I'd no'but
+put another stone&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A loud peal of laughter was Gubblum's swift abridgment. The peddler
+tapped the mouth of his pipe on his thumb-nail, and smiled under his
+shaggy brows.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Parson Christian finished his plowing, the day was far spent. He
+gave the boy a shilling as day's wage for leading the horses, drove the
+team back to their owner, Robert Atkinson, paid five shillings for the
+day's hire of them, and set out for home. On the way thither he called
+at Henry Walmsley's, the grocery store in the village, and bought half a
+pound of tea, a can of coffee, and a stone of sugar; then at Randal
+Alston's, the shoemaker's, and paid for the repairing of a pair of
+boots, and put them under his arm; finally, he looked in at the Flying
+Horse and called for a pot of ale, and drank it, and smoked a pipe and
+had a crack with Tommy Lowthwaite, the publican.</p>
+
+<p>The mist had risen as the day wore on, and now that the twilight was
+creeping down the valley, the lane to the vicarage could be plainly seen
+in its yellow carpeting of fallen leaves. An outer door of the house
+stood open, and a rosy glow streamed from the fire into the porch. Not
+less bright was the face within that was waiting to welcome the old
+vicar home.</p>
+
+<p>"Back again, Greta, back again!" shouted the parson, rolling into the
+cozy room with his ballast under either arm. "There&mdash;wait&mdash;fair play,
+girl&mdash;ah, you rogue!&mdash;now that's what I call a mean advantage!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a smack of lips, a little laugh in a silvery voice with a
+merry lilt in it, and then a deep-toned mutter of affected protestation
+breaking down into silence and a broad smile.</p>
+
+<p>At arms-length Greta glanced at the parson's burdens, and summoned an
+austere look.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, didn't I tell you never to do it again?" she said, with an
+uplifted finger and an air of stern reproof.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you now?" said the parson, with an expression of bland
+innocence&mdash;adding, in an accent of wonderment: "What a memory I have, to
+be sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave such domestic duties to your domestic superiors," said the girl,
+keeping a countenance of amazing severity. "Do you hear me, you dear old
+darling?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hear, I hear," said the old man, throwing his purchases on the floor
+one by one. "Why, bless me, and here's Mr. Bonnithorne," he added,
+lifting his eyes to the chimney-corner, where the lawyer sat toasting
+his toes. "Welcome, welcome."</p>
+
+<p>"Peter, Peter!" cried Greta, opening an inner door.</p>
+
+<p>A gaunt old fellow, with only one arm, shambled into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Peter, take away these things to the kitchen," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>The old man glanced down at the parson's purchases with a look of
+undisguised contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"He's been at it again, mistress," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The parson had thrown off his coat, and was pushing away his long boots
+with the boot-jack.</p>
+
+<p>"And how's Mr. Bonnithorne this rusty weather? Wait, Peter, give me the
+slippers out of the big parcel. I got Randal Alston to cut down my old
+boots into clock sides, and make me slippers out of the feet. Only
+sixpence, and see what a cozy pair. Thank you, Peter. So you're well,
+Mr. Bonnithorne. Odd, you say? Well, it is, considering the world of
+folk who are badly these murky days."</p>
+
+<p>Peter lifted the boots and fixed them dexterously under the stump of his
+abridged member. The tea and coffee he deposited in his trousers'
+pockets, and the sugar he carried in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be never no living with him," he muttered in Greta's ear as he
+passed out. "Don't know as I mind his going to plow&mdash;that's a job for a
+man with two hands&mdash;but the like o' this isn't no master's wark."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me!" exclaimed the parson, who was examining his easy-chair
+preparatory to sitting in it, "a new cushion&mdash;and a bag on the wall for
+my specs&mdash;and a shelf for my pipes&mdash;and a&mdash;a&mdash;what do you call this?"</p>
+
+<p>"An antimacassar, Mr. Christian," the lawyer said.</p>
+
+<p>"I wondered was he ever going to see any difference," said Greta, with
+dancing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, and red curtains on the windows, and a clean print counterpane
+on the settle&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A chintz&mdash;a chintz," interposed Greta, with a mock whimper.</p>
+
+<p>"And the old rosewood clock in the corner as bright as a looking-glass,
+and the big oak cabinet all shiny with oil&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Varnish, sir, varnish."</p>
+
+<p>"And all the carvings on it as fresh as a new pin&mdash;St. Peter with his
+great key, and the rich man with his money-bag trying to defy the fiery
+furnace."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I say you would scarcely know your own house when you came home
+again?" said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>She was busying herself at spreading the cloth on the round table and
+laying the parson's supper.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian was revolving on his slippered toes, his eyes full of
+child-like amazement, and a maturer twinkle of knowingness lurking in
+that corner of his aged orbs that was not directly under the fire of
+the girl's sharp, delighted gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Deary me, have you a young lady at home, Mr. Bonnithorne?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know I am a bachelor, Mr. Christian," said the lawyer, demurely.</p>
+
+<p>"So am I&mdash;so am I. I never knew any better&mdash;not until our old friend
+Mrs. Lowther died and left me to take charge of her daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother should have asked me to take charge of Mr. Christian, shouldn't
+she, Mr. Bonnithorne?" said Greta, with roguish eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's something in that," said the parson, with a laugh. "Peter
+was getting old and a bit rusty in the hinges, you know, and we were
+likely to turn out a pair of old crows fit for nothing but to scare good
+Christians from the district. But Greta came to the musty old house,
+with its dust and its cobwebs, and its two old human spiders, like a
+slant of sunlight on a muggy day. Here's supper&mdash;draw up your chair, Mr.
+Bonnithorne, and welcome. It's my favorite dish&mdash;she knows it&mdash;barley
+broth and a sheep's head, with boiled potatoes and mashed turnips. Draw
+up your chair&mdash;but where's the pot of ale, Greta?"</p>
+
+<p>"Peter! Peter!"</p>
+
+<p>The other spider presently appeared, carrying a quart jug with a little
+mountain of froth&mdash;a crater bubbling over and down the sides.</p>
+
+<p>"Been delving for potatoes to-day, Peter?" said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>Peter answered with a grumpy nod of his big head.</p>
+
+<p>"How many bushels?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe a matter of twelve," muttered Peter, shambling out.</p>
+
+<p>Then the parson and his guest fell to.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a happy man, Mr. Christian," said Mr. Bonnithorne, as Greta left
+the room on some domestic errand.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"No call for grace," he said, "with all the luxuries of life thrown into
+one's lap&mdash;that's the worst of living such a happy life. No trials, no
+cross&mdash;nothing to say but 'Soul, take thine ease'&mdash;and that's bad when
+you think of it.... Have some sheep's head, Mr. Bonnithorne; you've not
+got any tongue&mdash;here's a nice sweet bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Christian. I came round to pay the ten shillings for
+Joseph Parkinson's funeral sermon last Sunday sennight, and the one
+pound two half-yearly allowance from the James Bolton charity for poor
+clergy-men."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! they may well say it never rains but it pours," said the
+parson. "I called at Henry Walmsley's and Robert Atkinson's on my way
+home from the crossroads, and they both paid me their Martinmas
+quarterage&mdash;Henry five shillings, and Robert seven shillings&mdash;and when I
+dropped in on Randal Alston to pay for the welting and soling of my
+shoes he said they would come to one and sixpence, but that he owed me
+one and seven-pence for veal that Peter sold him, so he paid me a penny,
+and we are clear from the beginning of the world to this day."</p>
+
+<p>"I also wanted to speak about our young friend Greta," said Mr.
+Bonnithorne, softly. "I suppose you are reconciled to losing her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Losing her?&mdash;Greta!" said the parson, laying down his knife. Then
+smiling, "Oh, you mean when Paul takes her&mdash;of course, of course&mdash;only
+the marriage will not be yet awhile&mdash;he said so himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Marriage with Paul&mdash;no," said Mr. Bonnithorne, clearing his throat and
+looking grave.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian glanced into the lawyer's face uneasily and lapsed into
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Christian, you were left guardian of Greta Lowther by our dear
+friend, her mother. It becomes your duty to see that she does the best
+for her future welfare and happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, surely!" said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"You are an old man, Mr. Christian, and she is a young girl. When you
+and I are gone, Greta Lowther will still have the battle of life before
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Please God&mdash;please God!" said the parson, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it well that you should see that she shall have a husband that
+can fight it with her side by side?"</p>
+
+<p>"So she shall, so she shall&mdash;Paul is a manly fellow, and as fond of her
+as of his own soul&mdash;nay, as I tell him, it's idolatry and a sin before
+God, his love of the girl."</p>
+
+<p>"You're wrong, Mr. Christian. Paul Ritson is no fit husband for Greta.
+He is a ruined man. Since his father's death he has allowed the Ghyll to
+go to wreck. It is mortgaged to the last blade of grass. I know it."</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian shifted his chair from the table and gazed into the
+fire with bewildered eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew he was in trouble," he said, "but I didn't guess that things
+wore so grave a look."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see that he is shattered in mind as well as purse?" said the
+lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; I can't say that I do see that. He's a little absent sometimes,
+but that's all. When I talk of Matthew Henry and discuss his
+commentaries, or recite the story of dear Adam Clarke, he is a
+little&mdash;just a little forgetful&mdash;that's all&mdash;yes, that is all."</p>
+
+<p>"Compared with his brother&mdash;what a difference!" said Mr. Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there is a difference," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Such spirit, such intelligence&mdash;he'll be the richest man in Cumberland
+one of these days. He has bought up a royalty that is sweating ore, and
+now he is laying down pumping engines and putting up smelting-houses,
+and he is getting standing orders to fix a line of railway for the ore
+he is fetching up."</p>
+
+<p>"And where did the money come from?" asked the parson; "the money to
+begin?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne glanced up sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"It was his share of his father's personalty."</p>
+
+<p>"A big tree from such a little acorn," said the parson, meditatively,
+"and quick growth, too."</p>
+
+<p>"There's no saying what intelligence and enterprise will not do in this
+world, Mr. Christian," said the lawyer, who seemed less certain of the
+next. "Hugh Ritson is a man of spirit and brains. Now, that's the
+husband for Greta&mdash;that is, if you can get him&mdash;and I don't know that
+you can&mdash;but if it were only possible&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian faced about.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, gravely, "the girl is not up for sale, and
+the richest man in Cumberland can't buy her. The thirty pieces of silver
+for which Judas sold his master may have been smelted and coined afresh,
+but not a piece of that money shall touch fingers of mine!"</p>
+
+<p>"You mistake me, Mr. Christian, believe me, you do," protested the
+lawyer, with an aggrieved expression. "I was speaking in our young
+friend's interests. Whatever occurs, I beg of you, as a friend and
+well-wisher of the daughter of Robert Lowther, now in his grave, never
+to allow her to marry Paul Ritson."</p>
+
+<p>"That shall be as God wills it," said the parson quietly.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer had risen and drawn on his great-coat.</p>
+
+<p>"She can stay here with me," continued the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"No, she should marry now," said Mr. Bonnithorne, stepping to the door.
+"She's all but of age. It is hardly fair to keep her."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what do you mean?" asked the parson, a puzzled look on his face.</p>
+
+<p>"She is rich and she is young. Her wealth can buy comforts, and her
+youth win pleasures."</p>
+
+<p>The good old Christian opened wide his great gray eyes with a blank
+expression. He glanced vacantly about the simple room, rose to his feet,
+and sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of that before," he said, faintly, and staring long
+into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>There was a heavy foot on the path outside. The latch was lifted, and
+Paul Ritson stepped into the room. At the sound of his step Greta
+tripped through the inner door, all joy and eagerness, to welcome him.
+The parson got up and held out both hands, the clouds gone from his
+beaming face.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good-night," said the lawyer, opening the door. "I've four long
+miles before me. And how dark! how very dark!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson was in truth a changed man.</p>
+
+<p>His face was pale and haggard, and his eyes were bleared and heavy. He
+dropped with a listless weariness into the chair that Greta drew up to
+the fire. When he smiled the lips lagged back to a gloomy repose, and
+when he laughed the note of merriment rang hollow and fell short.</p>
+
+<p>"Just in time for a game with me, my lad!" said the parson. "Greta,
+fetch the chessboard and box."</p>
+
+<p>The board was brought, the pieces fixed; the parson settled himself at
+his ease, with slippers on the hearth-rug and a handkerchief across his
+knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Paul, I heard a great parl about you to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"About me! Where?" asked Paul, without much curiosity in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"At Mr. Proudfoot's smithy, while I was turning the fallows in the
+meadow down at the crossroads. Little Mr. Oglethorpe was saying that you
+slept at the Pack Horse, in Keswick, the night before last; but Mr. Job
+Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, said nay, and they had high words
+indeed, wherein Job called Mr. Oglethorpe all but his proper name, and
+flung away in high dudgeon."</p>
+
+<p>Paul moved his pawn and said, "I never slept at the Pack Horse in my
+life, Mr. Christian."</p>
+
+<p>Greta sat knitting at one side of the ingle. The kitten, with a bell
+attached to a ribbon about its neck, sported with the bows of her dainty
+slippers. Only the click of the needles, and the tinkle of the bell, and
+the hollow tick of the great clock in the corner broke the silence.</p>
+
+<p>At last Parson Christian drew himself up in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Paul, man, Paul&mdash;deary me, what a sad move! You're going back,
+back, back; once you could beat me five games to four. Now I can run
+away with you."</p>
+
+<p>The game soon finished, amid a chuckle from the parson, a bantering word
+from Greta, and a loud, forced laugh from Paul.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian lifted from a shelf a ponderous tome bound in leather
+and incased in green cloth.</p>
+
+<p>"I must make my day's entry," he said, "and get off to bed. I was astir
+before day-break this morning."</p>
+
+<p>Greta crept up behind the old man, and looked over his shoulder as he
+wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Nov. 21.&mdash;Retired to my lodging-room last night, and commended my
+all to God, and lay down, and fell asleep; but Peter minded the
+heifer that was near to calving; so he came and wakened me, and we
+went down and sealed her, and foddered her, and milked her. Spent all
+day plowing the low meadow, Peter delving potatoes. Called at the
+Flying Horse, and sat while I drank one pot of ale and no more, and
+paid for it. Received ten shillings from Lawyer Bonnithorne for
+funeral sermon, and one pound two from Bolton charity; also five
+shillings quarterage from Henry Walmsley, and seven from Robert
+Atkinson, and a penny to square accounts from Randal Alston, and so
+retired to my closet at peace with all the world. Blessed be God."</p></div>
+
+<p>The parson returned to its shelf the ponderous diary "made to view his
+life and actions in," and called through the inner door for his bedroom
+candle. A morose voice answered "Coming," and presently came.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Peter; and how's the meeting-house, and who preaches there
+next Sunday, Peter?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter grumbled out:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know as it's not yourself. I passed them my word as you'd
+exhort 'em a' Sunday afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"But nobody has ever asked me. You should have mentioned the matter to
+me first, Peter, before promising. But never mind, I'm willing, though
+it's a poor discourse they can get from me."</p>
+
+<p>Turning to Paul, who sat silent before the fire:</p>
+
+<p>"Peter has left us and turned Methodist," said the parson; "he is now
+Brother Peter Ward, and wants me to preach at the meeting-house. Well, I
+won't say nay. Many a good ordained clergyman has been dissenting
+minister as well. Good-night to you.... Peter, I wish you to get some
+whipcord and tie up the reel of my fishing-rod&mdash;there it is, on the
+rafters of the ceiling; and a bit more cord to go round the handle of my
+whip&mdash;it leans against the leads of the neuk window; and, Peter, I'm
+going to go to the mill with the oats to-morrow, and Robin Atkinson has
+loaned me his shandry and mare. Robin always puts a bushel of grain into
+the box, but it's light and only small feeding. I wish you to get a
+bushel of better to mix with it, and make it more worth the mare's labor
+to eat it. Good-night all; good night."</p>
+
+<p>Peter grumbled something beneath his breath and shambled out.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless him!" said Greta presently; and Paul, without lifting his
+eyes from the fire, said quietly:</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 17em;">
+"'Christe's lore, and His apostles twelve<br />
+He taught; but first he followed it himselve.'"<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Then there was silence in the little vicarage. Paul sat without
+animation until Greta set herself to bewitch him out of his moodiness.
+Her bright eyes, dancing in the rosy fire-light that flickered in the
+room; her high spirits bubbling over with delicious teasing and joyous
+sprightliness; her tenderness, her rippling laughter, her wit, her
+badinage&mdash;all were brought to the defeat and banishment of Paul's
+heaviness of soul. It was to no purpose. The gloom of the grave face
+would not be conquered. Paul smiled slightly into the gleaming eyes, and
+laughed faintly at the pouting lips, and stroked tenderly the soft hair
+that was glorified into gold in the glint of the fire-light; but the old
+sad look came back once and again.</p>
+
+<p>Greta gave it up at last. She rose from the hassock at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Sweetheart," she said, "I will go to bed. You are not well to-night, or
+you are angry, or out of humor."</p>
+
+<p>She waited a moment, but he did not speak. Then she made a feeble feint
+of leaving the room.</p>
+
+<p>At last Paul said:</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, I have something to say."</p>
+
+<p>She was back at her hassock in an instant. The laughter had gone from
+her eyes, and left a dewy wistfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"You are unhappy. You have been unhappy a long, long time, and have
+never told me the cause. Tell me now."</p>
+
+<p>The heavy face relaxed.</p>
+
+<p>"What ever put that in your head, little one?" he asked, in a playful
+tone, patting the golden hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me now," she said more eagerly. "Think of me as a woman fit to
+share your sorrows, not as a child to be pampered and played with, and
+never to be burdened with a man's sterner cares. If I am not fit to
+know your troubles, I am not fit to be your wife. Tell me, Paul, what it
+is that has taken the sunshine out of your life."</p>
+
+<p>"The sunshine has not been taken out of my life yet, little woman&mdash;here
+it is," said Paul, lightly, and he drew his fingers through the
+glistening hair.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's lucent eyes fell.</p>
+
+<p>"You are playing with me," she said gravely; "you are always playing
+with me. Am I so much a child? Are you angry with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Angry with you, little one? Hardly that, I think," said Paul, and his
+voice sunk.</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell me, sweetheart. You have something to say&mdash;what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to ask&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated. His heart was too full to speak. He began again.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it would be too great a sacrifice to give up&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember all you told me about my brother Hugh&mdash;that he said he
+loved you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said Greta, with a puzzled glance.</p>
+
+<p>"I think he spoke truly," said Paul, and his voice trembled.</p>
+
+<p>She drew back with agony in every line of her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Would it be ... do you think ... supposing I went away, far away, and
+we were not to meet for a time, a long time&mdash;never to meet again&mdash;could
+you bring yourself to love him and marry him?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta rose to her feet in agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Him&mdash;love him!&mdash;you ask me that&mdash;you!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl's voice broke down into sobs that seemed to shake her to the
+heart's core.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, darling, forgive me; I was blind&mdash;I am ashamed."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I could cry my eyes out!" she said, wiping away her tears. "Say you
+were only playing with me, then; say you were only playing; do say so,
+do!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will say anything&mdash;anything but the same words again&mdash;and they nearly
+killed me to say them."</p>
+
+<p>"And was this what you came to say?" Greta inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," he said, lifted out of his gloom by the excitement; "but
+another thing, and it is easier now&mdash;ten times easier now&mdash;to say it.
+Greta, do you think if I were to leave Cumberland and settle in another
+country&mdash;Australia or Canada, or somewhere far enough away&mdash;that you
+could give up home, and kindred, and friends, and old associations, and
+all the dear past, and face a new life in a new world with me? Could you
+do it?"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes sparkled. He opened his arms, and she flew to his embrace.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this your answer, little one?" he said, with choking delight. And a
+pair of streaming eyes looked up for a brief instant into his face.
+"Then we'll say no more now. I'm to go to London to-morrow night, and
+shall be away four days. When I return we'll talk again, and tell the
+good soul who lies in yonder. Peace be with him, and sweet sleep, the
+dear old friend!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul lifted up his hat and opened the door. His gloom was gone; his eyes
+were alive with animation. The worn cheeks were aflame. He stood erect,
+and walked with the step of a strong man.</p>
+
+<p>Greta followed him into the porch. The rosy fire-light followed her. It
+flickered over her golden hair, and bathed her beauty in a ruddy glow.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how free the air will breathe over there," he said, "when all this
+slavery is left behind forever! You don't understand, little woman, but
+some day you shall. What matter if it is a land of rain, and snow, and
+tempest? It will be a land of freedom&mdash;freedom, and life, and love. And
+now, Master Hugh, we shall soon be quits&mdash;very soon!"</p>
+
+<p>His excitement carried him away, and Greta was too greedy of his joy to
+check it with questions.</p>
+
+<p>They stood together at the door. The night was still and dark; the trees
+were noiseless, their prattling leaves were gone. Silent and empty as a
+vacant street was the unseen road.</p>
+
+<p>Paul held forth his hand to feel if it rained. A withered leaf floated
+down from the eaves into his palm.</p>
+
+<p>Then a footstep echoed on the path. It went on toward the village.
+Presently the postman came trudging along from the other direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Tom o' Dint!" cried Paul, cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>Tom stopped and hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was it I hailed on the road?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just now."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, who was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it was yourself."</p>
+
+<p>The little man trundled on in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"My brother, no doubt," said Paul, and he pulled the door after him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The next morning a bright sun shone on the frosty landscape. The sky was
+blue and the air was clear.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson sat in his room at the back of the Ghyll, with its window
+looking out on the fell-side and on the river under the leafless trees
+beneath. The apartment had hardly the appearance of a room in a Cumbrian
+homestead. It was all but luxurious in its appointments. The character
+of its contents gave it something of the odor of a by-gone age. Besides
+books on many shelves, prints, pictures in water and oil, and mirrors of
+various shapes, there was tapestry on the inside of the door, a bust of
+Dante above a cabinet of black oak, a piece of bas-relief in soapstone,
+a gargoyle in wood, a brass censer, a mediaeval lamp with open mouth,
+and a small ivory crucifix nailed to the wall above the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh himself sat at an organ, his fingers wandering aimlessly over the
+keys, his eyes gazing vacantly out at the window. There was a knock at
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," said the player. Mr. Bonnithorne entered and walked to a
+table in the middle of the floor. Hugh Ritson finished the movement he
+was playing, and then arose from the organ and drew an easy-chair to the
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Brought the deed?" he asked, quietly, Mr. Bonnithorne still standing.</p>
+
+<p>"I have, my dear friend, and something yet more important."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh glanced up: through his constant smile Mr. Bonnithorne was
+obviously agitated. Dropping his voice, the lawyer added, "Copies of the
+three certificates."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh smiled faintly. "Good; we will discuss the certificates first," he
+said, and drew his dressing-gown leisurely about him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne began to unfold some documents. He paused; his eye was
+keen and bright; he seemed to survey his dear friend with some
+perplexity; his glance was shadowed by a certain look of distrust; but
+his words were cordial and submissive, and his voice was, as usual, low
+and meek. "What a wonderful man you are. And how changed! It is only a
+few months since I had to whip up your lagging spirits at a great
+crisis. And now you leave me far behind. Not the least anxious! How
+different I am, to be sure. It was this very morning my correspondent
+sent me the copies, and yet I am here, five miles from home. And when
+the post arrived I declare to you that such was my eagerness to know if
+our surmises were right that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh interrupted in a quick, cold voice: "That you were too nervous to
+open his letter, and fumbled it back and front for an hour&mdash;precisely."</p>
+
+<p>Saying this, Hugh lifted his eyes quickly enough to encounter Mr.
+Bonnithorne's glance, and when they fell again a curious expression was
+playing about his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the papers," said Hugh, and he stretched forward his hand
+without shifting in his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, really, you are&mdash;really&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh raised his eyes again. Mr. Bonnithorne paused, handed the
+documents, and shuffled uneasily into a seat.</p>
+
+<p>One by one Hugh glanced hastily over three slips of paper. "This is
+well," he said, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well? I should say so, indeed. What could be better? I confess to you
+that until to-day I had some doubts. Now I have none."</p>
+
+<p>"Doubts? So you had doubts?" said Hugh, dryly "They disturbed your
+sleep, perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>The lurking distrust in Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes openly displayed itself,
+and he gazed full into the face of Hugh Ritson with a searching look
+that made little parley with his smile. "Then one may take a man's
+inheritance without qualm or conviction?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh pretended not to hear, and began to read aloud the certificates in
+his hand. "Let me see, this is first&mdash;Registration of Birth."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "Luckily, very luckily, the registration of
+birth is first."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh read:</p>
+
+<p>"Name, Paul. Date of birth, August 14, 1845. Place of birth, Russell
+Square, London. Father's name, Robert Lowther. Mother's name, Grace
+Lowther; maiden name, Ormerod."</p>
+
+<p>"Then this comes second&mdash;Registration of Marriage."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne rose in his eagerness and rubbed his hands together at
+the fire. "Yes, second," he said, with evident relish.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh read calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"Allan Ritson&mdash;Grace Ormerod&mdash;Register's office, Bow Street, Strand,
+London&mdash;June 12, 1847."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you say to that?" asked Mr. Bonnithorne, in an eager whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh continued without comment. "And this comes last&mdash;Registration of
+Birth."</p>
+
+<p>"Name, Hugh&mdash;March 25, 1848&mdash;Holme, Ravenglass, Cumberland&mdash;Allan
+Ritson&mdash;Grace Ritson (Ormerod)."</p>
+
+<p>"There you have the case in a nutshell," said Mr. Bonnithorne, dropping
+his voice. "Paul is your half-brother, and the son of Lowther. You are
+Allan Ritson's heir, born within a year of your father's marriage. Can
+anything be clearer?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh remained silently intent on the documents. "Were these copies made
+at Somerset House?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"And your correspondent can be relied upon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Assuredly. A solicitor in excellent practice."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he told what items he had to find, or did he make a general
+search?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was told to find the marriage or marriages of Grace Ormerod and to
+trace her offspring."</p>
+
+<p>"And these were the only entries?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne nodded again.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh twirled the papers in his fingers, and then placed two of them side
+by side. His face wore a look of perplexity. "I am puzzled," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What puzzles you?" said Mr. Bonnithorne. "Can anything be plainer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. By these certificates I am two and a half years younger than Paul.
+I was always taught that there was only a year between us."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne smiled, and said in a superior tone:</p>
+
+<p>"An obvious ruse."</p>
+
+<p>"You think a child is easily deceived&mdash;true!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne preserved a smiling face.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I will proceed to the payment of the legacy, and you, no doubt, to
+the institution of your claim."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Hugh Ritson, with emphasis, rising to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"You know that if a bastard dies seized of an estate, the law justifies
+his title. He is then the bastard eigne. You must eject this man."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Hugh Ritson again. The lawyer glanced up inquiringly, and
+Hugh added: "That shall come later. Meantime the marriage must be
+brought about."</p>
+
+<p>"Your own marriage with Greta?"</p>
+
+<p>"Paul's."</p>
+
+<p>"Paul's?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, the very suppression of his tone giving
+it additional emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul's," repeated Hugh with grim composure. "He shall marry her."</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer had risen once more, and was now face to face with Hugh
+Ritson, glancing into his eyes with eager scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot mean it?" he said at length.</p>
+
+<p>"And why not?" said Hugh, placidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Because Paul is her brother&mdash;at least, her half-brother."</p>
+
+<p>"They don't know that."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne's breath seemed to be arrested.</p>
+
+<p>"But we know it, and we can't stand by and witness their marriage!" he
+said at length.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson leaned with his back to the fire. "We can, and shall," he
+said, and not a muscle of his face moved.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne surveyed his friend from head to foot, and then his own
+countenance relaxed.</p>
+
+<p>"You are trifling; but it will be no trifle to them when they learn that
+their billing and cooing must end. And from such a cause, too. It will
+be a terrible shock. The only question is, whether it would not be more
+humane to say nothing of the impediment until we have brought about
+another match. Last night, at Parson Christian's, I did what I could for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh smiled in return; a close observer might have seen that his was a
+cold mockery of the lawyer's own smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you were always humane, Bonnithorne, and now your sensibilities
+are shocked. But when I spoke of marriage I meant the ceremony. Nothing
+more."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes twinkled.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I understand. You intend to separate them at the church
+door&mdash;perhaps at the altar rail. It is a shocking revenge. My very skin
+creeps!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh laughed lightly, and walked to the window. A slant of sunshine fell
+on his upturned face. When he turned his head and broke silence he spoke
+in a deep, harsh voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I was humane, too. When she spoke of marriage with Paul, I hinted at an
+impediment. She ridiculed the idea; scoffed at it." Another light laugh,
+and then a stern solemnity. "She insulted me&mdash;palpably, grossly,
+brutally. What did she say? Didn't I tell you before? Why, she said&mdash;ha!
+ha! would you believe it?&mdash;she said she'd rather marry a plowboy than
+such a gentleman as me. That was her very word."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's face was now dark with passion, while laughter was on his
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>"She shall marry her plowboy, to her lifelong horror and disgrace. I
+promised her as much, and I will keep my word!"</p>
+
+<p>"A terrible revenge!" muttered the lawyer, twitching uneasily at his
+finger-nails.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! You don't know to what lengths love may go. Even the feeble infant
+hearts of men whose minds are a blank can carry them any length in the
+devotion or the revenge of love!" He paused, and then added in a low
+tone, "She has outraged my love!"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely not past forgiveness?" interrupted Mr. Bonnithorne, nervously.
+"It would be a lifelong injury. And she is a woman, too."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh faced about.</p>
+
+<p>"But he is a man; and I have my reckoning with him also." Hugh Ritson
+strode across the room, and then stopped suddenly. "Look you,
+Bonnithorne, you said that with all your confidence on the night of my
+father's death, you had your doubts until to-day. But I had never a
+moment's doubt. Why? Because I had assurance from my mother's own lips.
+To me? No, but worse; to him. He knows well he is not my father's heir.
+He has known it since the hour of my father's death. He knows that I
+know it. Yet he has kept the lands to this day." Another uneasy
+perambulation. "Do you think of that when you talk of revenge?
+Manliness? He has none. He is a pitiful, truculent, groveling coward,
+ready to buy profit at any price. He has robbed me of my inheritance. He
+stands in my place. He is a living lie. Revenge? It will be
+retribution!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's composure was gone. Mr. Bonnithorne, not easily cowed,
+dropped his eyes before him. "Terrible, terrible!" he muttered again,
+and added with more assurance: "But you know I have always urged you to
+assert your right to the inheritance."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh was striding about the room, his infirm foot trailing heavily after
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Bonnithorne," he said, pausing, "when a woman has outraged the poor
+weak heart of one of the waifs whom fate flings into the gutter, he
+sometimes throws a cup of vitriol into her face, saying, 'If she is not
+for me, she is not for another;' or 'Where she has sinned, there let her
+suffer.' That is revenge; it is the feeble device of a man who thinks in
+his simple soul that when beauty is gone loathing is at hand." Another
+light trill of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"But the cup of retribution is not to be measured by the cup of
+vitriol."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne fumbled his papers nervously, and repeated beneath his
+breath, "Terrible, terrible!"</p>
+
+<p>"She has wronged me, Bonnithorne, and he has wronged me. They shall
+marry and they shall separate; and henceforward they shall walk together
+and yet apart, a gulf dividing them from each other, yet a wider gulf
+dividing both from the world; and so on until the end, and he and I and
+she and I are quits."</p>
+
+<p>"Terrible, terrible!" Mr. Bonnithorne mumbled again. "All nature rises
+against it."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it so? Then be it so," said Hugh, the flame subsiding from his
+cheek, and a cold smile creeping afresh about his lips. "Your sense of
+justice would have been answered, perhaps, if I had turned this bastard
+adrift penniless and a beggar, stopped the marriage, and taken by
+strategy the woman I could not win by love." The smile faded away. "That
+would have been better than the cup of vitriol, but not much better. You
+are a man of the world."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a terrible revenge," the lawyer muttered again&mdash;this time with a
+different intonation.</p>
+
+<p>"I repeat, they shall marry. No more than that," said Hugh. "I would
+outrage nature as little as I would shock the world."</p>
+
+<p>The sun had crept round to where the organ stood in one corner of the
+room. Hugh's passion had gradually subsided. He sidled on to the stool
+and began to play softly. A knock came to the door, and old Laird Fisher
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>"The gentleman frae Crewe is down at the pit about t' engine in the
+smelting-mill," said the old man.</p>
+
+<p>"Say I shall be with him in half an hour," said Hugh, and Laird Fisher
+left the room. Then Hugh put the papers in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"We have wasted too much time over the certificates&mdash;they can
+wait&mdash;where's the deed of mortgage?&mdash;I must have the money to pay for
+the new engine."</p>
+
+<p>"It is here," said the lawyer, and he spread a parchment on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh glanced hastily over it, and touched a hand-bell. When the maid
+appeared he told her to go to Mr. Paul, who was thatching in the
+stack-yard, and say he wished to see him at once. Then he returned to
+the organ and played a tender air. His touch was both light and
+strenuous.</p>
+
+<p>"Any news of his daughter?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, sinking his voice to a
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose daughter?" said Hugh, pausing and looking over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"The old man's&mdash;Laird Fisher's."</p>
+
+<p>"Strangely enough&mdash;yes. A letter came this morning."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stopped playing and thrust his hand into an inner pocket.
+But Mr. Bonnithorne hastened to show that he had no desire to pry into
+another man's secrets.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray don't trouble. Perhaps you'd rather not&mdash;just tell me in a word
+how things are shaping."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh laughed a little, unfolded a sheet of scented writing-paper, with
+ornamented border, and began to read:</p>
+
+<p>"'I am writing to thank you very much&mdash;' Here," tossing the letter to
+the lawyer, "read it for yourself." Then he resumed his playing.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne fixed his nose-glasses, and read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I am writing to thank you very much for your kind remembrance of me,
+it was almost like having your company, I live in hopes of seeing you
+soon, when are you coming to me? Sometimes I think you will never,
+never come, and then I can't help crying though I try not to, and I
+don't cry much. I don't go out very often London is far away, six
+miles, there are nice people here and nice children. Only think when
+my trouble is over and you come and take me home. How is poor
+father, does he look much older does he fret for me now? I wonder
+will he know me. I am quite well, only there is something the matter
+in my eyes. Sometimes when I wake up I can't see plain. Don't be long
+writing. My eyes are very sore and red to-day, and it is oh so lonely
+in this strange place. Mrs. Drayton is kind to me. Good-bye. She has
+a son, but he is always at meets, that is races, and I have never
+seen him. Write soon to your loving Mercy. The time is near."</p></div>
+
+<p>Hugh played on while Mr. Bonnithorne read. The lawyer, when he came to
+the end, handed the letter back with the simple comment:</p>
+
+<p>"Came this morning, you say? It was written last Tuesday&mdash;nearly a week
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh nodded his head over his shoulder, and continued to play. He swayed
+to and fro with an easy grace to the long sweeps of the music until the
+door opened sharply, and Paul entered with a firm step. Then he rose,
+picked a pen from the inkstand, and dipped it in the ink.</p>
+
+<p>Paul wore a suit of rough, light cloth, with leggins, and a fur cap,
+which he did not remove. His face was pale; decision sat on every line
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, Mr. Bonnithorne, if I don't shake hands," he said in his
+deep voice; "I'm at work, and none too clean."</p>
+
+<p>"This," said Hugh Ritson, twiddling the pen in his fingers, "this is the
+deed I spoke of yesterday. You sign there," pointing to a blank space in
+front of a little wafer.</p>
+
+<p>Then he placed one hand firmly on the upper part of the parchment, as if
+to steady it, and held out the pen.</p>
+
+<p>Paul made no approach to accepting it. He stretched forward, took hold
+of the document, and lifted it, casting Hugh's hand aside.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh watched him closely.</p>
+
+<p>"The usual formality," he said, lightly; "nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>Paul passed his eye rapidly over the deed. Then he turned to the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this the fourth or fifth mortgage that has been drawn?" he inquired,
+still holding the parchment before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, I can't say&mdash;I presume it is the&mdash;really, I hardly remember&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne's suavity of tone and customary smile broke down into
+silence and a look of lowering anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>Paul glanced steadfastly into his face.</p>
+
+<p>"But I remember," he said, with composure more embarrassing than
+violence. "It is the fifth. The Holme farm was first, and then came
+Goldscope. Hindscarth was mortgaged to the last ear of corn, and then it
+was the turn for Coledale. Now, it's the Ghyll itself, I see, house and
+buildings."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's face underwent a change, but his tone was unruffled as he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"If you please, we will come to business." Then with a sinister smile,
+"You resemble the French counsel&mdash;you begin every speech at the
+Creation. 'Let us go on to the Deluge,' said the judge."</p>
+
+<p>"To the Deluge!" said Paul; and he turned his head slowly to where Hugh
+stood, holding the pen in one hand and rapping the table with the
+knuckles of the other. "Rather unnecessary. We're already under water."</p>
+
+<p>The passion in Hugh Ritson's face dropped to a look of sullen anger. But
+he mastered his voice, and said quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"The engineer from Crewe is waiting for me at the pit. I have wasted the
+whole morning over these formalities. Come, come, let us have done. Mr.
+Bonnithorne will witness the signature."</p>
+
+<p>Paul had not shifted his steadfast gaze from his brother's face. Hugh
+dodged his glance at first, and then met it with an expression of
+audacity.</p>
+
+<p>Still holding the parchment before him, Paul said quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"To-night I leave home for London, and shall be absent four days. Can
+this business wait until my return?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, it can't," said Hugh with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Paul dropped his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't take that tone with me, I warn you. Can this business wait?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean what I say&mdash;it can not."</p>
+
+<p>"On my return I may have something to tell you that will affect this and
+the other deeds. Once more, can it wait?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you sign&mdash;yes or no?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Paul looked steady and straight into his brother's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You are draining away my inheritance&mdash;you are&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this word Hugh's smoldering temper was afire.</p>
+
+<p>"Your inheritance?" he broke out in his bitterest tones. "It is late in
+the day to talk of that. Your inheritance&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But he stopped. The expression of audacity gave place to a look of blank
+bewilderment. Paul had torn the parchment from top to bottom, and flung
+it on the table, and in an instant was walking out of the room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Paul Ritson returned to the stack-yard, and worked vigorously three
+hours longer. A stack had been stripped by a recent storm, and he
+thatched it afresh with the help of a laborer and a boy. Then he stepped
+indoors, changed his clothes, and filled a traveling-bag. When this was
+done he went in search of the stableman. Natt was in his stable,
+whistling as he polished his harness.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring the trap round to the front at seven," he said, "and put my bag
+in at the back; you'll find it in the hall."</p>
+
+<p>By this time the night had closed in, and the young moon showed faintly
+over the head of Hindscarth. The wind was rising.</p>
+
+<p>Paul returned to the house, ate, drank, and smoked. Then he rose and
+walked upstairs and knocked at the door of his mother's room.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson was alone. A lamp burned on the table and cast a sharp white
+light on her face. The face was worn and very pale. Lines were plowed
+deep on it. She was kneeling, but she rose as Paul entered. He bent his
+head and kissed her forehead. There was a book before her; a rosary was
+in her hand. The room was without fire. It was chill and cheerless, and
+only sparsely furnished&mdash;sheep-skin rugs on the floor, texts on the
+walls, a carved oak clothes-chest in one corner, two square high-backed
+chairs and a small table, a bed, and no more.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going off, mother," said Paul; "the train leaves in an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"When do you return?" said Mrs. Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see&mdash;this is Saturday; I shall be back on Wednesday evening."</p>
+
+<p>"God be with you!" she said in a fervent voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, I spoke to Greta last night, and she promised. We shall soon be
+free of this tyranny. Already the first link of the chain is broken. He
+called me into his room this morning to sign a mortgage on the Ghyll,
+and I refused."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you are about to go away and leave everything in his hands!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson sat down and Paul put his hand tenderly on her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Better that than to have it wrested from me inch by inch&mdash;to hold the
+shadow of an inheritance while he grasps the substance. He knows all.
+His dark hints are not needed to tell me that."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet he is silent," said Mrs. Ritson, and her eyes fell on to her book.
+"And surely it is for my sake that he is so&mdash;if in truth he knows all.
+Is he not my son? And is not my honor his honor?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"If the honor of twenty mothers, as true and dear as you, were the
+stepping-stones to his interest, over those stones he would go. No, no;
+it is not honor, whether yours or his, that keeps him silent."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson glanced up.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not too hard on him? He is guiltless in the eye of the world,
+and that at least should plead for him. Forgive him. Do not leave your
+brother in anger!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing to forgive," said Paul. "Even if he knew nothing, I
+should still go away and leave everything. I could not live any longer
+under the shadow of this secret, bound by an oath. I would go, as I go
+now, with sealed lips, but a free heart. He should have his own before
+man&mdash;and I mine, before God."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson sat in silence; her lips trembled perceptibly, and her
+eyelids quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall soon leave you, my dear son," she said in a tremulous voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay, you shall not," he answered in an altered tone, half of
+raillery, half of tenderness; "you are coming with us&mdash;with Greta and
+me&mdash;and over there the roses will bloom again in your white cheeks."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall soon leave you, dearest," she repeated, and told her beads.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to dispel her sadness; he laughed, and she smiled feebly; he
+patted her head playfully. But she came back to the same words: "I shall
+soon leave you."</p>
+
+<p>The moon was shining at the full when he lifted his hat to go. It was
+sailing through a sky of fibrous cloud. The wind was high, and rattled
+the empty boughs of the tree against the window. Keen frost was in the
+air.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall see my father's old friend in London on Monday, and be back on
+Wednesday. Good-bye. Keep a good heart. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>She wept on his breast and clung to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, good-bye!" he repeated, and triad to disengage himself from
+her embrace.</p>
+
+<p>But she clung closer. It was as if she was to see him no more.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye!" she sobbed, and with the tears in his own eyes he laughed at
+her idle fears.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! ha! ha! one would think I was going for life&mdash;ha! ha&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>There was a scream on the frosty air without. His laugh died on his
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>"What was that?" he said, and drew a sharp breath.</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her face, whiter now than ever, and with tearless eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the cry of the bird that foretells death," she said in a
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed a little&mdash;boisterously.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay; you will be well and happy yet." Then he broke away.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Natt was sitting in the trap, and it was drawn up in the court-yard to
+the door. He was looking through the darkness at some object in the
+distance, and when Paul came up he was not at first conscious of his
+master's presence.</p>
+
+<p>"What were you looking at, Natt?" said Paul, pulling on his gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"I war wond'rin' whether lang Dick o' the Syke had kindled a fire
+to-night, or whether yon lowe on the side of the Causey were frae the
+new smelting-house."</p>
+
+<p>Paul glanced over the horse's head. A deep glow stood out against the
+fell. All around was darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"The smelting-house, I should say," said Paul, and jumped to his seat
+beside Natt.</p>
+
+<p>By one of the lamps that the trap carried, he looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"A quarter past seven. It will be smart driving, but you can give the
+mare her own time coming back."</p>
+
+<p>Then he took the reins, and in another moment they were gone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>At eight o'clock that night the sky was brilliantly lighted up, and the
+sound of many voices was borne on the night wind. The red flare came
+from the Syke; the mill was afire. Showers of sparks and sheets of flame
+were leaping and streaming into the sky. Men and women were hurrying to
+and fro, and the women's shrill cries mingled with the men's shouts. At
+intervals the brightness of the glare faded, and then a column of
+choking smoke poured out and was borne away on the wind. Dick, the
+miller, was there, with the scorching heat reddening his wrathful face.
+John Proudfoot had raised a ladder against the mill, and, hatchet in
+hand, was going to cut away the cross-trees; but the heat drove him
+back. The sharp snap of the flames told of timbers being ripped away.</p>
+
+<p>"No use&mdash;it's gone," said the blacksmith, dragging the ladder behind
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I telt them afore what their damned smelting-house would do for me!"
+said the miller, striding about in his impotent rage.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian was standing by the gate on the windward side of the
+mill-yard, with Laird Fisher beside him, looking on in silence at the
+leaping flames.</p>
+
+<p>"The wind is from the south," he said, "and a spark of the hot refuse
+shot down the bank has been blown into the mill."</p>
+
+<p>The mill was a wooden structure, and the fire held it like a serpent in
+its grip. People were coming and going from the darkness into the red
+glare, and out of the glare into the darkness. Among them was one
+stalwart figure that none noticed in the general confusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you a tarpaulin?" said this man, addressing those about him.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a big one on the stack at Coledale," answered another.</p>
+
+<p>"Run for it!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's of no use."</p>
+
+<p>"Damme, run for it!"</p>
+
+<p>The tone of authority was not to be ignored. In three minutes a huge
+tarpaulin was being dragged behind a dozen men.</p>
+
+<p>"Lay hold of the ropes and let us dip it into the river," shouted the
+same voice above the prevailing clangor. It was done. Dripping wet, the
+tarpaulin was pulled into the mill-yard.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's your ladder? Quick!"</p>
+
+<p>The ladder was raised against the scorching wooden walls.</p>
+
+<p>"Be ready to throw me the ropes," shouted the deep voice.</p>
+
+<p>A firm step was set on the lowest rung. There was a crackle of glass,
+and then a cloud of smoke streamed out of a broken window. For an
+instant the bright glare was obscured. But it burst forth afresh, and
+leaped with great white tongues into the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"The sheets are caught!" shouted the miller.</p>
+
+<p>They were flying around with the wind. A line of flame seemed to be
+pursuing them.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's the man on the ladder&mdash;dusta know?" cried John Proudfoot.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunnot," answered the miller.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant Hugh Ritson came up. The smoke was gone, and now a dark
+figure could be dimly seen high up on the mill-side. He seized the
+cross-trees with both hands and swung himself on to the raking roof.</p>
+
+<p>"Now for the ropes!" he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>The flames burst out again and illumined the whole sky; the dark mass of
+the fells could be seen far overhead, and the waters of the river in the
+bed of the valley glowed like amber. The stalwart figure stood out in
+the white light against the red glare, holding on to the cross-trees on
+the top of the mill, and with a wheel of crackling fire careering beside
+him.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no doubt of his identity, with the light on his strong
+face and tawny hair.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Paul Ritson!" shouted many a voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Damme, the ropes&mdash;quick!"</p>
+
+<p>The ropes were thrown and caught, and thrown again to the other side.
+Then the dripping tarpaulin was drawn over the mill until it covered the
+top and half the sides. The wheel burned out, and the iron axle came to
+the ground with a plunge.</p>
+
+<p>The fire was conquered; the night sky grew black; the night wind became
+voiceless. Then the busy throng had time for talk.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Paul?" asked Parson Christian.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, where is he?" said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a stunner, for sure&mdash;where is he?" said the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>None knew. When the flames began to fade he was missed. He had
+gone&mdash;none knew where.</p>
+
+<p>"Nine o'clock," said Parson Christian, turning his face toward home.
+"Sharp work, while it lasted, my lads!"</p>
+
+<p>Then there was the sound of wheels, and Natt drove his trap to the gate
+of the mill-yard.</p>
+
+<p>"You've just missed it, Natt," said John Proudfoot; "where have you
+been?"</p>
+
+<p>"Driving the master to the train."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson was standing by. Every one glanced from him to Natt.</p>
+
+<p>"The train?&mdash;master? What do you mean? Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Why, Master Paul," said Natt, with a curl of the lip. "I reckon it
+could scarce be Master Hugh."</p>
+
+<p>"When? What train?" said Parson Christian.</p>
+
+<p>"The eight o'clock to London."</p>
+
+<p>"Eight o'clock? London?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't I speak plain?"</p>
+
+<p>"And has he gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I's warrant he's gone."</p>
+
+<p>Consternation sat on every face but Natt's.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Next day was Sunday, and after morning service a group of men gathered
+about the church porch to discuss the events of the night before. In the
+evening the parlor of the Flying Horse was full of dalespeople, and many
+a sapient theory was then and there put forth to account for the
+extraordinary coincidence of the presence of Paul Ritson at the fire and
+his alleged departure by the London train.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson was not seen abroad that day. But early on Monday morning he
+hastened to the stable, called on Natt to saddle a horse, sprung on its
+back and galloped away toward the town.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was bitterly cold, and the rider was buttoned up to the
+throat. The air was damp; a dense veil of vapor lay on the valley and
+hid half the fells; the wintery dawn, with its sunless sky, had not the
+strength to rend it asunder; the wind had veered to the north, and was
+now dank and icy. A snow-storm was coming.</p>
+
+<p>The face of Hugh Ritson was wan and jaded. He leaned heavily forward in
+the saddle; the biting wind was in his eyes; he had a fixed look, and
+seemed not to see the people whom he passed on the road.</p>
+
+<p>Dick o' the Syke was grubbing among the fallen wreck of the charred and
+dismantled mill. When Hugh rode past him he lifted his eyes and muttered
+an oath beneath his breath. Old Laird Fisher was trundling a wheelbarrow
+on the bank of the smelting-house. The headgear of the pit-shaft was
+working. As Hugh passed the smithy, John Proudfoot was standing, hammer
+in hand, by the side of a wheelless wagon upheld by poles. John was
+saying, "Wonder what sec a place Mister Paul slept a' Saturday neet&mdash;I
+reckon that wad settle all;" and a voice from inside the smithy
+answered: "Nowt of the sort, John; it's a fate, I tell, tha." The
+peddler's pony was standing by the hasp of the gate.</p>
+
+<p>Never once lifting his eyes, with head bent and compressed lips, Hugh
+Ritson rode on in the teeth of the coming storm. There was another storm
+within that was uprooting every emotion of his soul. When he came to the
+vicarage he drew up sharply and rapped heavily on the gate. Brother
+Peter came shambling out at the speed of six steps a minute.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Christian at home?" asked Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know as he is," said Peter.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know as I've heard."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him I'll call as I come back, in two hours."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know as I'll see him."</p>
+
+<p>"Then go and look for him!" shouted Hugh, impatiently bringing down the
+whip on the flank of the horse.</p>
+
+<p>Brother Peter Ward turned about sulkily.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know as I will," he grumbled, and trudged back into the house.</p>
+
+<p>Then Hugh Ritson rode on. A thin sleet began to fall, and it drove hard
+into his face. The roads were crisp, and the horse sometimes stumbled;
+but the rider pressed on.</p>
+
+<p>In less than half an hour he was riding into the town. The people who
+were standing in groups in the market-place parted and made space for
+him. They hailed him with respectful salutations. He responded curtly or
+not at all. Notwithstanding his long ride, his face was still pale, and
+his lips were bloodless. He stopped at the court-yard leading to the
+front of the Pack Horse. Old Willie Calvert, the innkeeper, stood there,
+and touched his cap when Hugh approached him.</p>
+
+<p>"My brother Paul slept here a few nights ago, I hear?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"So he did," said the innkeeper.</p>
+
+<p>"What night was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What night? Let me see&mdash;it were a week come Wednesday."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see him yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay; I were lang abed."</p>
+
+<p>"Who did&mdash;Mistress Calvert?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ey&mdash;she did for sure&mdash;Janet" (calling up the court). "She'll tell ye
+all the ins and oots."</p>
+
+<p>A comfortable-looking elderly body in a white cap and print apron came
+to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"You saw my brother&mdash;Paul, you know&mdash;when he slept at your house last
+Wednesday night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, surely," said Janet.</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nowt. It was verra late&mdash;maybe twelve o'clock&mdash;and I was bolting
+up and had the cannel in my hand to get me to bed, and a rap came, and
+when I opened the door who should it be but Mister Paul. He said he
+wanted a bed, but he seem't to be in the doldrums and noways keen for a
+crack, so I ax't na questions, but just took him to the little green
+room over the snug and bid him good-night."</p>
+
+<p>"And next morning&mdash;did you see him then?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but a morning when he paid for his bed for he had nowther bite nor
+sup in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he look changed?&mdash;anything different about him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nowt but in low feckle someways, and maybe summat different
+dressed."</p>
+
+<p>"How different? What did he wear that night?"</p>
+
+<p>Pale as Hugh Ritson's face had been before, it was now white as a face
+in moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe a pepper and salt tweed coat, but I can't rightly call to mind at
+the minute."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh's great eyes stared out of his head. His tongue cleaved to his
+mouth, and for the moment denied him speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mistress Calvert. Here, Willie, my man, drink my health with
+the missis."</p>
+
+<p>So saying, he tossed a silver coin to the innkeeper, wheeled about, and
+rode off.</p>
+
+<p>"I can not mak' nowther head nor tail o' this," said the old man.</p>
+
+<p>"Of what&mdash;the brass?" said Janet.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, but that's soond enough, for sure, auld lass."</p>
+
+<p>"Then just thoo leave other folks's business to theirselves, and come
+thy ways in with thee. Thoo wert allus thrang a-meddlin'."</p>
+
+<p>The innkeeper had gone indoors and drawn himself a draught of ale.</p>
+
+<p>"I allus like to see the ins and oots o' things," he observed, with a
+twinkle in his eye, and the pot to his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind as you're not ower keen at seein' the ins and oots o' that
+pewter."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be keerful, auld lass."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's horse went clattering over the stones of the streets until
+it came to the house of Mr. Bonnithorne. Then Hugh drew up sharply,
+jumped from the saddle, tied the reins to the loop in the gate-pier, and
+rang the bell. In another minute he was standing in the breakfast-room,
+which was made comfortable by a glowing fire. Mr. Bonnithorne, in
+dressing-gown and slippers, rose from his easy-chair with a look of
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear of the fire at the mill on Saturday night?" asked Hugh in
+a faltering voice.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Very unlucky, very," said the lawyer. "The man will want recompense,
+and the law will support him."</p>
+
+<p>"Tut!&mdash;a bagatelle!" said Hugh, with a gesture of impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, if you say so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You've heard nothing about Paul?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne answered with a shake of his yellow head, and a look of
+inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>Then Hugh told him of the man at the fire, and of Natt's story when he
+drove up in the trap. He spoke with visible embarrassment, and in a
+voice that could scarcely support itself. But the deep fear that had
+come over him had not yet taken hold of the lawyer. Mr. Bonnithorne
+listened with a bland smile of amused incredulity. Hugh stopped with a
+shudder.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you thinking?" he asked, nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"That Natt lied."</p>
+
+<p>"As well say that the people at the fire lied."</p>
+
+<p>"No; you yourself saw Paul there."</p>
+
+<p>"Bonnithorne, like all keen-eyed men, you are short-sighted. I have
+something more to tell you. The people at the Pack Horse say that Paul
+slept at their house last Wednesday night. Now I know that he slept at
+home."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne smiled again.</p>
+
+<p>"A mistake as to the night," he said; "what can be plainer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't wriggle; look the facts in the face."</p>
+
+<p>"Facts?&mdash;a coincidence in evidence&mdash;a common error."</p>
+
+<p>"Would to God it were!" Hugh strode about the room in obvious
+perturbation, his eyes bent on the ground. "Bonnithorne, what is the
+place where the girl Mercy lives?"</p>
+
+<p>"An inn at Hendon."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they call it the Hawk and Heron?"</p>
+
+<p>"They do. The old woman Drayton keeps it."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's step faltered. He listened with a look of stupid
+consternation.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I never tell you that the peddler, Oglethorpe, said he saw Paul at
+the Hawk and Heron in Hendon?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne dropped back into his seat without a word. Conviction
+was taking hold of him.</p>
+
+<p>"What do the folks say?" he asked at length.</p>
+
+<p>"Say? That it was a ghost, a wraith, twenty things&mdash;the idiots!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you say, Mr. Ritson?"</p>
+
+<p>"That it was another man."</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer remained sitting, his eyes fixed and vacant.</p>
+
+<p>"What then? What if it is another man? Resemblances are common. We are
+all brothers. For example, there are numbers of persons like myself in
+the world. Odd, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very," said Hugh, with a hard laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"And what if there exists a man resembling your half-brother, Paul, so
+closely that on three several occasions he has been mistaken for him by
+competent witnesses&mdash;what does it come to?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to. God knows! I want to find out. Who is this man? What is he?
+Where does he come from? What is his business here? Why, of all places
+on this wide earth, does he, of all men alive, haunt my house like a
+shadow?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson was still visibly perturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"There's more in this matter than either of us knows," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne watched him for a moment in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you draw a painful inference&mdash;what is it?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" repeated Hugh, and added, absently, "who can tell?"</p>
+
+<p>Up and down the room he walked restlessly, his eyes bent on the floor,
+his face drawn down into lines. At length he stood and picked up the hat
+he had thrown on the couch.</p>
+
+<p>"Bonnithorne," he said, "you and I thought we saw into the heart of a
+mystery. Heaven pity us for blind moles! I fear we saw nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;what&mdash;how so&mdash;when&mdash;" Mr. Bonnithorne stammered, and then stopped
+short.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh had walked out of the room and out of the house. He leaped into the
+saddle and rode away.</p>
+
+<p>The wind had risen yet higher; it blew an icy blast from behind him as
+he cantered home. Through the hazy atmosphere a cloud of dun, vaporish
+red could be seen trailing over the dim fells. It poised above the ball
+crown of the Eel Crags like a huge supernatural bird with outstretched
+wings.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh held the reins with half-frozen hands. He barely felt the biting
+cold. His soul was in a tumult, and he was driven on by fears that were
+all but insupportable. For months a thick veil had overspread his
+conscience, and now, in an instant, and by an accident, it was being
+rent asunder. He had lulled his soul to sleep. But no opiate of
+sophistry could keep the soul from waking. His soul was waking now. He
+began to suspect that he had been acting like a scoundrel.</p>
+
+<p>At the vicarage he stopped, dismounted, and entered. Standing in the
+hall, he overheard voices in the kitchen. They were those of Brother
+Peter and little Jacob Berry, the tailor, who had been hired to sew by
+the day, and was seated on the dresser.</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard of such sights afore," the little tailor was saying. "When
+auld Mother Langdale's son was killed at wrustlin' down Borrowdale way,
+and Mother Langdale was abed with rheumatis, she saw him come to the
+bed-head a-dripping wet with blood, as plain as plain could be, and in
+less nor an hour after they brought him home to the auld body on a
+shutter&mdash;they did, for sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Shaf on sec stories! I don't know as some folks aren't as daft as
+Mother Langdale herself!" Peter muttered in reply.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson beat the door heavily with his riding-whip.</p>
+
+<p>"Parson Christian at home now?" he asked, when Peter opened it.</p>
+
+<p>"Been and gone," said Peter.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you tell him I meant to come back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know as I did."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh's whip came down impatiently on his leggins.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know anything?" he asked. "Do you know that you are now talking
+to a gentleman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know as I do," mumbled Peter, backing in again.</p>
+
+<p>"If Miss Greta is at home tell her I should be glad to speak with
+her&mdash;do you hear?" Peter disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh was left alone in the hall. He waited some minutes, thinking that
+Peter was carrying his message. Presently he overheard that worthy
+reopening the discussion on Mother Langdale's sanity with little Jacob
+in the kitchen. The deep damnation he desired just then for Brother
+Peter was about to be indicated by another lusty rap on the kitchen
+door, when the door of the parlor opened, and Greta herself stood on
+the threshold with a smile and an outstretched hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it was your voice," she said, and led the way in.</p>
+
+<p>"Your cordial welcome heaps coals of fire on my head, Greta. I cannot
+forget in what spirit we last talked and parted."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us think no more about it," said Greta, and she drew a chair for
+him to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>He remained standing, and as if benumbed by strong feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to speak of it&mdash;to ask pardon for it&mdash;I was in the wrong,"
+he said, falteringly.</p>
+
+<p>She did not respond, but sat down with drooping eyes. He paused, and
+there was an ominous silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know what I suffered, or what I suffer still. You are very
+happy. I am a miserable man. Greta, do you know what it is to love
+without being loved? How can you know? It is torture beyond the gift of
+words&mdash;misery beyond the relief of tears. It is not jealousy; that is no
+more than a vulgar kind of envy. It is a nameless, measureless torment."</p>
+
+<p>He paused again. She did not speak. His voice grew tremulous.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not one of the fools who think that the souls that are created for
+each other must needs come together&mdash;that destiny draws them from the
+uttermost parts of the earth&mdash;that, trifle as they will with their best
+hopes, fate is stronger than they are, and true to the pole-star of
+ultimate happiness. I know the world too well to believe nonsense like
+that. I know that every day, every hour, men and women are casting
+themselves away&mdash;men on the wrong women, women on the wrong men&mdash;and
+that all this is a tangle that will never, never be undone."</p>
+
+<p>He stepped up to where she sat and dropped his voice to a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta&mdash;permit me to say it&mdash;I loved you dearly. Would to Heaven I had
+not! My love was not of yesterday. It was you and I, I and you. That was
+the only true marriage possible to either of us from world's end to
+world's end. But Paul came between us; and when I saw you give yourself
+to the wrong man&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Greta had risen to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"You say you come to ask pardon for what you said, but you really come
+to repeat it." So saying, she made a show of leaving the room.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh stood awhile in silence. Then he threw off his faltering tone and
+drew himself up.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come," he said, "to warn you before it is too late. I have come
+to say, while it is yet time, never marry my brother, for as sure as God
+is above us, you will repent it with unquenchable tears if you do."</p>
+
+<p>Greta's eyes flashed with an expression of disdain.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said; "you have come to threaten me&mdash;a sure sign that you
+yourself have some secret cause for fear."</p>
+
+<p>It was a home-thrust, and Hugh was hit.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, I repeat it, you are marrying the wrong man."</p>
+
+<p>"What right have you to say so?"</p>
+
+<p>"The right of one who could part you forever with a word."</p>
+
+<p>Greta was sore perplexed. Like a true woman, she would have given half
+her fortune at that moment to probe this mystery. But her indignation
+got the better of her curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"It is false!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true!" he answered. "I could speak the word that would part you
+wider than the poles asunder."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I challenge you to speak it," she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>They faced each other, pale, and with quivering lips.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not my purpose. I have warned you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not believe your own warning," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>He winced, but said not a word.</p>
+
+<p>"You have come to me with an idle threat, and fear is written on your
+own face."</p>
+
+<p>He drew his breath sharply, and did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever it is, you do not believe it."</p>
+
+<p>He was making for the door. He came back a step.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I speak the word?" he said. "Can you bear it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me," she said, "and carry your falsehood with you!"</p>
+
+<p>He was gone in an instant. Then her anger cooled directly, and her
+woman's curiosity came back with a hundred-fold rebound.</p>
+
+<p>"Gracious Heaven! what did he mean?" she thought, and the hot flush
+mounted to her eyes. She had half a mind to call him back. "Could it be
+true?" The tears were now rolling down her cheeks. "He has a secret
+power over Paul&mdash;what is it?" She ran to the door. "Hugh! Hugh!" He was
+gone. The galloping feet of his horse were heard faint in the distance.
+She went back into the house and sat down, and wept galling tears of
+pride and vexation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>At midday Parson Christian came home from the fields to dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been away leading turf," he said, "from Cole Moss, for Robin
+Atkinson, to pay him for loaning me his gray mare on Saturday when I
+fetched my grain to the mill. Happen most of it is burned up,
+though&mdash;but that's no fault of Robin's. So now we neither owe t'other
+anything, and we're straight from the beginning of the world."</p>
+
+<p>Greta was bustling about with the very efficient hindrance of Brother
+Peter's assistance, to get the dinner on the table. She smiled, and
+sometimes tossed her fair head mighty jauntily, and laughed out loud
+with a touch of rattling gayety. But there were rims of red around her
+bleared eyes, and her voice, beneath all its noisy merriment, had a
+tearful lilt.</p>
+
+<p>The parson observed this, but said nothing about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Coming round by Harras End I met John Lowthwaite," he said, "and John
+would have me go into his house and return thanks for his wife's
+recovery from childbed. So I went in, and warmed me, and drank a pot of
+ale with them, and assisted the wife and family to return praise to
+God."</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was laid, little Jacob Berry came in from the kitchen, and all
+sat down together&mdash;Parson Christian and Greta, Brother Peter, and the
+tailor hired to sew.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! I'm Jack-of-all-trades, Greta, my lass," said the parson,
+after grace. "Old Jonathan Truesdale came running after me at the
+bridge, to say that Mistress Truesdale wanted me to go and taste the
+medicine that the doctor sent her from Keswick, and see if it hadn't
+opium in it, because it made her sleep. I sent word that I had business
+to take me the other way, but would send Miss Greta if she would go.
+Jonathan said his missus would be very thankful, for she was lonesome at
+whiles."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go, and welcome," said Greta. The rims about her eyes were growing
+deeper; the parson chattered on, to banish the tempest of tears that he
+saw was coming.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Peter, and how did the brethren at the meeting house like the
+discourse yesterday afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know as they thought you were varra soond on the point of
+'lection," muttered Peter from the inside of his bowl of soup.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you're right homely folk down there, and I'd have no fault to
+find if you were not a little too disputatious. What's the use of
+wrangling over doctrine? Right or wrong, it will matter very little to
+any of us in a hundred years. We're on our way to heaven, and, please
+God, there'll be no doctrine there."</p>
+
+<p>Greta could not eat. She had no appetite for food. Another appetite&mdash;the
+appetite of curiosity&mdash;was eating at her heart. She laid down her knife.
+The parson could hide his concern no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, my lass, you and that braw lad of yours are like David and
+Jonathan, and" (with a stern wag of his white head) "I'm not so sure
+that I won't turn myself into Saul and fling my javelin at him for
+envy."</p>
+
+<p>The parson certainly did not look too revengeful at that moment, with
+the mist gathering in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Talking of Saul," said little Jacob, "there's that story of the witch
+of Endor, and Saul seein' Sam'el when he was dead. I reckon as that's
+no'but another version of what happened at the fire a' Saturday neet."</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian glanced furtively at Greta's drooping head, and then
+meeting the tailor's eye, he put his finger to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>When dinner was over the parson lifted from the shelf the huge tome,
+"made to view his life and actions in." He drew his chair to the fire
+and began to turn over the earliest leaves. Greta had thrown on her
+cloak and was fixing her hat.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to see poor Mrs. Truesdale," she said. Then, coming behind
+the old man, and glancing over his shoulder at the book on his knees,
+"What are you looking for?" she asked, and smiled; "a prescription for
+envy?"</p>
+
+<p>The parson shook his old head gravely. "You must know I met young Mr.
+Ritson this morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; he was riding home from his iron pits, but stopped and asked me if
+I could tell him when his father, who is dead and gone, poor fellow,
+came first to these parts, and how old his brother Paul might be at that
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did he ask?" said Greta, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I scarce can say. I told him I could not tell without looking at
+my book. Let me see; it must be a matter of seven-and-twenty years ago.
+How old is your sweetheart, Greta?"</p>
+
+<p>"Paul is twenty-eight."</p>
+
+<p>"And this is the year seventy-five. Twenty-eight from
+seventy-five&mdash;that's forty-seven. Paul was a wee toddle, I remember.
+I'll look for forty-seven. Eighteen forty-four, forty-five,
+forty-six&mdash;here it is&mdash;forty-seven. And, bless me, the very page! Look,
+here we have it."</p>
+
+<p>Then the parson read this entry in his diary:</p>
+
+<p>"'Nov. 18th.&mdash;Being promised to preach at John Skerton's church, at
+Ravenglass, I got ready to go thither. I took my mare and set forward
+and went direct to Thomas Storsacre's, where I was to lodge. It rained
+sore all the day, and I was wet, and took off my coat and let it run an
+hour. Then we supped and sat discoursing by the fire till near ten
+o'clock of one thing and another, and, among the rest, of one Allan
+Ritson, who had newly settled at Ravenglass. Thomas said Allan was fresh
+from Scotland, being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and
+that they had a child, called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet
+walking.'</p>
+
+<p>"The very thing! Wait, here's something more:</p>
+
+<p>"'Nov. 19th (Lord's day).&mdash;Went to church, and many people came to
+worship. Parson Skerton read the prayers and Thomas Storsacre the
+lessons. I prayed, and preached from Matt. vii. 23, 24; then ceased, and
+dismissed the people. After service, Thomas brought his new neighbor,
+Allan Ritson, who asked me to visit him that day and dine. So I went
+with him, and saw his wife and child&mdash;an infant in arms. Mrs. Ritson is
+a woman of some education and much piety. Her husband is a rough, blunt
+dalesman, of the good old type.'</p>
+
+<p>"The very thing," the parson repeated, and he put a pipe spill in the
+page.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder why he wants it?" said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>She left Parson Christian still looking at his book, and went out on her
+errand.</p>
+
+<p>She was more than an hour gone, and when she returned, the winter's day
+had all but closed in. Only a little yellow light still lingered in the
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, they have sent for you from the Ghyll," said the parson, as she
+entered. "Mrs. Ritson wants to see you to-night. Natt, the stableman,
+came with the trap. But he has gone again."</p>
+
+<p>"I will follow him at once," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, my lass; the day is not young enough," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"I was never afraid of the dark," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>She took down a lantern and lighted it, drew her cloak more closely
+about her, and prepared to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Then take this paper to young Mr. Hugh. It's a copy of what is written
+in my book."</p>
+
+<p>Greta hesitated. But she could not tell Parson Christian what had passed
+between Hugh and herself. She took the paper and hastened away.</p>
+
+<p>The parson sat for a while before the fire. Then he rose, walked to the
+door and opened it. "Heaven bless the girl, it's snowing! What a night
+for the child to be abroad!" He returned in disturbed humor to the
+fireside.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Greta set out, the atmosphere was yellow and vaporish. The sky grew
+rapidly darker. As she reached the village, thin flakes of snow began to
+fall. She could feel them driven by the wind against her face, and when
+she came by the inn she could see them in the dull, yellow light.</p>
+
+<p>The laborers were leaving the fields, and, with their breakfast cans
+swung on their fork handles, they were drifting in twos and threes into
+the Flying Horse. It looked warm and snug within.</p>
+
+<p>She passed the little cluster of old houses, and scarcely saw them in
+the deepening night. As she went by the mill she could just descry its
+ruined roof standing out like a dark pyramid against the dun sky. The
+snow fell faster. It was now lying thick on her cloak in front, and on
+the windward face of the lantern in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>The road was heavier than before, and she had still fully a quarter of a
+mile to go. She hastened on. Passing the little church&mdash;Parson
+Christian's church&mdash;she met Job Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, coming
+out of the shed in the church-yard. "Bad night for a young lady to be
+from home, begging your pardon, miss," said Job, and went on toward the
+village, his bunch of chisels clanking over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>The wind soughed in the leafless trees that grew around the old roofless
+barn at the corner of the road that led to the fells. The gurgle of a
+half-frozen waterfall came from the distant Ghyll. Save for these sounds
+and the dull thud of Greta's step on the snow-covered road, all around
+was still.</p>
+
+<p>How fast the snow fell now. Yet Greta heeded it not at all. Her mind was
+busy with many thoughts. She was thinking of Paul as Parson Christian's
+great book had pictured him&mdash;Paul as a child, a little, darling babe,
+not yet able to walk. Could it be possible that Paul, her Paul, had once
+been that? Of course, to think like this was foolishness. Every one must
+have been young at some time. Only it seemed so strange. It was a sort
+of mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Then she thought of Paul the man&mdash;Paul as he had been, gay and
+heartsome; Paul as he was, harassed by many cares. She thought of her
+love for him&mdash;of his love for her&mdash;of how they were soon, very soon, to
+join hands and face the unknown future in an unknown land. She had
+promised. Yes, and she would go.</p>
+
+<p>She thought of Paul in London, and how soon he would be back in
+Newlands. This was Monday, and Paul had promised to come home on
+Wednesday. Only two days more! Yet how long it would be, after all!</p>
+
+<p>Greta had reached the lonnin that went up to the Ghyll. She would soon
+be there. How thick the trees were in the lane! They shut out the last
+glimmer of light from the sky. The lantern burned yellow amidst the snow
+that lay on it like a crust.</p>
+
+<p>Then Greta thought of Mrs. Ritson. It was strange that Paul's mother had
+sent for her. They were friends, but there had never been much intimacy
+between them. Mrs. Ritson was a grave and earnest woman, a saintly soul,
+and Greta's lightsome spirit had always felt rebuked in her presence.
+Paul loved his mother, and she herself must needs love as well as
+reverence the mother of Paul. It was Paul first and Paul last. Paul was
+the center of her world. She was a woman, and love was her whole
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>Here in the lonnin she was in pitch darkness. She stumbled once into the
+dike; then laughed and went on again. At one moment she thought she
+heard a noise not far away. She stood and listened. No, it was nothing.
+Only a hundred yards more! Bravely!</p>
+
+<p>Then, by a swift rebound&mdash;she knew not why&mdash;her mind went back to the
+events of the morning. She thought of Hugh Ritson and his mysterious
+threat. What did he mean? What harm could he do them? Oh! that she had
+been calmer, and asked. Her heart fluttered. It flashed upon her that
+perhaps it was he and not his mother who had sent for her to-night. Her
+pulse quickened.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant the curlew shot over her head with its deep, mournful
+cry. At the same moment she heard a step approaching her. It came on
+quickly. She stopped. "Who is it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer. The sound of the footstep ceased.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?" she called again.</p>
+
+<p>Then with heavy thuds in the darkness and on the snow, some one
+approached. She trembled from head to foot, but advanced a step and
+stopped again. The footstep was passing her. She brought the light of
+the lantern full on the retreating figure.</p>
+
+<p>It was the figure of a man. Going by hastily, he turned his head over
+his shoulder and she saw his face. It was the face of Paul, colorless,
+agitated, with flashing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Every drop of Greta's blood stood still.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul!" she cried, thrilled and immovable.</p>
+
+<p>There was an instant of unconsciousness. The earth reeled beneath her.
+When she came to herself she was standing alone in the lane, the lantern
+half buried in the snow at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>Had it been all a dream?</p>
+
+<p>She was but twenty yards from the house. The door of the porch stood
+open. Chilled with fear to the heart's core, she rushed in. No one was
+in the hall. Not a sound, but the faint mutter of voices in the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>She ran through the passage and threw open the kitchen door. The farm
+laborers were at supper, chatting, laughing, eating, smoking.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you hear somebody in the house?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>The men got up and turned about. There was dead silence in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now."</p>
+
+<p>"No. What body?"</p>
+
+<p>She flew off without waiting to explain. The kitchen was too far away.
+Hugh Ritson's room opened from the first landing of the stairs. The
+stairs went up almost from the porch. Darting up, she threw open the
+door of Hugh's room. Hugh was sitting at the table, examining papers by
+a lamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen Paul?" she cried, in an agonized whisper, and with a
+panic-stricken look.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh dropped the papers and rose stiffly to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Great God! Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here&mdash;this moment!"</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met. He did not answer. He was very pale. Had she dreamed?
+She looked down at the snow-crusted lantern in her hand. It must have
+been all a dream.</p>
+
+<p>She stepped back on to the landing, and stood in silence. The serving
+people had come out of the kitchen, and, huddled together, they looked
+at her in amazement. Then a low moan reached her ear. She ran to Mrs.
+Ritson's room. The door to it stood wide open; a fire burned in the
+grate, a candle on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Outstretched on the floor lay the mother of Paul, cold, still, and
+insensible.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Ritson regained consciousness she looked about with the empty
+gaze of one who is bending bewildered eyes on vacancy. Greta was
+kneeling beside her, and she helped to lift her into the bed. Mrs.
+Ritson did not speak, but she grasped Greta's hand with a nervous
+twitch, when the girl whispered something in her ear. From time to time
+she trembled visibly, and glanced with a startled look toward the door.
+But not a word did she utter.</p>
+
+<p>Thus hour after hour wore on, and the night was growing apace. A painful
+silence brooded over the house. Only in the kitchen was any voice raised
+above a whisper. There the servants quaked and clucked&mdash;every tongue
+among them let loose in conjecture and the accents of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson passed again and again from his own room to his mother's. He
+looked down from time to time at the weary, pale, and quiet face. But he
+said little. He put no questions.</p>
+
+<p>Greta sat beside the bed, only less weary, only less pale and quiet,
+only less disturbed by horrible imaginings than the sufferer who lay
+upon it. Toward midnight Hugh came to say that Peter had been sent for
+her from the vicarage. Greta rose, put on her cloak and hat, kissed the
+silent lips, and followed Hugh out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>As they passed down the stairs Greta stopped at the door of Hugh
+Ritson's room, and beckoned him to enter it with her. They went in
+together, and she closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Now tell me," she said, "what this means."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh's face was very pale. His eyes had a wandering look, and when he
+spoke his voice was muffled. But by an effort of his unquenchable energy
+he shook off this show of concern.</p>
+
+<p>"It means," he said, "that you have been the victim of a delusion."</p>
+
+<p>Greta's pale face flushed. "And your mother&mdash;has she also been the
+victim of a delusion?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh shrugged his shoulders, showed his teeth slightly, but made no
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Answer me&mdash;tell me the truth&mdash;be frank for once&mdash;tell me, can you
+explain this mystery?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I could explain it, how would it be a mystery?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta felt the blood tingle to her finger-tips.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe I have told you the truth?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you have."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe I saw Paul in the lane?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you think you saw him."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know for certain that he went away?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh nodded his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure he has not got back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite sure."</p>
+
+<p>"In short, you think what I saw was merely the result of woman's
+hysteria?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh smiled through his white lips, and his staring eyes assumed a
+momentary look of amused composure. He stepped to the table and fumbled
+some papers.</p>
+
+<p>This reminded Greta of the paper the parson had asked her to deliver. "I
+ought to have given you this before," she said. "Mr. Christian sent it."</p>
+
+<p>He took it without much apparent interest, put it on the table unread,
+and went to the door with Greta.</p>
+
+<p>The trap was standing in the court-yard, with Natt in the driver's seat,
+and Brother Peter in the seat behind. The snow had ceased to fall, but
+it lay several inches deep on the ground. There was the snow's dumb
+silence on the earth and in the air.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh helped Greta to her place, and then lifted the lamp from the trap,
+and looked on the ground a few yards ahead of the horse. "There are no
+footprints in the snow," he said, with a poor pretence at a
+smile&mdash;"none, at least, that go from the house."</p>
+
+<p>Greta herself had begun to doubt. She lacked presence of mind to ask if
+there were any footprints at all except Peter's. The thing was done and
+gone. It all happened three hours ago, and it was easy to suspect the
+evidence of the senses.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh returned the lamp to its loop. "Did you scream," he asked, "when
+you saw&mdash;when you saw&mdash;it?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta was beginning to feel ashamed. "I might have done. I can not
+positively say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that explains everything. No doubt mother heard you and was
+frightened. I see it all now. Natt, drive on&mdash;cold journey&mdash;good-night."</p>
+
+<p>Greta felt her face burn in the darkness. Before she had time or
+impulse to reply, they were rolling away toward home.</p>
+
+<p>At intervals her ear caught the sound of suppressed titters from the
+driver's seat. Natt was chuckling to himself with great apparent
+satisfaction. Since the fire at the mill he had been putting two and two
+together, and he was now perfectly confident as to the accuracy of his
+computation. When folks said that Paul had been at the fire he laughed
+derisively, because he knew that an hour before he had left him at the
+station. But an idea works in a brain like Natt's pretty much as the hop
+ferments. When it goes to the bottom it leaves froth and bubbles at the
+top. Natt knew that there was some grave quarrel between the brothers.
+He also knew that there were two ways to the station and two ways back
+to Newlands&mdash;one through the town, the other under Latrigg. Mr. Paul
+might have his own reasons for pretending to go to London, and also his
+own reasons for not going. Natt had left him stepping into the station
+at the town entrance. But what was to prevent him from going out again
+at the entrance from Latrigg? Of course that was what he had done. And
+he had never been out of the county. Deary me, how blind folks were, to
+be sure! Thus Natt's wise head chuckled and clucked.</p>
+
+<p>At one moment Natt twisted his sapient and facetious noddle over his
+shoulder to where Brother Peter sat huddled into a hump and in gloomy
+silence. "Mercy me, Peter!" he cried, in an affrighted whisper, and with
+a mighty tragical start, "and is that thee? Dusta know I thowt it were
+thy ghost?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know as it's not&mdash;dragging a body frae bed a cold neet like
+this," mumbled Peter, numbed up to his tongue, but still warm enough
+there.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson was content that Greta should think she had been the victim
+of a delusion. He was not unwilling that she should be tortured by
+suggestions of the supernatural. If she concluded that Paul had deceived
+her as to his departure from Newlands, he would not be unlikely to
+foster the delusion. The one thing of all others which Hugh Ritson was
+anxious to prevent was that Greta should be led to draw the purely
+matter-of-fact inference that when she thought she saw Paul she had
+really seen another man.</p>
+
+<p>But that was his own conviction. He was now sure beyond the hope of
+doubt that there was a man alive who resembled Paul Ritson so closely
+that he had thrice before, and now once again, been mistaken for him by
+unsuspecting persons. That other man was to be the living power in his
+own life, in his brother's life, in his mother's life, in Greta's life.
+Who was he?</p>
+
+<p>Left alone in the court-yard when the trap drove away, Hugh Ritson
+shuddered and looked round. He had laughed with the easy grace of a man
+no longer puzzled as he bid Greta good-night, but suspense was gnawing
+at his heart. He returned hastily to his room, sat down at the table,
+picked up the paper which Parson Christian had sent him, and read it
+with eager eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He read it and reread it; he seemed to devour it line by line, word by
+word. When he would have set it down his fingers so trembled that he let
+it fall, and he rose from his chair with rigid limbs.</p>
+
+<p>What he had dreaded he now knew for certainty. He had stumbled into an
+empty grave. He opened a drawer and took out three copies of
+certificates that Mr. Bonnithorne had brought him. Selecting the
+earliest of these in order of date, he set it side by side with the copy
+of the extract from Parson Christian's diary.</p>
+
+<p>By the one&mdash;Paul, the son of Grace Ormerod, by her husband Robert
+Lowther, was born August 14, 1845.</p>
+
+<p>By the other&mdash;Paul, the reputed son of Grace Ormerod by her husband,
+Allan Ritson, was an infant still in arms on November 19, 1847.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson could not be Paul Lowther.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson could not be the half-brother of Greta Lowther.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson fell back as one who had been dealt a blow. For months he
+had been idly hatching an addled villainy. The revenge that he had
+promised himself for spurned and outraged love&mdash;the revenge that he had
+named retribution&mdash;was but an impotent mockery.</p>
+
+<p>For an hour he strode up and down the room with flushed face and limbs
+that shook beneath him. Natt came home from the vicarage, put in his
+horse, and turned into the kitchen&mdash;now long deserted for the night. He
+heard the restless footstep backward and forward, and began to wonder if
+anything further had gone wrong. At last he ventured upstairs, opened
+noiselessly the door, and found his master with a face aflame and a look
+of frenzy. But the curious young rascal with the sleepy eyes had not
+time to proffer his disinterested services before he was hunted out with
+an oath. He returned to the kitchen with a settled conviction that
+somewhere in that mysterious chamber his master kept a capacious
+cupboard for strong drink.</p>
+
+<p>Like master, like man: Natt brewed himself an ample pint of hot ale,
+pulled off his great boots, and drew up to warm himself before the
+remains of a huge fire.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's bedroom opened off his sitting-room. He went to bed; he
+tried to sleep, but no sleep came near him; he tossed about for an hour,
+rose, walked the room again, then went to bed once more.</p>
+
+<p>He was feeling the first pangs of honest remorse. A worse man would have
+accommodated himself more speedily to the altered conditions when he
+found that he had pursued a phantasm. To do this erring man justice, he
+writhed under it. A better man would have fled from it. If, at the
+outset, if when the first step in the descent had been taken, he had
+seen clearly that villainy lay that way, he would not have gone
+further. But now he had gone too far. To go on were as easy as to go
+back; and go on he must.</p>
+
+<p>While he honestly believed that Greta was half-sister to the man known
+to the world as Paul Ritson and his brother, he could have stood aside
+and witnessed without flinching the ceremony that was to hold them
+forever together and apart. Then without remorse he could have come down
+and separated them, and seen that woman die of heart's hunger who had
+starved to death the great love he bore her. There would have been a
+stern retribution in that, and the voice of nature would have whispered
+him that he did well.</p>
+
+<p>But when it was no longer possible to believe that Greta and Paul were
+anything to each other, the power of sophistry collapsed, and
+retribution sunk to revenge.</p>
+
+<p>He might go on, but there could be no self-deception. The blind
+earthworms of malice might delude themselves if they liked, but he could
+see, and he must face the truth. If ever he did what he had proposed to
+do, then he was a scoundrel, and a conscious scoundrel!</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson leaped out of his bed. The perspiration rolled in big beads
+from his forehead. His tongue grew thick and stiff in his mouth. The
+great veins in his neck swelled.</p>
+
+<p>Without knowing whither he went, he walked out of his own into his
+mother's room. A candle still burned on the table. The fire had
+smoldered out. A servant-maid sat by the bedside with head aslant,
+sleeping the innocent sleep. He approached the bed. His mother was
+breathing softly. She had fallen into a doze; the pale face was very
+quiet; the weary look of the worn cheeks was smoothed out; the absent
+eyes were lightly closed. Closed, too, on the rough world was the poor
+soul that was vexed by it.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson was touched. Somewhere deep down in that frozen nature the
+angel of love troubled the still waters.</p>
+
+<p>Bending his head, he would have touched the cold forehead with his
+feverish lips. But he drew back. No, no, no! Tenderness was not for
+him. The good God gave it to some as manna from heaven. But here and
+there a man, stretched on the rack of life, had not the drop of water
+that would cool his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>With stealthy steps, as of one who had violated the chamber of chastity,
+Hugh Ritson crept back to his own room. He took brandy from a cupboard
+and drank a glass of it. Then he lay down and composed himself afresh to
+sleep. Thoughts of Greta came back to him. Even his love for her was
+without tenderness. It was a fiery passion. It made him weep,
+nevertheless. Galling tears, hot, bitter, smarting tears, rolled from
+his eyes. And down in that deep and hidden well of feeling, where he,
+too, was a man like other men, Hugh Ritson's strong heart bled. He would
+have thought that love like his must have subdued the whole world to its
+will; that when a woman could reject it the very stones must cry out.
+Pshaw!</p>
+
+<p>Would sleep never come? He leaped up, and laughed mockingly, drank
+another glass of brandy, and laughed again. His door was open, and the
+hollow voice echoed through the house.</p>
+
+<p>He put on a dressing-gown, took his lamp in his hand, and walked
+down-stairs and into the hall. The wind had risen. It moaned around the
+house, then licked it with hissing tongues. Hugh Ritson walked to the
+ingle, where no fire burned. There he stood, scarcely knowing why. The
+lamp in his hand cast its reflection into the mirror on the wall. Behind
+it was a flushed face, haggard, with hollow eyes and parted lips.</p>
+
+<p>The sight recalled another scene. He stepped into the little room at the
+back. It was in that room his father died. Now it was empty; a bare
+mattress, a chair, a table&mdash;no more.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson lifted the lamp above his head and looked down. He was
+enacting the whole terrible tragedy afresh. He crept noiselessly to the
+door, opened it slightly, and looked cautiously out. Then, leaving it
+ajar, he stood behind it with bent head and inclining ear. His face wore
+a ghastly smile.</p>
+
+<p>The wind soughed and wept without.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson threw the door open and stepped back into the hall. There he
+stood some minutes with eyes riveted on one spot. Then he hurried away
+to his room. As he went up the stairs he laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>Back at his bedside he poured himself another glass of brandy, and once
+more lay down to sleep. He certainly slept this time, and his sleep was
+deep.</p>
+
+<p>Natt's dreamy ear heard a voice in the hall. He had drunk his hot ale,
+and from the same potent cause as his master, he also had slept, but
+with somewhat less struggle. Awakened in his chair by the unaccustomed
+sound, he stole on tiptoe to the kitchen door. He was in time to see
+from behind the figure of a man ascending the stairs carrying a lamp
+before him. Natt's eyes were a shade hazy at the moment, but he was
+cock-sure of what he saw. Of course it was Mister Paul, sneaking off to
+bed after more "straitforrad" folk had got into their nightcaps and
+their second sleep. That was where Natt soon put himself.</p>
+
+<p>When all was still in that troubled house, the moon's white face peered
+through a rack of flying cloud and looked in at the dark windows.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Next morning, Tuesday morning, Hugh Ritson found this letter on his
+table:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Dearest,&mdash;I do not know what is happening to me, but my eyes get
+worse and worse. To-day and yesterday I have not opened them. Oh,
+dear, I think I am losing my sight; and I have had such a fearful
+fright. The day after I wrote to you, Mrs. Drayton's son came home,
+and I saw him. Oh, I thought it was your brother Paul, and his name
+is Paul, too, but I think now it must be my eyes&mdash;they were very bad,
+and perhaps I did not see plain. He asked me questions, and went away
+next morning. Do not be long writing, I am, oh, so very lonely. When
+are you coming to me? Write soon.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Your loving, &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Mercy."</p></div>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had risen in a calmer mood. He was prepared for a disclosure
+like this. Last night he had been overwhelmed by the discovery that Paul
+Ritson was not the son of Robert Lowther. With the coming of daylight a
+sterner spirit of inquiry came upon him. The question that now agitated
+him was the identity of the man who had been mistaken for Paul.</p>
+
+<p>After Mercy's letter the mystery was in a measure dispelled. There could
+hardly be the shadow of a doubt that the man who had slept at the Pack
+Horse&mdash;the man who had been seen by many persons at the fire&mdash;the man
+who Greta had encountered in the lane&mdash;was one and the same with the man
+whom Mercy knew for Paul Drayton, the innkeeper at Hendon.</p>
+
+<p>But so much light on one small spot only made the surrounding gloom more
+dark. Far more important than any question of who this man was by repute
+was the other question of why he was there. Wherefore had he come? Why
+did he not come openly? What hidden reason had he for moving like a
+shadow where he knew no one and was known of none?</p>
+
+<p>Hugh thought again of the circumstance of his mother's strange seizure.
+Last night he had formulated his theory respecting it. And it was simple
+enough. The second man, whoever he was, had, for whatever reason, come
+to the house, and, failing to attract attention in the hall, had
+wandered aimlessly upstairs to the first room in which he heard a noise.
+That room happened to be his mother's, and when the stranger, with the
+fatal resemblance to her absent son, presented himself before her in
+that strange way, at that strange hour, in that strange place, the fear
+had leaped to her heart that it was his wraith warning her of his death,
+and she had fainted and fallen.</p>
+
+<p>The theory had its serious loop-holes for incredulity, but Hugh Ritson
+minded them not at all. Another and a graver issue tortured him.</p>
+
+<p>But this morning, by the light of Mercy's letter, his view was clearer.
+If the man who resembled Paul had come secretly to Newlands, he must
+have had his reasons for not declaring himself. If he had wandered when
+none was near into Mrs. Ritson's room, it must have been because he had
+a purpose there. And his mother's seizure might not have been due to
+purely superstitious fears, or her silence to shattered nerves.</p>
+
+<p>There was one thing to do, and that was to get at the heart of this
+mystery. Whoever he was, this second man was to be the living influence
+in all their lives.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far, one thing only was plain&mdash;that Paul Ritson was not the
+half-brother of Greta.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh determined to travel south forthwith. If the other man was still
+beating about Newlands, so much the better. Hugh would be able to see
+the old woman, his mother, and talk with her undisturbed by the
+suspicions of a cunning man.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh spent most of that day in his office at the pit-head, settling up
+such business as could not await his return. On Wednesday morning early
+he dispatched Natt on foot with a letter to Mr. Bonnithorne, explaining
+succinctly, but with shrewd reservations, the recent turn of events.
+Then he stepped for a moment into his mother's room.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ritson had risen, and was sitting by the fire writing. Hugh
+observed, as she rose, that there were tears in her eyes, and that the
+paper beneath her pen was stained with great drops that had fallen as
+she wrote. A woman was busy on her knees on the floor sorting linen into
+a trunk. This garrulous body, old Dinah Wilson, was talking as Hugh
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>"It caps all&mdash;you niver heard sec feckless wark," she was saying. "And
+Reuben threept me down, too. There he was in the peat loft when I went
+for the peats, and he had it all as fine as clerk after passon. 'It was
+Master Paul at the fire, certain sure,' he says, ower and ower again.
+'What, man, get away wi' thy botheration&mdash;Mister Paul was off to
+London!' I says. 'Go and see if tha can leet on a straight waistcoat any
+spot,' I says. But he threept and he threept. 'It was Master Paul or his
+own birth brother,' he says."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, Dinah!" said Mrs. Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh told his mother, in a quiet voice, that business was taking him
+away. Then he turned about and said "Good-day" without emotion.</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand to him and looked him tenderly in the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this our parting?" she said, and then leaned forward and touched his
+cheek with her lips.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed surprised, and turned pale; but he went out calmly and without
+speaking. In half an hour he was walking rapidly over the snow-crusted
+road to the station.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Paul parted from Natt at the station on Saturday night, he had told
+the stableman to meet him with the trap at the same spot and at the same
+hour on Wednesday. Since receiving these instructions, however, Natt
+had, as we have seen, arrived at conclusions of his own respecting
+certain events. The futility of doing as he had been bidden began to
+present itself to his mind with peculiar force. What was the good of
+going to the station for a man who was not coming by the train? What was
+the use of pretending to bring home a person who had never been away?
+These and other equivocal problems defied solution when Natt essayed
+them.</p>
+
+<p>He revolved the situation fully on his way home from Mr. Bonnithorne's,
+and decided that to go to the station that night at eight o'clock would
+be only a fine way of making a fool of a body. But when he reached the
+stable, and sat down to smoke, and saw the hour approaching, his
+instinct began to act automatically, and in sheer defiance of the thing
+he called his reason. In short, Natt pulled off his coat and proceeded
+to harness the mare.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was that, relieved of the weight of abstract questions, he made
+two grave discoveries. The first was that the horse bore marks of having
+been driven in his absence; the next, that the harness was not hanging
+precisely on those hooks where he had last placed it. And when he drew
+out the trap he saw that the tires of the wheels were still crusted with
+unmelted snow.</p>
+
+<p>These concrete issues finally banished the discussion of general
+principles. Natt had not entirely accounted for the strange
+circumstances when he jumped into his seat and drove away. But the old
+idea of Paul's dubious conduct was still fermenting; the froth and
+bubbles were still rising.</p>
+
+<p>Natt had not gone half-way to the station when he almost leaped out of
+the trap at the sudden advent of an original thought: The trap had been
+driven out before! He had not covered a mile more before that thought
+had annexed another: And along this road, too! After this the sequence
+of ideas was swift. In less than half a league, Natt had realized that
+Paul Ritson himself had driven the mare to the station in order that he
+might be there to come home at eight o'clock, and thus complete the
+deception which he had practiced on gullible and slow-witted persons.
+But in his satisfaction at this explanation Natt overlooked the trifling
+difficulty of how the trap had been got home again.</p>
+
+<p>Driving up into the station, he was greeted by a flyman waiting for
+hire.</p>
+
+<p>"Bad on the laal mare, ma man&mdash;two sec journeys in ya half day. I reckon
+tha knows it's been here afore?"</p>
+
+<p>Natt's face broadened into a superior smile, which seemed to desire his
+gratuitous informant to tell him something he didn't know. This unspoken
+request was about to be gratified.</p>
+
+<p>"Dusta ken who came down last?"</p>
+
+<p>Natt waved his hand in silent censure of so much unnecessary zeal, and
+passed on.</p>
+
+<p>Promptly as the clock struck eight, the London train drew up at the
+station, and a minute afterward Paul Ritson came out. "Here he be, of
+course," thought Natt.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was in great spirits. His face wore the brightest smile, and his
+voice had the cheeriest ring. His clothes, seen by the lamp, looked a
+little draggled and dirty.</p>
+
+<p>He swung himself into the trap, took the driver's seat and the reins and
+rattled along with cheerful talk.</p>
+
+<p>It was months since Natt had witnessed such an access of geniality on
+Paul's part.</p>
+
+<p>"Too good to be true," thought Natt, who, in his own wise way, was
+silently making a study in histrionics.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything fresh while I've been away?" asked Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" said Natt.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing new? Nobody's cow calved? The mare not lost her hindmost
+shoe&mdash;nothing?" asked Paul, and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I know no more nor you," said Natt, in a grumpy tone.</p>
+
+<p>Paul looked at him and laughed again. Not to-night were good spirits
+like his to be quenched by a servant's ill humor.</p>
+
+<p>They drove some distance without speaking, the silence being broken only
+by Paul's coaxing appeals to the old mare to quicken the pace that was
+carrying him to somebody who was waiting at the vicarage.</p>
+
+<p>Natt recovered from his natural dudgeon at an attempt to play upon him,
+and began to feel the humor of the situation. It was good sport, after
+all&mdash;this little trick of Master Paul. And the best of it was that
+nobody saw through it but Natt himself. Natt began to titter and look up
+significantly out of his sleepy eyes into Paul's face. Paul glanced back
+with a look of bewilderment; but of course that was only a part of the
+game.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep it up," thought Natt; "how we are doing 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>The landscape lying south was a valley, with a double gable of mountains
+at the top; the mill stood on a knoll two miles further up, and on any
+night but the darkest its black outlines could be dimly seen against the
+sky that crept down between these fells. There was no moon visible, but
+the moon's light was behind the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened to the mill?" said Paul, catching sight of the
+dismantled mass in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Nowt since Saturday neet, as I've heard on," said Natt.</p>
+
+<p>"And what happened then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nowt, nowt&mdash;I's warrant not," said Natt, with a gurgling titter.</p>
+
+<p>Paul looked perplexed. Natt had been drinking, nothing surer.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, lad, the wheel is gone&mdash;look!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll not say but it is. We know all about that, we do!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul glanced down again. Liquor got into the brains of some folk, but it
+had gone into Natt's face. With what an idiotic grin he was looking into
+one's eyes!</p>
+
+<p>But Paul's heart was full of happiness. His bosom's lord sat lightly on
+its throne. Natt's face was excruciatingly ridiculous, and Paul laughed
+at the sight of it. Then Natt laughed, and they both laughed together,
+each at, neither with, the other. "I don't know nothing, I don't. Oh,
+no!" chuckled Natt, inwardly. Once he made the remark aloud.</p>
+
+<p>When they came to the vicarage Paul drew up, threw the reins to Natt,
+and got down.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't wait for me," he said; "drive home."</p>
+
+<p>Natt drove as far homeward as the Flying Horse, and then turned in there
+for a crack, leaving the trap in the road. Before he left the inn, a
+discovery yet more astounding, if somewhat less amusing, was made by his
+swift and subtle intellect.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>An itinerant mendicant preacher had walked through the valley that day,
+and when night fell in he had gravitated to the parson's door.</p>
+
+<p>"Seeing the sun low," he said, "and knowing it a long way to Keswick,
+and I not being able to abide the night air, but sure to catch a cold, I
+came straight to your house."</p>
+
+<p>Like other guests of high degree, the shoeless being made a virtue of
+accepting hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, brother, and welcome," said Parson Christian; and that night
+the wayfarer lodged at the vicarage. He was a poor, straggle-headed
+creature, with a broken brain as well as a broken purse, but he had the
+warm seat at the ingle.</p>
+
+<p>Greta heard Paul's step on the path and ran to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, Paul! thank God you are here at last!"</p>
+
+<p>Her manner was warm and impulsive to seriousness, but Paul was in no
+humor to make nice distinctions.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian rose from his seat before the fire and shook hands with
+feeling and gravity.</p>
+
+<p>"Right glad to see you, good lad," he said. "This is Brother Jolly," he
+added, "a fellow-soldier of the cross, who has suffered sore for
+neglecting Solomon's injunction against suretyship."</p>
+
+<p>Paul took the flaccid hand of the fellow-soldier, and then drew Greta
+aside into the recess of the square window.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all settled," he said, eagerly; "I saw my father's old friend, and
+agreed to go out to his sheep runs as steward, with the prospect of
+farming for myself in two years' time. I have been busy, I can tell you.
+Only listen. On Monday I saw the good old gentleman&mdash;he's living in
+London now, and he won't go back to Victoria, he tells me&mdash;wants to lay
+his bones where they were got, he says&mdash;funny old dog, rather&mdash;says he
+remembers my father when he wasn't as solemn as a parish clerk on Ash
+Wednesday. Well, on Monday I saw the old fellow, and settled terms and
+things&mdash;liberal old chap, too, if he has got a hawk beak&mdash;regular
+Shylock, you know. Well&mdash;where was I? Oh, of course&mdash;then on Tuesday I
+took out our berths&mdash;yours, mother's, and mine&mdash;the ship is called the
+'Ballarat'&mdash;queer name&mdash;a fine sea-boat, though&mdash;she leaves the London
+docks next Wednesday&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Next Wednesday?" said Greta, absently, and with little interest in her
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a week to-day&mdash;sails at three prompt&mdash;pilot comes on at a quarter
+to&mdash;everybody aboard at twelve. But it didn't take quite four-and-twenty
+hours to book the berths, and the rest of the day I spent at a lawyer's
+office. Can't stomach that breed, somehow; they seem to get all the
+clover&mdash;maybe it's because they're a drift of sheep with tin cans about
+their necks, and can never take a nibble without all the world knowing.
+Ha! ha! I wish I'd thought of that when I saw old Shylock."</p>
+
+<p>Paul was rattling on with a glib tongue, and eyes that danced to the
+blithe step of an emancipated heart.</p>
+
+<p>In the slumberous fire-light the parson and the itinerant preacher
+talked together of the dust and noise in the great world outside these
+sleepy mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Greta drew back into the half-light of the window recess, too greedy of
+Paul's good spirits to check them.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I went to the lawyer's office," he continued, "and drew out a
+power of attorney in Hugh's name, and now he can do what he likes with
+the Ghyll, just as if it were his own. Much luck to him, say I, and some
+bowels, too, please God! But that's not all&mdash;not half. This morning&mdash;ah,
+now, you wise little woman, who always pretend to know so much more than
+other folks, tell me what I did in London before leaving it this
+morning?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta had hardly listened. Her eyes had dropped to his breast, her arms
+had crept about his neck, and her tears were falling fast. But he was
+not yet conscious of the deluge.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think? Why, I went to Doctors' Commons and bought the
+license&mdash;dirt cheap, too, at the price&mdash;and now it can be done any
+day&mdash;any day&mdash;- think of that! So ho! so ho! covering your face,
+eh?&mdash;up, now, up with it&mdash;gently. Do you know, they asked me your
+complexion, the color of your eyes, or something&mdash;that old Shylock or
+somebody&mdash;and I couldn't tell for the life of me&mdash;there, a peep, just
+one wee peep! Why, what's this&mdash;what the d&mdash;&mdash; What villain&mdash;what in the
+name of mischief is the ma&mdash;Why, Greta, you're cry&mdash;yes, you are&mdash;you
+are crying!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul had forced up Greta's face with gentle violence, and now he held
+her at arm's length, surveying her with bewildered looks.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian twisted about in his chair. He had not been so much
+immersed in wars and rumors of wars as to be quite ignorant of what was
+going on around him. "Greta is but in badly case," he said, pretending
+to laugh. "She has fettled things in the house over and over again, and
+she has if't and haffled over everything. She's been longing, surely."
+The deep voice had a touch of tremor in it this time, and the twinkling
+old eyes looked hazy.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, of course!" shouted Paul, in stentorian tones, and he laughed about
+as heartily as the parson.</p>
+
+<p>Greta's tears were gone in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"You must go home at once, Paul," she said; "your mother must not wait a
+moment longer."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and bantered and talked of his dismissal. She stopped him
+with a grave face and a solemn word. At last his jubilant spirit was
+conquered; he realized that something was amiss. Then she told him what
+happened at the Ghyll on Monday night. He turned white, and at first
+stood tongue-tied. Next he tried to laugh it off, but the laughter fell
+short.</p>
+
+<p>"Must have been my brother," he said; "it's true, we're not much alike,
+but then it was night, dark night, and you had no light but the dim
+lamp&mdash;and at least there's a family resemblance."</p>
+
+<p>"Your brother Hugh was sitting in his room."</p>
+
+<p>Paul's heart sickened with an indescribable sensation.</p>
+
+<p>"You found the door of my mother's room standing open?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wide open."</p>
+
+<p>"And Hugh was in his own room?" said Paul, his eyes flashing and his
+teeth set.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw him there a moment later."</p>
+
+<p>"My features, my complexion, my height, and my build, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"The same in everything."</p>
+
+<p>Paul lifted his face, and in that luminous twilight it were an
+expression of peculiar horror: "In fact, myself&mdash;in a glass?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta shuddered and answered, "Just that, Paul; neither more nor less."</p>
+
+<p>"Very strange," he muttered. He was shaken to the depths. Greta crept
+closer to his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"And when my mother recovered she said nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"You did not question her?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could I? But I was hungering for a word."</p>
+
+<p>Paul patted her head with his tenderest touch.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen her since?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not since. I have been ill&mdash;I mean, rather unwell."</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian twisted again in his chair. "What do you think, my lad?
+Greta in a dream last night rose out of bed, went to the stair-head, and
+there fell to the ground."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor darling," said Paul, the absent look flying from his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"But, blessed be God, she has no harm," said the parson, and turned once
+more to his guest.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, you must hurry away now. Good-bye for the present, dearest. Kiss
+me good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>But Paul stood there still.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, do you ever feel that what is happening now has happened
+before&mdash;somehow&mdash;somewhere&mdash;and where?&mdash;when?&mdash;the questions keep
+ringing in your brain and racking your heart&mdash;but there is no
+answer&mdash;you are shouting into a voiceless cavern."</p>
+
+<p>His face was as pale as ashes, his eyes were fixed, and his gaze was far
+away. Greta grew afraid of the horror she had awakened.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think too seriously about it," she said. "Besides, I may have
+been mistaken. In fact, Hugh said&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He made me ashamed. He said I had imagined I saw you and screamed, and
+so frightened your mother."</p>
+
+<p>"There are men in the world who would see the Lord of Hosts come from
+the heavens in glory and say it was only a water-spout."</p>
+
+<p>"But, as you said yourself, it was in the night, and very dark. I had
+nothing but the feeble oil-lamp to see by. Don't look like that, Paul."</p>
+
+<p>The girl lifted a nervous hand and covered his eyes, and laughed a
+little, hollow laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Paul shook himself free of his stupor.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Greta," he said, tenderly, and walked to the door. Then the
+vacant look returned.</p>
+
+<p>"The answer is somewhere&mdash;somewhere," he said, faintly. He shook himself
+again, and shouted, in his lusty tones:</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, all&mdash;good-night, good-night!"</p>
+
+<p>The next instant he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Out in the road, he began to run; but it was not from exertion alone
+that his breath came and went in gusts. Before he reached the village
+his nameless sentiment of dread of the unknown had given way to anxiety
+for his mother. What was this strange illness that had come upon her in
+his absence? Her angel-face had been his beacon in darkness. She had
+lifted his soul from the dust. Tortured by the world and the world's
+law, yet Heaven's peace had settled on her. Let the world say what it
+would, into her heart the world had not entered.</p>
+
+<p>He hurried on. What a crazy fool he had been to let Natt go off with the
+trap! Why had not that coxcomb told him what had occurred? He would
+break every bone in the blockhead's skin.</p>
+
+<p>How long the road was, to be sure! A hundred fears suggested themselves
+on the way. Would his mother be worse? Would she be still conscious?
+Why, in God's name, had he ever gone away?</p>
+
+<p>He came by the Flying Horse, and there, tied to the blue post, stood the
+horse and trap. Natt was inside. There he was, the villain, in front of
+the fire, laughing boisterously, a glass of hot liquor in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Paul jumped into the trap and drove away.</p>
+
+<p>It was hardly in human nature that Natt should resist the temptation to
+show his cronies by ocular demonstration what a knowing young dog he
+could be if he liked. Natt never tried to resist it.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it all die-spensy?" he asked, with a wink, when, with masterly
+circumlocution, he had broached his topic.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a fate, I tell tha'," said Tom o' Dint, taking a churchwarden from
+between his lips; and another thin voice, from a back bench&mdash;it was
+little Jacob Berry's&mdash;corroborated that view of the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>A fine scorn sat on the features of Natt as he exploded beneath their
+feet this mine of supernaturalism.</p>
+
+<p>"Shaf on your bogies and bodderment, say I," he cried; "there are folks
+as won't believe their own senses. If you'll no' but show me how yon
+horse of mine can be in two places at once, I'll maybe believe as Master
+Paul Ritson can be here and in London at the same time. Nowt short o'
+that'll do for me, I can tell you."</p>
+
+<p>And at this conclusive reasoning Natt laughed, and crowed, and stirred
+his steaming liquor. It was at that moment that Paul whipped up into the
+trap and drove away.</p>
+
+<p>"Show me as my horse as I've tied to the post out there is in his stable
+all the time, and I's not be for saying as maybe I won't give in."</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum Oglethorpe came straggling into the room at that instant, and
+caught the words of Natt's clinching argument.</p>
+
+<p>"What see a post?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the post afore the house, for sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I wudna be for saying but I's getten a bit short-sighted, but if
+theer's a horse tied to a post afore this house, I's not be for saying
+as I won't be domd!"</p>
+
+<p>Natt ran to the door, followed by a dozen pairs of quizzing eyes. The
+horse was gone. Natt sat down on the post and looked around in blank
+astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I will be domd!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>At last the bogies had him in their grip.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>By the time that Paul had got to the Ghyll his anxiety had reached the
+point of anguish. Perhaps it had been no more than a fancy, but he
+thought as he approached the house that a mist hung about it. When he
+walked into the hall his footsteps sounded hollow to his ear, and the
+whole place seemed empty as a vault. The spirit-deadening influence of
+the surroundings was upon him, when old Dinah Wilson came from the
+kitchen and looked at him with surprise. Clearly he had not been
+expected. He wanted to ask twenty questions, but his tongue cleaved to
+his mouth. The strong man trembled and his courage oozed away.</p>
+
+<p>Why did not the woman speak? How scared she looked, too! He was brushing
+past her, and up the stairs, when she told him, in faltering tones, that
+her mistress was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The word coursed through his veins like poison. "Gone! how gone?" he
+said. Could it be possible that his mother was dead?</p>
+
+<p>"Gone away," said Dinah.</p>
+
+<p>"Away! Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gone by train, sir, this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Gone by train," Paul repeated, mechanically, with absent manner.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a letter left, sir; it's on the table in her room."</p>
+
+<p>Recovering his self-possession, Paul darted upstairs at three steps a
+stride. His mother's room was empty; no fire in the grate; the pictures
+down from the walls; the table coverless; the few books gone from the
+shelf; all chill, voiceless, and blind.</p>
+
+<p>What did it mean? Paul stood an instant on the threshold, seeing all in
+one swift glance, yet seeing nothing. Then, with the first return of
+present consciousness, his eye fell on the letter that lay on the table.
+He took it up with trembling fingers. It was addressed in his mother's
+hand to him. He broke the seal. This is what he read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I go to-day to the shelter of the Catholic Church. I had long
+thought to return to this refuge, though I had hoped to wait until
+the day your happiness with Greta was complete. That, in Heaven's
+purposes, was not to be, and I must leave you without a last
+farewell. Good-bye, dear son, and God bless and guide you. If you
+love me, do not grieve for me. It is from love of you I leave you.
+Think of me as one who is at peace, and I will bless you even in
+heaven. If ever the world should mock you with your mother's name,
+remember that she is your mother still, and that she loved you to
+the last. Good-bye, dear Paul; you may never know the day when this
+erring and sorrowing heart will be allowed, in His infinite pity, to
+join the choirs above. Then, dearest, from the hour when you read
+this letter, think of me as dead, for I shall be dead to the world."</p></div>
+
+<p>Paul held the letter before him, and looked at it long with vacant eyes.
+Feeling itself seemed gone. Not a tear came from him, not a sigh, not
+one moan of an overwrought heart escaped him. All was blind, pulseless
+torpor. He stood there crushed and overwhelmed, a shaken, shattered man.
+A thousand horrors congealed within him to one deep, dead stupor.</p>
+
+<p>He turned away in silence, and walked out of the house. The empty
+chambers seemed, as he went, to echo his heavy footsteps. He took the
+road back toward the vicarage, turning neither to the right nor the
+left, looking straight before him, and never once shifting his gaze. The
+road might be long, but now it fretted him no more. The night might be
+cold, but colder far was the heart within him. The moon might fly behind
+the cloud floes, and her light burst forth afresh; but for him all was
+blank night.</p>
+
+<p>In the vicarage the slumberous fire was smoldering down. The
+straggle-brained guest had been lighted to his bed, and the good parson
+himself was carrying to his own tranquil closet a head full of the great
+world's dust and noise. Greta was still sitting before the dying fire,
+her heart heavy with an indefinable sensation of dread.</p>
+
+<p>When Paul opened the door his face was very pale and his eyes had a
+strange look; but he was calm, and spoke quietly. He told what had
+occurred, and read aloud his mother's letter. The voice was strong in
+which he read it, and never a tremor told of the agony his soul was
+suffering. Then he sat some time without speaking, and time itself had
+no reckoning.</p>
+
+<p>Greta scarcely spoke, and the old parson said little. What power had
+words to express a sorrow like this? Death had its solace; but there
+was no comfort for death in life.</p>
+
+<p>At last Paul told Parson Christian that he wished the marriage to take
+place at once&mdash;- to-morrow, or, at latest, the day after that. He told
+of their intention to leave England, of his father's friend, and, in
+answer to questions, of the power of attorney drawn up in the name of
+his brother.</p>
+
+<p>The old man was deeply moved, but his was the most unselfish of souls.
+He understood very little of all that was meant by what had been done,
+and was still to do. But he said, "God bless you and go with you!"
+though his own wounded heart was bleeding. Greta knelt at his chair, and
+kissed the tawny old face lined and wrinkled and damp now with a furtive
+tear. It was agreed that the marriage should take place on Friday. This
+was Wednesday night.</p>
+
+<p>Paul rose and stepped to the door, and Greta followed him to the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"It is good of you to leave all to your brother," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll not speak of it," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there not something between you?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Another time, darling."</p>
+
+<p>Greta recalled Hugh Ritson's strange threat. Should she mention it to
+Paul? She had almost done so, when she lifted her eyes to his face. The
+weary, worn expression checked her. Not now; it would be a cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew the answer to that omen was somewhere," he said, "and it has
+come."</p>
+
+<p>He stepped over the threshold and stood one pace outside. The snow still
+lay under foot, crusted with frost. The wind blew strongly, and soughed
+in the stiff and leafless boughs. Overhead the flying moon at that
+moment broke through a rack of cloud. At the same instant the red glow
+of the fire-light found its way through the open door, and was reflected
+on Paul's pallid face.</p>
+
+<p>Greta gasped; a thrill passed through her. There, before her, eye to eye
+with her once again, was the face she saw at the Ghyll!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Paul went back home, carrying with him a crushed and broken spirit He
+threw himself into a chair in a torpor of dejection. When the servants
+spoke to him, he lifted to their faces two clouded eyes, heavy with
+suffering, and answered their questions in few words. The maid laid the
+supper, and told him it was ready. When she returned to clear the cloth,
+the supper was untouched. Paul stepped up to his mother's room, and sat
+down before the cold grate. The candle he carried with him burned out.</p>
+
+<p>In the kitchen the servants of the farm and house gossipped long and
+bickered vigorously. "Whatever ails Master Paul?" "Crossed in love,
+maybe." "Shaf on sec woman's wit!" "Wherever has mistress gone?" "To buy
+a new gown, mayhap." "Sista now how a lass's first thowt runs on
+finery!" "Didsta hear nowt when you drove mistress to the rail, Reuben?"
+"Nay, nowt." "Dusta say it war thee as drove to the station this
+afternoon." "I wouldn't be for saying as it warn't." "Wilta be meeting
+Master Hugh in the forenoon, Natt?" "Nay, ax Natt na questions. He's
+fair tongue-tied to-neet, Natt is. He's clattering all of it to
+hisself&mdash;swearing a bit, and sec as that."</p>
+
+<p>When the servants had gone to bed, and the house was quiet, Paul still
+sat in his mother's abandoned room. No one but he knew what he suffered
+that night. He tried to comprehend the disaster that had befallen him.
+Why had his mother shut herself in a convent? How should her love for
+him require that she should leave him? To demand answers to these
+questions was like knocking at the door of a tomb; the voice was silent
+that could reply; there came no answer save the dull, heavy, hollow echo
+of his own uncertain knock. All was blind, dumb, insensate torpor. No
+outlook; no word; no stimulating pang.</p>
+
+<p>His stupor was broken by a vision that for long hours of that dead
+night burned in his brain like molten lead. The face which Greta had
+seen, and which his mother must also have seen, seemed to rise up before
+him as he sat in that deserted chamber. He saw his own face as he might
+have seen it in a glass. Not even the blackness of night could conceal
+it. Clear as a face seen in the day it shone and burned in that dark
+room. He closed his eyes to shut it out, but it was still before him. It
+was within him. It was imprinted in features of fire on his brain. He
+trembled with fear, never until that hour knowing what fear was. It
+acted upon him like his own ghost.</p>
+
+<p>He knew it was but a phantasy, but no phantasy was ever more horrible.
+He got up to banish it, and it stood before him face to face. He sunk
+down again, and it sat beside him eye to eye.</p>
+
+<p>Then it changed. For a moment it faded away into a palpitating mist, and
+the tension of his gaze relaxed. How blessed was that moment's respite!
+His thought returned to his mother. "If ever the world should mock you
+with your mother's name, remember that she is your mother still, and
+that she loved you to the last." Dear, sacred soul. Little fear that he
+should forget it! Little fear that the wise world should tarnish the
+fair shrine of that holy love! Tears of tenderness rose to his eyes, and
+in the midst of them he thought his mother sat before him. Her head was
+bent; an all-eating shame was crimsoning her pale cheek. Then he knew
+that other eyes were upon her, looking into her heart, prying deep down
+into her dead past, keeping open the heavy eyelids that could never
+sleep. He looked up; his own shadow was silently gazing down upon both
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>Paul leaped to his feet and ran out of the room. Surely the spirit of
+his mother still inhabited the deserted chamber. Surely this was the
+shadow that had driven her away. Big drops of sweat rolled in beads from
+his forehead. He went out of the house. Heavy black clouds were adrift
+in a stormy sky; behind them, the bright moon was scudding.</p>
+
+<p>He walked among the naked trees of the gaunt wood at the foot of
+Coledale, and listened to the short breathings of the wind among the
+frost-covered boughs. At every second step he gave a quick glance
+backward. But at last he saw the thing he looked for&mdash;it was walking
+with him side by side, pace for pace.</p>
+
+<p>He passed slowly out of the wood, not daring now to run. The white fell
+rose sheer up to the grim, gray crags that hung in shaggy, snowy masses
+over the black seams of the ravines; and the moon's light rested on them
+for an instant. Without thought or aim he began to climb. The ascent was
+perilous at any hour to any foot save that of a mountaineer. The
+exertion and the watchfulness banished the vision, and his liberated
+mind turned to Greta. What was life itself now without Greta's love?
+Nothing but a succession of days. She was the savior of his outcast
+state; she was his life's spring, whence the waters of content might
+flow. And a flood of emotion came over him, and in his heart he blessed
+her. It was then that on that gaunt headland he seemed to see her at his
+side. But between them, and dividing them, stalked the spectre of
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>All to the east was dense gloom, save where the pulsating red of the
+smelting house burned in the distance. With no rest for his foot, Paul
+walked in the direction of the light, and the shadow of his face walked
+with him. As the wind went by him it whistled in his ear, and it sounded
+in that solitude like the low cry of the thing at his side.</p>
+
+<p>Old Laird Fisher was at his work of wheeling the refuse of the ore from
+the mouth of the furnace, and shooting it down the bank. The glow of the
+hot stone in the iron barrow that he trundled was reflected in sharp
+white lights on his wrinkled face.</p>
+
+<p>"Ista theer, Mister Paul?" he said, catching his breath and coughing
+amid the smoke, and shouting between the gusts of wind.</p>
+
+<p>The slow beat of the engine and the clank of the chain of the cage in
+the shaft deadened the wind's shrill whistle. The smoke from the bank
+shot up and swirled away like a long flight of swallows.</p>
+
+<p>Standing there, the vision troubled him no longer. It had been merely a
+waking phantasy, bred of what Greta said she saw in the snow, and
+heightened by the shock to his nerves caused by his mother's departure.
+The sight of Matthew helped to beat it off. His submissive face was the
+sign of his broken spirit. A tempest had torn up his only hold on the
+earth. He was but a poor naked trunk flung on the ground, without power
+of growth or grip of the soil. He was old and he had no hope. Yet he
+lived on and worked submissively. Paul's own case was different. Destiny
+had dashed him in unknown seas against unseen rocks. But he was young,
+he had the power of life, and the stimulus of love. Yet here he was, the
+prey to an idle fancy, tortured by an agony of fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night to you, Matthew!" he shouted cheerily above the wind, and
+went away into the night.</p>
+
+<p>He would go home and sleep the fever out of his blood; he took the road;
+and as he went, the monotonous engine-throb died off behind him. He
+passed through the village; the street was empty, and it echoed loud to
+the sound of his footfall. Large shadows fell about him when for an
+instant the moon shot clear of a cloud. A light burned in a cottage
+window. Poor Mrs. Truesdale's sick life was within that sleepless
+chamber lingering out its last days. The wind fell to silence at one
+moment, and then a child's little cry came out to him in the night.</p>
+
+<p>He walked on, and plunged again into the darkness of the road beyond.
+The dogs were howling at the distant Ghyll. A sable cloud floated in the
+sky, and at its back the moon sailed. It was like black hair silvered
+with gray. But on one spot on the road before him the moon shone clear
+and white. The place fascinated him like a star. He quickened his pace
+until he came into the moon's open light. Then it turned to an ashy
+tint; it lay over the church-yard. His father's grave was only a few
+paces from the road.</p>
+
+<p>What unseen power had drawn him there? Was it meant that he should
+understand that all the stings that fate had in store for him were to be
+in some unsearchable way the refuse of his father's deed? His mind went
+back to the night of his father's death. He thought of his mother's
+confession&mdash;a confession more terrible to make more fearful to listen
+to, than a mother ever made before or a son ever heard. And now again,
+was the disaster of this very night a link in the chain of destiny?</p>
+
+<p>Let no man compare the withering effects of a father's curse with the
+blasting influence of a father's sin. If the wrath of Providence should
+fail in its stern and awful retribution, the world in its mercy would
+not forget that the sins of the fathers must be visited upon the
+children.</p>
+
+<p>Paul entered the lych-gate and entered the church-yard. The night dew on
+his cheeks was not colder than his tears as he knelt by his father's
+grave. At one instant he cursed the world and the world's cruel law.
+Then there stole into his heart a poison that corroded its dearest
+memory: he thought of his father with bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a strange awe crept over him. He knew, though still only
+by the eyes of his mind, that the vision had returned. He knew it was
+standing against the night-sky as a ghastly headstone to the grave. But
+when he raised his eyes what he saw was more terrible. The face was
+before him, but it was a dead face now. He saw his own corpse stretched
+out on his father's grave.</p>
+
+<p>His head fell on the cold sod. He lay like the dead on the grave of the
+dead. Then he knew that it was ordered above that the cloud of his
+father's sin should darken his days; that through all the range and
+change of life he was to be the lonely slave of a sin not his own. His
+fate was sin-inherited, and the wages of sin is death.</p>
+
+<p>Was it strange that at that moment, when all the earth seemed gloomed by
+the shadow of a curse that lay blackest over him&mdash;when reverence for a
+father's memory and love learned at a mother's knee were deadened by a
+sense of irremediable wrong&mdash;was it strange that there and then peace
+fell on him like a dove from heaven?</p>
+
+<p>Orphaned in one hour&mdash;now, and not till now&mdash;foredoomed to writhe like a
+worm amid the dust of the world&mdash;the man in him arose and shook off its
+fear.</p>
+
+<p>It was because he came to know&mdash;rude man as he was, unlettered, but
+strong of soul&mdash;that there is a Power superior to fate, that the
+stormiest sea has its Master, that the waif that is cast by the roughest
+wave on the loneliest shore is yet seen and known.</p>
+
+<p>And the voice of an angel seemed to whisper in his heart the story of
+Hagar and her son; how the boy was the first-born of his father; how the
+second-born became the heir; how the woman and son were turned away; how
+they were nigh to death in the desert; and how, at last, the cry came
+from heaven, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is."</p>
+
+<p>The horror of the vision had gone. It would come back no more. Paul
+walked home, went up to his own room, and slept peacefully.</p>
+
+<p>When he awoke the pink and yellow rose of a wintery sunrise bloomed over
+the head of the Eel Crags. The tinkle of the anvil came from across the
+vale. Sheep were bleating high up on the frost-nipped side of the fell.
+The echo of the ax could be heard from the wood, and the muffled lowing
+of the kine from the shippon in the yard behind. The harsh scrape of
+Natt's clogs was on the gravel. A robin with full throat perched on the
+window-ledge and warbled cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>Last night was gone from him for all eternity. Before him was the day,
+the world, and life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>That day&mdash;the day before the wedding&mdash;all the gossiping tongues in
+Newlands were cackling from morning till night. Natt had been sent round
+the dale with invitations addressed to statesmen, their wives, sons and
+daughters. Parson Christian himself made the round of the homes of the
+poor.</p>
+
+<p>"'The poor ye have always with you,' but not everywhere, and not often
+in Cana of Galilee," he said to Greta on setting out.</p>
+
+<p>And the people of the highways and hedges were nothing loath to come in
+to the feast. "God luck to the weddiners!" they said, "and may they
+never lick a lean poddish-stick."</p>
+
+<p>There was not much work done in the valley that day. The richest heiress
+on the country-side was about to be married to the richest statesman in
+the dale. On the eve of such an event it was labor enough to drop in at
+the Flying Horse and discuss mathematics. The general problem was one in
+simple addition, namely, how much Paul Ritson would be worth when he
+married Greta Lowther. And more than once that day twice two made a
+prodigious five.</p>
+
+<p>The frost continued and the roads were crisp. Heavy rains had preceded
+the frost, and the river that ran down the middle of the valley had
+overflowed the meadows to the width of a wide carriage-way. This was now
+a road of ice five miles long, smooth as glass, and all but as straight
+as an arrow.</p>
+
+<p>Abraham Strong, the carpenter, had been ordered to take the wheels off a
+disused landau and fix instead two keels of wood beneath the axles. This
+improvised sledge, after it had been shod in steel by the blacksmith,
+was to play a part in to-morrow's ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the day Brother Peter was dispatched to the town to fetch Mr.
+Bonnithorne. The four miles' journey afoot seemed to him a bigger candle
+than the entire game was worth.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know as I see what the lass wants mair nor she's got," he told
+himself, grumpily, as he plodded along the road. "What call has she for
+a man? Hasn't she two of 'em as she is? I made her comfortable enough
+myself. But lasses are varra ficklesome."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne gathered enough from Brother Peter's "Don't know as
+there's not a wedding in t' wind," to infer what was afoot. Hugh Ritson
+was away from home, and his brother Paul was availing himself of his
+absence to have the marriage ceremony performed.</p>
+
+<p>This was the inference with which Mr. Bonnithorne had walked from the
+town; but before reaching the vicarage he encountered Paul himself, who
+was even then on the way to his office. Few words passed between them.
+Indeed, the young dalesman was civil, and no more. He gave scant
+courtesy, but then he also gave something that was more substantial, and
+the severity of the lawyer's cynicism relaxed. Paul handed Mr.
+Bonnithorne, without comment, the deed drawn up in London. Mr.
+Bonnithorne glanced at it, pocketed it, and smiled. His sense of Paul's
+importance as a dangerous man sunk to nothing at that moment. They
+parted without more words.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian got home toward evening, dead beaten with fatigue. He
+found the lawyer waiting for him. The marriage had been big in his eyes
+all day, and other affairs very little.</p>
+
+<p>"So you shall give her away, Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, without
+superfluous preface of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, with elevated brows.</p>
+
+<p>"Who has more right?" said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know, you&mdash;you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Me! Nay, I must marry them. It is you for the other duty."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Mr. Christian, if you think of it, I am&mdash;I am&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are her father's old friend. There, let us look on it as settled."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne looked on it as awkward. "Well, to say the truth, Mr.
+Christian, I'd&mdash;I'd rather not."</p>
+
+<p>The old parson lifted two astonished eyes, and gazed at Mr. Bonnithorne
+over the rims of his spectacles. The lawyer's uneasiness increased. Then
+Parson Christian remembered that only a little while ago Mr. Bonnithorne
+had offered reasons why Paul should not marry Greta. They were rather
+too secular, those same reasons, but no doubt they had appealed honestly
+to his mind as a friend of Greta's family.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul and Greta are going away," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"So I judged."</p>
+
+<p>"They go to Victoria to farm there," continued the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"On Greta's money," added the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian looked again over the rims of his spectacles. Then for
+once his frank and mellow face annexed a reflection of the curl on the
+lawyer's lip. "Do you know," he said, "it never once came into my
+simple old pate to ask which would find the dross and which the honest
+labor?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne winced. The simple old pate could, on occasion, be more
+than a match for his own wise head.</p>
+
+<p>"Seeing that I shall marry her, I think it will be expected that you
+should give her to her husband; but if you have an objection&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"An objection?" Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "I don't know that my
+feeling is so serious as that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let us leave it there, and you'll decide in the morning," said
+Parson Christian.</p>
+
+<p>So they left it there, and Mr. Bonnithorne, the dear friend of the
+family, made haste to the telegraph office and sent this telegram to
+Hugh Ritson in London: "They are to be married to-morrow. If you have
+anything imperative to say, write to-night, or come."</p>
+
+<p>Paul and Greta saw each other only for five minutes that day amid the
+general hubbub; but their few words were pregnant with serious issues.
+Beneath the chorus of their hearts' joy there was an undersong of
+discord; and neither knew of the other's perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>Greta was thinking of Hugh Ritson's mysterious threat. Whether or not
+Hugh had the power of preventing their marriage was a question of less
+consequence to Greta at this moment than the other question of whether
+or not she could tell Paul what Hugh had said. As the day wore on, her
+uncertainty became feverish. If she spoke, she must reveal&mdash;what
+hitherto she had partly hidden&mdash;the importunity and unbrotherly
+disloyalty of Hugh's love. She must also awaken fresh distress in Paul's
+mind, already overburdened with grief for the loss of his mother.
+Probably Paul would be powerless to interpret his brother's strange
+language. And if he should be puzzled, the more he must be pained.
+Perhaps Hugh Ritson's threat was nothing but the outburst of a
+distempered spirit&mdash;the noise of a bladder that is emptying itself.
+Still, Greta's nervousness increased; no reason, no sophistry could
+allay it. She felt like a blind man who knows by the current of air on
+his face that he has reached two street crossings, and can not decide
+which turn to take.</p>
+
+<p>Paul, on his part, had a grave question to revolve. He was thinking
+whether it was the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in
+ignorance of the fact that he was not his father's legitimate son. Yet
+he could never tell her. The oath he had taken over his father's body
+must seal his lips forever. His mother's honor was wrapped up in that
+oath. Break the one, and the other was no longer inviolate. True, it
+would be to Greta, and Greta alone, and she and he were one. True, too,
+his mother was now dead to the world. But the oath was rigid:</p>
+
+<p>"Never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act, or her
+shame." He had sworn it, and he must keep it. The conflict of emotion
+was terrible. Love was dragging him one way, and love the other. Honor
+said yes, and honor said no. His heart's first thought was to tell Greta
+everything, to keep nothing back from her whose heart's last thought was
+his. But the secret of his birth must lie as a dead and speechless thing
+within him.</p>
+
+<p>If it was not the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in
+ignorance of his birth, there was only one escape from the dishonor&mdash;not
+to let her marry him at all. If they married, the oath must be kept. If
+the oath were kept, the marriage might be dishonored&mdash;it could not be
+the unreserved and complete union of soul with soul, heart with heart,
+mind with mind, which true marriage meant. It would be laying the
+treasure at the altar and keeping back part of the price.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was not a man of subtle intellect, or perhaps such reflections
+would have troubled him too deeply. Love was above everything, and to
+give up Greta was impossible. If Circumstance was the evil genius of a
+man's life, should it be made the god of it also?</p>
+
+<p>At all hazards Paul meant to marry Greta. And after all, what did this
+question of honor amount to? It was a mere phantasm. What did it matter
+to Greta whether he were high or basely born? Should he love her less or
+more? Would he be less or more worthy of her love? And how was his
+birth base? Not in God's eyes, for God had heard the voice of Hagar's
+son. Only in the eyes of the world. And what did that mean? It meant
+that whether birth was high or base depended one part on virtue and nine
+hundred and ninety-nine parts on money. Where had half the world's
+titled great ones sprung from? Not&mdash;like him&mdash;from their father and
+their father's fathers, but from a monarch's favorite.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Paul reasoned with himself at this juncture. Whether he was wholly
+right or wholly wrong, or partly right and partly wrong, concerns us not
+at all. It was natural that such a man, in such a place, at such an
+hour, should decide once for all to say not a word to Greta. It was just
+as natural that his reticence should produce the long series of
+incidents still to be recorded.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was not a word was said between them of what lay nearest to the
+hearts of both.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The morning was brilliant&mdash;a vigorous, lusty young day, such as can
+awake from the sleep of the night only in winter and in the north. The
+sun shone on the white frost; the air was hazy enough to make the
+perspective of the fells more sharp, and leave a halo of mystery to hang
+over every distant peak and play about every tree.</p>
+
+<p>The Ghyll was early astir, and in every nook and corner full of the buzz
+of gossip.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, things is at a pass, for sure!" "And never no axings nowther."
+"And all cock-a-hoop, and no waiting for the mistress to come back."
+"Shaf, what matter about the mistress&mdash;she's no' but a kill-joy. There'd
+be no merry neet an' she were at home." "Well, I is fair maizelt 'at he
+won't wait for Master Hugh&mdash;his awn brother, thoo knows." "What, lass,
+dusta think as he wad do owt at the durdum to-neet? Maybe tha's
+reckoning on takin' a step wi' him, eh?" "And if I is, it's nowt sa
+strange." "Weel, I wadna be for saying tha's aiming too high, for I mind
+me of a laal lass once as they called Mercy Fisher, and folks did say
+as somebody were partial to her." "Hod thy tongue about the bit thing;
+don't thoo misliken me to sec a stromp!"</p>
+
+<p>Resplendent in a blue cloth coat, light check trousers, a flowered
+yellow silk waistcoat, and a white felt hat, Natt was flying up and down
+the stairs to and from Paul's room. Paul himself had not yet been seen.
+Rumor in the kitchen whispered that he had hardly taken the trouble to
+dress, and had not even been at the pains to wash. Natt had more than
+once protested his belief that his master meant to be married in his
+shirt-sleeves. Nothing but "papers and pens and sealing-wax and things"
+had he asked for.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the vicarage a motley group had gathered. There was John
+Proudfoot, the blacksmith, uncommonly awkward in a frock coat and a pair
+of kid gloves that sat on his great hands like a clout on a pitchfork.
+Dick, the miller, was there, too, with Giles Raisley, the miner; and Job
+Sheepshanks (by the way of treaty of peace) stood stroking the tangled
+mane of Gubblum Oglethorpe's pony. Children hung on the fence, women
+gathered about the gate, dogs capered on the path. Gubblum himself had
+been in the house, and now came out accompanied by Brother Peter Ward
+and a huge black jug. The jug was passed round with distinct
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Is the laal man ever coming?" said Gubblum, smacking his lips and
+taking a swift survey of the road.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, here he is at sec a skufter as'll brak' his shins!"</p>
+
+<p>At the top of his speed, and breathless, clad in a long coat whose tails
+almost swept the ground, grasping a fiddle in one hand and a paper in
+the other, Tom o' Dint came hurrying up.</p>
+
+<p>"Tha's here at last, Tom, ma man. Teem a glass into him, Peter, and
+let's mak' a start."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye see, I's two men, I is," said the small man, apologetically. "I had
+my rounds with my letters to do first, and business afore pleasure, you
+knows."</p>
+
+<p>"Pleasure afore business, say I," cried Gubblum. "Never let yer wark get
+the upper hand o' yer wages&mdash;them's my maxims."</p>
+
+<p>Two coaches came up at the moment, having driven four miles for the
+purpose of driving four furlongs.</p>
+
+<p>John Proudfoot, without needless courtesy, took the fiddler-postman by
+the neck of his coat and the garment beneath its tails, and slung him,
+fiddle and all, on to the saddle of the pony, and held him there a
+moment, steadying him like a sack with an open mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit thee there as steady as a broody hen; and now let's mak' shift,"
+said the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"But I must go inside first," said the fiddler; "I've a letter for
+Lawyer Bonnithorne."</p>
+
+<p>"Shaf on thee and thy letter! Away with thee! Deliver it at the church
+door."</p>
+
+<p>The men dropped into a single file, with Tom o' Dint riding at their
+head, and Gubblum walking by the pony's side and holding the reins.</p>
+
+<p>"Strike up!" shouted Job Sheepshanks. "Ista ever gaen to begin?"</p>
+
+<p>Then the fiddler shouldered his fiddle, and fell to, and the first long
+sweeps of his wedding-march awoke the echoes of the vale.</p>
+
+<p>The women and children followed the procession a few hundred yards, and
+then returned to see the wedding-party enter the coaches.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the vicarage all was noise and bustle. Greta was quiet enough,
+and ready to set out at any time, but a bevy of gay young daleswomen
+were grouped about her, trying to persuade her to change her brown
+broche dress for a pale-blue silk, to have some hothouse plants in her
+hair, and at least to wear a veil.</p>
+
+<p>"And mind you keep up heart, darling, and speak out your responses; and,
+dearest, don't cry until the parson gets to 'God bless you!'"</p>
+
+<p>Greta received all this counsel with equal thanks. She listened to it,
+affected to approve of it, and ignored it. Her face betrayed anxiety.
+She hardly understood her own fears, but whenever the door opened, and a
+fresh guest entered, she knew that her heart leaped to her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian stood near her in silk gaiters and a coat that had been
+old-fashioned even in his youth. But his Jovian gray head and fine old
+face, beautiful in its mellowness and child-like simplicity, made small
+demand of dress. He patted Greta's hair sometimes with the affectionate
+gesture that might be grateful to a fondled child.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne arrived early, in a white waistcoat and coat adorned by
+a flower. His brave apparel was scarcely in keeping with the anxiety
+written on his face. He could not sit down for more than a moment in the
+same seat. He was up and down, walking to and fro, looking out of the
+window, and diving for papers into his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>The procession, headed by Tom o' Dint, had not long been gone, when word
+was given, and the party took to the coaches and set off at a trot. Then
+the group of women at the gate separated with many a sapient comment.</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, he's getten a bonny lass, for sure."</p>
+
+<p>"And many a sadder thing med happen to her, too."</p>
+
+<p>The village lay midway between the vicarage and the church, and the
+fiddler and his company marched through it to a brisk tune, bringing
+fifty pairs of curious eyes to the windows and the doors. Tom o' Dint
+sat erect in the saddle, playing vigorously, and when a burst of
+cheering hailed the procession as it passed a group of topers gathered
+outside the Flying Horse, Tom accepted it as a tribute to his playing,
+and bowed his head with becoming dignity, and without undue familiarity,
+always remembering that courtesy comes after art, as a true artist is in
+loyalty bound to do.</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice the pony slipped its foot on the frosty road, and then Tom
+was fain to abridge a movement in music and make a movement in
+gymnastics toward grasping the front of the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>But all went well until the company came within fifty paces of the
+church door, and there a river crossed the road. Being shallow and very
+swift, the river head escaped the grip of the frost, and slipped through
+its fingers. There was a foot-bridge on one side, and the men behind the
+fiddler fell out of line to cross by it.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum dropped the reins and followed them; but, as bridges are not
+made for the traffic of ponies, Tom o' Dint was bound to go through the
+water. Never interrupting the sweep and swirl of the march he was
+playing, he gave the pony a prod with his foot, and it plunged in. But
+scarcely had it taken two steps and reached the depth of its knees,
+when, from the intenser cold, or from coming sharply against a submerged
+stone, or from indignation at the fiddler's prod, or from the occult
+cause known as pure devilment, it shied up its back legs, and tossed
+down its tousled head, and pitched the musician head-foremost into the
+stream.</p>
+
+<p>Amid a burst of derisive cheers, Tom o' Dint was drawn, wet as a sack,
+to the opposite bank, and his fiddle was rescued from a rapid voyage
+down the river.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the untoward adventure had the good effect of reducing the
+fiddler's sense of the importance of his artistic function, and bringing
+him back to consciousness of his prosaic duties as postman. He put his
+hand into his pocket, feeling as if he had dipped it into a bag of eels,
+and drew out the lawyer's letter. It was wet, and the ink of the
+superscription was beginning to run.</p>
+
+<p>Tom o' Dint also began to run. Fearing trouble, he left his
+unsympathetic cronies, hurried on to the church, went into the vestry,
+where he knew there would be a fire, and proceeded to dry the letter.
+The water had softened the gum, and the envelope had opened.</p>
+
+<p>"So much the mair easier dried," thought Tom, and, nothing loath, he
+drew out the letter, unfolded it, and held it to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>The paper was smoking with the heat, and so was Tom, when he heard
+carriage-wheels without, and then a mighty hubbub, and loud voices
+mentioning his own name without reverence: "Where's that clothead of a
+fiddler?" and sundry other dubious allusions.</p>
+
+<p>Tom knew that he ought to be at the gate striking up a merry tune to
+welcome the bride. But then the letter was not dry. There was not a
+moment to lose. Tom spread the paper and envelope on the fender,
+intending to return for them, and dashed off with his fiddle to the
+discharge of his artistic duty.</p>
+
+<p>As Tom o' Dint left the vestry, Parson Christian entered it. The parson
+saw the papers on his fender, picked them up, and in all innocence read
+them. The letter ran as follows:</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 5em;">
+"Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square, Nov. 28.<br />
+</p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Dear Bonnithorne,&mdash;The man who was in Newlands is Paul Lowther,
+Greta's half-brother. Paul Ritson is my own brother, my father's son.
+Keep this to yourself as you value your salvation, your pride, or
+your purse, or whatever else you hold most dear. Send me by wire
+to-day the name of their hotel in London, the time of their train
+south, and who, if any, are with them.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yours,</p></div>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 25em;">
+"<span class="smcap">Hugh Ritson</span>."</p>
+<p style="margin-left: 5em;">"P.S.&mdash;The girl Mercy will be troublesome."
+</p>
+
+<p>The parson had scarcely time to understand the words he read, when he,
+too, was compelled to leave the vestry. The bride and bridegroom had met
+at the church door. It was usual to receive them at the altar with
+music. The fiddler's function was at an end for the present. Parson
+Christian could not allow the fiddle to be heard in church. There a less
+secular instrument was required. The church was too poor for an organ;
+it had not yet reached the dignity of a harmonium; but it had an
+accordion, and among the parson's offices was the office of
+accordionist. So, throwing his gown over his head, he walked into the
+church, stepped into the pulpit, whipped up his instrument from the
+shelf where he kept it, and began to play.</p>
+
+<p>Now it chanced that Mr. Bonnithorne in his legal capacity held certain
+documents for signature, and having accompanied the bride to the altar
+rail, he hurried to deposit them in the vestry. The gloom had still hung
+heavy on his brow as he entered the church. He was brooding over a
+letter that he had expected and had not received. Perhaps it was his
+present hunger for a letter that made his eye light first on the one
+which the fiddler-postman had left to dry. The parson had dropped it on
+the mantel-shelf. At a glance Mr. Bonnithorne saw it was his own.</p>
+
+<p>Tom o' Dint had been compelled to come up the aisle at the tail of the
+wedding-party. He saw Mr. Bonnithorne, who was at the head of it, go
+into the vestry. Dripping wet as he was, and with chattering teeth, the
+sweat stood on his forehead. "Deary me, what sec a character will I
+have!" he muttered. He elbowed and edged his way through the crowd, and
+got into the vestry at last. But he was too late. With an eye that
+struck lightning into the meek face of the fiddler, Mr. Bonnithorne
+demanded an explanation.</p>
+
+<p>The request was complied with.</p>
+
+<p>"And who has been in the room since you left it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nobody, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure of that?"</p>
+
+<p>"For sure," said Tom.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne's countenance brightened. He had read the letter, and,
+believing that no one else had read it, he was satisfied. He put it in
+his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I may finish drying it, sir?" said Tom o' Dint.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer gave a contemptuous snort, and turned on his heel.</p>
+
+<p>When Paul walked with a firm step up the aisle, he looked fresh and
+composed. His dress was simple; his eyes were clear and bright, and his
+wavy brown hair fell back from a smooth and peaceful brow.</p>
+
+<p>Greta, at Paul's side, looked less at ease. The clouds still hung over
+her face. Her eyes turned at intervals to the door, as if expecting some
+new arrival.</p>
+
+<p>The service was soon done, and then the parson delivered a homily. It
+was short and simple, telling how the good bishop had said marriage was
+the mother of the world, filling cities and churches, and heaven itself,
+whose nursery it was. Then it touched on the marriage rite.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not love ceremonies," said the parson, "for they are too often
+'devised to set a gloss on faint deeds,' and there are such of them as
+throw the thing they celebrate further away than the wrong end of a
+telescope."</p>
+
+<p>Then he explained that though the marriage ceremony was unknown to the
+early Christians, and never referred to in the old Bible, where Abraham
+"took" Sarah to wife, and Jacob "took" Rachel, yet that the marriage of
+the Church was a most holy and beautiful thing, symbolizing the union of
+Christ with His people. Last of all, he spoke of the stainless and pious
+parentage of both bride and bridegroom, and warned them to keep their
+name and fame unsullied, for "What is birth to man or woman," said the
+teacher, "if it shall be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such
+offspring?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta bowed her head meekly, and Paul stood, while the parson spoke,
+with absent eyes fixed on the tablets on the wall before him, spelling
+out mechanically the words of the commandments.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments the signatures were taken, the bell in the little
+turret was ringing, and the company were trooping out of the church. It
+was a rude old structure, with great bulges in the walls, little square
+lead lights, and open timbers untrimmed and straight from the tree.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd outside had gathered about the wheelless landau which the
+carpenter and blacksmith had converted into a sledge. On the box seat
+sat Tom o' Dint, his fiddle in his hand, and icicles hanging in the
+folds of his capacious coat. The bride and bridegroom were to return in
+this conveyance, which was to be drawn down the frozen river by a score
+of young dalesmen shod in steel. They took their seats, and had almost
+set off, when Greta called for the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Parson Christian, Parson Christian!" echoed twenty voices. The good
+parson was ringing the bell, being bell-ringer also. Presently the
+brazen tongue ceased wagging, and Parson Christian reappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's your seat, parson," said Paul, making space.</p>
+
+<p>"In half a crack," replied Parson Christian, pulling a great key out of
+his pocket and locking the church door. He was sexton as well.</p>
+
+<p>Then he got up into the sledge, word was called, the fiddle broke out,
+and away they went for the river-bank. A minute more and they were
+flying over the smooth ice with the morning sunlight chasing them, and
+the music of fifty lusty voices in their ears.</p>
+
+<p>They had the longer journey, but they reached the vicarage as early as
+the coaches that had returned by the road. Then came the breakfast&mdash;a
+solid repast, fit for appetites sharpened by the mountain air. Parson
+Christian presided in the parlor, and Brother Peter in the kitchen, the
+door between being thrown open. The former radiated smiles like April
+sunshine; the latter looked as sour as a plum beslimed by the
+earthworms, and "didn't know as he'd ever seen sec a pack of hungry
+hounds."</p>
+
+<p>After the breakfast the toasts, and up leaped Mr. Bonnithorne. That
+gentleman had quite cast off the weight of his anxiety. He laughed and
+chaffed, made quips and cranks.</p>
+
+<p>"Our lawyer is foreclosing," whispered a pert young damsel in Greta's
+ear. "He's getting drunk."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne would propose "Mr. and Mrs. Ritson." He began with a few
+hoary and reverend quotations&mdash;"Men are April when they woo, December
+when they wed." This was capped by "Maids are May when they are maids,
+but the sky changes when they are wives." Mr. Bonnithorne protested that
+both had been true, only with exceptions.</p>
+
+<p>Paul thanked the company in a dozen manly and well-chosen phrases, and
+then stepped to the kitchen door and invited the guests over whom
+Brother Peter presided to spend the evening at the Ghyll.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies had risen and carried off Greta to prepare for her journey,
+when Gubblum Oglethorpe got on his feet and insisted on proposing "the
+lasses." What Gubblum had to say on the subject it is not given to us to
+record. By some strange twist of logic, he launched out on a very
+different topic. Perhaps he sat in the vicinity of Nancy Tantarum, for
+he began with the story of a funeral.</p>
+
+<p>"It minds me," he said, "of the carriers at Adam Strang's funeral, at
+Gosforth, last back-end gone twelvemonth. There were two sets on 'em,
+and they'd a big bottle atween 'em&mdash;same as that one as auld Peter, the
+honey, keeps to hissel at yon end of the table. Well, they carried Adam
+shoulder high from the house to the grave-yard, first one set and then
+t'other, mile on mile apiece, and when one set got to the end of their
+mile they set down the coffin and went on for t'other set to pick it
+up. It were nine mile from Branthet Edge to Gosforth, so they had nine
+shifts atween 'em, and at every shift they swigged away at the big
+bottle&mdash;this way with it, Peter. Well, the mourners they crossed the
+fields for shortness, but the bearers, they had to keep the corpse road.
+All went reet for eight mile, and then one set with Adam were far ahead
+of the other with the bottle. They set the coffin on a wall at the
+roadside and went on. Well, when the second set came up they didn't see
+it&mdash;they couldn't see owt, that's the fact&mdash;same as I expect I'll be
+afore the day's gone, but not with Peter's good-will, seemingly. Well,
+they went on, too. And when all of 'em coom't up to the church togither,
+there was the parson in his white smock and his bare poll and big book
+open to start. But, you see, there warn't no corpse. Where was it? Why,
+it was no' but resting quiet all by itsel' on the wall a mile away."</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum was proceeding to associate the grewsome story with the
+incidents of Paul's appearance at the fire while he was supposed to be
+in London; but Greta had returned to the parlor, muffled in furs, Paul
+had thrown on a long frieze ulster, and every one had risen for the last
+leave-taking. In the midst of the company stood the good old Christian,
+his wrinkled face wet with silent tears. Greta threw herself into his
+arms and wept aloud. Then the parson began to cast seeming merry glances
+around him, and to be mighty jubilant all at once.</p>
+
+<p>The improvised sledge was at the door, laden with many boxes.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>A little cheer, a little attempt at laughter, a suppressed sigh, then a
+downright honest cry, and away they were gone. The last thing seen by
+Greta's hazy eyes was a drooping white head amid many bright girl faces.</p>
+
+<p>How they flew along. The glow of sunset was now in their faces. It
+crimsoned the west, and sparkled like gold on the eastern crags. Between
+them and the light were the skaters drawing the sledge, sailing along
+like a flight of great rooks, their voices echoing in unseen caverns of
+the fells.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne sat with Paul and Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you say you would stay in London?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"At Morley's Hotel," said Paul.</p>
+
+<p>With this answer the lawyer looked unreasonably happy.</p>
+
+<p>The station was reached in twenty minutes. The train steamed in. Paul
+and Greta got into the last carriage, all before it being full. A moment
+more, and they were gone.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Bonnithorne walked direct to the telegraph office. But the
+liquor he had taken played him false. He had got it into his stupefied
+head that he must have blundered about Morley's Hotel. That was not
+Paul's, but Hugh's address. So he sent this telegram:</p>
+
+<p>"Left by train at one. Address, Hawk and Heron."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went home happy.</p>
+
+<p>That night there was high revel at the Ghyll. First, a feast in the
+hall: beef, veal, mutton, ham, haggis, and hot bacon pie. Then an
+adjournment to a barn, where tallow candles were stuck into cloven
+sticks, and hollowed potatoes served for lamps. Strong ale and trays of
+tobacco went round, and while the glasses jingled and the smoke wreathed
+upward, a song was sung:</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 17em;">
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"A man may spend</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And God will send,</span><br />
+If his wife be good to owt;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But a man may spare</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And still be bare,</span><br />
+If his wife be good to nowt."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Then blindman's buff. "Antony Blindman kens ta me, sen I bought butter
+and cheese o' thee? I ga' tha my pot, I ga' tha my pan, I ga' all I had
+but a rap ho' penny I gave a poor auld man."</p>
+
+<p>Last of all, the creels were ranged round the hay-mows, and the floor
+was cleared of everything except a beer-barrel. This was run into the
+corner, and Tom o' Dint and fiddle were seated on top of it. Dancing was
+interrupted only by drinking, until Tom's music began to be irregular,
+whereupon Gubblum remonstrated; and then Tom, with the indignation of an
+artist, broke the bridge of his fiddle on Gubblum's head, and Gubblum
+broke the bridge of Tom's nose with his fist, and both rolled on to the
+floor and lay there, until Gubblum extricated himself with difficulty,
+shook his lachrymose noddle, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"The laal man is as drunk as a fiddler."</p>
+
+<p>The vicarage was quiet that night. All the guests save one were gone.
+Parson Christian sat before the smoldering fire. Old Laird Fisher sat
+with him. Neither spoke. They passed a long hour in silence.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><i>BOOK III.</i></h2>
+
+<p class='center'>THE DECLIVITY OF CRIME.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>A way-side hostelry, six miles from London, bearing its swinging sign of
+the silver hawk and golden heron. It was a little, low-roofed place,
+with a drinking-bar in front as you entered, and rooms opening from it
+on either hand.</p>
+
+<p>The door of the room to the left was shut. One could hear the voices of
+children within, and sometimes a peal of their merry laughter. The room
+to the right stood open to the bar. It was a smoky place, with a few
+chairs, a long deal table, a bench with a back, a form against the wall,
+pipes that hung on nails, and a rough beam across the low ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>A big fire burned in an open grate on a hearth without a fender. In
+front of it, coiled up in a huge chair like a canoe, that had a look of
+having been hewn straight from the tree, sat the only occupant of the
+room. The man wore a tweed suit of the indefinite pattern known as
+pepper and salt. His hat was drawn heavily over his face to protect his
+eyes from the glare of the fire-light. He gave satisfactory evidence
+that he slept.</p>
+
+<p>Under any light but that of the fire, the place must have looked
+cheerless to desolation, but the comfortless room was alive with the
+fire's palpitating heart. The rosy flames danced over the sleeper's
+tawny hair, over the sanded floor, over the walls adorned with gaudy
+prints. They threw shadows and then caught them back again; flashed a
+ruddy face out of the little cracked window, and then lay still while
+the blue night looked in.</p>
+
+<p>An old woman, with a yellow face deeply wrinkled, served behind the bar.
+Two or three carriers and hawkers sat on a bench before it. One of these
+worthies screwed up the right side of his face with an expression of
+cutting irony.</p>
+
+<p>"Burn my body, though, but what an inwalable thing to have a son wot
+never need do no work!"</p>
+
+<p>The old woman lifted her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"There, enough of that," she said, and then jerked her head toward the
+room from whence came measured snores. "He'll be working at throwing you
+out, some of you, same as he did young Bobby on Sunday sennight."</p>
+
+<p>"Like enough. He don't know which side his bread is buttered, he don't."</p>
+
+<p>"His bread?" said another, an old road-mender, with a scornful dig of
+emphasis. "His old mother's, you mean. Don't you notice as folks as eat
+other folks' bread, and earn none for theirselves, never knows no more
+nor babbies which side the butter is on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue, Luke Sturgis!" said the old woman. "Mayhap you think
+it's you're pint of half-and-half as keeps us all out of the union."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you're a-goin' to get wexed, Mrs. Drayton. So wot's to prevent me
+having another pint, just to get that fine son of yourn an extra cigar
+or so. Hold hard with the pewter, though. I'll drain off what's left, if
+convenient."</p>
+
+<p>A drowsy-eyed countryman, with a dog snoring at his feet, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Been to Lunnon again," and pointed the shank of his pipe in the
+direction of the sleeping man. "Got the Lunnon smell on his clothes. I
+allus knows it forty perches off."</p>
+
+<p>"You're wrong, then, Mr. Wiseman," said the old woman, "and he ain't got
+no smell of no Lunnon on his clothes this day, anyways. For he's been
+where there ain't no smell no more nor in Hendon, leastways unless the
+mount'ins smells and the cataracks and the sheeps."</p>
+
+<p>"The mount'ins? And has Master Paul been along of the mount'ins?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Cummerland, that's the mountains, and fur off, too, I've heerd."</p>
+
+<p>"Cummerland? Ain't that the part as the young missy comes from?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mayhap it is; I wouldn't be for saying no to that."</p>
+
+<p>"So that's the time o' day, is it?" The speaker gave a prolonged whistle
+and turned a suggestive glance into the faces of his companions. "Well,
+I allus says to my old woman, 'Bide quiet,' I says, 'and it'll leak
+out,' and sure enough, so it has."</p>
+
+<p>The landlady fired up.</p>
+
+<p>"And I allus says to your missus, 'Mistress Sturgis,' I says, 'it do
+make me that wexed to see a man a-prying into other people's business
+and a-talking and a-scandalizing, which it is bad in a woman, where you
+expects no better, as the saying is, but it ain't no ways bearsome in a
+man&mdash;and I wish you'd keep him,' I says, 'from poking his nose, as you
+might say, into other people's pewters.' There&mdash;that's what I allus says
+to your missis."</p>
+
+<p>"And very perwerse of you, too," said the worthy addressed, speaking
+with the easy good-nature of one who could afford to be rated. "And
+wot's to prevent me having a screw of twist on the strength of it,"
+putting a penny on the counter.</p>
+
+<p>The landlady threw down the paper of tobacco, picked up the penny, and
+cast it into the till.</p>
+
+<p>"On'y, as I say, there's no use denying now as Mister Paul Drayton has a
+finger in the young missy's pie."</p>
+
+<p>"There, that's enough o' that. I told you afore she never set eyes on
+him till a fortnight come Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>Two women came into the bar with jugs.</p>
+
+<p>"And how is the young missy?" asked the elder of the two, catching up
+the conversation as the landlady served her.</p>
+
+<p>"She's there," said the landlady, rather indefinitely, indicating with a
+sidelong nod the room to the left with the closed door.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the laughter of the children could be heard from within.</p>
+
+<p>"She's merry over it, at any rate, though I did hear a whisper," said
+the woman, "as she feeds two when she eats her wittals, as the saying
+is."</p>
+
+<p>The men laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's being overcur'ous, mistress," said one, as the woman passed out
+sniggering.</p>
+
+<p>"Such baggage oughtn't to be taken in to live with respectable people,"
+said the other woman, the younger one, who wore a showy bonnet and a
+little gay ribbon at her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"And that's being overcharitable," said another voice. "It's the women
+for charity, especially to one of themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"It's cur'osity as is the mischief i' this world," said the drowsy-eyed
+countryman. "People talk o' the root o' all evil, and some says drink,
+and some says money, and some says rheumatis, but I says cur'osity. Show
+me the man as ain't cur'ous, and he don't go a-poking his nose into
+every stink-pot, as you might say."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," said the gentleman addressed as Luke Sturgis. "And show
+me the man as ain't cur'ous" he said, with a wink, "and I'll show you
+the man as is good at a plough and inwalable at a ditch, and wery near
+worth his weight in gold at gapping a hedge, and mucking up a
+horse-midden, and catching them nasty moles wot ruin the county worse
+nor wars and publicans and parsons."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was Mercy Fisher who sat in the room to the left of the bar, and
+played with the children, and laughed when they laughed, and tried to
+forget that she was not as young as they were, and as happy and as free
+from thought, living as they lived, from hour to hour, with no past, and
+without a future, and all in the living present. But she was changed,
+and was now no longer quite a child, though she had a child's heart that
+would never grow old, but be a child's heart still, all the same that
+the weight of a woman's years lay upon it, and the burden of a woman's
+sorrow saddened it. A little older, a little wiser, perhaps, a little
+graver of face, and with eyes a little more wistful.</p>
+
+<p>A neighbor who had gone to visit a relative five miles away had brought
+round her children, begging the "young missy" to take care of them in
+her absence. A curly-headed boy of four sat wriggling in Mercy's lap,
+while a girl of six stood by her side, watching the needles as she
+knitted. And many a keen thrust the innocent, prattling tongues sent
+straight as an arrow to Mercy's heart. The little fellow was revolving a
+huge lozenge behind his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"And if oo had a little boy would oo give him sweets ery often&mdash;all
+days&mdash;sweets and cakes&mdash;would oo?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, every day, darling; I'd give him sweets and cakes every day."</p>
+
+<p>"I 'ikes oo. And would oo let him go out to play with the big boys, and
+get birds' nests and things, would oo?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, bird's nests, and berries, and everything."</p>
+
+<p>"I 'ikes oo, I do. And let him go to meet daddy coming home at night,
+and ride on daddy's back?"</p>
+
+<p>A shadow shot across the girl's simple face, and there was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Would oo? And lift him on daddy's shoulder, would oo?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" the little chap's delight required no fuller expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Ot's oo doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Knitting, darling&mdash;there, rest quiet on my knee."</p>
+
+<p>"Ot is it&mdash;knitting&mdash;stockings for oo little boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no little boy, sweetheart. They are mittens for a gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"How pooty! Ot's a gentleman?"</p>
+
+<p>"A man, dear. Mr. Drayton is a gentleman, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Then after a moment's sage reflection, "Me knows&mdash;a raskill."</p>
+
+<p>"Willy!"</p>
+
+<p>"'At's what daddy says he is."</p>
+
+<p>All this time the little maiden at Mercy's side had been pondering her
+own peculiar problem. "What would you do if you had a little girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let me see; I'd teach her to knit and to sew, and I'd comb her
+hair so nice, and make her a silk frock with flounces, and, oh! such a
+sweet little hat."</p>
+
+<p>"How nice! And would you take her to market and to church, and to see
+the dolls in Mrs. Bicker's window?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dearest, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And never whip her?"</p>
+
+<p>"My little girl would be very, very good, and oh! so pretty."</p>
+
+<p>"And let her go to grandma's whenever she liked, and not tell grandpa
+he's not to give her ha'pennies, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes ... dear ... yes ... perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Are your eyes very sore to-day, Mercy, they are so red?"</p>
+
+<p>But the little one of all was not interested in this turn of the
+conversation: "Well, why don't oo have a little boy?"</p>
+
+<p>A dead silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Wont oo, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Willy was put to the ground. "Let us sing something. Do you like
+singing, sweetheart?"</p>
+
+<p>The little fellow climbed back to her lap in excitement. "Me sing, me
+sing. Mammy told I a song&mdash;me sing it oo."</p>
+
+<p>And without further ceremony the little chap struck up the notes of a
+lullaby.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy had learned that same song, as her mother crooned it long ago by
+the side of her cot. A great wave of memory and love and sorrow and
+remorse, in one, swept over her. It cost her a struggle not to break
+into a flood of tears. And the little innocent face looked up at the
+ceiling as the sweet child-voice sung the familiar words.</p>
+
+<p>There was a new-comer in the bar outside. It was Hugh Ritson, clad in a
+long ulster, with the hood drawn over his hat. He stepped up to the
+landlady, who courtesied low from behind the counter. "So he has
+returned?" he said, without greeting of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, he is back, sir; he got home in the afternoon, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"You told him nothing of any one calling?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir&mdash;that is to say, sir&mdash;not to say told him, sir&mdash;but I did
+mention&mdash;just mention, sir, that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson smiled coldly. "Of course&mdash;precisely. Were you more prudent
+with the girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, sir, being as you told me not to name it to the missy&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He is asleep, I see."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; he'd no sooner taken bite and sup than he dropped off in his
+chair, same as you see, sir; and never a word since. He must have
+traveled all night."</p>
+
+<p>"He did not explain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, sir; he on'y called for his cold meat and his ale, sir, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You see, his old mother ain't noways in his confidence, master," said
+one of the countrymen on the bench.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor you in mine, my friend," said Hugh Ritson, facing about. Then
+turning again to the landlady, he said: "Tell him some one wants to
+speak with him. Or, wait, I'll tell him myself."</p>
+
+<p>He stepped into the room with the sleeping man, and closed the door
+after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Luke Sturgis," said the landlady, with sudden austerity, "I'll have you
+know as it's none of your business saying words what's onpleasant&mdash;and
+me his mother, too. What's it you say? Cloven hoof? He's a personable
+gentleman, if he has got summat a matter with a foot, and a clever face
+how-an'-ever!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Alone with the sleeping man, Hugh Ritson stood and looked down at him
+intently. The fire had burned to a steady glow of red coal without
+flame. There was no other light in the room.</p>
+
+<p>The sleeper began to stir with the uneasy movement of one who is
+struggling against the effect of a fixed gaze bent upon him. Then, with
+a shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders, he sat up in his
+chair. He tossed his hat back from his forehead, and a tuft of wavy
+brown hair tumbled over it. His head was held down, and his eyes were on
+the fire. Hugh Ritson took a step toward him and put one hand on his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Drayton," he said, and the man shrunk under his touch and slowly
+turned his face full upon him.</p>
+
+<p>When their eyes met Hugh Ritson saw what he had expected to see&mdash;the
+face of Paul Ritson. In that low, red light, every feature was the same.
+By the swift impulse of sense it seemed as if it could be the same man
+and no other; as if Paul Drayton and Paul Ritson were one man.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton got on to his feet with an uncertain shuffle, and then in a
+moment the hallucination was dispelled. He kicked, with a heavy boot, at
+the slumbering coals, and the fire broke into a sharp crackle and bright
+blaze. The white light fell on his face. It was a fine face brutalized
+by excess. The features were strong, manly, and impressive. What God had
+done was very good; but the eyes were bleared, and the lips discolored,
+and the expression, which might have been frank, was sullen.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wonder that you were tired after your journey; it was a long
+one," said Hugh Ritson. He affected an easy manner, but there was a
+tremor in his voice. "You caught the early Scotch mail from Penrith," he
+added, and drew a bench nearer to the fire and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton made a half-dazed scrutiny of his visitor, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Damme, if you're not the fence as was here afore, criss-crossing at our
+old woman! Tell us your name."</p>
+
+<p>The voice was husky, but it had, nevertheless, a note or two of the
+voice of Paul Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"That will be unnecessary," said Hugh Ritson, with complete
+self-possession. "We've met before," he added, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"The deuce we have&mdash;where?"</p>
+
+<p>"You slept at the Pack Horse at Keswick rather more than a week ago,"
+said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton betrayed no surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Last Saturday night you were active at the fire that almost destroyed
+the old mill at Newlands."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton's sullen face was immovable.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," said Hugh, elevating his voice and affecting a sudden flow
+of spirits, "I owe you my personal thanks for your exertions. What do
+you drink&mdash;brandy?"</p>
+
+<p>Going to the door, he called for a bottle of brandy and glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, again, on Monday night," he added, turning into the room, "you
+did me the honor to visit my own house."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton was still standing.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you," he said. "Shall I tell you your name?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh smiled with undisturbed humor. "That also will be unnecessary," he
+said; and leisurely drew off his gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"What d'ye want? I ain't got no time to waste&mdash;that's flat."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let me see, it's just ten o'clock," said Hugh Ritson, taking out
+his watch. "I want you to earn twenty pounds before twelve."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Drayton gave vent to a grim laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll pound it as I'm fly to what that means! You're looking to earn two
+hundred before midnight."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Drayton gave Hugh a sidelong glance of great astuteness.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh lifted his eyebrows and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Money is not my object."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it ain't, eh? Well, I'm not afraid for you to know as it's
+mine&mdash;very much so." And Mr. Drayton gave vent to another grim laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton entered the room at this moment, and set down the brandy,
+two glasses, and a water-bottle on the deal table.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me offer you a little refreshment," and Hugh took up the brandy and
+poured out half a tumbler.</p>
+
+<p>"Thankee, thankee!"</p>
+
+<p>"Water? Say when."</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Drayton stopped the dilution by snatching up his tumbler. His
+manner had undergone a change. The watchfulness of a ferocious creature
+dogged and all but trapped gave way to reckless abandonment, bravado and
+audacity.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the lay?" he said, with a chuckle.</p>
+
+<p>"To accompany a lady to Kentish Town Junction, and see her safe into the
+midnight train&mdash;that's all."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton laughed outright.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"The lady will be here shortly before midnight."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she will."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's face lost its smiles.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't laugh like that&mdash;I won't have it!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Drayton made another application to the spirit bottle, and then
+leaned toward Hugh Ritson over the arm of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," he said, "it's just a matter o' thirty years gone August
+since my mother put me into swaddling clothes, and deng my buttons if
+I'm wearing 'em yet!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, my friend?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton chuckled contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak out plain," he said. "Give the work its right name. I ain't
+afraid for you to say it. A man don't give twenty pounds for the like o'
+that. Not if he works for it honest, same as me. I'm a licensed
+victualer, and a gentleman&mdash;that's what I am, if you want to know."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson repudiated all unnecessary curiosity, whereupon Mr. Drayton
+again had recourse to the spirit bottle, mentioned afresh his profession
+and pretensions, and wound up by a relative inquiry, "And what do you
+call yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh did not immediately gratify Mr. Drayton's curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right, Mr. Drayton," he said; "I know all about you. Shall I tell
+you why you went to Cumberland?"</p>
+
+<p>Remarking that it was easy to repeat an old woman's gossip, Mr. Drayton
+took out of his pocket a goat-skin tobacco-pouch, and proceeded to
+charge a discolored meerschaum pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Thirty years ago," said Hugh Ritson, "a young lady tried to drown
+herself and her child. She was rescued and committed to an asylum. Her
+child, a son, was given into the care of the good woman with whom she
+had lodged."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Drayton interrupted. "Thankee; but, as the wice-chairman says,
+'we'll take it as read,' so we will."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson nodded his head, and continued, while Mr. Drayton smoked
+vigorously: "You have never heard of your mother from that hour to this;
+but one day you were told by the young girl whom circumstances had cast
+on your foster-mother's care, that among the mountains of Cumberland
+there lived another man who bore you the most extraordinary resemblance.
+That excited your curiosity. You had reasons for thinking that if your
+mother were alive she might be rich. Now, you yourself had the
+misfortune to be poor."</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm not afraid for anybody to know it," interrupted Mr. Drayton.
+"Come to the point honest. Look here, we are like two hyenas I saw one
+day at the Zoo. One got a bone in his tooth at feeding time, and blest
+if the other didn't fight for that bone I don't know how long and all."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," continued Hugh Ritson, with a dubious smile that the cloud of
+smoke might have hidden from a closer observer, "being a man of spirit,
+and not without knowledge of the world, having inherited brains, in
+short, from the parents who bequeathed you nothing else&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Drayton puffed volumes, then poured himself half a tumbler of the
+raw spirit and tossed it off.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You determined on seeing if, after all, this were only a fortuitous
+resemblance."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Drayton raised his hand. "I am a licensed victualer, that's what I
+am, and I ain't flowery," he said, in an apologetic tone; "I hain't had
+the chance of it, being as I'd no schooling&mdash;but, deng me, you've just
+hit it!" And the gentleman who could not be flowery shook hands
+effusively with the gentleman who could.</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely, Mr. Drayton, precisely," said Hugh Ritson. He paused and
+watched Drayton closely. That worthy had removed his pipe, and was
+staring, with stupid eyes and open mouth, into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"But you found nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"How d'ye know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your face at this moment says so."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! Don't you go along trusting this here time-piece for the time o'
+day. It ain't been brought up in habits o' truthfulness same as yours."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You and I are meant to be friends, Mr. Drayton," he said. "But let us
+first understand each other. Your idea that you could find your parents
+in Cumberland was a pure fallacy."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because your mother is dead."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton shook off the stupor of liquor, and betrayed a keen if momentary
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>"The book of the asylum in which she was confined, after the attempted
+suicide, contains the record&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But she escaped," interrupted Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"Contains the record of her escape and subsequent recovery&mdash;dead. The
+body was picked out of the river, recognized by the authorities as that
+of the unknown woman, and buried in the name she gave."</p>
+
+<p>"What name?" said Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's face underwent a momentary change.</p>
+
+<p>"That is indifferent," he said; "I forget."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure you forget?" said Drayton. "Couldn't be Ritson, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh struck the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Assuredly not&mdash;the name was not Ritson."</p>
+
+<p>The tone irritated Mr. Drayton. He glanced down with a look that seemed
+to say that Hugh Ritson had his Maker to thank for giving him the
+benefit of an infirm foot.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson mollified him by explaining that if he had any curiosity as
+to the name, he could discover it for himself. "Besides," said Hugh,
+"what matter about the name if your mother is dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's true," said Drayton, who, being now appeased, began to see that
+his anger had been puerile.</p>
+
+<p>"Depend upon it, your father, wherever he is, is a cipher," said Hugh
+Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton got on to his feet and trudged the floor uneasily. An idea had
+occurred to him. "The person picked out of the river may have been
+another woman. I've heard of such."</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly; but the chance of error is worth little to you." Hugh looked
+uncomfortable as he said this, but Drayton saw nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Bah! What matter?" said Drayton, and, determined to cudgel his brains
+no longer, he reached for the brandy and drank another half glass. There
+was then an interchange of deep amity.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," said Hugh, "what passed at the Ghyll on Monday night?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Ghyll? Monday? That was the night of the snow. What passed?
+Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wanted to see your mother. Saw your brother one night late at the door
+of the parson's house. Saw you at the fire. At the fire?&mdash;certainly.
+Stood a matter of a dozen yards away when that young buck of a stableman
+drove up with the trap. What excuse for going? Blest if I
+remember&mdash;summat or other; knocked, and no one came. I don't know how
+long and all I stood cooling my heels at the door. Then I saw a light
+coming from a room on the first floor, and up I went and knocked. 'Come
+in,' says somebody. I went in. Withered old party got up. Black crape
+and beads, you know. But, afore I could speak, she reeled like a top and
+fell all of a heap. Blest if the old girl didn't take me for a ghost!"
+Mr. Drayton elevated his eyebrows, and added with emphasis, "I got out."</p>
+
+<p>"And on the way back you frightened a young lady in the lane, who, like
+my mother, mistook you for the ghost of my brother Paul. Well, that
+young lady was married to my brother this morning. They are now on their
+way to London. They intend to leave England on Wednesday next, and they
+mean to pass to-night in your house."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Drayton's eyebrows went up again.</p>
+
+<p>"It is certainly hard to understand&mdash;but look," and Hugh Ritson handed
+to Drayton the telegram he had received from Bonnithorne. That worthy
+examined it minutely, back and front, with bleared and bewildered eyes,
+and then looked to his visitor for explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"The lady must not leave England," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton steadied himself, and tried hard to look appalled.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my soul, you make my flesh creep!" he said. "What do you want for
+your twenty pounds? Speak out plain. I'm not flowery, I'm not. I'm a
+licensed victualer and a gentleman&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What do I want? Only that you should send the lady home again by the
+first train."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, there was no cause for alarm," said Hugh, with an innocent
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton's laughter became boisterous.</p>
+
+<p>"I am to decoy the young thing away by making her believe as I'm her
+husband, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Drayton, you are a shrewd fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"And what about the husband&mdash;ain't he another shrewd fellow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave him to me. When the time comes, make no delay. Don't expose
+yourself unnecessarily. Wear that ulster you have on at present. Say as
+little as possible&mdash;nothing if practicable. Get the lady into the fly
+that shall be waiting at the door; drive to the station; book her to
+Keswick; put her into the carriage at the last moment; then clear away
+with all expedition. The midnight train never stops this side of
+Bedford."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton was shuffling across the room, chuckling audibly. "He, he, he!
+haw! haw!&mdash;so I'm to leave her at the station, eh? Poor young thing; I
+hain't got the heart&mdash;I hain't got it in me to be so cruel. No, no, I
+couldn't be such a vagabond of a husband&mdash;he, he! haw, haw!&mdash;and on the
+poor thing's wedding day, too."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson rose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"If you go an inch further than the station, you'll repent it to your
+dying day!" he said, once more bringing down his fist heavily on the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>At this Drayton chuckled and crowed yet louder, and declared that it
+would be necessary to have another half glass in order to take the taste
+of the observation out of his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Then his laughter ceased.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here: you want me to do a job as can only be done by one man
+alive. And what do you offer me&mdash;twenty pounds? Keep it," he said; "it
+won't pass, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>The fire had burned very low, the cheerless room was dense with smoke
+and noisome with the smell of dead tobacco. Drayton buttoned up to the
+throat the long coat he wore.</p>
+
+<p>"I've summat on," he said; "good-night."</p>
+
+<p>The sound of children's voices came from the bar. The little ones were
+going home.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, missy, and thank you." It was a woman's voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Mercy," cried the children.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton was opening the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Think again," said Hugh Ritson. "You run no risk. Eleven forty-five
+prompt will do."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Drayton went out, Hugh Ritson walked into the bar. The gossips had
+gone. Only the landlady was there. The door to the room opposite now
+stood open.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Drayton," said Hugh, "have you ever seen this face before?"</p>
+
+<p>He took a medallion from his pocket and held it out to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Lor's a mercy me!" cried the landlady; "why, it's her herself as plain
+as plain&mdash;except for the nun's bonnet."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the lady who lodged with you at Pimlico&mdash;the mother of Paul?"</p>
+
+<p>"As sure as sure! Lor's, yes; and to think the poor young dear is dead
+and gone! It's thirty years since, but it do make me cry, and my
+husband&mdash;he's gone, too&mdash;my husband he said to me, 'Martha,' he said,
+'Martha&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>The landlady's garrulity was interrupted by a light scream: "Hugh,
+Hugh!"</p>
+
+<p>Mercy Fisher stood in the door-way, with wonder-stricken eyes and
+heaving breast.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant the poor little soul had rushed into Hugh Ritson's arms
+with the flutter of a frightened bird.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I knew you would come&mdash;I was sure you would come!" she said, and
+dried her eyes, and then cried again, and then dried them afresh, and
+lifted her pouting lips to be kissed.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson made no display. A shade of impatience crossed his face at
+first, but it was soon gone. He tried to look pleased, and bent his head
+and touched the pale lips slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"You look wan, you poor little thing," he said, quietly. "What ails
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing&mdash;nothing, now that you have come. Only you were so long in
+coming, so very long."</p>
+
+<p>He called up a brave word to answer her.</p>
+
+<p>"But you see I keep my word, little woman," he said, and smiled down at
+her and nodded his head cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"And you have come to see me at last! All this way to see poor little
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>The mute weariness that had marked her face fled at that moment before a
+radiant smile.</p>
+
+<p>"One must do something for those who risk so much for one," he said, and
+laughed a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>The first surprise over, the joy of that moment was beyond the gift of
+speech. Her arms encircled his neck, and she looked up at his face in
+silence and with brightening eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And so you found the time long and tedious?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no one to talk to," she said, with a blank expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you ungrateful little thing! you had good Mrs. Drayton here, and
+her son, and all the smart young fellows of Hendon who came to drink at
+the bar and say pretty things to the little bar-maid, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not that&mdash;I had no one who knew you," she said, and dropped her
+voice to a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"But you go out sometimes&mdash;into the village&mdash;to London?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I never go out&mdash;never now."</p>
+
+<p>"Then your eyes are really worse?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not my eyes. But, never mind. Oh, I knew you would not forget me.
+Only sometimes of an evening, when the dusk fell in, and I sat by the
+fire all alone, something would say, 'He doesn't want me,' 'He won't
+come for me.' But that was not true, was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no; of course not."</p>
+
+<p>"And then when the children came&mdash;the neighbor's children,&mdash;and I put
+the little darlings to bed, and they said their prayers to me, and I
+tried to pray, too&mdash;sometimes I was afraid to pray&mdash;and then, and then,"
+(she glanced round watchfully and dropped her voice) "something would
+say, 'Why didn't he leave me alone? I was so happy!'"</p>
+
+<p>"You morbid little woman! You shall be happy again&mdash;you are happy now,
+are you not?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes, bleared and red, but bright with the shafts of love, looked up
+at him in the dumb joy that is perfect happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she said, and dropped her comely head on his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"But you should have taken walks&mdash;long, healthy, happy walks," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I did&mdash;while the roses bloomed and the dahlias and things, and I saved
+so many of them against you would come, moss roses and wild white roses;
+but you were so long coming and they withered. And then I couldn't throw
+them away, because, you know, they were yours; so I pressed them in the
+book you gave me. See, let me show you."</p>
+
+<p>She stepped aside eagerly to pick up a little gilt-edged book from the
+table in the inner room. He followed her mechanically, hardly heeding
+her happy prattle.</p>
+
+<p>"And was there no young fellow in all Hendon to make those lonely walks
+of yours more cheerful?"</p>
+
+<p>She was opening her book with nervous fingers, and stopped to look up
+with blank eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? No handsome young fellow who whispered that you were a pretty
+little thing, and had no right to go moping about by yourself? None?
+Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Her old look of weariness was creeping back.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Mercy, tell the truth, you sly little thing&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>She was fumbling his withered roses with nervous fingers. Her throat
+felt parched.</p>
+
+<p>He looked down at her saddening face, and then muttered, as if speaking
+to himself: "I told that Bonnithorne this hole and corner was no place
+for the girl. He should have taken her to London."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's heart grew sick. The book was closed and dropped back on to
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, Mercy," said Hugh Ritson, "I want you to be a good little
+woman, and do as I bid you, and not speak a word. Will you?"</p>
+
+<p>The child-face brightened, and Mercy nodded her head, a little tear
+rolling out of one gleaming eye. At the same moment she put her hand in
+the pocket of her muslin apron, and took out a pair of knitted mittens,
+and tried to draw them on to Hugh's wrists.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the gift, and smiled, and said: "I won't need these&mdash;not
+to-day, I mean. See, I wear long gloves, with fur wristbands&mdash;there,
+I'll store your mittens away in my pocket. What a sad little
+soul&mdash;crying again?"</p>
+
+<p>Mercy's pretty dreams were dying one by one. She lifted now a timid hand
+until it rested lightly on his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen. I'm going out, but I'll soon be back. I must talk with Mrs.
+Drayton, and I've something to pay her, you know."</p>
+
+<p>The timid hand fell to the girl's side.</p>
+
+<p>"When I return there may be some friends with me&mdash;a lady and a
+gentleman&mdash;but I want to see them alone, quite alone, and I don't want
+them to see you&mdash;do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>A great dumb sadness was closing in on Mercy's heart.</p>
+
+<p>"But they will soon be gone, and then to-morrow you and I must talk
+again, and try to arrange matters so that you won't be quite so lonely,
+but will stir about, and see the doctor for your eyes, and get well
+again, and try to forget&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Forget!" said the girl, faintly. Her parched throat took away her
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean&mdash;that is to say&mdash;I was hoping&mdash;of course, I mean forget all the
+trouble in Cumberland. And now get away to bed like a good little girl.
+I must be off. Ah, how late!&mdash;see, a quarter to eleven, and my watch is
+slow."</p>
+
+<p>He walked into the bar, buttoning up his coat to his ears. The girl
+followed him listlessly. Mrs. Drayton was washing glasses behind the
+counter.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind you send this little friend of mine to bed very soon," said Hugh
+to the landlady. "Look how red her eyes are! And keep a good fire in
+this cozy parlor on the left&mdash;you are to have visitors&mdash;you need not
+trouble about a bedroom&mdash;they won't stay long. Let me see, what do they
+say is the time of your last up-train?"</p>
+
+<p>"To London? The last one starts away at half past twelve," said the
+landlady.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good. I'll see you again, Mrs. Drayton. Good-night, Mercy, and do
+keep a brighter face. There&mdash;kiss me. Now, good-night&mdash;what a silly,
+affectionate little goose&mdash;and mind you are in bed and asleep before I
+return, or I shall be that angry&mdash;yes, I shall. You never saw me angry.
+Well, never mind. Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>The door opened and closed. Mercy went back into the room. It was
+cheerless and empty, and the children's happy voices lived in it no
+more. The girl's heart ached with a dull pain that had never a pang at
+all, but was dumb and dead and cold; and Mercy was all alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he was only in fun when he said that about walking out with
+somebody and trying to forget, and not being seen," she thought. "Yes;
+he must have been only in fun," she thought, "because he knew how I
+waited and waited."</p>
+
+<p>Then she took up again the book that he had hardly glanced at. It fell
+open at a yellow, dried-up rose that had left the stain of its heart's
+juice on the white leaf.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he was only in fun," she said, and then laughed a little; and then
+a big drop fell on to the open page and on to the dead flower.</p>
+
+<p>Then she tried to be very brave.</p>
+
+<p>"I must not cry; it makes my eyes, oh! so sore. I must get them well and
+strong&mdash;oh, yes! I must be well and strong against&mdash;against&mdash;then."</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her head slowly where she stood alone, and a smile, like a
+summer breeze on still water, rippled over her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"He kissed me," she thought, "and he came to see me&mdash;all this long, long
+way."</p>
+
+<p>A lovely dream shone in her face now.</p>
+
+<p>"And if he does not come again until&mdash;until then&mdash;he will be glad&mdash;oh,
+he will be very glad!"</p>
+
+<p>The thought of a future hour when the poor little soul should be rich
+with something of her own that would be dearest of all because not all
+her own, shone like a sleeping child's vision in her face. She went out
+into the bar and lighted a candle.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's your sweetheart&mdash;not the lawyer man, eh?" said Mrs. Drayton,
+bustling about.</p>
+
+<p>"I've no call to hide my face now&mdash;not now that he has come&mdash;have I?"
+said Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he is free of his money, and I'se just been hoping you get some
+of it, for, as I says, you want things bad, and them as has the looking
+to it should find 'em, as is only reasonable."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy did as she had been bidden: she went off to her bedroom. But her
+head was too full of thoughts for sleep. She examined her face in the
+glass, and smiled and blushed at it because he called it pretty. It was
+prettier than ever to her own eyes now. After half an hour she
+remembered that she had left the book on the table in the parlor, and
+crept down-stairs to recover it. When she was on the landing at the
+bottom, she heard a hurried knock at the outer door.</p>
+
+<p>Thereafter all her dreams died in an instant.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Hugh Ritson stepped out into the road, the night was dark. Fresh
+from the yellow light of the inn, his eyes could barely descry the
+footpath or see the dim black line of the hedge. The atmosphere was
+damp. The moisture in the air gathered in great beads on his eyebrows
+and beard, stiffening them with frost. It was bitterly cold. The mist
+that rose from the river spread itself over the cold, open wastes of
+marshy ground that lay to the right and to the left. The gloomy road was
+thick with half-frozen mud.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson buttoned his coat yet closer and started at a brisk pace.</p>
+
+<p>"No time to lose," he thought, "if I've to be at the station when the
+north train goes through. Would have dearly liked to keep an eye on my
+gentleman. Should have done it, but for the girl. 'Summat on,' eh? What
+is it, I wonder? It might be useful to know."</p>
+
+<p>With a cutting wind at his back he walked faster as his eyes grew
+familiar with the darkness. He was thinking that Bonnithorne's telegram
+might be an error. Perhaps it had even been tampered with. It was barely
+conceivable that Paul and Greta had ever so much as heard of the Hawk
+and Heron. And what possible inducement could they have to sleep in
+Hendon when they would be so near to London?</p>
+
+<p>His mind went back to Mercy Fisher. At that moment she was dreaming
+beautiful dreams of how happy she was very soon to make him. He was
+thinking, with vexation, that the girl was a connecting link with the
+people in Cumberland. Yes&mdash;and the only link, too. Could it be that
+Mercy&mdash;No; the idea of Mercy's disloyalty to him was really too
+ridiculous. If he could get to the station before the train from the
+north was due to stop there, he would see for himself whether Paul and
+Greta alighted. If they did not, as they must be in that train, he would
+get into it also, and go on with them to London. Bonnithorne might have
+blundered.</p>
+
+<p>The journey was long, and the roads were heavy for walking. It seemed a
+far greater distance than he had thought. At the angle of a gate and a
+thick brier hedge he struck a match and read the time by his watch.
+Eleven o'clock. Too late, if the watch were not more than a minute slow.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment he heard the whistle of a train, and between the whirs of
+the wind he heard the tinkle of the signal bell. Too late, indeed. He
+was still a quarter of a mile from the station.</p>
+
+<p>Still he held on his way, without hope for his purpose, yet quickening
+his pace to a sharp run.</p>
+
+<p>He had come within three hundred yards of the station when he heard an
+unearthly scream, followed in an instant by a great clamor and tumult of
+human voices. Shrieks, shouts, groans, sobs, wails&mdash;all were mingled
+together in one agonized cry that rent the thick night air asunder.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson ran faster.</p>
+
+<p>Then he saw haggard men and women appearing and disappearing before him
+in the light of a fire that panted on the ground like an overthrown
+horse.</p>
+
+<p>The north train had been wrecked.</p>
+
+<p>Within a dozen yards from the station the engine and three of the front
+carriages had broken from their couplings and plunged on to the bank.
+The last four carriages, free of the fatal chain, had kept the rails and
+were standing unharmed above.</p>
+
+<p>Women who had been dragged through the tops of the overturned carriages
+fled away with white faces into the darkness of the fields. Men, too,
+with panic-stricken eyes, sat down on the grass, helpless and useless.
+Some resolute souls, roused to activity, were pulling at the carriages
+to set them right. Men from the station came with lanterns, and rescued
+the injured, and put them to lie out of harm's way.</p>
+
+<p>The scene was harrowing, and only two of its incidents are material to
+this history. Over all the rest, the clamor, the tumult, the agony, the
+abject fear, and the noble courage, let a veil be drawn.</p>
+
+<p>Fate had brought together, in that hour of disaster, three men whose
+lives, hitherto apart, were henceforth to be bound up as one life for
+good or ill.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson rushed here and there like a man distraught. He peered into
+every face. He caught up a lantern that some one had set down, and ran
+to and fro in the darkness, stooping to let the light fall on those on
+the ground, holding up the red glare to the windows of the uninjured
+carriages.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment all his frozen soul seemed to melt. Face to face with the
+pitiless work of destiny, his own heartless schemes disappeared. At last
+he saw the face he looked for. Then he dropped the lantern to his side,
+and turned the glass of it from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay here, Greta," said a voice he knew. "I shall be back with you
+presently. Let me lend them a hand over yonder." The man went by him in
+the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Hark!</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson heard a cry from the field beyond the bank. It was there
+that they had placed the injured.</p>
+
+<p>"Help! help! I am robbed&mdash;- help!" came out of the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you?" asked another voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Here! Help! help!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson ran toward the place whence the first voice came, and saw
+the figure of a man stooping over something that lay on the ground. At
+the same moment another man rushed up and laid strong hold of the
+stooping figure. There was a short, sharp struggle. The two men were of
+one stature, one strength. There was a sound as of cloth ripped asunder.</p>
+
+<p>At the next moment one of the men went by like the wind and was lost in
+the blackness of the fields. But Hugh Ritson had held up the lantern as
+the man passed, and caught one swift glimpse of his face. He knew him.</p>
+
+<p>A group had gathered about the injured person on the ground and about
+the other man who had struggled to defend him.</p>
+
+<p>"Could you not hold the scoundrel?" said one.</p>
+
+<p>"I held him till his coat came to pieces in my hand. See here," said the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson knew the voice.</p>
+
+<p>"A piece of Irish frieze, I should say" (feeling it).</p>
+
+<p>"You must have gripped him by the lappel of his ulster. Let me keep
+this. I am a police sergeant. What is your name, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Ritson."</p>
+
+<p>"And your address?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was on my way to Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square. What place is
+this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hendon."</p>
+
+<p>"Could one get accommodation here for the night? A lady is with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Best go up by the twelve-thirty, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"The lady is too much worn and excited. Any hotel, inn, lodging-house?"</p>
+
+<p>A porter came up.</p>
+
+<p>"The Hawk and Heron's handiest. A mile, sir. Drayton&mdash;it's him as keeps
+it&mdash;he's here somewhere. Drayton!" (calling).</p>
+
+<p>"Can you get me a fly, my good fellow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The police sergeant moved off.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I may look for you at the Hawk and Heron?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson heard all. He kept the lantern down. In the darkness not a
+face of that group was seen of any man.</p>
+
+<p>A quarter of an hour later, Hugh Ritson, panting for breath, was
+knocking at the door of the inn. The landlady within fumbled with the
+iron bar behind it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, quick!" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and he stepped in sharply, bathed in perspiration.</p>
+
+<p>"Is your son back?" he said, catching his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Back, sir? No, sir; it's a mercy if he gets home afore morning, sir;
+he's noways&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop your clatter. The girl is in her room. Go and turn the key on
+her!"</p>
+
+<p>It was at that moment that Mercy, having stood an instant at the bottom
+of the stairs, had ventured nervously into the bar. Turning about, Hugh
+Ritson came face to face with her. At the sight of her his crimsoning
+cheeks became white with wrath.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I tell you to be in bed?" he muttered, in a low, hoarse whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"I've only come for ... I came down for ... Hugh, don't be angry with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, get back, then; don't stand there. Quick&mdash;and mind you lock your
+door."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm going. You wouldn't be angry with me, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, perhaps not; only get off&mdash;and quick! Do you hear? Why don't
+you go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I only came down for ... I only came...."</p>
+
+<p>"God! what foolery is this? The girl's fainting. Never mind. Here,
+landlady, bring a light! Lead the way. She's not too heavy to carry.
+Upstairs with you. What a snail you are, old woman! Which room?"</p>
+
+<p>Another knock at the outer door. Another and another in rapid
+succession.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a-coming, I'm a-coming!" cried the landlady from the floor above.</p>
+
+<p>She bustled down the stairs as fast as her stiff joints would let her,
+but the knock came again.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy me, mercy me! and whoever is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Damme, move your bones, and let me in!"</p>
+
+<p>The door flew open with pressure from without. Ghastly white, yet
+dripping with perspiration, his breath coming in short, thick gusts, his
+neck bare, his shirt-collar torn aside, the lappel of the frieze ulster
+gone, and the rent of the red flannel lining exposed, Paul Drayton
+entered. He was sober now.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?" with an oath.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm here," said Hugh Ritson, walking through the bar and into the
+bar-room to the right, and candle in hand.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton followed him, trying to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I in time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you are," with a hard smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Fearing I might be late."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you were."</p>
+
+<p>"Ran all the way."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you did."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you sniggering and mocking at?" with another oath.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson dropped his banter, and pointed without a word to the torn
+ulster and the disordered shirt-collar. Drayton glanced down at his
+dress in the light of the candle.</p>
+
+<p>"Crossed the fields for shortness, and caught in a bramble-bush," he
+said, muttering.</p>
+
+<p>"Drop it," said Hugh. "There's no time for it. Look here, Drayton, I'm a
+downright man. Don't try it on with me. As you say, it won't pass. Shall
+I tell you where the collar of that coat is now? It's at the
+police-station."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton made an uneasy movement and glanced up furtively. There was no
+mistaking what he saw in Hugh Ritson's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I've my own suspicions as to what caused that accident," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton shuddered and shrunk back.</p>
+
+<p>"No, damme! That shows what you are, though. Show me the man as allus
+suspects others of lying, and I'll show you a liar. Show me the man as
+allus suspects others of stealing, and I'll show you a thief. You
+suspect me of that, d'ye? I know you now!"</p>
+
+<p>"No matter," said Hugh, impatiently; "your sense of the distinction
+between crimes is a shade too nice. One crime I do not suspect you of&mdash;I
+saw you commit it. Is that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>Drayton was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll go to the station with the lady. The gentleman will go to London
+with me. They are to come here, after all, though my first advice was a
+blunder."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take the twenty," Drayton mumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you now? We'll discuss that matter afterward."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton seemed stupefied for a moment. Then he lifted his haggard face
+and grinned. Hugh Ritson understood him in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"No tricks, I tell you. If you don't put the lady in the train&mdash;the
+right train&mdash;and be back here at half past one to-morrow, you shall
+improve your acquaintance with the Old Bailey."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton carried his eyes slowly up to Hugh Ritson's face, then dropped
+them suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'm lagged, it will be a lifer!" he muttered. He fumbled his torn
+ulster. "I must change my coat," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"She'll see the rent."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better."</p>
+
+<p>"But the people at the junction will see it."</p>
+
+<p>"What matter?&mdash;you will be there as Paul Ritson, not Paul Drayton."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton began to laugh, to chuckle, to crow.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!"</p>
+
+<p>The sound of carriage-wheels came from the road.</p>
+
+<p>"They're here," said Hugh Ritson. "Keep you out of sight, as you value
+your liberty. Do you hear? Take care that he doesn't see you, and that
+she doesn't see you until he is gone."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton was tramping about the floor in the intensity of his energy.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the bar-slide. I'll just lift it an inch."</p>
+
+<p>"Not half an inch," said Hugh, and he blew out the candle.</p>
+
+<p>Then he took the key out of the inside of the lock, and put it on the
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>"What! am I to be a prisoner in my own house?" said Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll put the key on the bar-slide," whispered Hugh. "When you hear the
+door close after us, let yourself out&mdash;not a moment sooner."</p>
+
+<p>The carriage-wheels stopped outside. There was a sound as of the driver
+jumping from the box. Then there came a knock.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stepped back to Drayton and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"This is the very man who tried to hold you&mdash;keep you close."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"This way, sir; this way, my lady; we knew you was a-coming, so we kep'
+a nice warm fire in the parlor. This way, my lady, and mind the step up.
+Yes, it air dark, but it's clean, sir; yes, it is, sir; but there's a
+light in here, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Paul and Greta followed the landlady through the dark bar.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll find our way, my good woman. Ah, and how cozy you are here! As
+warm as toast on a cold night. Thank you, thank you&mdash;and&mdash;why, surely
+we've&mdash;we've surprised you. Did you say you were expecting somebody? Ah,
+I see!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton was backing out of the room with a pallid face, and
+twitching at the string of her apron. When she got to the bar she was
+trembling from head to foot.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe in ghosts," she muttered to herself, "but if so be as I
+did believe in ghosts, and afeart of 'em, I don't know as ... Lor's a
+mercy me! Who was a-saying as our Paul was like some one? And now here's
+some one as is like our Paul. And as much a match as two pewters, on'y
+one more smarter, mayhap, and studdier."</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever ails the old lady?" said Greta, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>Paul stood a moment and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange, but we can't trouble now. What a mercy we're safe and
+unharmed."</p>
+
+<p>"A fearful sight&mdash;I'll never, never forget it," said Greta, and she
+covered her face.</p>
+
+<p>Paul stepped to the door. The flyman was bringing in the luggage.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the boxes in the bar, driver&mdash;there, that will do. Many of them,
+eh? Rather. Here's for yourself. Why, bless my soul, who's this? What,
+Hugh!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson walked into the room calm and smiling, and held out his hand
+to Greta and then to his brother.</p>
+
+<p>"I came up to meet your train," he said, in answer to the look of
+inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that was good of you. Of course, you know of the accident. How
+did you find us here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard at the station that a lady and gentleman had gone to the Hawk
+and Heron."</p>
+
+<p>"And you followed? Well, Hugh, I must say that was brotherly of you,
+after all. Wasn't it, Greta?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear," said Greta, faintly, her voice trembling.</p>
+
+<p>Paul observed her agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor girl, you are upset. I don't wonder at it. You must get off for
+the night. Hugh, you must excuse her. It was a terrible scene, you know.
+Our new life begins with a great shock to you, Greta. Never mind; that
+only means that the bright days are before us."</p>
+
+<p>Paul stepped to the door again, and called to Mrs. Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, my good landlady, take my wife to her room."</p>
+
+<p>The landlady hobbled up.</p>
+
+<p>"Room, sir, room? The gentleman didn't say nothing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Take the lady to your best room upstairs," said Hugh, with a
+significant look.</p>
+
+<p>Greta was going. Her step was slow and uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you say good-night, Greta?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," she said, so faintly as hardly to be heard.</p>
+
+<p>The brothers looked after her.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless her!" said Paul, fervently. "The days before her shall be
+brighter, if I can make them so."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul," he said, "you and your wife must never meet again."</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson turned red, and then ashy pale. A scarcely perceptible
+tremble of the eyelids, then a jaunty laugh, and then an appalling
+solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>"What d'ye mean, man?" he said, with a vacant stare.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down and listen," said Hugh, seating himself, and lifting the poker
+to draw the fire together.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick, tell me what it, is!" said Paul again.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, don't chafe. We are hot-tempered men, both, at bottom," said
+Hugh, and his eye perused his brother with searching power.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't look at me like that," said Paul. "Don't try to frighten me.
+Speak out, and quickly."</p>
+
+<p>"Be calm," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Bah! you take me blindfold to the edge of a precipice, and tell be to
+'be calm.'"</p>
+
+<p>"You are wrong. I find you there, and remove the bandage," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick! what is it? In another moment I shall cry out!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson rose stiffly to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, did you tell Greta she was marrying a bastard?"</p>
+
+<p>With one look of anguish Paul fell back mute and trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you tell her?" said Hugh, with awful emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's eyes were on the ground, his head bent forward. He was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you did not mean to tell her," said Hugh, coldly. His eyes
+looked steadfastly at Paul's drooping head. "I think so still."</p>
+
+<p>Paul said nothing, but drew his breath hard. Hugh watched him closely.</p>
+
+<p>"To marry a woman under a false pretense&mdash;is it the act of an honorable
+man? Is it a cheat? Give it what name you will."</p>
+
+<p>Paul drew himself up; his lips were compressed, and he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this all?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you not tell her?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I had sworn to tell no one. You will read that secret, as you
+have read the other."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, rather, because you dare not do so; because, had you told her, she
+had never become your wife."</p>
+
+<p>Paul laughed vacantly.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see. My own lips are sealed, but yours are free. You shall
+tarnish the memory of our father and blacken the honor of our mother.
+You shall humble me, and rob me of my wife's love&mdash;if you will and
+can."</p>
+
+<p>Saying this, Paul stepped hastily to the door, flung it open, and cried:
+"Greta! Greta!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh followed him and caught him arm.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing?" he said, in a hoarse whisper; "be quiet, I tell
+you&mdash;be quiet."</p>
+
+<p>Paul turned about.</p>
+
+<p>"You say I am afraid to tell her. You charge me with trapping her into
+marrying me. You shall tell her yourself, now, here, and before my very
+face!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come in and shut the door," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"It would do no good, and perhaps some harm. No matter, you shall tell
+her. I challenge you to tell her."</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, and listen to me," said Hugh, sullenly; and putting himself
+between Paul and the door, he closed it. "There is more to think of than
+what Greta may feel," he added. "Have you nothing to say to me?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul's impetuous passion cooled suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have made you atonement," he said, faintly, and dropped into a seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Atonement!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson smiled bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"When you return you will see," said Paid, his eyes once more on the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"You are thinking of the deed of attorney&mdash;I have heard of it already,"
+said Hugh. A cold smile played on his compressed lips.</p>
+
+<p>"It was all that was left to do," said Paul, his voice hardly stronger
+than a whisper. His proud spirit was humbled, and his challenge dead.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, you have robbed me of my inheritance, consciously, deliberately.
+You have stood in my place. You stand there still. And you leave me your
+pitiful deed by way of amends!"</p>
+
+<p>A black frown crossed Hugh Ritson's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Atonement! Are you not ashamed of such mockery? What atonement is there
+for a wrong like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did it for the best; God knows I did!" said Paul, his head fell on
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stood over him, pale with suppressed wrath.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it best to hold my place until my place was no longer worth
+holding, and then to leave it with an empty show of generosity? Power of
+attorney! What right have you to expect that I will take that from you?
+Take my own from the man who robbed me of it, and to receive it back on
+my knees! To accept it as a gift, whereof the generosity of giving is
+yours, and the humility of receiving is mine!"</p>
+
+<p>A strong shudder passed over Paul's shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I was helpless&mdash;I was helpless!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Understand your true position&mdash;your legal position. You were your
+mother's illegitimate son&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I did it to protect her honor!"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;to hide her shame!"</p>
+
+<p>"As you will. I was helpless, and I did it for the best."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's face grew dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it best to be a perjured liar?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Paul gasped, but did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it best to be a thief?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul leaped to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"God, give me patience!" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it best to be an impostor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, for God's sake, stop!"</p>
+
+<p>"Was it best to be a living lie&mdash;and all for the sake of honor? Honor,
+forsooth! Is it in perjury and robbery that honor lies?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul strode about the room in silence, ashy pale, his face convulsed and
+ugly. Then his countenance softened, and his voice was broken as he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh, I have done you too much wrong already. Don't drive me into more;
+don't, don't, I beseech you!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh laughed lightly&mdash;a little trill that echoed in the silent room.</p>
+
+<p>At that heartless sound all the soul in Paul Ritson seemed to freeze. No
+longer abashed, he lifted his head and put his foot down firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"So be it," he said, and the cloud of anguish fell from his face. "I say
+it was to save our mother's good name that I consented to do what I
+did."</p>
+
+<p>"Consented?" said Hugh, elevating his eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't believe me? Very well; let it pass. You say my atonement is a
+mockery. Very well, let us say it is so. You say I have kept your place
+until it is no longer worth keeping. You mean that I have impoverished
+your estate. That is not true. And you know it is not true. If the land
+is mortgaged, you yourself have had the money!"</p>
+
+<p>"And who had a better right to it?" said Hugh, and he laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>Paul waved his hand, and gulped down the wrath that was rising.</p>
+
+<p>"You have led me the life of the damned. You know well what bitter cup
+you have made me drink. If I have stood to the world as my father's
+heir, you have eaten up the inheritance If my father's house was mine, I
+was no more than a cipher in it. I have had the shadow, and you the
+substance. You have undermined me inch by inch!"</p>
+
+<p>"And, meantime, I have been as secret as the grave," said Hugh, and once
+more he laughed lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"God knows your purpose&mdash;you do nothing without one," said Paul. "But it
+is not I alone that have suffered. Do you think that all this has been
+going on under our mother's eyes without her seeing it?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson dropped the bantering tone.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's face grew to an awful solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>"When our father died, it was to be her honor or mine to die with him.
+That was the legacy of his sin, Heaven forgive him. I did not hesitate.
+But since that hour she has wasted away."</p>
+
+<p>"Is this my fault?" Hugh asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven knows, and Heaven will judge between you," said Paul. "She could
+bear it no longer." Paul's voice trembled as he added, "She's gone!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence. It was as if an angel went by weeping.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," said Hugh, coldly. "She has taken the veil. I have since
+seen her."</p>
+
+<p>Paul glanced up.</p>
+
+<p>"She is in the Catholic Convent at Westminster," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's face quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"Miserable man! but for you, how happy she might have been!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are wrong," said Hugh. "It came of her own misdeed&mdash;and yours."</p>
+
+<p>Paul strode toward his brother with uplifted hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Not another word of that," he said, and his voice was low and deep.</p>
+
+<p>"How could she examine her conscience and be happy? She had put an
+impostor in the place of my father's heir," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"She had put there your father's first-born son," said Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"It is false! She had put there her bastard by another man!"</p>
+
+<p>Silent and awful, Paul stood a moment, with an expression of agony so
+horrible that for an instant even Hugh Ritson quailed before it.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," he said, huskily, and crouched down into his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother was married before," said Hugh, "and her marriage was
+annulled. It was invalid. A child was born of that union."</p>
+
+<p>Paul lifted his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't believe it!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is true, and you shall believe it!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul's heart sickened with dread.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father married again, and had a daughter. Your mother married
+again, and had a son. Your father's daughter is now living. Shall I tell
+you who she is? She is your wife&mdash;the woman you have married to-day!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul sprung to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a lie!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"See for yourself," said Hugh Ritson; and taking three papers from his
+pocket, he threw them on to the table. They were the copies of
+certificates which Bonnithorne had given him.</p>
+
+<p>Paul glanced at them with vacant and wandering eyes, fell back in his
+chair, dropped his head on to the table, and groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God! can this thing be?"</p>
+
+<p>"When your mother told you that you were an illegitimate son, she
+omitted to say by what father. That was natural in her, but cruel to
+you. I knew the truth from the first."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are a scoundrel confessed!" cried Paul.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh rolled his head slightly, and made a poor pretense to smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew how she had passed from one man to another; I knew what her
+honor counted for. And yet I was silent&mdash;silent, though by silence I
+lost my birthright. Say, now, if you will, which of us&mdash;you or I&mdash;has
+been the true guardian of our mother's name?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul got up again, abject, crushed, trembling in every limb.</p>
+
+<p>"Man, man, don't gnaw my heart away! Unsay your words! Have pity on me,
+and confess that it is a lie&mdash;a black, foul lie! Think of the horror of
+it&mdash;only think of it, and have pity!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is true!"</p>
+
+<p>Then Paul fell on his knees and caught his brother by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh, Hugh! my brother, confess it is false! Don't let my flesh consume
+away with horror! Don't let me envy the very dead who lie at peace in
+their graves! Pity her, if you have no pity left for me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I would save you from a terrible sin."</p>
+
+<p>Paul rose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I know it is a lie!" he said, and all the abject submission of his
+bearing fell away in one instant.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's face flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"There is that here," said Paul, throwing up his head and striking his
+breast, "that tells me it is false!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh smiled coldly, and regained his self-possession.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother knew all. If Greta had been my half-sister, would she have
+stood by and witnessed our love?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh waved his hand deprecatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother was as ignorant of the propinquity as you were. Robert
+Lowther was dead before she settled at Newlands. The survivors knew
+nothing of each other. The secret of that early and ill-fated marriage
+was buried with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Destiny itself would have prevented it, for destiny shapes its own
+ends, and shapes them for the best," said Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, destiny is shaping them now," said Hugh, "here, and in me. This is
+the point to which the pathways of your lives have tended. They meet
+here&mdash;and part."</p>
+
+<p>Paul's ashy face smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Then nature would have prevented it," he said. "If this thing had been
+true, do you think we should not have known it&mdash;she and I&mdash;in the
+natural recoil of our own hearts? When true hearts meet, there is that
+within which sanctions their love, and says it is good. That is Heaven's
+own license. No sanction of the world or the world's law, no earthly
+marriage is like to that, for it is the marriage first made by nature
+itself. Our hearts have met, hers and mine, and the same nature has
+sanctioned our love and sanctified it. And against that last, that
+first, that highest arbiter, do you ask me to take the evidence of these
+poor, pitiful papers? Away with them!" Paul's eyes were bright, his face
+had lost its shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"That is very beautiful, no doubt," said Hugh, and he smiled deeply.
+"But I warn you to beware."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no fear," said Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"See to it, I tell you. These lofty emotions leave a void that only a
+few homely facts can fill. Verify them."</p>
+
+<p>"I will, please God!"</p>
+
+<p>"Accept my statements and these papers, or&mdash;disprove both."</p>
+
+<p>"I will disprove them."</p>
+
+<p>"Meantime, take care. Leave your wife in this house until morning, but
+do you go elsewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"What!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul's anger was boiling up.</p>
+
+<p>"If you have wronged Greta&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I have done her no wrong," said Paul, growing fiercer.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, if you have wronged her, and would have it in your power to
+repair the injury, you must pass this night apart."</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh!" cried Paul, in white rage, rising afresh to his feet, "you have
+tortured me and broken the heart of my mother; you have driven me from
+my home and from the world; you have thrust yourself between me and the
+woman who loves me, and now, when I am stripped of all else but that
+woman's love, and am going out to a strange land, a stranger and with
+empty hands, you would take her from me also and leave me naked!"</p>
+
+<p>"I would save you from a terrible sin," said Hugh Ritson, once again.</p>
+
+<p>"Out of my way!" cried Paul, in a thick voice, and he lifted his
+clinched fist.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, I tell you," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Paul looked dangerous; his forehead contracted into painful lines; his
+quick breathing beat on Hugh's face.</p>
+
+<p>"For the love of Heaven, get out of my way!"</p>
+
+<p>But with awful strength and fury his fist fell at that moment, and Hugh
+Ritson was dashed to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant Paul had lifted his foot to trample him, but he staggered
+back in horror at the impulse, his face ghastly white, his eyes red like
+the sun above snow. Then there was silence, and then Paul gasped in a
+flood of emotion:</p>
+
+<p>"Get up! get up! Hugh, Hugh! get up!"</p>
+
+<p>He darted to the door and threw it open.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, come in! will nobody come?" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>The landlady was in the room at a stride. She had been standing,
+listening and quivering, behind the door.</p>
+
+<p>In another moment Greta hurried down-stairs, and hastened to Paul's
+side.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was leaning against the wall, his face buried in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Take him away," he groaned, "before I rue the day that I saw him!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson rose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, what has happened?" cried Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Take him away."</p>
+
+<p>And still Paul covered his eyes from the sight of what he had done and
+had been tempted to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stepped to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask your husband," he said, with emphasis, and an appalling calmness.
+"And remember this night. You shall never forget it!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he halted out of the room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson walked to the bare room opposite. The handle of the door did
+not turn in his hand. Drayton held it at the other side, and with head
+bent low he crouched there and listened.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it?" he whispered, when Hugh Ritson unlocked the door and pushed
+at it.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me in," said Hugh, sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Does he suspect?" whispered Drayton, when the door closed again. "Did
+he follow me? What are you going to do for a fellow? Damme, but I'll be
+enough for him!"</p>
+
+<p>And Drayton groped in the dark room among the dead cinders on the
+hearth, and picked up the poker.</p>
+
+<p>"You fool!" said Hugh, in a low voice. "Put that thing down."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't he after me? D'ye think I'm going to be taken? Let him come here
+and see!"</p>
+
+<p>Drayton tramped the room, and the floor creaked beneath his heavy tread.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak lower, you poltroon!" Hugh whispered, huskily. "He knows nothing
+about you. He has never heard of you. Be quiet. Do you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a light, nervous knock at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only me, sir," said Mrs. Drayton, from without, breathing audibly,
+and speaking faintly amid gusts of breath.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson opened the door, and the landlady entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Lor's a mercy me! whatever ails the gentleman? Oh, is it yourself in
+the dark, Paul? I'm that fearsome, I declare I shiver and quake at
+nothing. And the gentleman so like you, too! I never did see nothing
+like it, I'm sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! Stop your clatter. What does he say?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"The gentleman? He says and says and says as nothing and nothing and
+nothing will make him leave the lady this night."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll think better of that."</p>
+
+<p>"And wherever can I put them? And me on'y one room, forby Paul's. And no
+cleaning and airing, and nothing. That's what worrits me."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue! Put the lady in your son's room. Your son won't need
+it to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"That's where I did put her."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; leave her there."</p>
+
+<p>"And the gentleman, too, belike?"</p>
+
+<p>"The gentleman will go back with me. Come, get away!"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right; on'y there's no airing and cleaning; and I declare I'm
+that fearsome&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had taken the landlady by the shoulders and was pushing her
+out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment," he whispered, and drew her back. "Anything doing
+upstairs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Upstairs?&mdash;the bed&mdash;airing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The girl? Has she made any noise yet? Is she conscious?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not as I know of. I went up and listened, and never a sound. Deary me,
+deary me! I'm that fearsome&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Go up again, and put your ear to the door."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afeart she'll never come round, and her in that way, and weak, too,
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At that instant there came from the dark road the sound of
+carriage-wheels approaching. Hugh Ritson thrust the landlady out of the
+room, slammed the door to, and locked it.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" said Drayton, in a husky whisper. "Who do they want?
+You've not rounded on a fellow, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the carriage that is to take you and the lady to Kentish Town,"
+said Hugh. "Hush! Listen!"</p>
+
+<p>The driver rapped at the door with the end of his whip, and shouted from
+his seat: "Heigho, heigho&mdash;ready for Kentish Town? Eleven o'clock struck
+this half hour!" Then he could be heard beating his crossed arms under
+his armpits to warm his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"The fool!" muttered Hugh, "can't he keep his tongue in his mouth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right," shouted Mrs. Drayton, in a shrill voice, putting her face
+to the window-pane. "Belike it's for the gentleman," she explained to
+herself, and then, with candle in hand, she began to mount the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The door of the room to the left opened, and Paul Ritson came out. His
+great strength seemed to be gone&mdash;he reeled like a drunken man.</p>
+
+<p>"Landlady," he said, "when does your last train go up to London?"</p>
+
+<p>"At half past twelve," said Mrs. Drayton, from two steps up the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I get a fly, my good woman, at this hour of the night?"</p>
+
+<p>"The fly's at the door, sir&mdash;just come, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Paul went back into the room where he had left his wife.</p>
+
+<p>The two men in the dark room opposite listened intently.</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet," whispered Hugh Ritson. "I knew he must think better of it.
+He is going. Keep still. Five minutes more, and you start away with the
+lady for Kentish Town. He shall walk to the station with me. The instant
+we leave the house, you go to the lady and say, 'I have changed my mind,
+Greta. We must go together. Come.' Not a word more; hurry her into the
+fly, and away."</p>
+
+<p>"Easier said nor done, say I."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Alone with Greta, Paul kissed her fervently, and his head fell on her
+shoulder. The strong man was as feeble as a child now. He was prostrate.
+"The black lie is like poison in my veins!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" said Greta, and she tried to soothe him.</p>
+
+<p>"A lie more foul than man ever uttered before&mdash;more cruel, more
+monstrous."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, dearest?" said Greta again, with her piteous, imploring
+face close to his.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it's a lie. My heart tells me it is a lie. The very stones cry
+out that it is a lie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what it is," said Greta, and she embraced him tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>But even while he was struggling with the poison of one horrible word,
+it was mastering him. He put his wife from him with a strong shudder, as
+if her proximity stung him.</p>
+
+<p>Her bosom heaved. She looked appealingly into his face.</p>
+
+<p>"If it is false," she said, "whatever it is, why need it trouble you?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is true, my darling," he said, gulping down his fear and taking
+Greta in his arms, and trying to laugh lightly. "Why, indeed? Why need
+it trouble me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you not tell me?" she said, with an upward look of entreaty. She
+was thinking of what Hugh Ritson had said of an impediment to their
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I tell you what is false?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then let us dismiss the thought of it," she said, soothingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, of course, let us dismiss the thought of it, darling," and he
+laughed a loud, hollow laugh. His forehead was damp. She wiped away the
+cold sweat. His temples burned. She put her cool hand on them. He was
+the very wreck of his former self&mdash;the ruin of a man. "Would that I
+could!" he muttered to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell me," she said. "It is my right to know it. I am your wife
+now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He drew himself away. She clung yet closer. "Paul, there can be no
+secrets between you and me&mdash;nothing can be kept back."</p>
+
+<p>"Heavenly Father!" he cried, uplifting a face distorted with agony.</p>
+
+<p>"If you can not dismiss it, let it not stand between us," said Greta.
+Could it be true that there had been an impediment?</p>
+
+<p>"My darling, it would do no good to tell you. When I took you to be my
+wife, I vowed to protect and cherish you. Shall I keep my vow if I
+burden you with a black lie that will drive the sunshine out of your
+life? Look at me&mdash;look at me!"</p>
+
+<p>Greta's breast heaved heavily, but she smiled with a piteous sweetness
+as she laid her head on his breast, and said, "No, while I have you, no
+lie can do that!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul made no answer. An awful burden of speech was on his tongue. In the
+silence they heard the sound of weeping. It was as if some poor woman
+were sobbing her heart out in the room above.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, when two hearts are made one in marriage they are made one
+indeed," said Greta, in a soft voice. "Henceforth the thought of the one
+is the thought of both; the happiness of one is the happiness of both,
+the sorrow of one is the sorrow of both. Nothing comes between. Joy is
+twofold when both share it, and only grief is less for being borne by
+two. Death itself, cruel, relentless death itself, even death knits that
+union closer. And in sunshine and storm, in this world and in the next,
+the bond is ever the same. The tie of the purest friendship is weak
+compared with this tie, and even the bond of blood is less strong!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God of heaven, this is too much!" said Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, if this union of thought and deed, of joy and grief, begins with
+marriage and does not end even with death, shall we now, here, at the
+threshold of our marriage, do it wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>A great sob choked Paul's utterance. "I can not tell you," he cried; "I
+have sworn an oath."</p>
+
+<p>"An oath! Then, surely, this present trouble was not that which Hugh
+Ritson has threatened?"</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, if our union means anything, it means trust. Trust me, my
+darling. I am helpless. My tongue is sealed. I dare not speak. No, not
+even to you. Scarcely to God Himself!"</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"That is enough," she said, very tenderly, and now the tears coursed
+down her own cheeks. "I will not ask again. I do not wish to know. You
+shall forget that I asked you. Come, dearest, kiss me. Think no more of
+this. Come, now." And she drew his head down to hers.</p>
+
+<p>Paul threw himself into a chair. His prostration was abject.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, dearest," said Greta, soothingly, "be a man."</p>
+
+<p>"There is worse to come," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What matter," said Greta, and smiled. "I shall not fear if I have you
+beside me."</p>
+
+<p>"I can bear it no more," said Paul. "The thing is past cure."</p>
+
+<p>"No, dearest, it is not. Only death is that."</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, you said death would bind us closer together, but this thing
+draws us apart."</p>
+
+<p>"No, dearest, it does not. That it can not do."</p>
+
+<p>"Could nothing part us?" said Paul, lifting his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. Though the world divided us, yet we should be together."</p>
+
+<p>Again the loud sobs came from overhead.</p>
+
+<p>Paul rose to his feet, a shattered man no more. His abject mien fell
+from him like a garment. "Did I not say it was a lie?" he muttered,
+fiercely. "Greta, I am ashamed," he said; "your courage disgraces me.
+See what a pitiful coward you have taken for your husband. You have
+witnessed a strange weakness. But it has been for the last time. Thank
+God, I am now the man of yesterday!"</p>
+
+<p>Her tears were rolling down her cheeks, but her eyes were very bright.
+"What do you wish me to do?" she whispered. "Is it not something for me
+to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is, darling. You said rightly that the thought of one is the thought
+of both."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A terrible thing!"</p>
+
+<p>"No matter. I am here to do it. What?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is to part from me to-night&mdash;only for to-night&mdash;only until
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Greta's face broke into a perfect sunshine of beauty. "Is that all?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"My darling!" said Paul, and embraced her fervently and kissed the
+quivering lips, "I am leading you through dark vaults, where you can see
+no single step before you."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am holding your hand, my husband," Greta whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Speech was too weak for that great moment. Again the heart-breaking sobs
+fell on the silence. Then Paul drew a cloak over Greta's shoulders and
+buttoned up his ulster. "It is a little after midnight," he said with
+composure. "There is a fly at the door. We may catch the last train up
+to London. I have a nest for you there, my darling."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went out into the bar. "Landlady," he said, "I will come back
+to-morrow for our luggage. Meantime, let it lie here, if it won't be in
+your way. We've kept you up late, old lady. Here, take this&mdash;and thank
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thankee! and the boxes are quite safe, sir&mdash;thankee!"</p>
+
+<p>He threw open the door to the road, and hailed the driver of the fly,
+cheerily. "Cold, sleety night, my good fellow. You'll have a sharp
+drive."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; it air cold waiting, very, specially inside, sir, just for
+want of summat short."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, come in quick and get it, my lad."</p>
+
+<p>"Right, sir."</p>
+
+<p>When Paul returned to the room to call Greta, he found her examining
+papers. She had picked them up off the table. They were the copies of
+certificates which Hugh Ritson had left there. Paul had forgotten them
+during the painful interview. He tried to recover them unread, but he
+was too late.</p>
+
+<p>"This," she said, holding out one of them, "is not the certificate of
+your birth. This person, Paul Lowther, is no doubt my father's lost
+son."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," said Paul, dropping his head.</p>
+
+<p>"But he is thirty years of age&mdash;see! You are no more than twenty-eight."</p>
+
+<p>"If I could but prove that, it would be enough," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I can prove it, and I will!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"You! How?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait until to-morrow, and see," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He had put one arm about her waist, and was taking her to the door.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped. "I can guess what the black lie has been," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, driver, up and away."</p>
+
+<p>"Right, sir. Kentish Town Junction?"</p>
+
+<p>"The station, to catch the 12:30."</p>
+
+<p>The carriage door was opened and closed. Then the bitter weeping from
+the upper room came out to them in the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor girl! whatever ails her? I seem to remember her voice," said
+Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't wait," Paul answered.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The clocks of London were striking one when Paul and Greta descended the
+steps in front of St. Pancras Station. The night was dark and bitterly
+cold. Dense fog hung in the air, and an unaccustomed silence brooded
+over the city. A solitary four-wheeled cab stood in the open square. The
+driver was inside, huddled up in his great-coat, and asleep. A porter
+awakened him, and he made way for Greta and Paul. He took his apron from
+the back of his horse, wrapped it about his waist, and snuffed the wicks
+of his lamps&mdash;they burned low and red, and crackled in the damp
+atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>"What hotel, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"The convent, Westminster."</p>
+
+<p>"Convent, sir? Did you say the convent, sir? St. Margaret's,
+Westminster, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Catholic convent."</p>
+
+<p>Greta's hand pressed Paul's arm.</p>
+
+<p>The cabman got on to his box, muttering something that was inaudible. As
+he passed the gate lodge he drew up while the porter on duty came out
+with a lamp, and took the number of the cab.</p>
+
+<p>The fog grew more dense at every step, and the pace at which they
+traveled was slow. To avoid the maze of streets that would have helped
+them to a shorter cut on a clearer night, the driver struck along Euston
+Road to Tottenham Court Road, and thence south toward Oxford Street.
+This straighter and plainer course had the disadvantage of being more
+frequented. Many a collision became imminent in the uncertain light.</p>
+
+<p>The cabman bought a torch from a passer-by, and stuck it in his
+whip-barrel. As they reached the busier thoroughfares he got down from
+his box, took the torch in one hand and the reins in the other, and
+walked at his horse's head.</p>
+
+<p>The pace was now slower than before. It was like a toilsome passage
+through the workings of an iron mine. Volumes of noisome vapor rolled
+slowly past them. The air hung close over their heads like an unseen,
+vaulted roof. Red lights gleamed like vanishing stars down the elastic
+vista. One light would turn out to be a coffee-stall, round which a
+group of people gathered&mdash;cabmen muffled to the throat, women draggled
+and dirty, boys with faces that were old. Another would be a
+potato-engine, with its own volumes of white vapor, and the clank of its
+oven door like the metallic echo of the miner's pick. The line of
+regular lamps was like the line of candles stuck to the rock, the cross
+streets were like the cross-workings, the damp air settling down into
+streaks of moisture on the glass of the cab window was like the ceasless
+drip, drip of the oozing water from overhead.</p>
+
+<p>And to the two laden souls sitting within in silence and with clasped
+hands, the great city, nay, the world itself, was like a colossal mine,
+which human earthworms had burrowed underground, while the light and
+the free air were both above.</p>
+
+<p>At one point, where a patch of dry pavement indicated a bake-house under
+the street, three or four squalid creatures crouched together and slept.
+The streets were all but noiseless. It would be two hours yet before the
+giant of traffic would awake. The few cabmen hailed each other as they
+passed unrecognized, and their voices sounded hoarse. When the many
+clocks struck two, the many tones came muffled through the dense air.</p>
+
+<p>The journey was long and wearisome, but Paul and Greta scarcely felt it.
+They were soon to part; they knew not when they were to meet again.
+Perhaps soon, perhaps late; perhaps not until a darkness deeper than
+this should cover the land.</p>
+
+<p>Turning into Oxford Street, the cabman struck away to the west, in order
+to come upon Westminster by the main artery of Regent Street. The great
+thoroughfare was quiet enough now. Fashion was at rest, but even here,
+and in its own mocking guise, misery had its haunt. A light laugh broke
+the silence of the street, and a girl, so young as to be little more
+than a child, dressed in soiled finery, and reeling with unsteady step
+on the pavement, came up to the cab window and peered in.</p>
+
+<p>At the open door of a hotel, from whence a shaft of light came out into
+the fog, the cabman drew up. "Comfortable hotel, sir; think you'd like
+to put up, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul dropped the window. "We want the Catholic convent at Westminster,
+my man."</p>
+
+<p>The cabman had put up his torch and was flapping his arms under his
+armpits. "Cold job, sir. Think I've had enough of it. Ha'past two, and a
+mile from St. Margaret's yet, sir. Got a long step home, sir, and the
+missis looking out for me this hour and more."</p>
+
+<p>The night porter of the hotel had opened the cab door, but not for an
+instant did Paul's purpose waver. "I'm sorry, my good fellow, but we
+must reach the convent, as I tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't to-morrow do, sir? Comfortable quarters, sir. Can recommend 'em,"
+with a tip of his hand over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"We must get to the convent to-night, my man."</p>
+
+<p>The cabman returned to his horse's head with a grunt of dissatisfaction.
+"Porter, can you keep a bed for me here? I shall be back in an hour,"
+said Paul. The porter signified assent, and once again the cab moved off
+on its slow journey.</p>
+
+<p>As it passed out of Trafalgar Square by way of Charing Cross, the air
+suddenly lightened. It was as if waves of white mist rolled over the
+yellow vapor. The cabman threw away his torch, mounted his box, and set
+off at a trot. When he reached Parliament Square the fog was gone. The
+great clock of Westminster was striking three; the sky was a dun gray
+behind the clocktower, and the dark mass of the abbey could be dimly
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>The cab drew up on the south-west of Abbey Gardens and before a portico
+railed in by an iron gate. The lamp burning on the sidewalk in front
+cast a hazy light on what seemed to be a large brick house plain in
+every feature.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Saint Margaret's, sir. Eight shillings, sir, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>Paul dismissed the cabman and rang the bell; the hollow tongue sent out
+a startling reverberation into the night. The sky to the east was
+breaking; thin streaks of a lighter gray foretold the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened and the iron gate swung back. A sister carrying an open
+oil lamp motioned them to enter.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I see the superior?" said Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"She is newly risen," said the sister, and she fixed the lamp to a
+bracket in the wall and went away. They were left in a bare, chill,
+echoing hall.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment a line of nuns in their coifs passed close by them with
+quick and silent steps. At that gray hour they had risen for matins.
+Some of them were pale and emaciated, and one that was palest and most
+worn went by with drooping head and hands that inlaced her rosary. Paul
+stepped back a pace. The nun moved steadily onward with the rest. Never
+a sign of recognition, never an upward glance, only the quivering of a
+lip&mdash;but it was his mother!</p>
+
+<p>He, too, dropped his head, and his own lips trembled. The mother
+superior was standing with them before he was aware. For an instant his
+voice was suspended, but he told her at length that a great calamity had
+befallen them, and begged her to take his wife for a time into her care.</p>
+
+<p>"Charity is our office," said the mother, when she had heard his story.
+"Come, my sister, the Church is peace. Your poor laden soul may put off
+its load while you are here."</p>
+
+<p>Paul begged to be allowed a moment to say farewell, and the good mother
+left them together.</p>
+
+<p>Then from an inner chamber came the solemn tones of an organ and the
+full voices of a choir. The softened harmonies seemed to float into
+their torn hearts, and they wept. The gray dawn was creeping in. It
+blurred the red light of the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, darling, good-bye!" Paul whispered; but even while he spoke
+he clung the closer.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye for the present, dear husband," said Greta, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Who would have thought that this calamity could wait for you at the
+very steps of God's altar?"</p>
+
+<p>"A day will turn all this evil into good."</p>
+
+<p>"At the threshold of our life together to be torn apart!"</p>
+
+<p>"Think of it no more, dearest. Our lives will yet be the brighter for
+this calamity. Do you remember what Parson Christian used to say? The
+happiest life is not that which is always in the sunlight, but rather
+that over which a dark cloud has once lowered and passed away."</p>
+
+<p>Paul shook his head. "My lips are sealed. You do not know all. It is a
+cruel lie that separates us. But what if it can not be disproved?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta's eyes were full of a radiant hopefulness. "It can, and shall!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul bent his head and touched her forehead with his lips. "The past is
+a silence that gives back no answer," he said. "My mother alone could
+disprove it, and she is dead to the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Not alone, dearest. I can disprove it. Wait and see!"</p>
+
+<p>Paul smiled coldly, and once more shook his head. "You don't know all,"
+he said again, and kissed her reverently. "What if to-morrow, and
+to-morrow, and to-morrow brings no light to unravel this mystery?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear it. The finger of Heaven is in this," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, rather, the hand of destiny. And how little we are in the presence
+of that pitiless power!"</p>
+
+<p>"God sees all," said Greta. "He has led me in here, and He will guide me
+out again."</p>
+
+<p>"What if I brought you for a day, and you remain for a year, for life?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then think that God Himself has taken your wife at your hands."</p>
+
+<p>Paul's face, that had worn a look of deep dejection, became distorted
+with pain. "Oh, it is horrible! And this cloister is to be your
+marriage-bed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! All is peace here. Good-bye, dearest Paul. Be brave, my husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Brave? Before death a man may be brave; but in the face of a calamity
+like this, what man could be brave?"</p>
+
+<p>"God will turn it away."</p>
+
+<p>"God grant it. But I tremble to ask for the truth. The future is not
+more awful to me now than the past."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep up heart, dear Paul. You know how pleasant it is to fall asleep
+amid storms that shake the trees, and to awake in the stillness and the
+sunshine, and amid the songs of the birds. To-morrow the falsehood will
+be outfaced, and you will return to fetch me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Paul, "or else drag out my days as an outcast in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no. Good-bye, dearest." Then the voice of the comforter failed
+her, and she dropped her head on his breast.</p>
+
+<p>The choir within chanted the matin service. Paul removed the iron bar
+that crossed the door, and opened it. The opposite side of the street
+was a blank wall, with gaunt boughs of leafless trees behind it and
+above it, and beyond all was the dim sanctuary. Traffic's deep buzz
+flowed in the distance. The dawn had reddened the eastern sky, and the
+towers of the abbey were black against the glory of the coming day.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be that there is never a sunrise on this old city but it awakens
+some one to some new calamity," said Paul; "yet surely this is the
+heaviest stroke of all Good-bye, my darling!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, my husband!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yonder gray old fabric has looked on the scarred ruins of many a life,
+but never a funeral that has passed down its aisles was so sad as this
+parting. Good-bye, dearest wife, good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Paul!"</p>
+
+<p>He struck his breast and drew his breath audibly, "I must go. The thing
+is not to be thought of and endured!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Paul!" Her face was buried in his breast, to hide it from his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"They say that the day a dear friend is lost to us is purer and calmer
+in remembrance than the day before. May it be so with us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! You will soon be back to take me away." And Greta nestled closer
+to his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"If not&mdash;if not"&mdash;his hot breathing beat fast on her drooping head&mdash;"if
+not, then&mdash;as the world is dead to both without the other's love&mdash;remain
+here&mdash;in this house&mdash;forever. Good-bye! Good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>He disengaged her clinging arms. He pressed her cold brow with his
+quivering lips. Her fears conquered her brave heart at last. A mist was
+fast hiding her from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye! good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>A moment's silence, a breaking sigh, a rising sob, a last lingering
+touch of the inlaced fingers, and then the door closed behind him. She
+was alone in the empty hall; her lips were cold; her eyes were shut. The
+rosy hues of morning were floating in the air, now rich and sweet and
+balmy and restful, with the full, pure, holy harmonies of the choir.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was merely a momentary vexation which Hugh Ritson felt when the
+course that Paul had taken falsified his prescience. "No matter," he
+said, "it is only a question of a day, more or less. The thing must be
+done."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton made no attempt to conceal his relief when the door closed and
+the fly drove off. "I ain't sorry the fence is gone, and that's flat!"</p>
+
+<p>"Only, being gone, you will have a bigger risk to run now, my friend,"
+said Hugh Ritson, with undisguised contempt.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton looked up with a glance half of fear, half of suspicion. "You
+ain't gone and rounded on a fellow, after all? You ain't told him as I'm
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a fool! Get off to bed. Wait, you must put me up for the
+night. You'll take care of yourself if you're wise. The police will be
+here in the morning; take my word for that."</p>
+
+<p>"Here? In the morning? No!"</p>
+
+<p>"When they asked for his address, he gave them the name of this house.
+They'll not forget it. Men of that sort don't forget."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll pound if they don't."</p>
+
+<p>"They have memories for other things besides addresses. Consider if they
+have any other reason to remember the landlord of your house."</p>
+
+<p>"No criss-crossing! you don't do me the same as the old woman."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter. You know best. Take care of yourself, Mr. Drayton."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton buttoned his coat as near to the throat as the torn lapel would
+allow. "That's what I mean to do. I ain't going to be lagged. It's a
+lifer this time, and that would take the stiff'ning out of a man."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"No criss-crossing, I say."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave this house, and they'll have you in twenty-four hours."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay here, and they'll lag me in twelve. Being as that's twelve to the
+good, I'm off."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton's hand was on the door-handle. Hugh Ritson snatched it away. "An
+idiot like you deserves to be taken. Such men ought to be put away."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton lifted his fist. "Damme, but I'll put you away if&mdash;if&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson did not flinch. "What if I show you how to escape the
+consequences of to-night's work altogether?"</p>
+
+<p>Drayton's uplifted hand fell. "I ain't objecting to that," he growled.
+"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"By putting another man in your place."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton's eyes opened in a stare of blank amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"And what about me?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You," said Hugh Ritson, and a scarcely perceptible sneer curled his
+lip&mdash;"you shall stand in his shoes."</p>
+
+<p>A repulsive smile crossed Drayton's face. He fumbled the torn lapel with
+restless fingers. His eyes wandered to the door. There was a moment's
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Him?" he said, with an elevation of the eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson bent his head slightly. Drayton stood with mouth agape.</p>
+
+<p>Old Mrs. Drayton was pottering around the bar preparatory to going to
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be a-bidding you good-night, sir. Paul, you'll lock up after the
+gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Mrs. Drayton."</p>
+
+<p>The landlady hobbled away. But from midway up the stairs her querulous
+voice came again. "The poor young thing&mdash;I declare she's a-crying her
+eyes out."</p>
+
+<p>"Why d'ye mean to do?" asked Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"To get him here."</p>
+
+<p>"How'll ye track him? He's gone to London, ain't he? That's a big
+haystack to find a needle in, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"London is not a haystack, Mr. Drayton. It's a honey-comb, and every
+cell is labeled. On getting out of the train at St. Pancras Station they
+will either hire a cab or they will not. If they hire one, then the
+number will be taken at the lodge. By that number the cabman can be
+found. He will know where he drove his fare. If my brother left his wife
+at one place, and settled himself at another, the cabman will know that
+also. If they do not hire a cab, then, as the hour is late, and one of
+them is a lady, they must be somewhere in the vicinity of the station.
+Thus, in that vast honey-comb, their particular cells are already marked
+out for us. That's enough for the present. Who sleep in this house
+beside yourselves&mdash;and the girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody but a lad&mdash;a pot-boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he now&mdash;in bed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Four hours agone."</p>
+
+<p>"Where does he sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"Up in the attic."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let that lad see you. On which side of the house does the attic
+lie?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the gable, this end."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there an attic in the other gable?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a bad one."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter. Get a mattress and sleep there yourself, and lie close all
+day to-morrow. Take food, but no liquor, mind that. I'll come for you
+when all is clear. And now show me to your room."</p>
+
+<p>After some preparation the two men went upstairs, carrying the only
+remaining light.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the candle. You had best go up to your attic in the dark. Here,
+put this key in the girl's door and unlock it. She's quiet enough now.
+Hush&mdash;! No; it was only the wind. Good-night&mdash;and mind what I say, don't
+let that boy see you&mdash;and, listen, no liquor!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The day had not yet dawned, and all lay still in that house when Mercy
+Fisher opened noiselessly the door of her room and crept stealthily down
+the stairs. It was very dark in the bar below, and she had no light. The
+sickening odor of dead tobacco was in the air. She carried a little
+bundle in one hand, and with the other she felt her way around the walls
+until she came to the outer door. A heavy chain fastened it, and with
+nervous fingers she drew it out of the slide. When free of its groove,
+it slipped from her hand, and fell against the door-jamb with a clang.
+The girl's heart leaped to her throat. At first she crouched in fear,
+then lifted the latch, opened the door, and fled away into the gloom
+without, leaving the door wide open.</p>
+
+<p>Never to the last day of her life did she know what purpose guided her
+in that hour. She had no object, no aim. Only to fly away from a broken
+heart. Only to lie down on the earth and know no more, with all the
+heartache over. But she was drifting in her blind misery to that
+reservoir of life, London.</p>
+
+<p>She hurried down the road, never once looking back. The leafless trees
+were surging in the night-wind; their gaunt branches were waving grimly
+over her head. The hedges took fantastic shapes before her, and beside
+her. Her limbs trembled and her teeth chattered, yet she hastened on.
+Her head ached. She felt suffocated. The world was so cruel to her. If
+only she could fly from it and forget&mdash;only forget!</p>
+
+<p>The day was dawning; the deep blue of the sky to the left of her was
+streaked with thin bars. All before her was a blank void of dun gray. A
+veil of vapor beat against her cheeks. The wide marshy lands lay in mist
+around her. Not a sound but her own footstep on the road. Not a bird in
+the empty air, not a cloud in the blank sky. It was a dreary scene;
+neither day nor night.</p>
+
+<p>And through this grim realm that is aloof from all that is human, one
+poor, broken-hearted girl hurried on, her little bundle in her hand, a
+shawl wrapped about her shoulders, her red, tearless eyes fixed in front
+of her.</p>
+
+<p>Like the spirit of unrest, the wind moaned and soughed. Now and then a
+withered leaf of last year went by her with a light rustle and stealthy
+motion. Desolate as the heart within her was the waste ground.</p>
+
+<p>Bit by bit the gray sky lightened; the east was fretted over with pink,
+and a freshness was breathed into the air. Then she began to run. Behind
+her were all her pretty dreams, and they were dead. Behind her was the
+love she had cherished, and that was dead, too. From a joyful vision she
+had awakened to find the idol cold at her breast.</p>
+
+<p>Running hard along the gloomy road, under the empty sky, through the
+surging wind, the outcast girl cried in her tearless grief as a little
+child cries for the mother who is in her grave&mdash;never knowing its loss
+until it has grown tired, and weary, and sick, and the night is very
+near.</p>
+
+<p>She came to a brick-kiln that stood back from the road. Its wreathing
+smoke coiled slowly upward in the smoke-like atmosphere. The red haze
+drew her to it, as it drew the shivering waifs of the air. Cold and
+tired, she crept up and stood some minutes in the glow; but a step fell
+on her ear from behind the kiln, and she stole away like a guilty thing.</p>
+
+<p>Away, away, she knew not where. On, on, she knew not why.</p>
+
+<p>The day had dawned now. In the brightness of morning her heart sunk
+lower. Draggled and soiled, her hair still damp with the dew, and the
+odor of night in her dress, she walked on in the golden radiance of the
+risen sun.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, to bury herself forever, and yet not to die&mdash;no, no, not to die!</p>
+
+<p>At a cross-road there was a finger-post, and it read, "To Kilburn."
+Beyond it there was a wood, and the sunlight played on the pine-trees
+and reddened the dead leaves that still clung to an oak. She was warm
+now, but, oh! so tired. Behind the ambush of a holly-bush, close to the
+road, Mercy crouched down on a drift of withered leaves at the foot of a
+stout beech. She dozed a little and started. All was quiet. Then weary
+nature conquered fear, and overcame sorrow, and she slept.</p>
+
+<p>And sleep&mdash;that makes kings and queens of us all&mdash;gracious sleep, made a
+queen of the outcast girl, a queen of love; and she dreamed of her home
+among the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy was still sleeping when a covered wagon, such as carriers use,
+came trundling along the road. The driver, a bright-eyed man, with the
+freshness of the fields in his face, sat on the front rail and
+whistled. His horse shied at something, and this made him get up. He was
+at that moment in front of the holly-bush, and he saw Mercy lying behind
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Her face was worn and pale, her bonnet fallen back from her forehead,
+her head leaning against the trunk of the tree, one hand on her breast,
+the other straying aside on the drift of yellow leaves, where a little
+bundle covered by a red handkerchief had fallen from her graspless
+fingers, and the radiant morning sunlight over all.</p>
+
+<p>The driver of the wagon jumped to the ground. At the same moment Mercy
+awoke with a frightened look. She rose to her feet, and would have
+hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>"Young to be wagranting about, ain't ye, miss?" said the driver. His
+tone was kindlier than his words.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go, please," said Mercy, and she tried to pass.</p>
+
+<p>"Coorse, coorse; if yer wants to."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy thanked him, her eyes on the ground. She was already on the road.</p>
+
+<p>"Being as you're going my way, I ain't objecting to giving you a lift."</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you. I have no&mdash;I've no money. I must run."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll wait till I ax for it, won't ye, missy? Come, get up."</p>
+
+<p>"And will you let me go down whenever I like?"</p>
+
+<p>"Coorse I will; why not? Up with ye! There, easy, kneel on the shaft,
+that's the size of it. Now, go set yourself down on them sacks. Them's
+apples, them is. Right? Very well. We're off, then."</p>
+
+<p>The wagon was about half full of sacks, and Mercy crept down in the
+furthest corner.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't in the apple line reg'lar. I'm a fern-gatherer, that's wot I
+am. On'y nature don't keep ferning all the year round, so I'se forced to
+go fruiting winter times&mdash;buying apples same as them from off'n the
+farmers down the country, and bringing 'em up to Covent Garden. That's
+where I'm going now, that is. And got to be there afore the sales
+starts."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy listened, but said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"You know Covent Garden&mdash;not fur from Leicester Square and the
+Haymarket?"</p>
+
+<p>Mercy shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"What! Never been there&mdash;and that near?"</p>
+
+<p>Mercy shook her head again and dropped her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The driver twisted about to look at her. "Let a be, she's feeling it
+bad," he thought, and was silent for a moment. Then he twisted about for
+another look.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, missy, got bad eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're sore, and a little dim," said Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Blest if you don't look the spitting image of a friend of mine&mdash;'boutn
+the eyes, I mean&mdash;red and swelled up and such. It was Tom Crow, a
+partner of mine, in fact. Tom caught cold sleeping out one night as we
+was ferning down Roger Tichborne's estates&mdash;him as was the claimant for
+'em, you know, on'y he didn't get 'em. The cold flew to Tom's eyes
+straight, and blest if he ain't gone blind as a mole."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy's lips quivered. The driver stopped his chatter, conscious that he
+had gone too far, and then, with somewhat illogical perversity, he
+proceeded to express his vexation at himself by punishing his horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Get along, you stupid old perwerse old knacker's crutch!"</p>
+
+<p>The horse set off at a trot. They passed through a village, and Mercy
+read the name "Child's Hill" printed on the corner of a house.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it London you are going to?" said Mercy, timidly; "Covent Garden&mdash;is
+that London?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" The driver opened his eyes very wide in a blank stare.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy trembled and held down her head. They jogged on awhile in silence,
+and then the driver, who had cast furtive glances at the girl, drew
+rein, and said: "I'm wexed as I said Tom Crow was as blind as a mole.
+How-and-ever, a mole ain't blind, and it's on'y them coster chaps as
+think so, but I've caught a many of 'em out ferning. Besides, Tom was
+a-worrited with his missus, Tom was, and happen that was worse nor his
+cold.</p>
+
+<p>("Git along, you old perwerse old file!)</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Tom's missus cut away and left him. As young as you, and
+maybe as good to look at, but a bad 'un; and she broke Tom's heart, as
+the saying is. So Tom left the ferning. He hadn't no heart for it.
+Ferning's a thing as wants heart, it do. He started costering first, and
+now Tom's got a 'tater-ingine, on'y being as he's blind he has a boy to
+wheel it. And that woman, she done it all. 'Jim Groundsell,' he says to
+me&mdash;that's my name&mdash;'Jim,' he says, 'don't fix your heart on nothing,'
+he says, 'and keep to your sight and the ferning.'</p>
+
+<p>("Well, you perwerse old crutch! Get along with you!)</p>
+
+<p>"But I went and done it myself. And now my missus, she's a invalide, as
+they say, and she ain't out o' bed this twelvemonth come Christmas, and
+she gets lonesome lying all by herself, and frets a bit maybe, and&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>("Git along, will you, you wexing old fence!")</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence this time. They were leaving the green fields
+behind them, and driving through longer streets than Mercy had ever seen
+before. Though the sun was shining feebly, the lamps on the pavement
+were still burning. They passed a church, and Mercy saw by the clock
+that it was hard on eight. They drove briskly through Camden Town into
+St. Giles's, and so on to Long Acre.</p>
+
+<p>The streets were thronged by this time. Troops of people were passing to
+and fro. Cabs and omnibuses were rattling hither and thither. At every
+turn the crowd became denser and the noise louder. Mercy sat in her
+corner, bewildered. The strange city frightened her. For the time it
+drove away the memory of her sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached Covent Garden, Jim, the driver, drew up with a jerk,
+and nodded to some of the drivers of similar wagons, and hailed others
+with a lusty shout. All was a babel to the girl's dazed sense: laughter,
+curses, yelling, whooping, quarreling.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy's head ached. She got down, hardly knowing what to do next. Where
+was she to go? In that wilderness of London, more desolate than the
+trackless desert, what was she?</p>
+
+<p>She stood a moment on the pavement, her little bundle in her hand, and
+all the bewildering scene went round and round. The tears rose to her
+eyes, and the glare and noise and the tumult were blotted out.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant she felt herself being lifted back into the wagon, and
+then she remembered nothing more.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Two days later Hugh Ritson entered the convent church of St. Margaret.
+It was evening service, and the nave was thronged from chancel to porch.
+The aisles, which were bare of seats, were filled only half-way down,
+the rest of the pavement being empty save for a man here and there who
+leaned lightly against the great columns of the heavy colonnade.</p>
+
+<p>The sermon had already begun. Hugh Ritson walked up the aisle
+noiselessly until he came close behind the throng of people standing
+together. Then he stood at the side of a column and looked around on
+those in the nave.</p>
+
+<p>He was within range of the preacher's voice, but he hardly listened. His
+eyes traversed the church until at last they rested on one spot in the
+south transept, where a company of nuns sat with downcast eyes half
+closed. The face of one of them was hidden beneath her drooping coif;
+the rosary held to her breast was gripped with nervous fingers. Near at
+hand there was another face that riveted Hugh Ritson's gaze. It was the
+face of Greta, radiant in its own beauty, and tender with the devotional
+earnestness of parted lips and of lashes wet with the dew of a bruised
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>From these two his eyes never wandered for longer than a minute!
+Languidly he listened to the words that floated over the people, and
+held them mute. The preacher was a slight young man, emaciated, pale,
+with lustrous eyes, and a voice that had a thin, meek pipe. But the
+discourse was in a strain of feverish excitement, a spirit of hard
+intolerance, a tone of unrelenting judgment, that would have befitted
+the gigantic figure and thunderous accents of the monk Jerome.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is
+death." This was the text, twenty times repeated. Men talked of the
+rights of conscience, as if conscience were God's law. They babbled of
+toleration, as if any heresy were to be endured, if only it were
+believed. Conscience! It was the slave of Circumstance. Toleration! It
+was the watchword at the gate of hell.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson listened with a vague consciousness, his eyes fixed
+alternately on the nun with the drooping coif and on the fair, upturned
+face beside her. At last a word struck him, and made his whole soul to
+vibrate. Men, women, the great mute throng, pillars, arches, windows of
+figured saints, altar aflame with candles, the surpliced choir, and the
+pale, thin face with the burning eyes in the pulpit above&mdash;all vanished
+in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>What was true, said the preacher, in the realm of thought, could not be
+false in the world of life. Men did evil deeds, and justified them to
+their own enslaved minds. No way so dark but it had appeared to be the
+path of light; none so far wrong but it had seemed to be right. Let man
+beware of the lie that he told to his own heart. The end thereof is
+death.</p>
+
+<p>Staring from a bloodless face, Hugh Ritson reeled a step backward, and
+then clung with a trembling hand to the pillar against which he had
+leaned. The harsh scrape of his foot was heard over the hushed church,
+and here and there a neck was craned in his direction. His emotion was
+gone in an instant. A light curl of the hard lip told that the angel
+within him had once again been conquered.</p>
+
+<p>The sermon ended with a rapturous declaration of the immutability of
+God's law, and the eternal destinies of man. The world was full of
+change, but man, who seemed to change most, changed least. The stars
+that hung above had seen the beginning and the end of ages. Before man
+was, they were. The old river that flowed past the old city that night
+had flowed there centuries ago, and generations of men had lived and
+died in joy and sorrow, and still the same waters washed the same
+shore. But the stars that measure time itself, and the sea that recorded
+it, would vanish away, and man should be when time would be no more.
+"They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. They shall wax old as doth a
+garment.... But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."</p>
+
+<p>The preacher finished, and the buzz and rustle of the people shifting in
+their seats told of the tension that had been broken. Faces that had
+been distorted with the tremors of fear, or contracted with the
+quiverings of remorse, or glorified with the lights of ecstasy, resumed
+their normal expression.</p>
+
+<p>The vesper hymn was sung by the whole congregation, standing. It floated
+up to the blue roof, where the lights that burned low over the people's
+heads left in the gloom the texts written on the open timbers and the
+imaged Christ hung in the clerestory. There was one voice that did not
+sing the vesper hymn; and the close-locked lips of Hugh Ritson were but
+the symbol of the close-locked heart.</p>
+
+<p>He was asking himself, was it true that when the fire of the stars
+should be burned to ashes, still man would endure? Pshaw! What was man?
+These throngs of men, whose great voice swelled like the sea, what were
+they? In this old church where they sung, other men had sung before
+them, and where were they now? Who should say they had not perished?
+Living, believing, dying, they were gone: gone with their sins and
+sorrows; gone with their virtues and rewards; gone from all sight and
+all memory; and no voice came from them, pealing out of the abyss of
+death to join this song of hope. Hope! It was a dream. A dream that
+great yearning crowds like these, filling churches and chapels, dreamed
+age after age. But it was a dream from which there would be no awakening
+to know that it was not true.</p>
+
+<p>The priest and choir left the church. Then the congregation broke up and
+separated. Hugh Ritson stood awhile, still leaning against the column of
+the colonnade. The nuns in the south transept rose last, and went out by
+a little aperture opening from the south aisle. Hugh watched them pass
+at the distance of the width of the nave. Greta walked a few paces
+behind them. When the people had gone, and she rose from her seat, her
+eyes fell on Hugh. Then she dropped her head, and walked down the aisle
+with a hurried step. Hugh saw her out; the church was now empty, and the
+voluntary was done. He followed her through the door, and entered into
+the sacristy.</p>
+
+<p>Before him was another door; it led into the convent. The last of the
+line of nuns was passing through it. Greta stood in the sacristy, faint,
+with a scared face, one hand at her breast, the other on the base of a
+crucifix that stood by the wall. When she saw that he had followed her,
+her first impulse was to shrink away; her second was to sink to her
+knees at his feet. She did neither. Conquering her faintness, but still
+quivering from head to foot, she turned upon him with a defiant look.
+"Why do you come here? I do not wish to speak with you. Let me pass,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson made no effort to detain her. He stood before her with
+downcast eyes, his infirm foot bent under him. "I come to bid you
+farewell," he said, calmly; "I come to say that we meet no more."</p>
+
+<p>"Would that we had parted forever before we met the last time!" said
+Greta, fervently.</p>
+
+<p>"Would that we had never met!" said Hugh, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"That was a lie with which you parted me from my husband," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"It was&mdash;God forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>"And you knew it was a lie?" said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it was a lie."</p>
+
+<p>"Then where is your shame, that you can look me in the face? Have you no
+shame?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you no pity?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What pity had you for me? Have you not done me wrong enough already?"</p>
+
+<p>"God knows it is true. And He knows I am a miserable man. Have pity and
+forgive me, and say farewell!"</p>
+
+<p>Something of contrition in the tone touched her. She was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"The preacher was wrong," he said. "There is no spirit of evil. We are
+betrayed by our own passions, and the chief of those passions is love.
+It is the Nemesis that stalks through the world, haunting all men, and
+goading some to great wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"It was of your doing that I came here," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Would to God it may be of my doing that you remain here," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a prayer He will not hear. I am leaving this house to-night.
+There is some one coming who can unmask your wicked falsehood."</p>
+
+<p>"Parson Christian?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Greta made no answer, and Hugh continued, "His journey is needless. A
+word from my mother would have done all. She is in this house."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Heaven forgive you, she is here!" said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"You are wrong; you do not know all. Where is your husband?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta shook her head. "I have neither seen him nor heard from him since
+we parted at these doors," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"And when you leave them to-night, do you leave him behind you?" said
+Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven forbid!" said Greta, passionately.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's bloodless face was awful to look upon. "Greta," he said,
+in a tone of anguish, "give up the thought. Look on that false union as
+broken forever, and all this misery will end. It was I and you&mdash;you and
+I. But that is over now. I do not come between you. It is useless to
+think of that. I do not offer you my love; you refused it long ago. But
+I can not see you my brother's wife. That would be too much for me to
+endure. I will not endure it. Have pity upon me. If I have no claim to
+your love, have I no right to your pity? What have I suffered for your
+love? A life's misery. What have I sacrificed to it? My name&mdash;my
+place&mdash;my inheritance."</p>
+
+<p>Greta lifted her eyes with a look of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"What? Has he not even yet told you all?" said Hugh. "No matter. What
+has he done to earn your love that I have not done? What has he
+suffered? What has he sacrificed?"</p>
+
+<p>"If this is love, it is selfish love," said Greta, in a broken voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Selfish?&mdash;be it so. All love is selfish."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me&mdash;leave me!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson paused; the warmth of his manner increased. "I will leave
+you," he said, "and never seek you again; I will go from you forever,
+and crush down the sorrow that must be with me to the end, if you will
+promise me one thing."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" said Greta, her eyes on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"It is much," said Hugh, "but it is not all. If the price is great,
+think of the misery that it buys&mdash;and buries. You would sacrifice
+something for me, would you not?"</p>
+
+<p>His voice swelled as he spoke, and his pale face softened, and the light
+of hopeless love was in his great eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Say that you would&mdash;for me&mdash;me!" He held out his arms toward her as if
+soul and body together yearned for one word, one look of love.</p>
+
+<p>Greta stood there, silent and immovable. "What is it?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me think that you would do something for my sake&mdash;mine," he
+pleaded. "Let me carry away that solace. Think what I have suffered for
+you, and all in vain. Think that perhaps it was no fault of mine that
+you could not love me; that another woman might have found me worthy to
+be loved who had not been unworthy of love from me."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" repeated Greta, coldly, but her drooping lashes were wet
+with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Think that I am of a vain, proud, stubborn spirit; that in all this
+world there is neither man nor woman, friend nor enemy, to whom I have
+sued for grace or favor; that since I was a child I have never even
+knelt in prayer in God's house that man might see or God might hear.
+Then think that I am at your feet, a miserable man."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" said Greta, again.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson paused, and then added, more calmly: "That you should take
+the vows and the veil, and stay here until death."</p>
+
+<p>Greta lifted her eyes. Hugh's eyes were bent upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I can not. I should be false to my marriage vows," she said,
+quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"To be true to them is to be false to yourself, to your husband, and to
+me," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I love my husband," said Greta, with an eloquent glance. "To be true to
+them is to be true to him."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Hugh Ritson's manner underwent a change. It was the
+white heat of high passion that broke the silence when he spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta," he said, and his deep voice had a strong tremor, "if there is
+any truth in what that priest told us to-night&mdash;if it is not a dream and
+a solemn mockery made to enchant or appal the simple&mdash;if there is a God
+and judgment&mdash;my soul is already too heavily burdened with sins against
+you and yours. I would have eased it of one other sin more black than
+these; but it was not to be."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" said Greta. Her face was panic-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson came a step nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"That your husband is in my hands&mdash;that one word from me would commit
+him to a doom more dreadful than death&mdash;that if he is to be saved as a
+free man, alive, you must renounce him forever."</p>
+
+<p>"Speak plain. What do you mean?" said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Choose&mdash;quick! Which shall it be? You for this convent, or your husband
+for lifelong imprisonment?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta's mind was in a whirl. She was making for the door in front of
+them. He stepped before her.</p>
+
+<p>"I parted you with a lie," he said, "but to me it was not always a lie.
+I believed it once. Do you think I should have denied my self my
+inheritance, and let a bastard stand in my place, if I had not believed
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What further lie is this?" said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"No matter. Heaven knows. And all I did was for love of you. Is it so
+guilty a thing that I have loved you&mdash;to all lengths and ends of love? I
+meant to put a hemisphere between you&mdash;to send him to Australia, and
+you back home to Cumberland. What if the lie had then been outfaced? I
+should have parted you, and that would have been enough."</p>
+
+<p>"And now, when your revenge falls idle at your feet, you come to me on
+your knees," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Revenge? That was but a feeble revenge," said Hugh. "He would have
+learned the truth and come back to claim you. There would have been no
+peace for me while he was alive and free. Do I come to you on my knees?
+Yes; but it is to pray of you to save your husband. Is it so much that I
+ask of you? Think what is earned by it. If you have no pity for me, have
+you none for him?"</p>
+
+<p>She was struggling to pass him.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta," he said, "choose, and at once. It is now or never.
+To-night&mdash;to-morrow will be too late. You for a holy life of
+self-renouncement, or your husband to drag out his miserable days in
+penal servitude."</p>
+
+<p>"This is only another lie. Let me pass," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the truth, as sure as God hears us," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"I will swear it." He laid a strong hand on her wrist. "I will swear it
+at the very foot of God's altar."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to draw her back into the church. She resisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go; I will cry for help."</p>
+
+<p>He dropped her wrist, and fell back from her. She drew herself up in
+silence, and walked slowly away.</p>
+
+<p>He stood a moment alone in the sacristy. Then he went out through the
+church. It was empty and all but dark. The sacristan, with a long rod,
+was putting out the lights one by one. He turned, with arm uplifted, to
+look after the halting figure that passed down the aisle and out at the
+west porch.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Abbey Gardens, the street in front, was dark and all but deserted. Only
+a drunken woman went reeling along. But the dull buzz in the distance,
+and the white sheet in the sky, told that, somewhere near, the wild
+heart of the night beat high.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson looked up at the heavy mass of the convent building as he
+crossed the street. The lights were already out, and all was dark
+within. He went on, but presently stopped by a sudden impulse, and
+looked again.</p>
+
+<p>It was then he was aware that something moved in the deep portico. The
+lamp on the pavement sent a shaft of light on to the door, and there,
+under the gas-light, with the face turned from him, was the figure of a
+woman. She seemed to cast cautious and stealthy glances around, and to
+lift a trembling hand to the bell that hung above her. The hand fell to
+her side, but no ring followed. Once again the hand was lifted, and once
+again it fell back. Then the woman crept totteringly down the steps and
+turned to go.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson recrossed the street. Amid all the turmoil of his soul, the
+incident had arrested him.</p>
+
+<p>The woman was coming toward him. He put himself in her path. The light
+fell full upon her, and he saw her face.</p>
+
+<p>It was Mercy Fisher.</p>
+
+<p>With a low cry, the girl sunk back against the railings of the convent,
+and covered her face with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you, Mercy?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer. Then she tried to steal away, but he held her with
+gentle force.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you leave Hendon?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You did not want me," said the girl, in a tone of unutterable pain. And
+still her face was buried in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>He did not reply. He let her grief spend itself.</p>
+
+<p>Just then a drunken woman reeled back along the pavement and passed them
+close, peering into their midst, and going by with a jarring laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What's he a-doing to ye, my dear, eh?" she said, jeeringly. "Sarve ye
+right!" she added, and laughed again. She was a draggled, battered
+outcast&mdash;a human ruin, such as night, the pander, flings away.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy lifted her head. A dull, weary look was in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You know how I waited and waited," she said, "and you were so long in
+coming, so very long." She turned her eyes aside. "You did not want me;
+in your heart you did not want me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The wave of bitter memory drowned her voice. Not unmoved, he stood and
+looked at her, and saw the child-face wet with tears, and the night
+breeze of the city drift in her yellow hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been since?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"A man going to market brought me up in his wagon. I fainted, and then
+he took me to his home. He lives close by, in the Horse and Groom Yard.
+His wife is bedridden, and such a good creature, and so kind to me. But
+they are poor, and I had no money, and I was afraid to be a burden to
+them; and besides&mdash;besides&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"She saw that I was&mdash;she saw what was going to&mdash;being a woman, she knew
+I was soon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," said Hugh, stopping another flood of tears with a light
+touch of the hand. "How red your eyes look. Are they worse?"</p>
+
+<p>"The man was very good; he took me to the doctors at a hospital, and
+they said&mdash;oh, they said I might lose my sight!"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little Mercy!" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>He was now ashamed of his own sufferings. How loud they had clamored
+awhile ago; yet, what were they side by side with this poor girl's
+tangible sorrows! Mere things of the air, with no reality.</p>
+
+<p>"But no matter!" she burst out. "That's no matter."</p>
+
+<p>"You must keep up heart, Mercy. I spoke angrily to you the other night,
+but it's over now, is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why didn't you leave me alone?" said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, Mercy; it will be well with you yet." His own eyes were growing
+dim, but even then his heart was bitter. Had he not said in his wrath
+that passion was the demon of the world? He might say it in his sorrow,
+too. The simple heart of this girl loved him, even as his own lustier
+soul loved Greta. He had wronged her. But that was only a tithe of the
+trouble. If she could but return him hate for wrong, how soon everything
+would be right with her! "What brought you here, Mercy?"</p>
+
+<p>"One of the sisters&mdash;they visit the sick&mdash;one of them visited the house
+where they gave me lodgings, and I heard that they sometimes took
+homeless girls into the convent. And I thought I was homeless, now,
+and&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little woman!"</p>
+
+<p>"I came the night before last, but saw your brother Paul walking here in
+front. So I went away."</p>
+
+<p>"Paul?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then I came last night, and he was here again. So I went away once
+more, and to-night I came earlier, and he wasn't here, but just as I was
+going to ring the bell, and say that I had no home, and that my eyes
+were growing worse, something seemed to say they would ask if I had a
+father, and why I had left him; and then I couldn't ring&mdash;and then I
+thought if only I could die&mdash;yes, if only I could die and forget, and
+never wake up again in the morning&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, Mercy. You shall go back home to your father."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and I shall go with you."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence. The bleared eyes looked stealthily up into his face.
+A light smile played there.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>A bright vision came to her of a fair day when, hand in hand with him
+she loved, she should return to her forsaken home in the mountains, and
+hold up her head, and wipe away her father's tears. She was in the dark
+street of the city, then; she and her home were very far apart.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed inwardly at a different vision. In a grim spirit of humor he
+saw all his unquenchable passion conquered, and he saw himself the
+plain, homely, respectable husband of this simple wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Was Paul alone when you saw him?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And would you tell them all?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl's sidelong glance was far away.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, I want you to do something for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>Again the sidelong glance.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh lifted the girl's head with his hand to recall her wandering
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul will come again to-night. I want you to wait for him and speak to
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; but won't he ask me questions?"</p>
+
+<p>"What if he does? Answer them all. Only don't say that I have told you
+to speak to him. Tell him&mdash;will you remember it?&mdash;are you
+listening?&mdash;look me in the face, little woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him that Mr. Christian&mdash;Parson Christian, you know&mdash;has come to
+London and wishes to see him at once. Say he has looked for him at the
+hotel in Regent Street and not found him there, and is now at the inn in
+Hendon. Will you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Where were you going, Mercy&mdash;back to your poor friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But will he be sure to come to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt. At what time was he here last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ten o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"It is now hard on nine. Tell him to go to Hendon at once, and when he
+goes, you go with him. Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't forget&mdash;to-night; to-morrow night will not do. If he does not
+come, you must follow me to Hendon and tell me so. I shall be there.
+Don't tell him that&mdash;do you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl gave a meek assent.</p>
+
+<p>"And now good-bye for an hour or two, little one."</p>
+
+<p>He turned away, and she was left alone before the dark convent. But, she
+was not all alone. A new-born dream was with her, and her soul was
+radiant with light.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson walked rapidly through Dean's Yard in the direction of the
+sanctuary. As he turned into Parliament Street the half moon rose above
+the roof of Westminster Hall. But the night was still dark.</p>
+
+<p>He passed through Trafalgar Square and into the Haymarket. The streets
+were thronged. Crowds on crowds went languidly by. Dim ghosts of men and
+women, most of them, who loitered at this hour in these streets. Old
+men, with the souls long years dead within them, and the corruption
+reeking up with every breath to poison every word, or lurking like
+charnel lights in the eyes to blink contagion in every glance. Young
+girls hopping like birds beside them, the spectres of roses in their
+cheeks, but the real thorns at their hearts. There had been no way for
+them but this&mdash;this and one other way: either to drift into the Thames
+and be swallowed up in the waters of death, or to be carried along for a
+brief minute on the froth of the waves of life.</p>
+
+<p>Laughing because they might not weep; laughing because their souls were
+dead; laughing in their conscious travesty of the tragedy of
+pleasure&mdash;they tripped and lounged and sauntered along. And the lamps
+shone round them, and above them was the glimmering moon.</p>
+
+<p>As Hugh Ritson went up the steep Haymarket, his infirmity became more
+marked, and he walked with a sliding gait. Seeing this, a woman who
+stood there halted and limped a few paces by his side, and pretending
+not to see him, shouted with a mocking laugh, "What is it&mdash;a man or a
+bat?"</p>
+
+<p>How the wild, mad heart of the night leaped up!</p>
+
+<p>A man passed through the throng with eyes that seemed to see nothing of
+its frantic frenzy and joyless joy&mdash;a stalwart man, who strode along
+like a giant among midgets, his vacant eyes fixed before him, his strong
+white face expressionless. Hugh Ritson saw him. They passed within two
+paces, but without recognition. The one was wandering aimlessly in his
+blind misery toward the Convent of St. Margaret, the other was making
+for the old inn at Hendon.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>An hour later Hugh Ritson was standing in the bar of the Hawk and Heron.
+His mind was made up; his resolve was fixed; his plan was complete.</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody with him?" he said to the landlady, motioning toward the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Not as I knows on, sir, but he do seem that restless and off his
+wittals, and I don't know as I quite understands why&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stopped her garrulous tongue. "I have found the girl. She
+will come back to you to-night, Mrs. Drayton. If she brings with her the
+gentleman who left these boxes in your care, take him to your son's
+bedroom and tell him the person he wishes to see has arrived, and will
+be with him directly."</p>
+
+<p>With this he went up the stairs. Then, calling down, he added: "The
+moment he is in the room come up and tell me."</p>
+
+<p>A minute later he called again: "Where's the key to this door? Let me
+have it."</p>
+
+<p>The landlady hobbled up with the key to Drayton's bedroom; the room was
+empty and the door stood open. Hugh Ritson tried the key in the lock and
+saw that the wards moved freely. "That will do," he said, in a satisfied
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman was hobbling back. Hugh was standing in thought, with head
+bent, and the nail of his forefinger on his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, Mrs. Drayton," he said, "you should get the girl to help
+you a little sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Lor's, sir, I never troubles her, being as she's like a visitor."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Mrs. Drayton. She's young and hearty, and your own years are
+just a little past their best, you know. How's your breathing
+to-day&mdash;any easier?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't say as it's a mort better, neither, thanking you the
+same, sir," and a protracted fit of coughing bore timely witness to the
+landlady's words.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that's' a bad bout, my good woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is, sir; and I get no sympathy, neither&mdash;leastways not from
+him as a mother might look to&mdash;in a manner of speaking."</p>
+
+<p>"Bethink you. Is there nothing the girl can do for you when she comes?
+Nothing wanted? No errand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, taking it kindly, sir, there's them finings in the cellar
+a-wants doing bad, and the boy as ought to do 'em, he's that grumpysome,
+as I declare&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right, Mrs. Drayton. Send the girl down to them the moment she
+comes in, and keep her down until bed-time."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir! I'm sure I takes it very kind and thoughtful of a
+gentleman to say as much, and no call, neither."</p>
+
+<p>The landlady shuffled down-stairs, wagging gratefully her dense old
+noddle; the thoughtful gentleman left the key of Drayton's room in the
+lock on the outside of the door, and ascended a ladder that went up from
+the end of the passage. He knocked at a door at the top. At first there
+was no answer. A dull shuffling of feet could be heard from within.
+"Come, open the door," said Hugh, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened cautiously. Drayton stood behind it. Hugh Ritson
+entered. There was no light in the room; the red, smoking wick of a
+tallow candle, newly extinguished, was filling the air with its stench.</p>
+
+<p>"You take care of yourself," said Hugh. "Let us have a light."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton went down on his knees in the dark, fumbled on the floor for a
+box of lucifers, and relighted the candle. He was in his shirt-sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>"Cold without your coat, eh?" said Hugh. A sneer played about his lips.</p>
+
+<p>Without answering, Drayton turned to a mattress that lay in the gloom of
+one corner, lifted it, took up a coat that lay under it, and put it on.
+It was the ulster with the torn lapel.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson followed Drayton's movements, and laughed slightly. "Men
+like you are always cautious in the wrong place," he said. "Let them lay
+hands on you, and they won't be long finding your&mdash;coat." The last word
+had a contemptuous dig of emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"Damme if I won't burn it, for good and all," muttered Drayton. His
+manner was dogged and subdued.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you won't do that," said Hugh, and he eyed him largely. The garret
+was empty save for the mattress and the blanket that lay on it, and two
+or three plates, with the refuse of food, on the floor. It was a low
+room, with a skylight in the rake of the roof, which sloped down to a
+sharp angle. There was no window. The walls were half timbered, and had
+once been plastered, but the laths were now bare in many places.</p>
+
+<p>"Heard anything?" said Drayton, doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I called and told the police sergeant that I thought I was on the
+scent."</p>
+
+<p>"What? No!"</p>
+
+<p>The two men looked at each other&mdash;Drayton suspicious, Hugh Ritson with
+amused contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell you what, you don't catch me hobnobbing with them gentry," said
+Drayton, recovering his composure.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson made no other answer than a faint smile. As he looked into
+the face of Drayton, he was telling himself that no man had ever before
+been at the top of such a situation as that of which he himself was then
+the master. Here was a man who was the half-brother of Greta, and the
+living image of her husband. Here was a man who, despite vague
+suspicions, did not know his own identity. Here was a man over whom hung
+an inevitable punishment. Hugh Ritson smiled at the daring idea he had
+conceived of making this man personate himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Drayton," he said, "I mean to stand your friend in this trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell you again, the best friend to me is the man as helps me to make my
+lucky."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall do it, Drayton, this very night. Listen to me. That man, my
+brother, as they call him&mdash;Paul Ritson, as his name goes&mdash;is not my
+father's son. He is the son of my mother by another man, and his true
+name is Paul Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care what his true name is, nor his untrue, neither. It ain't
+nothing to me, say I, and no more is it."</p>
+
+<p>"Would it be anything to you to inherit five thousand pounds?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Lowther is the heir to as much. What would you say if I could put
+you in Paul Lowther's place, and get you Paul Lowther's inheritance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? A fortune out of hand&mdash;how?"</p>
+
+<p>"The way I described before."</p>
+
+<p>There was a slight scraping sound, such as a rat might have made in
+burrowing behind the partition.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" said Drayton, his face whitening, and his watchful eyes
+glancing toward the door. "A key in the lock?" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! isn't your own key on the inside?" said Hugh Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton hung his head in shame at his idle fears.</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;I haven't forgot," he muttered, covering his discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity to stay here and be taken, when you might as easily be
+safe," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"So it is," Drayton mumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"And go through penal servitude for life, when another man might do it
+for you," added Hugh, with a ghostly smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't axing you to say it over. What's that?" Drayton cowered down.
+The bankrupt garret had dropped a cake of its rotten plaster. Hugh
+Ritson moved not a muscle; only the sidelong glance told of his contempt
+for the hulking creature's cowardice.</p>
+
+<p>"The lawyer who has charge of this legacy is my friend and comrade," he
+said, after a moment's silence. "We should have no difficulty in that
+quarter. My mother is&mdash;Well, she's gone. There would be no one left to
+question you. If you were only half shrewd the path would be clear."</p>
+
+<p>"What about her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Greta? She would be your wife."</p>
+
+<p>"My wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"In name. You would go back, as I told you, and say: 'I, whom you have
+known as Paul Ritson, am really Paul Lowther, and therefore the
+half-brother of the woman with whom I went through the ceremony of
+marriage. This fact I learned immediately on reaching London. I bring
+the lady back as I found her, and shall ask that the marriage&mdash;which is
+no marriage&mdash;be annulled. I deliver up to the rightful heir, Hugh
+Ritson, the estates of Allan Ritson, and make claim to the legacy left
+me by my father, Robert Lowther.' This is what you have to say and do,
+and every one will praise you for an honest and upright man."</p>
+
+<p>"Very conscientious, no doubt; but what about him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will then be Paul Drayton, and a felon."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton chuckled. "And what about her?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he is in safe keeping, she will count for nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"So I'm to be Paul Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>"You are to pretend to be Paul Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you afore, as it won't go into my nob, and no more it will,"
+said Drayton, scratching his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall have time to learn your lesson; you shall have it pat," said
+Hugh Ritson. "Meantime&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At that instant Drayton's eyes were riveted on the skylight with an
+affrighted stare.</p>
+
+<p>"Look yonder!" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"The face on the roof!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson plucked up the candle and thrust it over his head and
+against the glass. "What face?" he said, contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>Again Drayton's head fell in shame at his abject fear.</p>
+
+<p>There was a shuffling footstep on the ladder outside. Drayton held his
+head aside, and listened. "The old woman," he mumbled. "What now?
+Supper, I suppose."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>At that moment there was a visitor in the bar down-stairs. He was an
+elderly man, with shaggy eyebrows and a wizened face; a diminutive
+creature with a tousled head of black and gray. It was Gubblum
+Oglethorpe. The mountain peddler had traveled south to buy chamois
+leather, and had packed a great quantity of it into a bundle, like a
+panier, which he carried over one arm.</p>
+
+<p>Since the wedding at Newlands, three days ago, Gubblum's lively
+intelligence had run a good deal on his recollection of the man
+resembling Paul Ritson, whom he had once seen in Hendon. He had always
+meant to settle for himself that knotty question. So here, on his first
+visit to London, he intended to put up at the very inn about which the
+mystery gathered.</p>
+
+<p>"How's ta rubbun on?" he said, by way of salute on entering. When Mrs.
+Drayton had gone upstairs she had left the pot-boy in charge of the bar.
+He was a loutish lad of sixteen, and his name was Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>Jabez slowly lifted his eyes from the pewters he was washing, and a
+broad smile crossed his face. Evidently the new-comer was a countryman.</p>
+
+<p>"Cold neet, eh? Sharp as a step-mother's breath," said Gubblum, throwing
+down the panier and drawing up to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>The smile on the face of Jabez broadened perceptibly, and he began to
+chuckle.</p>
+
+<p>"What's ta snertan at, eh?" said Gubblum. "I say it's hot weather varra.
+Hasta owt agenn it?"</p>
+
+<p>Jabez laughed outright. Clearly the countryman must be crazy.</p>
+
+<p>"What's yon daft thingamy aboot?" thought Gubblum. Then aloud, "Ay, my
+lad, gie us a laal sup o' summat."</p>
+
+<p>Jabez found his risible faculties sorely disturbed by this manner of
+speech. But he proceeded to fill a pewter. The pot-boy's movements
+resembled those of a tortoise in celerity.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a stirran lad, yon," thought Gubblum. "He's swaddering like a duck
+in a puddle."</p>
+
+<p>"Can I sleep here to-neet?" he asked, when Jabez had brought him his
+beer.</p>
+
+<p>Then the sapient smile on the pot-boy's face ripened into speech.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't answering for the sleeping," said Jabez, "but happen you may
+have a bed&mdash;he, he, he! I'll ask the missis&mdash;he, he, haw!"</p>
+
+<p>"The missis? Hasta never a master, then?" said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Jabez had been warned, with many portentous threats, that in the
+event of any one asking for the master he was to be as mute as the
+grave. So in answer to the peddler's question he merely shook his wise
+head and looked grave and astonishingly innocent.</p>
+
+<p>"No? And how lang hasta been here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three years come Easter," said Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>"And how lang dusta say 'at missis has been here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Missis? I heard father say as Mistress Drayton has kep' the Hawk and
+Heron this five-and-twenty year."</p>
+
+<p>"Five-and-twenty! Then I reckon that master would be no'but a laal wee
+barn when she coomt first," said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>"Happen he were," said Jabez. Then, recovering the caution so
+unexpectedly disturbed, Jabez protested afresh that he had no master.</p>
+
+<p>"It's slow wark suppen buttermilk wi' a pitchfork," thought Gubblum, and
+he proceeded to employ a spoon.</p>
+
+<p>"Sista, my lad, wadsta like me to lend thee a shilling?"</p>
+
+<p>Jabez grinned, and closed his fat fist on the coin thrust into his palm.</p>
+
+<p>"I once knew a man as were the varra spitten picter of your master,"
+said Gubblum. "In fact, his varra sel', upsett'n and doon thross'n. I
+thowt it were hissel', that's the fact. But when I tackled him he
+threept me down, and I was that vexed I could have bitten the side out
+of a butter-bowl."</p>
+
+<p>"But I ain't got no master," protested Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>"I were riding by on my laal pony that day, but now I'm going shankum
+naggum," continued Gubblum, unmindful of the pot-boy's mighty innocent
+look. "'A canny morning to you, Master Paul,' I shouted, and on I went."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you know his name?" said Jabez, opening wide his drowsy eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"'Master Paul's half his time frae home,' says the chap on t'road.
+'Coorse he is,' I says: 'it's me for knowing that,' Ah, I mind it same
+as it were yesterday. I looked back, and there he was standing at the
+door, and he just snitit his nose wi' his finger and thoom. Ey, he did,
+for sure."</p>
+
+<p>Jabez found his conscience abnormally active at that moment. "But I
+ain't got none," he protested afresh.</p>
+
+<p>"None what?"</p>
+
+<p>"No master."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a lie, my lad, for I see he's been putten a swine ring on yer
+snout to keep ye frae rooting up the ground."</p>
+
+<p>After this Gubblum sat a good half-hour in silence. Mrs. Drayton came
+down-stairs and arranged that Gubblum should sleep that night in the
+house. His bedroom was to be a little room at the back, entered from the
+vicinity of the ladder that led to the attics.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum got up, said he was tired, and asked to be shown to his room.
+Jabez lighted a candle, and they went off together.</p>
+
+<p>"Whereiver does that lead to?" said Gubblum, pointing to the ladder near
+his bedroom door.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno," said Jabez, moodily. He had been ruminating on Gubblum's
+observation about the swine ring.</p>
+
+<p>"He's as sour as vargis," thought Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>There was the creak of a footstep overhead.</p>
+
+<p>"Who sleeps in the pigeon loft?" Gubblum asked, tipping his finger
+upward.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno," repeated Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>"His dander's up," thought Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>Just then the landlady in the bar heard the sound of wheels on the road,
+and the next moment a carriage drew up at the open door.</p>
+
+<p>"I say there, lend a hand here, quick!" shouted the driver.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton hobbled up. The flyman was leaning through the door of the
+fly, helping some one to alight.</p>
+
+<p>"Take a' arm, missy; there, that's the size of it. Now, sir, down,
+gently."</p>
+
+<p>The person assisted was a man. The light from the bar fell on his face,
+and the landlady saw him clearly. It was Paul Ritson. He was flushed,
+and his eyes were bloodshot. Behind him was Mercy Fisher, with recent
+tears on her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's ill, Mrs. Drayton," said Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>Paul freed one of his arms from the grasp of the girl, waved with a
+gesture of deprecation, smiled a jaunty smile, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no; let me walk; I'm well&mdash;I'm well."</p>
+
+<p>With this he made for the house, but before he had taken a second step
+he staggered and fell against the door-jamb.</p>
+
+<p>"Deary me, deary me, the poor gentleman's taken badly," said Mrs.
+Drayton, fussing about.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson laughed a little, lifted his red eyes, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! But it's nothing. Just dizzy, that's all. And
+thirsty&mdash;very&mdash;give me a drink, good woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Bring that there bench up, missy, and we'll put him astride it," said
+the driver. "Right; that's the time o' day. Now, sir, down."</p>
+
+<p>"Deary me, deary me, drink this, my good gentleman. It'll do you a mort
+o' good. It's brandy."</p>
+
+<p>"Water&mdash;bring me water," said Paul Ritson, feebly; "I'm parched."</p>
+
+<p>"How hot his forehead is," said Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"And no light 'un to lift, neither," said the driver. "Does he live
+here, missis?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton brought a glass of water. Paul drained it to the last drop.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; I mean yes, driver," said the landlady, confusedly.</p>
+
+<p>"He warn't so bad getting in," the driver observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear, oh, dear! where is Mr. Christian&mdash;Parson Christian?" said
+Mercy, whose distracted eyes wandered around.</p>
+
+<p>"The gentleman's come, sir; he's upstairs, sir," said the landlady, and,
+muttering to herself, Mrs. Drayton hobbled away.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson's head had fallen on his breast. His hat was off, and his
+hair tumbled over his face. The strong man sat coiled up on the bench.
+Then he shook himself and threw up his head, as if trying to cast off
+the weight of stupor that sat on him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! who'd have thought of this? Water&mdash;more water!" he mumbled
+in a thick voice.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy stood before him with a glass in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it good for him, I wonder?" she said. "Oh, where is Mr. Christian?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson saw the glass, clutched at it with both hands, then smiled a
+poor, weak smile, as if to atone for his violence, and drank every drop.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well!&mdash;so hot&mdash;and dizzy&mdash;and cold!" he muttered, incoherently.</p>
+
+<p>Then he relapsed into silence. After a moment, the driver, who was
+supporting him at the back, looked over at his face. The eyes were
+closed, and the lips were hanging.</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone off unconscious," said the flyman. "Ain't ye got a bed
+handy?"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Mrs. Drayton came hastily down-stairs, in a fever of
+agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got to get him up to his room," she said, between gusts of
+breath.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a job for two men, ain't it, missis?" said the driver.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy had loosened Paul's collar, and with a nervous hand she was
+bathing his burning forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, tell Mr. Christian," she said; "say he has fainted."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton hobbled back. In another instant there was a man's step
+descending the stairs. Hugh Ritson entered the bar. He looked down at
+the unconscious man and felt his pulse. "When did this happen?" he
+asked, turning to Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"He said he was feeling ill when I met him; then he was worse in the
+train, and when we reached Hendon he was too dizzy to stand," said
+Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"His young woman, ain't it?" said the flyman, aside, to Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh nodded his head slightly. Then, turning toward Mrs. Drayton, with a
+significant glance, "Your poor son is going to be ill," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The landlady glanced back with a puzzled expression, and began in a
+blundering whimper, "The poor gentleman&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The old lady's son?" said the flyman, tipping his finger in the
+direction of the landlady.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Drayton," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy saw and heard all. The tears suddenly dried in her eyes, which
+opened wide in amazement. She said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh caught the altered look in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Drayton," he said, "didn't you say you had something urgent for
+Mercy to do? Let her set about it at once. Now, driver, lend a
+hand&mdash;upstairs; it's only a step."</p>
+
+<p>They lifted Paul Ritson between them, and were carrying him out of the
+bar.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the boy?" asked Hugh. "Don't let him get in the way. Boys are
+more hindrance than help," he added, in an explanatory tone.</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the foot of the stair. "Now, my man, easy&mdash;heavy, eh?
+rather."</p>
+
+<p>They went up. Mercy stood in the middle of the floor with a tearless and
+whitening face.</p>
+
+<p>Half a minute later Hugh Ritson and the flyman had returned to the bar.
+The phantom of a smile lurked about the flyman's mouth. Hugh Ritson's
+face was ashen, and his lips quivered.</p>
+
+<p>The boxes and portmanteaus which Paul and Greta had left in the bar
+three nights ago still lay in one corner. Hugh pointed them out to the
+driver. "Put them on top of the cab," he said. The flyman proceeded to
+do so.</p>
+
+<p>When the man was outside the door, Hugh Ritson turned to Mrs. Drayton.
+The landlady was fussing about, twitching her apron between nervous
+fingers. "Mrs. Drayton," said Hugh, "you will go in this fly to the
+Convent of St. Margaret, Westminster. There you will ask for Mrs.
+Ritson, the lady who was here on Friday night. You will tell her that
+you have her luggage with you, and that she is to go with you to St.
+Pancras Station to meet her husband, and return to Cumberland by the
+midnight train. You understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say as I do, sir, asking pardon, sir. If so be as the lady axes
+why her husband didn't come for her hisself&mdash;what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then say what is true&mdash;nothing more, Mrs. Drayton."</p>
+
+<p>"And happen what may that be, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"That her husband is ill&mdash;but mind&mdash;not seriously."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, I can speak to that, sir, being as I saw the poor gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton was putting on her bonnet and shawl. The flyman had fixed
+the luggage on top of the cab, and was standing in the bar, whip in
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"A glass for the driver," said Hugh. Mrs. Drayton moved toward the
+counter. "No, you get into the cab, Mrs. Drayton; Mercy will serve."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy went behind the counter and served the liquor in an absent manner.</p>
+
+<p>"It's now ten-thirty," said Hugh, looking at his watch. "You will drive
+first to the convent, Westminster, and from there to St. Pancras, to
+catch the train at twelve."</p>
+
+<p>Saying this, he walked to the door and put his head through the window
+of the cab. The landlady was settling herself in her seat. "Mrs.
+Drayton," he whispered, "you must not utter a syllable about your son
+when you see the lady. Mind that. You understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I can't say&mdash;being as I saw the gentleman&mdash;wherever's Paul?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!"</p>
+
+<p>The driver came out. He leaped to his seat. In another moment the cab
+rattled away.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson walked back into the house. The boy Jabez had come
+down-stairs. "When do you close the house?" Hugh asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Eleven o'clock, sir," said Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>"No one here&mdash;you might almost as well close now. No matter&mdash;go behind
+the bar, my lad. Mercy, your eyes are more inflamed than ever; get away
+to bed immediately."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy's eyes were not more red than their expression was one of
+bewilderment. She moved off mechanically. When she reached the foot of
+the stairs she turned and tried to speak. The words would not come. At
+length she said, in a strange voice: "You did not tell me the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Parson Christian?" said Mercy, and her voice grew stern.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not use that tone to me. Come, get away to bed, little one."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes dropped before his. She turned away. He watched her up the
+stairs. So sure of hand was he that not even at that moment did he doubt
+his hold of her. But Mercy did not go to bed. She turned in at the open
+door of Drayton's room. The room was dark; only a fitful ray of bleared
+moonlight fell crosswise on the floor; but she could see that the
+unconscious figure of Paul Ritson lay stretched upon the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"And I have led you here with a lie!" she thought. Then her head swam
+and fell on to the counterpane. Some minutes passed in silence. She was
+aroused by footsteps in the passage outside. They were coming toward
+this room. The door, which stood ajar, was pushed open. There was no
+time for Mercy to escape, so she crept back into the darkness of a
+narrow space between the foot of the bed and the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Two men entered. Mercy realized their presence in the dark room rather
+by the sense of touch than by the sense of hearing or sight. They walked
+lightly, the darkness hid them, but the air seemed heavy with their hot
+breath. One of them approached the bedside; Mercy felt the bed quiver.
+The man leaned over it, and there was a pause. Only the scarcely
+perceptible breathing of the insensible man fell on the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"He's safe enough still," said a voice that thrilled her through and
+through. "Now for it&mdash;there's no time to lose!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl crouched down and held her breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Damme if I ain't wishing myself well out of it!" muttered another
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy knew both men. They were Hugh Ritson and Paul Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh closed the door. "What simpleton says fortune favors the brave?"
+he said, in a low, derisive tone. "Here is fortune at the feet of a man
+like you!"</p>
+
+<p>Drayton growled, and Mercy heard the oath that came from beneath his
+breath. "I'm wanting to be out of this, and I ain't ashamed for you to
+know it."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's light laugh came from the bedside. He was still standing
+by Paul Ritson's head. "If the lord mayor came for you in his carriage,
+with a guard of flunkies, you would leave this house in less safety," he
+said. Then he added, impatiently: "Come, waste no words; strip off that
+tell-tale coat."</p>
+
+<p>With this he leaned over the bed, and there was a creak of the spring
+mattress.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" said Drayton, in an affrighted tone.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, be a man!" said Hugh, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye call this a man's work?" muttered Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>The light laugh once more. "Perhaps not so manly as robbing the dead and
+dying," said Hugh Ritson, and his voice was deep and cold.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy heard another muttered oath. Dear God! what was about to be done?
+Could she escape? The door was closed. Still, if she could but reach it,
+she might open it and fly away.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant, Hugh Ritson, as if apprehending her thought, said,
+"Wait," and then stepped back to the door and drew the snap bolt. Mercy
+leaned against the wall, and heard the beating of her heart. In the
+darkness she knew that Paul Drayton had thrown off his coat. "A good
+riddance!" he muttered, and the heavy garment fell with a thud.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had returned to the bed-head. "Give me a hand," he said;
+"raise him gently&mdash;there, I'll hold him up&mdash;now draw off his
+coat&mdash;quietly, one arm at a time. Is it free? Then, lift&mdash;away."</p>
+
+<p>Another heavy garment fell with a thud.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the fence got in his other pockets, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, lend your hand again&mdash;draw off the boots&mdash;they're Cumberland
+make, and yours are cockney style&mdash;quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Drayton stepped to the bottom of the bed and fumbled at the feet of the
+insensible man. He was then within a yard of the spot where the girl
+stood. She could feel his proximity, and the alcoholic fumes of his
+breath rose to her nostrils. She was dizzy, and thought she must have
+fallen. She stretched out one hand to save herself, and it fell on to
+the bed-rail. It was within a foot of Drayton's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Take off his stockings&mdash;they're homespun&mdash;while I remove the cravat.
+The pin was a present; it has his name engraved on the plate behind."</p>
+
+<p>The slant of the moonlight had died off the floor, and all was dark.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton's craven fears seemed to leave him. He laughed and crowed. "How
+quiet the fence is&mdash;very obliging, I'm sure&mdash;just fainted in the nick of
+time. Will it last?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quick! strip off your own clothes and put them where these have come
+from. The coat with the torn lapel&mdash;where is it? Make no mistake about
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll pound it, no!" Drayton laughed a short, hoarse laugh.</p>
+
+<p>There was some shuffling in the darkness. Then a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!"</p>
+
+<p>Mercy knew that Hugh Ritson had grasped the arm of Drayton, and that
+both held their breath. At that moment the moonlight returned, and the
+bleared shaft that had once crossed the floor now crossed the bed. The
+light fell on the face of the prostrate man. His eyes were open.</p>
+
+<p>"Water&mdash;water!" said Paul Ritson, very feebly.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stepped out of the moonlight and went behind his brother.
+Then Mercy saw a hand before Paul's face, putting a spirit flask to his
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>When the hand was raised the face twitched slightly, the eyes closed
+with a convulsive tremor, and the half-lifted head fell back on to the
+pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll be quieter than ever now," said Hugh Ritson, softly. Mercy
+thought she must have screamed, but the instinct of self-preservation
+kept her still. She stirred not a limb. Her head rested against the
+wall, her eyes peered into the darkness, her parched tongue and parted
+lips burned like fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick! put his clothes on to your own back, and let us be gone."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton drew on the garments and laughed hoarsely. "And a good fit,
+too&mdash;same make of a man to a T&mdash;ex&mdash;act&mdash;ly!"</p>
+
+<p>The window and the door stood face to face; the bed was on the left of
+the door, with the head at the door-end. The narrow alcove in which the
+girl stood was to the left of the window, and in front of the window
+there was a dressing-table. Drayton stepped up to this table to fix the
+cravat by the glass. The faint moonlight that fell on his grinning face
+was reflected dimly into the mirror.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Mercy's sickening eyes turned toward the bed. There, in
+repose that was like death itself, lay the upturned face of Paul Ritson.
+Two faces cast by nature in the same mold&mdash;one white and serene and
+peaceful, the other bloated, red, smirking, distorted by passion, with
+cruel eyes and smoking lips.</p>
+
+<p>"The very thing&mdash;the very thing&mdash;damme if his own mother wouldn't take
+me for her son!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stepped to Drayton's side. When he spoke his voice was like
+a cold blast of wind.</p>
+
+<p>"Now listen: From this moment at which you change your coat for his you
+cease to be Paul Drayton, and become Paul Ritson."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you say I was to be Paul Lowther?"</p>
+
+<p>"That will come later."</p>
+
+<p>"As I say, it won't go into my nob."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter; say nothing to yourself but this, 'I am to pretend to be
+Paul Ritson.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now for it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ready?" asked Hugh. He returned to the bed-head.</p>
+
+<p>"Ready."</p>
+
+<p>"Then give a hand here. We must put him up into your garret. When the
+police come for him he must seem to be in hiding and in drink. You
+understand?"</p>
+
+<p>A low, hoarse laugh was the only answer.</p>
+
+<p>Then they lifted the unconscious man from the bed, opened the door, and
+carried him into the passage.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy recovered her stunned senses. When the men were gone she crept out
+on tiptoe and tripped down the passage to her own room. At the door she
+reeled and fell heavily. Then, in a vague state of consciousness, she
+heard these words passed over her&mdash;"Carry her back into her room and
+lock her in." At the same instant she felt herself being lifted in a
+strong man's arms.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Before Gubblum Oglethorpe parted with Jabez, he tried to undo the
+mischief he had done. "Give us a shak' o' thy daddle," he said, holding
+out his hand. But Jabez had not forgotten the similitude of the swine
+ring. He made no response.</p>
+
+<p>"Dang him for a fool!" thought Gubblum. "He's as daft as a besom." Then
+Gubblum remembered with what lavish generosity he had bribed the pot-boy
+to no purpose. "He cover't a shilling dammish," he thought; "I'll dang
+his silly head off!"</p>
+
+<p>Jabez put down the candle and backed out of the room, his eyes fixed on
+the peddler with a ghostly stare.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't boggle at me. I'll none hurt ye," said Gubblum. Jabez
+pulled the door after him. "His head's no'but a lump of puddin' and a
+daub o' pancake," thought Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>Then the peddler sat on the bed and began to wonder what possible reason
+there might be for the lad's sudden change of temper. He sat long, and
+many crude notions trotted through his brain. At last he recalled the
+fact that he had said something about Jabez's snout carrying a swine
+ring. That was the rub, sure enough. "I mak' no doobt he thowt it was a
+by-wipe," thought Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>Just as the peddler had arrived at this sapient conclusion, he heard
+heavy footsteps ascending and descending the ladder that stood in the
+passage outside. Gubblum understood the sounds to mean that the inn was
+so full of visitors that some of them had to be lodged even in the
+loft. "Ey, I shouldn't wonder but this is a bonny paying consarn," he
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>He undressed, got into bed, and blew out his light. He lay awhile
+waiting for sleep, and thinking of the failure of his plummets to sound
+the depths of Jabez. Then he remembered with vexation that the lad had
+even laughed at him in spite of the "shilling dammish."</p>
+
+<p>"Shaf, it was no'but his guts crowkin'," thought Gubblum; and he rolled
+over, face to the wall, and began to pay nasal tribute to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>From the slowly tightening grip of unconsciousness Gubblum was roused to
+sudden wakefulness. There was a noise as of heavy shuffling feet outside
+his door. The peddler raised himself and listened.</p>
+
+<p>"Too dark in this corner," said a voice. "Get a light."</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum crept out of bed, held his head to the door, and listened.</p>
+
+<p>There were retreating steps. Then the man who had spoken before spoke
+again. "Quick, there! we must catch the train at eleven fifteen."</p>
+
+<p>The voice pealed in Gubblum's memory. He knew it. It was the voice of
+the last man he should have looked for in this house&mdash;Hugh Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the footsteps approached, and thin fingers of light shot over
+Gubblum's head into his dark room. He looked up at the door. Three small
+round holes had been pierced into the styles for ventilation.</p>
+
+<p>"Put the candle on the floor and take the feet&mdash;I'll go up first," said
+the same voice.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum raised himself on tiptoe and tried to peer through the
+perforations. He was too small a man to see through. There was a chair
+by the side of his bed, and his extinguished candle stood on it. He
+removed the candlestick, lifted the chair cautiously, placed its back to
+the door, and mounted it. Then he saw all.</p>
+
+<p>There were two men, and he knew both&mdash;the brothers Ritson. Ah! had he
+not said that Paul Ritson kept this inn? "I'll shut up the whole boilin'
+of 'em next time," thought the peddler, "Wait! what are they lugging
+into the pigeon loft?"</p>
+
+<p>"Easy!&mdash;damme, but the fence is a weight!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the hoarse voice of the other man. The candle was behind him and
+on the floor. It cast its light on his back. "If I could no'but get a
+blink frae the cannel, I'd see what's atween them," thought Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>The men with their burden were now at the top of the ladder.</p>
+
+<p>"Twist about, and go in sideways," muttered the voice first heard.</p>
+
+<p>The man below twisted. This movement brought the full light of the
+candle on to the faces of all three.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord A'mighty, whativer's this?" Gubblum thought.</p>
+
+<p>The burden was a man's body. But it was the face that startled the
+peddler&mdash;the face of Paul Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum's eyes passed over the group in one quick glance. He saw two
+Paul Ritsons there, and one of them lay as still as the dead.</p>
+
+<p>A minute more of awful tension, and the door of the loft above was
+slammed and shut, the heavy feet of the two men descended the ladder
+quickly, and went down the stairs into the bar.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum listened as if with every sense. He knew that the outer door to
+the road had opened and closed. He heard footsteps dying away in the
+distance without. All was silent within the house.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Two men hastening in the night to the Hendon railway station paused at
+that turn of the road which leads to the police offices and jail.</p>
+
+<p>"You go on and take care of yourself&mdash;I'll follow in five minutes," said
+one.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't going to give a man away?" said the other.</p>
+
+<p>There was only a contemptuous snort for answer. The first speaker had
+turned on his heel. When he reached the police offices, he rang the
+bell. The door was answered by a sergeant in plain clothes. "I've found
+your man for you," said Hugh Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"Where, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the Hawk and Heron."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Drayton. You'll find him lying in the garret at the west end of
+the gable&mdash;drunk. Lose not an hour. Go at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Is the gentleman who struggled with him still staying there&mdash;Mr. Paul
+Ritson?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; he goes back home to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"What's his address in the country?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Ghyll, Newlands, Cumberland."</p>
+
+<p>"And yours, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am his brother, Hugh Ritson, and my address is the same."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go this instant."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, take your piece of frieze with you and see if it fits. It was by
+the torn ulster that I recognized your man. Good-night."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>As soon as the noise of the retiring steps had died away on Gubblum's
+ear, he dressed himself partially, opened the door of his bedroom
+cautiously, and stepped into the passage. He was still in the dark, and
+groping with one hand, he felt for the ladder by which the two men had
+carried their burden to the loft above. He had grasped the lowest rungs
+of it, and was already some steps up, when he heard a singular noise. It
+was something between the cry of a child and the deep moan of a sick
+man. Did it come from the loft? Gubblum held his head in that direction
+and listened. No; the sound was from the other end of the passage. Now
+it was gone, and all was quiet. What a strange house was this!</p>
+
+<p>"Can't see a styme," thought Gubblum. "I'll away for the cannel."</p>
+
+<p>Back in his bedroom he struck a match, and then stepped afresh into the
+passage, guarding the newly lighted candle with the palm of his hand.
+Then there came a shrill cry. It seemed to be before him, above him,
+behind him, everywhere about him. Gubblum's knees gave way, but the
+stubborn bit of heart in him was not to be shaken.</p>
+
+<p>"A rayder queerly sort of a house," he thought; and at that instant
+there were heavy lunges at a door at the further end of the passage, and
+a cry of "Help! help!"</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum darted in the direction of the voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me out!" cried the voice from within.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum tried the door. It was locked.</p>
+
+<p>"Help! help!" came again.</p>
+
+<p>"In a sniffer; rest ye a bit!" shouted Gubblum, and putting the light on
+the floor, he planted his shoulder against the door, and one foot
+against the opposite wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Help! help! let me out! quick, quick!" came once more from within.</p>
+
+<p>"Sec a skrummidge!" shouted Gubblum, panting for breath.</p>
+
+<p>Then the lock gave way and the door flew open. In the midst of the bad
+light Gubblum saw nothing at first. Then a woman with wild eyes and a
+face of anguish came out on him from the dark room. It was Mercy Fisher.</p>
+
+<p>When they recognized each other there was a moment of silence. But it
+was only a moment, and that moment was too precious to be lost. In a
+flood of tears the girl told him what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum understood no more than that villainy had been at work. Mercy
+saw nothing but that she had been deceived and had been herself the
+instrument of deception. This was enough.</p>
+
+<p>"The raggabrash! I'd like to rozzle their backs with an ash stick," said
+Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, where have they taken him&mdash;where, where?" cried Mercy, wringing her
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't put on wi' thee&mdash;I know," said Gubblum. "I questit them up the
+stairs. Come along wi' me, lass, and don't slobber and yowl like a
+barn."</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum whipped up his candle, and hurried along the passage and up the
+ladder like a monkey, Mercy following at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>"Belike they've locked this door forby," he said.</p>
+
+<p>But no, the key was in the lock. Gubblum turned it and pushed it open.
+Then he peered into the garret, holding the candle above his head. When
+the light penetrated the darkness, they saw a man's figure outstretched
+on a mattress that lay on the bare floor of the empty room. They ran up
+to it, and raised the head.</p>
+
+<p>"It's his fadder's son, I'll uphod thee," said Gubblum. "And yon
+riff-raff, his spitten picter, is no'but some wastrel merry-begot."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy was down on her knees beside the insensible man, chafing his
+hands. There was a tremulous movement of the eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>"Sista, he's coming tul't. Slip away for watter, lass," said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy was gone and back in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"Let a be, let a be&mdash;he'll come round in a crack. Rub his forehead&mdash;stir
+thy hand, lass&mdash;pour the watter&mdash;there, that's enough&mdash;plenty o' butter
+wad sto a dog. Sista, he's coming tul't fast."</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson had opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Slip away for mair watter, lass&mdash;there, that's summat like&mdash;rest ye, my
+lad&mdash;a drink?&mdash;ey, a sup o' watter."</p>
+
+<p>Paul looked around him. His filmy eyes were full of questions. But at
+first his tongue would not speak. He looked up at the bare skylight and
+around at the bleached walls, and then back into the face of the
+peddler. He noticed Mercy, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we, my girl?" he said, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the Hawk and Heron," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"How do I come to be here?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy covered her face, and sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"I brought you," she said, at length.</p>
+
+<p>Paul looked at her a moment with bewildered eyes. Then the tide of
+memory flowed back upon his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember," he said, quietly; "I was feeling dizzy&mdash;hadn't slept two
+nights&mdash;not even been in bed&mdash;walked the streets the long hours
+through."</p>
+
+<p>Everything had rushed over him in a moment, and he closed his eyes with
+a deep groan. At his feet Mercy buried her face and sobbed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Paul drew himself feebly up on his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Parson Christian?" he asked, and gazed around, with a faint
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's anguish overflowed.</p>
+
+<p>"That was a lie I told you," she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>The smile fled away.</p>
+
+<p>"A lie! Why a lie?"</p>
+
+<p>He was struggling with a dazed sense.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you that Parson Christian was here and wanted you. He is not
+here."</p>
+
+<p>And Mercy's weeping seemed to choke her.</p>
+
+<p>"My good girl, and why?"</p>
+
+<p>"They brought you to this room and left you, and now they are gone."</p>
+
+<p>"They! Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your brother Hugh and Mr. Drayton."</p>
+
+<p>Paul looked deadly sick at heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is this Drayton?"</p>
+
+<p>"The spitten picter of yourself, my lad," said Gubblum; "the man I telt
+ye of lang ago&mdash;him as keeps this house."</p>
+
+<p>Paul's eyes wandered vacantly. His nervous fingers twitched at the
+ulster that he wore.</p>
+
+<p>"What's this?" he said, and glanced down at his altered dress.</p>
+
+<p>"When you were insensible they stripped you of your clothes and put
+others on you," said Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose clothes are these?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Drayton's."</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson rose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are the men?" he said, in a husky voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the station&mdash;that was all I heard."</p>
+
+<p>Paul gazed about with hazy eyes. Mercy flung herself at his feet and
+wept bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me! oh, forgive me!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked down at her with a confused expression. His brain was
+benumbed. He drew one arm across his face as though struggling to
+recover some lost link of memory.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, my good lass, what's this?" he said, and then smiled faintly and
+made an attempt to raise her up.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is at the convent at Westminster?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Then all his manner changed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?&mdash;what of that?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Drayton was sent there in a cab to tell Mrs. Ritson to be at St.
+Pancras Station at midnight to meet her husband and return to
+Cumberland."</p>
+
+<p>The face that had been pale became suddenly old and ghastly. There was
+an awful silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this the truth?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," cried the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I see it all now&mdash;I think I understand," he faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me!" cried the girl.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed hardly to see her.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been left in this room insensible, and the impostor who
+resembles me&mdash;where is he now?"</p>
+
+<p>He struggled with the sickness that was mastering him. His brain reeled.
+The palms of his hands became damp. He staggered and leaned against the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Rest ye a bit, my lad," said Gubblum. "You'll be gitten stanch agen
+soon."</p>
+
+<p>He recovered his feet. His face was charged with new anger.</p>
+
+<p>"And the wicked woman who trapped me to this house is still here," he
+said, in a voice thick with wrath.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me! forgive me!" wept the girl at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>He took her firmly by the shoulders, raised her to her knees, and turned
+her face upward till her eyes met his.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me look at her," he said, hoarsely. "Who would have believed it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me! forgive me!" cried the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Woman, woman! what had I done to you&mdash;what, what?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl's sobs alone made answer.</p>
+
+<p>In his rage he took her by the throat. A fearful purpose was written in
+his face.</p>
+
+<p>"And this is the woman who bowed down the head of her old father nigh to
+the grave," he said, bitterly, and flung her from him.</p>
+
+<p>Then he staggered back. His little strength had left him. There was
+silence. Only the girl's weeping could be heard.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant, strangely calm, without a tear in his sad eyes, he
+stepped to her side and raised her to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I was wrong," he said; "surely I was wrong. You could not lie to me
+like that, and know it. No, no, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"They told me what I told you," said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"And I blamed you for it all, poor girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you forgive me?" she said, lifting her eyes timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive you?&mdash;ask God to forgive you, girl. I am only a man, and you
+have wrecked my life."</p>
+
+<p>There was a foot on the ladder, and Jabez, the boy, stepped up, a candle
+in his hand. He had been waiting for the landlady, when he heard voices
+overhead.</p>
+
+<p>"The varra man!" shouted Gubblum. "Didsta see owt of thy master
+down-stairs?"</p>
+
+<p>Jabez grinned, and glanced up at Paul Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"Hark ye, laal man, didsta see two men leaving the house a matter of
+fifteen minutes ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"Belike I did," said Jabez. "And to be sure it were the gentleman that
+come here afore&mdash;and another one."</p>
+
+<p>"Another one&mdash;your master, you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Jabez grinned from ear to ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Didsta hear owt?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard the gentleman say they had to be at St. Pancras at midnight."</p>
+
+<p>Paul fumbled at his breast for his watch. It was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"What's o'clock?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Fifteen after eleven, master," said Jabez. "I've just bolted up."</p>
+
+<p>Paul's face was full of resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll follow," he said; "I've lost time enough already."</p>
+
+<p>"What, man! you'll never manish it&mdash;and you as weak as watter forby.
+You'll be falling swat in the road like a wet sack."</p>
+
+<p>Paul had pulled the door open. Excitement lent him strength. The next
+moment he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the master off to? St. Pancras?" asked Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>"Fadge-te-fadge, gang out of my gate! Away, and lig down your daft head
+in bed!" said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>Jabez did not act on the peddler's advice. He returned to the bar to
+await the return of Mrs. Drayton, whose unaccustomed absence gave rise
+to many sapient conjectures in the boy's lachrymose noddle. He found
+the door to the road open, and from this circumstance his swift
+intelligence drew the conclusion that his master had already gone. His
+hand was on the door to close and bolt it, when he heard rapid footsteps
+approaching. In an instant two men pushed past him and into the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Mr. Drayton," said one, panting from his run.</p>
+
+<p>"He's this minute gone," said Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that true, my lad?" the man asked, laying a hand on the boy's
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone to St. Pancras, sir. He's got to be there at midnight," said
+Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>The boy had recognized the visitors, and was trembling.</p>
+
+<p>The men glanced into each other's faces.</p>
+
+<p>"That was Drayton&mdash;the man that ran past us down the road," said one.</p>
+
+<p>"Make sure of it," said the other. "Search the place; I'll wait for you
+here."</p>
+
+<p>In two minutes more the men had left the house together.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A quarter of an hour later the night porter at the Hendon railway
+station saw a man run across the platform and leap into the up train
+just as the carriages were moving away. He remarked that the man was
+bareheaded, and wore his clothes awry, and that a rent near the collar
+of his long frieze ulster exposed a strip of red flannel lining. He
+thought he knew him.</p>
+
+<p>The train had barely cleared the platform when two men ran up and came
+suddenly to a stand in front of the porter.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone!" said one of them, with vexation.</p>
+
+<p>"That would be the 11:35," said the other, "to King's Cross. Did any one
+get into it here, porter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sergeant&mdash;Drayton, of the Hawk and Heron," said the porter.</p>
+
+<p>"Your next up is 11:45 to St. Pancras?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, due at twelve."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it prompt?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the second."</p>
+
+<p>The two men faced about.</p>
+
+<p>"Time enough yet," said one.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The cab that drove Mrs. Drayton into London carried with it a world of
+memories. Thought in her old head was like the dip of a sea-bird in the
+sea&mdash;now here, now there, now a straight flight, and now a backward
+swirl. As she rattled over the dark roads of Child Hill and the New End,
+she puzzled her confused brain to understand the business on which she
+had been sent. Why had the gentleman been brought out to Hendon? Why,
+being ill, was he so soon to be removed? Why, being removed, was he not
+put back into this cab, and driven to the station for Cumberland? What
+purpose could be served by sending her to the convent for the
+gentleman's wife, when the gentleman himself might have been driven
+there? Why was the lady in a convent? The landlady pursed up her lips
+and contracted her wrinkled brows in a vain endeavor to get light out of
+the gloom of these mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of the gentleman lying ill at her house suggested many
+thoughts concerning her son. Paul was not her son, and his name was not
+Drayton. Whose son he was she never knew, and what his name was she had
+never heard. But she had fixed and done for him since he was a baby, and
+no mother could have loved a son more than she had loved her Paul. What
+a poor, puling little one he was, and how the neighbors used to shake
+their heads and say:</p>
+
+<p>"You'll never rear it; there's a fate on it, poor, misbegotten mite!"</p>
+
+<p>That was thirty long years ago, and now Paul was the lustiest young man
+in Hendon. Ah! it was not Hendon then, but London, and her husband, the
+good man, was alive and hearty.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll thrive yet, Martha," he would say, and the little one would seem
+to know him, and would smile and crow when he cracked his fingers over
+its cot.</p>
+
+<p>Then the landlady thought of the dark days that followed, when bread was
+scarce and the gossips would say:</p>
+
+<p>"Serve you right. What for do you have an extra mouth to feed?&mdash;take the
+brat to the foundling."</p>
+
+<p>But her husband, God bless him, had always said:</p>
+
+<p>"What's bite and sup for a child? Keep him, Martha; he'll be a comfort
+to ye yet, old woman."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton wiped her eyes as she drove in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>Then the bad times changed, and they left the town and took the inn at
+Hendon, and then the worst times of all came on them, for as soon as
+they were snug and comfortable the good man himself died. He lay dying a
+week, and when the end came he cried for the child.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the boy," he said, and she lifted the child into his arms in
+bed. Then he raised his thin white hand to stroke the wavy hair, but the
+poor hand fell into the little one's face.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton shifted in her seat, and tried to drive away the memories
+that trod on the heels of these recollections; but the roads were still
+dark, and nothing but an empty sky was to be seen, and the memories
+would not be driven away. She recalled the days when young Paul grew to
+be a lusty lad&mdash;daring, reckless, the first in mischief, the deepest in
+trouble. And there was no man's hand to check him, and people shook
+their heads and whispered, "He'll come to a bad end; he has the
+wickedness in his blood." Poor lad, it was not his fault if he had
+turned out a little wild and wayward and rough, and cruel to his own
+mother, as you might say, jostling her when he had a drop to drink, and
+maybe striking her when he didn't know what he was doing, and never
+turning his hand to honest work, but always dreaming of fortunes coming
+some day, and betting and racing, and going here and there, and never
+resting happy and content at home. It was not his fault: he had been led
+astray by bad companions. And then she didn't mind a blow&mdash;not she.
+Every woman had to bear the like of that. You want a world of patience
+if you have men creatures about you&mdash;that's all.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking of bad companions suggested to the landlady's mind, by some
+strange twist of which she was never fully conscious, the idea of Hugh
+Ritson. The gentleman who had come so strangely among them appeared to
+have a curious influence over Paul. He seemed to know something of
+Paul's mother. Paul himself rummaged matters up long ago, and found that
+the lady had escaped from the asylum, and been lost. And now the strange
+gentleman came with her portrait and said she was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Poor soul, how well Mrs. Drayton remembered her! And that was thirty
+years ago! She had never afterward set eyes on the lady, and never heard
+of her but once, and even that once must be five-and-twenty years since.
+One day she went for coal to the wharf at Pimlico, and there she met an
+old neighbor, who said: "Mrs. Drayton, your lodger, she that drowned
+herself, came back for the babby, but your man and you were shifted
+away." And to think that the poor young thing was dead and gone now, and
+she herself, who had thought she was old even in those days, was alive
+and hearty still!</p>
+
+<p>By this time the cab was rattling through the busy streets of London,
+and the train of the landlady's thoughts was broken. Only in a vague way
+did she know where she was going. The cab was taking her there, and it
+would take her back again. When they reached the convent she had to ask
+for Mrs. Ritson, and say she was sent to take her to St. Pancras Station
+to meet her husband there, and return to Cumberland by the train at
+midnight. That was all.</p>
+
+<p>The clock of the abbey was marking the half-hour after eleven as the cab
+passed into Parliament Square. In another minute they drew up before the
+convent in Abbey Gardens.</p>
+
+<p>The cabman jumped from the box, rang the bell, and helped Mrs. Drayton
+to alight. The iron gate and the door in the portico swung open
+together, and a nun stood on the threshold, holding a lamp in her hand.
+Mrs. Drayton hobbled up the steps and entered the hall. A deep gloom
+pervaded the wide apartment, in which there were but two wicker chairs
+and a table. The nun wore a gray serge gown, with a wimple cut square
+on her chest, a girdle about her waist, and a rosary hanging by her
+side.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I see a lady boarder&mdash;Mrs. Ritson?" said the landlady.</p>
+
+<p>The nun started a little, and then answered in a low, melancholy voice,
+in which the words she spoke were lost. Mrs. Drayton's eyes were now
+accustomed to the gloom, and she looked into the nun's face. It was a
+troubled and clouded face, and when it was lifted for an instant to her
+own, Mrs. Drayton felt chilled, as if a death's-hand had touched her.</p>
+
+<p>It was the face of the mother of Paul! Older, sadder, calmer, but the
+same face still.</p>
+
+<p>The nun dropped her eyes, and made the sign of the cross. Then she
+walked with a quick and noiseless step to the other end of the hall, and
+sounded a deep gong. In a moment this summoned a sister&mdash;a novice,
+dressed like the first, except all in white. Mrs. Drayton was now
+trembling from head to foot, but she repeated her question, and was led
+into a bare, chill room, and left alone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Greta parted from Hugh Ritson three hours before, she was in an
+agony of suspense. Another strange threat had terrified her. She had
+been asked to make choice of one of two evils; refusing to believe in
+Hugh Ritson's power, she had rejected both. But the uncertainty was
+terrible. To what lengths might not passion, unrequited passion,
+defeated passion, outraged passion, lead a man like Hugh Ritson? Without
+pity, without remorse, with a will that was relentless and a heart that
+never knew truth, he was a man to flinch at no extremity. What had he
+meant?</p>
+
+<p>Greta's first impulse had been to go in search of her husband, but this
+was an idle and a foolish thought. Where should she look? Besides this,
+she had promised to remain in the convent until her husband should come
+for her, and she must keep her word. She did not go to supper when the
+gong sounded, but crept up to her room. The bell rang for vespers, and
+Greta did not go to the chapel. She lay down in anguish and wept
+scalding tears. The vesper hymn floated up to her where she lay, and she
+was still weeping. There was no light in this dark place; there was no
+way out of this maze but to wait and suffer.</p>
+
+<p>And slowly the certainty stole upon her that Hugh Ritson had made no
+idle threat. He was a resolute man; he had given her a choice of two
+courses, and had she not taken a selfish part? If Paul, her husband,
+were indeed in danger, no matter from what machination of villainy&mdash;was
+it much to ask that she, his wife, should rescue him by a sacrifice that
+fell heaviest upon herself? Hugh Ritson had been right&mdash;her part had
+been a selfish one. Oh, where was Mr. Christian? She had telegraphed for
+him, and he had answered that he would come; yet hour had followed hour,
+and still he had not arrived.</p>
+
+<p>Three hours she tossed in agony. She heard the sisters pass up the
+echoing stone staircase to their dormitories, and then the silent house
+became as dumb as a vault. Not a ripple flowed into this still tarn from
+the great stream of the world that rushed and surged and swelled with
+the clangor of a million voices around its incrusted sides.</p>
+
+<p>Her window overlooked the Abbey Gardens. All was quiet beneath. Not a
+step sounded on the pavement. Before her the blank wall was black, and
+the dark, leafless trees stood out from the vague green of the grass
+beyond. Against the sky were the dim outlines of the two towers of the
+old abbey&mdash;by day a great rock for the pigeons that wheeled above the
+tumbling sea of the city, by night a skull of stone from which the voice
+of the bell told of the flight of time.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the calm of a moment's stupefaction Greta was awakened by a knock
+at her door. The novice entered and told her that a woman waited below
+to speak with her. Greta betrayed no surprise, and she was beyond the
+reach of fresh agitation. Without word or question she followed the
+novice to the room where Mrs. Drayton sat.</p>
+
+<p>She recognized the landlady and heard her story. Greta's heart leaped up
+at the thought of rejoining her husband. Here was the answer to the
+prayer that had gone up she knew not how often from her troubled heart.
+Soon she would be sure that Hugh Ritson's threat was vain. Soon she
+would be at Paul's side and hold his hand, and no earthly power should
+separate them again. Ah, thank God, the merciful Father, who healed the
+wounded hearts of His children, she should very soon be happy once more,
+and all the sorrows of these past few days would fade away into a dim
+memory.</p>
+
+<p>"Twelve o'clock at St. Pancras, and you have the luggage in a cab at the
+door, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and there's no time to lose, for, to be sure, the night is going
+fast," said Mrs. Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"And he will be there to meet me?" asked Greta. Her eyes, still wet with
+recent tears, danced with a new-found joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, at St. Pancras," said the landlady.</p>
+
+<p>Greta's happiness overflowed. She took the old woman in her arms and
+kissed her wizened cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute&mdash;only a minute," she said, and tripped off with the swift
+glide of a lapwing. But when she was half-way up the stairs her ardor
+was arrested, and she returned with drooping face and steps of lead.</p>
+
+<p>"But why did he not come for me himself?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The gentleman is not well&mdash;he is ill," said Mrs. Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"Ill? You say he is ill? Then he could not come. And I blamed him for
+not coming!"</p>
+
+<p>"The gentleman is weak, but noways worse; belike he will go straight off
+and meet you at the station."</p>
+
+<p>Greta turned away once again, and went upstairs slowly. At a door on the
+first landing she tapped lightly, and when a voice answered from within
+she entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>The superior was on her knees at a table. She lifted a calm and
+spiritual face as Greta approached.</p>
+
+<p>"Reverend mother," said Greta, "I am leaving you this moment."</p>
+
+<p>"So soon, my daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"My husband has sent for me; he will meet me at the railway station at
+twelve."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did he not come himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is ill; he has gone direct."</p>
+
+<p>"The hour is late and the message is sudden. Are you satisfied?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am anxious, reverend mother&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, my daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"An old gentleman, a clergyman, Mr. Christian, is coming from
+Cumberland. I have expected him hourly, but he is not yet arrived. I
+cannot wait; I must rejoin my husband. Will you order that a message be
+left for the clergyman?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is the message, my child?"</p>
+
+<p>"Simply that I have returned with my husband by the train leaving St.
+Pancras at midnight."</p>
+
+<p>"The lay sister in the hall shall deliver it."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is the sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sister Grace."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Reverend mother, has Sister Grace ever spoken of the past?"</p>
+
+<p>The superior told a few beads.</p>
+
+<p>"The past is as nothing to us here, my daughter. Within these walls the
+world does not enter. In the presence of the Cross the past and the
+future are one."</p>
+
+<p>Greta drew a long breath. Then she stooped and kissed the hand of the
+superior, and turned softly away.</p>
+
+<p>Greta and the landlady passed out through the deep portico, and the same
+nun who had opened the door closed it behind them. Mrs. Drayton clung to
+Greta's arm as they went through, and her hand trembled perceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is she?" whispered the landlady, when they were seated in a cab.</p>
+
+<p>"Sister Grace," said Greta, and turned her head aside.</p>
+
+<p>"I could ha' sworn as she were the mother of my Paul," murmured Mrs.
+Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>Greta faced about, but the landlady saw nothing of the look of inquiry;
+her eyes, like her thoughts, were far away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Though the hour was late, the streets were thronged. The people were
+trooping home from the theaters; and the Strand, as Greta and the
+landlady crossed it, was choked with cabs and omnibuses. The cab drove
+through the Seven Dials, and there the public-houses were disgorging at
+every corner their poor ruins of men and women. Shouts, curses,
+quarreling, and laughter struck upon the ear above the whir of the
+wheels. Unshaven men and unwashed women, squalid children running here
+and there among the oyster and orange stalls, thieves, idlers, vagabonds
+of all conditions, not a few honest people withal, and among them the
+dark figures of policemen.</p>
+
+<p>Greta's heart beat high that night. Her spirit was full of a new
+alacrity. Every inch of the way, as they flew over the busy streets,
+seemed to awake in her soul some fresh sensibility. She wondered where
+the multitudes of people came from, and whither they were going&mdash;vast
+oceans on oceans of humanity, flowing and ebbing without tide.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to alight a hundred times, and empty her pockets of all her
+money. A blind man, playing a tin whistle, and leading a small dog held
+by a long string, awoke her special pity; the plaintive look in the eye
+of the cur was an object of peculiar sympathy. A filthy woman, reeling
+drunk and bareheaded across the street, almost under the feet of the
+horses, her discolored breast hanging bare, and a puny infant crying
+feebly in her arms, was another occasion for solicitude. A tiny mite
+that might have been a dirty boy, coiled up in a ball on a doorstep like
+a starved cat, was an object of all but irresistible attraction. But she
+dare not stop for an instant; and, at last, with this certainty, she lay
+back and shut her eyes very resolutely, and wondered whether, after all,
+it were not very selfish to be very happy.</p>
+
+<p>The cab stopped with a jolt; they were at St. Pancras station.</p>
+
+<p>"Has he come?" asked Greta, eagerly, and looked about her with eyes that
+comprehended everything at a glance.</p>
+
+<p>She could not see Paul, and when a porter opened the cab and helped her
+to alight, it was on her tongue to ask the man if he had seen her
+husband. But no, she would not do that. She must look for him herself,
+so that she might be the first to see him. Oh, yes, she must be the very
+first to see him, and she was now obstinately determined to ask no one.</p>
+
+<p>The porter brought round the truck, and wheeled the luggage onto the
+platform, and Greta and Mrs. Drayton followed it. Then the wide eyes
+that half smiled and looked half afraid beneath their trembling lids
+glanced anxiously around. No, Paul was not there.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the time?" she asked, her eyes still wandering over the
+bustling throng about her.</p>
+
+<p>"Ten to twelve, miss," announced the porter.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said, with a sigh of relief, "then he will soon be here."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you sit in the waiting-room, miss?" asked the porter; and almost
+unconsciously she followed him when he led the way. Mrs. Drayton hobbled
+behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say about being ill?" she asked, when they were left
+together.</p>
+
+<p>"That he was only a bit dizzy. Mayhap he's noways 'customed to illness,"
+said the landlady.</p>
+
+<p>"That is true. And what did you say then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I coaxed him to rest him a bit, and take a drop o' summat, and he
+smiled and said, 'Thank you, my good woman.'</p>
+
+<p>"You were in the right, you dear old soul," said Greta. And she put her
+arms about the landlady and hugged her. "I'm sure you've been very good
+to my husband, and watched him tenderly, while I, who should have nursed
+him, have been away. Thank you, thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Drayton was feeling uneasy. "Well, d'ye know, I can't bear to see a
+fellow creatur' suffer. It goes agen me someways."</p>
+
+<p>Greta had risen to her feet. "Stay here, Mrs. Drayton&mdash;Drayton, isn't
+it?&mdash;stay here while I go on to the platform. He might come and not see
+me. Ah, yes, he may be looking everywhere for me now."</p>
+
+<p>She went out and elbowed her way among the people who were hurrying to
+and fro; she dodged between the trucks that were sliding luggage on to
+the weighing machine and off to the van. The engines were puffing
+volumes of smoke and steam up to the great glass roof, where the whistle
+of the engine-man echoed sharp and shrill. Presently she returned to the
+waiting-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mrs. Drayton," she said, "I dreamed a fearful dream last night.
+What do you think? Will he be well enough to come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Coorse, coorse, my dear. 'Tell her to meet her husband at twelve.'
+Them's the gentleman's own words."</p>
+
+<p>"How happy I shall be when we are safe at home! And if he is ill, it
+will be for me to nurse him then."</p>
+
+<p>The light in the dove-like eyes at that moment told plainly that to the
+poor soul even illness might bring its compensating happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"And as to dreams, to be sure, they are on'y dreams; and what's dreams,
+say I?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, Mrs. Drayton," said Greta, and once more she shot away
+toward the platform. Her mind had turned to Parson Christian. Could it
+be possible that he had arrived? The porter who had brought in her
+luggage was still standing beside it, and with him there was another
+porter. Their backs were toward Greta as she came out of the
+waiting-room, and, tripping lightly behind them, she overheard a part of
+their conversation before they were aware that she was near.</p>
+
+<p>"See the old file in the gaiters by the eleven up?" said one.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather. A reg'lar grandmother's great-grandfather just out of the year
+one. Talk about swallows, eh?&mdash;and the buckles&mdash;and the stockings!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good sort, how-an'-ever."</p>
+
+<p>"Good for a tip, eh? Wouldn't ha' thought it."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but a real good-hearted 'un an' if he is a Pape."</p>
+
+<p>"Never?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure. Got me to put him in a fly for the Catholic Convent up
+Westminster way."</p>
+
+<p>Greta could restrain herself no longer, but burst in upon them with
+twenty questions. When had the parson arrived? When had he left? Was it
+in a fly? Would it go quickly? Could there be time for it to get back?</p>
+
+<p>"What's your train, miss&mdash;twelve to the north?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; will he catch it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Scarce get back at twelve," said the porter. But, in spite of this
+discouraging prophecy, Greta was so elated at the fresh intelligence
+that she drew out her purse and gave the man five shillings. She had no
+other change than two half crowns and two pennies, and in her present
+elevation of soul there could be no choice, between the silver and the
+copper, as to which the bearer of such news deserved.</p>
+
+<p>The man stared, and then smiled, but he quickly reconciled himself to
+the unexpected. With extraordinary alacrity he labeled the luggage, and
+bowled off to the north train, which was already at the platform.</p>
+
+<p>It was now within three minutes of midnight, and Mrs. Drayton had joined
+Greta in the bustling throng on the platform.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I feel as if a thousand hearts were all swelling and beating in my
+breast at once," said Greta. "Mrs. Drayton, is it certain that he will
+come? Porter, have you put the luggage in the van? Which is the
+train&mdash;the left?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, miss, the left's going out to make room for the local train up from
+Kentish Town and Hendon. The right's your train, miss. Got your ticket,
+miss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. Must I get it, think you? Is the time short? Yes, I will get
+two tickets myself," she added, turning to the landlady. "Then when he
+comes he will have nothing to do but step into the carriage."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to be quick, miss&mdash;train's nigh due out&mdash;only a minute,"
+said the porter.</p>
+
+<p>Greta's luminous eyes were peering over the heads of the people that
+were about her. Then they brightened, with a flash more swift than
+lightning, and all her face wore in an instant a heavenly smile. "Ah, he
+is there&mdash;there at the back&mdash;at the booking-office&mdash;run to him, run my
+good, dear creature; run and tell him I am here! I'll find a compartment
+and have the door open."</p>
+
+<p>Greta tripped along the platform with the foot of a deer. In another
+moment she had a carriage door open, and she stood there with the handle
+in her hand. She saw him coming who was more than all the world to her.
+But she did not look twice. No, she would not look twice. She would wait
+until they were within, alone, together.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side with him walked Hugh Ritson. Could it be possible? And was
+it he who had brought her husband? Ah! he had repented, and it was only
+she who had been bitter to the end. How generous of him! how cruel of
+her!</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes fell, and a warm flush overspread her cheeks as he who came
+first stepped into the carriage. She did not look again at him, nor did
+he look again at her. She knew he did not, though her eyes were down.
+"Oh, when we are alone!" she thought, and then she turned to Hugh
+Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>The heavenly smile was still on her beautiful face, and the deep light
+in her eyes spoke of mingled joy and grief.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh, I fear, I fear," she faltered, "I have been hard and cruel. Let
+us be friends; let me be your dearest sister."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in silence. His infirm foot trailed a pace. He saw what
+was in her heart, and he knew well what was in his own heart, too; he
+thought of the blow that he was about to strike her.</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand, and took in hers his own unresisting fingers. Ay,
+he knew that there and then he was about to break that forgiving heart
+forever. He knew who had stepped into that carriage.</p>
+
+<p>She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. The man in him could bear up no
+longer. He broke down; he could not speak; he was choked with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>She turned to the landlady, who stood near, twitching at the ribbons of
+her bonnet and peering into the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Mrs. Drayton, and God bless you for what you have done for my
+husband!"</p>
+
+<p>The landlady muttered something that was inaudible; she was confused;
+she stammered, and then was silent.</p>
+
+<p>Greta stepped into the carriage. The guard was standing at the door. The
+bell had been rung. The train had been signaled. The whistle had
+sounded. The clocks were striking midnight.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait! Wait!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a voice from the end of the platform. The guard turned with a
+smile to see who called on a train to wait. An old gentleman in silk
+stockings and gaiters, with long white hair flowing under the broad brim
+of a low-crowned hat, came panting to the only door that was still open.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick, sir, it's moving; in with you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Christian!" cried Greta, and throwing her arms about him, she drew
+him into the carriage. Then the train began to move away.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant another train&mdash;the local train from Kentish Town and
+Hendon&mdash;steamed up to the opposite side of the platform. Before it had
+stopped two men leaped out. They were the two police-sergeants.
+Instantly&mdash;simultaneously&mdash;a man burst through the barrier and ran on to
+the platform from the street. He was bareheaded, and his face was
+ghastly white. In one moment the police-sergeants had laid hands upon
+him. The train to the north had not yet cleared the platform. He saw it
+passing out. He took hold of the hands by which he was held and threw
+them off, as if their grasp had been the grasp of a child. Then he
+bounded away toward the retreating train. It was now moving rapidly. It
+was gone; it was swallowed up in the dark mouth beyond, and the man
+stood behind, bareheaded, dripping with perspiration, yet white as
+ashes, his clothes awry, the collar of his frieze ulster torn away, and
+a strip of red flannel lining exposed.</p>
+
+<p>It was Paul Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>The police-sergeants hurried up with the re-enforcement of two porters
+to recover their man. But he was quiet enough now. He did not stir a
+muscle when they handcuffed him. He looked around with vague, vacant
+eyes, hardly seeming to realize where he was or what was being done with
+him. His frenzy was gone.</p>
+
+<p>They led him down the platform. Hugh Ritson was standing on the spot
+where Greta had left him one minute before. When the company neared that
+spot the prisoner stopped. He looked across at Hugh Ritson in silence,
+and for an instant the dazed look died off his face. Then he turned his
+head aside, and allowed himself to be led quietly away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>A morning paper, of November&mdash;, contained the following paragraph:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It will be remembered that in the reports of the disastrous railway
+collision, which occurred at Hendon on Friday last, it was mentioned
+as a ghastly accessory to the story of horror that an injured
+passenger, who had been lifted from the debris of broken carriages,
+and put to lie out of harm's way in a field close at hand, was
+brutally assaulted and (apparently) robbed by some unknown scoundrel,
+who, though detected in the act itself, tore himself from the grasp
+of Police-Sergeant Cox, of the Hendon division of the metropolitan
+police force, and escaped in the darkness. The authorities were
+determined that their vigilance should not be eluded, and a person
+named Paul Drayton is now in custody, and will be brought up at Bow
+Street this morning. It turns out that Drayton is an innkeeper at
+Hendon, where he has long borne a dubious character. He was arrested
+at midnight in St. Pancras Station, in a daring and mad attempt to
+escape by the north-bound train, and it is understood that the
+incident of his capture is such as reflects the highest credit on the
+resolution, energy, and intrepidity of the force."</p></div>
+
+<p>The same paper, of the day after, contained this further paragraph:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The man Drayton, who was yesterday formally committed to take his
+trial at the Central Criminal Court, will be brought up at the Old
+Bailey to-morrow; and as the evidence is said to be of a simple and
+unconflicting character, it is not expected that the hearing will
+extend over a single day. It is stated that the accused, who observed
+a rigid silence during yesterday's proceedings, will, on his trial,
+set up the extraordinary defense of mistaken identity."</p></div>
+
+<p>An evening paper of Friday, November&mdash;, contained the following remarks
+in the course of a leading note:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is a familiar legal maxim that a plea of alibi that breaks down
+is the worst of all accusations. The scoundrel that attempted to rob
+a dying man, who lay helpless and at his mercy amid the confusion of
+Friday night's accident at Hendon, was audacious enough to put forth
+the defense that he was not the man he was taken for. Cases of
+mistaken identity are, of course, common enough in the annals of
+jurisprudence, but we imagine the instances are rare indeed of
+evidence of identity so exceptional and conclusive as that which
+convicted the Hendon innkeeper being susceptible of error. The very
+clothes he wore in the dock bore their own witness to his guilt, and
+the court saw the police-sergeant produce a scrap of cloth torn from
+the guilty man's back, which exactly fitted a rent in the prisoner's
+ulster. The whole case would be a case of criminality too gross and
+palpable to merit a syllable of comment but for the astounding
+assurance with which the accused adhered to his plea in the face of
+evidence that was so complete as to make denial little more than a
+farce. He denied that he was Paul Drayton, and said his name was Paul
+Ritson. He was identified as Drayton by several witnesses who have
+known him from infancy; among others by his old mother, Martha
+Drayton, whose evidence (given with reluctance, and with more tears
+than a son so unnatural deserved) was at once as damning and as
+painful as anything of the kind ever heard in a court of justice. The
+claim to be Paul Ritson was answered by the evidence of Mr. Hugh
+Ritson, mine-owner in Cumberland, and brother of the gentleman whom
+the prisoner wished to personate. Mr. H. Ritson admitted a
+resemblance, but had no hesitation in saying that the accused was not
+his  brother. The prisoner thereupon applied to the court that the
+wife of Paul Ritson should be examined, but, as it was explained that
+both husband and wife were at present ill in Cumberland, the court
+wisely ruled against the application. As a final freak of defense,
+the prisoner asked for the examination of one Mercy Fisher, who, he
+said, would be able to say by what circumstances he came to wear the
+clothes of the guilty man. The court adjourned for an hour in order
+that this person might be produced, but on reassembling it was
+explained that the girl, who turned out to be a mistress whom Drayton
+had kept at his mother's house, had disappeared. Thus, with a
+well-merited sentence of three years' penal servitude, ended a trial
+of which the vulgarity of detail was only equalled by the audacity of
+defense."</p></div>
+
+<p>A week passed, and the public had almost forgotten the incidents of the
+trial, when the following paragraph appeared in a weekly journal:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have heard that the man who was sentenced to three years' penal
+servitude for robbery at the scene of the Hendon accident was seized
+with an attack of brain fever immediately upon his arrival at
+Millbank. The facts that transpire within that place of retirement
+are whispered with as much reserve as guards the secrets of another
+kind of confessional, but I do hear that since the admission of the
+man who was known on his trial as Paul Drayton, and who is now
+indicated by a numerical cognomen, certain facts have come to light
+which favor the defense he set up of mistaken identity."</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The chapter room of St. Margaret's Convent was a chill, bare chamber
+containing an oak table and four or five plain oak chairs. On the
+painted walls, which were of dun gray, there was an etching by a
+Florentine master of the flight into Egypt, and a symbolic print of the
+Sacred Heart. Besides these pictures there was but a single text to
+relieve the blindness of the empty walls, and it ran: "Where the tree
+falls, there it must lie."</p>
+
+<p>Four days after Greta's departure from the house wherein she had been
+received as a temporary boarder, the superior sat in the chapter room,
+and a sister knelt at her feet. The sister's habit was gray and her
+linen cape was plain. She wore no scapular, and no hood above the close
+cap that hid her hair and crossed her forehead. She was, therefore, a
+lay sister; she was Sister Grace.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, hear my sin," she said in a trembling whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak on, daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"We were both at Athlone in the year of the great famine. He was an
+officer in a regiment quartered there. I was a novice of the choir in
+the Order of Charity. We met in scenes sanctified by religion. Oh,
+mother, the famine was sore, and he was kind to the famished people!
+'The hunger is on us,' they would cry, as if it had been a plague of
+locusts. It was thus, with their shrill voices and wan faces, that the
+ragged multitudes followed us. Yes, mother, he was very, very kind to
+the people."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>The penitent bowed her head yet lower. "My mother, I renounced the vows,
+and&mdash;we were married."</p>
+
+<p>The lips of the superior moved in silent prayer.</p>
+
+<p>"What was his name, my daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Robert Lowther. We came from Ireland to London. A child was born, and
+we called him Paul. Then my husband's love grew chill and died. I
+grieved over him. Perhaps I was but a moody companion. At last he told
+me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The voice faltered; the whole body quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my child?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mother, he told me I was not his wife; that I was a Catholic, but
+that he was a Protestant; that a Catholic priest had married us in
+Ireland without question or inquiry. That was not a valid marriage by
+English law."</p>
+
+<p>"Shame on the English law! But what do we know of the law at the foot of
+the Cross? Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"He left me. Mother, I flung God's good gift away. I tried to drown
+myself, and my little child with me; but they prevented me. I was placed
+in an asylum for the insane, and my baby&mdash;my Paul&mdash;was given into the
+care of a woman with whom I had lodged. Have I not sinned deeply?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your sins are great, my daughter, but your sufferings have also been
+great. What happened then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I escaped from the asylum and returned for my child. It was gone. The
+woman had removed to some other part of London, none knew where, and my
+Paul, my darling, was lost to me forever. My mother, it was then that I
+sinned deepest of all."</p>
+
+<p>Her head was bowed to her trembling knees, and her voice was all but
+suspended in an agony of shame.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, I flung away God's better gift than life! Oh, how shall I tell
+you? Your foot trembles, reverend mother. You are a holy woman, and know
+nothing of the world's temptations."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, my daughter; I am as great a sinner as yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell you. Mother, mother, you see I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"It is for your soul's weal, my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"I had tried to serve God, and He had seen my shame. What was left to me
+but the world, the world, the world! Perhaps the world itself would have
+more mercy. My kind mother, have I not told you yet?"</p>
+
+<p>The superior made the sign of the cross.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, my daughter! the enemy of your soul was with you then. You should
+not have ceased to lift your hands to Heaven in supplication and prayer.
+You should have prostrated yourself three days and nights in the tribune
+before the Holy Sacrament."</p>
+
+<p>The penitent raised her pale face.</p>
+
+<p>"In less time I was a lost and abandoned woman."</p>
+
+<p>The superior told a few beads with trembling fingers. Then she lifted
+the cross that hung from her girdle, and held it out to the sister.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought of my child, and prayed that he might be dead. I thought of
+him who was not my husband, and my heart grew cold and hard. Mother, my
+redemption came. Yes, but with it came the meaning of the fearful
+words, too late. Amid the reeling madness of the life that is mocked
+with the name of gay, I met a good man. Yes, holy mother, a good man.
+Mother, he now sleeps there!"</p>
+
+<p>Her pale face, serene and solemn, was lifted again, and the hand that
+held the crucifix was raised above her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I loathed my life. He took me away from it&mdash;to the mountains&mdash;to
+Scotland, and a child was born. Mother, it was only then that I awoke as
+from a trance. It seemed as if a ring of sin begirt me. Tears&mdash;ah, me!
+what tears were shed. But rest and content came at last, and then we
+were married."</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, my daughter, little did I think when I received your vows
+that the enemy of your soul had so mastered you."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen a little longer, holy mother. The child grew to be the image of
+my darling, my Paul&mdash;every feature, every glance the same. And partly to
+remind me of my lost one, and partly to make me forget him forever, I
+called the second child Paul. Mother, the years went by in peace. The
+past was gone from me. Only its memory lay like a waste in my silent
+heart. I had another son, and called him Hugh. After many years my
+husband died." The penitent paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, another thing comes back to me; but I have confessed it
+already. Shall I repeat it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my daughter, not if it touches the oath that lay heavy on your
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought my first child was dead. For thirty years I had not seen him.
+But the pathways of our lives crossed at last, and the woman who nursed
+him came to this house four days ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, my son, the child of that first false union, my darling, for
+whom I wept scalding tears long, long years ago; my Paul, whose loss was
+all but the loss of his mother's soul, my son is a thief and an
+outcast."</p>
+
+<p>The lips of the superior moved again in prayer.</p>
+
+<p>"He is the man known to the world as Paul Drayton&mdash;to me as Paul
+Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear daughter, humble yourself in the midst of so awful a judgment.
+Do you say Drayton?&mdash;Drayton, who, as I hear, was to-day tried and
+sentenced?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;yes&mdash;how shall I tell you?&mdash;the same and not the same. Mother, the
+crime was committed by my son Paul Lowther, the sentence was pronounced
+on my son Paul Ritson."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear daughter&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I was in the court and heard all; and I alone knew all&mdash;I alone, alone!
+Bear with me that I transgressed the law of this holy order. Think, oh!
+my kind mother, think that the nun was yet the woman, and, above all,
+the mother. Yes, I heard all. I heard the charge that convicted my son
+Paul Lowther. He was guilty before God and man. But the prisoner in the
+dock was my son Paul Ritson. I knew him, and believed him when he denied
+the name they gave him. Ah, me, my heart bled!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do, my daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, I was weak, very weak. I could not see my duty clearly. An
+awful conflict was rife within me. I could not justify the one man
+without condemning the other. And both were the children of my bosom."</p>
+
+<p>"Fearful, fearful! But, my daughter, the one was guilty and the other
+innocent."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; a thousand times yes; but then there was myself. How could I
+punish the guilty without revealing the secret sin that had been thirty
+years hidden in my heart? And my poor, weak spirit shrunk within me, and
+I sat silent amid all."</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, we must crucify our spiritual pride."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; but there was the love of my son, Paul Ritson&mdash;he thought me
+a good woman even yet. How could I confess to that sinful past and not
+loose the love of the only human soul that held me pure and true?
+Mother, it is very sweet to be loved."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my daughter, my daughter, a terrible situation, terrible,
+terrible!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, I have told you everything. Tell me now what hope is left. Give
+me your direction."</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, let us humble ourselves before God, and pray that He may
+reveal the path of duty. Come."</p>
+
+<p>The superior rose, took her crozier in her hand, and walked out of the
+room. The sister followed her. They passed through the sacristy into the
+empty church.</p>
+
+<p>It was evening. The glow of a wintery sunset came through the windows to
+the west, and fell in warm gules on the altar. There was the hush of the
+world's awe here as day swooned into night. Without these walls were
+turmoil and strife. Within was the balm of rest&mdash;the rest that lies in
+the heart of the cyclone.</p>
+
+<p>And the good mother and the sister went down on their knees together,
+and prayed for light and guidance. The mother rose, but the sister knelt
+on; darkness fell, and she was still kneeling, and when the east was
+dabbled with the dawn, the gray light fell on her bowed head and
+uplifted hands.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><i>BOOK IV.</i></h2>
+
+<p class='center'>THE WATERS OF MARAH ARE BITTER.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'>IN THE YEAR 1877.</p>
+
+
+<p>The dale lay green in the morning sunlight; the river that ran through
+its lowest bed sparkled with purple and amber; the leaves prattled low
+in the light breeze that souched through the rushes and the long grass;
+the hills rose sheer and white to the smooth blue lake of the sky, where
+only one fleecy cloud floated languidly across from peak to peak. Out of
+unseen places came the bleating of sheep and the rumble of distant
+cataracts, and above the dull thud of tumbling waters far away was the
+thin caroling of birds overhead.</p>
+
+<p>But the air was alive with yet sweeter sounds. On the breast of the fell
+that lies over against Cat Bells a procession of children walked, and
+sung, and chattered, and laughed. It was St. Peter's Day, and they were
+rush-bearing: little ones of all ages, from the comely girl of fourteen,
+just ripening into maidenhood, who walked last, to the sweet boy of four
+in the pinafore braided with epaulets, who strode along gallantly in
+front. Most of the little hands carried rushes, but some were filled
+with ferns, and mosses, and flowers. They had assembled at the
+school-house, and now, on their way to the church, they were making the
+circuit of the dale.</p>
+
+<p>They passed over the road that crosses the river at the head of
+Newlands, and turned down into the path that follows the bed of the
+valley. At that angle there stands a little group of cottages
+deliciously cool in their white-wash, nestling together under the heavy
+purple crag from which the waters of a ghyll fall into a deep basin that
+reaches to their walls. The last of the group is a cottage with its end
+to the road, and its open porch facing a garden shaped like a wedge. As
+the children passed this house an old man, gray and thin and much bent,
+stood by the gate, leaning on a staff. A colly, with the sheep-dog's
+wooden bar suspended from its shaggy neck, lay at his feet. The hum of
+voices brought a young woman into the porch. She was bareheaded and wore
+a light print gown. Her face was pale and marked with lines. She walked
+cautiously, stretching one hand before her with an uncertain motion, and
+grasping a trailing tendril of honeysuckle that swept downward from the
+roof. Her eyes, which were partly inclined upward and partly turned
+toward the procession, had a vague light in their bleached pupils. She
+was blind. At her side, and tugging at her other hand, was a child of a
+year and a half&mdash;a chubby, sunny little fellow with ruddy cheeks, blue
+eyes, and fair curly hair.</p>
+
+<p>Prattling, laughing, singing snatches, and waving their rushes and ferns
+above their happy, thoughtless heads, the children rattled past. When
+they were gone the air was empty, as it is when the lark stops in its
+song.</p>
+
+<p>The church of Newlands stands in the heart of the valley, half hidden by
+a clump of trees. By the lych-gate Parson Christian stood that morning,
+aged a little, the snow a thought thicker on his bushy hair, the face
+mellower, the liquid eyes full of the sunlight behind which lies the
+shower. Greta stood beside him; quieter of manner than in the old days,
+a deeper thoughtfulness in her face, her blue eyes more grave and less
+restless, her fair hair no longer falling in waves behind her, but
+gathered up into a demure knot under her hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Here they come, bless their innocent hearts!" said Parson Christian,
+and at that moment the children turned an angle of the road.</p>
+
+<p>The pink and white of their frocks and pinafores were all but hidden by
+the little forest of green that they carried before and above them.</p>
+
+<p>"'Till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane," muttered Greta, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>When the rush-bearers came up to the front of the church, the lych-gate
+was thrown open and they filed through.</p>
+
+<p>"How tired he looks, the brave little boy!" said Greta, picking up the
+foremost of the company, the tiny man in the epaulets, now covered with
+the dust of the roads.</p>
+
+<p>"The little ones first, and you great girls afterward," said the parson.
+"Those with flowers go up to the communion and lay them on the form, and
+those with mosses put them on the font, and those with rushes and ferns
+begin under the pulpit and come down the aisle to the porch."</p>
+
+<p>The stalwart little tramp in Greta's arms wriggled his way to the
+ground. He had mosses in his hands and must go first. Then the children
+trooped into the church, and in an instant the rude old place was alive
+with the buzz of prattling tongues.</p>
+
+<p>The floor covered many a tomb. Graven on the plain slabs that formed the
+pathway down the middle of the church were the names of the men and
+women who had lived and died in the dale generations gone by. In their
+own day they were children themselves; and now other children&mdash;their own
+children's children's children&mdash;with never a thought about what lay
+beneath, with only love in their eyes, and laughter on their lips, and
+life in their limbs&mdash;were strewing rushes down the path above them.</p>
+
+<p>In ten minutes there was not an inch of the flagged aisle visible. All
+was green from the communion to the porch. Here and there an adventurous
+lad, turning to account the skill at climbing acquired at
+birds'-nesting, had clambered over the pews to the rude cross-trees, and
+hung great bunches of rushes from the roof.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, children, let us sing," said the parson, and taking up the
+accordion, he started a hymn.</p>
+
+<p>The leaded windows of the old church stood open, and the sweet young
+voices floated away, and far away, over the uplands and the dale. And
+the birds still sung in the blue sky, and the ghylls still rumbled in
+the distance, and the light wind still souched through the long grass,
+and the morning sunlight shone over all.</p>
+
+<p>There was a cloud of dust on the road, and presently there came trooping
+down from the village a company of men, surrounded by a whole circuit of
+dogs. Snarls, and yaps, and yelps, and squawks, and guffaws, and
+sometimes the cachinnation and crow of cocks, broke upon the clear air.
+The roystering set would be as many as a dozen, and all were more or
+less drunk. First came John Proudfoot, the blacksmith, in his
+shirt-sleeves, with his leathern apron wrapped in a knot about his
+waist, and a silver and black game-cock imprisoned under his arm. Lang
+Geordie Moore, his young helper, carried another fowl. Dick o' the Syke,
+the miller, in a brown coat whitened with flour, walked abreast of
+Geordie and tickled the gills of the fowl with a straw. Job Sheepshanks,
+the letter-cutter, carried a pot of pitch and a brush, and little Tom o'
+Dint hobbled along with a handful of iron files. Behind these came the
+landlord of the Flying Horse, with a basket over one arm, from which
+peeped the corks of many bottles, and Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll,
+carried a wicker cage, in which sat a red bantam-cock with spurs that
+glittered in the light.</p>
+
+<p>There was one other man who walked with the company, and he was the soul
+of the noisy crew; his voice was the loudest, his laugh the longest, and
+half of all that was said was addressed to him. He was a lusty man with
+a florid face; he wore a suit of tweeds plaided in wide stripes of buff
+and black.</p>
+
+<p>It was Paul Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"Burn my body, and what's on now?" he said, as the gang reached the
+church.</p>
+
+<p>"Rush-bearing, I reckon," answered Tom o' Dint.</p>
+
+<p>"And what's rush-bearing?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know, Mister Paul," said the postman, "rush-bearing&mdash;the barns
+rush-bearing&mdash;St. Peter's Day, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay, I know&mdash;rush-bearing. Let me see, ain't it once a year?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, man, but you mind the days when you were a bit boy and went
+a-rushing yersel'?" said the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"Coorse, coorse, oh, ay, I ain't forgotten them days. Let me see, it's a
+kind of a harvest-home, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nowt o' the sort," said Dick, the miller, testily. "Your memory's
+failing fast, Mister Ritson."</p>
+
+<p>"And that's true, old fence. I'll never be the same man again after that
+brain fever I had up in London&mdash;not in the head-piece, you know."</p>
+
+<p>The group of men and dogs had drawn up in front of the church just as
+Brother Peter crossed the church-yard to the porch, carrying a red paper
+in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that&mdash;the Methodee man?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the Methodee, for sure," said the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, it's the parson's Peter," added the postman, "and yon paper is a
+telegraph&mdash;it's like he's takin' it to somebody."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold hard, my boys," said Drayton; and, leaving his cronies he strode
+through the lych-gate and down the path, the dogs yapping around him.</p>
+
+<p>Brother Peter had drawn up at the door of the porch; the children were
+still singing.</p>
+
+<p>"If that telegram is for my wife, you may hand it over to me," said
+Drayton, and reached out his hand to take it.</p>
+
+<p>Brother Peter drew back.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be all right, old fellow&mdash;I'll see she gets it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, thoo'll manish that, I's warn," said Peter, in a caustic voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, don't you know that what belongs to the wife belongs to the
+husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know as I do. I'se never been larn't sec daftness," said Peter.</p>
+
+<p>"Hand it over. Come, be quick!"</p>
+
+<p>"Get ower me 'at can," said Peter, with a decisive twinkle.</p>
+
+<p>"Gi'e him a slab ower the lug," shouted the miller from the road.</p>
+
+<p>"You hear what they say? Come, out with it."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, you've rowth o' friends, you're a teeran crew, but I cares laal for
+any on you."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton turned away with a contemptuous snort.</p>
+
+<p>"Damme, what a clatter!" he shouted, and leaped on to the raised mound
+of a grave to look in at an open window. As he did so he kicked a glass
+for flowers that lay upon it, and the broken frame tumbled in many
+pieces. "I've done for somebody's money," he said with a loud guffaw.</p>
+
+<p>"What, man, but it were thy awn brass as bought it," said the
+blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, it's thy fadder's grave," said Job Sheepshanks.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton glanced down at the headstone.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, so it is!" he said; "d'ye see, I hain't been here since the day I
+buried him."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, that's all stuff and nonsense," said Job. "I mind the morning I
+found ye lying wet and frostit on the top of that grave."</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye say so? Well, I ain't for denying it; and now I think of it, I
+was&mdash;yes, I was here that morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, you warn't nowt o' the sort," said the blacksmith. "That were the
+varra morning as Giles Raisley saw you at the Pack Horse sleeping. I
+mind the fratch Job had with laal Gubblum about it long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all stuff and nonsense," replied Job. "He were here."</p>
+
+<p>"The Pack Horse? Well, now, I remember, I was there, too."</p>
+
+<p>The singing had ceased, and Greta came out into the porch on tiptoe,
+carrying in her arms a tiny mite, who was crying. Peter handed her the
+telegram, and turned up the path.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton had rejoined his companions, and was in the act of knocking the
+neck off a bottle by striking it against the wall, when Peter walked
+through the lych-gate.</p>
+
+<p>"Tee a pint o' yal down the Methodee's back," shouted Dick, the miller,
+and in another moment Brother Peter was covered with the contents of the
+broken bottle.</p>
+
+<p>A loud, roystering laugh filled the air, and echoed from the hills.</p>
+
+<p>"What a breck!" tittered the postman.</p>
+
+<p>"What a breck!" shouted the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>"What a breck!" roared the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"Get ower me 'at can!" mimicked Natt.</p>
+
+<p>"He's got a lad's heart, has Mister Paul," said the landlord of the
+Flying Horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, he's a fair fatch," echoed little Tom o' Dint.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Peter to shake himself dry of the liquor that dripped from him
+in froth, the noisy gang reeled down the road, the yelping dogs
+careering about them, and the cocks squawking with the hugs they
+received from the twitching arms of the men convulsed with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>At the head of the Vale of Newlands there is a clearing that was made by
+the lead miners of two centuries ago. It lies at the feet of an
+ampitheater of hills that rise peak above peak, and die off depth beyond
+depth. Of the old mines nothing remains but the level cuttings in the
+sides of the fells, and here and there the washing-pits cut out of the
+rock at your feet. Fragments of stone lie about, glistening with veins
+of lead, but no sound of pick or hammer breaks the stillness, and no
+cart or truck trundles over the rough path. It is a solitude in which
+one might forget that the world is full of noise.</p>
+
+<p>To this spot Drayton and his cronies made their way. At one of the old
+washing troughs they drew up, and sat in a circle on its rocky sides.
+They had come for a cock fight. It was to be the bantam (carried by Natt
+and owned by his master) against all comers. Drayton and the blacksmith
+were the setters-on. The first bout was between the bantam and Lang
+Geordie's ponderous black Spanish. Geordie's bird soon squawked
+dolorously, and made off over the heads of the derisive spectators,
+whereupon Geordie captured it by one of its outstretched wings, and
+forthwith screwed its neck. Then came John Proudfoot's silver and black,
+and straightway steel gaffs were affixed to the spurs. When the cocks
+felt their feet they crowed, and then pecked the ground from side to
+side. An exciting struggle ensued. Up and down, over and under, now
+beating the breast, now trailing the comb, now pecking at the gills. And
+the two men at opposite sides of the pit&mdash;the one in his shirt-sleeves
+rolled up to the elbows, the other in his sporting plaid&mdash;stooped with
+every lunge and craned their necks at every fall, and bobbed their heads
+with every peck, their eyes flashing, their teeth set.</p>
+
+<p>At one moment they drew off their birds, called for the files, and
+sharpened up the spurs. Later on they seized the cocks by the necks,
+shouted for the pitch-pot and patched up the bleeding combs. The birds
+were equally matched, and fought long. At last their strength ebbed
+away. They followed each other feebly, stretching their long, lagging
+throats languidly, opening their beaks and hanging out their dry, white
+tongues, turning tail, then twisting about and fighting again, until
+both lay stretched out on the pit bottom.</p>
+
+<p>As the energy of the cocks subsided, the ardor of the men waxed
+sensibly. They yelled excitedly, protested, reviled, swore, laughed,
+jeered, and crowed.</p>
+
+<p>At length, when the bantam fell and gave no signs of speedy
+resurrection, the anger of Drayton could not be supported. He leaped
+across the pit, his face red as his cock's comb, and shouting, "Damme,
+what for did ye pick up my bird?" he planted a blow full on the
+blacksmith's chest.</p>
+
+<p>A fight of yet fiercer kind followed. Amid shouts, and in the thick of a
+general scuffle, the blacksmith closed with his powerful adversary,
+gripped him about the waist, twisted him on his loins, and brought him
+to the ground with a crash. Then he stood over him with fierce eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I mak' no doubt you're not hankerin' for another of that sort!" he
+puffed.</p>
+
+<p>"John's given him the cross-buttock," said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"The master's lost all his wrustling," said Natt, blinking out of his
+sleepy eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I mind the day when he could have put John down same as a bit boy,"
+said the little postman.</p>
+
+<p>Natt helped Drayton to his feet. He was quiet enough, now, but as black
+in the face as a thunder-cloud.</p>
+
+<p>"This comes of a gentleman mixing with them as is beneath him," he
+muttered, and he mopped his perspiring forehead with a bandanna
+handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>The miller snorted, the mason grunted, the little postman laughed in his
+thin pipe.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton's eyes flashed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a gentleman, I am, if you want to know," he said, defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith stood by, leisurely rolling down his shirt-sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, for fault of wise folk we call you so," he said, and laughed. "But
+when I leet of a man, I's rather have him nor a hundred sec gentlemen as
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thoo's reet for once, John!" shouted Dick o' the Syke, and there was
+some general laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentleman! Ax the women-folk what they mak' of sec a gentleman,"
+continued the blacksmith with contemptuous emphasis. "Him as larn't
+folks to fill the public and empty the cupboard."</p>
+
+<p>There was a murmur among the men as they twisted about.</p>
+
+<p>"Ax them what they mak' of him 'at spent four days in Lunnon and came
+back another man&mdash;ax the women-folk; they're maistly reet, I reckon."</p>
+
+<p>Another uneasy movement among the men.</p>
+
+<p>"Burn my body! and what's the women to me?" said Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nowt," answered the blacksmith. "Your awn wife seems nowdays
+powerful keen for your company."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton's eyes were red, but the fire died out of them in an instant. He
+stepped up to the blacksmith and held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You've licked me," he said, in another tone, "but I ain't the man to
+keep spite, I ain't; so come along, old fence, and let's wet it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's weel said," put in Tommy Lowthwaite, the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no'but fair," said Dick, the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a reet sort, after all," said Job, the mason.</p>
+
+<p>"He's his awn fadder's son, is Paul Ritson," said Tom o' Dint.</p>
+
+<p>In two minutes more the soiled company were trampling knee-deep through
+rank beds of rushes on their way to the other side of the dale. They
+stopped a few yards from a pit shaft with its headgear and wheel.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's take my brother's ken for it," said Drayton, and they turned into
+a one-story house that stood near.</p>
+
+<p>It was a single capacious chamber, furnished more like a library than an
+office; carpets, rugs, a cabinet, easychairs, and a solid table in the
+middle of the floor. The cock-fighters filed in and sat down on every
+available chair, on the table, and at last on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Squat and whiff," said Drayton, "and, Tommy, you out with the corks,
+quick."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be a bonny money-making consarn to keep up the likes of this,"
+said the miller, settling himself uneasily in an easy-chair.</p>
+
+<p>Dick was telling himself what a fool he had been not to ask more than
+the fifty pounds he received for the damage once done by fire to his
+mill.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you never heard as it ain't all gold as glitters?" said Drayton;
+and he struck a lucifer match on the top of the mahogany table.</p>
+
+<p>"What, man, dusta mean as the pit's not paying?" said the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton gave his head a sidelong shake of combined astuteness and
+reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"I mak' no doubt now as you have to lend Master Hugh many a gay penny,"
+said Tom o' Dint in an insinuating tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Least said, soonest mended," said Drayton, sententiously, and smiled a
+mighty knowing smile.</p>
+
+<p>Then the men laughed, and the landlord handed the bottles round, and all
+drank out of the necks, and puffed dense volumes of smoke from their
+pipes, and spat on the carpet.</p>
+
+<p>And still the birds sung in the clear air without, and still the ghylls
+rumbled, and still the light wind souched through the grass, and still
+the morning sunlight shone over all.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and Hugh Ritson entered, followed by the lawyer, Mr.
+Bonnithorne. There was a steely glimmer in his eyes as he stood just
+inside the threshold and looked round.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, get out of this!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>The men shuffled to their feet and were elbowing their way out. Drayton,
+who sat on the table, removed his pipe from between his teeth and called
+on them to remain.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stepped up to Drayton and touched him on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to speak with you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" demanded Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to speak with you," repeated Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? Out with it. You've got the gift of the gab, hain't ye?
+Don't mind my friends."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's face whitened, and a cold smile passed over it.</p>
+
+<p>"Your time is near," he muttered, and he turned on his heel.</p>
+
+<p>As he stepped out of the noisesome chamber, a loud, hoarse laugh
+followed him. He drew a long breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God it will soon be over!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Bonnithorne was at his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it to be to-morrow?" asked the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow," said Hugh Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you told him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him yourself, Bonnithorne. I can bear with the man no longer. I
+shall be doing something that I may repent."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you apprised Parson Christian?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson bent his head.</p>
+
+<p>"And Greta?"</p>
+
+<p>"She won't come," said Hugh. "The girl could never breathe the same air
+as that scoundrel for five minutes together."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet he's her half-brother," said the lawyer, softly; and then he
+added, with the conventional smile: "Odd, isn't it?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When the procession of children had passed the little cottage at the
+angle of the roads, the old man who leaned on his staff at the gate
+turned about and stepped to the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Did the boy see them?&mdash;did he see the children?" said the young woman
+who held the child by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I mak' na doot," said the old man.</p>
+
+<p>He stooped to the little one and held out one long, withered finger. The
+soft baby hand closed on it instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he laugh? I thought he laughed," said the young woman.</p>
+
+<p>A bright smile played on her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe so, lass."</p>
+
+<p>"Ralphie has never seen the children before, father. Didn't he look
+frightened&mdash;just a little frightened&mdash;at first, you know? I thought he
+crept behind my gown."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe, maybe."</p>
+
+<p>The little one had dropped the hand of his young mother, and, still
+holding the bony finger of his grandfather, he toddled beside him into
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>Very cool and sweet was the kitchen, with white-washed walls and hard
+earthen floor. A table and a settle stood by the window, and a dresser
+that was an armory of bright pewter dishes, trenchers, and piggins
+crossed the opposite wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, but sista here, laal man," said the old charcoal-burner, and he
+dived into a great pocket at his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you brought it? Is it the kitten? Oh, dear, let the boy see it!"</p>
+
+<p>A kitten came out of the old man's pocket, and was set down on the rug
+at the hearth. The timid creature sat dazed, then raised itself on its
+hind legs and mewed.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Ralphie? Is he watching it, father? What is he doing?"</p>
+
+<p>The little one had dropped on hands and knees before the kitten, and was
+gazing up into its face.</p>
+
+<p>The mother leaned over him with a face that would have beamed with
+sunshine if the sun of sight had not been missing.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he looking? Doesn't he want to coddle it?"</p>
+
+<p>The little chap had pushed his nose close to the nose of the kitten, and
+was prattling to it in various inarticulate noises.</p>
+
+<p>"Boo&mdash;loo&mdash;lal-la&mdash;mamma."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't he a darling, father?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a winsome wee thing," said the old man, still standing with
+drooping head over the group on the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>The mother's face saddened, and she turned away. Then from the opposite
+side of the kitchen, where she was making pretense to take plates from a
+plate-rack, there came the sound of suppressed sobs. The old man's eyes
+followed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, lass; let's have a sup of broth," he said in a tone that carried
+another message.</p>
+
+<p>The young woman put plates and a bowl of broth on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"To think that I can never see my own child, and everybody else can see
+him!" she said, and then there was another bout of tears.</p>
+
+<p>The charcoal-burner supped at his broth in silence. A glistening bead
+rolled slowly down his wizened cheek, and the interview on the hearth
+went on without interruption:</p>
+
+<p>"Mew&mdash;mew&mdash;mew." "Boo&mdash;loo&mdash;lal-la&mdash;mamma."</p>
+
+<p>There was a foot on the gravel in front.</p>
+
+<p>"How fend ye, Mattha?" said a voice from without.</p>
+
+<p>"Come thy ways, Gubblum," answered the old man.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum Oglethorpe entered, dressed differently than of old. He wore a
+suit of canvas stained deeply with iron ore.</p>
+
+<p>"I's thinking maybe Mercy will let me warm up my poddish," said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>"And welcome," said Mercy, and took down from the dresser a saucepan and
+porridge thivel. "I'll make it for you while father sups his broth."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, lass, you're as thrang as an auld peat wife, I's warn. I'll mak'
+it myself. I's rather partic'lar about my poddish, forby. Dusta know how
+many faults poddish may have? They may be sour, sooty, sodden, and
+savorless, soat, welsh, brocken, and lumpy&mdash;and that's mair nor enough,
+thoo knows."</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum had gone down on the hearth-rug.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, and here's the son and heir," he said. "Nay, laddie, mind my
+claes&mdash;they'll dirty thy brand-new brat for thee."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he growing, Gubblum?"</p>
+
+<p>"Growing?&mdash;amain."</p>
+
+<p>"And his eyes&mdash;are they changing color?&mdash;going brown?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe&mdash;I'll not be for saying nay."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he&mdash;is he very like me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay&mdash;weel&mdash;nay&mdash;I's fancying I see summat of the stranger in the laal
+chap at whiles."</p>
+
+<p>The young mother turned her head. Gubblum twisted to where Matthew sat.</p>
+
+<p>"That man and all his raggabrash are raking about this morning. It caps
+all, it does, for sure."</p>
+
+<p>The old charcoal-burner did not answer. He paused with the spoon half
+raised, glanced at Mercy, and then went on with his broth.</p>
+
+<p>"Hasta heard of the lang yammer in the papers about yon matter?" said
+Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay," said Matthew, "I hears nowt of the papers."</p>
+
+<p>"He's like to hang a lang crag when he hears about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I mak' na doubt," said Matthew, showing no curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my belief 'at the auld woman at Hendon is turning tail. You mind
+she was down last back end, and he wadn't have nowt to say to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, I mind her," said Matthew.</p>
+
+<p>"Every dog has his day, and I reckon yon dog's day is nigh amaist done.
+And it wad have been a vast shorter on'y Mercy hadn't her eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, ey," said Matthew, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"If the lass had no'but been able to say, 'Yon man is Drayton, and yon
+as you've got in prison is Ritson, and I saw the bad wark done,' that
+would have settled it."</p>
+
+<p>"Na doot," said Matthew, his head in the bowl.</p>
+
+<p>"They warn't for hearing me. When the parson took me up to Lunnon mair
+nor a twelvemonth agone, they sent us baith home with our tails atween
+our legs. 'Bring us the young woman,' they said; 'your evidence will
+stand aside hers, but not alone. Bring the young woman to 'dentify,'
+they says. 'She's gone blind,' we says. 'We can't help that,' they says.
+And that's what they call justice up in Lunnon."</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, ey," said Matthew.</p>
+
+<p>"But then thoo has to mak' 'lowances for them gentry folk&mdash;they've never
+been larn't no better, thoo sees."</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum's porridge was bubbling, and the thivel worked vigorously.
+Matthew had picked up the child from the hearth. The little fellow was
+tugging at his white beard.</p>
+
+<p>"It were bad luck that me and Mercy didn't stay a day or so langer in
+Hendon yon time. She had her eyes then. But the lass was badly, and"
+(dropping his voice) "that way, thoo knows, and I warn't to prophesy
+what was to happen to poor Paul Ritson. So I brought her straight away
+home."</p>
+
+<p>"So thoo did, Gubblum," said Matthew, stroking the child's head.</p>
+
+<p>"It's that Hugh as is at the bottom of it all, I reckon. I'm not afraid
+to say it, if he is my master. I allus liked Paul Ritson&mdash;the reet one,
+thoo knows, not this taistrel that calls hisself Paul Ritson&mdash;but I
+cared so laal for Hugh that I could have taken him and wrowk't the fire
+with him."</p>
+
+<p>The porridge was ready, and Mercy set a wooden bowl on the table. "I's
+fullen thy bicker, my lass," said Gubblum. "I's only a laal man, but I's
+got a girt appetite, thoo sees." Then turning to Matthew he continued:
+"But he's like to pay for it. He brought his raggabash here, and now the
+rascal has the upper hand&mdash;that's plain to see."</p>
+
+<p>"So it be," said Matthew.</p>
+
+<p>"Deemoralizin' all the country-side, what with his drinkin' and
+cock-fightin' and terriers, an' I don't know what. Theer's Dick o' the
+Syke, he's a ruined man this day, and John, the blacksmith, he's never
+had a heat on the anvil for a week, and as for Job, the mason, he's
+shaping to be mair nor ever like his Bible namesake, for he won't have
+nowt but his dunghill to sit on soon."</p>
+
+<p>"Dusta think they dunnot ken he's the wrong man?" asked Matthew.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, Mattha, but a laal bit of money's a wonderful thing, mind ye."</p>
+
+<p>"It is for sure."</p>
+
+<p>"One day he went to clogger Kit to be measur't for new shoes. 'What,
+Master Ritson,' says Kit, 'your foot's langer by three lines nor when I
+put the tape on it afore.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>"Next day Kit had an order for two pairs, forby a pair of leggins and
+clogs for Natt. That's the way it's manish'd."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy had taken her child from her father's knee, and was sitting on the
+sconce bench with it, holding a broken piece of a mirror before its
+face, and listening for its laugh when it saw itself in the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"But he's none Cummerland&mdash;hearken to his tongue," said Matthew.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum put down his spoon on his plate, now empty.</p>
+
+<p>"That minds me," he said, laughing, "that I met him out one day all
+dressed in his brave claes&mdash;them as might do for a nigger that plays the
+banjo. 'Off for a spogue?' I says. 'What's a spogue?' he says, looking
+thunder. 'Nay,' I says, 'you're no'but a dalesman&mdash;ax folks up Hendon
+way,' I says. I was peddling then, but Master Hugh 'counters me another
+day, and he says, 'Gubblum,' he says, 'I's wanting a smart laal man,
+same as you, to weigh the ore on the bank-top&mdash;pund a week,' he says."</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, I mak' no doot they thowt to buy thee ower," said Matthew.</p>
+
+<p>"They've made a gay canny blunder if they think they've put a swine ring
+on Gubblum's snout. Buy or beat&mdash;that's the word. They've bought most of
+the folk and made them as lazy as libbed bitches. But they warn't able
+to buy the Ritson's bitch itself."</p>
+
+<p>"What dusta mean, Gubblum?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, man! thoo's heard how the taistrel killed poor auld Fan? No?
+Weel, thoo knows she was Paul Ritson's dog, Fan was; and when she saw
+this man coming up the lonnin, she frisk't and wag't her tail. But when
+she got close to him she found her mistake, and went slenken off. He
+made shift to coax her, but Fan wad none be coaxed; and folks were
+takin' stock. So what dusta think the taistrel does, but ups with a
+stone and brains her."</p>
+
+<p>"That's like him, for sure," said Matthew. "But don't the folk see that
+his wife as it might be, Miss Greta as was, won't have nowt to say to
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, they say that's no'but a rue-bargain, and she found out her mind
+after she wedded&mdash;that's all the clot-heads think about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Hark!" said Mercy, half rising from the sconce. "It's Mrs. Ritson's
+foot."</p>
+
+<p>The men listened. "Nay, lass, there's no foot," said Gubblum.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she's on the road," said Mercy. Her face showed that pathetic
+tension of the other senses which is peculiar to the blind. A moment
+later Greta stepped into the cottage. The telegram which Brother Peter
+gave her at the church was still in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning, Matthew; good-morning, Gubblum; I have news for you,
+Mercy. The doctors are coming to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy's face fell perceptibly. The old man's head drooped lower.</p>
+
+<p>"There, don't be afraid," said Greta, touching her hand caressingly. "It
+will soon be over. The doctors didn't hurt you before, did they?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but this time it will be the operation," said Mercy. There was a
+tremor in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>Greta had lifted the child from the sconce. The little fellow cooed
+close to her ear, and babbled his inarticulate nothings.</p>
+
+<p>"Only think, when it's all over you will be able to see your darling
+Ralphie for the first time!"</p>
+
+<p>Mercy's sightless face brightened. "Oh, yes," she said, "and watch him
+play, and see him spin his tops and chase the butterflies. Oh, that will
+be very good!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dusta say to-day, Mistress Ritson?" asked Matthew, the big drops
+standing in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Matthew; I will stay to see it over, and mind baby, and help a
+little."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy took the little one from Greta's arms and cried over it, and
+laughed over it, and then cried and laughed again. "Mamma and Ralphie
+shall play together in the garden, darling, and Ralphie shall see the
+horses&mdash;and the flowers&mdash;and the birdies&mdash;and mamma&mdash;yes, mamma shall
+see Ralphie. Oh, Mrs. Ritson, how selfish I am!&mdash;how can I ever repay
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>The tears were trickling down Greta's cheeks. "It is I who am selfish,
+Mercy," she said, and kissed the sightless orbs. "Your dear eyes shall
+give me back my poor husband."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Two hours later the doctors arrived. They had called at the vicarage in
+driving up the valley, and Parson Christian was with them. They looked
+at Mercy's eyes, and were satisfied that the time was ripe for the
+operation. At the sound of their voices, Mercy trembled and turned
+livid. By a maternal instinct she picked up the child, who was toddling
+about the floor, and clasped it to her bosom. The little one opened wide
+his blue eyes at sight of the strangers, and the prattling tongue became
+quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"Take her to her room, and let her lie on the bed," said one of the
+doctors to Greta.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden terror seized the young mother. "No, no, no!" she said, in an
+indescribable accent, and the child cried a little from the pressure to
+her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Mercy, dear, be brave for your darling's sake," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to me," said the doctor, quietly but firmly. "You are now quite
+blind, and you have been in total darkness for a year and a half. We may
+be able to restore your sight by giving you a few minutes' pain. Will
+you not bear it?"</p>
+
+<p>Mercy sobbed, and kissed the child passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"Just think, it is quite certain that without an operation you will
+never regain your sight," continued the doctor. "You have nothing to
+lose and everything to gain. Are you satisfied? Come, go away to your
+room quietly."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Just imagine, only a few minutes' pain, and even of that you will
+scarcely be conscious. Before you know what is doing, it will be done."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy clung closer to her child, and kissed it again and yet more
+fervently.</p>
+
+<p>The doctors turned to each other. "Strange vanity!" muttered the one who
+had not spoken before. "Her eyes are useless, and yet she is afraid she
+may lose them."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy's quick ears caught the whispered words. "It is not that," she
+said passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"No, gentlemen," said Greta, "you have mistaken her thought. Tell her
+she runs no danger of her life."</p>
+
+<p>The doctors smiled and laughed a little. "Oh, that's it, eh? Well, we
+can tell her that with certainty."</p>
+
+<p>Then there was another interchange of half-amused glances.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, we that be men, sirs, don't know the depth and tenderness of a
+mother's heart," said Parson Christian. And Mercy turned toward him a
+face that was full of gratitude. Greta took the child out of her arms
+and hushed it to sleep in another room. Then she brought it back and put
+it in its cradle that stood in the ingle.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Mercy," she said, "for the sake of your boy." And Mercy permitted
+herself to be led from the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"So there will be no danger," she said. "I shall not leave my boy. Who
+said that? The doctor? Oh, good gracious, it's nothing. Only think, I
+shall live to see him grow to be a great lad!"</p>
+
+<p>Her whole face was now radiant.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be nothing. Oh, no, it will be nothing. How silly it was to
+think that he would live on, and grow up, and be a man, and I lie cold
+in the church-yard, and me his mother! That was very childish, wasn't
+it? But, then, I have been so childish since Ralphie came."</p>
+
+<p>"There, lie and be quiet, and it will soon be over," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me kiss him first. Do let me kiss him! Only once. You know it's a
+great risk, after all. And if he grew up&mdash;and I wasn't here, if&mdash;if&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There, dear Mercy, you must not cry again. It inflames your eyes, and
+that can't be good for the doctors."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I won't cry. You are very good; everybody is very good. Only
+let me kiss my little Ralphie&mdash;just for the last."</p>
+
+<p>Greta led her back to the side of the cot, and she spread herself over
+it with outstretched arms, as the mother-bird poises with outstretched
+wings over her brood. Then she rose, and her face was peaceful and
+resigned.</p>
+
+<p>The Laird Fisher sat down before the kitchen fire, with one arm on the
+cradle-head. Parson Christian stood beside him. The old charcoal-burner
+wept in silence, and the good parson's voice was too thick for the words
+of comfort that rose to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>The doctors followed into the bedroom. Mercy was lying tranquilly on her
+bed. Her countenance was without expression. She was busy with her own
+thoughts. Greta stood by the bedside; anxiety was written in every line
+of her beautiful, brave face.</p>
+
+<p>"We must give her the gas," said one of the doctors, addressing the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy's features twitched.</p>
+
+<p>"Who said that?" she asked, nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"My child, you must be quiet," said the doctor in a tone of authority.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will be quiet, very quiet; only don't make me unconscious," she
+said. "Never mind me; I will not cry. No; if you hurt me I will not cry
+out. I will not stir. I will do everything you ask. And you shall say
+how quiet I have been. Only don't let me be insensible."</p>
+
+<p>The doctors consulted aside, and in whispers.</p>
+
+<p>"Who spoke about the gas? It wasn't you, Mrs. Ritson, was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must do as the doctors wish, dear," said Greta in a caressing
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I will be very good. I will do every little thing. Yes, and I will
+be so brave. I am a little childish sometimes, but I can be brave, can't
+I?"</p>
+
+<p>The doctors returned to the bedside.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, we will not use the gas," said one. "You are a brave little
+woman, after all. There, be still&mdash;very still."</p>
+
+<p>One of the doctors was tearing linen into strips for bandages, while
+the other fixed Mercy's head to suit the light.</p>
+
+<p>There was a faint sound from the kitchen. "Wait," said Mercy. "That is
+father&mdash;he's crying. Tell him not to cry. Say it's nothing."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a weak little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"There, he will hear that; go and say it was I who laughed."</p>
+
+<p>Greta left the room on tiptoe. Old Matthew was still sitting over a
+dying fire, gently rocking the sleeping child. Parson Christian's eyes
+were raised in prayer.</p>
+
+<p>When Greta returned to the bedroom, Mercy called her, and said very
+softly&mdash;"Let me hold your hand, Greta&mdash;may I say Greta?&mdash;there," and her
+fingers closed on Greta's with a convulsive grasp.</p>
+
+<p>The operation began. Mercy held her breath. She had the stubborn
+north-country blood in her. Once only a sigh escaped. There was a dead
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>In two or three minutes the doctor said: "Just another minute, and all
+will be over."</p>
+
+<p>At the next instant Greta felt her hand held with a grasp of iron.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor, doctor, I can see you!" cried Mercy, and her words came in
+gusts.</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet," said the doctor in a stern voice. In half a minute more the
+linen bandages were being wrapped tightly over Mercy's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor, dear doctor, let me see my boy," cried Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet, I say," said the doctor again.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear doctor, my dear doctor, only one peep&mdash;one little peep&mdash;I saw your
+face&mdash;let me see my Ralphie's!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, it is not safe."</p>
+
+<p>"But only for a moment. Don't put the bandage on for one moment. Just
+think, doctor, I have never seen my boy; I've seen other people's
+children, but never once my own, own darling. Oh, dear doctor&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are exciting yourself. Listen to me; if you don't behave yourself
+now you may never see your child."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, I will behave myself; I will be very good. Only don't shut me
+up in darkness again until I see my boy. Greta, bring him to me.
+Listen: I hear his breathing. Go for my darling. The kind doctor won't
+be angry with you. Tell him that if I see my child it will cure me. I
+know it will."</p>
+
+<p>Greta's eyes were swimming in tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Rest quiet, Mercy. Everything may be lost if you disturb yourself now,
+my dear."</p>
+
+<p>The doctors were wrapping bandage over bandage, and fixing them firmly
+at the back of their patient's head.</p>
+
+<p>"Now listen again," said one of them. "This bandage must be kept over
+your eyes for a week."</p>
+
+<p>"A week&mdash;a whole week? Oh, doctor, you might as well say forever!"</p>
+
+<p>"I say a week. And if you should ever remove it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not for an instant? Not raise it a little?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you ever remove it for an instant, or raise it ever so little, you
+will assuredly lose your sight forever. Remember that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, doctor, it is terrible! Why did you not tell me so before? Oh, this
+is worse than blindness! Think of the temptation, and I have never seen
+my boy!"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor had fixed the bandage, and his voice was less stern, but no
+less resolute.</p>
+
+<p>"You must obey me," he said; "I will come again this day week, and then
+you shall see your child, and your father, and this young lady, and
+everybody. But, mind, if you don't obey me you will never see anything.
+You will have one glance of your little boy, and then be blind forever,
+or perhaps&mdash;yes, perhaps die."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy lay quiet for a moment. Then she said in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Dear doctor, you must forgive me. I am very willful, and I promised to
+be so good. I will not touch the bandage. No, for the sake of my little
+boy, I will never, never touch it. You shall come yourself and take it
+off, and then I shall see him."</p>
+
+<p>The doctors went away. Greta remained all night in the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>"You are happy now, Mercy?" said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," said Mercy. "Just think, only a week! And he must be so
+beautiful by this time."</p>
+
+<p>When Greta took the child to her at sunset, there was an ineffable joy
+in her pale face, and next morning, when Greta awoke, Mercy was singing
+softly to herself in the sunrise.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was a gathering of miners near the pit-head that morning. It was
+pay day. The rule was that the miners on the morning shift should pass
+through the pay-office before going down the shaft at eight o'clock; and
+that those on the night shift should pass through on their way home a
+few minutes afterward. When the morning men passed through the office
+they had found the pay-door shut, and a notice posted over it, saying,
+"All wages due at eight o'clock to-day will be paid at the same hour
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Presently the men on the night shift came up in the cages, and after a
+brief explanation both gangs, with the banksmen and all top-ground
+hands, except the engine-man, trooped away to a place suitable for a
+conference. There was a worked-out open cutting a hundred yards away. It
+was a vast cleft dug into the side of the mountain, square on its base,
+vertical in its three gray walls, and sweeping up to a dizzy height,
+over which the brant sides of the green fell rose sheer into the sky. It
+was to this natural theatre that the two hundred miners made their way
+in groups of threes and fours, their lamps and cans in their hands,
+their red-stained clothes glistening in the morning sun.</p>
+
+<p>It was decided to send a deputation to the master, asking that the order
+might be revoked and payment made as usual. The body of the men remained
+in the clearing, conversing in knots, while two miners, buirdly fellows,
+rather gruffer of tongue than the rest, went to the office to act as
+spokesmen.</p>
+
+<p>The deputation were approaching the pit-head when the engine-man shouted
+that he had just heard the master's knock from below, and in another
+moment Hugh Ritson, in flannels and fustian, stepped out of the cage.</p>
+
+<p>He heard the request, and at once offered to go to the men and give his
+answer. The miners made way for him respectfully, and then closed about
+him when he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Men," he said, with a touch of his old resolution, "let me tell you
+frankly, as between man and man, that I can not pay you this morning,
+because I haven't got the money. I tried to get it, and failed. This
+afternoon I shall receive much more than is due to you, and to-morrow
+you shall be promptly paid."</p>
+
+<p>The miners twisted about and compared notes in subdued voices.</p>
+
+<p>"That's no'but fair," said one.</p>
+
+<p>"He cannut say na fairer," said another.</p>
+
+<p>But there were some who were not so easily appeased; and one of these
+crushed his way through the crowd, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Ritson, we're not same as the bettermer folk, as can get credit for
+owt 'at they want. We ax six days' pay because we have to do six days'
+payin' wi' it. And if we're back a day in our pay we're a day back in
+our payin'; and that means clemmin' a laal bit&mdash;and the wife and barns
+forby."</p>
+
+<p>There were murmurs of approval from the crowd, and then another
+malcontent added:</p>
+
+<p>"Times has changed to a gay tune sin' we could put by for a rainy day.
+It's hand to mouth now, on'y the mouth's allus ready and the hand's
+not."</p>
+
+<p>"It's na much as we ha' gotten to put away these times," said the first
+speaker. "Not same as the days when a pitman's wife, 'at I ken on, flung
+a five-pound note in his face and axed him what he thowt she were to
+mak' o' that."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay," responded the others in a chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"Men, I'm not charging you with past extravagance," said Hugh Ritson;
+"and it's not my fault if the pit hasn't done as well for all of us as I
+had hoped."</p>
+
+<p>He was moving away, when the crowd closed about him again.</p>
+
+<p>"Mates," shouted one of the miners, "there's another word as some on us
+wad like to say to the master, and that's about the timber."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" asked Hugh Ritson, facing about.</p>
+
+<p>"There be some on us 'at think the pit's none ower safe down the bottom
+working, where the seam of sand runs cross-ways. We're auld miners,
+maistly, and we thowt maybe ye wadna tak' it wrang if we telt ye 'at it
+wants a vast mair forks and upreets."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, my lads, I'll see what I can do," said Hugh Ritson; and then
+added in a lower tone: "But I've put a forest of timber underground
+already, and where this burying of money is to end God alone knows."</p>
+
+<p>He turned away this time and moved off, halting more noticeably than
+usual on his infirm foot.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to his office near the pit-bank, and found Mr. Bonnithorne
+awaiting him.</p>
+
+<p>"The day is young, but I'm no sluggard, you know," said the lawyer. "I
+thought we might want a word or two before the meeting at the Ghyll."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson did not notice the explanation. He looked anxious and
+disturbed. While stripping off his pit flannels, and putting on his
+ordinary clothes, he told Mr. Bonnithorne what had just occurred, and
+then added:</p>
+
+<p>"If anything had been necessary to prove that this morning's bad
+business is inevitable, I should have found it in this encounter with
+the men."</p>
+
+<p>"It comes as a fillip to your already blunted purpose," said the lawyer
+with a curious smile. "Odd, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Blunted!" said Hugh Ritson, and there was a perceptible elevation of
+the eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he drew a long breath, and said with an air of relief:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well, if she suffers who has suffered enough already, he, at least,
+will be out of the way forever."</p>
+
+<p>Bonnithorne shifted slightly on his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"You think so?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Something cynical in the tone caught Hugh Ritson's ear.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a bad change, wasn't it?" added the lawyer; "this one is likely
+to be a deal more troublesome."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson went on with his dressing in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, by the interchange your positions were reversed," continued
+the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the other was in your hands,
+while you are in the hands of this one."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's foot fell heavily at that instant, but he merely said,
+with suppressed quietness:</p>
+
+<p>"There was this one's crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Was&mdash;precisely," said Mr. Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson looked up with a look of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"When you gave the crime to the other, this one became a free man," the
+lawyer explained.</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it all come to?" said Hugh Ritson, sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"That your hold of Paul Drayton is gone forever."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you can never incriminate him without first incriminating
+yourself," said the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"Who talks of incrimination?" said Hugh Ritson, testily. "To-day, this
+man is to take upon himself the name of Paul Lowther&mdash;his true name,
+though he doesn't know it, blockhead as he is. Therefore, I ask again:
+What does it all come to?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne shifted uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," he said, meekly, but the curious smile still played about his
+downcast face.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was silence again.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know that Mercy Fisher is likely to regain her sight?" said
+Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so? Dear me, dear me!" said the lawyer, sincere at last.
+"In all the annals of jurisprudence there is no such extraordinary case
+of identity being conclusively provable by one witness only, and of that
+witness becoming blind. Odd, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson smiled coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"Odd? Say providential," he answered. "I believe that's what you church
+folk call it when the Almighty averts a disaster that is made imminent
+by your own short-sightedness."</p>
+
+<p>"A disaster, indeed, if her sight ceases to be so providentially short,"
+said the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"Get the man out of the way, and the woman is all right," said Hugh. He
+picked a letter out of a drawer, and handed it to Mr. Bonnithorne. "You
+will remember that the other was to have shipped to Australia."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne bowed his head.</p>
+
+<p>"This letter is from the man for whom he intended to go out&mdash;an old
+friend of my father. Answer it, Bonnithorne."</p>
+
+<p>"In what terms?" asked the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"Say that a long illness prevented, but that Paul Ritson is now prepared
+to fulfill his engagement."</p>
+
+<p>"And what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"What then?" Hugh Ritson echoed. "Why, what do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Send him?" with a motion of the thumb over the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Again the cynical tone caught Hugh Ritson's ear, and he glanced up
+quickly, but made no remark. He was now dressed.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ready," and on reaching the door and taking a last look round the
+room, he added: "I'll have the best of this furniture removed to the
+Ghyll to-morrow. The house has been unbearable of late, and I've been
+forced to spend most of my time down here."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you don't intend to give him much grace?" asked Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>"Not an hour."</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer bent his forehead very low at that moment.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The sun was high over the head of Hindscarth, but a fresh breeze was
+blowing from the north, and the walk to the Ghyll was bracing. Mr.
+Bonnithorne talked little on the way, but Hugh Ritson's spirits rose
+sensibly, and he chatted cheerfully on indifferent subjects. It was
+still some minutes short of nine o'clock when they reached the house.
+The servants were bustling about in clean aprons and caps.</p>
+
+<p>"Have the gentlemen arrived?" asked Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, sir," answered one of the servants&mdash;it was old Dinah Wilson.</p>
+
+<p>The two men stepped up to Hugh Ritson's room. There the table was spread
+for breakfast. The lawyer glanced at the chairs, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have invited other friends?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh nodded his head, and sat down at the organ.</p>
+
+<p>"Three or four neighbors of substance," he said, opening the case. "In a
+matter like this it is well to have witnesses."</p>
+
+<p>Bonnithorne replied with phlegm:</p>
+
+<p>"But what about the feelings of the man who is so soon to be turned out
+of the house?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's fingers were on the keys. He paused and faced about.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no conception that you had such a delicate sense of humor,
+Bonnithorne," he said, with only the shadow of a smile. "Feelings! His
+feelings!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a swift glide up the notes, and other sounds were lost. The
+window was half open; the lawyer walked to it and looked out. At that
+moment the two men were back to back. Hugh Ritson's head was bent over
+the keyboard. Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes were on the tranquil landscape
+lying in the sun outside. The faces of both wore curious smiles.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson leaped from his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I feel like another man already," he said, and took a step or two
+up and down the room, his infirm foot betraying no infirmity. There was
+the noise of fresh arrivals in the hall. A minute later a servant
+entered, followed by three gentlemen, who shook hands effusively with
+Hugh Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"Delighted to be of service, I'm sure," said one.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad the unhappy connection is to be concluded&mdash;it was a scandal," said
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>"You could not go on living on such terms&mdash;life wasn't worth it, you
+know," said the first.</p>
+
+<p>The third gentleman was more restrained, but Hugh paid him marked
+deference. They had a short, muttered conference apart.</p>
+
+<p>"Get the other mortgages wiped off the deeds and I have no objection to
+lend you the money on the security of the house and land," said the
+gentleman. At that remark Hugh Ritson bowed his head and appeared
+satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>He rang for breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask Mr. Paul if he is ready," he said, when Dinah brought the tray.</p>
+
+<p>"Master Paul is abed, sir," said Dinah; and then she added for herself:
+"It caps all&mdash;sec feckless wark. It dudn't use to be so, for sure. I'll
+not say but a man may be that changed in a twelvemonth&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I'll go to him myself," said Hugh; and begging to be excused, he
+left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne followed him to the other side of the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you counted the cost?" he asked. "It will be a public scandal."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh smiled, and answered with composure:</p>
+
+<p>"Whose will be the loss?"</p>
+
+<p>"God knows!" said the lawyer, with sudden energy.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh glanced up quickly. There was the murmur of voices from within the
+room they had just left.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it that you are too jealous of your good name to allow it to be
+bruited abroad in a scandal, as you say?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne's face wore a curious expression at that moment.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not my good name that is in question," he said, quietly, and
+turned back to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose then? His?"</p>
+
+<p>But the lawyer already held the door ajar, and was passing into the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson made his way to the bedroom occupied by Paul Drayton. He
+opened the door without knocking. It was dark within. Thin streaks of
+dusty sunlight shot from between a pair of heavy curtains. The air was
+noisome with dead tobacco smoke and the fumes of stale beer. Hugh's
+gorge rose, but he conquered his disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" said a husky voice from behind the dark hangings of a
+four-post bed that was all but hidden in the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>"The friends are here," said Hugh Ritson, cheerily. "How long will you
+be?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a suppressed chuckle.</p>
+
+<p>"All right."</p>
+
+<p>"We will begin breakfast," said Hugh. He was turning to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that lawyer man back from Scotland?" asked Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"Bonnithorne? He's here&mdash;he didn't say that he'd been away," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"All right."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson returned to the bed-head. "Have you heard," he said in a
+subdued voice, "that the doctors have operated on the girl Mercy, and
+that she is likely to regain her sight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? What?" Drayton had started up in bed. Then rolling down his sleeves
+and buttoning them leisurely, he added: "But that ain't nothing to me."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson left the room. He was in spirits indeed, for he had borne
+even this encounter with equanimity. As he passed through the house,
+Brother Peter entered at the porch with a letter in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Parson Christian coming?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know 'at I've heard," said Peter. "He's boddered me to fetch ye a
+scribe of a line. Here 'tis."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson opened the envelope. The note ran:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to break bread with one who
+has broken the peace of my household; nor is it agreeable to my duty
+as a minister of Christ to give the countenance of my presence to
+proceedings which must be a sham, inasmuch as the person concerned is
+an imposter&mdash;with the which name I yet hope to brand him when the
+proper time and circumstances arrive."</p></div>
+
+<p>Hugh smiled as he read the letter; then he thrust a shilling into
+Peter's unyielding hand, and shot away.</p>
+
+<p>"The parson will not come," said Hugh, drawing Bonnithorne aside; "but
+that can not matter. If he is Greta's guardian, you are her father's
+executor." Then, raising his voice, "Gentlemen," he said, "my brother
+wishes us to begin breakfast; he will join us presently."</p>
+
+<p>The company was soon seated; the talk was brisk and cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>"Glorious prospect," said a gentleman sitting opposite the open window.
+"Often wonder you don't throw out a bay, Mr. Ritson."</p>
+
+<p>"I've thought of it," said Hugh, "but it's not worth while to spend such
+money until one is master of one's own house."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, true, true!" said several voices in chorus.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton entered, his eyes red, his face sallow. "Morning, gents," he
+said in his thick guttural.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the gentlemen rose, and bowed with frigid politeness. "Good
+morning, Mr. Ritson," said the third.</p>
+
+<p>The servant had followed Drayton into the room with a beefsteak
+underdone. "Post not come?" he asked, shifting his plates.</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be long now," said Bonnithorne, consulting his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Sooner the better," Drayton muttered. He took some papers from a
+breast-pocket and counted them; then fixed them in his waistcoat, where
+his watch would have been if he had worn one.</p>
+
+<p>When breakfast was done, Hugh Ritson took certain documents from a
+cabinet. "Be seated, gentlemen," he said. All sat except Drayton, who
+lighted a pipe, and rang to ask if the postman had come. He had not.
+"Then go and sharpen up his heels."</p>
+
+<p>"My duty would be less pleasant," said Hugh Ritson, "if some of the
+facts were not already known."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'll take 'em as read, so we will," put in Drayton, perambulating
+behind a cloud of smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, I will ask you to be seated," said Hugh, in an altered tone.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton sat down with a snort.</p>
+
+<p>"I have to tell you," continued Hugh Ritson, "that my brother known to
+you as Paul Ritson, is now satisfied that he was not the heir of my
+father, who died intestate."</p>
+
+<p>There were sundry nods of the grave noddles assembled about the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Fearful shock to any man," said one. "No wonder he has lost heart and
+grown reckless," said another.</p>
+
+<p>"On becoming aware of this fact, he was anxious to relinquish the estate
+to the true heir."</p>
+
+<p>There were further nods, and some muttered comments on the requirements
+of honor.</p>
+
+<p>"I show you here a copy of the register of my father's marriage, and a
+copy of the register of my own birth, occurring less than a year
+afterward. From these, in the absence of extraordinary testimony, it
+must be the presumption that I am myself my father's rightful heir."</p>
+
+<p>The papers were handed about and returned with evident satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"So far, all is plain," continued Hugh Ritson. "But my brother has
+learned that he is not even my father's son."</p>
+
+<p>Three astonished faces were lifted from the table. Bonnithorne sat with
+head bent. Drayton leaned an elbow on one knee and smoked sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"It turns out that he is the son of my mother by another man," said Hugh
+Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>The guests twisted about. "Ah, that explains all," they whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"You will be surprised to learn that my mother's husband by a former
+invalid marriage was no other than Robert Lowther, and that he who sits
+with us now as Paul Ritson is really Paul Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>At this, Hugh placed two further documents on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton cleared his throat noisily.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, dear me! yet it's plain enough!" said one of the visitors.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what about Mrs. Ritson&mdash;Miss Greta, I mean?" asked another.</p>
+
+<p>"She is Paul Lowther's half-sister, and therefore his marriage with her
+must be annulled."</p>
+
+<p>The three gentlemen turned in their seats and looked amazed, Drayton
+still smoked in silence. Bonnithorne did not raise his head.</p>
+
+<p>"He will relinquish to me my father's estates, but he is not left
+penniless," continued Hugh Ritson. "By his own father's will he inherits
+five thousand pounds."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton snorted contemptuously, then spat on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Friends," said Hugh Ritson again, "there is only one further point, and
+I am loath to touch on it. My brother&mdash;I speak of Paul Lowther&mdash;on
+taking possession of the estates, exercised what he believed to be his
+legal right to mortgage them. I am sorry to say he mortgaged them
+deeply."</p>
+
+<p>There was an interchange of astute glances.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were a rich man, I should be content to be the loser, but I am a
+poor man, and am compelled to ask that those mortgages stand forfeit."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it the law?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is&mdash;and, as you will say, only a fair one," Hugh answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are the mortgagees?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is where the pity arises&mdash;the chief of them is no other than the
+daughter of Robert Lowther&mdash;Greta."</p>
+
+<p>Sundry further twists and turns. "Pity for her." "Well, she should have
+seen to his title. Who was her lawyer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her father's executor, our friend Mr. Bonnithorne."</p>
+
+<p>"How much does she lose?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid a great deal&mdash;perhaps half her fortune," said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"No matter; it's but fair, Mr. Ritson is not to inherit an estate
+impoverished by the excesses of the wrong man."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton's head was still bent, but he scraped his feet restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have only another word to say," said Hugh. "In affairs of this solemn
+nature, it is best to have witnesses, or perhaps I should have preferred
+to confer with Paul and Mr. Bonnithorne in private." He dropped his
+voice and added: "You see, there is my poor mother; and though, in a
+sense, she is no longer of this world, her good name must ever be sacred
+with me."</p>
+
+<p>The astute glances again, and two pairs of upraised hands. The lawyer
+had twisted toward the window.</p>
+
+<p>"But our friend Bonnithorne will tell you that the law in effect
+compelled me to evict my brother. You may not know that there is a
+condition of English law in which a bastard becomes a permanent heir;
+that is when he is called, in the language of the law, the bastard
+eigne." There was a tremor in his voice as he added softly: "Believe me,
+I had no choice."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton stamped his heavy foot, threw down his pipe, and jumped to his
+feet. "It's a lie, the lot of it!" he blurted. Then he fumbled at his
+watch-pocket, and pulled out a paper. "That's my register, straight and
+plain."</p>
+
+<p>He stammered it aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"Ritson, Paul; father, Allan Ritson; mother, Grace Ritson. Date of
+birth, April 6, 1847; place, Crieff, Scotland."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson, a little pale, smiled. The others turned to him in their
+amazement. In an instant he had regained an appearance of indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Where does it come from?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The registrar's at Edinburgh. D'ye say it ain't right?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but I say, what is it worth? Gentlemen," said Hugh, turning to the
+visitors, "compare it with the register of my father's marriage.
+Observe, the one date is April 6, 1847; the other is June 12, 1847. Even
+if genuine, does it prove legitimacy?"</p>
+
+<p>Drayton laid his hand on the lawyer's arm. "Here you, speak up, will
+ye?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne rose, and then Hugh Ritson's pale face became ghastly.</p>
+
+<p>"This birth occurred in Scotland," he said. "Now, if the father happened
+to hold a Scotch domicile, and the mother lived with him as his wife,
+the child would be legitimate."</p>
+
+<p>"Without a marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Without a ceremony."</p>
+
+<p>Natt pushed into the room, his cap in one hand, a letter in the other.
+He had knocked twice, and none had heard. "The post, sir; one letter for
+Master Paul."</p>
+
+<p>"Good lad!" Drayton clutched it with a cry of delight.</p>
+
+<p>"But my father had no Scotch domicile," said Hugh, with apparent
+composure.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but he had," said Drayton, tearing open his envelope.</p>
+
+<p>"He was a Scotsman born," said Bonnithorne, taking another document from
+Drayton's hand. "See, this is his register. Odd, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's eyes flashed. He looked steadily into the face of the
+lawyer, then he took the paper.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment he crushed it in his palm and flung it out of the
+window. "I shall want proof both of your facts and your law," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, and welcome," said Drayton, shouting in his agitation. "Listen to
+this," and he proceeded to read.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait! From whom?" asked Hugh Ritson. "Some pettifogger?"</p>
+
+<p>"The solicitor-general," said Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that good enough?" asked Drayton, tauntingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," said Hugh, rapping the table with his finger-tips.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton handed the letter to the lawyer. "Do you read it," he said; "I
+ain't flowery. I'm a gentleman, and&mdash;" He stopped suddenly and tramped
+the floor, while Bonnithorne read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"If there is no reason to suppose the father lost his Scotch
+domicile, the son is legitimate. If the husband recognized his wife
+in registering his son's birth, the law of Scotland would presume
+that there was a marriage, but whether of ceremony or consent would
+be quite indifferent."</p></div>
+
+<p>There was a pause, Drayton took the letter from the lawyer's hands,
+folded it carefully, and put it in his fob-pocket. Then he peered into
+Hugh Ritson's face with a leer of triumph. Bonnithorne had slunk aside.
+The guests were silent.</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye hear?" said Drayton, "the son is legitimate." He gloated over the
+words, and tapped his pocket as he repeated them. "What d'ye say to it,
+eh?"</p>
+
+<p>At first Hugh Ritson struggled visibly for composure, and in an instant
+his face was like marble. Drayton came close to him.</p>
+
+<p>"You were going to give me the go-by, eh? Turn me out-o'-doors, eh?
+Damme, it's my turn now, so it is!"</p>
+
+<p>So saying, Drayton stepped to the door and flung it open.</p>
+
+<p>"This house is mine," he said; "go, and be damned to you!"</p>
+
+<p>At this unexpected blow, Hugh Ritson beat the ground with his foot. He
+looked round at the strangers, and felt like a wretch who was gagged and
+might say nothing. Then he halted to where Drayton stood with
+outstretched arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me have a word with you in private," he said in a voice that was
+scarcely audible.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton lifted his hand, and his fist was clinched.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a syllable!" he said. His accent was brutal and frenzied.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's nostrils quivered, and his eyes flashed. Drayton quailed
+an instant, and burst into a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>There was a great silence. Bonnithorne was still before the window, his
+face down, his hands clasped behind him, his foot pawing the ground.
+Hugh Ritson walked to his side. He contemplated him a moment, and then
+touched him on the shoulder. When he spoke, his face was dilated with
+passion, and his voice was low and deep.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a Book," he said, "that a Churchman may know, which tells of
+an unjust steward. The master thought to dismiss him from his
+stewardship. Then the steward said within himself, 'What shall I do?'"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"What did he do?" continued Hugh Ritson, and every word fell on the
+silence like the stroke of a bell. "He called his master's debtors
+together, and said to the first, 'How much do you owe?' 'One hundred
+measures.' Then he said, 'Write a bill for fifty.'"</p>
+
+<p>There was another pause.</p>
+
+<p>"What did that steward mean? He meant that when the master should
+dismiss him from his stewardship, the debtor should take him into his
+house."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's manner was the white heat of calm. He turned half round to
+where Drayton stood, and raised his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"That debtor was henceforth bound hand and foot. Let him but parley with
+the steward, and the steward cried, 'Thief,' 'Forger,' 'Perjurer.'"</p>
+
+<p>Bonnithorne shuffled uneasily. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but
+the words would not come. At last he gulped down something that had
+seemed to choke him, smiled between his teeth a weak, bankrupt smile,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"How are we to read your parable? Are you the debtor bound hand and
+foot, and is your brother the astute steward?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's foot fell heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it so?" he said, catching at the word. "Then be it so;" and his
+voice rose to a shrill cry. "That steward shall come to the ground, and
+his master with him!"</p>
+
+<p>At that he stepped back to where Drayton stood with eyes as full of
+bewilderment as frenzy.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Lowther&mdash;" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Call me Paul Ritson," interrupted Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Lowther&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ritson!" Drayton shouted, and then, dropping his voice, he said,
+rapidly: "You gave it me, and by God I'll keep it!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson leaned across the table and tapped a paper that lay on it.</p>
+
+<p>"That is your name," he said, "and I'll prove it."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton burst into another laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You daren't try," he chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh turned upon him with eyes of fire.</p>
+
+<p>"So you measure my spirit by your own. Man, man!" he said, "do you know
+what you are doing?"</p>
+
+<p>There was another brutal laugh from Drayton, but it died suddenly on his
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>Then Hugh Ritson stepped to the door. He took a last look round. It was
+as if he knew that he had reached the beginning of the end&mdash;as if he
+realized that he was never again to stand in the familiar room. The
+future, that seemed so near an hour ago, was gone from him forever; the
+cup that he had lifted to his lips lay in fragments at his feet. He saw
+it all in that swift instant. On his face there were the lines of agony,
+but over them there played the smile of resolve. He put one hand to his
+forehead, and then said in a voice so low as to be no more than a
+whisper:</p>
+
+<p>"Wait and see."</p>
+
+<p>When the guests, who stood huddled together like sheep in a storm, had
+recovered their stunned senses, Hugh Ritson was gone from the room.
+Drayton had sunk into a chair near where Bonnithorne stood, and was
+whining like a whipped hound.</p>
+
+<p>"Go after him! What will he do? You know I was always against it!"</p>
+
+<p>But presently he stood up and laughed, and bantered and crowed, and
+observed that it was a pity if a gentleman could not be master in his
+own house, and that what couldn't be cured must be endured.</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely," interposed one of the guests, "and you have my entire
+sympathy, Mr. Ritson. A more cruel deception was never more manfully
+exposed."</p>
+
+<p>"I fully agree with you, neighbor," said another, "and such moral
+tyranny is fearful to contemplate. Paul Lowther, indeed! Now, that is a
+joke."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is rather, ain't it?" said Drayton. And then he laughed, and
+they all laughed and shook hands, and were excellent good friends.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Greta stayed with Mercy until noon that day, begging, entreating, and
+finally commanding her to lie quiet in bed, while she herself dressed
+and fed the child, and cooked and cleaned, in spite of the Laird
+Fisher's protestations. When all was done, and the old charcoal-burner
+had gone out on the hills, Greta picked up the little fellow in her
+arms and went to Mercy's room. Mercy was alert to every sound, and in an
+instant was sitting up in bed. Her face beamed, her parted lips smiled,
+her delicate fingers plucked nervously at the counterpane.</p>
+
+<p>"How brightsome it is to-day, Greta," she said. "I'm sure the sun must
+be shining."</p>
+
+<p>The window was open, and a soft breeze floated through the sun's rays
+into the room. Mercy inclined her head aside, and added, "Ah, you young
+rogue you; you are there, are you? Give him to me, the rascal!" The
+rogue was set down in his mother's arms, and she proceeded to punish his
+rascality with a shower of kisses. "How bonny his cheeks must be; they
+will be just like two ripe apples," and forthwith there fell another
+shower of kisses. Then she babbled over the little one, and lisped, and
+stammered, and nodded her head in his face, and blew little puffs of
+breath into his hair, and tickled him until he laughed and crowed and
+rolled and threw up his legs; and then she kissed his limbs and
+extremities in a way that mothers have, and finally imprisoned one of
+his feet by putting it ankle deep into her mouth. "Would you ever think
+a foot could be so tiny, Greta?" she said. And the little one plunged
+about and clambered laboriously up its mother's breast, and more than
+once plucked at the white bandage about her head. "No, no; Ralphie must
+not touch," said Mercy with sudden gravity. "Only think, Ralphie pet,
+one week&mdash;only one&mdash;ay, less&mdash;only six days now, and then&mdash;oh, then&mdash;" A
+long hug, and the little fellow's boisterous protest against the
+convulsive pressure abridged the mother's prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>All at once Mercy's manner changed. She turned toward Greta, and said:
+"I will not touch the bandage, no, never; but if Ralphie tugged at it,
+and it fell&mdash;would that be breaking my promise?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta saw what was in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it would, dear," she said; but there was a tremor in her
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy sighed audibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Just think, it would be only Ralphie. The kind doctors could not be
+angry with my little child. I would say, 'It was the boy,' and they
+would smile and say, 'Ah, that is different.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the little one," said Greta with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy drew the child closer, and there was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"I was very wrong, Greta," she said in a low tone. "Oh! you would not
+think what a fearful thing came into my mind a minute ago. Take my
+Ralphie. Just imagine, my own innocent baby tempted me."</p>
+
+<p>As Greta reached across the bed to lift the child out of his mother's
+lap, the little fellow was struggling to communicate, by help of a
+limited vocabulary, some wondrous intelligence of recent events that
+somewhat overshadowed his little existence. "Puss&mdash;dat," many times
+repeated, was further explained by one chubby forefinger with its
+diminutive finger-nail pointed to the fat back of the other hand.</p>
+
+<p>"He means that the little cat has scratched him," said Greta, "but bless
+the mite, he is pointing to the wrong hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Puss&mdash;dat," continued the child, and peered up into his mother's
+sightless face. Mercy was all tears in an instant. She had borne
+yesterday's operation without a groan, but now the scratch on her
+child's hand went to her heart like a stab.</p>
+
+<p>"Lie quiet, Mercy," said Greta; "it will be gone to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Go-on," echoed the little chap, and pointed out at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"The darling, how he picks up every word!" said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"He means the horse," explained Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Go-on&mdash;man&mdash;go-on," prattled the little one, with a child's
+indifference to all conversation except his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless the love, he must remember the doctor and his horse," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy was putting her lips to the scratch on the little hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Greta, I am very childish; but a mother's heart melts like butter."</p>
+
+<p>"Batter," echoed the child, and wriggled out of Greta's arms to the
+ground, where he forthwith clambered on to the stool, and possessed
+himself of a slice of bread which lay on the table at the bedside. Then
+the fair curly head disappeared like a glint of sunlight through the
+door to the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I care if other mothers see my child? I shall see him, too,"
+said Mercy, and she sighed. "Yes," she added softly, "his hands and his
+eyes and his feet and his soft hair."</p>
+
+<p>"Try to sleep an hour or two, dear," said Greta, "and then perhaps you
+may get up this afternoon&mdash;only perhaps, you know, but we'll see."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Greta, yes. How kind you are."</p>
+
+<p>"You will be far kinder to me some day," said Greta, very tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;ah, yes, I remember. How very selfish I am&mdash;I had quite forgotten.
+But then it is so hard not to be selfish when you are a mother. Only
+fancy, I never think of myself as Mercy now. No, never. I'm just
+Ralphie's mamma. When Ralphie came, Mercy must have died in some way.
+That's very silly, isn't it? Only it does seem true."</p>
+
+<p>"Man&mdash;go-on&mdash;batter," was heard from the kitchen, mingled with the
+patter of tiny feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to him. How tricksome he is! And you should hear him cry, 'Oh!'
+You would say, 'That child has had an eye knocked out.' And then, in a
+minute, behold! he's laughing once more. There, I'm selfish again; but I
+will make up for it some day, if God is good."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mercy, He is good," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>Her arms rested on the door-jamb, and her head dropped on to it; her
+eyes swam. Did it seem at that moment as if God had been very good to
+these two women?</p>
+
+<p>"Greta," said Mercy, and her voice fell to a whisper, "do you think
+Ralphie is like&mdash;anybody?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear, he is like you."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Then Mercy's hand strayed from under the bedclothes
+and plucked at Greta's gown.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think," she asked, in a voice all but inaudible, "that father
+knows who it is?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can not say&mdash;we have never told him."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I&mdash;he never asked, never once&mdash;only, you know, he gave up his work
+at the mine, and went back to the charcoal-pit when Ralphie came. But he
+never said a word."</p>
+
+<p>Greta did not answer. There was another pause. Then Mercy said, in a
+stronger voice, "Will it be soon&mdash;the trial?"</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as your eyes are better," said Greta, earnestly; "everything
+depends on your recovery."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the bedroom door was pushed open with a little lordly
+bang, and the great wee man entered with his piece of bread stuck rather
+insecurely on one prong of a fork.</p>
+
+<p>"Toas," he explained complacently, "toas," and walked up to the empty
+grate and stretched his arm over the fender at the cold bars.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, there's no fire for toast, you darling goose," said Greta,
+catching him in her arms, much to his masculine vexation.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy had risen on an elbow, and her face was full of the yearning of
+the blind. Then she lay back.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," she said to herself in a faltering voice, "let me lie
+quiet and think of all his pretty ways."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Greta returned to the vicarage toward noon, and overtook Parson
+Christian and Peter in the lonnin, the one carrying a scythe over his
+shoulder, the other a bundle of rushes under his one arm. The parson was
+walking in silence under the noontide sun, his straw hat tipped back
+from his forehead and his eyes on the ground. He was busy with his own
+reflections. It was not until Greta had tripped up to his side and
+slipped his scythe-stone from its strap in the pole that the parson was
+awakened from his reverie.</p>
+
+<p>"Great news, Greta&mdash;great news, my lass!" he said in answer to her
+liberal tender in exchange for his thoughts. "How well it's said, that
+he that diggeth a pit for another should look that he fall not into it
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>"What news, Mr. Christian?" said Greta, and her color heightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we've been mowing the grass in the church-yard, Peter and I, and
+the scythe is old like ourselves, and it wanted tempering. So away we
+went to the smithy to have it ground, and who should come up but Robbie
+Atkinson, leading hassocks from Longridge. And Robbie would fain have us
+go with him and be cheerful at the Flying Horse. Well, we'd each had a
+pot of ale and milk, when in came Natt, the stableman at Ritson's, all
+lather like one of his horses after his master has been astride her. And
+Natt was full of a great quarrel at the Ghyll, wherein young Mr. Hugh
+had tried to turn yonder man out of the house in the way I told you of
+before, but the man denied that he was what Hugh called him, and clung
+to it that he was Paul Ritson, and brought documents to show that Paul
+was his father's rightful heir, after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well?" asked Greta, breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>Peter had shambled on to the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Natt is no very trustworthy chronicler, I fear, but one thing is
+plain, and that is, that Mr. Hugh, who thought to turn yon man out of
+the house, has been turned out of it himself."</p>
+
+<p>Greta stood in the road, trembling from head to foot.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor husband!" she said in a whisper. Then came a torrent of
+questions. "When did this happen? What think you will come of it? Where
+will Hugh go? What will he do? Ah, Mr. Christian, you always said the
+cruel instrument would turn in his hand!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a step behind them. In their anxiety they had not noticed it
+until it was close at their heels. They turned, and were face to face
+with Mr. Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer bowed, but before they had exchanged the courtesies of
+welcome, a horse's tramp came from the road, and in a moment Drayton
+rode up the lonnin. His face was flushed, and his manner noisy as he
+leaped from the saddle into their midst.</p>
+
+<p>Greta lifted one hand to her breast, and with the other hand she clasped
+that of the parson. The old man's face grew rigid in an instant, and
+all the mellowness natural to it died away.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton made up to Greta and the parson with an air of braggadocio.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come to tell you once for all that my wife must live under my
+roof."</p>
+
+<p>No one answered. Drayton took a step near, and slapped his boot with his
+riding-whip.</p>
+
+<p>"The law backs me up in it, and I mean to have it out."</p>
+
+<p>Still there was no answer, and Drayton's braggadocio gathered assurance
+from the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Not as I want her. None of your shrinking away, madame." A hoarse
+laugh. "Burn my body! if I wouldn't as soon have my mother for a wife."</p>
+
+<p>"What then?" said the parson in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Appearances. I ain't to be a laughing-stock of the neighborhood any
+longer. My wife's my wife. A husband's a husband, and wants obedience."</p>
+
+<p>"And what if you do not get it?" asked the parson, his old face
+whitening.</p>
+
+<p>"What? Imprisonment&mdash;that's what." Drayton twisted about and touched the
+lawyer with the handle of his whip. "Here, you, tell 'em what's what."</p>
+
+<p>Thus appealed to, Mr. Bonnithorne explained that a husband was entitled
+to the restitution of connubial rights, and, in default, to the
+"attachment" of his spouse.</p>
+
+<p>"The law," said Mr. Bonnithorne, "can compel a wife to live with her
+husband, or punish her with imprisonment for not doing so."</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye hear?" said Drayton, slapping furiously at the sole of his boot.
+"Punish her with imprisonment."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, and then the parson said, quietly but firmly:</p>
+
+<p>"I gather that it means that you want to share this lady's property."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what of it? Hain't I a right to share it, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have thus far enjoyed the benefit of her mortgages, on the pretense
+that you are her husband; but now you are going too far."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll see. Here, you," prodding the lawyer, "take proceedings at once.
+If she won't come, imprison her. D'ye hear&mdash;imprison her!"</p>
+
+<p>He swung about and caught the reins from the horse's mane, laughing a
+hollow laugh. Greta disengaged her hand from the hand of the parson, and
+stepped up to Drayton until she stood before him face to face, her eyes
+flashing, her lips quivering, her cheeks pale, her whole figure erect
+and firm.</p>
+
+<p>"And what of that?" she said. "Do you think to frighten me with the
+cruelties of the law?&mdash;me?&mdash;me?" she echoed, with scorn in every
+syllable. "Have I suffered so little from it already that you dare to
+say, 'Imprison her,' as if that would drive me to your house?"</p>
+
+<p>Drayton tried to laugh, but the feeble effort died on his hot lips. He
+spat on the ground, and then tried to lift his eyes back to the eyes of
+Greta, but they fell to the whip that he held in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Imprison me, Paul Drayton! I shall not be the first you've imprisoned.
+Imprison me, and I shall be rid of you and your imposture!" she said,
+raising her voice.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton leaped to the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do it!" he muttered; and now, pale, crushed, his braggadocio gone,
+he tugged his horse's head aside and brought down the whip on its flank.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian turned to Mr. Bonnithorne.</p>
+
+<p>"Follow him," he said, resolutely, and lifted his hand.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer made a show of explanation, then assumed an air of authority,
+but finally encountered the parson's white face, and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>In another moment Greta was hanging on Parson Christian's neck, sobbing
+and moaning, while the good old Christian, with all the mellowness back
+in his wrinkled face, smoothed her hair as tenderly as a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor Paul, my dear husband!" cried Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! thanks be to God, things are at their worst now, and they can't
+move but they must mend," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>He took her indoors and bathed her hot forehead, and dried with his hard
+old hand the tears that fell from eyes that a moment before had flashed
+like a basilisk's.</p>
+
+<p>Toward five o'clock that evening a knock came to the door of the
+vicarage, and old Laird Fisher entered. His manner was more than usually
+solemn and constrained.</p>
+
+<p>"I's coom't to say as ma lass's wee thing is taken badly," he said, "and
+rayder sudden't."</p>
+
+<p>Greta rose from her seat and put on her hat and cloak. She was hastening
+down the road while the charcoal-burner was still standing in the middle
+of the floor.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Greta reached the old charcoal-burner's cottage, the little one was
+lying in a drowsy state in Mercy's arms. Its breathing seemed difficult;
+sometimes it started in terror; it was feverish and suffered thirst. The
+mother's wistful face was bent down on it with an indescribable
+expression. There were only the trembling lips to tell of the sharp
+struggle that was going on within. But the yearning for a sight of the
+little flushed countenance, the tearless appeal for but one glimpse of
+the drowsy little eyes, the half-articulate cry of a mother's heart
+against the fate that made the child she had suckled at her breast a
+stranger, whose very features she might not know&mdash;all this was written
+in that blind face.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he pale?" said Mercy. "Is he sleeping? He does not talk now, but
+only starts and cries, and sometimes coughs."</p>
+
+<p>"When did this begin?" asked Greta.</p>
+
+<p>"Toward four o'clock. He had been playing, and I noticed that he
+breathed heavily, and then he came to me to be nursed. Is he awake now?
+Listen."</p>
+
+<p>The little one in its restless drowsiness was muttering faintly,
+"Man&mdash;go-on&mdash;batter&mdash;toas."</p>
+
+<p>"The darling is talking in his sleep, isn't he?" said Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a ringing, brassy cough.</p>
+
+<p>"It is croup," thought Greta.</p>
+
+<p>She closed the window, lighted a fire, placed the kettle so that the
+steam might enter the room, then wrung flannels out of hot water, and
+wrapped them about the child's neck. She stayed all that night at the
+cottage, and sat up with the little one and nursed it. Mercy could not
+be persuaded to go to bed, but she was very quiet. It had not yet taken
+hold of her that the child was seriously ill. He was drowsy and a little
+feverish, his pulse beat fast and he coughed hard sometimes, but he
+would be better in the morning. Oh, yes, he would soon be well again,
+and tearing up the flowers in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>Toward midnight the pulse fell rapidly, the breathing become quieter,
+and the whole nature seemed to sink. Mercy listened with her ear bent
+down at the child's mouth, and a smile of ineffable joy spread itself
+over her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless him, he is sleeping so calmly," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Greta did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>"The 'puss' and the 'man' don't darken his little life so much now,"
+continued Mercy, cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear," said Greta, in as strong a voice as she could summon.</p>
+
+<p>"All will be well with my darling boy soon, will it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear," said Greta, with a struggle.</p>
+
+<p>Happily Mercy could not read the other answer in her face.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy had put her sensitive fingers on the child's nose, and was
+touching him lightly about the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta," she said in a startled whisper, "does he look pinched?"</p>
+
+<p>"A little," said Greta, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"And his skin&mdash;is it cold and clammy?"</p>
+
+<p>"We must give him another hot flannel," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy sat at the bedside, and said nothing for an hour. Then all at
+once, and in a strange, harsh voice, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I wish God had not made Ralphie so winsome."</p>
+
+<p>Greta started at the words, but made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>The daylight came early. As the first gleams of gray light came in at
+the window, Greta turned to where Mercy sat in silence. It was a sad
+face that she saw in the mingled yellow light of the dying lamp and the
+gray of the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, do you remember what Mistress Branthet said when her baby died
+last back-end gone twelvemonth?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta looked up quickly at the bandaged eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Parson Christian tried to comfort her, and said, 'Your baby is
+now an angel in Paradise,' and she turned on him with 'Shaf on your
+angels&mdash;I want none on 'em&mdash;I want my little girl.'"</p>
+
+<p>Mercy's voice broke into a sob.</p>
+
+<p>Toward ten o'clock the doctor came. He had been detained. Very sorry to
+disoblige Mrs. Ritson, but fact was old Mr. de Broadthwaite had an
+attack of lumbago, complicated by a bout of toothache, and everybody
+knew he was most exacting. Young person's baby ill? Feverish, restless,
+starts in its sleep, and cough?&mdash;Ah, croupy cough&mdash;yes, croup, true
+croup, not spasmodic. Let him see; how old? A year and a half? Ah, bad,
+very. Most frequent in second year of infancy. Dangerous, highly so.
+Forms a membrane that occludes air passages. Often ends in convulsions,
+and child suffocates. Sad, very. Let him see again. How long since the
+attack began? Yesterday at four. Ah, far gone, far. The great man soon
+vanished, leaving behind him a harmless preparation of aconite and
+ipecacuanha.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy had heard all, and her pent-up grief broke out in sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, to think I shall hear my Ralphie no more, and to know his white
+cold face is looking up from a coffin, while other children are playing
+in the sunshine and chasing the butterflies! No, no, it can not be; God
+will not let it come to pass; I will pray to Him and He will save my
+child. Why, He can do anything, and He has all the world. What is my
+little baby boy to Him? He will not let it be taken from me!"</p>
+
+<p>Greta's heart was too full for speech. But she might weep in silence,
+and none there would know. Mercy stretched across the bed and, tenderly
+folding the child in her arms, she lifted him up, and then went down on
+her knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Merciful Father," she said in a childish voice of sweet confidence,
+"this is my baby, my Ralphie, and I love him so dearly. You would never
+think how much I love him. But he is ill, and doctor says he may die.
+Oh, dear Father, only think what it would be to say, 'His little face is
+gone.' And then I have never seen him. You will not take him away until
+his mother sees him. So soon, too. Only five days more. Why, it is quite
+close. Not to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the next, but the day after
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>She put in many another child-like plea, and then rose with a smile on
+her pale lips and replaced the little one on his pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"How patient he is," she said. "He can't say 'Thank you,' but I'm sure
+his eyes are speaking. Let me feel." She put her finger lightly on the
+child's lids. "No, they are shut; he must be sleeping. Oh, dear, he
+sleeps very much. Is he gaining color? How quiet he is! If he would only
+say, 'Mamma!' How I wish I could see him!"</p>
+
+<p>She was very quiet for awhile, and then plucked at Greta's gown
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta," she said eagerly, "something tells me that if I could only see
+Ralphie I should save him."</p>
+
+<p>Greta started up in terror. "No, no, no; you must not think of it," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"But some one whispered it. It must have been God Himself. You know we
+ought to obey God always."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, it was not God who said that. It was your own heart. You must
+not heed it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure it was God," said Mercy. "And I heard it quite plain."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, my darling, think what you are saying. Think what it is you wish
+to do. If you do it you will be blind forever."</p>
+
+<p>"But I shall have saved my Ralphie."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; you will not."</p>
+
+<p>"Will he not be saved, Greta?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only our heavenly Father knows."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, He whispered it in my heart. And, as you say, He knows best."</p>
+
+<p>Greta was almost distraught with fear. The noble soul in her would not
+allow her to appeal to Mercy's gratitude against the plea of maternal
+love. But she felt that all her happiness hung on that chance. If Mercy
+regained her sight, all would be well with her and hers; but if she lost
+it the future must be a blank.</p>
+
+<p>The day wore slowly on, and the child sunk and sunk. At evening the old
+charcoal-burner returned, and went into the bedroom. He stood a moment,
+and looked down at the pinched little face, and when the child's eyes
+opened drowsily for a moment he put his withered forefinger into its
+palm; but there was no longer a responsive clasp of the chubby hand.</p>
+
+<p>The old man's lips quivered behind his white beard.</p>
+
+<p>"It were a winsome wee thing," he said, faintly, and then turned away.</p>
+
+<p>He left his supper untouched and went into the porch. There he sat on a
+bench and whittled a blackthorn stick. The sun was sinking over the head
+of the Eel Crag; the valley lay deep in a purple haze; the bald top of
+Cat Bells stood out bright in the glory of the passing day. A gentle
+breeze came up from the south, and the young corn chattered with its
+multitudinous tongues in the field below. The dog lay at the
+charcoal-burner's feet, blinking in the sun and snapping lazily at a
+buzzing fly.</p>
+
+<p>The little life within was ebbing away. No longer racked by the ringing
+cough, the loud breathing became less frequent and more harsh. Mercy
+lifted the child from the bed and sat with it before the fire. Greta saw
+its eyes open, and at the same moment she saw the lips move slightly,
+but she heard nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"He is calling his mamma," said Mercy, with her ear bent toward the
+child's mouth.</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence for a long time. Mercy pressed the child to her
+breast; its close presence seemed to soothe her.</p>
+
+<p>Greta stood and looked down; she saw the little lips move once more, but
+again she heard no sound.</p>
+
+<p>"He is calling his mamma," repeated Mercy, wistfully, "and, oh, he seems
+such a long way off!"</p>
+
+<p>Once again the little lips moved.</p>
+
+<p>"He is calling me," said Mercy, listening intently; and she grew
+restless and excited. "He is going away. I can hear him. He is far off.
+Ralphie, Ralphie!" She had lifted the child up to her face. "Ralphie,
+Ralphie!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the baby, Mercy," said Greta.</p>
+
+<p>But the mother clung to it with a convulsive grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie!..."</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden flash of some white thing. In an instant the bandage
+had fallen from Mercy's head, and she was peering down into the child's
+face with wild eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ralphie, Ralphie!... Hugh!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>The mother had seen her babe at last, and in that instant she had
+recognized the features of its father.</p>
+
+<p>At the next moment the angel of God passed through that troubled house,
+and the child lay dead at the mother's breast.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy saw it all, and her impassioned mood left her. She rose to her
+feet quietly, and laid the little one in the bed. There was never a sigh
+more, never a tear. Only her face was ashy pale, and her whitening lips
+quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta," she said, very slowly, "will you go for him?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta kissed the girl's forehead tenderly. Her own calm, steadfast,
+enduring spirit sunk. All the world was dead to her now.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>The next minute she was gone from the room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The evening was closing in; now and then the shrill cries of the birds
+pealed and echoed in the still air; a long, fibrous streak of silver in
+the sky ebbed away over the head of Hindscarth. Greta hastened toward
+the pit-brow. The clank of the iron chain in the gear told that the cage
+in the shaft was working.</p>
+
+<p>It was a year and a half since her life had first been overshadowed by a
+disaster more black and terrible than death itself, and never for an
+instant had the clouds been lifted until three days ago. Then, in a
+moment, the light had pierced through the empty sky, and a way had been
+wrought for her out of the labyrinth of misery. But even that passage
+for life and hope and love seemed now to be closed by the grim
+countenance of doom.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy would be blind forever! All was over and done. Greta's strong,
+calm spirit sunk and sunk. She saw the impostor holding to the end the
+name and place of the good man; and she saw the good man dragging his
+toilsome way through life&mdash;an outcast, a by-word, loaded with ignominy,
+branded with crime. And that unhappy man was her husband, and he had no
+stay but in her love&mdash;no hope but in her faith.</p>
+
+<p>Greta stopped at the door of Hugh Ritson's office and knocked. A moment
+later he and she were face to face. He was dressed in his pit flannels,
+and was standing by a table on which a lamp burned. When he recognized
+her, he passed one hand across his brow, the other he rested on the
+mantel-piece. There was a momentary twitching of her lips, and he
+involuntarily remarked that in the time that had passed since they last
+met she had grown thinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me," she said in a trembling whisper. "Mercy's child is dead,
+and the poor girl is asking for you in her great trouble."</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak at once, but shaded his eyes from the lamp. Then he
+said, in a voice unlike his own:</p>
+
+<p>"I will follow you."</p>
+
+<p>She had held the door in her hand, and now she turned to go. He took one
+step toward her.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, have you nothing more to say to me?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you wish me to say?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer; his eyes fell before her.</p>
+
+<p>There was a slight wave of her hand as she added:</p>
+
+<p>"The same room ought never to contain both you and me&mdash;it never should
+have done so&mdash;but this is not my errand."</p>
+
+<p>"I have deserved it," he said, humbly.</p>
+
+<p>"The cruel work is done&mdash;yes, done past undoing. You have not heard the
+last of it. Then, since you ask me what I have to say to you, it is
+this: That man, that instrument of your malice who is now your master,
+has been to say that he can compel me to live with him, or imprison me
+if I refuse. Can he do it?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson lifted his eyes with a blind, vacant stare.</p>
+
+<p>"To live with him? Him? You to live with him?" he said, absently.</p>
+
+<p>"To live under his roof&mdash;those were his words. Can he do it? I mean if
+the law recognizes him as my husband?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's eyes wandered.</p>
+
+<p>"Do it? Your husband?" he echoed, incoherently.</p>
+
+<p>"I know well what he wants," said Greta, breathing heavily; "it is not
+myself he is anxious for&mdash;but he can not have the one without the
+other."</p>
+
+<p>"The one without the other?" echoed Hugh Ritson in a low tone. Then he
+strode across the room in visible agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, that man is&mdash;. Do you know who he is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Drayton, the innkeeper of Hendon," she answered, calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; he is your&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused, his brows knit, his fingers interlaced. Her bosom swelled.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you tell me that he is my husband?" she said indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson again passed his hand across his brow.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, I have deserved your distrust," he said, in an altered tone.</p>
+
+<p>"What is done can never be undone," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>His voice had regained its calmness, but his manner was still agitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I may serve you even yet," he said; "I have done you too much wrong; I
+know that."</p>
+
+<p>"What is your remorse worth now?" she asked. "It comes too late."</p>
+
+<p>Then he looked her steadily in the face, and replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, it is well said that the most miserable man in all the world is
+he who feels remorse before he does the wrong. I was&mdash;I am&mdash;that man. I
+did what I did knowing well that I should repent it&mdash;ay, to the last
+hour of my life. But I was driven to it&mdash;I had no power to resist
+it&mdash;it mastered me then&mdash;it would master me now."</p>
+
+<p>The finger-tips of Greta's right hand were pressed close against her
+cheek. Hugh Ritson took a step nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta," he said, and his voice fell to a broken whisper, "there are
+some men to whom love is a passing breath, a gentle gale that beats on
+the face and sports in the hair, and then is gone. To me it is a wound,
+a deep, corrosive, inward wound that yearns and burns."</p>
+
+<p>Greta shuddered; it was as if his words stung her. Then with an
+impatient gesture she turned again toward the door, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"This is the death-hour of your child, and, Heaven pardon you, it seems
+to be the death-hour of your brother's hopes too!" She faced about. "Do
+you think of him?" she added, lifting her voice. "When you see this man
+in his place, wasting his substance and mine, do you ever think of him
+where he is?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice trembled and broke. There was a moment's silence. She had
+turned her head aside, and he heard the low sound of sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think of him," he answered, slowly. "At night, in the sleepless
+hours, I do think of him where he is; and I think of him as a happy man.
+Yes, a happy man! What if he wears a convict's dress?&mdash;his soul is yoked
+to no deadening burden. As for me&mdash;well, look at me!"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard everything," said Greta; "you have sown the wind, and you
+are reaping the whirlwind."</p>
+
+<p>Something like a laugh broke from him. It came from the waters of
+bitterness that lay deep in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that," he said. "All that will pass away."</p>
+
+<p>She was on the threshold; a force of which she knew nothing held her
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta, I am not so bad a man as perhaps I seem; I am a riddle that you
+may not read. The time is near when I shall trouble the world no more,
+and it will be but a poor wounded name I shall leave behind me, will it
+not? Greta, would it be a mockery to ask you to forgive me?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are others who have more to forgive," said Greta. "One of them
+is waiting for you at this moment; and, poor girl! her heart is broken."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson bent his head slightly, and Greta pulled the door after her.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The evening had closed in; the watery veil that goes between day and
+night was hanging in the air; the wind had risen, and the trees were
+troubled. When Hugh Ritson reached the cottage, all was dark about the
+house save for the red glow from the peat fire which came out into the
+open porch. The old Laird Fisher was sitting there, a blackthorn stick
+at his feet, his elbows on his knees, his cheeks rested on his hands.
+The drowsy glow fell on his drooping white head. As Hugh Ritson passed
+into the kitchen, the old man lifted to his a countenance on which grief
+and reproach were stamped together. Hugh Ritson's proud spirit was
+rebuked by the speechless sorrow of that look. It was such a look as a
+wounded hound lifts to the eyes of a brutal master.</p>
+
+<p>A sheep-dog was stretched at full length before the slumbering fire. The
+kitchen was empty, and silent too, except for the tick of the clock and
+the colly's labored breathing. But at the sound of Hugh's uncertain step
+on the hard earthen floor, the door of the bedroom opened, and Greta
+motioned him to enter.</p>
+
+<p>A candle burned near the bed. Before a fire, Mercy Fisher sat with
+Parson Christian. Her head lay on a table that stood between, her face
+buried in her encircled arms. One hand lay open beside the long loose
+tresses of yellow hair, and the parson's hand rested upon it
+caressingly. Parson Christian rose as Hugh Ritson entered, and bowing
+coldly, he left the room; Greta had already gone out, and he rejoined
+her in the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy lifted her head and looked up at Hugh. There was not a tear in her
+weary, red, swollen eyes, and not a sigh came from her heaving breast.
+She rose quietly, and taking Hugh's hand in her own, she drew him to the
+bedside.</p>
+
+<p>"See where he is," she said in a voice of piercing earnestness, and with
+her other hand she lifted a handkerchief from the little white face.
+Hugh Ritson shuddered. He saw his own features as if memory had brought
+them in an instant from the long past.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy disengaged her hand, and silently hid her face. But she did not
+weep.</p>
+
+<p>"My little Ralphie," she said, plaintively, "how quiet he is now! Oh,
+but you should have seen him when he was like a glistening ray of
+morning light. Why did you not come before?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson stood there looking down at the child's dead face, and made
+no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"It is better as it is," his heart whispered at that moment. The next
+instant his whole frame quivered. What was the thought that had risen
+unbidden within him? Better that his child should lie there cold and
+lifeless than that it should fill this desolate house with joy and love?
+Was he, then, so black a villain? God forbid! Yet it was better so.</p>
+
+<p>"All is over now," said Mercy, and her hands fell from her face. She
+turned her weary eyes full upon him, and added: "We have been punished
+already."</p>
+
+<p>"Punished?" said Hugh. "We?" There was silence for a moment; and then,
+dropping his voice until it was scarcely audible, he said: "Your burden
+is heavy to bear, my poor girl."</p>
+
+<p>Her slight figure swayed a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I could bear it no longer," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Many a one has thought that before you," he said; "but God alone knows
+what we can not bear until we are tried."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, all is over now," she repeated listlessly.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke of herself as if her days were already ended and past; as if
+her orb of life had been rounded by the brief span of the little
+existence that lay finished upon the bed. Hugh Ritson looked at her, and
+the muscles of his face twitched. Her weary eyes were still dry; their
+dim light seemed to come from far away.</p>
+
+<p>"How I prayed that I might see my Ralphie," she said. "I thought surely
+God had willed it that I should never see my child. Perhaps that was to
+be my punishment for&mdash;all that had taken place. But I prayed still. Oh,
+you would not think how much I pray! But it must have been a wicked
+prayer."</p>
+
+<p>She hid her face once more in her hands, and added, with unexpected
+animation:</p>
+
+<p>"God heard my prayer, and answered it&mdash;but see!" She pointed to the
+child. "I saw him&mdash;yes, I saw him&mdash;die!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson was moved, but his heart was bitter. At that moment he
+cursed the faith that held in bondage the soul of the woman at his side.
+Would that he could trample it underfoot, and break forever the chains
+by which it held the simple.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh," she said, and her voice softened, "we are about to part forever.
+Our little Ralphie&mdash;yours and mine&mdash;he calls me. I could not live
+without him. God would not make me do that. He has punished me already,
+and He is merciful. Only think, our Ralphie is in heaven!"</p>
+
+<p>She paused and bit her lip, and drew her breath audibly inward. Her face
+took then a death-like hue, and all at once her voice overflowed with
+anguish.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, something whispered at that instant that God had not
+punished us enough, that Ralphie was not in heaven, and that the sins of
+the fathers&mdash;Oh, my darling, my darling!"</p>
+
+<p>With a shrill cry she stopped, turned to the bed, threw her outspread
+arms about the child, and kissed it fervently.</p>
+
+<p>The tears came at length, and rained down on that little silent face.
+Hugh Ritson could support the strain no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy," he said, and his voice had a deep tremor&mdash;"Mercy, if there is
+any sin, it is mine, and if there is to be any punishment hereafter,
+that will be mine too. As for your little boy, be sure he is in heaven."
+He had stepped to the door, and his thumb was on the wooden latch. "You
+say rightly, we shall never meet again," he said in a muffled voice.
+"Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy lifted her tearful face. "Give me your hand at parting," she said
+in an imploring tone. He was on the opposite side of the bed from where
+she stood, and she reached her hand across it. He took a step nearer,
+and his hand closed in hers. Between them and beneath their clasped
+hands lay the child. "Hugh, we could not love in this world&mdash;something
+went astray with us; but we shall meet again, shall we not?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned his eyes away.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me," she said&mdash;"promise me."</p>
+
+<p>He drew his breath hard.</p>
+
+<p>"If there is a God and a judgment, be sure we shall meet," he said.</p>
+
+<p>His voice broke. He turned abruptly aside and hurried out of the house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The night was now dark; there was no moon, and there were no stars; the
+wind soughed mournfully through the trees. In the occasional lull the
+rumble of the cataracts drifted heavily through the air.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson walked in the darkness with drooping head. He was not making
+for the pit-brow; he had taken the opposite direction. When he reached
+the village, he stopped at the Flying Horse. Loud peals of laughter came
+from the parlor, hidden by red blinds from the road.</p>
+
+<p>He stood at the door that opened into the bar. The landlady, her face
+turned from him, was talking with obvious animation to a daleswoman who
+stood with a jug in her hand at the other side of the counter.</p>
+
+<p>"What, woman, thoo's surely heard what happen't at the Ghyll this
+morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, Bessie, I's been thrang as Throp wife, cleaning and tittivating."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, lass, they've telt me as it were shocking. Two brothers, and such
+a fratch! It coom't to blows at last, and they do say 'at Master Hugh is
+nigh amaist dead with a bash the girt fellow gave him."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson rapped sharply at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell your husband I wish to see him," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The landlady looked up, fumbled with a napkin, and answered nervously,
+"Yes, sir." Then she hobbled to the door of the parlor and opened it. A
+wave of mingled noise, vapor, and foul odors came through the aperture.
+"Tommy!" she screamed above the babel.</p>
+
+<p>The landlord appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you send me a dog-cart at half past four in the morning?" said
+Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe&mdash;it's a gay canny hour, I reckon," said the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>He pulled at a long pipe as he spoke, and his face, which was flushed,
+wore an impudent smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I have to catch the five-o'clock train," Hugh answered.</p>
+
+<p>"To London?" One cheek was twisted into numerous wrinkles.</p>
+
+<p>"I said the five train," said Hugh, sternly. "Can you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I's niver said nay&mdash;it'll be three half-crowns."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh put half a sovereign on the counter.</p>
+
+<p>"Let it be sent at half past four promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"To the Ghyll?"</p>
+
+<p>The twist of the cheek was a shade less perceptible.</p>
+
+<p>"To the pit-brow."</p>
+
+<p>The parlor door opened again, and Natt stood on the threshold. The
+stableman's sleepy eyes awakened to a knowing twinkle. Then his flat
+face disappeared, and a thin titter mingled audibly with the clamor
+within. In another moment the door was thrown wide open, and Drayton
+came slouching out. His hair fell back over his forehead, from which his
+hat was tipped back. A cigar was perched between his teeth; the tips of
+his fingers were thrust into his waistcoat pockets.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in; I've summat to show you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh did not stir, but he lifted his head and looked into the room. Half
+a score of the riff-raff of the dale were seated amid clouds of smoke.
+On the wooden mantel-shelf above the wide ingle a large book stood
+open, and the leaves fluttered with the wind that came through the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I hain't forgotten what you said long ago about the parson's book,"
+said Drayton, "so here it is, and a mighty valuable thing I call it. You
+thought to frighten me with it, but bless yer soul, I like it, I do.
+Listen."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton stepped back into the room, turned the leaves, and began to read
+in a lusty tone:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"1847.&mdash;November 18.&mdash;Thomas said Allan was fresh from Scotland,
+being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and that they had a
+child called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet walking."</p></div>
+
+<p>It was the parson's diary.</p>
+
+<p>"That's good enough, ain't it, Master Hugh Ritson?" said Drayton, with
+an ungainly bow, and a vast show of civility, followed instantly by a
+sidelong leer at his cronies about him.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson held himself stiffly, and merely said:</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you get it?"</p>
+
+<p>At this question there were sundry snorts and titters and muttered
+responses from the men at the tables. Hugh's eyes passed over them with
+a steely glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Stolen it, I suppose," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Drayton, "and a neat job too. Natt 'ticed away the Methodee
+man while I borrowed it."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton seemed to be proud of his share in the transaction, and his
+friends laughed loudly at the adroit turn he had given to the matter.
+Natt's drowsy eyes were preternaturally bright at that great moment.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's forehead darkened with ire.</p>
+
+<p>"This is your gratitude to the clergyman," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Sundry further snorts and sniggers went round the tables.</p>
+
+<p>"There's not a man of you who is not beholden to Parson Christian," said
+Hugh, sternly. He twisted sharply round upon one graybeard whose laugh
+still rumbled between his teeth. "Reuben Rae, who nursed your sick wife?
+John Proudfoot," to the blacksmith, "what about your child down with the
+fever?" His quick eye traversed the parlor, and more than one lusty
+crony was fain to bury his face in his breast. "Yet you laugh, brave
+fellows as you are, when the good man's house is broken into by a
+thief."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton took a swift stride toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"Drop it, and quick!" he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson governed himself with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not here to brawl," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Pigeon-livered blatherskite!&mdash;that's what I call ye&mdash;d'ye hear?" said
+Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh's face flinched, but he turned on his heel, and was on the road at
+the next instant.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton followed him out, laughing boisterously. Hugh made one quick
+step backward and shut the door; then he turned about on Drayton, whose
+cruel face could be dimly seen in the hazy red light that came through
+the blinds.</p>
+
+<p>"You have tried to torture me," he said, "just as you would hang a dog
+by its tail, or draw the teeth of a rat. You have threatened with worse
+torture a good and loyal woman. You are a scoundrel, and you know it!
+But even you would hesitate if you knew for certain who or what you are.
+Let me tell you again, now, when we are alone, and while I have no
+personal interest to serve: You are the man whose name I gave you&mdash;Paul
+Lowther, son of Robert Lowther&mdash;and that lady, my brother's wife, whom
+for reason of profit you would compel to live under the same roof with
+you, is your own sister!"</p>
+
+<p>Drayton's loud guffaw rang out above the wind's moan in the trees. His
+cronies within heard it and listened.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a rare old story, that is. Let me see; you've told it before, I
+fancy."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it was a lie; now it's God's truth!" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"And then it was believed, but now it's not. No, no, Master Hugh, it
+won't pass."</p>
+
+<p>"We will see."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had swung about and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton went back to his friends.</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't the pluck of a pigeon when it comes to the push," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, he wears a bonny white feather in his cap, for sure," said old
+Reuben Rae.</p>
+
+<p>"No fight in'im&mdash;no'but tongue lather," said John, the blacksmith.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson walked through the darkness to the pit-brow. The glow of the
+furnace lighted up the air to the south, and showed vaguely the brant
+sides of the fell; the dull thud of the engine, the clank of the chain,
+and the sharp crack of the refuse tumbling down the bank from the
+banksman's barrow were the only sounds that rose above the wind's loud
+whistle.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum was at the mouth of the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>"Oglethorpe," said Hugh, "how many of the gangs are below to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"All but two&mdash;auld Reuben's and Jim South'et's."</p>
+
+<p>"Then they have chosen to work on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, another fortnight&mdash;trusting to get their wage afore that, please
+God."</p>
+
+<p>"They shall not be disappointed."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson turned away. Gubblum trundled his last wheelbarrow to the
+edge of the bank, and then rested and said to himself, "He takes it cool
+enough onyway."</p>
+
+<p>But the outside tranquillity disappeared when Hugh Ritson reached his
+own room on the pit-brow. He bathed his hot forehead again and again.
+His fingers twitched nervously, and he plunged his perspiring hands into
+cold water above the wrists, holding them there for several minutes. Not
+for long did he sit in one seat. He tramped the room uneasily, his
+infirm foot trailing heavily. Then he threw himself on the couch, tossed
+from side to side, rose, and resumed his melancholy walk. Thus an hour
+passed drearily.</p>
+
+<p>His mind recalled one by one the events of the day. And one by one there
+came crowding back upon him the events of the two years that had passed
+since his father's death. A hurricane was upheaving every memory of his
+mind. And every memory had its own particular sting, and came up as a
+blight to fret his soul. He tried to guard himself from himself. What he
+had first thought to do was but in defense of his strict legal rights,
+and if he had gone further&mdash;if he had done more, without daring to think
+of it until it was done&mdash;then it was love that had led him astray. Was
+it so cruel a thing to be just? So foul a thing to love?</p>
+
+<p>But above the shufflings of remorse, above the stiflings of regret,
+above the plea of a maddening love, was the voice of revenge speaking
+loudly in his soul. That man, his instrument, now his master, Paul
+Lowther, must be brought down, and his time-serving sponsor with him.
+But how? There was but one way&mdash;by denouncing himself. Yes, that was the
+sole outlet for his outraged and baffled spirit. He must go to the
+proper quarter and say, "I have perjured myself, and sworn away my
+brother's liberty. The man who was condemned as Paul Drayton is Paul
+Ritson. I did it all."</p>
+
+<p>That would bring this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price!
+The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him.
+And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the
+impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What
+alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light
+dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the
+day of his life was done.</p>
+
+<p>What if he allowed everything to take its course? Well, he was a
+disgraced and ruined man, turned adrift from his father's house, and
+doomed to see a stranger living there. Did he lack gall to make such a
+climax bitter? Bitter, eh! and a thousand times the more bitter because
+he himself had, for ends of his own, first placed the scoundrel where he
+sat.</p>
+
+<p>No, no, no; Paul Lowther must be brought down, and with him must fall
+the poor ruins of a better man. Yes a better man, let the world say what
+it would.</p>
+
+<p>Could it occur that he would not be believed? that when he said "Take
+me, I am a perjurer," they would answer, "No, your self-denunciation is
+only a freak of revenge, a mad attempt to injure the relative who has
+turned you out of his house?" Hugh Ritson laughed as the grim irony of
+such a possible situation flashed upon him: a man self-condemned and
+saved from punishment by the defense of his enemy!</p>
+
+<p>There was a knock at his door. In his stupor he was not at first
+conscious of what the knock meant. At length he recalled himself and
+cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Come in."</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum Oglethorpe entered.</p>
+
+<p>"The men on the twelve o'clock shift are just about ganging down, and
+they want to tak' a few mair forks with them. They've telt me 'at the
+timber is splitting like matchwood under the sandy vein."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson made an effort to gather the purport of Gubblum's message.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell them to take the forks," he said in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum was backing out, and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon thoo's not heard the last frae auld Mattha's," he said in
+another voice.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Oglethorpe?" said Hugh, his head bent over the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Robbie South'et's wife has been up to t' brow, and says that Mercy's
+laal thing is gone."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh did not lift his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the last?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, but warse. The lass herself tore the bandage frae her eyes, and
+she's gone stone blind, and that's foriver."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh's head bent closer over the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Oglethorpe," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Gubblum backed out, muttering to himself as he returned to the shaft, "A
+cool hand, how-an'-iver."</p>
+
+<p>The moment the door closed, Hugh Ritson tramped the floor in restless
+perambulations. What had he thought of doing? Delivering himself to
+justice as a perjurer? Had he, then, no duty left in life that he must
+needs gratify his revenge in a kind of death? What of the woman who had
+suffered for him? What of the broken heart and the wretched home? Were
+these as nothing against the humiliation of a proud spirit?</p>
+
+<p>Never for an instant, never in his bitterest agony, did Hugh Ritson lie
+to his own soul and say that the resolution he had formed was prompted
+by remorse for what he had done to Paul Ritson; not revenge for what he
+had suffered from Paul Drayton. To be a saint when sick; to find the
+conscience active when defeat overwhelmed it&mdash;that was for the weak
+dregs of humanity. But such paltering was not for him.</p>
+
+<p>On the one hand revenge, on the other duty&mdash;which was he to follow? The
+wretched man could come to no decision; and when the fingers of his
+watch pointed to one o'clock he lay down on the couch to rest.</p>
+
+<p>It was not sleep that he wanted; sleep had of late become too full of
+terrors; but sleep overcame him, nevertheless. His face, when he slept,
+was the face of a man in pain; and dreams came that were the distorted
+reflections of his waking thoughts. He dreamed that he had died in
+infancy. Calm, serene, very sweet, and peaceful, his little innocent
+face of childhood looked up from the white pillow. He thought his mother
+bent over him, and shed many tears; but he himself belonged to another
+world of beings, and looked down on both.</p>
+
+<p>"It is better so," he thought, "and the tears she weeps are blest."</p>
+
+<p>At this he awoke, and rose to his feet. What soft nothings men had said
+of sleep! "Oh, sleep, it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole!"
+Gentle! More tyrannous than death. The melancholy perambulation ended,
+and he lay down once more. He slept and dreamed again. This time he had
+killed his own brother. A moment before they had stood face to
+face&mdash;vigorous, wrathful, with eyes that flashed, and hands uplifted.
+Now his brother lay quiet and awful at his feet, and the great silence
+was broken by a voice from heaven crying, "A fugitive and a vagabond
+shalt thou be on the earth!"</p>
+
+<p>He started to his feet in terror. "Mercy, mercy!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>Then he drew his breath hard and looked about him. "A dream&mdash;only
+another dream," he said to himself, and laughed between his close-set
+teeth. The lamp still burned on the table. He rose, drew a key from his
+pocket, opened a cupboard, and took out a small bottle. It contained an
+opiate. "Since I must sleep, let my sleep at least be dreamless," he
+said, and he measured a dose. He was lifting the glass to his lips,
+when he caught sight of his face in the glass. "Pitiful! pitiful! A mere
+dream unnerves me. Pitiful enough, forsooth! And so I must needs hide
+myself from myself behind a bulwark like this!" He held the drug to the
+light, and while his hand trembled he laughed. Then he drank it off, put
+out the light, and sat on the couch.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn had fretted the sky, and the first streaks of day crept in at
+the window, when the lamp's yellow light was gone. Hugh Ritson sat in
+the gray gloom, his knees drawn close under his chin, his arms folded
+over his breast, his head bent heavily forward. He was crooning an old
+song. Presently the voice grew thick, the eye became clouded, and then
+the head fell back. He was asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed again. Or
+was it a vision, and not a dream, that came to him now? He thought he
+stood in a room which he had seen before. On the bed some white thing
+lay. It was a child, and the little soul had fled. Beside it a woman
+cowered, and moaned "Guilty, guilty!" Her eyes were fixed on the child,
+yet she saw nothing; the sightless orbs were bleached. But with her
+heart she saw the child; and she saw himself also as he entered. Then it
+seemed that she turned her blind face toward him, and called on him by
+name. The next instant she was gone. Her seat was vacant, the bed was
+empty; only a gray-bearded man sat by a cold grate. With an overpowering
+weight pressing him down, it seemed to Hugh that he threw up his head,
+and again he heard his name.</p>
+
+<p>He leaped to his feet. Big beads of cold sweat stood on his forehead.
+"Mercy is dead," he whispered with awe. "She has gone to put in her plea
+of guilty. She is in God's great hand!"</p>
+
+<p>The next moment a voice shouted, "Mr. Ritson!"</p>
+
+<p>He listened, and in the gray light his stony countenance smiled grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Ritson!" once more, followed by the rap of a whip-handle against
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Tommy the landlord," said Hugh, and he broke into a harsh laugh. "So
+you were my angel, Tommy, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Another harsh laugh. The landlord, sitting in the dog-cart outside,
+heard it, and thought to himself, "Some one with him."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson plunged his head into the wash-basin, and rubbed himself
+vigorously with a rough towel. "My last sleep is over," he said,
+glancing aside with fearful eyes at the couch. "I'll do this thing that
+I am bent upon; but no more sleep, and no more dreams!"</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door, threw a rug up to the landlord, put on an ulster,
+and leaped into the dog-cart. They started away at a quick trot. A chill
+morning breeze swept down the vale. The sun was rising above Cat Bells,
+but Hugh Ritson still felt as if he were traveling toward the deepening
+night. He sat with folded arms, and head bent on his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Hasta heard what happened at auld Laird Fisher's this morning?" said
+the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh answered in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"The lass has followed her barn rather sudden't. Ey, she's gone, for
+sure. Died a matter of half an hour ago. I heard it frae the parson as I
+coom't by."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson bent yet lower his drooping head.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>At 2 o'clock that day Hugh Ritson arrived at Euston. He got into a cab
+and drove to Whitehall. At the Home Office he asked for the Secretary of
+State. A hundred obstacles arose to prevent him from penetrating to the
+head of the department. One official handed him over to another, the
+second to a third, the third to a fourth.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson was hardly the man to be balked by such impediments. His
+business was with the Secretary of State, and none other. Parliament was
+in session, and the Home Secretary was at the afternoon sitting of the
+House. Hugh Ritson sought and found him there. He explained his purpose
+in few words, and was listened to with a faint smile of incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>The secretary was a stolid Yorkshireman, who affected whatever measure
+of bluffness had not been natural to him from birth. He first looked at
+his visitor with obvious doubts of his sanity; and when this suspicion
+had been set at rest by Hugh's incisive explanation, with an equally
+obvious desire to feel his bumps.</p>
+
+<p>But the face of the Yorkshireman soon became complicated by other shades
+of expression than such as come of distrust of a man's reason or
+contempt of his sentimentality.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't you better sleep on it, and come to see me at Whitehall in the
+morning?" he said, with more respect than he had yet shown. "Then if you
+are still of the same mind, I will send for the Public Prosecutor."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson bowed his acquiescence.</p>
+
+<p>"And can I have the order for Portland?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably. It will be against the new regulation that none may visit a
+convict prison except prison officials and persons interested in prison
+discipline. But we'll see what can be done."</p>
+
+<p>That night, Hugh Ritson called at the Convent of St. Margaret. It was
+late when he entered, and when he came out again, half an hour
+afterward, the lamps were lighted in the Abbey Gardens. The light fell
+on the face of the lay sister who opened the door to him. She wore a
+gray gown, but no veil or scapular, and beneath the linen band that
+covered her hair her eyes were red and swollen.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson hailed a hansom in the Broad Sanctuary, and drove to Hendon.
+The bar of the Hawk and Heron was full of carriers, carters,
+road-menders, and farm-laborers, all drinking, and all noisy. But,
+despite this evidence of a thriving trade, the whole place had a
+bankrupt appearance as of things going to wreck. Jabez served behind the
+counter. He had developed a good deal of personal consequence, and held
+up his head, and repeatedly felt the altitude of a top-knot that curled
+there, and bore himself generally with the cockety air of the young
+rooster after the neck of the old one has been screwed. Mrs. Drayton sat
+knitting in the room where Mercy and the neighbor's children once played
+together. When Hugh Ritson went in to her, the old body started.</p>
+
+<p>"Lor's a mercy, me, sir, to think it's you! I'm that fearsome, that I
+declare I shiver and quake at nothing. And good for nowt i' the world
+neither, not since my own flesh and blood, as you might say, disowned
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean at the trial?" asked Hugh Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"The trial, sir!" said the landlady, lifting bewildered eyes, while the
+click of the needles ceased. "My Paul weren't there. Cummerland,
+sir&mdash;and you heard him yourself what he said of me." A corner of her
+house-wife's apron went up to her face. "Me as had brought him up that
+tender! Well," recovering composure, "I've lost heart, and serve him
+right. I just lets the house and things go, I do. I trusts to
+Providence; and that Jabez, he's no better nor a babby in the public
+line."</p>
+
+<p>When Hugh Ritson left the inn, the old body's agitation increased. She
+had set down the knitting, and was fidgeting, first with her cap and
+then her apron.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to me," said Hugh. "To-day is Friday. On Monday you must go to
+the convent where you saw the mother of Paul. Ask for Sister Grace. Will
+you remember&mdash;Sister Grace? She will tell you all."</p>
+
+<p>It was hard on eleven o'clock when Hugh Ritson returned to town. The
+streets were thronged, and he walked for a long hour amid the crowds
+that passed through the Strand. In all that multitudinous sea of faces,
+there was not a countenance on which the mark of suffering was more
+indelibly fixed than on his own.</p>
+
+<p>His sensibilities were wrought up to an unwonted pitch. He was like a
+waif adrift in unknown waters, a cloud without anchor in a tempestuous
+sky; yet he felt that night as he had never felt before, that he had
+suddenly become possessed of another and most painful sense. Not a face
+in that sea of faces but he seemed to know its secret fear, its joy and
+sorrow, the watchful dread that seared the hidden heart, the fluttering
+hope that buoyed it up.</p>
+
+<p>It was an awful thing to be turned adrift in a world of sin and
+suffering with this agonizing sense. He could look, whether he would or
+not, beneath the smiling and rubicund countenance of the
+hail-fellow-well-met to that corrosive spot within where the trust of
+the widow and fatherless had been betrayed; or see beyond the stolid and
+heavy appearance proper to the ox the quivering features of the man who
+had stood long years ago above the dead body of the woman who had thrown
+her death at his door as sole reward for the life he had wrecked.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, not only did the past write its manual there, but the future wrote
+its sign. He knew that the young girl in pink ribbons who was hurrying
+along with a smile on her lips, from the shop in the west to that
+unknown home in the east where the child of her shame had laughed and
+crowed and climbed up her bosom to her chin, was doomed to find that the
+source of all her joy and half her sorrow lay cold and stiff in its
+crib.</p>
+
+<p>He grew fearful of himself; he shuddered as the unsuspected murderer
+brushed his elbow; he shuddered yet more as a mirror flashed back the
+reflection of his own hard face, and the idea came to him that perhaps
+other eyes could see what his eyes saw.</p>
+
+<p>He turned down Arundel Street and on to the Embankment. No! no! no! the
+merciful God had not willed it that any man should look so deeply into
+the heart of his fellow-man. That was indeed to know good and evil; and
+the thought stole over him that perhaps it was in degree as a man had
+eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of life that he was cursed with
+this bitter knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Here, on the quiet pavement that echoed to his footsteps, the air was
+free. He uncovered his head, and the light west wind played in his hair
+and cooled his temples. Not a star shone overhead, and the river that
+flowed in the bed below was dark. More dark to him was the sea of
+humanity that flowed above.</p>
+
+<p>He had heard that the death-roll of the Thames was one of every day for
+the year, and he leaned over the granite wall and wondered if the old
+river had claimed its toll for the day that was now almost done. His
+hair seemed to rise from its roots as he thought that perhaps at that
+very instant, in the black waters beneath him, the day's sacrifice was
+washing past.</p>
+
+<p>He walked on, and the dull buzz of the Strand fell on his ear. What,
+after all, was the old god of the river to the Juggernaut of the city?
+And it was now, when the fret of the day had worn down, that Hugh Ritson
+thought of all that he had left behind him in the distant north. There
+in the darkness and the silence, amid the mountains, by the waving trees
+and the rumbling ghylls, lay half the ruins of his ruined life. The glow
+of old London's many lights could not reach so far, but the shadow of
+that dark spot was here.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The clocks struck midnight, and he returned to the hotel at which he had
+engaged a bed. He did not lie down to sleep, but walked to and fro the
+night through.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning at ten he was at the Home Office again. He saw the
+secretary and some of the law officers of the Crown. When he came out he
+carried in his pocket an order to visit a convict in Portland, and was
+attended by a police-sergeant in plain clothes. They took train from
+Waterloo at two in the afternoon, and reached Weymouth at six. When they
+crossed the strip of sea, the best of the day was gone, and a fresh
+breeze blew across the breakwater.</p>
+
+<p>The Saxon walls of the castle at the foot of the Vern Hill reflected the
+chill blue of the water; but far above, where the rocky coast dipped to
+the beach, the yellow stone, with the bluish clay in its crevices, shone
+in the glow of the sinking sun.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson and his companion put up for the night at the Portland Arms
+Inn. A ruddy, round-faced man in middle life, clean shaven and dressed
+youthfully, was smoking in the parlor. He exchanged a salutation with
+the cordiality of one who was nothing loath for a chat; then he picked
+up the old Reeve staff, and explained the ancient method of computing
+tithes. But Hugh Ritson was in no humor for conversation, and after
+dinner he set out for a solitary walk. He took the road that turns from
+the beach through the villages of Chiswell and Fortune's Well. When he
+reached the top of the hill the sea lay around him; and beneath him, to
+the right and left of the summit, were the quarries where the convicts
+labored, with two branches of an inclined railway leading down to the
+breakwater. On the summit itself, known as the Grove, was a long, high
+granite wall, with a broad gate-way, and the lancet lights of a lodge at
+one side of it. This was the convict prison, and the three or four
+houses in front of it were the residences of governor, chaplain, and
+chief warder. A cordon of cottages at a little distance were the homes
+of the assistant warders. There were a few shops amid this little group
+of cottages, and one public house, the Spotted Dog.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson strolled into the tavern and sat down in a little
+"snuggery," which was separated from a similar apartment by a wooden
+partition that stood no higher than a tall man's height, and left a
+space between the top stile and the ceiling. A company of men gossiped
+at the other side of the partition.</p>
+
+<p>"Talk of B 2001," said a guttural voice (Hugh Ritson started at the
+sound), "I took the stiff'ning out of him first go off. When he'd done
+he separates and come on from the moor; I saw he wasn't an old lag, so
+says I to 'im, 'Green 'un,' I says, 'if you're leary, you'll fetch a
+easy lagging, and if you're not, it'll be bellows to mend with you.'
+'What d'ye mean?' he says. 'It's bloomin' 'ard work here,' I says, 'and
+maybe you don't get shin-of-beef soup to do it on. Bread and water, for
+a word,' I says. 'You're in my gang, quarrying, and I won't work you
+'ard except I'm druv to it, but I want wide men in my gang,' I says,
+'and no putting the stick on agen the screw.' 'Don't understand,' he
+says. 'Then follow a straight tip,' I says; 'stand by your warder and
+he'll stand by you.' Blest if that lag as I'd give that good advice to
+didn't get me fined the very next day."</p>
+
+<p>"Never!" said sundry incredulous voices.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a hot afternoon, and I'd just whipped a quid in my mouth and
+leaned atop of my musket for forty winks after dinner. The second-timers
+was codding afront of me, and 2001 and the young chap as was dying of
+the consumption was wheeling and filling ahead. Well, up comes the
+governor right in front of 2001, and shouts, 'Warder,' he shouts,
+'you're fined for inattention.' Then off he goes. All right, Mr. 2001, I
+says, I'll not misremember."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do?" (a loud, hollow laugh). "That was when the barracks was building,
+and one day a bit of a newspaper blowed over from the officers'
+quarters, and 2001 came on it, and the botcher picked it up. He'd
+chucked hisself quick. 'Right about face&mdash;march.' He got seven stretch,
+a month's marks, and lost his bedding."</p>
+
+<p>A hearty laugh followed this account of a "screw's" revenge on a "green"
+convict. Hugh Ritson listened and shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't surprised at anything from that luny," said another voice. "He
+was in my gang at the moor, and I know'd 'im. They put 'im in the
+soap-suds gang first, but he got hisself shifted. Then they sent 'im
+botching with the tailors, but he put out his broom for the governor,
+and said a big lusty man same as 'im wasn't for sitting on a board all
+day. The flat didn't want to fetch a easy lagging, that's the fact."</p>
+
+<p>There was a loud guffaw.</p>
+
+<p>"So they put 'im in my turf gang out on the moor, and one day a old
+clergyman come in gaiters and a broad-brimmer, and a face as if the
+master of the house were a-shaking at his hand, and the missis flopping
+down-stairs to give him a smack of the lips. Well, 2001 saw him in
+Principal Warder Rennell's office, and not afore the bars. So next day I
+says, 'Got anybody outside as would like to send you summat by the
+Underground?' 'The what?' he says, reg'lar black in the face. 'The
+underground railway,' I says, tipping him a wink. 'Get away from me, you
+bloodsucker!' he says. But I pinched 'im. The old lags were laughing at
+one of the grave-digger's oyster-openers, when up comes Rennell. 'Who's
+laughing?' he says. 'It's 2001,' I says; 'he's always idling and
+malingering.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Ha, ha, ha! what did he get?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three days' bread and water, a week's marks, and loss of class
+privileges. He didn't mind the grub and the time, but Jack-in-the-box,
+who was warder on his landing, said he took it proper bad as he
+couldn't write home to the missis."</p>
+
+<p>"What's his dose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three. One of the old lags would do it on his head, and fetch it easy,
+too. He's a scholar, and could get to be a wardsman in the infirmary, or
+medicine factotum for the croaker, or maybe book-keeper for the
+governor. But he's earned no remissions, and he'll fill his time afore
+he slings his hook again."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson could support the gossip no longer. He got up to leave the
+house, but before doing so he pushed open the door that led to the
+adjoining room, and stood a moment on the threshold, comprehending
+everything and everybody in one quick glance. The air breathed fresh
+outside. He walked in the gathering gloom of evening to the ruins of the
+church by the cliff, and, passing through the lych-gate, he came on the
+beaten track to the rocks. The rocks lay a hundred feet beneath, torn
+from the mainland in craggy masses that seemed ready to slide from their
+base to the deep chasm between. Could it be possible that men who were
+the slaves of hinds like those in yonder tavern could cling to their
+little lives while a deliverance like this beetling cliff stood near? A
+cold smile played on Hugh Ritson's face as he thought that, come what
+would, such slavery was not for him.</p>
+
+<p>The sycamore by the ruined chancel pattered in the breeze, and the
+wheatear's last notes came from its top-most bough. Far below the waves
+were rocking lazily. There were other waves at Hugh Ritson's feet&mdash;the
+graves of dead men. Some who were buried there long ago were buried in
+their chains. Under the earth the fettered men&mdash;on the ruins of the
+church the singing bird. Across the sea the light was every moment
+fading. In another hour the day would be done, and then the moon would
+look down peacefully on the fettered and the free.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson returned to the Portland Arms Inn. He found the
+police-sergeant in conversation with the ruddy-faced gentleman who had
+wished to explain to him the mysteries of the Reeve staff.</p>
+
+<p>"He is the doctor at the prison," whispered the sergeant aside.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Hugh turned to the doctor and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you happen to know the convict B 2001?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;Drayton," said the doctor; "calls himself Ritson. Are you a
+friend?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's face quivered slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered, "I am not his friend." Then, after a pause, "But I
+have an order to see him. Besides, I have just heard him discussed by a
+company of wardens in a pot-house on the hill."</p>
+
+<p>"Who were they? What were they like?"</p>
+
+<p>"A tall man, one of them, fifty-five years of age, gray hair, grizzly
+beard, dark, vindictive eyes, a gash on one cheek, and a voice like a
+crow's."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! Jim-the-ladder&mdash;a discharged soldier."</p>
+
+<p>"Another, a cadaverous fellow, with a plausible tongue."</p>
+
+<p>"Horrocks&mdash;an old second-classer; served his time at Dartmoor and got
+promotion&mdash;doubtful official discipline."</p>
+
+<p>"They both deserve one more and much higher promotion," said Hugh
+Ritson, with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean this." The doctor laughed, and put the forefinger of one hand,
+held horizontally, to the tip of the other, held upright.</p>
+
+<p>"Can it be possible that the law is unable to maintain a fair stand-up
+fight with crime, and must needs call a gang of poltroons and
+blackmailers to its assistance?"</p>
+
+<p>"You heard a bad account of B 2001, I judge?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard of nothing that he had done which the Pope of Rome might have
+feared to acknowledge."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right&mdash;he's as good a man as there's on Portland Bill," said
+the doctor, "and if he's not quite as immaculate as his holiness, he's
+in the right of it this time."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson glanced up.</p>
+
+<p>"You've heard he's in the punishment cells," said the doctor. "By the
+way, you'll not see him until Monday; he can't join his gang before, and
+he hasn't a class privilege left, poor devil."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh inquired the cause.</p>
+
+<p>"Since he came here he's been yoked to a young fellow dying of
+consumption. The lad didn't relish the infirmary&mdash;he lost his marks
+toward remission there. He knew the days he had to serve, and used to
+nick them off every night on his wooden spoon. It was a weary way from a
+thousand back, back, back to one. And that Jim-the-ladder took delight
+in keeping up the count by reports. The poor boy wanted to die in his
+mother's arms. He had got his time down to a week, when the 'screw'
+clapped as many marks on to him as added a month to his imprisonment.
+Then he lost heart, and dropped down like a flounder, and when they
+picked him up he was dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Was B 2001 with him as usual?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was; and he broke the strap, sprung on the warder, and tore his
+rifle out of his hands. Jim-the-ladder has been a prize-fighter in his
+day, and there was a tussle. He leaped back on B 2001 with a howl, and
+the blows fell like rain-drops. There was a fearful clamor, the convicts
+screaming like madmen."</p>
+
+<p>"B 2001 is a powerful man," said Hugh Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"He closed with the warder, gripped him by the waist, twisted him on his
+loins, turned him heels overhead, and brought him down in a sweep that
+would have battered the life out of any other man. Up came the civil
+guard, and the convict was brought into the lodge covered with dust,
+sweat and blood, his eyes flashing like balls of fire. They had the
+lad's body on a stretcher beside him, the lips white, and the cheeks a
+mask of blue. It was a tremendous spectacle, I can tell you."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's breast heaved, and somewhere deep down in his soul he
+surprised a feeling of pride. That man was a hero and his own brother!</p>
+
+<p>"And so the convict was punished?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fourteen days' penal class diet, and marks enough for six months. He'll
+be out on Monday, and then he'll wear the blue cap that denotes a
+dangerous man."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it impossible to see him to-morrow?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Come up before church in the morning and ask for me, and we'll speak to
+the governor."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Early next morning Hugh Ritson showed his order at the prison gates, and
+was admitted to the doctor's quarters. Hugh and the doctor went in
+search of the governor, but learned that he was away from home for the
+day. The deputy-governor was abed with a raging tooth, and there was
+nothing to do but to wait until morning in order to speak with the
+convict.</p>
+
+<p>"You can stay here until to-morrow," said the doctor; "I can give you a
+shake-down. And now let us go off to church. But come this way first."</p>
+
+<p>They walked in the direction of that portion of the parade-ground which
+was marked, in great white letters, "34 gang," with the broad arrow
+beneath. Near to this stood a building composed chiefly of wood and
+iron, and marked in similar letters "E Hall." They entered a corridor
+that led to an open landing in the shape of a many-sided polygon, each
+side being a door. In the middle of the landing there was an iron
+circular staircase that led to landings above and below. A warder
+paraded the open space, which was lighted by gas-jets.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! Look," said the doctor, standing by the peep-hole in one of the
+doors, and at the same time putting out the gas-jet that burned on the
+door-jamb.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson approached, and at first he could see nothing in the
+darkness. But he heard a curious clanking noise from within. Then the
+glimmer of a feeble candle came through the bars, and he saw a box-like
+apartment, some seven feet long by four feet broad and eight feet high.
+It was a punishment cell. There was a shelf at the opposite end, and a
+tin wash-basin stood on it.</p>
+
+<p>On the side of the door there must have been a similar shelf, on which
+the candle burned. A broom, a can, and a bowl were on the brick floor.
+There was no other furniture except a hammock swung from end to end,
+and the convict was lying in it at this moment. It could be seen that a
+heavy chain was fastened with riveted rings around each ankle, and
+linked about the waist by a strap. At every movement this chain clanked;
+night and day it was there; if the prisoner shifted in his sleep, its
+grating sound broke on the silence of the cell, and banished the only
+sunshine of his life, the sunshine of his dreams. His head was back to
+the door so that the light of the candle burning on the shelf might fall
+on a slate which rested on his breast. Though he occupied a punishment
+cell he was writing, and Hugh Ritson's quick eyes could decipher the
+words: "Oh, that it would please God to destroy me; that He would but
+loose His hand and cut me off! Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall
+deliver me from the body of this death?" He paused in his writing and
+pecked like a bird at a hard piece of bread beside him.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson fell back, and as his infirm foot grated along the floor,
+the convict started and turned his face. It was a blank, pale face, full
+of splendid resolution and the nobility of suffering, but without one
+ray of hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>But Hugh Ritson's eyes were on the ground, and he made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>They went to church. The civil guard was drawn up under the gallery with
+loaded rifles. Eight hundred convicts attended service; some of them
+were penitent; most of them were trying to make a high profession of
+contrition as a bid for the good graces of the chaplain. The obtrusive
+reverence of one sinister gray-head near at hand attracted Hugh Ritson's
+especial attention. He knelt with his face to the gallery in which the
+choir sat. Beside him was a youth fresh from Millbank. The hoary sinner
+was evidently initiating the green hand into the mysteries of his new
+home. He was loud in his responses, but his voice had a trick of
+dropping suddenly to a whispered conference.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's the fat 'un in the choir? A chap as is doing his ten. His missis
+chared to keep the kids, and one morning early he popped the old girl's
+shoes."</p>
+
+<p>The voice of the chaplain interrupted further explanation; but after
+another loud response the old rascal's mouth was twisted awry with the
+words:</p>
+
+<p>"He's a wide 'un, he is&mdash;seat in the choir got comfortable cushions.
+Besides, he gets off Saturday morning's work for practicing&mdash;got no more
+voice nor a corn-crake."</p>
+
+<p>Evidently it was no disadvantage here to be the greatest of vagabonds.
+When a cadaverous old Jew came hobbling up the aisle with his gang, the
+gray-head whispered, with awe:</p>
+
+<p>"It's old Mo; he's in the stocking gang; but I did business with him
+when he could ha' sent old Rothschild home for a pauper."</p>
+
+<p>At one moment the attention of the green hand was arrested by a tall man
+in the black and gray that indicated a convict who had attempted to
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>"Says he's in for twenty thousand, but it's a lie," whispered the old
+man; "he only knocked a living out of the religious fake."</p>
+
+<p>The last of the conference that Hugh Ritson overheard was a piece of
+touching advice.</p>
+
+<p>"Them as 'as any pluck in 'em turns savage, same as B 2001; them as
+'asn't, knocks under, same as me; and I says to you, knock under."</p>
+
+<p>After service the sacrament was celebrated. There must have been many
+hundreds of communicants, all humble in their piety. It could be noticed
+that the chaplain had sometimes to keep a tight grip of the goblet
+containing the wine.</p>
+
+<p>That night Hugh Ritson lodged at the doctor's quarters. He did not lie,
+but, as on the night before, he walked the long hours through,
+steadfastly resisting every temptation to sleep. At five in the morning
+he heard the great bell at the gate ring for two minutes, and, shortly
+afterward, the tramp, tramp, tramp of many feet under his window. The
+convicts, to the number of fifteen hundred, were drawn up on the
+parade-ground. They looked chill in the cold light of early morning;
+their gray jackets lay loose on their spare shoulders; their hands hung
+inertly at their sides, and they walked with the oscillating motion of
+men whose feet were sore in their heavy boots. The civil guard was drawn
+up, the chief warder whistled, and then the men fell out into gangs of
+twenty-five each, attended by an assistant warder.</p>
+
+<p>"Rear rank, take two paces to the right&mdash;march."</p>
+
+<p>Then the tramp, tramp again. As the outside gangs passed through the
+gate, each officer in charge received his rifle, bayonet, belt, and
+cartridge-box from the armorer at the lodge. The stone-dressing gang
+passed close under the window, and Hugh Ritson reeled back as one of the
+men&mdash;a stalwart fellow in a blue cap, who was walking abreast of a
+misshapen creature with a face full of ferocity&mdash;lifted his eyes upward
+from the file.</p>
+
+<p>At eight o'clock the governor appeared at his receiving-office. He was a
+slight man with the face and figure of a greyhound. His military
+frock-coat was embossed with Crimean medals, and he was redolent of the
+odor of Whitehall. He received Hugh Ritson's papers with a curious
+mixture of easy courtesy and cold dignity&mdash;a sort of combination of the
+different manners in which he was wont to bow to a secretary of state
+and condemn a convict to the chain and bread and water.</p>
+
+<p>"The men are back to breakfast at nine," he said. "Watkins," to the
+chief warder, "have B 2001 brought round to the office immediately 34
+gang returns."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had left the receiving-office and was crossing the
+parade-ground when a loud hubbub arose near the lodge.</p>
+
+<p>"The boat!" shouted twenty voices, and a covey of convicts ran in the
+direction of a shed where an eight-oar boat was kept on the chocks. "A
+man has mizzled&mdash;run a wagon into the sea and is drifting down the
+race."</p>
+
+<p>How the demons laughed, how they cursed in jest, how they worked, how
+luminous were their eyes and haggard faces at the prospect of
+recapturing one of their fellow-prisoners who had tried to make his
+escape! Every convict who helped to catch a fugitive was entitled to a
+remission of six days. The doctor took Hugh Ritson up on to the lead
+flat that covered his quarters. From that altitude they could see over
+the prison wall to the rocky coast beyond. Near the ruins of the old
+church a gang of convicts were running to and fro, waving their hands,
+and shouting in wild excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"It's gang 34," said the doctor, "Jim-the-ladder's gang."</p>
+
+<p>The sun had risen, the sea was glistening in its million facets, and
+into many a rolling wave a sea-bird dipped its corded throat. In the
+silvery water-way there was something floating that looked as if it
+might have been a tub. It was the wagon that the convict had driven into
+the water for a boat.</p>
+
+<p>"It will sink&mdash;it's shod with thick hoops of iron," said the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>The convict could be seen standing in it. He had thrown off his coat and
+cap, and his sleeveless arms were bare to the armpits. The civil guard
+ran to the cliff and fired. One shot hit. The man could be seen to tear
+the coarse linen shirt from his breast and bind it above the wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"Why does he not crouch down?" said Hugh Ritson: he did not know who
+this convict was, but in his heart there was a feverish desire that the
+prisoner should escape.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a doomed man&mdash;he's in the race&mdash;it's flowing hard, and he'll drift
+back to the island," said the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later a posse of the civil guard, with two assistant
+warders, brought the recaptured fugitive into the governor's
+receiving-office. The stalwart fellow strode between the warders with a
+firm step and head erect. He wore no jacket or cap, and on one bare arm
+a strip of linen was roughly tied. His breast was naked, his eyes were
+aflame, and save for a black streak of blood across the cheek, his face
+was ashy pale. But that man was not crushed by his misfortunes; he
+seemed to crush them.</p>
+
+<p>"Take that man's number," said the governor.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, take it, and see you take it rightly," said the convict.</p>
+
+<p>"It's B 2001," said the chief warder.</p>
+
+<p>The governor consulted a paper that lay on his table.</p>
+
+<p>"Send for the gentleman," he said to an attendant. "It's well for you
+that you are wanted by the law officers of the Crown," he added, turning
+to the prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>The convict made no answer; he was neither humble nor sullen; his manner
+was frank but fierce, and made almost brutal by a sense of wrong.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment Hugh Ritson stepped into the office. His eyes dropped,
+and his infirm foot trailed heavily along the floor. He twitched at his
+coat with nervous fingers; his nostrils quivered; his whole body
+trembled perceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the man," said the chief warder, with a deferential bow.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson tried to raise his eyes, but they fell suddenly. He opened
+his lips to speak, but the words would not come. And meantime the wet,
+soiled, naked, close-cropped, blood-stained convict, flanked by armed
+warders, stood before him with head erect and eyes that searched his
+soul. The convict rested one hand on his hip and pointed with the other
+at Hugh Ritson's abject figure.</p>
+
+<p>"What does this man want with me?" he said, and his voice was deep.</p>
+
+<p>At that Hugh Ritson broke in impetuously:</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, I will not outrage your sufferings by offering you my pity."</p>
+
+<p>The officers looked into each other's faces.</p>
+
+<p>"I want none of your pity!" said the convict, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"No; it is I who need yours," said Hugh Ritson, in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>The convict laughed a hard laugh, and turned to the warders.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, take me away&mdash;I've had enough of this."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen. I have something to say to you&mdash;something to do for you, too."</p>
+
+<p>The convict broke afresh into a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me away, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What if I say I am sorry for the past?" said Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are a hypocrite!" the convict answered.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson drew himself up, and took his breath audibly. In one swift
+instant his face became discolored and his features pinched and rigid.
+There was silence, and then in a low, broken tone, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, you know well what sort of a man I am; don't drive me too hard. I
+have come here to do you a service. Remember your sufferings&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Once again the convict broke into a cold laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember that others&mdash;one other&mdash;may be suffering with you."</p>
+
+<p>The convict's haughty look fled like a flash of light.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, take me out of this," he muttered in a low, hoarse voice. He took
+a step back, but the guard closed around him. "I won't stand to listen
+to this man. Do you hear? I won't listen," he said hotly; "he has come
+to torture me&mdash;that's all!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to undo what I have done," said Hugh. "Paul, let me undo
+it. Don't rouse the bad part of me at this crisis of your life and
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>The convict paused, and said more quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's your policy to undo it."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson flinched. The words had gone to his heart like a spear. If
+he had dared to mask his motive, that thrust would have left it naked.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not wrong the truth by saying I am a changed man," he answered
+meekly. "My motive is my own; but my act shall be all in all to you."</p>
+
+<p>The convict's face lightened.</p>
+
+<p>"You have used me for your vengeance," he said; "you shall not use me
+for your contrition also. Guards, let me out&mdash;let me out, I tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>The governor interposed:</p>
+
+<p>"When you leave this room you go direct to the cells."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, take me to your cells, and let me lie there and die and rot," said
+the convict.</p>
+
+<p>"Take him away," said the governor.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, I beseech you to hear me!" cried Hugh, amid the clanking of the
+arms of the guard.</p>
+
+<p>"Take him away!" the governor shouted again.</p>
+
+<p>An hour after, B 2001 was recalled to the receiving-office. He was quiet
+enough now.</p>
+
+<p>"We have an order respecting you from the Secretary of State," said the
+governor. "You are required to give evidence at a trial. At two o'clock
+you leave Portland for Cumberland, and your guard goes with you."</p>
+
+<p>The convict bent his head and went out in silence.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Paul Ritson&mdash;let him be known by his official number no more&mdash;was not
+taken to the punishment cells. He was set to work with the
+stone-dressing gang stationed near the gate of the prison. The news of
+his attempt to escape had not spread more rapidly than rumors of his
+approaching departure.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," shouted a hoary convict, "take a crooked message out?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's your message?"</p>
+
+<p>"On'y a word to the old girl telling her where she'll find a bunch of
+keys as she wants partic'lar."</p>
+
+<p>"Write her yourself, my man."</p>
+
+<p>"What, and the governor read it, and me get a bashing, and the crushers
+pinch the old moll? Well, I am surprised at ye; but I forgot, you're a
+straight man, you are."</p>
+
+<p>A mocking laugh followed this explanatory speech.</p>
+
+<p>A young fellow with a pale, meek face and the startled eyes of a hare
+crept close up to where Paul Ritson worked, and took a letter out of one
+of his boots.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the last I had from home," he said, quietly, and put the letter
+into Paul's hands.</p>
+
+<p>It was a soiled and crumpled paper, so greasy from frequent handlings
+and so much worn by many foldings that the writing could scarcely be
+deciphered. Home? It was dated from the Union of Liverpool, and had come
+from his invalid wife and his children, all living there.</p>
+
+<p>The poor fellow could not read, but he had somehow learned the letter
+by heart, and was able to point out each bit of family history in the
+exact place where it was recorded.</p>
+
+<p>He had lost his class privileges, and was not allowed to reply; and now
+he wanted to know if Paul Ritson could get down to Liverpool and see his
+wife and little ones, and tell them how well he was, and how lusty he
+looked, and what fine times he had of it&mdash;"just to keep up their
+spirits, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I say, you sir," bawled a sinister gray-head&mdash;the same whose
+conversation was overheard in church&mdash;"I hear as you're a employer of
+labor when yer not lagged. Any chance? I wants to leave my sitivation.
+Long hours, and grub reg'lar onsatisfactory. Besides, my present
+employer insists on me wearing a collar with a number&mdash;same as a wild
+beast or a bobby. It's gettin' ridic'lus. So I've give notice, and I
+flit in September. Maybe ye see as I'm growing my wings to fly." The
+hoary sinner pointed upward to his grizzly hair, which was longer than
+the hair of his comrades. "On'y it's coming out another tint o' awrburn
+nor what it was ten years ago, and the old woman won't have the same
+pride in my pussonal appearance."</p>
+
+<p>At two o'clock the assistant warder known as Jim-the-ladder marched Paul
+Ritson to the chief warder's office. There the convict was handcuffed
+and the warder armed. Then they set out.</p>
+
+<p>On the steamboat that plied between the Portland Ferry and Weymouth the
+convict dress attracted much attention. The day was some sort of chapel
+festival, and great numbers of chapel people in holiday costume crowded
+the decks and climbed the paddle-boxes; the weather was brilliant; the
+sun danced on the waters like countless fairies on a floor of glass; a
+brass band played on the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Again at the Weymouth railway station the people gathered in little
+groups, and looked askance at the convict. During the few minutes which
+elapsed before the train left the platform, a knot of spectators stood
+before the carriage and peered in at the window.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson paid little heed to these attentions, but they were often
+unwelcome enough. "Keep clear of him&mdash;see the blue cap?" "What an
+ill-looking fellow&mdash;to be sure, his looks are enough to hang him."</p>
+
+<p>Paul laughed bitterly. His heart felt cold within him at that moment. If
+he had worn broadcloth and a smile, how different the popular verdict
+might have been. Who then would have said that he was a villain?
+Certainly not yonder sleek minister of Christ who was humming a psalm
+tune a moment ago, and paused to whisper, "Be sure your sin will find
+you out." The black-coated Pharisee was handing a lady into a
+first-class carriage.</p>
+
+<p>The train started. Paul threw himself back in his seat, and thought of
+all that had occurred since he made this journey before. He was
+traveling in the other direction then, and what an agony was that first
+experience of convict life! He had never thought of it from that day to
+this.</p>
+
+<p>Other and more poignant memories had day after day obliterated the
+recollection of that experience. But it came back now as freshly as if
+it had all occurred yesterday. He was one of a gang of twenty who were
+traveling from Millbank to Dartmoor. The journey to Waterloo in the
+prison van had been a terrible ordeal. He had thought in the cells that
+it would be nothing to him if people in the streets recognized him. The
+shameful punishment of an innocent man was not his, but the law's
+disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, when he was marched out into the prison grounds abreast of a
+cadaverous wretch with shrunken brows and the eyes of a hawk, an old
+thief in front of him, and a murderer convicted of manslaughter treading
+on his heels, the cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>He had meant to hold up his head, and if people looked into his face to
+look frankly back into their faces. But when his turn came he leaped
+into the van, and his chin buried itself in his breast.</p>
+
+<p>Then the crowds drawn up on the pavement outside as the gates rolled
+back and the van passed through; the crush in a busy thoroughfare when
+the van stopped to let a line of crowded omnibuses go by; the horrible
+scene at the station when the convicts were marched down the platform,
+and every ear was arrested by the tramp, tramp of twenty fettered men!</p>
+
+<p>Above all, the jests and the laughter of the older hands who had served
+their time before, and were superior to all small considerations of
+public shame! "I say, you with the gig-lamps, toss a poor devil a bit o'
+'bacco." "Seen us afore? In coorse you have. You in the white choker,
+look hard while yer at it, and you'll know us again." "Oh, Mother
+Shipton, and is that yourself? and how pleased we is to see ye, and just
+tip us yer welwet purse, and we'll give it yer back when we're this way
+again." And not all the rigor of the attendant warders was enough to
+suppress such jesting.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson could not forbear to laugh aloud when he remembered with
+what an agony of sweat he had that day crept back into his seat.</p>
+
+<p>Times had changed since then. He had spent a year and a half in a
+government school, and had been educated out of all torturing delicacy.</p>
+
+<p>The warder attempted to draw him into conversation. Jim-the-ladder
+repeatedly protested that he bore no malice. "I'm a good fellow at
+bottom," he said more than once, and Paul Ritson showed no malice. But
+he laughed bitterly at a grim and an obvious thought that the warder's
+dubious words suggested. Failing in his efforts at conciliation, the
+warder charged his pipe and relapsed into a long silence.</p>
+
+<p>They had a compartment to themselves. At a station where the train
+stopped a man opened the door and had already put one foot into the
+carriage when he recognized the caste of his traveling companions. He
+disappeared in a twinkling. Paul Ritson did his best to restrain the
+anger that well-nigh choked him. He merely sent a ringing laugh after
+the retreating figure. At another station a police inspector, dressed in
+a little brief authority, caught sight of the blue cap and gray jacket,
+and bustled up to examine the warder's papers. Then, with a lofty look,
+he strode through the group of spectators whom his presence had
+attracted.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at Waterloo, the warder hailed a cab, and they drove to Scotland
+Yard to report themselves. There they supped on cocoa and brown bread,
+with the addition of a rasher of bacon and a pipe for the warder. Thence
+they were driven to Euston to catch the nine-o'clock train to Penrith.</p>
+
+<p>The journey north was uneventful. At Rugby, Stafford, and elsewhere, the
+train stopped, and little groups of people looked in at the convict, and
+made apposite comments on his appearance, crime, and condition. Paul
+Ritson often shut his eyes and said nothing. Sometimes a sneer curled
+his lip, sometimes he burst into a bitter laugh. He was thinking that
+this was a fitting close to the degradation of his prison life. If one
+feeling of delicacy, one tender sentiment, one impulse of humanity
+remained to him when the gates of Portland closed behind him; it only
+required this cruel torture to crush it forever.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the risk of dismissal and the more immediate danger at the
+hands of Paul Ritson, the warder coiled himself up and fell asleep. It
+was after midnight when they reached Crewe, and from that point of the
+journey the worst of the torment ceased. Their merciful fellow-men were
+mostly in bed, dreaming of heroic deeds that they were doing. But the
+silence of night had its own torture. As the train rumbled on through
+the darkness, now rattling in a long tunnel, now sliding into open air
+like a boat into still water, Paul Ritson's mind went back to the day
+which seemed now to be so far away that it might have belonged to
+another existence, when he traveled this road with the dear soul who had
+trusted her young and cloudless life to his keeping. Where was she now?
+Peace be with her, wheresoever she was! He recalled her tenderest
+glance, he seemed to hear her softest tone; the light pressure of her
+delicate fingers was now on his hands&mdash;the hard hands that wore the
+irons. And even at that moment, when all his soul went out to the pure
+young wife who had shared his sufferings, and he felt as if time and
+space were nothing, as if he had drawn her to him by the power of his
+yearning love, it seemed to him that all at once there rang in his ears
+the shrill, sharp voices of the convicts rapping out their foul and
+frightful oaths.</p>
+
+<p>He leaped to his feet, with a muttered oath on his own lips, and when
+the imagined agony with which he surprised himself had given way to a
+new sense of his actual sufferings, his heart grew yet more cold and
+bitter. He thought of what he had been and of what he was. There could
+be no disguising the truth&mdash;he was a worse man. Yes; whatsoever had once
+been pure in him, whatsoever had once been generous, whatsoever had once
+been of noble aspiration, was now impure, and ungenerous, and ignoble.
+Above all else, he had lost that tenderness which is the top and crown
+of a strong man. He felt as if the world had lifted its hand against
+him, and as if he were ready and eager to strike back.</p>
+
+<p>They reached Penrith toward four in the morning, and then the carriage
+in which they traveled was shunted on to the branch line to await the
+first train toward Cockermouth. The day was breaking. From the window
+Paul Ritson could see vaguely the few ruins of the castle. That familiar
+object touched him strangely. He hardly knew why, but he felt that a
+hard lump at his heart melted away. By and by the brakeman shouted to
+the signalman in the gray silence of the morning. The words were
+indifferent&mdash;only some casual message&mdash;but they were spoken in the broad
+Cumbrian that for a year and a half had never once fallen on Paul
+Ritson's ear. Then the lump that had melted as his heart seemed to rise
+to his throat.</p>
+
+<p>The gray light become intermingled with red, and soon the sky to the
+east was aflame. Paul let down the carriage window, and long waves of
+sweet mountain air, laden with the smell of peat, flowed in upon him.
+His lips parted and his breast expanded. At five o'clock the engine was
+attached. A few carriages were added at the platform, and these
+contained a number of pitmen, in their red-stained fustian, going down
+for the morning shift. When the train moved westward, the sun had
+risen, and all the air was musical with the songs of the birds. Very
+soon the train ran in among the mountains, and then at last the
+bitterness of Paul Ritson's heart seemed to fall away from him like a
+garment. That quick thrill of soul which comes when the mountains are
+first seen after a long absence is a rapture known to the mountaineer
+alone. Paul saw his native hills towering up to the sky, the white mists
+flying off their bald crown, the torrents leaping down their brant
+sides, and the tears filled his eyes and blotted it all out. The
+sedge-warbler was singing with the wheatear, and, though he could not
+see them now, he knew where they were: the sedge-warbler was flitting
+among the rushes of the low-land mere; the wheatear was perched on the
+crevice of gray rock in which it had laid its pale-blue eggs; the sheep
+were bleating on the fells, and he knew their haunts by the lea of the
+bowlders and along the rocky ledges where grew the freshest grasses.
+Down the corries of Blencathra, long drifts of sheep were coming before
+the dogs, and he knew that the shepherds had been out on the fells
+during the short summer night, numbering the sheep for the washing in
+the beck below.</p>
+
+<p>Everything came back upon him like a memory of yesterday. He stood up
+and thrust out his head, and did not think of his gray jacket and blue
+cap until a carter who watered his horses at a pool near the railway
+lines started and stared as if he had seen a "boggle" at noonday.</p>
+
+<p>Then Paul Ritson remembered that he was still a convict, that his hands
+wore irons, that the man who lay sleeping on the seat of the carriage
+was his warder, and that the steely thing that peeped from the belt of
+the sleeping man was a revolver, to be promptly used if he attempted to
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>But not even these reflections sufficed to dissipate the emotion that
+had taken hold of him. He began at length to think of Hugh Ritson, and
+to wonder why he had been brought back home. Home!&mdash;home? It was a
+melancholy home-coming, but it was coming home, nevertheless.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Two days later the gray old town-hall that stands in the market-place of
+Keswick was surrounded by a busy throng. The Civil Court of the County
+Assize was sitting in this little place for the nonce to try a curious
+case of local interest. It was an action for ejectment brought by Greta,
+Mrs. Paul Ritson, against a defendant whose name was entered on the
+sheet as Paul Drayton, alias Paul Ritson, now of the Ghyll, in the
+Parish of Newlands.</p>
+
+<p>The court-room was crowded. It was a large, bare room, with a long table
+and two rows of chairs crossing the end, the one row occupied by the
+judge and a special jury, the other by the lawyers for the prosecution
+and defense. The rest of the chamber was not provided with seats, and
+there the dalespeople huddled together.</p>
+
+<p>A seat had been found for Greta at one end of the table. Her cheek
+rested on her hand. She dropped her eyes as the spectators craned their
+necks to catch a glimpse of her. Behind her, and with one hand on her
+chair-back, stood the old parson, his Jovian white head more white than
+of old, the tenderer lines in his mellow face drawn down to a look of
+pain. Immediately facing Greta, at the opposite end of the table, Hugh
+Ritson sat. One leg was thrown over the other knee, and the long,
+nervous fingers of the right hand played with the shoelace. His head was
+inclined forward, and the thin, pallid, clean-cut face with the great
+calm eyes and the full, dilated nostrils was more than ever the face of
+a high-bred horse. None would have guessed the purpose with which Hugh
+Ritson sat there. One would have said that indifference was in those
+eyes and on that brow&mdash;indifference or despair.</p>
+
+<p>Near where the rustle was loudest and most frequent among the
+spectators, Drayton sat by the side of Mr. Bonnithorne. He was dressed
+in his favorite suit of broad plaid, and had a gigantic orange-lily
+stuck jauntily in his buttonhole. His face was flushed and his eyes
+sparkled. Now and again he leaned back to whisper something to the
+blacksmith, the miller, and the landlord of the Flying Horse, who were
+grouped behind him. His remarks must have been wondrously facetious, for
+they were promptly followed by a low gurgle, which was as promptly
+suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>The counsel for the plaintiff opened his case. The plaintiff sued as the
+owner in succession to her husband, who was at present dead to the law.
+She contended that the man who now stood seized of the Ghyll was not her
+husband, Paul Ritson, but Paul Drayton, an innkeeper of Hendon, who bore
+him a strange personal resemblance, and personated him. The evidence of
+identity which should presently be adduced was full and complete in the
+essential particular of proving that the defendant was not Paul Ritson,
+by whose title alone the defense would maintain the right of present
+possession. Unhappily, the complementary evidence as to the actual
+identity of the defendant with Paul Drayton, the publican, had been
+seriously curtailed by the blindness, followed by the death, of an
+important witness. Still, if he, the counsel for the plaintiff, could
+prove to the satisfaction of the jury that the defendant was not the man
+he represented himself to be, they would have no course but to grant the
+ejectment for which the plaintiff asked. To this end he would call two
+witnesses whose evidence must outweigh that of all others&mdash;the wife of
+Paul Ritson, and the clergyman who solemnized the marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Greta's name was called, and she rose at the end of the table. Her bosom
+heaved under the small lace shawl that covered her shoulders, and was
+knotted like a sailor's scarf, on her breast. She stood erect, her eyes
+raised slightly and her drooping hands clasped in front. After the
+customary formalities, she was examined.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the only child of the late Robert Lowther?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am the daughter of Robert Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton threw back his head, and laughed a little.</p>
+
+<p>"You were married to Paul Ritson in 1875 at the parish church of
+Newlands, the minister being the Reverend Mr. Christian?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was."</p>
+
+<p>"On the day of your marriage you accompanied your husband to London, and
+the same night he left you at the Convent of St. Margaret, Westminster?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is quite true."</p>
+
+<p>There was a buzz of conversation in the court, accompanied by a
+whispered conference on the bench. Counsel paused to say that it was not
+a part of his purpose to trouble the court with an explanation of facts
+which were so extraordinary that they could only be credited on the oath
+of a person who, though present, would not be called. At this reference
+Hugh Ritson raised his languid eyes, and the examination proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>"Three days afterward you received a message from your husband,
+requesting you to meet him at St. Pancras Station, and return with him
+to Cumberland by the midnight train?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did."</p>
+
+<p>"Who took you the message?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Drayton, the old person at the inn at Hendon."</p>
+
+<p>"You went to the station?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell the court what occurred there."</p>
+
+<p>"Just on the stroke of twelve, when the train was about to leave, a man
+whom at first sight I mistook for my husband came hurrying up the
+platform, and I stepped into the carriage with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see that man in court?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; he sits two seats to your right."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton rose, smiled broadly, bowed to the witness, and resumed his
+seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you alone in the compartment?"</p>
+
+<p>"At first we were; but just as the train was moving away who should join
+us but Parson Christian."</p>
+
+<p>There was another buzz of conversation, and counsel paused again to say
+that he should not trouble the court with an explanation of the
+extraordinary circumstances by which Parson Christian came to be in
+London at that critical moment. These facts formed in themselves a
+chain of evidence which must yet come before a criminal court, involving
+as it did the story of a conspiracy more painful and unnatural perhaps
+than could be found in the annals of jurisprudence.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell the court what passed in the train."</p>
+
+<p>"I perceived at once that the man was not my husband, though strangely
+like him in face and figure, and when he addressed me as his wife I
+repulsed him."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Parson Christian also realize the mistake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, but not quite so quickly."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"We left the train at the first station at which it stopped."</p>
+
+<p>"Did the defendant offer any resistance?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; he looked abashed, and merely observed that perhaps a recent
+illness had altered him."</p>
+
+<p>Counsel for the defense, at whose left Mr. Bonnithorne sat as attorney
+for the defendant, cross-examined the witness.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that on the night following the morning of your marriage your
+husband left you at a convent?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne dropped his twinkling eyes, and muttered something that
+was inaudible to the witness. There was a titter among the people who
+stood behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"And you say that Mrs. Drayton took you the message of which you have
+spoken. Did she tell you that your husband had been ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"She did."</p>
+
+<p>"We are to infer that you visited the house of the Draytons at Hendon?"</p>
+
+<p>"A railway accident drove us there."</p>
+
+<p>"Did any one accompany the defendant to St. Pancras that night?"</p>
+
+<p>"My husband's brother, Mr. Hugh Ritson, was with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell the jury where your husband now is, if he is not at this moment in
+court."</p>
+
+<p>No answer. Amid a profound silence the plaintiff's lawyer was understood
+to object to the question.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we can afford to waive it," said counsel, with a superior smile.
+"One further question, Mrs. Ritson. Had you any misunderstanding with
+your husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you swear that your voices were not raised in angry dispute while
+you were at the inn at Hendon?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta lifted her head and her eyes flashed. "Yes, I will swear it," she
+said in a soft voice but with impressive emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne reached up to the ear of counsel and was understood to
+say that perhaps the point was too delicate to be pressed.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian was next examined. The defendant in the present action
+was not the man whom he married to the plaintiff. He had since seen Paul
+Ritson. Where? In the convict prison of Dartmoor. In cross-examination
+he was asked by what name the convict was known to the directors of
+Dartmoor. Paul Drayton.</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell the court how you came to identify the defendant as Drayton."</p>
+
+<p>"There were many facts pointing that way."</p>
+
+<p>"Give us one."</p>
+
+<p>"On the morning of the marriage I found a letter lying open before the
+fire in my vestry. It was from Mr. Hugh Ritson to Mr. Bonnithorne, and
+it mentioned the name of Drayton in a connection which, by the light of
+later revelations, provoked many inferences."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonnithorne was unprepared for this answer. Counsel looked at him
+inquiringly, but the attorney glanced down and colored deeply.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you show us the letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I left it where I found it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it can hardly be received as evidence."</p>
+
+<p>The attorney smiled, and the tension of Drayton's face relaxed. There
+was a slight shuffle among the people; the witness had stepped back.</p>
+
+<p>Counsel for the defense opened his case. They were asked to believe that
+the defendant in the present action was Paul Drayton, in the teeth of
+the fact that Paul Drayton was at that moment a convict in a convict
+prison. The incredible statement was made that a newly married husband
+had placed his young wife in a convent on the night of their marriage,
+and that when they should have rejoined each other an interchange had
+been made, the husband going to prison in another man's name, the other
+man coming to Cumberland to claim the place of the woman's husband.
+Moreover, they were asked to believe that the husband's brother, Mr.
+Hugh Ritson, had either been fooled by the impostor or made a party to
+the imposture. Happily it was easy to establish identity by two
+unquestionable chains of evidence&mdash;resemblance and memory. It would be
+shown that the defendant could be none other than Paul Ritson, first,
+because he resembled him exactly in person; second, because he knew all
+that Paul Ritson ought to know; third, because he knew nothing that Paul
+Ritson might not know. No two men's lives had ever been the same from
+the beginning of the world, and as it would be seen that the defendant's
+life had been the same as Paul Ritson's, it followed that Paul Ritson
+and the defendant were one and the same man.</p>
+
+<p>Dick o' the Syke was the first witness examined for the defense. He
+swore that Paul Ritson was active in extinguishing a fire that broke out
+in the mill two years ago; that he had climbed to the cross-trees with a
+hatchet; and that within the past month the defendant had described to
+him the precise locality and shape of the gap made in the roof by the
+fire. No one could have known so much except himself and the man who
+stood on the cross-trees. That man was Paul Ritson, and he was there and
+then recognized by many spectators, among whom was Parson Christian.</p>
+
+<p>The next witness was Mistress Calvert, of the Pack Horse. Paul Ritson
+had slept at their house one night two years ago, and a few days since
+the present defendant had pointed out the bedroom he occupied, and
+recalled the few words of conversation which passed between them.</p>
+
+<p>Natt, the stableman, was called. His sleepy eyes blinked knowingly as he
+explained that one winter's night, when the snow fell heavily, Mrs.
+Ritson, then Miss Greta, was startled by what she mistook for the ghost
+of Paul Ritson. The witness had not been so easily deceived, and the
+defendant had since described to him the exact scene and circumstances
+of what the lady had thought to be the ghostly appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed John Proudfoot, the blacksmith; Tom o' Dint, the postman;
+Giles Raisley, the pitman; Job Sheepshanks, the mason; and Tommy
+Lowthwaite, the landlord of the Flying Horse&mdash;all swearing to points of
+identity.</p>
+
+<p>One recalled the fact that Paul Ritson had a scar on his head that was
+caused by the kick of a horse when he was a boy. The defendant had just
+such a scar.</p>
+
+<p>Another remembered that Paul Ritson had a mark on the sole of his right
+foot which had been made by treading on a sharp piece of rock on
+Hindscarth. The defendant had exactly such a mark.</p>
+
+<p>A third had wrestled with Paul Ritson, and knew that he had a mole
+beneath the left shoulder-blade on the back. The defendant had a mole in
+that unusual place.</p>
+
+<p>Counsel for the defense smiled blandly at the special jury, the special
+jury smiled blandly at counsel for the defense. Was it really necessary
+that the defendant should be called? Surely it was a pity to occupy the
+time of the court. The whole case was in a nutshell&mdash;the lady had
+quarreled with her husband. State of affairs would be promptly gauged
+when it was explained that this action had been raised to anticipate a
+forthcoming suit in the divorce court for restitution of connubial
+rights.</p>
+
+<p>The counsel for the plaintiff smiled also, and his was a weak smile of
+conscious defeat. He stammered a desire to withdraw&mdash;said he had been
+promised more conclusive evidence when he undertook the case, and sat
+down with an apologetic air.</p>
+
+<p>There was a shuffle of feet in the court. Drayton had risen to receive
+the congratulations of his friends behind him and the cordial nods of
+some of the superior people who had been favored with seats at the right
+hand and left of the judge. He was answering in a loud tone, when there
+was a sudden lull of the buzz of gossip, and all eyes were directed
+toward one end of the table.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had risen from his seat, and with a face that was very pale,
+but as firm as a rock, he was engaged in a whispered conference with the
+plaintiff's counsel. That gentleman's eager face betrayed the keenest
+possible interest in what he heard. Presently he lifted his arm with an
+impatient gesture, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, I have unexpectedly come into possession of new and most
+important evidence."</p>
+
+<p>"Of what nature?" asked the judge.</p>
+
+<p>"If it is conceivable," said counsel, "that in any question of personal
+identity the court will accept the evidence of all the tinkers and
+tailors, the riff-raff, the raggabash of the country-side, and reject
+that of the wife of the man whose estate is in question, perhaps it will
+be allowed that there are three persons who are essential to this
+examination&mdash;the brother of Paul Ritson, the defendant who claims to be
+Paul Ritson, and the convict who is suffering penal servitude in the
+name of Paul Drayton. I might name one other whose evidence might be yet
+more conclusive than that of any of these alone&mdash;the mother of Paul
+Ritson; but she is unhappily dead to the world."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton was still on his feet, riveted to the spot where he stood.
+Obtuse as he was, he saw at a glance what had occurred. In all his
+calculations this chance had never suggested itself&mdash;that Hugh Ritson
+would risk the personal danger to bring him down.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you put these persons into the witness-box?"</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, it is, I presume, within the liberties of the defendant to
+keep carefully out of that box, but the court will not refuse to hear
+the evidence of the two persons of whom I speak&mdash;the brother of Paul
+Ritson and the convict known as Paul Drayton."</p>
+
+<p>At this there was high commotion. Greta had leaned back in her chair,
+her bosom heaving, her face shadowed by lines of pain. Parson Christian
+stood behind her with a blank expression of bewilderment. Drayton's
+brows were tightened and his lips were drawn hard.</p>
+
+<p>"None of their criss-crossin' for me," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"You can ask for a new trial," said the judge.</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, another case is pending, and on the issue in this case the
+other case must largely depend."</p>
+
+<p>"How far has the present one proceeded?"</p>
+
+<p>"The defendant's case is not yet completed."</p>
+
+<p>During this scene Hugh Ritson had stood quietly by the table. He
+remained there with complete self-possession while counsel proceeded to
+explain that four days ago, in anticipation of this action and of
+another that had been threatened, a statutory declaration had been made
+in the presence of the Home Secretary and the law officers of the Crown.
+The first result of that statement was that the convict Drayton was now
+present in the court-house ready to appear at this trial.</p>
+
+<p>The judge signified his desire that the convict might be brought in and
+heard.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson motioned to a tall man who stood near, and immediately
+afterward a door was thrown open and another man stepped into the
+court-room.</p>
+
+<p>Every eye was fixed upon him. He wore a convict's gray jacket, with the
+round badge marked "3. B 2001. P S," and the broad arrow beneath. His
+face was pale and rigid; his large eyes glittered; he was in his full
+manhood, but his close-cropped hair was slightly tinged with gray. He
+pushed his way through the people, who fell back to let him pass. When
+he reached the table he tapped it impatiently with one of his hands,
+which were fettered, and threw up his head with a glance of defiance.
+His whole bearing was that of a strong man who believed that every man's
+hand was against him, and who intended to let it be seen that his own
+hand was against every man's.</p>
+
+<p>Counsel rose again, and asked that the defendant's witnesses might be
+recalled. This was done.</p>
+
+<p>"John Proudfoot, Job Sheepshanks, Thomas Lowthwaite, Giles Raisley,
+look this way. Who is this man?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a dead hush. Then, one by one, the men who had been named
+shook their heads. They did not know the convict. Indeed, he was
+terribly altered. The ordeal of the past two years had plowed strange
+lines in his face. At that moment he was less like himself than was the
+impostor who came there to personate him.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's manner did not change. Only a slight curl of the lip
+betrayed his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Counsel continued, "Is there any one in court who recognizes him?"</p>
+
+<p>Not a voice responded. All was silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Will the defendant stand side by side with him?"</p>
+
+<p>Drayton leaped up with a boisterous laugh, and swaggered his way to the
+opposite side of the table. As he approached, the convict looked at him
+keenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Will Mrs. Ritson come forward again?"</p>
+
+<p>Greta had already risen, and was holding Parson Christian's hand with a
+nervous grip. She stepped apart, and going behind the two men, she came
+to a stand between them. On the one side stood Drayton, with a smirking
+face half turned toward the spectators; on the other stood the convict,
+his hands bound before him, his defiant glance softened to a look of
+tenderness, and his lips parted with the unuttered cry that was ready to
+burst from them.</p>
+
+<p>"Greta," said Hugh Ritson, in a low tone of indescribable pathos, "which
+of these men is your husband?"</p>
+
+<p>Counsel repeated the question in form.</p>
+
+<p>Greta had slowly raised her eyes from the ground until they reached the
+convict's face. Then in an instant, in a flash of light, with the quick
+cry of a startled bird, she flung herself on his neck. Her fair head
+dropped on the frieze of the convict's jacket, and her sobs were all
+that broke the silence.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's emotion surged in his throat, but he stood quietly at the
+table. Only his slight figure swayed a little and his face quivered. His
+work was not yet done.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the answer of nature," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson was put into the witness-box, and in a voice that was full
+and strong, and that penetrated every corner of the court, he identified
+the convict as his brother, Paul Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>Counsel for the defense had seemed to be stunned. Recovering himself, he
+tried to smile, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"After this melodramatic interlude, perhaps I may be allowed to ask our
+new witness a few questions. Did you, at the Central Criminal Court,
+held at the Old Bailey in 1875, swear that the person who stands here in
+the dress of a convict was not Paul Ritson?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did."</p>
+
+<p>"Now for my second question. Did you also swear that the defendant was
+your brother, and therefore not Paul Drayton."</p>
+
+<p>"I did."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you were guilty of perjury at that time, or you are guilty of
+perjury now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was guilty of perjury then."</p>
+
+<p>The judge interposed and asked if the witness was awakened to the
+enormity of the crime to which he confessed. Hugh Ritson bent his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you conscious that you are rendering yourself liable to penal
+servitude?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have signed a declaration of my guilt."</p>
+
+<p>The answers were given in perfect calmness, but a vein of pathos ran
+through every word.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know that a few years back many a poor wretch whose crime was
+trifling compared with yours has gone from the dock to the gallows?"</p>
+
+<p>"My guilt is unmitigated guilt. I make a voluntary statement. I am not
+here to appeal for mercy."</p>
+
+<p>There was the hush of awe in the court.</p>
+
+<p>The face of the convict wore an expression of amazement.</p>
+
+<p>Counsel smiled again.</p>
+
+<p>"I presume you know that the effect of the law officers of the Crown,
+believing the story that you tell us now is that, if they do so, the man
+whom you call your brother will be put into possession of the estate of
+which your late father died seized?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is entitled to it."</p>
+
+<p>Counsel turned to the jury with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"It is always necessary to find some standard by which to judge of human
+actions. The witness quarreled with the defendant four days ago, and
+this is his revenge. But I appeal to the court. Is this story credible?
+Is it not a palpable imposture?"</p>
+
+<p>The judge again interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Men do not risk so much for a lie. The witness knows that when the
+court rises the sheriff may take him into custody."</p>
+
+<p>At this counsel rose again and asked the bench not to play into the
+hands of the witness by apprehending him.</p>
+
+<p>"Let the convict be examined," said the judge.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson raised his head; Greta sunk into a chair beneath him. He was
+not sworn.</p>
+
+<p>The warder in charge put in an entry from the books of the prison. It
+ran: "Paul Drayton, five feet eleven inches, brown hair and eyes, aged
+thirty, licensed victualer, born in London, convicted of robbery at the
+scene of a railway accident."</p>
+
+<p>"Does that entry properly describe you?" asked the judge.</p>
+
+<p>The convict's eyes wandered.</p>
+
+<p>"What's going on?" he said, in a tone of bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"Attend, my man. Are you Paul Ritson, the eldest son of the late Allan
+Ritson?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you want to know?" said the convict.</p>
+
+<p>"It befits a witness who is permitted to come from the scene of a
+degrading punishment to give a prompt and decisive answer. What is your
+name, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Find it out."</p>
+
+<p>"My man," said the judge, more suavely, "we sit here in the name of the
+law, and the law could wish to stand your friend." (The convict laughed
+bitterly.) "Pray help us to a decision in the present perplexing case
+by a few frank answers. If you are Paul Drayton, you go back to Portland
+to complete the term of your imprisonment. If it can be proved that you
+are Paul Ritson, your case will be laid before the home officials, with
+the result that you will be liberated and re-established in your estate.
+First of all, which is your name&mdash;Paul Drayton or Paul Ritson?"</p>
+
+<p>The convict did not answer at first. Then he said in a low tone:</p>
+
+<p>"No law can re-establish me."</p>
+
+<p>The judge added:</p>
+
+<p>"Bethink you, if you are Paul Ritson, and an innocent man, the law can
+restore you to your young wife."</p>
+
+<p>Visibly moved by this reference, the convict's eyes wandered to where
+Greta sat beside him, and the tension of his gaze relaxed.</p>
+
+<p>The judge began again:</p>
+
+<p>"You have been recognized by two witnesses&mdash;one claiming to be your
+brother, the other to be your wife&mdash;as Paul Ritson. Are you that
+person?"</p>
+
+<p>The convict's face showed the agony he suffered. In a vague, uncertain,
+puzzled way he was thinking of the consequences of his answer. If he
+said he was Paul Ritson, it seemed to him that it must leak out that he
+was not the eldest legitimate son of his father. Then all the fabric of
+his mother's honor would there and then tumble to the ground. He
+recalled his oath; could he pronounce six words and not violate it? No,
+not six syllables. How those mouthing gossips would glory to see a good
+name trailed in the dust!</p>
+
+<p>"Are you Paul Ritson, the eldest son and heir of Allan Ritson?"</p>
+
+<p>The convict looked again at Greta. She rose to her feet beside him. All
+her soul was in her face, and cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Answer, answer!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can not answer," said the convict, in a loud, piercing voice.</p>
+
+<p>At that terrible moment his strength seemed to leave him. He sunk
+backward into the chair from which Greta had risen.</p>
+
+<p>She stood over him and put her hand tenderly on his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell them it is true," she pleaded, "tell them you are my husband; tell
+them so; oh, tell them, tell them!" she cried in a tone of piteous
+supplication.</p>
+
+<p>He raised to hers his weary eyes with a dumb cry for mercy from the
+appeal of love.</p>
+
+<p>Only Hugh Ritson, of all who were there present, understood what was in
+the convict's heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Ritson is the rightful heir of his father and his mother's
+legitimate son," he muttered audibly.</p>
+
+<p>The convict turned to where his brother sat, and looked at him with a
+face that seemed to grapple for the missing links of a chain of facts.</p>
+
+<p>Counsel for the defense arose.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be seen that the unhappy convict witness will not be used as an
+instrument of deception," he said. "He is Paul Drayton, and can not be
+made to pretend that he is Paul Ritson."</p>
+
+<p>The hush of awe in the court was broken by the opening of a door behind
+the bench. Two women stood on the threshold. One of them was small,
+wrinkled, and old. She was Mrs. Drayton. The other was a nun in hood and
+cape. She was Sister Grace.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson leaned toward counsel for the plaintiff, who promptly rose
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"The witness I spoke of as dead to the world is now present in the
+court."</p>
+
+<p>Amid a buzz of conversation the nun was handed to the table. She raised
+her long veil and showed a calm, pale face. After the usual formalities,
+counsel addressed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Ritson," he said, "tell us which of the two men who sit opposite
+is your son."</p>
+
+<p>Sister Grace answered in a clear, soft voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Both are my sons. The convict is Paul Ritson, my son by Allan Ritson;
+the other is Paul Lowther, my son by an unhappy alliance with Robert
+Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>Drayton jumped to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"There, that's enough of this!" he shouted, excitedly. "Damme, if I can
+stand any more of it!"</p>
+
+<p>Bonnithorne reached over and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Mad man, what are you doing? Hold your tongue!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's all up. There's the old woman, too, come to give me away. Here, I
+say, I'm Paul Drayton; that's what I am, if you want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Let the sheriff take that man before a justice of the peace," said the
+judge.</p>
+
+<p>"It was you that led me into this mess!" shouted Drayton at Bonnithorne.
+"Only for you I would have been in Australia by this time."</p>
+
+<p>"Let the sheriff apprehend Mr. Bonnithorne also," said the judge. "As
+for you, sir," he continued, turning to Hugh Ritson, "I will report your
+evidence to the Public Prosecutor&mdash;who must be in possession of your
+statutory declaration&mdash;and leave the law officers to take their own
+course with regard to you."</p>
+
+<p>The action for ejectment was adjourned.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton and Bonnithorne did not trouble the world much longer. Within a
+month they were tried and condemned together&mdash;the one for personation;
+both for conspiracy.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Ritson was removed in charge of his warder, to be confined in the
+town jail pending the arrival of instructions from the Secretary of
+State. Hugh Ritson walked out of the court-room a free man.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson returned to his room on the pit-brow. On his way there he
+passed a group of people congregated on the bridge at the town end. They
+fell apart as he walked through, but not an eye was raised to his, and
+not one glance of recognition came from his stony face. Toward the
+middle of the afternoon a solicitor came from Carlisle and executed a
+bill of sale on the machinery and general plant. The same evening, as
+the men on the day shift came up the shaft, and those on the night shift
+were about to go below, the wages were paid down to the last weights
+taken at the pit-mouth. Then Hugh Ritson closed his doors and began
+afresh his melancholy perambulation of the room.</p>
+
+<p>That night&mdash;it was Wednesday night&mdash;as darkness fell on the mountain and
+moorland, there was a great outcry in the Vale. It started at the
+pit-mouth, and was taken up on every side. In less than a quarter of an
+hour a hundred people&mdash;men, women, and children&mdash;were gathered about the
+head of the shaft. There had been a run of sand in the pit, and some of
+the hands were imprisoned in the blocked-up workings. Cries, moans, and
+many sounds of weeping arose on the air in one dismal chorus. "I knew it
+would come;" "I telt the master lang ago;" "Where's my man?" "And mine?"
+"And my poor barn&mdash;no'but fifteen." "Anybody seen my Willie?" "Is that
+thee, Robbie, ma lad?&mdash;No." As every cageful of men and boys came to the
+surface, there was a rush of mothers, wives, and fathers to recognize
+their own.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson went out and pushed his way through the people.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the sand running?" he asked of a pitman just landed.</p>
+
+<p>"In the sandy vein, 2, 3, 1," answered the man.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the shaft is clear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, but the water's blocked in the main working, and it's not safe to
+go down."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had taken the man's candle out of his hand, and was fixing
+it with the putty in the front of his own hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready?" he shouted to the engine-man, above the babel of
+voices.</p>
+
+<p>In another moment he had stepped into the cage and looped down the iron
+rail in front of it. There was a moment's silence among the
+panic-stricken people as the cage began to move downward.</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of the shaft a group of men waited to ascend. Their faces
+were lurid in the dim light. Before the cage grounded Hugh Ritson could
+hear their breathing. "How many of you are left?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No'but two now&mdash;Giles Raisley and auld Reuben," answered one of the
+men. The others, without heeding the master's question, had scrambled
+into the cage, and were already knocking the signal for the ascent.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson turned toward the working known among the men as the sandy
+vein. The cage was now rising, and the pitman who had spoken found
+himself left on the pit bottom; the single moment that he had given to
+the master had lost him his chance of a place. He cast one stern glance
+upward, and a muttered oath was on his lips. At the next instant he had
+taken the direction followed by Hugh Ritson, and was walking one pace
+behind him.</p>
+
+<p>In the silence the dull thud of their footsteps on the rock beneath
+mingled with the drip, drip of the water overhead. When they had gone a
+hundred yards down the narrow working there came another and far more
+terrible sound. It was such a sound as the sea might have made if it had
+rushed through a thousand crevices in the rock. It was the sound of the
+thousands of tons of sand as they forced their way from the dense mass
+above. And over the hiss as of the sea was the harsh crack of great
+timbers splitting like matchwood.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the awful scene of this tumult Hugh Ritson quickened his steps.
+The man followed close at his heels. Presently their passage was blocked
+with sand like a wall. Then over their heads the cross-trees cracked,
+and the upright forks split and bent at the right and left of them. In
+another moment the ground beneath them shook under the new weight that
+lay on it. They stepped quickly back, and in an instant, with a groan
+such as the sea makes when it is sucked by the ebbing tide from a cave
+in a rock, the floor, with all its freight, went down a score of feet.
+It had fallen to an old working that lay below.</p>
+
+<p>Then the bent forks hung from the roof in empty air. Silence followed
+this shock, and through the silence there came a feeble cry for help.
+Hugh Ritson stepped out, plucked his candle from his hat, and held it
+before his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you?" he called, and his voice came back through the echoing
+depths beyond. Presently a man could be dimly seen clinging to a
+cross-piece in an alcove made for an air-shaft from the main working. To
+get to him the treacherous ground must be crossed, with its cracking
+roof, through which the sand slid even yet, and under the split timbers
+that still creaked.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson did not hesitate; he turned to leap down, saying, "Follow
+me." But the man clung to him from behind.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, dunnot!" he cried. "I can not go there. It's mair nor
+my life is worth!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson twisted about, and looked him steadily in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name, my man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Davey Braithwaite."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are the young fellow whose wife died last week?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ey," with a drooping head.</p>
+
+<p>"Your child died before her, did it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, he did, poor laal thing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your father and mother are gone, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're gone, for sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"And you have neither kith nor kin left in all the world?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, no'but mysel' left."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson said no more; a hard smile played on his white face, and at
+the next instant he had leaped down on to the bed of sand below.</p>
+
+<p>The man recoiled a pace or two and wrung his hands. Before he was aware
+of what had happened, Giles Raisley and the master were standing beside
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Where were old Reuben and his gang stationed?" said Hugh Ritson.</p>
+
+<p>"In the main working; but the water is dammed up; we can never pass."</p>
+
+<p>They returned to the shaft bottom, and walked thence down the cutting
+that ran from it at right angles. A light burned far away in the dim
+vista of that long dark burrowing.</p>
+
+<p>It was a candle stuck to the rock. The men who worked by it had left it
+there when they rushed off for their lives. Through the bottom of this
+working there ran a deep trough, but it was now dry.</p>
+
+<p>This was the channel by which the whole pit was drained. Beyond the
+light the three men encountered another wall of sand, and from behind it
+and through it there came to them the dull thud and the plash of heavy
+water.</p>
+
+<p>"If auld Reuben's theer, he's a dead man," said Giles Raisley, and he
+turned to go.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson had struggled to the top of the heap, and was plowing the
+sand away from the roof with his hands. In a little while he had forced
+an opening, and could see into the dark space beyond. The water had
+risen to a reservoir of several feet deep. But it was still four or five
+feet from the roof, and over the black, surging, bubbling waves the
+imprisoned miner could be seen clinging to a ledge of rock. Half his
+body was already immersed. When the candle shot its streak of light
+through the aperture of sand, the poor creature uttered a feeble cry.</p>
+
+<p>In another moment the master had wormed his body through the hole and
+dropped slowly into the water. Wading breast deep, he reached the
+pitman, gave him his hand, and brought him safely through the closing
+seam.</p>
+
+<p>When the cage rose to the surface again, bringing back to life and the
+world the last of the imprisoned miners, a great cheer broke from many a
+lusty throat. Women who had never thought to bless the master, blessed
+him now with fervent tongues. Men who had thought little of the courage
+that could rest in that slight figure, fell aside at the sense of their
+own cowardice. Under the red glow that came from the engine fire many a
+hard face melted.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson saw little of this, and heeded it not at all. He plucked the
+candle, still burning, from his hat, and threw it aside. Then he walked
+through the people toward his room, and when he got there he shut the
+door, almost slamming it in the faces of those who followed. He pulled
+down the window-blinds, and began afresh his perambulation to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>He had grown paler and thinner. There was a somber light in his eyes,
+and his lips were whitening. His step, once quick and sure, despite his
+infirmity, was now less certain. He had not slept since the night of
+Mercy's death. Determined never to encounter again the pains and terrors
+of sleep, he had walked through the long hours of the four succeeding
+nights. He knew what the result must be, and did not shrink from it.
+Once only he had thought of a quicker way to the sure goal that was
+before him. Then he had opened a cupboard, and looked long and intently
+at a bottle that he took from its shelf. But he had put the bottle back.
+Why should he play the fool, and leap the life to come? Thus, night
+after night, he had walked and walked, never resting, never pausing,
+though the enfeebled limbs shook beneath him, and the four walls of the
+room reeled in his dazed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Before returning to their homes, the people gathered in the darkness
+about the office on the pit-brow and gave one last cheer.</p>
+
+<p>The master heard them, and his lip curled.</p>
+
+<p>"Simpletons!&mdash;they don't understand," he muttered, beneath his breath,
+and continued his melancholy walk.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, a banksman, who acted as personal attendant on Hugh
+Ritson, brought him his breakfast. It was not early.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had risen, but the blinds of the office were still drawn, and a
+candle burned on the table. The man would have put out the candle and
+let in the sunlight, but the master forbid him. He was a Methodist, and
+hummed psalm tunes as he went about his work. This morning he was more
+than usually fresh and happy when he entered with his tray; but at the
+sight of Hugh Ritson's pallid face his own face saddened.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a young man yet, Luke," said the master. "Let me see, how old
+are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seventy-nine, sir. I was born in ninety-eight. That was when auld
+Bonnypart was agate of us and Nelson bashed him up."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say you have grandchildren by this time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bless you, ey, and great-grandchilder, and ten of them, too; and all
+well and hearty, thank the Lord!"</p>
+
+<p>The sound of a bell, slowly tolling, came from across the dale. Hugh
+Ritson's face contracted, and his eyes fell.</p>
+
+<p>"What bell is that?" he asked, in an altered tone.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like to be the church bell. They're burying poor auld Matha's lass
+and her wee barn this morning."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson did not touch his breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>"Luke, close the shutters," he said, "and bring more candles."</p>
+
+<p>He did not go out that day, but continued to walk to and fro in the
+darkened room. Toward nightfall he grew feverish, and rang frequently
+the bell that summoned the banksman. He had only some casual order, some
+message, some unimportant explanation.</p>
+
+<p>At length the old man understood his purpose, and settled himself there
+for the night. They talked much during the early hours, and often the
+master laughed and jested. But the atmosphere that is breathed by a
+sleepless man is always heavy with sleep, and in spite of his efforts to
+keep awake, Luke dozed away in his chair. Then for hours there was a
+gloomy silence, broken only by the monotonous footfall within and the
+throb of the engine without.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, Friday, the sun shone brilliantly, but the shutters of the
+little house on the pit-brow remained closed, and the candle still
+burned on the table. Hugh Ritson had grown perceptibly feebler, yet he
+continued his dreary walk. The old banksman was forbidden to send for a
+doctor, but he contrived to dispatch a messenger for Parson Christian.
+That night he watched with the master again. When the conversation
+failed, he sung. First, a psalm of David, "The fool hath said in his
+heart, There is no God;" then a revival hymn of Charles Wesley about
+ransom by Christ's blood.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been a strange spectacle to strange eyes. The old
+man&mdash;young still, though seventy-nine, dear to troops of dear ones,
+encircled in his age by love and honor, living in poverty that was
+abundance, with faith that was itself the substance of things hoped for,
+his simple face ruddier and mellower than before&mdash;rocking his head and
+singing in the singleness of his heart. The other man&mdash;barely thirty,
+yet already old, having missed his youth, his thin cheeks pallid as
+linen, his eyes burning with a somber light&mdash;alone in the world,
+desolate, apart&mdash;walking with an uncertain step and a tremor of the
+whole frame, which seemed to lurch for poise and balance, yet swinging
+his arms with the sweep of the melody, and smiling a forced smile
+through his hard and whitened lips.</p>
+
+<p>When the singing ceased, Hugh Ritson paused suddenly and turned to the
+old banksman.</p>
+
+<p>"Luke," he said, abruptly, "I suppose there will be many to follow you
+when your time comes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ey, please God," answered the banksman, dashing away a furtive drop
+that had rolled on to his cheek; "there'll be my childer, and my
+childer's childer, and their childer, forby. Maybe the barns will lay me
+behind the mother; poor auld body!"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson's face darkened, and he resumed his walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! what matter?" he asked himself; "the night winds are enough to
+moan over a man's grave." And he laughed a little.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning&mdash;Saturday morning&mdash;he wrote a letter, and sent Luke to the
+village to post it. Then he attended to some business relating to the
+pit. After that, he shut the door and bolted it. When the old man
+brought the midday meal he knocked in vain, and had to go away.</p>
+
+<p>Night closed in, and still there came no answer to the old man's knock.
+When the sun had set the wind had risen. It threatened to be a
+tempestuous night.</p>
+
+<p>Toward ten o'clock Parson Christian arrived. He had wrestled long with
+his own heart as to what course it was his duty to take. He had come at
+last in answer to the banksman's summons, and now he knocked at the
+door. There was no answer. The wind was loud in the trees overhead, but
+he could hear the restless footfall within. He knocked again, and yet
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Then the bolt was drawn, and a voice at once strange and familiar cried,
+"Come in, Parson Christian."</p>
+
+<p>He had not called or spoken.</p>
+
+<p>The parson entered. When his eyes fell on Hugh Ritson's face he
+shuddered as he had never shuddered before. Many a time he had seen
+death in a living face, but never anything like this. The livid cheeks
+were stony, the white lips were drawn hard, the somber eyes burned like
+a deep, slow fire, the yellow hands were gaunt and restless. There was
+despair on the contracted brow, but no repentance. And the enfeebled
+limbs trembled, but still shuffled on&mdash;on, on, on, through their longer
+journey than from Gabbatha to Golgotha. The very atmosphere of the room
+breathed of death.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me pray with you," said the parson, softly, and without any other
+words, he went down on his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, pray for me&mdash;pray for me; but you lose your labor; nothing can save
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us call on God," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>A bitter laugh broke from Hugh Ritson's lips.</p>
+
+<p>"What! and take to him the dregs and rinsings of my life? No!"</p>
+
+<p>"The blood of Christ has ransomed the world. It can save the worst
+sinner of us all, and turn away the heavy wrath of God."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson broke again into a bitter laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"The end has come of sin, as of trouble. No matter." Then, with an awful
+solemnity, he added: "My soul is barren. It is already given over to the
+undying worm. I shall die to-morrow at sunrise."</p>
+
+<p>"No man knows the day nor the hour&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson repeated, with a fearful emphasis, "I shall die as the sun
+rises on Sunday morning."</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian remained with him the weary night through. The wind
+moaned and howled outside. It licked the walls as with the tongues of
+serpents. The parson prayed fervently, but Hugh Ritson's voice never
+once rose with his. To and fro, to and fro, the dying man continued his
+direful walk. At one moment he paused and said with a ghastly smile,
+"This dying is an old story. It has been going on every day for six
+thousand years, and yet we find it as terrible as ever."</p>
+
+<p>Toward three in the morning he threw open the shutters. The windows were
+still dark; it seemed as if the dawn were far away. "It is coming," he
+said calmly. "I knew it must come soon. Let us go out to meet it."</p>
+
+<p>With infinite effort he pulled his ulster over his shoulders, put on his
+hat, and opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" said the parson, and his voice broke.</p>
+
+<p>"To the top of the fell."</p>
+
+<p>"Why there?"</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Ritson turned his heavy eyes upon him. "To see the new day dawn,"
+he said, with an awful pathos.</p>
+
+<p>He had already stepped out into the gloom. Parson Christian followed
+him. They took the path that led through the moor end to the foot of Cat
+Bells. The old man offered his arm, but Hugh Ritson shook his head and
+walked one pace ahead. It was a terrible journey. The wind had dropped.
+In the air the night and day commingled. The dying man struggled along
+with the firm soul of a stricken lion. Step by step and with painful
+labor they ascended the bare side of the fell in the gray light of
+morning. They reached the top at last.</p>
+
+<p>Below them the moorland lay dark and mute. The mist was around them.
+They seemed to stand on an islet of the clouds. In front the day-break
+was bursting the confines of the bleak racks of cloud. Then the day came
+in its wondrous radiance, and flooded the world in a vast ocean of
+light.</p>
+
+<p>On the mountain brow Hugh Ritson resumed his melancholy walk. The old
+parson muttered, as if to himself, "Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and
+fro? Wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?" Hugh Ritson overheard the words,
+and all his manner changed. The stubborn lips softened, the somber eye
+melted, the contracted brow relaxed, and for the first time in all this
+length of years, he cried like a little child.</p>
+
+<p>At the same instant the sun swept up, and he fell. Parson Christian bent
+over him. The crimson of the east twas reflected on his white face. The
+new day had dawned.</p>
+
+<p>On the Tuesday following two mourners stood by an open grave in the
+church-yard of Newlands. One of them was white-headed; the other wore
+the jacket and cap, the badge and broad arrow of a convict. The sexton
+and his man had lowered the coffin to its last home, and then stepped
+aside. A tall man leaned on the lych-gate, and a group of men and women
+stood in silence by the porch of the church. The afternoon sun was low,
+and the shadows of the tombstones stretched far on the grass.</p>
+
+<p>The convict went down on his knees, and looked long into the grave. When
+he arose, the company that had gathered about the porch had gone, and
+voices singing a hymn came from within the old church. It was the
+village choir practicing. The world's work had begun again.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Two days later the fell behind the Ghyll was a scene of unusual
+animation. It was the day of the shearing. The sheep, visibly whiter and
+more fleecy for a washing of some days before, had been gathered into
+stone folds. Clippers were seated on creels ranged about a turf fire,
+over which a pot of tar hung from a triangle of boughs. Boy "catchers"
+brought up the sheep, one by one, and girl "helpers" carried away the
+fleeces, hot and odorous, and hung them over the open barn doors. As the
+sheep were stripped, they were tugged to the fire and branded from the
+bubbling tar with the smet mark of the Ritsons. The metallic click of
+the shears was in the air, and over all was the blue sky and the
+brilliant sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>In a white overall, stained with patches of tar and some streaks of
+blood, smudged with soap and scraps of the clinging wool, Parson
+Christian moved among the shearers, applying plentiful doses of salve
+from a huge can to the snips made in the skin of the sheep by the
+accidents of the shears.</p>
+
+<p>"We might have waited for the maister afore shearing&mdash;eh?" said Reuben,
+from one of the creels.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll be here before we finish, please the Lord," answered the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it to-day you're to gang for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"A daub on this leg, parson, where she kicked&mdash;deuced take her!... It's
+like you'll bring him home in a car?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay; Randal Alston has loaned me his mare."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, man, what a upshot we'll have, for sure&mdash;bacon pie and veal and
+haggis, and top stannin pie and puddings, I reckon.... Just a hand to
+her leg, parson, while I strip the coat and waistcoat off this
+black-faced herdwick.... Is the mistress to come home, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, Reuben, Mrs. Ritson has gone back to where she came from."</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, it's no'but naturable, after all that's happent.... Easy now ...
+be quiet, wilta ... dusta want another snip, eh?... And young Mistress
+Greta&mdash;it's like she'll be mistress now?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's very likely she'll come to the Ghyll with her husband, Reuben."</p>
+
+<p>"God bless her! And there's been no luck on the land since he left
+it&mdash;and everything a fault, too.... There, she's stripped. Away with
+her, Natt, man, and de'il tak' her."</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon a vast crowd of men, women and children had gathered
+once more about the old town-hall at Keswick. They laughed and bantered
+and sung. Presently the door of the hall was thrown open, and two men
+came out. One was Paul Ritson, no longer clad as a convict; the other
+was Parson Christian. The people hailed them with a mighty shout, lifted
+them into a gig that was drawn up in the market-place, took out the
+horses and crowded into the shafts. Then they set off with a great cheer
+through the town and the country road, the dust rising in clouds behind
+them.</p>
+
+<p>They took the road to the west of the valley, and as they passed under
+the wood, an old man, much bent, was easing a smoking fire in the
+charcoal pit. He paused and raised himself, his iron rod in his hand,
+and lifted his heavy eyes toward the clamorous company. The gig flew
+past with its shouts, its cheers, and its noisy laughter, and the old
+man turned silently back to his work.</p>
+
+<p>When they came near to the vicarage, Paul leaped from the carriage over
+the heads of the men who pulled it, vaulted the gate, and bounded into
+the house. There was one who waited for him there, and in an instant she
+was locked close in his arms. "At last!" he whispered. Her heart
+overflowed; she dropped her fair young head on his heaving breast, and
+wept sweet tears.</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian came rolling up the path surrounded by a tumultuous
+throng. Foremost and lustiest were the blacksmith and the miller, and
+close behind came the landlord and the postman. All were shouting as if
+their brassy throats might crack.</p>
+
+<p>There was high revel at the Ghyll that evening. First came the feasting
+in the old kitchen: huge rounds of beef, quarters of lamb, pease, and
+sweet puddings and pies. Then came the dancing in the barn, lighted by
+candles in cloven sticks, and lanterns of turnips that were scooped out
+hollow.</p>
+
+<p>But at the vicarage Paul and Greta sat alone in silence and with clasped
+hands. Parson Christian came in and out at intervals, gossiping cheerily
+of the odds and ends of daily life, as if its even tenor had never been
+disturbed. They supped together, and sat on till midnight; and then the
+old Christian took down his green tome and wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"June 30.&mdash;So Paul being to return home after his long absence, I
+spent the forenoon on the fell shearing, and earned a stone of wool
+and a windle of rye. In the afternoon I set forward toward Keswick,
+wherefor Randal Alston had loaned me his mare and gig. At the Flying
+Horse I lighted not, but stood while I drank a pot of ale with John
+Proudfoot and Richard Parkinson and a neighbor that comes to-morrow
+to thatch the low barn for me. Then direct to Keswick, where there
+was a great concourse, and a hearty welcome, and much rejoicings
+that warmed me and came nigh to break me withal. Got son Paul at
+last, and would have driven direct home, but the good folk were not
+minded that it should be so, and naught would do but that they must
+loose the mare and run in the shafts. So we reached home about six,
+and found all well, and my love Greta, after long waiting in her
+closet, very busy with Paul, who had run in ahead of me. So I went
+out again and foddered and watered the mare, for Peter is sometimes a
+sad fatch and will not always give a horse what is worth its trouble
+in the eating. And being thrang this evening a-mending the heels of
+my old clock boots with lath nails, whereof I bought a pennyworth at
+Thomas Seed's shop in the market-place, I saw little of Paul, but
+left him to Greta. Then supped, and read a psalm and prayed in my
+family, and sat till full midnight. So I retire to my lodging-room,
+at peace with all the world, and commend my all to God. The Lord
+forgive the sins of me and mine that we have committed in these our
+days of trial. Blessed be God who has wrought our victory, and
+overcome our enemies and brought us out more than conquerors. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Amen."</p></div>
+
+<p>Parson Christian had put down the pen, and was sprinkling the writing
+with sand from a pepper-castor, when Brother Peter came in with candles
+in his hand and a letter under his abridged arm. "Laal Tom o' Dint gave
+me this for thee," he said to Paul, and dropped the letter on to his
+knees. "I was sa thrang with all their bodderments, that I don't know as
+I didna forget it."</p>
+
+<p>Parson Christian returned the green-clad book to its shelf, took up his
+candle, bid good-night, and went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>Brother Peter shambled out, and then Paul and Greta were left alone.</p>
+
+<p>Paul opened the letter. It was inclosed in a sheet of paper that bore
+the stamp of the Convent of St. Margaret, and these words only, "Sent on
+by Sister Grace." Paul began to read the letter aloud, Greta looking
+over his shoulder. But as he proceeded his voice faltered, and then he
+stopped. Then, in silence, the eyes of both traversed the written words.
+They ran:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mother, I have wronged you deeply, and yours is a wrong that may
+never be repaired. The past does not return, and what is done is done
+with. It is not allowed to us to raze out the sins and the sufferings
+of the days that are gone; they stand and will endure. I am not so
+bad a man as perhaps I seem; but of what avail is it to defend myself
+now? and who would believe me? My life has been one long error, and
+the threads of my fate have been tangled. Have I not passed before
+our little world for a stern and callous man? Yet the blight of my
+soul has been passion. Yearning for love where love could never be
+returned, I am the ruins of what I might have been. If I did wrong
+knowingly, it was not until passion mastered me; if I saw things as
+they did not exist, it was because passion made me blind. Mother, if
+there is One above to watch and judge our little lives, surely He
+sees this, and reckons the circumstances with the deed.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her that I wish her peace. If I were a man used to pray,
+perhaps I would ask Heaven to bless her. But my heart is barren of
+prayer. And what, after all, boots my praying? I have given her back
+at last to the love of a noble man. And now my wasted life is done,
+and this is the end&mdash;a sorry end!</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, I shall not live to suffer the earthly punishment of my
+crime. Never fear&mdash;my hand shall not be lifted against myself. Be
+sure of that, whatever else may seem doubtful. But very soon this
+passionate and rebellious soul will stand for judgment before its
+awaiting God.</p>
+
+<p>"Farewell, my mother, farewell!"</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Son of Hagar, by Sir Hall Caine
+
+
+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: A Son of Hagar
+       A Romance of Our Time
+
+
+Author: Sir Hall Caine
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 19, 2008  [eBook #26088]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SON OF HAGAR***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+A SON OF HAGAR.
+
+A Romance of Our Time
+
+by
+
+HALL CAINE,
+
+Author of "The Bondsman," "The Deemster," etc.
+
+"God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Hurst & Company
+Publishers.
+
+
+
+TO
+
+R.D. BLACKMORE.
+
+It must be an exceeding great reward, beyond all the rewards of material
+success, to know that you have written a book that is deep, tranquil,
+strong and pure. Again and again you have nobly earned that knowledge.
+Across the more than thirty years that divide us, the elder from the
+younger brother, the veteran from the raw comrade, let me offer my hand
+to you as to a master of our craft.
+
+To the author, then, of a romance that has no equal save in Scott, I
+humbly dedicate this romance of mine.
+
+H.C.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CUMBRIAN WORDS.
+
+barn=child; dusta=dost thou; hasta=hast thou.
+
+laal=little; leet=alight; girt=great.
+
+sista=seest thou.
+
+varra=very.
+
+wadsta=wouldst thou.
+
+wilta=wilt thou.
+
+Shaf!=_an expression of contempt_.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+In my first novel, "The Shadow of a Crime," I tried to penetrate into
+the soul of a brave, unselfish, long-suffering man, and to lay bare the
+processes by which he raised himself to a great height of
+self-sacrifice. In this novel the aim has been to penetrate into the
+soul of a bad man, and to lay bare the processes by which he is tempted
+to his fall. To find a character that shall be above all common
+tendencies to guilt and yet tainted with the plague-spot of evil hidden
+somewhere; then to watch the first sharp struggle of what is good in the
+man with what is bad, until he is in the coil of his temptation; and
+finally, to show in what tragic ruin a man of strong passions, great
+will and power of mind may resist the force that precipitates him and
+save his soul alive--this is, I trust, a motive no less worthy, no less
+profitable to study, in the utmost result no less heroic and inspiring,
+than that of tracing the upward path of noble types of mind. For me
+there has been a pathetic, and I think purifying, interest in looking
+into the soul of this man and seeing it corrode beneath the touch of a
+powerful temptation until at the last, when it seems to lie spent, it
+rises again in strength and shows that the human heart has no depths in
+which it is lost. If this character had been equal to my intention, it
+might have been a real contribution to fiction, and far as I know it to
+fall short of the first deep blow of feeling in which it was conceived,
+it is, I think, new to the novel, though it holds a notable place in the
+drama--it would be presumptuous to say where--unnecessary, also, as I
+have made no disguise of my purpose.
+
+One of the usual disadvantages of choosing a leading character that is
+off the lines of heroic portraiture is that the author may seem to be in
+sympathy with a base part in life and with base opinions. In this novel
+I run a different risk. I shall not be surprised if I provoke some
+hostility in making the bad man justify his course by the gaunt and grim
+morality that masquerades as the morality of our own time, while the
+good man is made to justify his one dubious act by the full and sincere
+and just morality that too often wears now the garb of vice--the
+morality of the books of Moses. This novel relies, I trust, on the sheer
+humanities alone, but among its less aggressive purposes is that of a
+plea for the natural rights of the bastard. Those rights have been
+recognized in every country and by every race, except one, since the day
+when the outcast woman in the wilderness hearkened to the cry from
+heaven which said, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is." In
+England alone have the rights of blood been as nothing compared with
+the rights of property, and it is part of the business of this novel to
+exhibit these interests at a climax of strife. I have no fear that any
+true-hearted person will accuse me of a desire to cast reproach upon
+marriage as an ordinance. Recognizing the beauty and the sanctity of
+marriage, I have tried to show that true marriage is a higher thing than
+a ceremony, and that people who use the gibbet and stake for offenders
+against its forms are too often those who see no offense in the
+violation of its spirit.
+
+My principal scenes are again among the mountains of Cumberland; but in
+this second attempt I have tried to realize more completely their
+solitude and sweetness, their breezy healthfulness, and their scent as
+of new-cut turf, by putting them side by side with scenes full of the
+garrulous clangor and the malodor of the dark side of London.
+
+When I began, I thought to enlarge the popular knowledge of our robust
+north-country by the addition of some whimsical character and quaint
+folk-lore. If much of this quiet local atmosphere has had to make way
+before one strong current of tragic feeling, I trust some of it remains
+that is fresh and bracing in the incidents of the booth, the smithy, the
+dalesman's wedding, the rush-bearing, the cock-fighting, and the
+sheep-shearing. Those readers of the earlier book who found human nature
+and an element of humor in the patois, will regret with me the necessity
+so to modify the dialect in this book as to remove from it nearly all
+the race quality that comes of intonation.
+
+I ought to add that one of my characters, Parson Christian, is a
+portrait of a dear, simple, honest soul long gone to his account, and
+that the words here put into his mouth are oftener his own than mine.
+
+I trust this book may help to correct a prevailing misconception as to
+the morals and mind of the typical English peasantry. It is certain that
+the conventional peasant of literature, the broad-mouthed rustic in a
+smock-frock, dull-eyed, mulish, beetle-headed, doddering, too vacant to
+be vicious, too doltish to do amiss, does not exist as a type in
+England. What does exist in every corner of the country is a peasantry
+speaking a patois that is often of varying inflections, but is always
+full of racy poetry, illiterate and yet possessed of a vast oral
+literature, sharing brains with other classes more equally than
+education, humorous, nimble-witted; clear-sighted, astute, cynical, not
+too virtuous, and having a lofty, contempt for the wiseacres of the
+town.
+
+The manners and customs, the folk lore and folk-talk of Cumberland are
+far from exhausted in my two Cumberland novels; but it is not probable
+that I shall work in this vein again. In parting from it, may I venture
+to hope that here and there a reader grown tired of the life of the
+great cities has sometimes found it a relief to escape with me into
+these mountain solitudes and look upon a life as real and more true; a
+life that is humble and yet not low; a life in which men may be men, and
+the rude people of the soil need study the face of no master save nature
+alone?
+
+
+A SON OF HAGAR.
+
+
+
+
+_BOOK I._
+
+
+RETRO ME, SATHANA!
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+IN THE YEAR 1845.
+
+
+It was a chill December morning. The atmosphere was dense with fog in
+the dusky chamber of a London police court; the lights were bleared and
+the voices drowsed. A woman carrying a child in her arms had been half
+dragged, half pushed into the dock. She was young; beneath her
+disheveled hair her face showed almost girlish. Her features were
+pinched with pain; her eyes had at one moment a serene look, and at the
+next moment a look of defiance. Her dress had been rich; it was now torn
+and damp, and clung in dank folds to her limbs. The child she carried
+appeared to be four months old. She held it convulsively at her breast,
+and when it gave forth a feeble cry she rocked it mechanically.
+
+"Your worship, I picked this person out of the river at ha'past one
+o'clock this morning," said a constable. "She had throwed herself off
+the steps of Blackfriars Bridge."
+
+"Had she the child with her?" asked the bench.
+
+"Yes, your worship; and when I brought her to land I couldn't get the
+little one out of her arms nohow--she clung that tight to it. The
+mother, she was insensible; but the child opened its eyes and cried."
+
+"Have you not learned her name?"
+
+"No, sir; she won't give us no answer when we ask her that."
+
+"I am informed," said the clerk, "that against all inquiries touching
+her name and circumstances she keeps a rigid silence. The doctor is of
+opinion, your worship, that the woman is not entirely responsible."
+
+"Her appearance in court might certainly justify that conclusion," said
+the magistrate.
+
+The young woman had gazed vacantly about her with an air of
+indifference. She seemed scarcely to realize that through the yellow
+vagueness the eyes of a hundred persons were centered on her haggard
+face.
+
+"Anybody here who knows her?" asked the bench.
+
+"Yes, your worship; I found out the old woman alonger she lodged."
+
+"Let us hear the old person."
+
+A woman in middle life--a little, confused, aimless, uncomfortable
+body--stepped into the box. She answered to the name of Drayton. Her
+husband was a hotel porter. She had a house in Pimlico. A month ago one
+of her rooms on the first floor back had been to let. She put a card in
+her window, and the prisoner applied. Accepted the young lady as tenant,
+and had been duly paid her rent. Knew nothing of who she was or where
+she came from. Couldn't even get her name. Had heard her call the baby
+Paul. That was all she knew.
+
+"Her occupation, my good woman, what was it?
+
+"Nothing; she hadn't no occupation, your worship."
+
+"Never went out? Not at night?"
+
+"No, sir; leastways not at night, sir. I hopes your worship takes me for
+an honest woman, sir."
+
+"Did nothing for a living, and yet she paid you. Did you board her?"
+
+"Yes, your worship; she could cook her wittles, but the poor young thing
+seemed never to have heart for nothing, sir."
+
+"Never talked to you?"
+
+"No, sir; nothing but cried. She cried, and cried, and cried, 'cept when
+she laughed, and then it were awful, your worship. My man always did say
+as how there was no knowing what she'd be doing of yet."
+
+"Is she married, do you know?"
+
+"Yes, your worship; she wears her wedding-ring quite regular--only, once
+she plucked it off and flung it in the fire--I saw it with my own eyes,
+sir, or I mightn't ha' believed it; and I never did see the like--but
+the poor creature's not responsible at whiles--that's what my husband
+says."
+
+"What was her behavior to the child? Did she seem fond of it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, your worship; she used to hug, and hug, and hug it, and call
+it her darling, and Paul, and Paul, and Paul, and all she had left in
+the world."
+
+"When did you see her last before to-day?"
+
+"Yesterday, sir; she put on her bonnet and cape and drew a shawl around
+the baby, and went out in the afternoon. 'It will do you a mort of
+good,' says I to her; 'Yes, Mrs. Drayton,' says she, 'it will do us both
+a world of good.' That was on the front doorsteps, your worship and it
+was a nice afternoon, but I had never no idea what she meant to be doing
+of; but she's not responsible, poor young thing, that's what my--"
+
+"And when night came and she hadn't got home, did you go in search of
+her?"
+
+"Yes, your worship; for I says to my husband, says I, 'Poor young thing,
+I can't rest in my bed, and knowing nothing of what's come to her.' And
+my man, he says to me, 'Maggie,' he says, 'you go to the station and
+give the officers her description,' he says--'a tall young woman as
+might ha' been a lady, a-carrying a baby--- that'll be good enough,' he
+says, and I went. And this morning the officer came, and I knew by his
+face as something had happened, and--"
+
+"Let us hear the doctor. Is he in court?"
+
+"Yes, your worship," said the constable.
+
+Mrs. Drayton was being bustled out of the box. She stopped on the first
+step down--
+
+"And I do hope as no harm will come to her--she's not
+responsible--that's what my hus--"
+
+"All right, we know all that; down with you; this way; don't bother his
+worship!"
+
+At the bottom of the steps the woman stopped again with a handkerchief
+to her eyes.
+
+"And it do make me cry to see her, poor thing, and the baby, too, and
+innocent as a kitten--and I hopes if anything is done to her as--"
+
+Mrs. Drayton's further hopes and fears were lost in the bustle of the
+court. The young woman in the dock still gazed about her vacantly. There
+was strength in her firmly molded lip, sensibility in her large dark
+eyes, power in her broad, smooth brow, and a certain stateliness in the
+outlines of her tall, slim figure.
+
+The doctor who had examined her gave his report in a few words; the
+woman should be under control, though she was dangerous to no one but
+herself. Her attempt at suicide was one of the common results of
+disaster in affairs of love. Perhaps she was a married woman, abandoned
+by her husband; more likely she was an unfortunate lady in whom the
+shame of pregnancy had produced insanity. She was obviously a person of
+education and delicacy of feeling.
+
+"She must have connections of some kind," said the magistrate; and,
+turning to the dock, he said quietly, "Give us your name, my good lady."
+
+The woman seemed not to hear, but she pressed her child yet closer to
+her breast, and it cried feebly.
+
+The magistrate tried again.
+
+"Your baby's name is Paul, isn't it? Paul--what?"
+
+She looked around, glanced at the magistrate and back at the people in
+the court, but said nothing.
+
+Just then the door opposite the bench creaked slightly, and a gentleman
+entered. The woman's wondering eyes passed over him. In an instant her
+torpor was shaken off. She riveted her gaze on the new-comer. Her
+features contracted with lines of pain. She drew the child aside, as if
+to hide it from sight. Then her face twitched, and she staggered back
+into the arms of the constable behind her. She was now insensible.
+Through the dense folds of the fog the vague faces of the spectators
+showed an intent expression.
+
+It was observed that the gentleman who had entered the court a moment
+before immediately left it. The magistrate saw him pass out of the door
+merely as a distorted figure in the dusky shadows.
+
+"Let her be removed to the Dartford asylum," said the magistrate; "I
+will give an order at once."
+
+A voice came from the body of the court. It was Mrs. Drayton's voice,
+thick with sobs.
+
+"And if you please, your worship, may me and my husband take care of the
+child until the poor young thing is well enough to come for it? We've no
+children of our own, sir, and my husband and me, we'd like to have it,
+and no one would do no better by it, your worship."
+
+"I think you are a good woman, Mrs. Drayton," said the magistrate. Then,
+turning to the clerk, he added: "Let inquiries be made about her, and,
+if all prove satisfactory, let the child be given into her care."
+
+"Oh, thank your worship; it do make me cry--"
+
+"Yes, all right--never mind now--we know all about it--come along."
+
+The prisoner recovered consciousness in being removed from the dock; the
+constable was taking the child out of her arms. She clung to it with
+feverish hands.
+
+"Take me away," she said in a deep whisper, and her eyes wandered to the
+door.
+
+"Stop that man!" said the magistrate, pointing to the vague recesses
+into which the spectator had disappeared. An officer of the court went
+out hastily. Presently returning: "He is gone," said the officer.
+
+"Take me away, take me away!" cried the prisoner in a tense voice.
+"Paul, Paul, my own little Paul!" The woman's breath came and went in
+gusts, and her child cried from the convulsive pressure to her breast.
+
+"Remove them," said the bench.
+
+There was a faint commotion. Among the people in the court, huddled like
+sheep, there was a harsh scraping of feet, and some suppressed
+whispering. The stolid faces on the bench turned and smiled slightly in
+the yellow gleam of the gas that burned in front of them. Then the
+momentary bustle ended, the woman and child were gone, and the calm
+monotony of the court was resumed.
+
+Six months later a handsome woman, still little more than a girl, yet
+with eyes of suffering, stepped up to the door of a house in Pimlico and
+knocked timidly.
+
+"I wish to see Mrs. Drayton," she said, when the door was opened by an
+elderly person.
+
+"Bless you, they're gone, Mrs. Drayton and her Husband."
+
+"Gone!" said the young woman, "gone! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, gone--removed--shifted."
+
+"Removed--shifted?" The idea seemed to struggle its slow way into her
+brain.
+
+"In course--what else, when the big hotel fails and he loses his job?
+Rents can't be paid on nothing a week, and something to put in the mouth
+besides."
+
+"Gone? Are you mad? Woman, think what you're saying. Gone where?"
+
+"How do I know where? Mad, indeed! I'll not say but other folk look a
+mort madder nor ever I looked."
+
+The young woman took her by the shoulder.
+
+"Don't say that--don't say you don't know where they're gone. They've
+got my child, I tell you; my poor little Paul.
+
+"Oh, so you're the young party as drowned herself, are you? Well,
+they're gone anyways, and the little chit with them, and there's no
+saying where. You may believe me. Ask the neighbors else."
+
+The young woman leaned against the door-jamb with a white face and great
+eyes.
+
+"Well, well, how hard she takes it. Deary me, deary me, she's not a bad
+sort, after all. Well, well, who'd ha' thought it! There, there, come in
+and sit awhile. It is cruel to lose one's babby--and me to tell her,
+too. Misbegotten or not, it's one's own flesh and blood, and that's what
+I always says."
+
+The young woman had been drawn into the house and seated on a chair. She
+got up again with the face of an old woman.
+
+"Oh, I'm choking!" she said.
+
+"Rest awhile, do now, my dear--there--there."
+
+"No, no, my good woman, let me go."
+
+"Heaven help you, child; how you look!"
+
+"Heaven has never helped me," said the young woman. "I was a Sister of
+Charity only two years ago. A man found me and wooed me; married me and
+abandoned me; I tried to die and they rescued me; they separated me from
+my child and put me in an asylum; I escaped, and have now come for my
+darling, and he is gone."
+
+"Deary me, deary me!" and the old woman stroked her consolingly.
+
+"Let me go," she cried, starting up afresh. "If Heaven has done nothing
+for me, perhaps the world itself will have mercy."
+
+The ghastly face answered ill to the grating laugh that followed as she
+jerked her head aside and hurried away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IN THE YEAR 1875.
+
+
+It was Young Folks' Day in the Vale of Newlands. The summer was at its
+height; the sun shone brightly; the lake to the north lay flat as a
+floor of glass, and reflected a continent of blue cloud; the fells were
+clear to their summits, and purple with waves of heather. It was
+noontide, and the shadows were short. In the slumberous atmosphere the
+bees droned, and the hot air quivered some feet above the long, lush
+grass. The fragrance of new-mown hay floated languidly through a
+sub-current of wild rose and honeysuckle. In a meadow at the foot of the
+Causey Pike tents were pitched, flags were flying, and crowds of men,
+women, and children watched the mountain sports.
+
+In the center of a group of spectators two men, stripped to the waist,
+were wrestling. They were huge fellows, with muscles that stood out on
+their arms like giant bulbs, and feet that held the ground like the
+hoofs of oxen. The wrestlers were calm to all outward appearance, and
+embraced each other with the quiet fondling of lambs and the sinuous
+power of less affectionate creatures. But the people about them were
+wildly excited. They stopped to watch every wary movement of the foot,
+and craned their necks to catch the subtlest twist of the wrist.
+
+"Sista, Reuben, sista! He'll have enough to do to tummel John Proudfoot.
+John's up to the scat to-day, anyways."
+
+"Look tha! John's on for giving him the cross-buttock."
+
+John was the blacksmith, a big buirdly fellow with a larger blunt head.
+
+"And he has given it too, has John."
+
+"Nay, nay, John's doon--ey, ey, he's doon, is John."
+
+One of the wrestlers had thrown the other, and was standing quietly over
+him. He was a stalwart young man of eight-and-twenty, brown-haired,
+clear-eyed, of a ruddy complexion, with a short, thick, curly beard, and
+the grace and bearing that comes of health and strength and a complete
+absence of self-consciousness. He smiled cheerfully, and nodded his head
+in response to loud shouts of applause. "Weel done! Verra weel done!
+That's the way to ding 'em ower! What sayst tha, Reuben?"
+
+"What a bash it was, to be sure!"
+
+"What dusta think you of yon wrestling, ey, man?"
+
+"Nay, nay, it's verra middling."
+
+"Ever seen owt like it since the good auld days you crack on sa often,
+auld man?"
+
+"Nay, he doont him verra neat, did Paul--I will allow it."
+
+"There's never a man in Cumberland need take a hand with young Paul
+Ritson after this."
+
+"Ey, ey; he's his father's son."
+
+The wrestler, surrounded by a little multitude of boys, who clung to his
+sparse garments on every side, made his way to a tent.
+
+At the same moment a ludicrous figure forced a passage through the
+crowd, and came to a stand in the middle of the green. It was a
+diminutive creature, mounted on a pony that carried its owner on a
+saddle immediately below its neck, and a pair of paniers just above its
+tail. The rider was an elderly man with shaggy eyebrows and beard of
+mingled black and gray. His swarthy, keen wizened face was twisted into
+grotesque lines beneath a pair of little blinking eyes, which seemed to
+say that anybody who refused to see that they belonged to a perfectly,
+wideawake son of old Adam made a portentous mistake. He was the mountain
+peddler, and to-day, at least, his visit was opportune.
+
+"Lasses, here's for you! Look you, here's Gubblum Oglethorpe, pony and
+all."
+
+"Why, didsta ever see the like--Gubblum's getten hissel into a saddle!"
+
+Gubblum, from his seat on the pony, twisted one half of his wrinkled
+face awry, and said:
+
+"In course I have! But it's a vast easier getting into this saddle nor
+getting out of it, I can tell you!"
+
+"Why, how's that, Gubblum?" cried a voice from the crowd.
+
+"What, man, did you never hear of the day I bought it?"
+
+Sundry shakes of many heads were the response.
+
+"No?" said Gubblum, with an accent of sheer incredulity, and added,
+"Well, there is no accounting for the ignorance of some folks."
+
+"What happened to you, Gubblum?"
+
+Gubblum's expression of surprise gave place to a look of condescension.
+He lifted his bronzed and hairy hand to the rim of his straw hat to
+shade his eyes from the sun.
+
+"Well, when I got on to auld Bessy, here, I couldn't get off
+again--that's what happened."
+
+"No? Why?"
+
+"You see, I'd got my clogs on when I went to buy the saddle in Kezzick,
+and they're middling wide in the soles, my clogs are. So when I put my
+feet into the stirrups, there they stuck."
+
+"Stuck!"
+
+"Ey, fast as nails! And when I got home to Branth'et Edge I couldn't get
+them out. So our Sally, she said to my auld woman, 'Mother,' she said,
+'we'll have to put father into the stable with the pony and fetch him a
+cup of tea.' And that's what they did, and when I had summat into me I
+had another fratch at getting out of the saddle; but I couldn't manish
+it; so I had--what you think I had to do?"
+
+"Nay, man, what?"
+
+"I had to sleep all night in the stable on Bessy's back!"
+
+"Bless thee, Gubblum, and whatever didsta do?"
+
+"I'm coming to that, on'y some folks are so impatient. Next morning that
+lass of mine, she said to her mother, 'Mother,' she said, 'wouldn't it
+be best to take the saddle off the pony, and then father he'll sure come
+off with it?'"
+
+"And they did do it?"
+
+"Ey, they did. They took Bessy and me round to the soft bed as they
+keeps maistly at the back of a stable, and they loosened the straps and
+gave a push, and cried 'Away.'"
+
+"Weel, man, weel?"
+
+"Weel! nowt of the sort! It wasn't weel at all! When I rolled over I was
+off the pony, for sure; but I was stuck fast to the saddle just the
+same."
+
+"What ever did they do with thee then?"
+
+"I'm coming to that, too, on'y some folks are so mortal fond of hearing
+theirselves talk. They picked me up, saddle and all, and set me on the
+edge of the kitchen dresser. And there I sat for the best part of a
+week, sleeping and waking, and carding and spinning, and getting fearful
+thin. But I got off at last, I did!" There was a look of proud content
+in Gubblum's face as he added, "What a thing it is to be eddicated! We
+don't vally eddication half enough!"
+
+A young fellow--it was Lang Geordie Moore--pushed a smirking face
+between the shoulders of two girls, and said:
+
+"Did you take to reading and writing, then, Gubblum, when you were on
+the kitchen dresser?"
+
+There was a gurgling titter, but, disdaining to notice the interruption,
+Gubblum lifted his tawny face into the glare of the sun, and said:
+
+"It was my son as did it--him that is learning for a parson. He came
+home from St. Bees, and 'Mother,' he said, before he'd been in the house
+a minute, 'let's take fathers clogs off, and then his feet will come
+out of the stirrups."
+
+A loud laugh bubbled over the company. Gubblum sat erect in the saddle
+and added with a grave face:
+
+"That's what comes of eddication and reading the Bible and all o' that!
+If I had fifty sons I'd make 'em all parsons."
+
+The people laughed again, and crowed and exchanged nods and knowing
+winks. They enjoyed the peddler's talk, and felt an indulgent tenderness
+for his slow and feeble intellect. He on his part enjoyed no less to
+assume a simple and shallow nature. A twinkle lurked under his bushy
+brows while he "smoked the gonies." They laughed and he smiled slyly,
+and both were satisfied.
+
+Gubblum Oglethorpe, peddler, of Branth'et Edge, got off his pony and
+stroked its tousled mane. He was leading it to a temporary stable, when
+he met face to face the young wrestler, Paul Ritson, who was coming from
+the tent in his walking costume. Drawing up sharply, he surveyed Paul
+rapidly from head to foot, and then asked him with a look of
+bewilderment what he could be doing there.
+
+"Why, when did you come back to these parts?"
+
+Paul smiled.
+
+"Come back! I've not been away."
+
+The old man looked slyly up into Paul's face and winked. Perceiving no
+response to that insinuating communication, his wrinkled face became
+more grave, and he said:
+
+"You were nigh to London three days ago."
+
+"Nigh to London three days ago!" Paul laughed, then nodded across at a
+burly dalesman standing near, and said: "Geordie, just pinch the old
+man, and see if he's dreaming."
+
+There was a general titter, followed by glances of amused inquiry. The
+peddler took off his hat, held his head aside, scratched it leisurely,
+glanced up again at the face of young Ritson, as if to satisfy himself
+finally as to his identity, and eventually muttered half aloud:
+
+"Well, I'm fair maizelt--that's what I am!"
+
+"Maizelt--why?"
+
+"I could ha' sworn I saw you at a spot near London three days ago."
+
+"Not been there these three years," said Paul.
+
+"Didn't you wave your hand to me as we went by--me and Bessy?"
+
+"Did I? Where?"
+
+"Why, at the Hawk and Heron, in Hendon."
+
+"Never saw the place in my life."
+
+"Sure of that?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+The grave old head dropped once more, and the pony's head was held down
+to the withered hand that scratched and caressed it. Then the first idea
+of a possible reason on Paul's part for keeping his movements secret
+suggested itself afresh to Gubblum. He glanced soberly around, caught
+the eye of the young dalesman furtively, and winked again. Paul laughed
+outright, nodded his head good-humoredly, and rather ostentatiously
+winked in response. The company that had gathered about them caught the
+humor of the situation, and tittered audibly enough to provoke the
+peddler's wrath.
+
+"But I say you have seen it," shouted Gubblum in emphatic tones.
+
+At that moment a slim young man walked slowly past the group. He was
+well dressed, and carried himself with ease and some dignity, albeit
+with an air of listlessness--a weary and dragging gait, due in part to a
+slight infirmity of one foot. When some of the dalesmen bowed to him his
+smile lacked warmth. He was Hugh Ritson, the younger brother of Paul.
+
+Gubblum's manner gathered emphasis. "You were standing on the step of
+the Hawk and Heron," said he, "and I waved my hand and shouted 'A canny
+morning to you, Master Paul'--ey, that I did!"
+
+"You don't say so!" said Paul, with mock solemnity. His brother had
+caught the peddler's words, and stopped.
+
+"But I do say so," said Gubblum, with many shakes of his big head. Let
+any facetious young gentleman who supposed that it was possible to make
+sport of him, understand once for all that it might be as well to throw
+a stone into his own garden.
+
+"Why, Gubblum," said Paul, smothering a laugh, "what was I doing at
+Hendon?"
+
+"Doing! Well, a chap 'at was on the road along of me said that Master
+Paul had started innkeeper."
+
+"Innkeeper!"
+
+There was a prolonged burst of laughter, amid which one amused patriarch
+on a stick shouted: "Feel if tha's abed, Gubblum, ma man!"
+
+"And if I is abed, it's better nor being in bed-lam, isn't it?" shouted
+the peddler.
+
+Then Gubblum scratched his head again, and said more quietly: "It caps
+all. If it wasn't you, it must ha' been the old gentleman hissel'."
+
+"Are we so much alike? Come, let's see your pack."
+
+"His name was Paul, anyways."
+
+Hugh Ritson had elbowed his way through the group, and was now at
+Gubblum's elbow listening intently. When the others had laughed, he
+alone preserved an equal countenance.
+
+"Paul--what?" he asked.
+
+"Nay, don't ax me--I know nowt no mair--I must be an auld maizelin, I
+must, for sure!"
+
+Hugh Ritson turned on his heel and walked off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The Vale of Newlands runs north and south. On its east banks rise the
+Cat Bell fells and the Eel Crags; on the west rise Hindscarth and
+Robinson, backed by Whiteless Pike and Grasmoor. A river flows down the
+bed of the valley, springing in the south among the heights of Dale
+Head, and emptying into Bassenthwaite on the north. A village known as
+Little Town stands about midway in the vale, and a road runs along each
+bank. The tents were pitched for the sports near the bed of the valley,
+on the east side of the Newlands Beck. On the west side, above the road,
+there was a thick copse of hazel, oak, and birch. From a clearing in
+this wood a thin column of pale blue smoke was rising through the still
+air. A hut in the shape of a cone stood a few yards from the road. It
+was thatched from the ground upward with heather and bracken, leaving
+only a low aperture as door. Near the hut a small fire of hazel sticks
+crackled under the pot that swung from a forked triangle of oak limbs.
+Fagots were stacked at one end of the clearing; a pile of loose bark lay
+near. It was a charcoal pit, and behind a line of hurdles that were
+propped with poles and intertwined with dead grass and gorse, an old man
+was building a charcoal fire.
+
+He was tall and slight, and he stooped. His eyes were large and heavy;
+his long beard was whitening. He wore a low-crowned hat with broad brim,
+and a loose flannel jacket without a waistcoat. Most of us convey the
+idea that to our own view we are centers of our circles, and that the
+universe revolves about us. This old man suggested a different feeling.
+To himself he might have been a thing gone somehow out of its orbit.
+There was a listless melancholy, a lonely weariness in his look and
+movements. An old misery seemed to sit on him.
+
+His name was Matthew Fisher; but the folk of the country-side called him
+Laird Fisher. The dubious dignity came of the circumstance that he was
+the holder of an absolute royalty on a few acres of land under
+Hindscarth. The royalty had been many generations in his family. His
+grandfather had set store by it. When the lord of the manor had worked
+the copper pits at the foot of the Eel Crags, he had tried to possess
+himself of the royalties of the Fishers. But the peasant family resisted
+the aristocrat. Luke Fisher believed there was a fortune under his feet,
+and he meant to try his own luck on his holding some day. That day never
+came. His son, Mark Fisher, carried on the tradition, but made no effort
+to unearth the fortune. They were a cool, silent, slow, and stubborn
+race. Matthew Fisher followed his father and his grandfather, and
+inherited the family faith. All these years the tenders of the lord of
+the manor were ignored, and the Fishers enjoyed their title of courtesy
+or badinage. When Matthew was a boy there was a rhyme current in the
+vale which ran:
+
+"There's t' auld laird, and t' young laird, and t' laird among t' barns.
+If iver there comes another laird, we'll hang-him up by t' arms."
+
+There is a tough bit of Toryism in the grain of these northern
+dalesfolk. Their threat was idle; no other laird ever came. Matthew
+married, and had one daughter only. He farmed his few acres with poor
+results. The ground was good enough, but Matthew was living under the
+shadow of the family tradition. One day--it was Sunday morning, and the
+sun shone brightly--he was rambling by the Po Beck that rose on
+Hindscarth and passed through his land, when his eye glanced over a
+glittering stone that lay among the pebbles, at the bottom of the
+stream. It was ore, good full ore, and on the very surface. Then the
+Laird Fisher sunk a shaft and all his earnings with it in an attempt to
+procure iron or copper. The dalespeople derided him, but he held
+silently on his way.
+
+"How dusta find the cobbles to-day--any softer?" they would ask.
+
+"As soft as the hearts of most folk," he would answer, and then add in a
+murmur, "and maybe a vast harder nor their heads."
+
+The undeceiving came at length, and then the Laird Fisher was old and
+poor. His wife died broken-hearted. After that the laird never rallied.
+The breezy irony of the dalesfolk did not spare the old man's bent head.
+"He's brankan" (holding up his head) "like a steg swan," they would say
+as he went past. The shaft was left unworked, and the holding lay
+fallow. Laird Fisher took wage from the lord of the manor to burn
+charcoal in the copse.
+
+The old man had raised his vertical shaft, and was laying the oak limbs
+against it, when a girl of about eighteen came along the road from the
+south, and clambered over the stile that led to the charcoal pit. She
+was followed by a sheep-dog, small and wiry as a hill-fox.
+
+"Is that thee, Mercy?" said the charcoal-burner from the fire, without
+turning.
+
+The girl was a pretty little thing; yet there was something wrong with
+her prettiness. One saw at once that her cheeks should have been pink
+and white like the daisy, and that her hair, which was yellow as the
+primrose, should have tumbled in wavelets about them. There ought to
+have been sunshine in the blue eyes, and laughter on the red lips, and
+merry lilt in the soft voice. But the pink had faded from the girl's
+cheek; the shadow had chased the sunshine from her eyes; her lips had
+taken a downward turn, and a note of sadness had stolen the merriment
+from her voice.
+
+"It's only your tea, father," she said, setting down a basket. Then
+taking up a spoon that lay on the ground, she stirred the mess that was
+simmering over the fire. The dog lay and blinked in the sun.
+
+A rabbit rustled through the coppice, and a jay screeched in the distant
+glade. But above all came the peals of merry laughter from below. The
+girl's eyes wandered yearningly to the tents over which the flags were
+flying.
+
+"Do you hear the sports, father?" she said.
+
+"Ey, lass, there's gay carryin's-on. They're chirming and chirping like
+as many sparrows." The old man twisted about. "I should have thowt as
+thou'd have been in the thick of the thrang thysel', Mercy, carryin' on
+the war."
+
+"I didn't care to go," said Mercy in an undertone.
+
+The old man looked at her silently for a moment.
+
+"Ways me, but thoos not the same heartsome lass," he said, and went on
+piling the fagots around the shaft. "But I count nowt of sec wark," he
+added, after a pause.
+
+Little Mercy's eyes strayed back from the bubbling pot to the tents
+below. There was a shout of applause.
+
+"That's Geordie Moore's voice," thought Mercy. She could see a circle
+with linked hands. "They're playing the cushion game," she said under
+her breath, and then drew a long sigh.
+
+Though she did not care to go to the sports to-day, she felt, oh! so
+sick at heart. Like a wounded hare that creeps into quiet ambush, and
+lies down on the dry clover to die, she had stolen away from all this
+noisy happiness; but her heart's joy was draining away. In her wistful
+eyes there was something almost cruel in this bustling merriment, in
+this flaunting gayety, in this sweet summer day itself.
+
+The old charcoal-burner had stepped up to where the girl knelt with
+far-away eyes.
+
+"Mercy," he said, "I've wanted a word with you this many a day."
+
+"With me, father?"
+
+The girl rose to her feet. There was a look of uneasiness in her face.
+
+"You've lost your spirits--what's come of them?"
+
+"Me, father?"
+
+The assumed surprise was in danger of breaking down.
+
+"Not well, Mercy--is that it?"
+
+He took her head between his hard old hands, and stroked her hair as
+tenderly as a mother might have done.
+
+"Oh, yes, father; quite well, quite."
+
+Then there was a little forced laugh. The lucent eyes were full of a
+dewy wistfulness.
+
+"Any trouble, Mercy?"
+
+"What trouble, father?"
+
+"Nay, any trouble--trouble's common, isn't it?"
+
+The old man's voice shook slightly, and his hand trembled on the girl's
+head.
+
+"What have I to trouble me!" said Mercy, in a low voice nigh to
+breaking.
+
+"Well, you know best," said the charcoal-burner. Then he put his hand
+under the girl's chin and lifted her face until her unwilling eyes
+looked into his. The scrutiny appeared to console him, and a smile
+played over his battered features. "Maybe I was wrong," he thought.
+"Folk are allus clattering."
+
+Mercy made another forced little laugh, and instantly the Laird Fisher's
+face saddened.
+
+"They do say 'at you're not the same heartsome little lass," he said.
+
+"Do they? Oh, but I am quite happy! You always say people are
+busybodies, don't you, father?"
+
+The break-down was imminent.
+
+"Why, Mercy, you're crying."
+
+"Me--crying!" The girl tossed her head with, a pathetic gesture of gay
+protestation. "Oh, no; I was laughing--that was it."
+
+"There are tears in your eyes, anyways."
+
+"Tears? Nonsense, father! Tears? Didn't I tell you that your sight was
+failing you--- ey, didn't I, now?"
+
+It was of no use to struggle longer. The fair head fell on the heaving
+breast, and Mercy sobbed.
+
+The old man looked at her through a blinding mist in his hazy eyes.
+"Tell me, my little lassie, tell me," he said.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing," said Mercy. She had brushed away the tears and was
+smiling.
+
+The Laird Fisher shook his head.
+
+"It's nothing, father--only--"
+
+"Only--what?"
+
+"Only--oh, it's nothing!"
+
+"Mercy, my lass," said the Laird Fisher, and the tears stood now in his
+own dim eyes, "Mercy, remember if owt goes wrong with a girl, and her
+mother is under the grass, her father is the first she should come to
+and tell all."
+
+The old man had seated himself on a stout block cut from a trunk, and
+was opening the basket, when there was a light, springy step on the
+road.
+
+"So you fire to-night, Matthew?"
+
+An elderly man leaned over the stile and smiled.
+
+"Nay, Mr. Bonnithorne, there's ower much nastment in the weather yet."
+
+The gentleman took off his silk hat and mopped his forehead. His hair
+was thin and of a pale yellow, and was smoothed flat on his brow.
+
+"You surprise me! I thought the weather perfect. See how blue the sky
+is."
+
+"That doesn't argy. It might be better with never a blenk of blue. It
+was rayder airy yesterday, and last night the moon got up as blake and
+yellow as May butter."
+
+The smile was perpetual on the gentleman's face. It showed his teeth
+constantly.
+
+"You dalesmen are so weather-wise."
+
+The voice was soft and womanish. There was a little laugh at the end of
+each remark.
+
+"We go by the moon in firing, sir," the charcoal-burner answered, "Last
+night it rose sou'-west, and that doesn't mean betterment, though it's
+quiet enough now. There'll be clashy weather before nightfall."
+
+The girl strayed away into the thicket, and startled a woodcock out of a
+heap of dead oak leaves. The gentleman followed her with his eyes. They
+were very small and piercing eyes, and they blinked frequently.
+
+"Your daughter does not look very well, Matthew."
+
+"She's gayly, sir; she's gayly," said the charcoal-burner shortly, his
+mouth in his can of tea.
+
+The gentleman smiled from the teeth out. After a pause, he said: "I
+suppose it isn't pleasant when one of your hurdles is blown down, and
+the charcoal burning," indicating the wooden hurdles which had been
+propped about the half-built charcoal stack.
+
+"Ey, it's gay bad wark, to be sure--being dragged into the fire."
+
+The dog had risen with a startled movement. Following the upward
+direction of the animal's nose, the gentleman said, "Whose sheep are
+those on the ghyll yonder?"
+
+"Auld Mr. Ritson's, them herdwicks."
+
+The sheep were on a ridge of shelving rock.
+
+"Dangerous spot, eh?"
+
+"Ey, it's a bent place. They're verra clammersome, the black-faced
+sorts."
+
+"I'll bid you good-day, Matthew." The yellow-haired elderly gentleman
+was moving off. He walked with a jerk and a spring on his toes. "And
+mind you take your daughter to the new doctor at Keswick," he said at
+parting.
+
+"It's not doctoring that'll mend Mercy," the charcoal-burner muttered,
+when the other had gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Josiah Bonnithorne was quite without kinspeople or connections. His
+mother had been one of two sisters who lived by keeping a small
+confectioner's shop in Whitehaven, and were devoted Methodists. The
+sisters had formed views as to matrimony, and they enjoyed a curious
+similarity of choice. They were to be the wives of preachers. But the
+opportunity was long in coming, and they grew elderly. At length the
+younger sister died, and so solved the problem of her future. The elder
+sister was left for two years more alone with her confectionery. Then
+she married a stranger who had come to one of the pits as gangsman. It
+was a sad falling off. But at all events the gangsman was a local
+preacher, and so the poor soul who took him for husband had effected a
+compromise with her cherished ideal. It turned put that he was a
+scoundrel as well, and had a wife living elsewhere. This disclosure
+abridged his usefulness among the brethren, and he fled. Naturally, he
+left his second wife behind, having previously secured a bill of sale on
+her household effects. A few months elapsed, the woman was turned adrift
+by her husband's creditors, and then a child was born. It was a poor
+little thing--a boy. The good souls of the "connection" provided for it
+until it was two years old, and afterward placed it in a charity school.
+While the little fellow was there, his mother was struck down by a
+mortal complaint. Then for the first time the poor ruined woman asked to
+see her child. They brought the little one to her bedside, and it smiled
+down into her dying face. "Oh, that it may please the Lord to make him a
+preacher!" she said with a great effort. At a sign from the doctor the
+child was taken away. The face pinched by cruel suffering quivered
+slightly, the timid eyes worn by wasted hope softened and closed, and
+the mother bid farewell to everything.
+
+The boy lived. They christened him Josiah, and he took for surname the
+maiden name of his mother, Bonnithorne. He was a weakling, and had no
+love of boyish sports; but he excelled in scholarship. In spite of these
+tendencies, he was apprenticed to a butcher when the time came to remove
+him from school. An accident transferred him to the office of a
+solicitor, and he was articled. Ten years later he succeeded to his
+master's practice, and then he sailed with all sail set.
+
+He disappointed the "connection" by developing into a Churchman, but
+otherwise aroused no hostile feeling. It was obviously his cue to
+conciliate everybody. He was liked without being popular, trusted
+without being a favorite. Churchwarden, trustee for public funds,
+executor for private friends, he had a reputation for disinterested
+industry. And people said how well it was that one so unselfish as
+Josiah Bonnithorne should nevertheless prosper even as this world goes.
+
+But there was a man in Cumberland who knew Mr. Bonnithorne from the
+crown of his head to the sole of his foot. That man was Mr. Hugh Ritson.
+Never for an instant did either of these palter with the other.
+
+When Mr. Bonnithorne left the charcoal pit, he followed the road that
+crossed the Newlands Beck, and returned on the breast of the Eel Crags.
+This led him close to the booth where the sports were proceeding. He
+heard, as he passed, the gurgling laugh with which the dalesfolk
+received the peddler's story of how he saw Paul Ritson at Hendon. A
+minute afterward he encountered Hugh Ritson on the road. There was only
+the most meagre pretense at greeting when these men came face to face.
+
+"Your father sent for me," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"On what business?" Hugh Ritson asked.
+
+"I have yet to learn."
+
+They walked some steps without speaking. Then the lawyer turned with his
+constant smile, and said in his soft voice:
+
+"I have just seen your little friend. She looks pale, poor thing!
+Something must be done, and shortly."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face flushed perceptibly. His eyes were on the ground.
+
+"Let us go no further in this matter," he said, in a low tone. "I saw
+her yesterday. Then there is her father, poor, broken creature! Let it
+drop."
+
+"I did not believe it of you!" Mr. Bonnithorne spoke calmly and went on
+smiling.
+
+"Besides, I am ashamed. The thing is too mean," said Hugh Ritson. "In
+what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode occur?"
+
+"So, so! Or is it the story of the cat in the adage? You would and you
+wouldn't?"
+
+"My blood is not thick enough. I can't do it."
+
+"Then why did you propose it? Was it your suggestion or mine? I thought
+to spare the girl her shame. Here her trouble must fall on her in
+battalions, poor little being. Send her away, and you decimate them."
+
+"It is unnecessary. You know I am superior to prejudice." Hugh Ritson
+dropped his voice and said, as if speaking into his breast: "If the
+worst comes to the worst, I can marry her."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne laughed lightly.
+
+"Ho! ho! And in what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode
+occur?"
+
+Hugh Ritson drew up sharply.
+
+"Why not? Is she poor? Then what am I? Uneducated? What is education
+likely to do for me? A simple creature, all heart and no head? God be
+praised for that!"
+
+At this moment a girl's laugh came rippling through the air. It was one
+of those joyous peals that make the heart's own music. Hugh Ritson's
+pale face flushed a little, and he drew his breath hard.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head in the direction of the voice, and said
+softly: "So our friend Greta is here to-day?"
+
+"Yes," said Hugh Ritson very quietly.
+
+Then the friends walked some distance in silence.
+
+"It is scarcely worthy of you to talk in this brain-sick fashion," said
+Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a dull irritation in the tone. "You place
+yourself in the wrong point of view. You do not love the little being."
+
+Hugh Ritson's forehead contracted, and he said: "If I have wrecked my
+life by one folly, one act of astounding unwisdom, what matter? There
+was but little to wreck. I am a disappointed man."
+
+"Pardon me, you are a very young one," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"What am I in my father's house? He gives no hint of helping me to an
+independence in life."
+
+"There are the lands. Your father must be a rich man."
+
+"And I am a second son."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+Hugh Ritson glanced up quickly.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You say you are a second son."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Would it be so fearful a thing if you were not a second son?"
+
+"In the name of truth, be plain. My brother Paul is living."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head twice or thrice, and said calmly: "You
+know that your brother hopes to marry Greta?"
+
+"I have heard it."
+
+Again the flush came to Hugh Ritson's cheeks. His low voice had a
+tremor.
+
+"Did I ever tell you of her father's strange legacy?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"My poor friend Robert Lowther left a legacy to a son of his own, who
+was Greta's half-brother."
+
+"An illegitimate son?"
+
+"Not strictly. Lowther married the son's mother," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"Married her? Then his son was his heir?"
+
+"No."
+
+Hugh Ritson looked perplexed.
+
+"The girl was a Catholic, Lowther a Protestant. A Catholic priest
+married them in Ireland. That was not a valid marriage by English law."
+
+Hugh smiled grimly.
+
+"And Lowther had the marriage annulled?"
+
+"He had fallen in love," began Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"This time with an heiress?" There was a caustic laugh.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded. "Greta's mother. So he--"
+
+"Abandoned the first wife," Hugh Ritson interrupted again.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne shook his head with an innocent expression.
+
+"Wife? Well, he left her."
+
+"You talk of a son. Had they one?"
+
+"They had," said Mr. Bonnithorne, "and when the woman and child ...
+disappeared--"
+
+"Exactly," said Hugh Ritson, and he smiled. "What did Lowther then?"
+
+"Married again, and had a daughter--Greta."
+
+"Then why the legacy?"
+
+"Conscience-money," said Mr. Bonnithorne, pursing up his mouth.
+
+Hugh Ritson laughed slightly.
+
+"The sort of fools' pence the Chancellor of the Exchequer receives
+labeled 'Income Tax.'"
+
+"Precisely--only Lowther had no address to send it to."
+
+"He had behaved like a scoundrel," said Hugh Ritson.
+
+"True, and he felt remorse. After the second marriage he set people to
+find the poor woman and child. They were never found. His last days were
+overshadowed by his early fault. I believe he died broken-hearted. In
+his will--I drew it for him--he left, as I say, a sum to be paid to this
+son of his first wife--when found."
+
+Hugh Ritson laughed half mockingly.
+
+"I thought he was a fool. A scoundrel is generally a fool as well."
+
+"Generally; I've often observed it," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"What possible interest of anybody's could it be to go hunting for the
+son of the fool's deserted wife?"
+
+"The fool," answered Mr. Bonnithorne, "was shrewd enough to make an
+interest by ordering that if the son were not found before Greta came of
+age, a legacy of double the sum should be paid to an orphanage for
+boys."
+
+Hugh Ritson's respect for the dead man's intelligence experienced a
+sensible elevation.
+
+"So it is worth a legacy to the family to discover Greta's
+half-brother," he said, summing up the situation in an instant. "If
+alive--If not, then proof that he is dead."
+
+The two men had walked some distance, and reached the turning of a lane
+which led to a house that could be seen among the trees at the foot of a
+ghyll. The younger man drew up on his infirm foot.
+
+"But I fail to catch the relevance of all this. When I mentioned that I
+was a second son you--"
+
+"I have had hardly any data to help me in my search," Mr. Bonnithorne
+continued. He was walking on. "Only a medallion-portrait of the first
+wife." Mr. Bonnithorne dived into a breast-pocket.
+
+"My brother Paul is living. What possible--"
+
+"Here it is," said Mr. Bonnithorne, and he held out a small picture.
+
+Hugh Ritson took it with little interest.
+
+"This is the portrait of the nun," he said, as his eyes first fell on
+it, and recognized the coif and cape.
+
+"A novice--that's what she was when Lowther met her," said Mr.
+Bonnithorne.
+
+Then Hugh Ritson stopped. He regarded the portrait attentively; looked
+up at the lawyer and back at the medallion. For an instant the strong
+calm which he had hitherto shown seemed to desert him. The picture
+trembled in his hand. Mr. Bonnithorne did not appear to see his
+agitation.
+
+"Is it a fancy? Surely it must be fancy!" he muttered.
+
+Then he asked aloud what the nun's name had been.
+
+"Ormerod."
+
+There was a start of recovered consciousness.
+
+"Ormerod--that's strange!"
+
+The exclamation seemed to escape inadvertently.
+
+"Why strange?"
+
+Hugh Ritson did not answer immediately.
+
+"Her Christian name?"
+
+"Grace."
+
+"Grace Ormerod? Why, you must know that Grace Ormerod happened to be my
+own mother's maiden name!"
+
+"You seem to recognize the portrait."
+
+Hugh Ritson had regained his self-possession. He assumed an air of
+indifference.
+
+"Well, yes--no, of course not--no," he said, emphatically, at last.
+
+In his heart there was another answer. He thought for the moment when he
+set eyes on the picture that it looked like--a little like--his own
+mother's face.
+
+They walked on. Mr. Bonnithorne's constant smile parted his lips.
+Lifting his voice rather unnecessarily, he said:
+
+"By the way, another odd coincidence! Would you like to know the name of
+Grace Ormerod's child by Robert Lowther?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's heart leaped within him, but he preserved an outward show
+of indifference, and drawled:
+
+"Well, what was it?"
+
+"Paul."
+
+The name went through him like an arrow, then he said, rather languidly:
+
+"So the half-brother of Greta Lowther, wherever he is, is named--"
+
+"Paul Lowther," said Mr. Bonnithorne. "But," he added, with a quick
+glance, "he may--I say he may--be passing by another name--Paul
+something else, for example."
+
+"Assuredly--certainly--yes--yes," Hugh Ritson mumbled. His all but
+impenetrable calm was gone.
+
+They reached the front of the house, and stood in a paved court-yard. It
+was the home of the Ritsons, known as the Ghyll, a long Cumbrian
+homestead of gray stone and green slate. A lazy curl of smoke was
+winding up from one chimney through the clear air. A gossamer net of the
+tangled boughs of a slim brier-rose hung over the face of a broad porch,
+and at that moment a butterfly flitted through it. The chattering of
+geese came from behind.
+
+"Robert Lowther was the father of Grace Ormerod's child?" said Hugh
+Ritson, vacantly.
+
+"The father of her son Paul."
+
+"And Greta is his daughter? Is that how it goes?"
+
+"That is so--and half-sister to Paul."
+
+Hugh Ritson raised his eyes to Mr. Bonnithorne's face.
+
+"And of what age would Paul Lowther be now?"
+
+"Well, older than you, certainly. Perhaps as old as--yes, perhaps as
+old--fully as old as your brother."
+
+Hugh Ritson's infirm foot trailed heavily on the stones. His lips
+quivered. For a moment he seemed to be rapt. Then he swung about and
+muttered:
+
+"Tut! it isn't within belief. Thrusted home, it might betray a man,
+Heaven only knows how deeply."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne looked up inquiringly.
+
+"Pardon me; I fail, as you say, to catch the relevance."
+
+"Mr. Bonnithorne," said Hugh Ritson, holding out his hand, "you and I
+have been good friends, have we not?"
+
+"Oh, the best of friends."
+
+"At your leisure, when I have had time to think of this, let us discuss
+it further."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne smiled assent.
+
+"And meantime," he said, softly, "let the unhappy little being we spoke
+of be sent away."
+
+Hugh Ritson's eyes fell, and his voice deepened.
+
+"Poor little soul--I'm sorry--very."
+
+"As for Greta and her lover--well--"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head significantly, and left his words
+unfinished.
+
+"My father is crossing the stack-yard," said Hugh Ritson. "You shall see
+him in good time. Come this way."
+
+The shadows were lengthening in the valley. A purple belt was stretching
+across the distant hills, and a dark-blue tint was nestling under the
+eaves. A solitary crow flew across the sky, and cawed out its guttural
+note. Its shadow fell, as it passed, on two elderly people who were
+coming into the court-yard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+"It's time for that laal Mr. Bonnithorne to be here," said Allan Ritson.
+
+"Why did you send for him?" asked Mrs. Ritson, in the low tone that was
+natural to her.
+
+"To get that matter about the will off my mind. It'll be one thing less
+to think about, and it has boddert me sair and lang."
+
+Allan spoke with the shuffling reserve of a man to whose secret
+communings a painful idea had been too long familiar. In the effort to
+cast off the unwelcome and secret associate, there was a show of
+emancipation which, as an acute observer might see, was more assumed
+than real.
+
+Mrs. Ritson made no terms with the affectation of indifference. Her
+grave face became yet more grave, and her soft voice grew softer as she
+said:
+
+"And if when it is settled and done the cloud would break that has hung
+over our lives, then all would be well. But that can never be."
+
+Allan tossed his head aside, and made pretense to smile; but no gleam of
+sunshine on his cornfields was ever chased so closely by the line of
+dark shadow as his smile by the frown that followed.
+
+"Come, worrit thysel' na' mair about it! When I've made my will, and put
+Paul on the same footing with t'other lad, who knows owt mair nor we
+choose to tell?"
+
+Mrs. Ritson glanced into his face with a look of sad reproach.
+
+"Heaven knows, Allan," she said; "and the dark cloud still gathers for
+us there."
+
+The old man took a step or two on the gravel path, and dropped his gray
+head. His voice deepened:
+
+"Tha says reet, mother," he said, "tha says reet. Ey, it saddens my auld
+days--and thine forby!" He took a step or two more, and added: "And na
+lawyer can shak' it off now. Nay, nay, never now. Weel, mother, our sky
+has been lang owerkessen; but, mind ye," lifting his face and voice
+together, "we've had gude crops if we tholed some thistles."
+
+"Yes, we've had happy days, too," said Mrs. Ritson.
+
+At that moment there came from across the vale the shouts of the
+merrymakers and the music of a fiddle. Allan Ritson lifted his head,
+nodded it aside jauntily, and smiled feebly through the mist that was
+gathering about his eyes.
+
+"There they are--wrestling and jumping. I mind me when there was scarce
+a man in Cummerlan' could give me the cross-buttock. That's many a lang
+year agone, though. And now our Paul can manish most on 'em--that he
+can."
+
+The fiddle was playing a country dance. The old man listened; his face
+broadened, he lifted a leg jauntily, and gave a sweep of one arm.
+
+Just then there came through the air a peal of happy laughter. It was
+the same heart's music that Hugh Ritson and Mr. Bonnithorne had heard in
+the road. Allan's face brightened, and his voice had only the faintest
+crack in it as he said:
+
+"That's Greta's laugh! It is for sure! What a heartsome lass yon is! I
+like a heartsome lassie--a merrie touch, and gone!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Ritson, soberly; "Greta is a winsome girl."
+
+It was hardly spoken when a young girl bounded down upon them, almost
+breathless, yet laughing in gusts, turning her head over her shoulder
+and shouting:
+
+"Hurrah! Beaten, sir! Hurrah!"
+
+It was Greta Lowther; twenty years of age, with fair hair, quick brown
+eyes, a sunny face lighted up with youthful animation, a swift smile on
+her parted lips--an English wild white rose.
+
+"I've beaten him," she said. "He challenged me to cross Windybrowe while
+he ran round the Bowder stone, but I got to the lonnin before he had
+crossed the bridge."
+
+Then, running to the corner of the lane, she plucked off her straw hat,
+waved it about her head, and shouted again in an accent of triumph:
+
+"Hurrah! hurrah! beaten, sir, beaten!"
+
+Paul Ritson came running down the fell in strides of two yards apiece.
+
+"Oh, you young rogue--you cheated!" he cried, coming to a stand and
+catching his breath.
+
+"Cheated?" said Greta, in a tone of dire amazement.
+
+"You bargained to touch the beacon on the top of Windybrowe, and you
+didn't go within a hundred yards of it."
+
+"The beacon? On Windybrowe?" said the girl, and wondrous perplexity
+shone in her lovely eyes.
+
+Paul wiped his brow, and shook his head and his finger with mock gravity
+at the beautiful cheat.
+
+"Now, Greta, now--now--gently--"
+
+Greta looked around with the bewildered gaze of a lost lambkin.
+
+"Mother," said Paul, "she stole a march on me."
+
+"He was the thief, Mrs. Ritson; you believe me, don't you?"
+
+"Me! why I never stole anything in my life--save one thing."
+
+"And what was that, pray?" said Greta, with another mighty innocent
+look.
+
+Paul crept up to her side and whispered something over her shoulder,
+whereupon she eyed him largely, and said with a quick smile:
+
+"You don't say so! But please don't be too certain of it. I'm sure I
+never heard of that theft."
+
+"Then here's a theft you shall hear of," said Paul, throwing one arm
+about her neck and tipping up her chin.
+
+There was a sudden gleam of rosy, roguish lips. Old Allan, with mischief
+dancing in his eyes, pretended to recover them from a more distant
+sight.
+
+"Er--why, what's that?" he said; "the sneck of a gate, eh?"
+
+Greta drew herself up.
+
+"How can you--and all the people looking--they might really think that
+we were--we were--"
+
+Paul came behind, put his head over one shoulder, and said:
+
+"And we're not, are we?"
+
+"They're weel matched, mother, eh?" said Allan, turning to his wife.
+"They're marra-to-bran, as folks say. Greta, he's a girt booby, isn't
+he?"
+
+Greta stepped up to the old man, and with a familiar gesture laid a hand
+on his arm. At the same moment Paul came to his side. Allan tapped his
+son on the back.
+
+"Thou girt lang booby," he said, and laughed heartily. All the shadows
+that had hung over him were gone. "And how's Parson Christian?" he asked
+in another tone.
+
+"Well, quite well, and as dear an old soul as ever," said Greta.
+
+"He's father and mother to thee baith, my lass. I never knew thy awn
+father. He was dead and gone before we coom't to these parts. And thy
+mother, too, God bless her! she's dead and gone now. But if this lad of
+mine, this Paul, this girt lang--Ah, and here's Mr. Bonnithorne, and
+Hughie, too."
+
+The return of the lawyer and Hugh Ritson abridged the threat of
+punishment that seemed to hang on the old man's lips.
+
+Hugh Ritson's lifted eyes had comprehended everything. The girl leaning
+over his father's arm; the pure, smooth cheeks close to the swarthy,
+weather-beaten, comfortable old face; the soft gaze upward full of
+feeling; the half-open lips and the teeth like pearls; then the glance
+round, half of mockery, half of protest, altogether of unconquerable
+love, to where Paul Ritson stood, his eyes just breaking into a smile;
+the head, the neck, the arms, the bosom still heaving gently after the
+race; the light loose costume--Hugh Ritson saw it all, and his heart
+beat fast. His pale face whitened at that moment, and his infirm foot
+trailed heavily on the gravel.
+
+Allan shook hands with Mr. Bonnithorne, and then turned to his sons.
+"Come, you two lads have not been gude friends latterly, and that's a
+sair grief baith to your mother and me. You're not made in the same mold
+seemingly. But you must mak' up your fratch, my lads, for your auld
+folks' sake, if nowt else."
+
+At this he stretched out both arms, as if with the intention of joining
+their hands. Hugh made a gesture of protestation.
+
+"I have no quarrel to make up," he said, and turned aside.
+
+Paul held out his hand. "Shake hands, Hugh," he said. Hugh took the
+proffered hand with unresponsive coldness.
+
+Paul glanced into his brother's face a moment, and said:
+
+"What's the use of breeding malice? It's a sort of live stock that's not
+worth its fodder, and it eats up everything."
+
+There was a scarcely perceptible curl on Hugh Ritson's lip, but he
+turned silently away. With head on his breast, he walked toward the
+porch.
+
+"Stop!"
+
+It was old Allan's voice. The deep tone betrayed the anger that was
+choking him. His face was flushed, his eyes were stern, his lips
+trembled.
+
+"Come back and shak' hands wi' thy brother reet."
+
+Hugh Ritson faced about, leaning heavily on his infirm foot.
+
+"Why to-day more than yesterday or to-morrow?" he said, calmly.
+
+"Come back, I tell thee!" shouted the old man more hotly.
+
+Hugh maintained his hold of himself, and said in a quiet and even voice,
+"I am no longer a child."
+
+"Then bear thysel' like a man--not like a whipped hound."
+
+The young man shuddered secretly from head to foot. His eyes flashed for
+an instant. Then, recovering his self-control, he said:
+
+"Even a dog would resent such language, sir."
+
+Greta had dropped aside from the painful scene, and for a moment Hugh
+Ritson's eyes followed her.
+
+"I'll have no sec worriment in my house," shouted the old man in a
+broken voice. "Those that live here must live at peace. Those that want
+war must go."
+
+Hugh Ritson could bear up no longer.
+
+"And what is your house to me, sir? What has it done for me? The world
+is wide."
+
+Old Allan was confounded. Silent, dumb, with great staring eyes, he
+looked round into the faces of those about him. Then in thick, choking
+tones he shouted:
+
+"Shak' thy brother's hand, or thou'rt no brother of his."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Hugh very quietly.
+
+"Shak' hands, I tell thee." The old man's fists were clinched. His body
+quivered in every limb.
+
+His son's lips were firmly set; he made no answer.
+
+The old man snatched from Mr. Bonnithorne the stick he carried. At this
+Hugh lifted his eyes sharply until they met the eyes of his father.
+Allan was transfixed. The stick fell from his hand. Then Hugh Ritson
+halted into the house.
+
+"Come back, come back ... my boy ... Hughie ... come back!" the old man
+sobbed out. But there was no reply.
+
+"Allan, be patient, forgive him; he will ask your pardon," said Mrs.
+Ritson.
+
+Paul and Greta had stolen away. The old man was now speechless, and his
+eyes, bent on the ground, swam with tears.
+
+"All will be well, please God," said Mrs. Ritson. "Remember, he is
+sorely tried, poor boy. He expected you to do something for him.'"
+
+"And I meant to, I meant to--that I did," the father answered in a
+broken cry.
+
+"But you've put it off, and off, Allan--- like everything else."
+
+Allan lifted his hazy eyes from the ground, and looked into his wife's
+face. "If it had been t'other lad I could have borne it maybe," he said,
+feelingly.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne, standing aside, had been plowing the gravel with one
+foot. He now raised his eyes, and said: "And yet, Mr. Ritson, folk say
+that you have always shown most favor to your eldest son."
+
+The old man's gaze rested on the lawyer for a moment, but he did not
+speak at once, and there was an awkward silence.
+
+"I've summat to say to Mr. Bonnithorne, mother," said the statesman. He
+was quieter now. Mrs. Ritson stepped into the house.
+
+Allan Ritson and the lawyer followed her, going into a little parlor to
+the right of the porch. It was a quaint room, full of the odor of a
+by-gone time. The floor was of polished black oak covered with skins;
+the ceiling was paneled oak and had a paneled beam. Bright oak
+cupboards, their fronts carved with rude figures, were set into the
+walls, which were whitened, and bore one illuminated text and three
+prints in black and white. The furniture was heavy and old. There was a
+spinning-wheel under the wide window-board. A bluebottle buzzed about
+the ceiling; a slant of sunlight crossed the floor. The men sat down.
+
+"I sent for thee to mak' my will, Mr. Bonnithorne," said the old man.
+
+The lawyer smiled.
+
+"It is an old maxim that delay in affairs of law is a candle that burns
+in the daytime; when the night comes it is burned to the socket."
+
+Old Allan took little heed of the sentiment.
+
+"Ey," he said, "but there's mair nor common 'casion for it in my case."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne was instantly on the alert.
+
+"And what is your especial reason?" he asked.
+
+Allan's mind seemed to wander. He stood silent for a moment, and then
+said slowly, as if laboring with thought and phrase:
+
+"Weel, tha must know ... I scarce know how to tell thee ... Weel, my
+eldest son, Paul, as they call him--"
+
+The old man stopped, and his manner grew sullen. Mr. Bonnithorne came to
+his help.
+
+"Yes, I am all attention--your eldest son--"
+
+"He is--he is--"
+
+The door opened and Mrs. Ritson entered the room, followed close by the
+Laird Fisher.
+
+"Mr. Ritson, your sheep, them black-faced herdwicks on Hindscarth, have
+broke the fences, and the red drift of 'em is down in the barrowmouth of
+the pass," said the charcoal-burner.
+
+The statesman got on his feet.
+
+"I must gang away at once," he said. "Mr. Bonnithorne, I must put thee
+off, or maybe I'll lose fifty head of sheep down in the ghyll."
+
+"I made so bold as to tell ye, for I reckon we'll have all maks of
+weather yet."
+
+"That's reet, Mattha; and reet neighborly forby. I'll slip away after
+thee in a thumb's snitting."
+
+The Laird Fisher went out.
+
+"Can ye bide here for me until eight o'clock to-neet, Mr. Bonnithorne?"
+
+There was some vexation written on the lawyer's face, but he answered
+with meekness:
+
+"I am always at your service, Mr. Ritson. I can return at eight."
+
+"Verra good" Then, turning to Mrs. Ritson, "Give friend Bonnithorne a
+bite o' summat," said Allan, and he followed the charcoal-burner. Out in
+the court-yard he called the dogs. "Hey howe! hey howe! Bright! Laddie!
+Come boys; come, boys, te-lick, te-smack!"
+
+He put his head in at the door of an out-house and shouted, "Reuben,
+wheriver ista? Come thy ways quick, and bring the lad!"
+
+In another moment a young shepherd and a cowherd, surrounded by three or
+four sheep-dogs, joined Allan Ritson in the court-yard.
+
+"Dusta gang back to the fell, Mattha?" said the statesman.
+
+"Nay; I's done for the day. I'm away home."
+
+"Good-neet, and thank."
+
+Then the troop disappeared down the lonnin--the men calling, the dogs
+barking.
+
+In walking through the hall Mr. Bonnithorne encountered Hugh Ritson, who
+was passing out of the house, his face very hard, his head much bent.
+
+"Would you," said the lawyer, "like to know the business on which I have
+been called here?"
+
+Hugh Ritson did not immediately raise his eyes.
+
+"To make his will," added Mr. Bonnithorne, not waiting for an answer.
+
+Then Hugh Ritson's eyes were lifted; there was one flash of
+intelligence; after that the young man went out without a word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Hugh Ritson was seven-and-twenty. His clean-shaven face was long, pale,
+and intellectual; his nose was wide at the bridge and full at the
+nostrils; he had firm-set lips, large vehement eyes, and a broad
+forehead, with hair of dark auburn parted down the middle and falling in
+thin waves on the temples. The expression of the physiognomy in repose
+was one of pain, and, in action, of power; the effect of the whole was
+not unlike that which is produced by the face of a high-bred horse, with
+its deep eyes and dilated nostrils. He was barely above medium height,
+and his figure was almost delicate. When he spoke his voice startled
+you--it was so low and deep to come from that slight frame. His
+lameness, which was slight, was due to a long-standing infirmity of the
+hip.
+
+As second son of a Cumbrian statesman, whose estate consisted chiefly of
+land, he expected but little from his father, and had been trained in
+the profession of a mining engineer. After spending a few months at the
+iron mines of Cleator, he had removed to London at twenty-two, and
+enrolled himself as a student of the Mining College in Jermyn Street.
+There he had spent four years, sharing the chambers of a young barrister
+in the Temple Gardens. His London career was uneventful. Taciturn in
+manner, he made few friends. His mind had a tendency toward
+contemplative inactivity. Of physical energy he had very little, and
+this may have been partly due to his infirmity. Late at night he would
+walk alone in the Strand: the teeming life of the city, and the mystery
+of its silence after midnight, had a strong fascination for him. In
+these rambles he came to know some of the strangest and oddest of the
+rags and rinsings of humanity: among them a Persian nobleman of the late
+shah's household, who kept a small tobacco-shop at the corner of a
+by-street, and an old French exile, once of the court of Louis
+Phillippe, who sold the halfpenny papers. At other times he went out
+hardly at all, and was rarely invited.
+
+Only the housemate, who saw him at all times and in many moods, seemed
+to suspect that beneath that cold exterior there lay an ardent nature.
+But he himself knew how strong was the tide of his passion. He could
+never look a beautiful woman in the face but his pulse beat high, and he
+felt almost faint. Yet strong as his passion was, his will was no less
+strong. He put a check on himself, and during his four years in London
+contrived successfully to dam up the flood that was secretly
+threatening him.
+
+At six-and-twenty he returned to Cumberland, having some grounds for
+believing that his father intended to find him the means of mining for
+himself. A year had now passed, and nothing had been done. He was
+growing sick with hope deferred. His elder brother, Paul, had spent his
+life on the land, and it was always understood that in due course he
+would inherit it. That at least was the prospect which Hugh Ritson had
+in view, though no prospective arrangement had been made. Week followed
+week, and month followed month, and his heart grew bitter. He had almost
+decided to end this waiting. The day would come when he could bear it
+not longer, and then he would cut adrift.
+
+An accidental circumstance was the cause of his irresolution. He used to
+walk frequently on the moss where the Laird Fisher sunk his shaft. In
+the beck that ran close to the disused headgear he would wade for an
+hour early in the summer morning. One day he saw the old laird's
+daughter washing linen at the beck-side. He remembered her as a pretty,
+prattling thing of ten or eleven. She was now a girl of eighteen, with a
+pure face, a timid manner, and an air that was neither that of a woman
+nor of a child. Her mother was lately dead, her father spent most of his
+days on the fell (some of his nights also when the charcoal was
+burning), and she was much alone. Hugh Ritson liked her gentle replies
+and her few simple questions. So it came about that he would look for
+her in the mornings, and be disappointed if he did not catch sight of
+her good young face. Himself a silent man, he liked to listen to the
+girl's modest, unconnected talk. His stern eyes would soften at such
+times to a sort of caressing expression. This went on for months, and in
+that solitude no idle tongue was set to wag. At length Hugh Ritson
+perceived that the girl's heart was touched. If he came late he found
+her leaning over the gate, her eyes bent down among the mountain grasses
+at her feet, and her cheeks colored by a red glow. It is unnecessary to
+go further. The girl gave herself up to him with her whole heart and
+soul, and he--well, he found the bulwarks with which he had surrounded
+himself were ruined and down.
+
+Then the awakening came, and Hugh learned too late that he had not loved
+the simple child, by realizing that with all the ardor of his restrained
+but passionate nature he loved another woman.
+
+So much for the first complication in the tragedy of this man's life.
+
+The second complication was new to his consciousness, and it was at this
+moment conspiring with the first to lure him to consequences that are
+now to be related. The story which Mr. Bonnithorne had told of the
+legacy left by Greta's father to a son by one Grace Ormerod had come to
+him at a time when, owing to disappointment and chagrin, he was
+peculiarly liable to the temptation of any "honest trifle" that pointed
+the way he wished to go. If the Grace Ormerod who married Lowther had
+indeed been his own mother, then--a thousand to one--Paul was Lowther's
+son. If Paul was Lowther's son he was also half brother of Greta. If
+Paul was not the son of Allan Ritson, then he himself, Hugh Ritson, was
+his father's heir.
+
+In the present whirlwind of feeling he did not inquire too closely into
+the pros and cons of probability. Enough that evidence seemed to be with
+him, and that it transformed the world in his view.
+
+Perhaps the first result of this transformation was that he
+unconsciously assumed a different attitude toward the unhappy passage in
+his life wherein Mercy Fisher was chiefly concerned. What his feeling
+was before Mr. Bonnithorne's revelation, we have already seen. Now the
+sentiment that made much of such an "accident" was fit only for a
+"turgid melodrama," and the idea of "atonement" by "marriage" was the
+mock heroic of those "great lovers of noble histories," the spectators
+who applaud it from the pit.
+
+When he passed Mr. Bonnithorne in the hall at the Ghyll he was on his
+way to the cottage of the Laird Fisher. He saw in the road ahead of him
+the group which included his father and the charcoal-burner, and to
+avoid them he cut across the breast of the Eel Crags. After a sharp
+walk of a mile he came to a little white-washed house that stood near
+the head of Newlands, almost under the bridge that crosses the fall. It
+was a sweet place in a great solitude, where the silence was broken only
+by the tumbling waters, the cooing of pigeons on the roof, and the
+twittering of ringouzels by the side of the torrent. The air was fresh
+with the smell of new peat. There was a wedge-shaped garden in front,
+and it was encompassed by chestnut-trees. As Hugh Ritson drew near he
+noticed that a squirrel crept from the fork of one of these trees. The
+little creature rocked itself on the thin end of a swaying branch,
+plucking sometimes at the drooping fan of the chestnut, and sometimes at
+the prickly shell of its pendulous nut. When he opened the little gate
+Hugh Ritson observed that a cat sat sedately behind the trunk of that
+tree, glancing up at intervals at the sporting squirrel in her moving
+seat.
+
+As he entered the garden Mercy was crossing it with a pail of water just
+raised from the well. She had seen him, and now tried to pass into the
+house. He stepped before her and she set down the pail. Her head was
+held very low, and her cheeks were deeply flushed.
+
+"Mercy," he said, "it is all arranged. Mr. Bonnithorne will see you into
+the train this evening, and when you get to your journey's end the
+person I spoke of will meet you."
+
+The girl lifted her eyes beseechingly to his face.
+
+"Not to-day, Hugh," she said in a broken whisper; "let me stay until
+to-morrow."
+
+He regarded her for a moment with a steadfast look, and when he spoke
+again his voice fell on her ear like the clank of a chain.
+
+"The journey has to be made. Every week's delay increases the danger."
+
+The girl's eyes fell again, and the tears began to drop from them on to
+the brown arms that she had clasped in front.
+
+"Come," he said in a softer tone, "the train starts in an hour. Your
+father is not yet home from the pit, and most of the dalespeople are at
+the sports. So much the better. Put on your cloak and hat and take the
+fell path to the Coledaie road-ends. There Mr. Bonnithorne will meet
+you."
+
+The girl's tears were flowing fast, though she bit her lip and struggled
+to check them.
+
+"Come, now, come; you know this was of your own choice."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I never thought it would be so hard to go," she said at length.
+
+He smiled feebly, and tried a more rallying tone.
+
+"You are not going for life. You will come back safe and happy."
+
+The words thrilled her through and through. Her clasped hands trembled
+visibly, and her fingers clutched them with a convulsive movement. After
+awhile she was calmer, and said quietly:
+
+"No, I'll never come back--I know that quite well." And her head dropped
+on her breast and she felt sick at heart. "I'll have to say good-bye to
+everything. There were Betsy Jackson's children--I kissed them all this
+morning, and never said why--little Willy, he seemed to know, dear
+little fellow, and cried so bitterly."
+
+The memories of these incidents touched to overflowing the springs of
+love in the girl's simple soul, and the bubbling child-voice was drowned
+in sobs.
+
+The man stood with a smile of pain on his face. He came close, and
+brushed away her tears, and touched her drooping head with a gesture of
+protestation.
+
+Mercy regained her voice.
+
+"And then there's your mother," she said, "and I can't say good-bye to
+her, and my poor father, and I daren't tell him--"
+
+Hugh stamped on the path impatiently.
+
+"Come, come, Mercy, don't be foolish."
+
+The girl lifted to his the good young face that had once Been bonny as
+the day and was now pale with weeping and drawn down with grief. She
+took him by the coat, and then, by an impulse which she seemed unable to
+resist, threw one arm about his neck, and raised her face to his until
+their lips all but touched, and their eyes met in a steadfast gaze.
+
+"Hugh," she said, passionately, "are you sure that you love me well
+enough to think of me when I am gone?--are you quite, quite sure?"
+
+"Yes, yes; be sure of that," he said, gently.
+
+He disengaged her arm.
+
+"And will you come and fetch me after--after--"
+
+She could not say the word. He smiled and answered, "Why, yes, yes."
+
+Her fingers trembled and clung together; her head fell; her cheeks were
+aglow.
+
+"Why, of course." He smiled again, as if in deprecation of so much
+child-like earnestness; then put his arm about the girl's shoulder,
+dropped his voice to a tone of mingled compassion and affection, and
+said, as he lifted the brightening face to his, "There, there--now go
+off and make ready."
+
+The girl brushed her tears away vigorously, and looked half ashamed and
+half enchanted.
+
+"I'm going."
+
+"That's a good little girl."
+
+How the sunshine came back at the sound of his words!
+
+"Good-bye for the present, Mercy--only for the present, you know."
+
+But how the shadow pursued the sunshine after all!
+
+Hugh saw the tears gathering again in the lucent eyes, and came back a
+step.
+
+"There--a smile--just one little smile!" She smiled through her tears.
+"There--there--that's a dear little Mercy. Good-day; good-bye."
+
+Hugh turned on his heel and walked sharply away. As he passed out
+through the gate he could not help observing that the cat from the foot
+of the chestnut-tree was walking stealthily off, with something like a
+dawning smile on its whiskered face, and the brush of the squirrel
+between its teeth.
+
+Hugh Ritson had gained his end, and yet he felt more crushed than at the
+darkest moment of defeat. He had conquered his own manhood; and now he
+crept away from the scene of his triumph with a sense of utter
+abasement. When he had talked with Mr. Bonnithorne it was with a
+feeling of the meanness of the folly in which he was involved; and if
+any sentiment touching the girl's situation was strong upon him it was
+closely bound up with a personal view of the degradation that might come
+of a man's humiliating unwisdom. The very conventionality of his folly
+had irked him. But its cowardice was now uppermost. That a man should
+enter into warfare with a woman on unequal terms, and win by cajolery
+and deceit, was more than cruel; it was brutal. He could have borne even
+this hard saying so far as it concerned the woman's suffering, but for
+the reflection that it made the man something worse than a coxcomb in
+his own eyes.
+
+The day was now far spent; the brilliant sun had dipped behind
+Grisedale, and left a ridge of dark fells in the west. On the east the
+green sides of Cat Bells and the Eel Crags were yellow at the summit,
+where the hills held their last commerce with the hidden sun. Not a
+breath of wind; not the rustle of a leaf; the valley lay still, save for
+the echoing voices of the merrymakers in the booth below. The sky
+overhead was blue, but a dark cloud, like the hulk of a ship, had
+anchored lately to the north.
+
+Hugh Ritson took the valley road back to Ghyll. He was visibly
+perturbed; he walked with head much bent, stopped suddenly at times,
+then snatched impetuously at the trailing bushes, and passed on. When he
+was under Hindscarth, the sharp yap of dogs, followed by the bleat of
+unseen sheep, caused him to look up, and he saw a group of men, like
+emmets creeping on a dark bowlder, moving over a ridge of shelving rock.
+
+There was a slight spasm of his features at that moment, and his foot
+trailed more heavily as he went on. At a twist of the road he passed the
+Laird Fisher. The old man looked less melancholy than usual. It was as
+if the familiar sorrow sat a little more lightly to-night on the
+half-ruined creature.
+
+"Good-neet to you, sir, and how fend ye?" he said almost cheerily.
+
+Hugh Ritson responded briefly.
+
+"So you're not sleeping on the fell to-night, Matthew?" and as he spoke
+his eyes wandered toward the fell road.
+
+"Nay; I's not firing to-neet, for sure; my daughter is expecting me."
+
+Hugh's eyes were now fixed intently on the road that crossed the foot of
+the fell to the west. The charcoal-burner was moving off, and, following
+at the same moment the upward direction of Hugh Ritson's gaze, he said:
+
+"It's a baddish place yon, where your father is with Reuben and the lad,
+and it's baddish weather that is coming, too--look at yon black cloud
+over Walna Scar."
+
+Then for an instant there was embarrassment in Hugh Ritson's eyes, and
+he answered in a faltering commonplace.
+
+"Ways me; but I must slip away home, sir; my laal lass will be weary
+waiting. Good-neet to you, sir; good-neet."
+
+"Good-night, Matthew, and God help you," said Hugh in a tone of
+startling earnestness, his eyes turned away.
+
+He had walked half a mile further, and reached the lonnin that led to
+the Ghyll, when he was almost overrun by Greta Lowther, who came
+tripping out of the gate of a meadow, her bonnet swinging over her arm,
+her soft, wavy hair floating over her white forehead, her cheeks colored
+with a warm glow, a roguish light in her eyes, and laughter on the point
+of bubbling out of her lips.
+
+Greta had just given Paul Ritson the slip. There was a thicket in the
+field she had crossed, and it was covered with wild roses, white and
+red. Through the heart of it there rippled a tiny streak of water that
+was amber-tinted from the round shingle in its bed. The trunk of an old
+beech lay across it for ford or bridge. Underfoot were the sedge and
+moss; overhead the thick boughs and the roses; in the air, the odor of
+hay and the songs of birds. And Paul, the cunning rascal, would have
+tempted Greta into this solitude; but she was too shrewd, the wise
+little woman, to-be so easily trapped. Pretending to follow him in
+ignorance of his manifest design, she tripped back on tiptoe, and fled
+away like a lapwing over the noiseless grass.
+
+When Greta met Hugh Ritson she was saying to herself, of Paul in
+particular, and of his sex in general: "What dear, simple, unsuspecting,
+trustful creatures they are!" Then she drew up sharply, "Ah, Hugh!"
+
+"How happy you look, Greta!" he said, fixing his eyes upon her.
+
+A new light brightened her sunny face. "Not happier than I feel," she
+answered. She swung the arm over which the bonnet hung; the heaving of
+her breast showed the mold of her early womanhood.
+
+Hugh Ritson's mind had for the last half hour brooded over many a good
+purpose, but not one of them was now left.
+
+"You witnessed a painful scene to-day," he said, with some hesitation.
+"Be sure it was no less painful to me because you were there to see it."
+
+"Oh, I was so sorry," said Greta, impetuously. "You mean with your
+father?"
+
+Hugh bent his head slightly. "It was inevitable--I know that full
+well--but for my share in it I ask your pardon."
+
+"That is nothing," she said; "but you took your father too seriously."
+
+"I took him at his word--that was all."
+
+"But the dear old man meant nothing, and you meant very much. He only
+wanted to abuse you a little, and perhaps frighten you, and shake his
+stick at you, and then love you all the better for it."
+
+"You may be right, Greta. Among the whims of nature there is that of
+making such human contradictions; but, as you say, I take things
+seriously--everything--life itself."
+
+He paused, and there was a slight trembling of the lip.
+
+"Besides," he went on in another tone, "it has been always so. Since our
+childhood--my brother's and mine--there has not been much paternal
+tenderness wasted on me. I can hardly expect it now."
+
+"Surely that must be a morbid fancy," Greta said in a distressed tone.
+The light was dying out of her eyes. She made one quick glance downward
+to where Hugh Ritson's infirm foot trailed on the road, and then, in an
+instant of recovered consciousness, she glanced up, now confused and
+embarrassed, into his face.
+
+She was too late; he had read her thought. A faint smile parted her
+lips; and the light of his own eyes was cold.
+
+"No; not that," he said; "I ask no pity in that regard--and need none.
+Nature has given my brother a physique that would shame a Greek statue,
+but he and I are quits--perhaps more than quits."
+
+He made a hard smile, and she flushed deep with shame of having her
+thought read.
+
+"I am sorry if I conveyed that," she said, slowly. "It must have been
+quite unwittingly. I was thinking of your mother. She is so good and
+tender to everybody. Why, she is the angel of the country-side. Do you
+know what name they've given her?"
+
+Hugh shook his head.
+
+"Saint Grace! Parson Christian told me--it seems it was my own dear
+mother who christened her."
+
+"Nevertheless, there has not been much to sweeten my life, Greta," he
+said.
+
+His voice arrested her; it was charged with unusual feeling. She made no
+answer, and they began to walk toward the house.
+
+After a few steps Greta remembered the trick that she had played on
+Paul, and craned her beautiful neck to see over the stone cobble-hedge
+into the field where she had left him.
+
+Hugh observed her intently.
+
+"I hear that you have decided. Is it so, Greta?" he said.
+
+"Decided what?" she asked, coloring again.
+
+He also colored slightly, and answered with a strained quietness.
+
+"To marry my brother."
+
+"If he wishes it--I suppose he does--he says so, you know."
+
+Hugh looked earnestly into the girl's glowing face, and said with
+deliberation:
+
+"Greta, perhaps there are reasons why you should not marry Paul."
+
+"What reasons?"
+
+He did not reply at once, and she repeated her question. Then he said in
+a strange tone:
+
+"Just and lawful impediments, as they say."
+
+Greta's eyes opened wide in undisguised amazement.
+
+"Impossible--you cannot mean it," she said with her customary
+impetuosity. She glanced into Hugh's face, and misread what she saw
+there. Then she began to laugh; at first lightly, afterward rather
+boisterously, and said with head averted, and almost as if talking to
+herself, "No, no; he is nothing to me but the man I love."
+
+"Do you then love him?"
+
+Greta started.
+
+"Do you ask?" she said. The amazement in the wide eyes had deepened to a
+look of rapture. "Love him?" she said; "better than all the world
+beside." The girl was lifted out of herself. "You are to be my brother,
+Hugh, and I need not fear to speak so."
+
+She swung her bonnet on her arm, just to preserve composure by some
+distracting exercise.
+
+Hugh Ritson stopped, and his face softened. It was a perplexing smile
+that sat on his features. While he had talked with Greta there had run
+through his mind, as a painful undertone, the thought of Mercy Fisher.
+He had now dismissed the last of his qualms respecting her. To be tied
+down for life to a mindless piece of physical prettiness--what man of
+brains could bear it? He had yielded to a natural impulse--true! That
+moment of temptation threatened painful consequences--still true! What
+then? Nothing! Was the dead fruit to hang about his neck forever?
+Tut!--all natural law was against it. Had he not said that he was above
+prejudice? So was he above the maudlin sentiment of the "great lovers of
+noble histories." The sophistry grew apace with Greta's beautiful
+countenance before him. Catching at her last word, he said:
+
+"Your brother--yes. But did you never guess that I could have wished
+another name?"
+
+The look of amazement returned to her eyes; he saw it and went on:
+
+"Is it possible that you have not read my secret?"
+
+"What secret?" she said in a half-smothered voice.
+
+"Greta, if your love had been great love, you must have read my secret
+just as I have read yours." In a low tone he continued: "Long ago I knew
+that you loved, or thought you loved, my brother. I saw it before he had
+seen it--before you had realized it."
+
+The red glow colored her cheeks more deeply than before. She had
+stopped, and he was tramping nervously backward and forward.
+
+"Greta," he said again, and he fixed his eyes entreatingly upon her,
+"what is the love that scarcely knows itself?--that is the love with
+which you love my brother. And what is the tame, timid passion of a man
+of no mind?--that is the love which he offers you. What is your love for
+him, or his for you?--what is it, can it be? Love is not love unless it
+is the love of true minds. That was said long ago, Greta, and how true
+it is!" He went on quickly, in a tone of dull irritation: "All other
+love is no better than lust. Greta, I understand you. It is not for a
+rude man like my brother to do so." Then in an eager voice he said:
+"Dearest, I bring you a love undreamed of among these country boors."
+
+"Country boors!" she repeated in a half-stifled whisper.
+
+He did not hear her. His vehement eyes swam, and he was dizzy.
+
+"Greta, dearest, I said there has been little in my life to sweeten it.
+Yet I am a man made to love and to be loved. My love for you has been
+mute for months; but it can be mute no longer. Perhaps I have had my own
+impediment, apart from our love for Paul. But that is all over now."
+
+His cheeks quivered, his lips trembled, his voice swelled, his nervous
+fingers were riveted to his palm. He approached her and took her hand.
+She seemed to be benumbed by strong feeling. She had stood as one
+transfixed, a slow paralysis of surprise laying hold of her faculties.
+But at his touch her senses regained their mastery. She flung away his
+hand. Her breast heaved. In a voice charged with indignation, she said:
+
+"So this is what you mean! I understand you at last!"
+
+Huge Ritson fell back a pace.
+
+"Greta, hear me--hear me again!"
+
+But she had found her voice indeed.
+
+"Sir, you have outraged your brother's heart as surely as if at this
+moment I had been your brother's wife!"
+
+"Greta, think before you speak--think, I implore you!"
+
+"I have thought! I have thought of you as your sister might think, and
+spoken to you as my brother. Now I know how mean of soul you are!"
+
+Hugh broke in passionately:
+
+"For God's sake, stop! I am an unforgiving man."
+
+His nostrils quivered, every nerve vibrated.
+
+"Love? You never loved. If you knew what the word means you would die of
+shame where you stand this instant."
+
+Hugh lost all control.
+
+"I bid you beware!" he said in wrath and dismay.
+
+"And I bid you be silent!" said Greta, with an eloquent uplifting of the
+hand. "You offer your love to a pledged woman. It is only base love that
+is basely offered. It is bad coin, sir, and goes back dishonored."
+
+Hugh Ritson regained some self-command. The contractions were deep about
+his forehead, but he answered in an imperturbable voice:
+
+"You shall never marry my brother!"
+
+"I will--God willing!"
+
+"Then you shall marry him to your lifelong horror and disgrace."
+
+"That shall be as Heaven may order."
+
+"A boor--a hulking brute--a bas--"
+
+"Enough! I would rather marry a plowboy than such a gentleman as you!"
+
+Face to face, eye to eye, with panting breath and scornful looks, there
+they stood for one moment. Then Greta swung about and walked down the
+lonnin.
+
+Hugh Ritson's natural manner returned instantly. He looked after her
+without the change of a feature, and then turned quietly into the
+house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+There was a drowsy calm in the room where Mr. Bonnithorne sat at lunch.
+It was the little oak-bound parlor to the right, in which he had begun
+the conversation with old Allan Ritson that had been interrupted by the
+announcement of the Laird Fisher. Half of the window was thrown up, and
+the landscape framed by the sash lay still as a picture. The sun that
+had passed over Grisedale sent a deep glow from behind, and the woods
+beneath took a restful tone. Only the mountain-head was white where it
+towered into the sky and the silence.
+
+Mrs. Ritson entered and sat down. Her manner was meek almost to
+abjectness. She was elderly, but her face bore traces of the beauty she
+had enjoyed in youth. The lines had grown deep in it since then, and now
+the sadness of its expression was permanent. She wore an old-fashioned
+lavender gown, and there was a white silk scarf about her neck. Her
+voice was low and tremulous, yet eager, as if it were always
+questioning.
+
+With downcast head, and eyes bent on her lap, where her fingers twitched
+nervously as she knitted without cessation, she sat silent, or put meek
+questions to her guest.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne answered in smiles and speeches of six words apiece.
+Between each sparse reply he addressed himself afresh to his lunch with
+an appetite that was the reverse of sparse. All the while a subdued hum
+of many voices came up from the booth in the fields below.
+
+At length Mrs. Ritson's anxiety overcame the restraint of her manner.
+
+"Mr. Bonnithorne," she said, "do let the will be made to-night. Urge Mr.
+Ritson, when he returns, to admit of no further delay. He has many noble
+qualities, but procrastination is his fault. It has been ever so."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne paused with a glass half raised to his lips, and lifted
+his eyes instead.
+
+"Pardon me, madame," he said, with the customary smile which failed to
+disarm his words; "this is for certain reasons a subject I can hardly
+discuss with--with--- with a woman."
+
+And just then a peacock strutted through the court-yard, startling the
+still air with its empty scream.
+
+Mrs. Ritson colored deeply. Even modesty like hers had been put to a
+severe strain. But she dropped her eyes again, finished a row of
+stitches, rested the steel needle on her lip, and answered quietly:
+
+"Surely a woman may talk of what concerns her husband and her children."
+
+The great man had resumed his knife and fork.
+
+"Not necessarily," he said. "It is a strange and curious fact that there
+is one condition in which the law does not recognize the right of a
+woman to call her son her own."
+
+During this prolonged speech, Hugh Ritson, fresh from his interview with
+Greta Lowther, entered the room, and stretched himself on the couch.
+
+Mrs. Ritson, without shifting the determination of her gaze from the
+nervous fingers in her lap, said:
+
+"What condition?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne twisted slightly, and glanced significantly at Hugh as
+he answered:
+
+"The condition of illegitimacy."
+
+Something supercilious in the tone jarred on Mrs. Ritson's ear. She
+looked up from her knitting, and said:
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Bonnithorne placed his knife and fork with precision over his empty
+plate, used his napkin with deliberation, coughed slightly, and said: "I
+mean that the law denies the name of son to offspring that has been
+bastardized."
+
+Mrs. Ritson's face grew crimson, and she rose to her feet.
+
+"If so, the law is cruel and wicked," she said in a voice more tremulous
+with emotion.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne leaned languidly back in his chair, ejected a long "hem"
+from his overburdened chest, inserted his fingers in the armpits of his
+waistcoat, looked up, and said: "Odd, isn't it?"
+
+Unluckily for the full effect of Mr. Bonnithorne's subtle witticism,
+Paul Ritson, with Greta at his side, appeared in the door-way at the
+moment of its delivery. The manner more than the words had awakened his
+anger, and the significance of both he interpreted by his mother's
+agitated face. In two strides he stepped up to where the great man sat,
+even now all smiles and white teeth, and laid a powerful hand on his
+arm.
+
+"My friend," said Paul, lustily, "it might not be safe for you to speak
+to my mother again like that!"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne rose stiffly, and his shifty eyes looked into Paul's
+wrathful face.
+
+"Safe?" he echoed with emphasis.
+
+Paul, his lips compressed, bent his head, and at the same instant
+brought the other hand down on the table.
+
+Without speaking, Mr. Bonnithorne shuffled back into his seat. Mrs.
+Ritson, letting fall her knitting into her lap, sat and dropped her face
+into her hands. Paul took her by the arm, raised her up, and led her out
+of the room. As he did so, he passed the couch on which Hugh Ritson lay,
+and looked down with mingled anger and contempt into his brother's
+indifferent eyes.
+
+When the door closed behind them, Hugh Ritson and Mr. Bonnithorne rose
+together. There was a momentary gleam of mutual consciousness. Then
+instantly, suddenly, by one impulse, the two men joined hands across the
+table.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+The cloud that had hung over Walna Scar broke above the valley, and a
+heavy rain-storm, with low mutterings of distant thunder, drove the
+pleasure-people from the meadow to the booth. It was a long canvas tent
+with a drinking-bar at one end, and stalls in the corners for the sale
+of gingerbreads and gimcracks. The grass under it was trodden flat, and
+in patches the earth was bare and wet beneath the trapesing feet of the
+people. They were a mixed and curious company. In a ring that was
+cleared by an athletic plowman the fiddler-postman of Newlands, Tom o'
+Dint, was seated on a tub turned bottom up. He was a little man with
+bowed legs and feet a foot long.
+
+"Now, lasses, step forret! Dunnot be blate. Come along with ye, any as
+have springiness in them!"
+
+The rough invitation was accepted without too much timidity by several
+damsels dressed in gorgeous gowns and bonnets. Then up and down, one,
+two, three, cut and shuffle, cross, under, and up and down again.
+
+"I'll be mounting my best nag and comin' ower to Scara Crag and tappin'
+at your window some neet soon," whispered a young fellow to the girl he
+had just danced with.
+
+She laughed a little mockingly.
+
+"Your best nag, Willy?"
+
+"Weel--the maister's."
+
+She laughed again, and a sneer curled her lip. "You Colebank chaps are
+famous sweethearts, I hear. Fare-te-weel, Willy."
+
+And she twisted on her heel. He followed her up.
+
+"Dunnet gowl, Aggy. Mappen I'll be maister man mysel' soon."
+
+Aggy pushed her way through the crowd and disappeared.
+
+"She's packed him off wi' a flea in his ear," said an elderly man
+standing near.
+
+"Just like all the lave of them," said another, "snurling up her neb at
+a man for lack of gear. Why didna he brag of some rich uncle in
+Austrilly?"
+
+"Ey, and stuff her with all sorts of flaitchment and lies. Then all the
+lasses wad be glyming at him."
+
+The dance spun on.
+
+"Why, it's a regular upshot, as good as Carel fair," said one of the
+girls.
+
+"Bessie, you're reet clipt and heeled for sure," responded her
+companion.
+
+Bessie's eyes sparkled with delight at the lusty compliment paid to her
+dancing, and she opened her cloak to cool herself, and also to show the
+glittering locket that hung about her neck.
+
+"It's famish, this fashion," muttered the elderly cynic. "It must tak' a
+brave canny fortune."
+
+"Shaf, man, the country's puzzen'd round with pride," answered his
+gossip. "Lasses worked in the old days. Now they never do a hand's turn
+but washin' and bleachin' and starchin' and curlin' their polls."
+
+"Ey, ey, there's been na luck in the country since the women-folk began
+to think shame of their wark."
+
+The fiddler made a squeak on two notes that sounded like kiss-her, and
+from a corner of the booth there came a clamorous smack of lips.
+
+"I saw you sweetheartin' laal Bessie," said one of the fellows to
+another.
+
+"And I saw you last night cutteran sa soft in the meadow. Nay, dunnot
+look sa strange. I never say nowt, not I. Only yon mother of Aggy's,
+she's a famous fratcher, and dunnot you let her get wind. She brays the
+lasses, and mappen she'll bray somebody forby."
+
+While the dancing proceeded there was a noisy clatter of glasses and a
+mutter of voices in the neighborhood of the bar.
+
+"The varra crony one's fidgin to see! Gie us a shak' of thy daddle!"
+shouted a fellow with a face like a russet apple.
+
+"Come, Dick, let's bottom a quart together. Deil tak' the expense."
+
+"Why, man, and wherever hasta been since Whissen Monday?"
+
+"Weel, you see, I went to the fair and stood with a straw in my mouth,
+and the wives all came round, and one of them said, 'What wage do you
+ask, canny lad?' 'Five pounds ten,' I says. 'And what can you do?' she
+says. 'Do?' I says, 'anything from plowing to threshing and nicking a
+nag's tail,' I says. 'Come, be my man,' she says. But she was like to
+clem me, so I packed up my bits of duds and got my wage in my reet-hand
+breek pocket, and here I am."
+
+The dancing had finished, and a little group was gathered around the
+fiddler's tub.
+
+"Come thy ways; here's Tom o' Dint conjuring, and telling folk what they
+are thinking."
+
+"That's mair nor he could do for the numskulls as never think."
+
+"He bangs all the player-folk, does Tom."
+
+"Who's yon tatterdemalion flinging by the newspaper and bawling, 'The
+country's going to the dogs?'"
+
+"That's Grey Graham, setting folk by the lug with his blusteration."
+
+"Mess, lads, but he'd be a reet good Parli'ment man to threep about the
+nation."
+
+"Weel, I's na pollytishun, but if it's tearin' and snappin' same as a
+terrier that mak's a reet good Parli'ment man, I reckon not all England
+could bang him."
+
+"And that's not saying nowt, Sim. I've heard Grey Graham on the ballot
+till it's wet him through to the waistcoat."
+
+"Is that Mister Paul Ritson and Mistress Lowther just run in for
+shelter?"
+
+"Surely; and a reet bonny lass she is."
+
+"And he's got larnin' and manners too."
+
+"Ey, he's of the bettermer sort, is Paul."
+
+"Does she live at the parson's--Parson Christian's?"
+
+"Why, yes, man; it's only naturable--he's her guardian."
+
+"And what a man he is, to be sure."
+
+"Ey, we'll never see his like again when he's gone."
+
+"Nay, not till the water runs up bank and trees grow down bank."
+
+"And what a scholar, and no pride neither, and what's mair in a parson,
+no greed. Why, the leal fellow values the world and the world's gear not
+a flea."
+
+"Contentment's a kingdom, as folk say, and religion is no worse for a
+bit o' charity."
+
+There was a momentary pressure of the company toward the mouth of the
+booth, where Gubblum Oglethorpe reappeared with his pack swung from his
+neck in front of him. The girls gathered eagerly around.
+
+"What have you to-day, Gubblum?"
+
+"Nay, nowt for you, my dear. You're one of them that allus looks best
+with nothing on."
+
+"Oh, Gubblum!"
+
+The compliment was certainly a dubious one.
+
+"Only your bits of shabby duds--that's all that pretty faces like yours
+wants."
+
+"Oh, Gubblum!"
+
+The peddler was evidently a dear, simple soul.
+
+"Lord bless you, yes; what's in here," slapping his pack contemptuously,
+"it's only for them wizzent old creatures up in London--them 'at have
+faces like the map of England when it shows all the lines of the
+railways--just to make them a bit presentable, you know. And there is no
+knowing what some of these things won't do to mak' a body smart--what
+with brooches and handkerchers and collars, and I don't know what."
+
+Gubblum's air of indifference had the extraordinary effect of bringing a
+dozen pairs of gloating eyes on the strapped pack. The face of the
+peddler wore an expression of bland innocence as he continued:
+
+"But bless you, I'm such a straightforward chap, or I'd make my fortune
+with the like of what's here."
+
+"Open your pack, Gubblum," said one of the fellows, Geordie Moore,
+prompted by sundry prods from the elbow of a little damsel by his side.
+
+The "straightforward chap" made a deprecatory gesture, and then yielded
+obligingly. While loosening the straps he resumed his discourse on his
+own general ignorance of business tactics, his ruinous honesty, and
+demoralizing sense of honor.
+
+"I'm not cute enough, that's my fault. I know the way to my mouth with a
+spoonful of poddish, and that's all. If I go further in the dark, I'm
+lost."
+
+Gubblum opened his pack and drew forth a red and green shawl of a
+hideous pattern.
+
+"Now, just to give you a sample. Here's a nice neat shawl that I never
+had no more nor two of. Well, I actually sold the fellow of that shawl
+for seven-and-sixpence."
+
+The look of amazement at his own shortcomings which sat on the
+child-like face of the peddler was answered by the expression of mock
+surprise in the face of Paul Ritson, who came up at the moment, took the
+shawl from Gubblum's outstretched arms, and said in a hushed whisper:
+
+"No, did you now?"
+
+Geordie Moore thereupon dived into his pocket, and brought out three
+half-crowns.
+
+"Here's for you, Gubblum; let's have it."
+
+"'Od bless me!" cried the elderly cynic, "but that Gubblum will never
+mak' his plack a bawbee."
+
+And Grey Graham, having disposed of the affairs of the nation and
+witnessed Geordie snap at the peddler's bait, cried out in a bitter
+laugh:
+
+   "'There's little wit within his powe
+   That lights a candle at the lowe.'"
+
+Just then a tumult arose in the vicinity of the bar. The two cronies
+were at open war.
+
+"Deuce take it! I had fifteen white shillin' in my reet-hand breek
+pocket, and where are they now?"
+
+"'Od dang thee! what should I know about your brass? You're kicking up a
+stour to waken a corp!"
+
+"I had fifteen white shillin' in my reet-hand breek pocket, I tell
+thee!"
+
+"What's that to me, thou poor shaffles? You're as drunk as muck. Do you
+think I've taken your brass? You've got a wrong pig by the lug if you
+reckon to come ower me!"
+
+"They were in my reet-hand breek pocket, I'll swear on it!"
+
+"What a fratchin'--try your left-hand breek pocket."
+
+The russet-faced plowman thrust his hand where directed and instantly a
+comical smile of mingled joy and shame overspread his countenance. There
+was a gurgling laugh, through which the voice of the peddler could be
+heard saying:
+
+"We'll mak' thee king ower the cockers, my canny lad."
+
+The canny lad was slinking away amid a derisive titter, when a great
+silence fell on the booth. Those in front fell back, and those behind
+craned their necks to see over the heads of the people before them.
+
+At the mouth of the booth stood the old Laird Fisher, his face ghastly
+pale, his eyes big and restless, the rain dripping from his long hair
+and beard.
+
+"They've telt me," he began in a strange voice, "they've telt me that my
+Mercy has gone off in the London train. I reckon they're mistook as to
+the lass, but I've come to see for mysel'. Is she here?"
+
+None answered. Only the heavy rain-drops that pattered on the canvas
+overhead broke the silence. Paul Ritson pushed his way through the
+crowd.
+
+"Mercy?--London? Wait, Matthew; I'll see if she's here."
+
+The Laird Fisher looked from face to face of the people about him.
+
+"Any on you know owt about her?" he asked in a low voice. "Why don't you
+speak, some on you? You shake your heads--what does that mean?"
+
+The old man was struggling to control the emotion that was surging in
+his throat.
+
+"No, Matthew, she's not here," said Paul Ritson.
+
+"Then maybe it's true," said Matthew, with a strange quiet.
+
+There was a pause. Paul was the first to shake off his surprise.
+
+"She might be at Little Town--in Keswick--twenty places."
+
+"She might be, Master Paul, but she's nowt o' the sort. She's on her way
+to London, Mercy is."
+
+It was Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll, who spoke.
+
+At that the old man's trance seemed to break.
+
+"Gone! Mercy gone! Gone without a word! Why? Where?"
+
+"She'd her little red bundle aside her; and she cried a gay bit to
+hersel' in the corner. I saw her mysel'."
+
+Paul's face became rigid with anger.
+
+"There's villainy in this--be sure of that!" he said, hotly.
+
+The laird rocked his head backward and forward, and his eyes swam with
+tears; but he stood in the middle as quiet as a child.
+
+"My laal Mercy," he said, faintly, "gone from her old father."
+
+Paul stepped to the old man's side, and put a great hand on his shoulder
+as softly as a woman might have soothed her babe. Then turning about,
+and glancing wrathfully in the faces around them, he said:
+
+"Some waistrel has been at work here. Who is he? Speak out. Anybody
+know?"
+
+No one spoke. Only the laird moaned feebly, and reeled like a drunken
+man. Then, with the first shock over, the old man began to laugh. What a
+laugh it was!
+
+"No matter," he said; "no matter. Now I've nowt left, I've nowt to lose.
+There's comfort in that, anyways. Ha! ha! ha! But my heart is like to
+choke for all. You say reet, Mr. Ritson, there's villainy in it."
+
+The old man's eyes wandered vacantly.
+
+"Her own father," he mumbled; "her lone old father--broken-hearted--him
+'at loved her--no matter, I've nowt left to--Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+He tried to walk away jauntily, and with a ghastly smile on his battered
+face, but he stumbled and fell insensible into Paul's outstretched arms.
+They loosened his neckerchief and bathed his forehead.
+
+Just then Hugh Ritson strode into the tent, stepped up to the group, and
+looked down over the bent heads at the stricken father lying in his
+brother's arms.
+
+Paul's lips trembled and his powerful frame quivered.
+
+"Who knows but the scoundrel is here now?" he said; and his eyes
+traversed the men about him. "If he is, let him look at his pitiless
+work; and may the sight follow him to his death!"
+
+At that moment Hugh Ritson's face underwent an awful change. Then the
+old man opened his eyes in consciousness, and Hugh knelt before him and
+put a glass of water to his lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+In the homestead of the Ritsons the wide old ingle was aglow with a
+cheerful fire, and Mrs. Ritson stood before it baking oaten cake on a
+"griddle." The table was laid for supper with beef and beer and milk and
+barley-bread. In the seat of a recessed window, Paul Ritson and Greta
+Lowther sat together.
+
+At intervals that grew shorter, and with a grave face that became more
+anxious, Mrs. Ritson walked to the door and looked out into the
+thickening sky. The young people had been too much absorbed to notice
+her increasing perturbation, until she opened a clothes-chest and took
+out dry flannels and spread them on the hearth to air.
+
+"Don't worrit yourself, mother," said Paul. "He'll be here soon. He had
+to cross the Coledale Pass, and that's a long stroke of the ground, you
+know."
+
+"It's an hour past supper-time," said Mrs. Ritson, glancing aside at the
+old clock that ticked audibly from behind the great arm-chair. "The rain
+is coming again--listen!" There was a light patter of rain-drops against
+the window-panes. "If he's on the fells now he'll be wet to the skin."
+
+"I wish I'd gone in place of him," said Paul, turning to Greta. "A bad
+wetting troubles him nowadays. Not same as of old, when he'd follow the
+fells all day long knee-deep in water and soaked to the skin with rain
+or snow."
+
+The thunder-clap shook the house. The windows rattled, and the lamp that
+had been newly lighted and put on the table flickered slightly and
+burned red.
+
+"Mercy, me, what a night! Was that a flash of lightning?" said Mrs.
+Ritson, and she walked to the door once more and opened it.
+
+"Don't worrit, mother," repeated Paul. "Do come in. Father will be here
+soon, and if he gets a wetting there's no help for it now."
+
+Paul had turned aside from an animated conversation with Greta to
+interpolate this remonstrance against his mother's anxiety. Resuming the
+narrative of his wrestling match, he described its incidents as much by
+gesture as by words.
+
+"John Proudfoot took me--so--and tried to give me the cross-buttock, but
+I caught his eye and twisted him on my hip--so--and down he went in a
+bash!"
+
+A hurried knock came to the outer door. In an instant it was opened, and
+a white face looked in.
+
+"What's now, Reuben?" said Paul, rising to his feet.
+
+"Come along with me--leave the women-folk behind--master's down--the
+lightning has struck him--I'm afeart he's dead!"
+
+"My father!" said Paul, and stood for a moment with a bewildered look.
+"Go on, Reuben, I'll follow." Paul picked up his hat and was gone in an
+instant.
+
+Mrs. Ritson had been stooping over the griddle when Reuben entered. She
+heard what he said, and rose up with a face of death-like pallor. But
+she said nothing, and sunk helplessly into a chair. Then Greta stepped
+up to her and kissed her.
+
+"Mother--dear mother!" she said, and Mrs. Ritson dropped her head on the
+girl's breast.
+
+Hugh had been sitting over some papers in his own room off the first
+landing. He overheard the announcement, and came into the hall.
+
+"Your father has been struck by the lightning," said Greta.
+
+"They will fetch him home," said Hugh.
+
+At the next moment there was the sound from without of burdened
+footsteps. They were bearing the injured man. Through the back of the
+house they carried him to his room.
+
+"That is for my sake," said Mrs. Ritson, raising her tear-stained face
+to listen.
+
+Paul entered. His ruddy cheeks had grown ashy white. His eyes, that had
+blinked with pleasure a minute ago, now stared wide with fear.
+
+"Is he alive?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Thank God! oh, thank God forever and ever! Let me go in to him."
+
+"He is unconscious--he breathes--but no more."
+
+Mrs. Ritson, with Paul and Greta, went into the room in which they had
+placed the stricken man. He lay across the bed in his clothes, just as
+he had fallen. They bathed his forehead and applied leeches to his
+temples. He breathed heavily, but gave no sign of consciousness.
+
+Paul sat at his father's side with his face buried in his hands. He was
+recalling his boyish days, when his father would lift him in his arms
+and throw him on the bare back of the pony that he gave him on his
+thirteenth birthday. Could it be possible that the end was at hand!
+
+He got up and led Greta out of the room.
+
+"This house of mourning is no place for you," he said; "the storm is
+over: you must leave us; Natt can put the mare into the trap and drive
+you home."
+
+"I will not go," said Greta; "this shall be my home to-night. Don't send
+me away from you, Paul. You are in trouble, and my place is here."
+
+"You could do no good, and might take some harm."
+
+Mrs. Ritson came out.
+
+"Where is Mr. Bonnithorne?" she asked. "He was to be here at eight. Your
+father might recover consciousness."
+
+"The lawyer could do nothing to help him."
+
+"If he is to leave us, may it please God to give him one little hour of
+consciousness."
+
+"Yes, knowing us again--giving us a farewell word."
+
+"There is another reason--a more terrible reason!"
+
+"You are thinking of the will. Let that go by. Come, mother--and Greta,
+too--- come, let us go back."
+
+Half an hour later the house was as still as the chamber of death. With
+hushed voices and noiseless steps the women-servants moved to and from
+the room where lay the dying man. The farming men sat together in an
+outer kitchen, and talked in whispers.
+
+The storm had passed away; the stars struggled one by one through a rack
+of flying cloud, and a silver fringe of moonlight sometimes fretted the
+black patches of the sky.
+
+Hugh Ritson sat alone in the old hall, that was now desolate enough. His
+face rested on his hand, and his elbow on his knee. There was a strange
+light in his eyes. It was not sorrow, and it was not pain; it was
+anxiety, uncertainty, perturbation. Again and again he started up from a
+deep reverie, and then a half-smothered cry escaped him. He walked a few
+paces to and fro, and sat down once more.
+
+A servant crossed the hall on tiptoe. Hugh raised his head.
+
+"How is your patient now?" he said, quietly.
+
+"Just breathing, sir; still quite unconscious."
+
+Hugh got up uneasily. A mirror hung on the wall in front of him, and he
+stood and looked vacantly into it. His thoughts wandered, and when a
+gleam of consciousness returned the first object that he saw was the
+reflection of his own face. It was full of light and expression. Perhaps
+it wore a ghostly smile. He turned away from the sight impatiently.
+
+Sitting down again he tried to compose himself. Point by point he
+revolved the situation. He thought of what the lawyer had said of his
+deserted wife and lost son of Lowther. Then, taking out of an inner
+pocket the medallion that Mr. Bonnithorne had lent him, he looked at it
+long and earnestly.
+
+The inspection seemed to afford a grim satisfaction. There could be no
+doubt now of the ghostly smile that played upon his face.
+
+There was a tall antique clock in the corner of the hall. It struck
+eight. The slow beats of the bell echoed chillily in the hushed
+apartment. The hour awakened the consciousness of the brooding man. At
+eight o'clock Mr. Bonnithorne was appointed to be there to make the
+will.
+
+Hugh Ritson touched gently a hand-bell that stood on the table. A
+servant entered.
+
+"Send Natt to me," said Hugh.
+
+A moment later the stableman shambled into the hall. He was a thick-set
+young fellow with a short neck and a full face, and eyelids that hung
+deep over a pair of cunning eyes. At first sight one would have said
+that the rascal was only half awake; at the second glance, that he was
+never asleep.
+
+Hugh received him with a show of cordiality.
+
+"Ah, Natt, come here--closer."
+
+The man walked across. Hugh dropped his voice.
+
+"Go down to Little Town and find Mr. Bonnithorne. You may meet him on
+the way. If not, he will be at the Flying Horse. Tell him I sent you to
+say that Adam Fallow lies dying at Bigrigg, and must see him at once.
+You understand?"
+
+The man lifted his slumberous eyelids. A suspicious twinkle lurked
+beneath them. He glanced around, then down at his big, grimy boots,
+measured with one uplifted hand the altitude of the bump on the top of
+his bullet head, and muttered, "I understand."
+
+Hugh's face darkened.
+
+"Silence!" he said, sternly; and then he met Natt's upward glance with a
+faint smile. "When you come back, get yourself out of the way--do you
+hear?"
+
+The heavy eyelids went up once more. "I hear."
+
+"Then be off!"
+
+The fellow was shuffling away.
+
+"Natt," said Hugh, following him a step, "you fancied that new whip of
+mine; take it. You'll find it in the porch."
+
+A smile crossed Natt's face from ear to ear. He stumbled out.
+
+Hugh Ritson returned to the hearth. That haunting mirror caught the
+light of his eyes again and showed that he too was smiling. At the same
+instant there came from the inner room the dull, dead sound of a deep
+sob. It banished the smile and made him pause. He looked at the
+reflection of his face--could it be the face of a scoundrel? Was he
+playing a base part? No, he was merely asserting his rights; his plain
+legal rights--nothing more.
+
+He opened a cupboard in the wall and took down a bunch of keys.
+Selecting one key, he stepped up to a cabinet and opened it. In a
+compartment were many loose papers. Now to see if by chance there
+existed a will already. He glanced at the papers one by one and threw
+them aside. When he had finished his inspection he took a hasty turn
+about the room. No trace--he had been sure of it!
+
+Again the deep sob came from within. Hugh Ritson walked noiselessly to
+the inner door, opened it slightly, bent his head, and listened. He
+turned away with an expression of pain, picked up his hat, and went out.
+
+The night was very dark. He strode a few paces down the lonnin and then
+back to the porch. Uncovering his head, he let the night wind cool his
+hot temples. His breath came audibly and hard. He was turning again
+into the house when his eye was arrested by a light near the turning of
+the high-road. The light was approaching; he walked toward it, and met
+Josiah Bonnithorne. The lawyer was jouncing along toward the house with
+a lantern in his hand.
+
+"Didn't you meet the stableman?" said Hugh in an eager whisper.
+
+"No."
+
+"The blockhead must have taken the old pack-horse road on the fell-side.
+One would be safe in that fool's stupidity. You have heard what has
+happened?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"There is no will already."
+
+"And your father is insensible?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then none shall be made."
+
+There was a pause, in which the darkness itself seemed full of speech.
+The lantern cast its light only on an open cart-shed in the lane.
+
+"If your mother is the Grace Ormerod who married Robert Lowther and had
+a son by him, then Paul was that son--the heir to Lowther's
+conscience-money."
+
+"Bonnithorne," said Hugh Ritson--his voice trembled and broke--"if it is
+so, then it is so, and we need do nothing. Remember, he is my father. It
+is not within belief that he wants to disinherit his own son for the son
+of another man."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne broke into a half-smothered laugh, and stepped close
+into the cobble-hedge, keeping the lantern down.
+
+"Your father--yes. But you have seen to-day what that may come to. He
+has always held you under his hand. Paul has been the old man's
+favorite."
+
+"No doubt of that." Hugh crept close to the lawyer. He was wrestling in
+the coil of a tragic temptation.
+
+"If he recovers consciousness, he may be tempted to recognize as his own
+his wife's illegitimate son. That"--the low tone was one of withering
+irony--"will keep her from dishonor, and you from the estates."
+
+"At least he is my brother--my mother's son. If my father wishes to
+provide for him, God forbid that we should prevent."
+
+Once more the half-smothered laugh came through the darkness.
+
+"You have missed your vocation, Mr. Ritson. Believe me, the Gospel has
+lost a fervent advocate. Perhaps you would like to pray for this good
+brother; perhaps you would consider it safe to drop on your knee and
+say, 'My good brother that should be, who has ever loved me, whom I have
+ever loved, take here my fortune, and leave me until death a penniless
+dependent on the lands that are mine by right of birth.'"
+
+Hugh Ritson's breath came in gusts through his quivering, unseen lips.
+
+"Bonnithorne, it cannot be--it is mere coincidence, seductive, damning
+coincidence. My mother knows all. If it were true that Paul was the son
+of Lowther, she would know that Paul and Greta must be half-brother and
+half-sister. She would stop their unnatural union."
+
+"And do you think I have waited until now to sound that shoal water with
+a cautious plummet? Your mother is as ignorant of the propinquity as
+Greta herself. Lowther was dead before your family settled in Newlands.
+The families never once came together while the widow lived. And now not
+a relative survives who can tell the story."
+
+"Parson Christian?" said Hugh Ritson.
+
+"A great child just out of swaddling-clothes!"
+
+"Then the secret rests with you and me, Bonnithorne?"
+
+"Who else? The marriage must not come off. Greta is Paul's half-sister,
+but she is no relative of yours--"
+
+"You are right, Bonnithorne," Hugh Ritson broke in; "the marriage is
+against nature."
+
+"And the first step toward stopping it is to stop the will."
+
+"Then why are you here?"
+
+"To make sure that there is no will already. You have satisfied me, and
+now I go."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Who shall say that I am acting a base part?" said Hugh, in an eager
+tone.
+
+"Who indeed?"
+
+"Nature itself is on my side."
+
+The man was conquered. He was in the grip of his temptation.
+
+"I am off, Mr. Ritson. Get back into the house. It is not safe for you
+to be out of sight and sound."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne was moving off in the darkness, the lamp before his
+breast; its light fell that instant on Hugh Ritson's haggard face.
+
+"Wait; put out your lamp."
+
+"It's done."
+
+All was now dark.
+
+"Good-night."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+With slow whispers the two men parted.
+
+The springy step of Josiah Bonnithorne was soon lost in the road below.
+
+Hugh Ritson stood for awhile where the lawyer left him, and then turned
+back into the house. He found the cabinet open. In the turmoil of
+emotion he had forgotten to close it. He returned to it, and shuffled
+with the papers to put them back in their place. At that moment the door
+opened, and a heavy footstep fell on the floor. Hugh glanced up
+startled. It was Paul. His face was plowed deep with lines of pain. But
+the cloud of sorrow that it wore was not so black as the cloud of anger
+when he saw what his brother was doing and guessed his purpose.
+
+"What are you about?" Paul asked, mastering his wrath.
+
+There was no response.
+
+"Shut up that cabinet!"
+
+Hugh turned about with a flushed face.
+
+"I shall do as I please!"
+
+Paul took two strides toward him.
+
+"Shut it up!"
+
+The cabinet was closed. At the same moment Mrs. Ritson came from the
+inner room. Paul turned on his heel.
+
+"He is thinking of the will," said the elder brother. "Perhaps it is
+natural that he should distrust me; but when the time comes he is
+welcome to the half of everything, and ten thousand wills would hardly
+give him more."
+
+Mrs. Ritson was strongly agitated. Her eyes, red with weeping, were
+aflame with expression.
+
+"Paul, he is conscious," she cried in a voice that her anxiety could not
+subdue. "He is trying to speak. Where is the lawyer?"
+
+Hugh had been moving toward the outer door.
+
+"Conscious!" he repeated, and returned to the hearth.
+
+"Send for Mr. Bonnithorne at once!" said Mrs. Ritson, addressing Hugh.
+
+Her manner was feverish. Hugh touched the bell. When the servant
+appeared, he said:
+
+"Tell Natt to run to the village for Mr. Bonnithorne."
+
+Paul had walked to the door of the inner room. His hand was on the
+handle, when the door opened and Greta came out. She stepped up to Mrs.
+Ritson and tried to quiet her agitation.
+
+The servant returned.
+
+"I can't find Natt," she said. "He is not in the house."
+
+"You'll find him in the stable," said Hugh, composedly.
+
+The servant went out hurriedly.
+
+Paul returned to the middle of the room.
+
+"I'll go myself," he said, and plucked his hat from the settle, but Mrs.
+Ritson rose to prevent him.
+
+"No, no, Paul," she said in a tremulous voice, "you must never leave his
+side."
+
+Paul glanced at his brother with a perplexed look. The calmness of
+Hugh's manner disturbed him.
+
+The servant reappeared.
+
+"Natt is not in the stable, sir."
+
+Paul's face was growing crimson. Mrs. Ritson turned to Hugh.
+
+"Hugh, my dear son, do you go for the lawyer."
+
+A faint smile that lurked at the corners of Hugh's mouth gave way to a
+look of injury.
+
+"Mother, my place, also, is here. How can you ask me to leave my
+father's side at a moment like this?"
+
+Greta had been looking fixedly at Hugh.
+
+"I'll go," she said, resolutely.
+
+"Impossible," said Paul. "It is now dark--the roads are wet and lonely."
+
+"I'll go, nevertheless," said Greta, firmly.
+
+"God bless you, my darling, and love you and keep you forever!" said
+Paul. Wrapping a cloak about her shoulders, he whispered: "My brave
+girl--that's the stuff of which an English woman may be made."
+
+He opened the door and walked out with her across the court-yard. The
+night was now clear and calm; the stars burned; the trees whispered; the
+distant ghylls, swollen by the rain, roared loud through the thin air; a
+bird on the bough of a fir-tree whistled and chirped. The storm was
+gone; only its wreckage lay in the still room within.
+
+"A safe journey to you, dear girl, and a speedy return," whispered Paul,
+and in another moment Greta had vanished in the dark.
+
+When he returned to the hall, his brother was passing into the room
+where the sick man lay. Paul was about to follow when his mother, who
+was walking aimlessly to and fro in yet more violent agitation than
+before, called on him to remain. He turned about and stepped up to her,
+observing as he did so that Hugh had paused on the threshold, and was
+regarding them with a steadfast look.
+
+Mrs. Ritson took Paul's hand with a nervous grasp. Her eyes, that bore
+the marks of recent tears, had the light of wild excitement.
+
+"God be praised that he is conscious at last!" she said.
+
+Paul shook his head as if in censure of his mother's feelings.
+
+"Let him die in peace," he said; "let his soul pass quietly to its rest.
+Don't vex it now with thoughts of the cares it leaves behind."
+
+Mrs. Ritson let go his hand, and dropped into a chair. A slight shudder
+passed over her. Paul looked down with a puzzled expression. Then there
+was a low sobbing. He leaned over his mother and smoothed her hair
+tenderly.
+
+"Come, let us go in," he said in a broken voice.
+
+Mrs. Ritson rose from her seat and went down on her knees. Her eyes,
+still wet, but no longer weeping, were raised to heaven.
+
+"Almighty Father, give me strength!" she said beneath her breath, and
+then more quietly she rose to her feet.
+
+Paul regarded her with increasing perturbation. Something even more
+serious than he yet knew of was amiss. Hardly knowing why, his heart
+sunk still deeper.
+
+"What are we doing?" he said, scarcely realizing his own words.
+
+Mrs. Ritson threw herself on his neck.
+
+"Did I not say there was a terrible reason why your father should make a
+will?"
+
+Paul's voice seemed to die within him.
+
+"What is it, mother?" he asked feebly, not yet gathering the meaning of
+his fears.
+
+"God knows, I never dreamed it would be my lips that must tell you,"
+said Mrs. Ritson. "Paul, my son, my darling son, you think me a good
+mother and a pure woman. I am neither. I must confess all--now--and to
+you. Oh, how your love will turn from me!"
+
+Paul's face turned pale. His eyes gazed into his mother's eyes with a
+fixed look. The clock ticked audibly. Not another sound broke the
+silence. At last Paul spoke.
+
+"Speak, mother," he said; "is it something about my father?"
+
+Mrs. Ritson's face fell on to her son's breast. A strong shudder ran
+over her shoulders, and she sobbed aloud.
+
+"You are not your father's heir," she said; "you were born before we
+married.... But you will try not to hate me, ... your own mother.... You
+will try, will you not?"
+
+Paul's great frame shook visibly. He tried to speak. His tongue cleaved
+to his mouth.
+
+"Do you mean that I am--a bastard?" he said in a hoarse whisper.
+
+The word seemed to sting his mother like a poisoned arrow. She clung yet
+closer about his neck.
+
+"Pity me and love me still, though I have wronged you before God and
+man. I whom the world thought so pure--I am but a whited sepulcher--a
+dishonored woman dishonoring her dearest son!"
+
+The door opened gently, and Hugh Ritson stood in the door-way. Neither
+his brother nor his mother realized his presence. He remained a moment,
+and then withdrew, leaving the door ajar.
+
+Beneath the two whom he left behind, the world at that moment reeled.
+
+Paul stood with great, wide eyes, that had never tear to soften them,
+gazing vacantly into the weeping eyes before him. His lips quivered, but
+he did not speak.
+
+"Paul, speak to me--speak to me--only speak--only let me hear your
+voice! See, I am at your feet--your mother kneels to you--forgive her as
+God has forgiven her!"
+
+And loosing her grasp, she flung herself on the ground before him, and
+covered her face with her hands.
+
+Paul seemed not at first to know what was happening. Then he stooped and
+raised his mother to her feet.
+
+"Mother, rise up," he said in a strange, hollow tone. "Who am I that I
+should presume to pardon you? I am your son--you are my mother!"
+
+His vacant eyes gathered a startled expression. He glanced quickly
+around the room, and said in a deep whisper:
+
+"How many know of this?"
+
+"None besides ourselves."
+
+The frightened look disappeared. In its place came a look of
+overwhelming agony.
+
+"But I know of it; oh, my God!" he cried; and into the chair from which
+his mother had risen he fell like a wounded man.
+
+Mrs. Ritson dried her eyes. A strange quiet was coming upon her now. Her
+voice gathered strength. She laid a hand on the head of her son, who sat
+before her with buried face.
+
+"Paul," she said, "it is not until now that the day of reckoning has
+waited for me. When you were a babe, and knew nothing of your mother's
+grief, I sorrowed over the shame that might yet be yours; and when you
+grew to be a prattling child, I thought if God would look into your
+innocent eyes they would purchase grace for both of us."
+
+Paul lifted his head. At that moment of distress God had sent him the
+gracious gift of tears. His eyes were wet, and looked tenderly at his
+mother.
+
+"Paul," she continued, quite calmly now, "promise me one thing."
+
+"What is it?" he asked, softly.
+
+"That if your father should not live to make the will that must
+recognize you as his son, you will never reveal this secret."
+
+Paul rose to his feet. "That is impossible. I cannot promise it," he
+said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Honor and justice require that my brother Hugh, and not I, should be my
+father's heir--he, at least, must know."
+
+"What honor, and what justice?"
+
+"The honor of a true man--the justice of the law of England."
+
+Mrs. Ritson dropped her head. "So much for your honor," she said. "But
+what of mine?"
+
+"Mother, what do you mean?"
+
+"That if you allow your younger brother to inherit, the world by that
+act will be told all--your father's sin, your mother's shame."
+
+Mrs. Ritson raised her hands to her face, and turned aside. Paul stepped
+up to her and kissed her forehead reverently.
+
+"You are right," he said. "Forgive me--I thought only of myself. The
+world that loves to tarnish a pure name would like to gloat over your
+sorrow. That it shall never! Man's law may have been outraged, but God's
+law is still inviolate. Whatever my birth, I am as much your son in the
+light of Heaven as Jacob was the son of Isaac, or David of Jesse. Come,
+let us go to him--he may yet live to acknowledge me."
+
+It had been a terrible moment, but it was past. To live to manhood in
+ignorance of the dishonor of his birth, and then to learn the truth
+under the shadow of death--this had been a tragic experience. The love
+he had borne his father--the reverence he had learned at his mother's
+knee--to what bitter test had they been put! Had all the past been but
+as the marble image of a happy life! Was all the future shattered before
+him! Pshaw! he was the unconscious slave of a superstition--a phantasm,
+a gingerbread superstition!
+
+And a mightier touch awoke his sensibilities--the touch of nature.
+Before God at that moment he was his father's son. If the world, or the
+world's law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving
+to be damned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly
+ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim to his
+father's name?
+
+Paul took in love the hand of his mother. "Let us go in to him," he
+repeated, and together they walked across the room.
+
+The outer door was flung open, and Greta entered, flushed and with
+wide-open eyes. At the same instant the inner door swung noiselessly
+back, and Hugh Ritson stood on the threshold. Greta was about to speak,
+but Hugh motioned her to silence. His face was pale, his hand trembled.
+"Too late," he said, huskily; "he is dead!"
+
+Greta sunk on to the settle in the window recess. Hugh walked to the
+hearth and paused with rigid features before the haunting mirror.
+
+Paul stood for a moment hand in hand with his mother, motionless,
+speechless, cold at his heart. Then he hurried into the inner room. Mrs.
+Ritson followed him, closing the door behind him.
+
+The little oak-bound room was dusky; the lamp that burned low was
+shaded. Across the bed lay Allan Ritson, in his habit as he lived. But
+his lips were white and cold.
+
+Paul stood and looked down. There lay his father--his father still! His
+father by right of nature--of love--of honor--let the world say what it
+would.
+
+And he knew the truth at last: too late to look into those glassy eyes
+and read the secret of their long years of suffering love.
+
+"Father," Paul whispered, and fell to his knees by the deaf ear.
+
+Mrs. Ritson, strangely quiet, strangely calm, stepped to the opposite
+side of the bed, and placed one hand on the dead man's breast.
+
+"Paul," she said, "come here."
+
+He rose to his feet and walked to her side.
+
+"Lay your hand with mine, and pledge to me your solemn word never to
+speak of what you have heard to-night until that great day when we three
+shall stand together before the great white throne."
+
+Paul placed his hand side by side with hers, and lifted his eyes to
+heaven.
+
+"On my father's body, by my mother's honor--never to reveal to any human
+soul, by word or deed, his act or her shame--always to bear myself as
+their lawful son before man, even as I am their rightful son before
+God--I swear it! I swear it!"
+
+His voice was cold and clear, but the words were scarcely uttered when
+he fell to his knees again, with a subdued cry of overwrought feeling.
+
+Mrs. Ritson staggered back, caught the curtains of the bed, and covered
+her face. All was still.
+
+Then a shuffling footfall was heard on the floor. Hugh Ritson was in the
+darkened room. He lifted the shaded lamp from the table, approached the
+bedside, and held the lamp with one hand above his head. The light fell
+on the outstretched body of his father and the bowed head of his
+brother.
+
+
+
+
+_BOOK II._
+
+
+THE COIL OF THE TEMPTATION.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+It was late in November, and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay
+on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with
+mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and
+gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only
+a fibrous vagueness was visible.
+
+In an old pasture field by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an
+elderly man, sturdy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun.
+There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar
+and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over
+his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed the
+expression of gentleness and easy good-nature. It was a fine old face,
+with the beauty of simplicity and the sweetness of content.
+
+A boy in front led the horses, and whistled. The parson hummed a tune as
+he turned his furrows. Sometimes he sung in a drawling tone--
+
+   "Bonny lass, canny lass, wilta be mine?
+   Thou's nowder wesh dishes nor sarra the swine."
+
+At the turn-rows he paused, and rested on his plow handles. He rested
+longest at the turn-rows on the roadside of the field. Like the
+shivering mists that grouped about the open doors, he was held there by
+light and warmth.
+
+The smithy stood at the opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of
+the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the
+fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a
+long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations
+of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin
+clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's
+sledge echoed in unseen recesses of the hills beyond.
+
+This smithy of Newlands filled the function which under a higher
+propitiousness of circumstance is answered by a club. Girded with his
+leather apron, his sleeves rolled tightly over his knotty arms, the
+smith, John Proudfoot, stood waiting for his heat. His striker, Geordie
+Moore, had fallen to at the bellows. On the tool chest sat Gubblum
+Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the
+gate. The miller, Dick of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o'
+Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the
+grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point by many similar
+applications.
+
+"Nay, I can make nowt of him. He's a changed man for sure," said the
+blacksmith.
+
+Gubblum removed his pipe and muttered sententiously:
+
+"It's die-spensy, I tell thee."
+
+"Dandering and wandering about at all hours of the day and night,"
+continued the blacksmith.
+
+"It's all die-spensy," repeated the peddler.
+
+"And as widderful and wizzent as a polecat nailed up on a barn door,"
+said Tom o' Dint, lifting his grating knife from the grindstone and
+speaking with a voice as hoarse.
+
+"Eh, and as weak as watter with it," added the blacksmith.
+
+"His as was as strong as rum punch," rejoined the fiddler.
+
+"It's die-spensy, John--nowt else," said Gubblum.
+
+The miller broke in testily.
+
+"What's die-spensy?"
+
+"What ails Paul Ritson?" answered Gubblum.
+
+"Shaf on your balderdash," said Dick of the Syke; "die-spensying and
+die-spensying. You've no' but your die-spensy for everything. Tommy's
+rusty throat, and John's big toe, and lang Geordie's broken nose, as
+Giles Raisley gave him a' Saturday neet at the Pack Horse--it's all
+die-spensy."
+
+The miller was a blusterous fellow, who could swear in lusty anger and
+laugh in boisterous sport in a single breath.
+
+Gubblum puffed placidly.
+
+"It is die-spensy. I know it by exper'ence," he observed, persistently.
+
+The blacksmith's little eyes twinkled mischievously.
+
+"To be sure you do, Gubblum. You had it bad the day you crossed in the
+packet from Whitehebben. That was die-spensy--a cute bout too."
+
+"I've heard as it were amazing rough on the watter that day," said Tom,
+in a pause of the wheel, glancing up knowingly at the blacksmith.
+
+"Heard, had you? Must have been tolerable deaf else. Rough? Why, them do
+say as the packet were wrecked, and only two planks saved. Gubblum was
+washed ashore cross-legged on one of them, and his pack on the other."
+
+The long, labored breathings of the bellows ended, the iron was thrown
+white hot out of the glowing coals on to the anvil, and the clank of the
+hand-hammer and thud of the sledge were all that could be heard. Then
+the iron cooled, and was lifted back into the palpitating blaze. The
+blacksmith stepped to the door, wiped his streaming forehead with one
+hand and waved the other to the parson plowing in the opposite field.
+
+"A canny morning, Mr. Christian," he shouted. "Bad luck for the parson's
+young lady, anyhow--her sweetheart is none to keen for the wedding," he
+said, turning again to the fire.
+
+"She's a fine like lass, yon," said Tom o' Dint.
+
+An old man, iron gray, with a pair of mason's mallets swung front and
+back across his shoulders, stepped into the smithy.
+
+"How fend ye, John?" he said.
+
+"Middling weel, Job," answered the blacksmith; "and what's your errand
+now?"
+
+"A chisel or two for tempering."
+
+"Cutting in the church-yard to-day, Job? Cold wark, eh?"
+
+"Ey, auld Ritson's stone as they've putten over him."
+
+The blacksmith tapped the peddler on the arm.
+
+"Gubblum, shall I tell you what's a-matter with Paul?"
+
+"Never you bother, John, it's die-spensy."
+
+"It's fretting--that's it--fretting for his father."
+
+"Fretting for his fiddlesticks!" shouted Dick, the miller; "Allan's dead
+this half a year."
+
+"John's reet," said Job, the stone-cutter; "it is fretting."
+
+Dick of the Syke got up off the iron rods.
+
+"Because a young fellow has given you a job of wark to cut his father's
+headstone and tell a lie or two in letters half an inch deep and two
+shillings a dozen--does that show 'at he's fretting?"
+
+"He didn't do nowt of the sort," said Job, hotly.
+
+"Dusta mean as it were the other one--Hugh?" inquired the miller.
+
+"Maybe that's reet," said Job.
+
+Dick of the Syke was not to be beaten for lack of the logic of
+circumlocution.
+
+"Then what for do you say as Paul is weeping his insides out about his
+father, when he leaves it to other folks to put a bit of stone over him
+and a few scrats on it?"
+
+"Because I do say so," said Job, conclusively.
+
+"And maybe you've got your reasons, Job," said the blacksmith with
+insinuating suavity.
+
+"Maybe I have," said the mason. Then softening, he added, "I don't mind
+telling you, neither. Yesterday morning when I went to wark I found Paul
+Ritson lying full length across his father's grave. His clothes were
+soaking with dew, and his face was as white as a Feb'uary mist, and
+stiff and set like, and his hair was frosted over same as a pane in the
+church window."
+
+"Never!"
+
+"He was like to take no note of me, but I gave him a shake, and called
+out, 'What, Mr. Paul! why, what, man! what's this?'"
+
+"And what ever did he say?"
+
+"Say! Nowt. He get hissel' up--and gay stiff in the limbs he looked, to
+be sure--and walked off without a word."
+
+Gubblum on the tool chest had removed his pipe from between his lips
+during the mason's narrative, and listened with a face of blank
+amazement.
+
+"Weel, that is a stiffener," he said, drawing a long breath.
+
+"What's a stiffener?" said Job, sharply.
+
+"That 'at you're telling for gospel truth." Then, turning to the
+blacksmith, the peddler pointed the shank of his pipe at the mason, and
+said: "What morning was it as he found Paul Ritson taking a bath to
+hissel' in the kirk-yard?"
+
+"Why, yesterday morning," said the smith.
+
+"Well, he bangs them all at lying!" said Gubblum.
+
+"What dusta say?" shouted Job, with sudden fury.
+
+"As you've telt us a lie," answered Gubblum.
+
+"Sista, Gubblum, if you don't take that word back I'll--I'll throw you
+into the water-butt!"
+
+"And what would I do while you were thrang at that laal job?" asked the
+peddler.
+
+The blacksmith interposed.
+
+"Sec a rumpus!" he said; "you're too sudden in your temper, Job."
+
+"Some folks are ower much like their namesakes in the Bible," said
+Gubblum, resuming his pipe.
+
+"Then what for did he say it worn't true as I found young Ritson
+yesterday morning wet to the skin in the church-yard?" said Job,
+ignoring the peddler.
+
+"Because he warn't there," said Gubblum.
+
+Job lost all patience.
+
+"Look here," he said, "if you're not hankering for a cold bath on a
+frosty morning, laal man, I don't know as you've got any call to say
+that again!"
+
+"He warn't there," the "laal man" muttered doggedly.
+
+The blacksmith had plunged his last heat into the water trough to cool,
+and a cloud of vapor filled the smithy.
+
+"Lord A'mighty!" he said, laughing, "that's the way some folks go
+off--all of a hiss and a smoke."
+
+"He warn't there," mumbled the peddler again, impervious to the homely
+similitude.
+
+"How are you so certain sure?" said Dick of the Syke. "You warn't there
+yourself, I reckon."
+
+"No; but I was somewhere else, and so was Paul Ritson. I slept at the
+Pack House in Kezzick night afore last, and he did the same."
+
+"Did you see him there?" said the blacksmith.
+
+"No; but Giles Raisley saw him, and he warn't astir when Giles went on
+his morning shift at eight o'clock."
+
+The blacksmith broke into a loud guffaw.
+
+"Tell us how he was at the Hawk and Heron in London at midsummer."
+
+"And so he was," said Gubblum, unabashed.
+
+"Willy-nilly, ey?" said the blacksmith, pausing over the anvil with
+uplifted hammer, the lurid reflection of the hot iron on his face.
+
+"Maybe he had his reasons for denying hisself," said Gubblum.
+
+The blacksmith laughed again, tapped the iron with the hand-hammer, down
+came the sledge, and the flakes flew.
+
+Two miners entered the smithy.
+
+"Good-morning, John; are ye gayly?" said one of them.
+
+"Gayly, gayly! Why, it's Giles hissel'!"
+
+"Giles," said the peddler, "where was Paul Ritson night afore last?"
+
+"Abed, I reckon," chuckled one of the new-comers.
+
+"Where abed?"
+
+"Nay, don't ax me. Wait--night afore last? That was the night he slept
+at Janet's, wasn't it?"
+
+Gubblum's eyes twinkled with triumph.
+
+"What, did I tell you?"
+
+"What call had he to sleep at Keswick?" said the blacksmith; "it's
+no'but four miles from his own bed at the Ghyll."
+
+"Nay, now, when ye ax the like o' that--"
+
+Tom, the postman, stopped his grindstone and snuckered huskily:
+
+"Maybe he's had a fratch with yon brother--yon Hugh."
+
+"I'm on the morning shift this week, and Mother Janet she said: 'Giles,'
+she said, 'the brother of your young master came late last night for a
+bed.'"
+
+"Job, what do you say to that?" shouted the blacksmith above the
+pulsating of the bellows, and with the sharp white lights of the leaping
+flames on his laughing face.
+
+"Say! That they're a pack of liars!" said the mason, catching up his
+untempered chisels and flinging out of the smithy.
+
+When he had gone, Gubblum removed his pipe and said calmly: "He's ower
+much like his Bible namesake in temper--that's the on'y fault of Job."
+
+The parson, in the field outside, had stood in the turn-rows, resting on
+his plow-handles. He had been drawling "Bonny lass, canny lass;" but,
+catching the sound of angry words, he had paused and listened. When Job,
+the mason, flung away, he returned to his plowing, and disappeared down
+the furrow, the boy whistling at his horse's head.
+
+"Why, Mattha, it is thee?" said the blacksmith, observing for the first
+time the second of the new-comers; "and how fend ye?"
+
+"Middling weel, John, middling weel," said Matthew, in a low voice,
+resting on the edge of the trough.
+
+It was Laird Fisher, more bent than of old, with deeper lines in his
+grave face and with yet more listless eyes. He had brought two picks for
+sharpening.
+
+"Got your smelting-house at wark down at the pit, Mattha?" asked the
+blacksmith.
+
+"Ey, John, it's at wark--it's at wark."
+
+The miller had turned to go, but he faced about with ready anger.
+
+"Lord, yes, and a pretty pickle you and your gaffer's like to make of
+me. Wad ye credit it, John? they've built their smelting-house within
+half a rod of my mill. Half a rod; not a yard mair. When your red-hot
+rubbish is shot down your bank, where's it going to go, ey? That's what
+I want to know--where's it going to go?"
+
+"Why, into your mill, of course," said Gubblum, with a wink, from the
+tool-chest. "That'll maybe help you to go by fire when you can't raise
+the wind."
+
+"Verra good for thee, Gubblum," laughed the blacksmith.
+
+"I'll have the law on them safe enough," said the miller.
+
+"And where's your damages to come from?"
+
+"From the same spot as all the rest of the brass--that's good enough for
+me."
+
+Matthew's voice followed the insinuating guffaw.
+
+"I spoke to Master Hugh yesterday. I telt him all you said about a
+wall."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He won't build it."
+
+"Of course not. Why didsta not speak to Paul?"
+
+"No use in that," said Matthew, faintly.
+
+"Nay, young Hugh is a gaffer," exclaimed the blacksmith.
+
+"And Paul has no say in it except finding the brass, ey?"
+
+"I mak' no doubt as you're reet, Dick," said Matthew, meekly.
+
+"It's been just so since the day auld Allan died," said the blacksmith.
+"He hadn't been a week in his grave before Hugh bought up Mattha's
+royalty in the Hammer Hole, and began to sink for iron. He's never found
+much ore, as I've heard tell on, but he goes ahead laying down his
+pumping engines, and putting up his cranes, and boring his mill-races,
+just as if he was proper-ietor of a royal mine."
+
+"Hugh is the chain-horse, and Paul's no'but the mare in the shafts,"
+said Gubblum.
+
+"And the money comes somehow," said Tom o' Dint, who had finished the
+knife and was testing its edge in whittling a stick.
+
+Matthew got up from his seat.
+
+"I'll come again for the picks, John," he said quietly; and the old man
+stepped out of the bright glow into the chill haze.
+
+"Mattha has never been the same since laal Mercy left him," said the
+blacksmith.
+
+"Any news of her?" asked the peddler.
+
+"Ax Tom o' Dint; he's the postman, and like to know if anybody in
+Newlands gets the scribe of a line from the wench," said the miller.
+
+Tom shakes his head. "You could tell summat, an' you would, ey, Tom?"
+said the blacksmith, showing his teeth.
+
+"Don't you misliken me," said the rural messenger in his husky tones;
+"I'm none of your Peeping Toms." And the postman drew up his head with
+as much pride of office as could be assumed by a gentleman of bowed legs
+and curtailed stature.
+
+"It baffles me as Mattha hisself could make nowt of his royalty in the
+Hammer Hole, if there was owt to make out of it," said the miller from
+the gate, buttoning his coat up to his ears.
+
+"I've heard as he had a mind to try his luck again," said Giles Raisley.
+
+"Nay, nay, nowt of the sort," said the blacksmith. "When the laal lass
+cut away and left the auld chap he lost heart and couldn't bear the
+sight of the spot where she used to bide. So he started back to his bit
+place on Coledale Moss. But Hugh Ritson followed him and bought up his
+royalty--for nowt, as they say--and set him to wark for wage in his own
+sinking--the same that ruined the auld man lang ago."
+
+"And he's like to see a fortun' come out of it yet," said Giles.
+
+"It won't be Mattha's fortun', then."
+
+"Nay, never fear," said the miner.
+
+Gubblum shook the ashes out of his pipe, and said meditatively,
+"Mattha's like me and the cuckoo."
+
+"Why, man, how's that?" said the blacksmith, girding his leather apron
+in a band about his waist. A fresh heat was in the fire; the bellows
+were belching; the palpitating flames were licking the smoky hood. A
+twinkle lurked in the blacksmith's eye. "How's that?" he repeated.
+
+"He's allus stopping short too soon," said Gubblum. "My missis, she said
+to me last back end, 'Gubblum,' she said, 'dusta mind as it's allus
+summer when the cuckoo is in the garden?' 'That's what is is,' I said.
+'Well,' she said, 'dusta not think it wad allus be summer if the cuckoo
+could allus be kept here?' 'Maybe so,' I says; 'but easier said nor
+done.' 'Shaf on you for a clothead!' says she; 'nowt so simple. When you
+get the cuckoo into the garden, build a wall round and keep it in.' And
+that's what I did; and I built it middling high, too, but it warn't high
+enough, for, wad ye think it, one day I saw the cuckoo setting off, and
+it just skimmed the top of that wall by a bare inch. Now, if I'd no'but
+put another stone--"
+
+A loud peal of laughter was Gubblum's swift abridgment. The peddler
+tapped the mouth of his pipe on his thumb-nail, and smiled under his
+shaggy brows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+When Parson Christian finished his plowing, the day was far spent. He
+gave the boy a shilling as day's wage for leading the horses, drove the
+team back to their owner, Robert Atkinson, paid five shillings for the
+day's hire of them, and set out for home. On the way thither he called
+at Henry Walmsley's, the grocery store in the village, and bought half a
+pound of tea, a can of coffee, and a stone of sugar; then at Randal
+Alston's, the shoemaker's, and paid for the repairing of a pair of
+boots, and put them under his arm; finally, he looked in at the Flying
+Horse and called for a pot of ale, and drank it, and smoked a pipe and
+had a crack with Tommy Lowthwaite, the publican.
+
+The mist had risen as the day wore on, and now that the twilight was
+creeping down the valley, the lane to the vicarage could be plainly seen
+in its yellow carpeting of fallen leaves. An outer door of the house
+stood open, and a rosy glow streamed from the fire into the porch. Not
+less bright was the face within that was waiting to welcome the old
+vicar home.
+
+"Back again, Greta, back again!" shouted the parson, rolling into the
+cozy room with his ballast under either arm. "There--wait--fair play,
+girl--ah, you rogue!--now that's what I call a mean advantage!"
+
+There was a smack of lips, a little laugh in a silvery voice with a
+merry lilt in it, and then a deep-toned mutter of affected protestation
+breaking down into silence and a broad smile.
+
+At arms-length Greta glanced at the parson's burdens, and summoned an
+austere look.
+
+"Now, didn't I tell you never to do it again?" she said, with an
+uplifted finger and an air of stern reproof.
+
+"Did you now?" said the parson, with an expression of bland
+innocence--adding, in an accent of wonderment: "What a memory I have, to
+be sure!"
+
+"Leave such domestic duties to your domestic superiors," said the girl,
+keeping a countenance of amazing severity. "Do you hear me, you dear old
+darling?"
+
+"I hear, I hear," said the old man, throwing his purchases on the floor
+one by one. "Why, bless me, and here's Mr. Bonnithorne," he added,
+lifting his eyes to the chimney-corner, where the lawyer sat toasting
+his toes. "Welcome, welcome."
+
+"Peter, Peter!" cried Greta, opening an inner door.
+
+A gaunt old fellow, with only one arm, shambled into the room.
+
+"Peter, take away these things to the kitchen," said Greta.
+
+The old man glanced down at the parson's purchases with a look of
+undisguised contempt.
+
+"He's been at it again, mistress," he said.
+
+The parson had thrown off his coat, and was pushing away his long boots
+with the boot-jack.
+
+"And how's Mr. Bonnithorne this rusty weather? Wait, Peter, give me the
+slippers out of the big parcel. I got Randal Alston to cut down my old
+boots into clock sides, and make me slippers out of the feet. Only
+sixpence, and see what a cozy pair. Thank you, Peter. So you're well,
+Mr. Bonnithorne. Odd, you say? Well, it is, considering the world of
+folk who are badly these murky days."
+
+Peter lifted the boots and fixed them dexterously under the stump of his
+abridged member. The tea and coffee he deposited in his trousers'
+pockets, and the sugar he carried in his hand.
+
+"There'll be never no living with him," he muttered in Greta's ear as he
+passed out. "Don't know as I mind his going to plow--that's a job for a
+man with two hands--but the like o' this isn't no master's wark."
+
+"Dear me!" exclaimed the parson, who was examining his easy-chair
+preparatory to sitting in it, "a new cushion--and a bag on the wall for
+my specs--and a shelf for my pipes--and a--a--what do you call this?"
+
+"An antimacassar, Mr. Christian," the lawyer said.
+
+"I wondered was he ever going to see any difference," said Greta, with
+dancing eyes.
+
+"Dear me, and red curtains on the windows, and a clean print counterpane
+on the settle--"
+
+"A chintz--a chintz," interposed Greta, with a mock whimper.
+
+"And the old rosewood clock in the corner as bright as a looking-glass,
+and the big oak cabinet all shiny with oil--"
+
+"Varnish, sir, varnish."
+
+"And all the carvings on it as fresh as a new pin--St. Peter with his
+great key, and the rich man with his money-bag trying to defy the fiery
+furnace."
+
+"Didn't I say you would scarcely know your own house when you came home
+again?" said Greta.
+
+She was busying herself at spreading the cloth on the round table and
+laying the parson's supper.
+
+Parson Christian was revolving on his slippered toes, his eyes full of
+child-like amazement, and a maturer twinkle of knowingness lurking in
+that corner of his aged orbs that was not directly under the fire of
+the girl's sharp, delighted gaze.
+
+"Deary me, have you a young lady at home, Mr. Bonnithorne?"
+
+"You know I am a bachelor, Mr. Christian," said the lawyer, demurely.
+
+"So am I--so am I. I never knew any better--not until our old friend
+Mrs. Lowther died and left me to take charge of her daughter."
+
+"Mother should have asked me to take charge of Mr. Christian, shouldn't
+she, Mr. Bonnithorne?" said Greta, with roguish eyes.
+
+"Well, there's something in that," said the parson, with a laugh. "Peter
+was getting old and a bit rusty in the hinges, you know, and we were
+likely to turn out a pair of old crows fit for nothing but to scare good
+Christians from the district. But Greta came to the musty old house,
+with its dust and its cobwebs, and its two old human spiders, like a
+slant of sunlight on a muggy day. Here's supper--draw up your chair, Mr.
+Bonnithorne, and welcome. It's my favorite dish--she knows it--barley
+broth and a sheep's head, with boiled potatoes and mashed turnips. Draw
+up your chair--but where's the pot of ale, Greta?"
+
+"Peter! Peter!"
+
+The other spider presently appeared, carrying a quart jug with a little
+mountain of froth--a crater bubbling over and down the sides.
+
+"Been delving for potatoes to-day, Peter?" said the parson.
+
+Peter answered with a grumpy nod of his big head.
+
+"How many bushels?"
+
+"Maybe a matter of twelve," muttered Peter, shambling out.
+
+Then the parson and his guest fell to.
+
+"You're a happy man, Mr. Christian," said Mr. Bonnithorne, as Greta left
+the room on some domestic errand.
+
+Parson Christian shook his head.
+
+"No call for grace," he said, "with all the luxuries of life thrown into
+one's lap--that's the worst of living such a happy life. No trials, no
+cross--nothing to say but 'Soul, take thine ease'--and that's bad when
+you think of it.... Have some sheep's head, Mr. Bonnithorne; you've not
+got any tongue--here's a nice sweet bit."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Christian. I came round to pay the ten shillings for
+Joseph Parkinson's funeral sermon last Sunday sennight, and the one
+pound two half-yearly allowance from the James Bolton charity for poor
+clergy-men."
+
+"Well, well! they may well say it never rains but it pours," said the
+parson. "I called at Henry Walmsley's and Robert Atkinson's on my way
+home from the crossroads, and they both paid me their Martinmas
+quarterage--Henry five shillings, and Robert seven shillings--and when I
+dropped in on Randal Alston to pay for the welting and soling of my
+shoes he said they would come to one and sixpence, but that he owed me
+one and seven-pence for veal that Peter sold him, so he paid me a penny,
+and we are clear from the beginning of the world to this day."
+
+"I also wanted to speak about our young friend Greta," said Mr.
+Bonnithorne, softly. "I suppose you are reconciled to losing her?"
+
+"Losing her?--Greta!" said the parson, laying down his knife. Then
+smiling, "Oh, you mean when Paul takes her--of course, of course--only
+the marriage will not be yet awhile--he said so himself."
+
+"Marriage with Paul--no," said Mr. Bonnithorne, clearing his throat and
+looking grave.
+
+Parson Christian glanced into the lawyer's face uneasily and lapsed into
+silence.
+
+"Mr. Christian, you were left guardian of Greta Lowther by our dear
+friend, her mother. It becomes your duty to see that she does the best
+for her future welfare and happiness."
+
+"Surely, surely!" said the parson.
+
+"You are an old man, Mr. Christian, and she is a young girl. When you
+and I are gone, Greta Lowther will still have the battle of life before
+her."
+
+"Please God--please God!" said the parson, faintly.
+
+"Isn't it well that you should see that she shall have a husband that
+can fight it with her side by side?"
+
+"So she shall, so she shall--Paul is a manly fellow, and as fond of her
+as of his own soul--nay, as I tell him, it's idolatry and a sin before
+God, his love of the girl."
+
+"You're wrong, Mr. Christian. Paul Ritson is no fit husband for Greta.
+He is a ruined man. Since his father's death he has allowed the Ghyll to
+go to wreck. It is mortgaged to the last blade of grass. I know it."
+
+Parson Christian shifted his chair from the table and gazed into the
+fire with bewildered eyes.
+
+"I knew he was in trouble," he said, "but I didn't guess that things
+wore so grave a look."
+
+"Don't you see that he is shattered in mind as well as purse?" said the
+lawyer.
+
+"No, no; I can't say that I do see that. He's a little absent sometimes,
+but that's all. When I talk of Matthew Henry and discuss his
+commentaries, or recite the story of dear Adam Clarke, he is a
+little--just a little forgetful--that's all--yes, that is all."
+
+"Compared with his brother--what a difference!" said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"Well, there is a difference," said the parson.
+
+"Such spirit, such intelligence--he'll be the richest man in Cumberland
+one of these days. He has bought up a royalty that is sweating ore, and
+now he is laying down pumping engines and putting up smelting-houses,
+and he is getting standing orders to fix a line of railway for the ore
+he is fetching up."
+
+"And where did the money come from?" asked the parson; "the money to
+begin?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne glanced up sharply.
+
+"It was his share of his father's personalty."
+
+"A big tree from such a little acorn," said the parson, meditatively,
+"and quick growth, too."
+
+"There's no saying what intelligence and enterprise will not do in this
+world, Mr. Christian," said the lawyer, who seemed less certain of the
+next. "Hugh Ritson is a man of spirit and brains. Now, that's the
+husband for Greta--that is, if you can get him--and I don't know that
+you can--but if it were only possible--"
+
+Parson Christian faced about.
+
+"Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, gravely, "the girl is not up for sale, and
+the richest man in Cumberland can't buy her. The thirty pieces of silver
+for which Judas sold his master may have been smelted and coined afresh,
+but not a piece of that money shall touch fingers of mine!"
+
+"You mistake me, Mr. Christian, believe me, you do," protested the
+lawyer, with an aggrieved expression. "I was speaking in our young
+friend's interests. Whatever occurs, I beg of you, as a friend and
+well-wisher of the daughter of Robert Lowther, now in his grave, never
+to allow her to marry Paul Ritson."
+
+"That shall be as God wills it," said the parson quietly.
+
+The lawyer had risen and drawn on his great-coat.
+
+"She can stay here with me," continued the parson.
+
+"No, she should marry now," said Mr. Bonnithorne, stepping to the door.
+"She's all but of age. It is hardly fair to keep her."
+
+"Why, what do you mean?" asked the parson, a puzzled look on his face.
+
+"She is rich and she is young. Her wealth can buy comforts, and her
+youth win pleasures."
+
+The good old Christian opened wide his great gray eyes with a blank
+expression. He glanced vacantly about the simple room, rose to his feet,
+and sat down again.
+
+"I never thought of that before," he said, faintly, and staring long
+into the fire.
+
+There was a heavy foot on the path outside. The latch was lifted, and
+Paul Ritson stepped into the room. At the sound of his step Greta
+tripped through the inner door, all joy and eagerness, to welcome him.
+The parson got up and held out both hands, the clouds gone from his
+beaming face.
+
+"Well, good-night," said the lawyer, opening the door. "I've four long
+miles before me. And how dark! how very dark!"
+
+Paul Ritson was in truth a changed man.
+
+His face was pale and haggard, and his eyes were bleared and heavy. He
+dropped with a listless weariness into the chair that Greta drew up to
+the fire. When he smiled the lips lagged back to a gloomy repose, and
+when he laughed the note of merriment rang hollow and fell short.
+
+"Just in time for a game with me, my lad!" said the parson. "Greta,
+fetch the chessboard and box."
+
+The board was brought, the pieces fixed; the parson settled himself at
+his ease, with slippers on the hearth-rug and a handkerchief across his
+knee.
+
+"Do you know, Paul, I heard a great parl about you to-day?"
+
+"About me! Where?" asked Paul, without much curiosity in his tone.
+
+"At Mr. Proudfoot's smithy, while I was turning the fallows in the
+meadow down at the crossroads. Little Mr. Oglethorpe was saying that you
+slept at the Pack Horse, in Keswick, the night before last; but Mr. Job
+Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, said nay, and they had high words
+indeed, wherein Job called Mr. Oglethorpe all but his proper name, and
+flung away in high dudgeon."
+
+Paul moved his pawn and said, "I never slept at the Pack Horse in my
+life, Mr. Christian."
+
+Greta sat knitting at one side of the ingle. The kitten, with a bell
+attached to a ribbon about its neck, sported with the bows of her dainty
+slippers. Only the click of the needles, and the tinkle of the bell, and
+the hollow tick of the great clock in the corner broke the silence.
+
+At last Parson Christian drew himself up in his chair.
+
+"Well, Paul, man, Paul--deary me, what a sad move! You're going back,
+back, back; once you could beat me five games to four. Now I can run
+away with you."
+
+The game soon finished, amid a chuckle from the parson, a bantering word
+from Greta, and a loud, forced laugh from Paul.
+
+Parson Christian lifted from a shelf a ponderous tome bound in leather
+and incased in green cloth.
+
+"I must make my day's entry," he said, "and get off to bed. I was astir
+before day-break this morning."
+
+Greta crept up behind the old man, and looked over his shoulder as he
+wrote:
+
+   "Nov. 21.--Retired to my lodging-room last night, and commended my
+   all to God, and lay down, and fell asleep; but Peter minded the
+   heifer that was near to calving; so he came and wakened me, and we
+   went down and sealed her, and foddered her, and milked her. Spent all
+   day plowing the low meadow, Peter delving potatoes. Called at the
+   Flying Horse, and sat while I drank one pot of ale and no more, and
+   paid for it. Received ten shillings from Lawyer Bonnithorne for
+   funeral sermon, and one pound two from Bolton charity; also five
+   shillings quarterage from Henry Walmsley, and seven from Robert
+   Atkinson, and a penny to square accounts from Randal Alston, and so
+   retired to my closet at peace with all the world. Blessed be God."
+
+The parson returned to its shelf the ponderous diary "made to view his
+life and actions in," and called through the inner door for his bedroom
+candle. A morose voice answered "Coming," and presently came.
+
+"Thank you, Peter; and how's the meeting-house, and who preaches there
+next Sunday, Peter?"
+
+Peter grumbled out:
+
+"I don't know as it's not yourself. I passed them my word as you'd
+exhort 'em a' Sunday afternoon."
+
+"But nobody has ever asked me. You should have mentioned the matter to
+me first, Peter, before promising. But never mind, I'm willing, though
+it's a poor discourse they can get from me."
+
+Turning to Paul, who sat silent before the fire:
+
+"Peter has left us and turned Methodist," said the parson; "he is now
+Brother Peter Ward, and wants me to preach at the meeting-house. Well, I
+won't say nay. Many a good ordained clergyman has been dissenting
+minister as well. Good-night to you.... Peter, I wish you to get some
+whipcord and tie up the reel of my fishing-rod--there it is, on the
+rafters of the ceiling; and a bit more cord to go round the handle of my
+whip--it leans against the leads of the neuk window; and, Peter, I'm
+going to go to the mill with the oats to-morrow, and Robin Atkinson has
+loaned me his shandry and mare. Robin always puts a bushel of grain into
+the box, but it's light and only small feeding. I wish you to get a
+bushel of better to mix with it, and make it more worth the mare's labor
+to eat it. Good-night all; good night."
+
+Peter grumbled something beneath his breath and shambled out.
+
+"God bless him!" said Greta presently; and Paul, without lifting his
+eyes from the fire, said quietly:
+
+   "'Christe's lore, and His apostles twelve
+   He taught; but first he followed it himselve.'"
+
+Then there was silence in the little vicarage. Paul sat without
+animation until Greta set herself to bewitch him out of his moodiness.
+Her bright eyes, dancing in the rosy fire-light that flickered in the
+room; her high spirits bubbling over with delicious teasing and joyous
+sprightliness; her tenderness, her rippling laughter, her wit, her
+badinage--all were brought to the defeat and banishment of Paul's
+heaviness of soul. It was to no purpose. The gloom of the grave face
+would not be conquered. Paul smiled slightly into the gleaming eyes, and
+laughed faintly at the pouting lips, and stroked tenderly the soft hair
+that was glorified into gold in the glint of the fire-light; but the old
+sad look came back once and again.
+
+Greta gave it up at last. She rose from the hassock at his feet.
+
+"Sweetheart," she said, "I will go to bed. You are not well to-night, or
+you are angry, or out of humor."
+
+She waited a moment, but he did not speak. Then she made a feeble feint
+of leaving the room.
+
+At last Paul said:
+
+"Greta, I have something to say."
+
+She was back at her hassock in an instant. The laughter had gone from
+her eyes, and left a dewy wistfulness.
+
+"You are unhappy. You have been unhappy a long, long time, and have
+never told me the cause. Tell me now."
+
+The heavy face relaxed.
+
+"What ever put that in your head, little one?" he asked, in a playful
+tone, patting the golden hair.
+
+"Tell me now," she said more eagerly. "Think of me as a woman fit to
+share your sorrows, not as a child to be pampered and played with, and
+never to be burdened with a man's sterner cares. If I am not fit to
+know your troubles, I am not fit to be your wife. Tell me, Paul, what it
+is that has taken the sunshine out of your life."
+
+"The sunshine has not been taken out of my life yet, little woman--here
+it is," said Paul, lightly, and he drew his fingers through the
+glistening hair.
+
+The girl's lucent eyes fell.
+
+"You are playing with me," she said gravely; "you are always playing
+with me. Am I so much a child? Are you angry with me?"
+
+"Angry with you, little one? Hardly that, I think," said Paul, and his
+voice sunk.
+
+"Then tell me, sweetheart. You have something to say--what is it?"
+
+"I have come to ask--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+He hesitated. His heart was too full to speak. He began again.
+
+"Do you think it would be too great a sacrifice to give up--"
+
+"What?" she gasped.
+
+"Do you remember all you told me about my brother Hugh--that he said he
+loved you?"
+
+"Well?" said Greta, with a puzzled glance.
+
+"I think he spoke truly," said Paul, and his voice trembled.
+
+She drew back with agony in every line of her face.
+
+"Would it be ... do you think ... supposing I went away, far away, and
+we were not to meet for a time, a long time--never to meet again--could
+you bring yourself to love him and marry him?"
+
+Greta rose to her feet in agitation.
+
+"Him--love him!--you ask me that--you!"
+
+The girl's voice broke down into sobs that seemed to shake her to the
+heart's core.
+
+"Greta, darling, forgive me; I was blind--I am ashamed."
+
+"Oh, I could cry my eyes out!" she said, wiping away her tears. "Say you
+were only playing with me, then; say you were only playing; do say so,
+do!"
+
+"I will say anything--anything but the same words again--and they nearly
+killed me to say them."
+
+"And was this what you came to say?" Greta inquired.
+
+"No, no," he said, lifted out of his gloom by the excitement; "but
+another thing, and it is easier now--ten times easier now--to say it.
+Greta, do you think if I were to leave Cumberland and settle in another
+country--Australia or Canada, or somewhere far enough away--that you
+could give up home, and kindred, and friends, and old associations, and
+all the dear past, and face a new life in a new world with me? Could you
+do it?"
+
+Her eyes sparkled. He opened his arms, and she flew to his embrace.
+
+"Is this your answer, little one?" he said, with choking delight. And a
+pair of streaming eyes looked up for a brief instant into his face.
+"Then we'll say no more now. I'm to go to London to-morrow night, and
+shall be away four days. When I return we'll talk again, and tell the
+good soul who lies in yonder. Peace be with him, and sweet sleep, the
+dear old friend!"
+
+Paul lifted up his hat and opened the door. His gloom was gone; his eyes
+were alive with animation. The worn cheeks were aflame. He stood erect,
+and walked with the step of a strong man.
+
+Greta followed him into the porch. The rosy fire-light followed her. It
+flickered over her golden hair, and bathed her beauty in a ruddy glow.
+
+"Oh, how free the air will breathe over there," he said, "when all this
+slavery is left behind forever! You don't understand, little woman, but
+some day you shall. What matter if it is a land of rain, and snow, and
+tempest? It will be a land of freedom--freedom, and life, and love. And
+now, Master Hugh, we shall soon be quits--very soon!"
+
+His excitement carried him away, and Greta was too greedy of his joy to
+check it with questions.
+
+They stood together at the door. The night was still and dark; the trees
+were noiseless, their prattling leaves were gone. Silent and empty as a
+vacant street was the unseen road.
+
+Paul held forth his hand to feel if it rained. A withered leaf floated
+down from the eaves into his palm.
+
+Then a footstep echoed on the path. It went on toward the village.
+Presently the postman came trudging along from the other direction.
+
+"Good-night, Tom o' Dint!" cried Paul, cheerily.
+
+Tom stopped and hesitated.
+
+"Who was it I hailed on the road?" he asked.
+
+"When?"
+
+"Just now."
+
+"Nay, who was it?"
+
+"I thought it was yourself."
+
+The little man trundled on in the dark.
+
+"My brother, no doubt," said Paul, and he pulled the door after him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The next morning a bright sun shone on the frosty landscape. The sky was
+blue and the air was clear.
+
+Hugh Ritson sat in his room at the back of the Ghyll, with its window
+looking out on the fell-side and on the river under the leafless trees
+beneath. The apartment had hardly the appearance of a room in a Cumbrian
+homestead. It was all but luxurious in its appointments. The character
+of its contents gave it something of the odor of a by-gone age. Besides
+books on many shelves, prints, pictures in water and oil, and mirrors of
+various shapes, there was tapestry on the inside of the door, a bust of
+Dante above a cabinet of black oak, a piece of bas-relief in soapstone,
+a gargoyle in wood, a brass censer, a mediaeval lamp with open mouth,
+and a small ivory crucifix nailed to the wall above the fire.
+
+Hugh himself sat at an organ, his fingers wandering aimlessly over the
+keys, his eyes gazing vacantly out at the window. There was a knock at
+the door.
+
+"Come in," said the player. Mr. Bonnithorne entered and walked to a
+table in the middle of the floor. Hugh Ritson finished the movement he
+was playing, and then arose from the organ and drew an easy-chair to the
+fire.
+
+"Brought the deed?" he asked, quietly, Mr. Bonnithorne still standing.
+
+"I have, my dear friend, and something yet more important."
+
+Hugh glanced up: through his constant smile Mr. Bonnithorne was
+obviously agitated. Dropping his voice, the lawyer added, "Copies of the
+three certificates."
+
+Hugh smiled faintly. "Good; we will discuss the certificates first," he
+said, and drew his dressing-gown leisurely about him.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne began to unfold some documents. He paused; his eye was
+keen and bright; he seemed to survey his dear friend with some
+perplexity; his glance was shadowed by a certain look of distrust; but
+his words were cordial and submissive, and his voice was, as usual, low
+and meek. "What a wonderful man you are. And how changed! It is only a
+few months since I had to whip up your lagging spirits at a great
+crisis. And now you leave me far behind. Not the least anxious! How
+different I am, to be sure. It was this very morning my correspondent
+sent me the copies, and yet I am here, five miles from home. And when
+the post arrived I declare to you that such was my eagerness to know if
+our surmises were right that--"
+
+Hugh interrupted in a quick, cold voice: "That you were too nervous to
+open his letter, and fumbled it back and front for an hour--precisely."
+
+Saying this, Hugh lifted his eyes quickly enough to encounter Mr.
+Bonnithorne's glance, and when they fell again a curious expression was
+playing about his mouth.
+
+"Give me the papers," said Hugh, and he stretched forward his hand
+without shifting in his seat.
+
+"Well, really, you are--really--"
+
+Hugh raised his eyes again. Mr. Bonnithorne paused, handed the
+documents, and shuffled uneasily into a seat.
+
+One by one Hugh glanced hastily over three slips of paper. "This is
+well," he said, quietly.
+
+"Well? I should say so, indeed. What could be better? I confess to you
+that until to-day I had some doubts. Now I have none."
+
+"Doubts? So you had doubts?" said Hugh, dryly "They disturbed your
+sleep, perhaps?"
+
+The lurking distrust in Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes openly displayed itself,
+and he gazed full into the face of Hugh Ritson with a searching look
+that made little parley with his smile. "Then one may take a man's
+inheritance without qualm or conviction?"
+
+Hugh pretended not to hear, and began to read aloud the certificates in
+his hand. "Let me see, this is first--Registration of Birth."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "Luckily, very luckily, the registration of
+birth is first."
+
+Hugh read:
+
+"Name, Paul. Date of birth, August 14, 1845. Place of birth, Russell
+Square, London. Father's name, Robert Lowther. Mother's name, Grace
+Lowther; maiden name, Ormerod."
+
+"Then this comes second--Registration of Marriage."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne rose in his eagerness and rubbed his hands together at
+the fire. "Yes, second," he said, with evident relish.
+
+Hugh read calmly:
+
+"Allan Ritson--Grace Ormerod--Register's office, Bow Street, Strand,
+London--June 12, 1847."
+
+"What do you say to that?" asked Mr. Bonnithorne, in an eager whisper.
+
+Hugh continued without comment. "And this comes last--Registration of
+Birth."
+
+"Name, Hugh--March 25, 1848--Holme, Ravenglass, Cumberland--Allan
+Ritson--Grace Ritson (Ormerod)."
+
+"There you have the case in a nutshell," said Mr. Bonnithorne, dropping
+his voice. "Paul is your half-brother, and the son of Lowther. You are
+Allan Ritson's heir, born within a year of your father's marriage. Can
+anything be clearer?"
+
+Hugh remained silently intent on the documents. "Were these copies made
+at Somerset House?" he asked.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded.
+
+"And your correspondent can be relied upon?"
+
+"Assuredly. A solicitor in excellent practice."
+
+"Was he told what items he had to find, or did he make a general
+search?"
+
+"He was told to find the marriage or marriages of Grace Ormerod and to
+trace her offspring."
+
+"And these were the only entries?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded again.
+
+Hugh twirled the papers in his fingers, and then placed two of them side
+by side. His face wore a look of perplexity. "I am puzzled," he said.
+
+"What puzzles you?" said Mr. Bonnithorne. "Can anything be plainer?"
+
+"Yes. By these certificates I am two and a half years younger than Paul.
+I was always taught that there was only a year between us."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne smiled, and said in a superior tone:
+
+"An obvious ruse."
+
+"You think a child is easily deceived--true!"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne preserved a smiling face.
+
+"Now, I will proceed to the payment of the legacy, and you, no doubt, to
+the institution of your claim."
+
+"No," said Hugh Ritson, with emphasis, rising to his feet.
+
+"You know that if a bastard dies seized of an estate, the law justifies
+his title. He is then the bastard eigne. You must eject this man."
+
+"No," said Hugh Ritson again. The lawyer glanced up inquiringly, and
+Hugh added: "That shall come later. Meantime the marriage must be
+brought about."
+
+"Your own marriage with Greta?"
+
+"Paul's."
+
+"Paul's?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, the very suppression of his tone giving
+it additional emphasis.
+
+"Paul's," repeated Hugh with grim composure. "He shall marry her."
+
+The lawyer had risen once more, and was now face to face with Hugh
+Ritson, glancing into his eyes with eager scrutiny.
+
+"You cannot mean it?" he said at length.
+
+"And why not?" said Hugh, placidly.
+
+"Because Paul is her brother--at least, her half-brother."
+
+"They don't know that."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne's breath seemed to be arrested.
+
+"But we know it, and we can't stand by and witness their marriage!" he
+said at length.
+
+Hugh Ritson leaned with his back to the fire. "We can, and shall," he
+said, and not a muscle of his face moved.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne surveyed his friend from head to foot, and then his own
+countenance relaxed.
+
+"You are trifling; but it will be no trifle to them when they learn that
+their billing and cooing must end. And from such a cause, too. It will
+be a terrible shock. The only question is, whether it would not be more
+humane to say nothing of the impediment until we have brought about
+another match. Last night, at Parson Christian's, I did what I could for
+you."
+
+Hugh smiled in return; a close observer might have seen that his was a
+cold mockery of the lawyer's own smile.
+
+"Yes, you were always humane, Bonnithorne, and now your sensibilities
+are shocked. But when I spoke of marriage I meant the ceremony. Nothing
+more."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes twinkled.
+
+"I think I understand. You intend to separate them at the church
+door--perhaps at the altar rail. It is a shocking revenge. My very skin
+creeps!"
+
+Hugh laughed lightly, and walked to the window. A slant of sunshine fell
+on his upturned face. When he turned his head and broke silence he spoke
+in a deep, harsh voice.
+
+"I was humane, too. When she spoke of marriage with Paul, I hinted at an
+impediment. She ridiculed the idea; scoffed at it." Another light laugh,
+and then a stern solemnity. "She insulted me--palpably, grossly,
+brutally. What did she say? Didn't I tell you before? Why, she said--ha!
+ha! would you believe it?--she said she'd rather marry a plowboy than
+such a gentleman as me. That was her very word."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face was now dark with passion, while laughter was on his
+lips.
+
+"She shall marry her plowboy, to her lifelong horror and disgrace. I
+promised her as much, and I will keep my word!"
+
+"A terrible revenge!" muttered the lawyer, twitching uneasily at his
+finger-nails.
+
+"Tut! You don't know to what lengths love may go. Even the feeble infant
+hearts of men whose minds are a blank can carry them any length in the
+devotion or the revenge of love!" He paused, and then added in a low
+tone, "She has outraged my love!"
+
+"Surely not past forgiveness?" interrupted Mr. Bonnithorne, nervously.
+"It would be a lifelong injury. And she is a woman, too."
+
+Hugh faced about.
+
+"But he is a man; and I have my reckoning with him also." Hugh Ritson
+strode across the room, and then stopped suddenly. "Look you,
+Bonnithorne, you said that with all your confidence on the night of my
+father's death, you had your doubts until to-day. But I had never a
+moment's doubt. Why? Because I had assurance from my mother's own lips.
+To me? No, but worse; to him. He knows well he is not my father's heir.
+He has known it since the hour of my father's death. He knows that I
+know it. Yet he has kept the lands to this day." Another uneasy
+perambulation. "Do you think of that when you talk of revenge?
+Manliness? He has none. He is a pitiful, truculent, groveling coward,
+ready to buy profit at any price. He has robbed me of my inheritance. He
+stands in my place. He is a living lie. Revenge? It will be
+retribution!"
+
+Hugh Ritson's composure was gone. Mr. Bonnithorne, not easily cowed,
+dropped his eyes before him. "Terrible, terrible!" he muttered again,
+and added with more assurance: "But you know I have always urged you to
+assert your right to the inheritance."
+
+Hugh was striding about the room, his infirm foot trailing heavily after
+him.
+
+"Bonnithorne," he said, pausing, "when a woman has outraged the poor
+weak heart of one of the waifs whom fate flings into the gutter, he
+sometimes throws a cup of vitriol into her face, saying, 'If she is not
+for me, she is not for another;' or 'Where she has sinned, there let her
+suffer.' That is revenge; it is the feeble device of a man who thinks in
+his simple soul that when beauty is gone loathing is at hand." Another
+light trill of laughter.
+
+"But the cup of retribution is not to be measured by the cup of
+vitriol."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne fumbled his papers nervously, and repeated beneath his
+breath, "Terrible, terrible!"
+
+"She has wronged me, Bonnithorne, and he has wronged me. They shall
+marry and they shall separate; and henceforward they shall walk together
+and yet apart, a gulf dividing them from each other, yet a wider gulf
+dividing both from the world; and so on until the end, and he and I and
+she and I are quits."
+
+"Terrible, terrible!" Mr. Bonnithorne mumbled again. "All nature rises
+against it."
+
+"Is it so? Then be it so," said Hugh, the flame subsiding from his
+cheek, and a cold smile creeping afresh about his lips. "Your sense of
+justice would have been answered, perhaps, if I had turned this bastard
+adrift penniless and a beggar, stopped the marriage, and taken by
+strategy the woman I could not win by love." The smile faded away. "That
+would have been better than the cup of vitriol, but not much better. You
+are a man of the world."
+
+"It is a terrible revenge," the lawyer muttered again--this time with a
+different intonation.
+
+"I repeat, they shall marry. No more than that," said Hugh. "I would
+outrage nature as little as I would shock the world."
+
+The sun had crept round to where the organ stood in one corner of the
+room. Hugh's passion had gradually subsided. He sidled on to the stool
+and began to play softly. A knock came to the door, and old Laird Fisher
+entered.
+
+"The gentleman frae Crewe is down at the pit about t' engine in the
+smelting-mill," said the old man.
+
+"Say I shall be with him in half an hour," said Hugh, and Laird Fisher
+left the room. Then Hugh put the papers in his pocket.
+
+"We have wasted too much time over the certificates--they can
+wait--where's the deed of mortgage?--I must have the money to pay for
+the new engine."
+
+"It is here," said the lawyer, and he spread a parchment on the table.
+
+Hugh glanced hastily over it, and touched a hand-bell. When the maid
+appeared he told her to go to Mr. Paul, who was thatching in the
+stack-yard, and say he wished to see him at once. Then he returned to
+the organ and played a tender air. His touch was both light and
+strenuous.
+
+"Any news of his daughter?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, sinking his voice to a
+whisper.
+
+"Whose daughter?" said Hugh, pausing and looking over his shoulder.
+
+"The old man's--Laird Fisher's."
+
+"Strangely enough--yes. A letter came this morning."
+
+Hugh Ritson stopped playing and thrust his hand into an inner pocket.
+But Mr. Bonnithorne hastened to show that he had no desire to pry into
+another man's secrets.
+
+"Pray don't trouble. Perhaps you'd rather not--just tell me in a word
+how things are shaping."
+
+Hugh laughed a little, unfolded a sheet of scented writing-paper, with
+ornamented border, and began to read:
+
+"'I am writing to thank you very much--' Here," tossing the letter to
+the lawyer, "read it for yourself." Then he resumed his playing.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne fixed his nose-glasses, and read:
+
+   "I am writing to thank you very much for your kind remembrance of me,
+   it was almost like having your company, I live in hopes of seeing you
+   soon, when are you coming to me? Sometimes I think you will never,
+   never come, and then I can't help crying though I try not to, and I
+   don't cry much. I don't go out very often London is far away, six
+   miles, there are nice people here and nice children. Only think when
+   my trouble is over and you come and take me home. How is poor
+   father, does he look much older does he fret for me now? I wonder
+   will he know me. I am quite well, only there is something the matter
+   in my eyes. Sometimes when I wake up I can't see plain. Don't be long
+   writing. My eyes are very sore and red to-day, and it is oh so lonely
+   in this strange place. Mrs. Drayton is kind to me. Good-bye. She has
+   a son, but he is always at meets, that is races, and I have never
+   seen him. Write soon to your loving Mercy. The time is near."
+
+Hugh played on while Mr. Bonnithorne read. The lawyer, when he came to
+the end, handed the letter back with the simple comment:
+
+"Came this morning, you say? It was written last Tuesday--nearly a week
+ago."
+
+Hugh nodded his head over his shoulder, and continued to play. He swayed
+to and fro with an easy grace to the long sweeps of the music until the
+door opened sharply, and Paul entered with a firm step. Then he rose,
+picked a pen from the inkstand, and dipped it in the ink.
+
+Paul wore a suit of rough, light cloth, with leggins, and a fur cap,
+which he did not remove. His face was pale; decision sat on every line
+of it.
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Bonnithorne, if I don't shake hands," he said in his
+deep voice; "I'm at work, and none too clean."
+
+"This," said Hugh Ritson, twiddling the pen in his fingers, "this is the
+deed I spoke of yesterday. You sign there," pointing to a blank space in
+front of a little wafer.
+
+Then he placed one hand firmly on the upper part of the parchment, as if
+to steady it, and held out the pen.
+
+Paul made no approach to accepting it. He stretched forward, took hold
+of the document, and lifted it, casting Hugh's hand aside.
+
+Hugh watched him closely.
+
+"The usual formality," he said, lightly; "nothing more."
+
+Paul passed his eye rapidly over the deed. Then he turned to the lawyer.
+
+"Is this the fourth or fifth mortgage that has been drawn?" he inquired,
+still holding the parchment before him.
+
+"Really, I can't say--I presume it is the--really, I hardly remember--"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne's suavity of tone and customary smile broke down into
+silence and a look of lowering anxiety.
+
+Paul glanced steadfastly into his face.
+
+"But I remember," he said, with composure more embarrassing than
+violence. "It is the fifth. The Holme farm was first, and then came
+Goldscope. Hindscarth was mortgaged to the last ear of corn, and then it
+was the turn for Coledale. Now, it's the Ghyll itself, I see, house and
+buildings."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face underwent a change, but his tone was unruffled as he
+said:
+
+"If you please, we will come to business." Then with a sinister smile,
+"You resemble the French counsel--you begin every speech at the
+Creation. 'Let us go on to the Deluge,' said the judge."
+
+"To the Deluge!" said Paul; and he turned his head slowly to where Hugh
+stood, holding the pen in one hand and rapping the table with the
+knuckles of the other. "Rather unnecessary. We're already under water."
+
+The passion in Hugh Ritson's face dropped to a look of sullen anger. But
+he mastered his voice, and said quietly:
+
+"The engineer from Crewe is waiting for me at the pit. I have wasted the
+whole morning over these formalities. Come, come, let us have done. Mr.
+Bonnithorne will witness the signature."
+
+Paul had not shifted his steadfast gaze from his brother's face. Hugh
+dodged his glance at first, and then met it with an expression of
+audacity.
+
+Still holding the parchment before him, Paul said quietly:
+
+"To-night I leave home for London, and shall be absent four days. Can
+this business wait until my return?"
+
+"No, it can't," said Hugh with emphasis.
+
+Paul dropped his voice.
+
+"Don't take that tone with me, I warn you. Can this business wait?"
+
+"I mean what I say--it can not."
+
+"On my return I may have something to tell you that will affect this and
+the other deeds. Once more, can it wait?"
+
+"Will you sign--yes or no?" said Hugh.
+
+Paul looked steady and straight into his brother's eyes.
+
+"You are draining away my inheritance--you are--"
+
+At this word Hugh's smoldering temper was afire.
+
+"Your inheritance?" he broke out in his bitterest tones. "It is late in
+the day to talk of that. Your inheritance--"
+
+But he stopped. The expression of audacity gave place to a look of blank
+bewilderment. Paul had torn the parchment from top to bottom, and flung
+it on the table, and in an instant was walking out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Paul Ritson returned to the stack-yard, and worked vigorously three
+hours longer. A stack had been stripped by a recent storm, and he
+thatched it afresh with the help of a laborer and a boy. Then he stepped
+indoors, changed his clothes, and filled a traveling-bag. When this was
+done he went in search of the stableman. Natt was in his stable,
+whistling as he polished his harness.
+
+"Bring the trap round to the front at seven," he said, "and put my bag
+in at the back; you'll find it in the hall."
+
+By this time the night had closed in, and the young moon showed faintly
+over the head of Hindscarth. The wind was rising.
+
+Paul returned to the house, ate, drank, and smoked. Then he rose and
+walked upstairs and knocked at the door of his mother's room.
+
+Mrs. Ritson was alone. A lamp burned on the table and cast a sharp white
+light on her face. The face was worn and very pale. Lines were plowed
+deep on it. She was kneeling, but she rose as Paul entered. He bent his
+head and kissed her forehead. There was a book before her; a rosary was
+in her hand. The room was without fire. It was chill and cheerless, and
+only sparsely furnished--sheep-skin rugs on the floor, texts on the
+walls, a carved oak clothes-chest in one corner, two square high-backed
+chairs and a small table, a bed, and no more.
+
+"I'm going off, mother," said Paul; "the train leaves in an hour."
+
+"When do you return?" said Mrs. Ritson.
+
+"Let me see--this is Saturday; I shall be back on Wednesday evening."
+
+"God be with you!" she said in a fervent voice.
+
+"Mother, I spoke to Greta last night, and she promised. We shall soon be
+free of this tyranny. Already the first link of the chain is broken. He
+called me into his room this morning to sign a mortgage on the Ghyll,
+and I refused."
+
+"And yet you are about to go away and leave everything in his hands!"
+
+Mrs. Ritson sat down and Paul put his hand tenderly on her head.
+
+"Better that than to have it wrested from me inch by inch--to hold the
+shadow of an inheritance while he grasps the substance. He knows all.
+His dark hints are not needed to tell me that."
+
+"Yet he is silent," said Mrs. Ritson, and her eyes fell on to her book.
+"And surely it is for my sake that he is so--if in truth he knows all.
+Is he not my son? And is not my honor his honor?"
+
+Paul shook his head.
+
+"If the honor of twenty mothers, as true and dear as you, were the
+stepping-stones to his interest, over those stones he would go. No, no;
+it is not honor, whether yours or his, that keeps him silent."
+
+Mrs. Ritson glanced up.
+
+"Are you not too hard on him? He is guiltless in the eye of the world,
+and that at least should plead for him. Forgive him. Do not leave your
+brother in anger!"
+
+"I have nothing to forgive," said Paul. "Even if he knew nothing, I
+should still go away and leave everything. I could not live any longer
+under the shadow of this secret, bound by an oath. I would go, as I go
+now, with sealed lips, but a free heart. He should have his own before
+man--and I mine, before God."
+
+Mrs. Ritson sat in silence; her lips trembled perceptibly, and her
+eyelids quivered.
+
+"I shall soon leave you, my dear son," she said in a tremulous voice.
+
+"Nay, nay, you shall not," he answered in an altered tone, half of
+raillery, half of tenderness; "you are coming with us--with Greta and
+me--and over there the roses will bloom again in your white cheeks."
+
+Mrs. Ritson shook her head.
+
+"I shall soon leave you, dearest," she repeated, and told her beads.
+
+He tried to dispel her sadness; he laughed, and she smiled feebly; he
+patted her head playfully. But she came back to the same words: "I shall
+soon leave you."
+
+The moon was shining at the full when he lifted his hat to go. It was
+sailing through a sky of fibrous cloud. The wind was high, and rattled
+the empty boughs of the tree against the window. Keen frost was in the
+air.
+
+"I shall see my father's old friend in London on Monday, and be back on
+Wednesday. Good-bye. Keep a good heart. Good-bye."
+
+She wept on his breast and clung to him.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye!" he repeated, and triad to disengage himself from
+her embrace.
+
+But she clung closer. It was as if she was to see him no more.
+
+"Good-bye!" she sobbed, and with the tears in his own eyes he laughed at
+her idle fears.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! one would think I was going for life--ha! ha--"
+
+There was a scream on the frosty air without. His laugh died on his
+lips.
+
+"What was that?" he said, and drew a sharp breath.
+
+She lifted her face, whiter now than ever, and with tearless eyes.
+
+"It was the cry of the bird that foretells death," she said in a
+whisper.
+
+He laughed a little--boisterously.
+
+"Nay, nay; you will be well and happy yet." Then he broke away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Natt was sitting in the trap, and it was drawn up in the court-yard to
+the door. He was looking through the darkness at some object in the
+distance, and when Paul came up he was not at first conscious of his
+master's presence.
+
+"What were you looking at, Natt?" said Paul, pulling on his gloves.
+
+"I war wond'rin' whether lang Dick o' the Syke had kindled a fire
+to-night, or whether yon lowe on the side of the Causey were frae the
+new smelting-house."
+
+Paul glanced over the horse's head. A deep glow stood out against the
+fell. All around was darkness.
+
+"The smelting-house, I should say," said Paul, and jumped to his seat
+beside Natt.
+
+By one of the lamps that the trap carried, he looked at his watch.
+
+"A quarter past seven. It will be smart driving, but you can give the
+mare her own time coming back."
+
+Then he took the reins, and in another moment they were gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+At eight o'clock that night the sky was brilliantly lighted up, and the
+sound of many voices was borne on the night wind. The red flare came
+from the Syke; the mill was afire. Showers of sparks and sheets of flame
+were leaping and streaming into the sky. Men and women were hurrying to
+and fro, and the women's shrill cries mingled with the men's shouts. At
+intervals the brightness of the glare faded, and then a column of
+choking smoke poured out and was borne away on the wind. Dick, the
+miller, was there, with the scorching heat reddening his wrathful face.
+John Proudfoot had raised a ladder against the mill, and, hatchet in
+hand, was going to cut away the cross-trees; but the heat drove him
+back. The sharp snap of the flames told of timbers being ripped away.
+
+"No use--it's gone," said the blacksmith, dragging the ladder behind
+him.
+
+"I telt them afore what their damned smelting-house would do for me!"
+said the miller, striding about in his impotent rage.
+
+Parson Christian was standing by the gate on the windward side of the
+mill-yard, with Laird Fisher beside him, looking on in silence at the
+leaping flames.
+
+"The wind is from the south," he said, "and a spark of the hot refuse
+shot down the bank has been blown into the mill."
+
+The mill was a wooden structure, and the fire held it like a serpent in
+its grip. People were coming and going from the darkness into the red
+glare, and out of the glare into the darkness. Among them was one
+stalwart figure that none noticed in the general confusion.
+
+"Have you a tarpaulin?" said this man, addressing those about him.
+
+"There's a big one on the stack at Coledale," answered another.
+
+"Run for it!"
+
+"It's of no use."
+
+"Damme, run for it!"
+
+The tone of authority was not to be ignored. In three minutes a huge
+tarpaulin was being dragged behind a dozen men.
+
+"Lay hold of the ropes and let us dip it into the river," shouted the
+same voice above the prevailing clangor. It was done. Dripping wet, the
+tarpaulin was pulled into the mill-yard.
+
+"Where's your ladder? Quick!"
+
+The ladder was raised against the scorching wooden walls.
+
+"Be ready to throw me the ropes," shouted the deep voice.
+
+A firm step was set on the lowest rung. There was a crackle of glass,
+and then a cloud of smoke streamed out of a broken window. For an
+instant the bright glare was obscured. But it burst forth afresh, and
+leaped with great white tongues into the sky.
+
+"The sheets are caught!" shouted the miller.
+
+They were flying around with the wind. A line of flame seemed to be
+pursuing them.
+
+"Who's the man on the ladder--dusta know?" cried John Proudfoot.
+
+"I dunnot," answered the miller.
+
+At that instant Hugh Ritson came up. The smoke was gone, and now a dark
+figure could be dimly seen high up on the mill-side. He seized the
+cross-trees with both hands and swung himself on to the raking roof.
+
+"Now for the ropes!" he shouted.
+
+The flames burst out again and illumined the whole sky; the dark mass of
+the fells could be seen far overhead, and the waters of the river in the
+bed of the valley glowed like amber. The stalwart figure stood out in
+the white light against the red glare, holding on to the cross-trees on
+the top of the mill, and with a wheel of crackling fire careering beside
+him.
+
+There could be no doubt of his identity, with the light on his strong
+face and tawny hair.
+
+"It's Paul Ritson!" shouted many a voice.
+
+"Damme, the ropes--quick!"
+
+The ropes were thrown and caught, and thrown again to the other side.
+Then the dripping tarpaulin was drawn over the mill until it covered the
+top and half the sides. The wheel burned out, and the iron axle came to
+the ground with a plunge.
+
+The fire was conquered; the night sky grew black; the night wind became
+voiceless. Then the busy throng had time for talk.
+
+"Where's Paul?" asked Parson Christian.
+
+"Ay, where is he?" said the miller.
+
+"He's a stunner, for sure--where is he?" said the blacksmith.
+
+None knew. When the flames began to fade he was missed. He had
+gone--none knew where.
+
+"Nine o'clock," said Parson Christian, turning his face toward home.
+"Sharp work, while it lasted, my lads!"
+
+Then there was the sound of wheels, and Natt drove his trap to the gate
+of the mill-yard.
+
+"You've just missed it, Natt," said John Proudfoot; "where have you
+been?"
+
+"Driving the master to the train."
+
+Hugh Ritson was standing by. Every one glanced from him to Natt.
+
+"The train?--master? What do you mean? Who?"
+
+"Who? Why, Master Paul," said Natt, with a curl of the lip. "I reckon it
+could scarce be Master Hugh."
+
+"When? What train?" said Parson Christian.
+
+"The eight o'clock to London."
+
+"Eight o'clock? London?"
+
+"Don't I speak plain?"
+
+"And has he gone?"
+
+"I's warrant he's gone."
+
+Consternation sat on every face but Natt's.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Next day was Sunday, and after morning service a group of men gathered
+about the church porch to discuss the events of the night before. In the
+evening the parlor of the Flying Horse was full of dalespeople, and many
+a sapient theory was then and there put forth to account for the
+extraordinary coincidence of the presence of Paul Ritson at the fire and
+his alleged departure by the London train.
+
+Hugh Ritson was not seen abroad that day. But early on Monday morning he
+hastened to the stable, called on Natt to saddle a horse, sprung on its
+back and galloped away toward the town.
+
+The morning was bitterly cold, and the rider was buttoned up to the
+throat. The air was damp; a dense veil of vapor lay on the valley and
+hid half the fells; the wintery dawn, with its sunless sky, had not the
+strength to rend it asunder; the wind had veered to the north, and was
+now dank and icy. A snow-storm was coming.
+
+The face of Hugh Ritson was wan and jaded. He leaned heavily forward in
+the saddle; the biting wind was in his eyes; he had a fixed look, and
+seemed not to see the people whom he passed on the road.
+
+Dick o' the Syke was grubbing among the fallen wreck of the charred and
+dismantled mill. When Hugh rode past him he lifted his eyes and muttered
+an oath beneath his breath. Old Laird Fisher was trundling a wheelbarrow
+on the bank of the smelting-house. The headgear of the pit-shaft was
+working. As Hugh passed the smithy, John Proudfoot was standing, hammer
+in hand, by the side of a wheelless wagon upheld by poles. John was
+saying, "Wonder what sec a place Mister Paul slept a' Saturday neet--I
+reckon that wad settle all;" and a voice from inside the smithy
+answered: "Nowt of the sort, John; it's a fate, I tell, tha." The
+peddler's pony was standing by the hasp of the gate.
+
+Never once lifting his eyes, with head bent and compressed lips, Hugh
+Ritson rode on in the teeth of the coming storm. There was another storm
+within that was uprooting every emotion of his soul. When he came to the
+vicarage he drew up sharply and rapped heavily on the gate. Brother
+Peter came shambling out at the speed of six steps a minute.
+
+"Mr. Christian at home?" asked Hugh.
+
+"Don't know as he is," said Peter.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Don't know as I've heard."
+
+"Tell him I'll call as I come back, in two hours."
+
+"Don't know as I'll see him."
+
+"Then go and look for him!" shouted Hugh, impatiently bringing down the
+whip on the flank of the horse.
+
+Brother Peter Ward turned about sulkily.
+
+"Don't know as I will," he grumbled, and trudged back into the house.
+
+Then Hugh Ritson rode on. A thin sleet began to fall, and it drove hard
+into his face. The roads were crisp, and the horse sometimes stumbled;
+but the rider pressed on.
+
+In less than half an hour he was riding into the town. The people who
+were standing in groups in the market-place parted and made space for
+him. They hailed him with respectful salutations. He responded curtly or
+not at all. Notwithstanding his long ride, his face was still pale, and
+his lips were bloodless. He stopped at the court-yard leading to the
+front of the Pack Horse. Old Willie Calvert, the innkeeper, stood there,
+and touched his cap when Hugh approached him.
+
+"My brother Paul slept here a few nights ago, I hear?" said Hugh.
+
+"So he did," said the innkeeper.
+
+"What night was it?"
+
+"What night? Let me see--it were a week come Wednesday."
+
+"Did you see him yourself?"
+
+"Nay; I were lang abed."
+
+"Who did--Mistress Calvert?"
+
+"Ey--she did for sure--Janet" (calling up the court). "She'll tell ye
+all the ins and oots."
+
+A comfortable-looking elderly body in a white cap and print apron came
+to the door.
+
+"You saw my brother--Paul, you know--when he slept at your house last
+Wednesday night?"
+
+"Yes, surely," said Janet.
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Nay, nowt. It was verra late--maybe twelve o'clock--and I was bolting
+up and had the cannel in my hand to get me to bed, and a rap came, and
+when I opened the door who should it be but Mister Paul. He said he
+wanted a bed, but he seem't to be in the doldrums and noways keen for a
+crack, so I ax't na questions, but just took him to the little green
+room over the snug and bid him good-night."
+
+"And next morning--did you see him then?" said Hugh.
+
+"No, but a morning when he paid for his bed for he had nowther bite nor
+sup in the house."
+
+"Did he look changed?--anything different about him?"
+
+"Nay, nowt but in low feckle someways, and maybe summat different
+dressed."
+
+"How different? What did he wear that night?"
+
+Pale as Hugh Ritson's face had been before, it was now white as a face
+in moonlight.
+
+"Maybe a pepper and salt tweed coat, but I can't rightly call to mind at
+the minute."
+
+Hugh's great eyes stared out of his head. His tongue cleaved to his
+mouth, and for the moment denied him speech.
+
+"Thank you, Mistress Calvert. Here, Willie, my man, drink my health with
+the missis."
+
+So saying, he tossed a silver coin to the innkeeper, wheeled about, and
+rode off.
+
+"I can not mak' nowther head nor tail o' this," said the old man.
+
+"Of what--the brass?" said Janet.
+
+"Nay, but that's soond enough, for sure, auld lass."
+
+"Then just thoo leave other folks's business to theirselves, and come
+thy ways in with thee. Thoo wert allus thrang a-meddlin'."
+
+The innkeeper had gone indoors and drawn himself a draught of ale.
+
+"I allus like to see the ins and oots o' things," he observed, with a
+twinkle in his eye, and the pot to his mouth.
+
+"Mind as you're not ower keen at seein' the ins and oots o' that
+pewter."
+
+"I'll be keerful, auld lass."
+
+Hugh Ritson's horse went clattering over the stones of the streets until
+it came to the house of Mr. Bonnithorne. Then Hugh drew up sharply,
+jumped from the saddle, tied the reins to the loop in the gate-pier, and
+rang the bell. In another minute he was standing in the breakfast-room,
+which was made comfortable by a glowing fire. Mr. Bonnithorne, in
+dressing-gown and slippers, rose from his easy-chair with a look of
+surprise.
+
+"Did you hear of the fire at the mill on Saturday night?" asked Hugh in
+a faltering voice.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head.
+
+"Very unlucky, very," said the lawyer. "The man will want recompense,
+and the law will support him."
+
+"Tut!--a bagatelle!" said Hugh, with a gesture of impatience.
+
+"Of course, if you say so--"
+
+"You've heard nothing about Paul?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne answered with a shake of his yellow head, and a look of
+inquiry.
+
+Then Hugh told him of the man at the fire, and of Natt's story when he
+drove up in the trap. He spoke with visible embarrassment, and in a
+voice that could scarcely support itself. But the deep fear that had
+come over him had not yet taken hold of the lawyer. Mr. Bonnithorne
+listened with a bland smile of amused incredulity. Hugh stopped with a
+shudder.
+
+"What are you thinking?" he asked, nervously.
+
+"That Natt lied."
+
+"As well say that the people at the fire lied."
+
+"No; you yourself saw Paul there."
+
+"Bonnithorne, like all keen-eyed men, you are short-sighted. I have
+something more to tell you. The people at the Pack Horse say that Paul
+slept at their house last Wednesday night. Now I know that he slept at
+home."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne smiled again.
+
+"A mistake as to the night," he said; "what can be plainer?"
+
+"Don't wriggle; look the facts in the face."
+
+"Facts?--a coincidence in evidence--a common error."
+
+"Would to God it were!" Hugh strode about the room in obvious
+perturbation, his eyes bent on the ground. "Bonnithorne, what is the
+place where the girl Mercy lives?"
+
+"An inn at Hendon."
+
+"Do they call it the Hawk and Heron?"
+
+"They do. The old woman Drayton keeps it."
+
+Hugh Ritson's step faltered. He listened with a look of stupid
+consternation.
+
+"Did I never tell you that the peddler, Oglethorpe, said he saw Paul at
+the Hawk and Heron in Hendon?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne dropped back into his seat without a word. Conviction
+was taking hold of him.
+
+"What do the folks say?" he asked at length.
+
+"Say? That it was a ghost, a wraith, twenty things--the idiots!"
+
+"What do you say, Mr. Ritson?"
+
+"That it was another man."
+
+The lawyer remained sitting, his eyes fixed and vacant.
+
+"What then? What if it is another man? Resemblances are common. We are
+all brothers. For example, there are numbers of persons like myself in
+the world. Odd, isn't it?"
+
+"Very," said Hugh, with a hard laugh.
+
+"And what if there exists a man resembling your half-brother, Paul, so
+closely that on three several occasions he has been mistaken for him by
+competent witnesses--what does it come to?"
+
+Hugh paused.
+
+"Come to. God knows! I want to find out. Who is this man? What is he?
+Where does he come from? What is his business here? Why, of all places
+on this wide earth, does he, of all men alive, haunt my house like a
+shadow?"
+
+Hugh Ritson was still visibly perturbed.
+
+"There's more in this matter than either of us knows," he said.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne watched him for a moment in silence.
+
+"I think you draw a painful inference--what is it?" he asked.
+
+"What?" repeated Hugh, and added, absently, "who can tell?"
+
+Up and down the room he walked restlessly, his eyes bent on the floor,
+his face drawn down into lines. At length he stood and picked up the hat
+he had thrown on the couch.
+
+"Bonnithorne," he said, "you and I thought we saw into the heart of a
+mystery. Heaven pity us for blind moles! I fear we saw nothing."
+
+"Why--what--how so--when--" Mr. Bonnithorne stammered, and then stopped
+short.
+
+Hugh had walked out of the room and out of the house. He leaped into the
+saddle and rode away.
+
+The wind had risen yet higher; it blew an icy blast from behind him as
+he cantered home. Through the hazy atmosphere a cloud of dun, vaporish
+red could be seen trailing over the dim fells. It poised above the ball
+crown of the Eel Crags like a huge supernatural bird with outstretched
+wings.
+
+Hugh held the reins with half-frozen hands. He barely felt the biting
+cold. His soul was in a tumult, and he was driven on by fears that were
+all but insupportable. For months a thick veil had overspread his
+conscience, and now, in an instant, and by an accident, it was being
+rent asunder. He had lulled his soul to sleep. But no opiate of
+sophistry could keep the soul from waking. His soul was waking now. He
+began to suspect that he had been acting like a scoundrel.
+
+At the vicarage he stopped, dismounted, and entered. Standing in the
+hall, he overheard voices in the kitchen. They were those of Brother
+Peter and little Jacob Berry, the tailor, who had been hired to sew by
+the day, and was seated on the dresser.
+
+"I've heard of such sights afore," the little tailor was saying. "When
+auld Mother Langdale's son was killed at wrustlin' down Borrowdale way,
+and Mother Langdale was abed with rheumatis, she saw him come to the
+bed-head a-dripping wet with blood, as plain as plain could be, and in
+less nor an hour after they brought him home to the auld body on a
+shutter--they did, for sure."
+
+"Shaf on sec stories! I don't know as some folks aren't as daft as
+Mother Langdale herself!" Peter muttered in reply.
+
+Hugh Ritson beat the door heavily with his riding-whip.
+
+"Parson Christian at home now?" he asked, when Peter opened it.
+
+"Been and gone," said Peter.
+
+"Did you tell him I meant to come back?"
+
+"Don't know as I did."
+
+Hugh's whip came down impatiently on his leggins.
+
+"Do you know anything?" he asked. "Do you know that you are now talking
+to a gentleman?"
+
+"Don't know as I do," mumbled Peter, backing in again.
+
+"If Miss Greta is at home tell her I should be glad to speak with
+her--do you hear?" Peter disappeared.
+
+Hugh was left alone in the hall. He waited some minutes, thinking that
+Peter was carrying his message. Presently he overheard that worthy
+reopening the discussion on Mother Langdale's sanity with little Jacob
+in the kitchen. The deep damnation he desired just then for Brother
+Peter was about to be indicated by another lusty rap on the kitchen
+door, when the door of the parlor opened, and Greta herself stood on
+the threshold with a smile and an outstretched hand.
+
+"I thought it was your voice," she said, and led the way in.
+
+"Your cordial welcome heaps coals of fire on my head, Greta. I cannot
+forget in what spirit we last talked and parted."
+
+"Let us think no more about it," said Greta, and she drew a chair for
+him to the fire.
+
+He remained standing, and as if benumbed by strong feeling.
+
+"I have come to speak of it--to ask pardon for it--I was in the wrong,"
+he said, falteringly.
+
+She did not respond, but sat down with drooping eyes. He paused, and
+there was an ominous silence.
+
+"You don't know what I suffered, or what I suffer still. You are very
+happy. I am a miserable man. Greta, do you know what it is to love
+without being loved? How can you know? It is torture beyond the gift of
+words--misery beyond the relief of tears. It is not jealousy; that is no
+more than a vulgar kind of envy. It is a nameless, measureless torment."
+
+He paused again. She did not speak. His voice grew tremulous.
+
+"I'm not one of the fools who think that the souls that are created for
+each other must needs come together--that destiny draws them from the
+uttermost parts of the earth--that, trifle as they will with their best
+hopes, fate is stronger than they are, and true to the pole-star of
+ultimate happiness. I know the world too well to believe nonsense like
+that. I know that every day, every hour, men and women are casting
+themselves away--men on the wrong women, women on the wrong men--and
+that all this is a tangle that will never, never be undone."
+
+He stepped up to where she sat and dropped his voice to a whisper.
+
+"Greta--permit me to say it--I loved you dearly. Would to Heaven I had
+not! My love was not of yesterday. It was you and I, I and you. That was
+the only true marriage possible to either of us from world's end to
+world's end. But Paul came between us; and when I saw you give yourself
+to the wrong man--"
+
+Greta had risen to her feet.
+
+"You say you come to ask pardon for what you said, but you really come
+to repeat it." So saying, she made a show of leaving the room.
+
+Hugh stood awhile in silence. Then he threw off his faltering tone and
+drew himself up.
+
+"I have come," he said, "to warn you before it is too late. I have come
+to say, while it is yet time, never marry my brother, for as sure as God
+is above us, you will repent it with unquenchable tears if you do."
+
+Greta's eyes flashed with an expression of disdain.
+
+"No," she said; "you have come to threaten me--a sure sign that you
+yourself have some secret cause for fear."
+
+It was a home-thrust, and Hugh was hit.
+
+"Greta, I repeat it, you are marrying the wrong man."
+
+"What right have you to say so?"
+
+"The right of one who could part you forever with a word."
+
+Greta was sore perplexed. Like a true woman, she would have given half
+her fortune at that moment to probe this mystery. But her indignation
+got the better of her curiosity.
+
+"It is false!" she said.
+
+"It is true!" he answered. "I could speak the word that would part you
+wider than the poles asunder."
+
+"Then I challenge you to speak it," she exclaimed.
+
+They faced each other, pale, and with quivering lips.
+
+"It is not my purpose. I have warned you," he said.
+
+"You do not believe your own warning," she answered.
+
+He winced, but said not a word.
+
+"You have come to me with an idle threat, and fear is written on your
+own face."
+
+He drew his breath sharply, and did not reply.
+
+"Whatever it is, you do not believe it."
+
+He was making for the door. He came back a step.
+
+"Shall I speak the word?" he said. "Can you bear it?"
+
+"Leave me," she said, "and carry your falsehood with you!"
+
+He was gone in an instant. Then her anger cooled directly, and her
+woman's curiosity came back with a hundred-fold rebound.
+
+"Gracious Heaven! what did he mean?" she thought, and the hot flush
+mounted to her eyes. She had half a mind to call him back. "Could it be
+true?" The tears were now rolling down her cheeks. "He has a secret
+power over Paul--what is it?" She ran to the door. "Hugh! Hugh!" He was
+gone. The galloping feet of his horse were heard faint in the distance.
+She went back into the house and sat down, and wept galling tears of
+pride and vexation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+At midday Parson Christian came home from the fields to dinner.
+
+"I've been away leading turf," he said, "from Cole Moss, for Robin
+Atkinson, to pay him for loaning me his gray mare on Saturday when I
+fetched my grain to the mill. Happen most of it is burned up,
+though--but that's no fault of Robin's. So now we neither owe t'other
+anything, and we're straight from the beginning of the world."
+
+Greta was bustling about with the very efficient hindrance of Brother
+Peter's assistance, to get the dinner on the table. She smiled, and
+sometimes tossed her fair head mighty jauntily, and laughed out loud
+with a touch of rattling gayety. But there were rims of red around her
+bleared eyes, and her voice, beneath all its noisy merriment, had a
+tearful lilt.
+
+The parson observed this, but said nothing about it.
+
+"Coming round by Harras End I met John Lowthwaite," he said, "and John
+would have me go into his house and return thanks for his wife's
+recovery from childbed. So I went in, and warmed me, and drank a pot of
+ale with them, and assisted the wife and family to return praise to
+God."
+
+Dinner was laid, little Jacob Berry came in from the kitchen, and all
+sat down together--Parson Christian and Greta, Brother Peter, and the
+tailor hired to sew.
+
+"Dear me! I'm Jack-of-all-trades, Greta, my lass," said the parson,
+after grace. "Old Jonathan Truesdale came running after me at the
+bridge, to say that Mistress Truesdale wanted me to go and taste the
+medicine that the doctor sent her from Keswick, and see if it hadn't
+opium in it, because it made her sleep. I sent word that I had business
+to take me the other way, but would send Miss Greta if she would go.
+Jonathan said his missus would be very thankful, for she was lonesome at
+whiles."
+
+"I'll go, and welcome," said Greta. The rims about her eyes were growing
+deeper; the parson chattered on, to banish the tempest of tears that he
+saw was coming.
+
+"Well, Peter, and how did the brethren at the meeting house like the
+discourse yesterday afternoon?"
+
+"Don't know as they thought you were varra soond on the point of
+'lection," muttered Peter from the inside of his bowl of soup.
+
+"Well, you're right homely folk down there, and I'd have no fault to
+find if you were not a little too disputatious. What's the use of
+wrangling over doctrine? Right or wrong, it will matter very little to
+any of us in a hundred years. We're on our way to heaven, and, please
+God, there'll be no doctrine there."
+
+Greta could not eat. She had no appetite for food. Another appetite--the
+appetite of curiosity--was eating at her heart. She laid down her knife.
+The parson could hide his concern no longer.
+
+"Dear me, my lass, you and that braw lad of yours are like David and
+Jonathan, and" (with a stern wag of his white head) "I'm not so sure
+that I won't turn myself into Saul and fling my javelin at him for
+envy."
+
+The parson certainly did not look too revengeful at that moment, with
+the mist gathering in his eyes.
+
+"Talking of Saul," said little Jacob, "there's that story of the witch
+of Endor, and Saul seein' Sam'el when he was dead. I reckon as that's
+no'but another version of what happened at the fire a' Saturday neet."
+
+Parson Christian glanced furtively at Greta's drooping head, and then
+meeting the tailor's eye, he put his finger to his lips.
+
+When dinner was over the parson lifted from the shelf the huge tome,
+"made to view his life and actions in." He drew his chair to the fire
+and began to turn over the earliest leaves. Greta had thrown on her
+cloak and was fixing her hat.
+
+"I'm going to see poor Mrs. Truesdale," she said. Then, coming behind
+the old man, and glancing over his shoulder at the book on his knees,
+"What are you looking for?" she asked, and smiled; "a prescription for
+envy?"
+
+The parson shook his old head gravely. "You must know I met young Mr.
+Ritson this morning?"
+
+"Hugh?"
+
+"Yes; he was riding home from his iron pits, but stopped and asked me if
+I could tell him when his father, who is dead and gone, poor fellow,
+came first to these parts, and how old his brother Paul might be at that
+time."
+
+"Why did he ask?" said Greta, eagerly.
+
+"Nay, I scarce can say. I told him I could not tell without looking at
+my book. Let me see; it must be a matter of seven-and-twenty years ago.
+How old is your sweetheart, Greta?"
+
+"Paul is twenty-eight."
+
+"And this is the year seventy-five. Twenty-eight from
+seventy-five--that's forty-seven. Paul was a wee toddle, I remember.
+I'll look for forty-seven. Eighteen forty-four, forty-five,
+forty-six--here it is--forty-seven. And, bless me, the very page! Look,
+here we have it."
+
+Then the parson read this entry in his diary:
+
+"'Nov. 18th.--Being promised to preach at John Skerton's church, at
+Ravenglass, I got ready to go thither. I took my mare and set forward
+and went direct to Thomas Storsacre's, where I was to lodge. It rained
+sore all the day, and I was wet, and took off my coat and let it run an
+hour. Then we supped and sat discoursing by the fire till near ten
+o'clock of one thing and another, and, among the rest, of one Allan
+Ritson, who had newly settled at Ravenglass. Thomas said Allan was fresh
+from Scotland, being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and
+that they had a child, called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet
+walking.'
+
+"The very thing! Wait, here's something more:
+
+"'Nov. 19th (Lord's day).--Went to church, and many people came to
+worship. Parson Skerton read the prayers and Thomas Storsacre the
+lessons. I prayed, and preached from Matt. vii. 23, 24; then ceased, and
+dismissed the people. After service, Thomas brought his new neighbor,
+Allan Ritson, who asked me to visit him that day and dine. So I went
+with him, and saw his wife and child--an infant in arms. Mrs. Ritson is
+a woman of some education and much piety. Her husband is a rough, blunt
+dalesman, of the good old type.'
+
+"The very thing," the parson repeated, and he put a pipe spill in the
+page.
+
+"I wonder why he wants it?" said Greta.
+
+She left Parson Christian still looking at his book, and went out on her
+errand.
+
+She was more than an hour gone, and when she returned, the winter's day
+had all but closed in. Only a little yellow light still lingered in the
+sky.
+
+"Greta, they have sent for you from the Ghyll," said the parson, as she
+entered. "Mrs. Ritson wants to see you to-night. Natt, the stableman,
+came with the trap. But he has gone again."
+
+"I will follow him at once," said Greta.
+
+"Nay, my lass; the day is not young enough," said the parson.
+
+"I was never afraid of the dark," said Greta.
+
+She took down a lantern and lighted it, drew her cloak more closely
+about her, and prepared to go.
+
+"Then take this paper to young Mr. Hugh. It's a copy of what is written
+in my book."
+
+Greta hesitated. But she could not tell Parson Christian what had passed
+between Hugh and herself. She took the paper and hastened away.
+
+The parson sat for a while before the fire. Then he rose, walked to the
+door and opened it. "Heaven bless the girl, it's snowing! What a night
+for the child to be abroad!" He returned in disturbed humor to the
+fireside.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+When Greta set out, the atmosphere was yellow and vaporish. The sky grew
+rapidly darker. As she reached the village, thin flakes of snow began to
+fall. She could feel them driven by the wind against her face, and when
+she came by the inn she could see them in the dull, yellow light.
+
+The laborers were leaving the fields, and, with their breakfast cans
+swung on their fork handles, they were drifting in twos and threes into
+the Flying Horse. It looked warm and snug within.
+
+She passed the little cluster of old houses, and scarcely saw them in
+the deepening night. As she went by the mill she could just descry its
+ruined roof standing out like a dark pyramid against the dun sky. The
+snow fell faster. It was now lying thick on her cloak in front, and on
+the windward face of the lantern in her hand.
+
+The road was heavier than before, and she had still fully a quarter of a
+mile to go. She hastened on. Passing the little church--Parson
+Christian's church--she met Job Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, coming
+out of the shed in the church-yard. "Bad night for a young lady to be
+from home, begging your pardon, miss," said Job, and went on toward the
+village, his bunch of chisels clanking over his shoulder.
+
+The wind soughed in the leafless trees that grew around the old roofless
+barn at the corner of the road that led to the fells. The gurgle of a
+half-frozen waterfall came from the distant Ghyll. Save for these sounds
+and the dull thud of Greta's step on the snow-covered road, all around
+was still.
+
+How fast the snow fell now. Yet Greta heeded it not at all. Her mind was
+busy with many thoughts. She was thinking of Paul as Parson Christian's
+great book had pictured him--Paul as a child, a little, darling babe,
+not yet able to walk. Could it be possible that Paul, her Paul, had once
+been that? Of course, to think like this was foolishness. Every one must
+have been young at some time. Only it seemed so strange. It was a sort
+of mystery.
+
+Then she thought of Paul the man--Paul as he had been, gay and
+heartsome; Paul as he was, harassed by many cares. She thought of her
+love for him--of his love for her--of how they were soon, very soon, to
+join hands and face the unknown future in an unknown land. She had
+promised. Yes, and she would go.
+
+She thought of Paul in London, and how soon he would be back in
+Newlands. This was Monday, and Paul had promised to come home on
+Wednesday. Only two days more! Yet how long it would be, after all!
+
+Greta had reached the lonnin that went up to the Ghyll. She would soon
+be there. How thick the trees were in the lane! They shut out the last
+glimmer of light from the sky. The lantern burned yellow amidst the snow
+that lay on it like a crust.
+
+Then Greta thought of Mrs. Ritson. It was strange that Paul's mother had
+sent for her. They were friends, but there had never been much intimacy
+between them. Mrs. Ritson was a grave and earnest woman, a saintly soul,
+and Greta's lightsome spirit had always felt rebuked in her presence.
+Paul loved his mother, and she herself must needs love as well as
+reverence the mother of Paul. It was Paul first and Paul last. Paul was
+the center of her world. She was a woman, and love was her whole
+existence.
+
+Here in the lonnin she was in pitch darkness. She stumbled once into the
+dike; then laughed and went on again. At one moment she thought she
+heard a noise not far away. She stood and listened. No, it was nothing.
+Only a hundred yards more! Bravely!
+
+Then, by a swift rebound--she knew not why--her mind went back to the
+events of the morning. She thought of Hugh Ritson and his mysterious
+threat. What did he mean? What harm could he do them? Oh! that she had
+been calmer, and asked. Her heart fluttered. It flashed upon her that
+perhaps it was he and not his mother who had sent for her to-night. Her
+pulse quickened.
+
+At that instant the curlew shot over her head with its deep, mournful
+cry. At the same moment she heard a step approaching her. It came on
+quickly. She stopped. "Who is it?" she asked.
+
+There was no answer. The sound of the footstep ceased.
+
+"Who are you?" she called again.
+
+Then with heavy thuds in the darkness and on the snow, some one
+approached. She trembled from head to foot, but advanced a step and
+stopped again. The footstep was passing her. She brought the light of
+the lantern full on the retreating figure.
+
+It was the figure of a man. Going by hastily, he turned his head over
+his shoulder and she saw his face. It was the face of Paul, colorless,
+agitated, with flashing eyes.
+
+Every drop of Greta's blood stood still.
+
+"Paul!" she cried, thrilled and immovable.
+
+There was an instant of unconsciousness. The earth reeled beneath her.
+When she came to herself she was standing alone in the lane, the lantern
+half buried in the snow at her feet.
+
+Had it been all a dream?
+
+She was but twenty yards from the house. The door of the porch stood
+open. Chilled with fear to the heart's core, she rushed in. No one was
+in the hall. Not a sound, but the faint mutter of voices in the kitchen.
+
+She ran through the passage and threw open the kitchen door. The farm
+laborers were at supper, chatting, laughing, eating, smoking.
+
+"Didn't you hear somebody in the house?" she cried.
+
+The men got up and turned about. There was dead silence in a moment.
+
+"When?"
+
+"Now."
+
+"No. What body?"
+
+She flew off without waiting to explain. The kitchen was too far away.
+Hugh Ritson's room opened from the first landing of the stairs. The
+stairs went up almost from the porch. Darting up, she threw open the
+door of Hugh's room. Hugh was sitting at the table, examining papers by
+a lamp.
+
+"Have you seen Paul?" she cried, in an agonized whisper, and with a
+panic-stricken look.
+
+Hugh dropped the papers and rose stiffly to his feet.
+
+"Great God! Where?"
+
+"Here--this moment!"
+
+Their eyes met. He did not answer. He was very pale. Had she dreamed?
+She looked down at the snow-crusted lantern in her hand. It must have
+been all a dream.
+
+She stepped back on to the landing, and stood in silence. The serving
+people had come out of the kitchen, and, huddled together, they looked
+at her in amazement. Then a low moan reached her ear. She ran to Mrs.
+Ritson's room. The door to it stood wide open; a fire burned in the
+grate, a candle on the table.
+
+Outstretched on the floor lay the mother of Paul, cold, still, and
+insensible.
+
+When Mrs. Ritson regained consciousness she looked about with the empty
+gaze of one who is bending bewildered eyes on vacancy. Greta was
+kneeling beside her, and she helped to lift her into the bed. Mrs.
+Ritson did not speak, but she grasped Greta's hand with a nervous
+twitch, when the girl whispered something in her ear. From time to time
+she trembled visibly, and glanced with a startled look toward the door.
+But not a word did she utter.
+
+Thus hour after hour wore on, and the night was growing apace. A painful
+silence brooded over the house. Only in the kitchen was any voice raised
+above a whisper. There the servants quaked and clucked--every tongue
+among them let loose in conjecture and the accents of surprise.
+
+Hugh Ritson passed again and again from his own room to his mother's. He
+looked down from time to time at the weary, pale, and quiet face. But he
+said little. He put no questions.
+
+Greta sat beside the bed, only less weary, only less pale and quiet,
+only less disturbed by horrible imaginings than the sufferer who lay
+upon it. Toward midnight Hugh came to say that Peter had been sent for
+her from the vicarage. Greta rose, put on her cloak and hat, kissed the
+silent lips, and followed Hugh out of the room.
+
+As they passed down the stairs Greta stopped at the door of Hugh
+Ritson's room, and beckoned him to enter it with her. They went in
+together, and she closed the door.
+
+"Now tell me," she said, "what this means."
+
+Hugh's face was very pale. His eyes had a wandering look, and when he
+spoke his voice was muffled. But by an effort of his unquenchable energy
+he shook off this show of concern.
+
+"It means," he said, "that you have been the victim of a delusion."
+
+Greta's pale face flushed. "And your mother--has she also been the
+victim of a delusion?"
+
+Hugh shrugged his shoulders, showed his teeth slightly, but made no
+reply.
+
+"Answer me--tell me the truth--be frank for once--tell me, can you
+explain this mystery?"
+
+"If I could explain it, how would it be a mystery?"
+
+Greta felt the blood tingle to her finger-tips.
+
+"Do you believe I have told you the truth?" she asked.
+
+"I am sure you have."
+
+"Do you believe I saw Paul in the lane?"
+
+"I am sure you think you saw him."
+
+"Do you know for certain that he went away?"
+
+Hugh nodded his head.
+
+"Are you sure he has not got back?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"In short, you think what I saw was merely the result of woman's
+hysteria?"
+
+Hugh smiled through his white lips, and his staring eyes assumed a
+momentary look of amused composure. He stepped to the table and fumbled
+some papers.
+
+This reminded Greta of the paper the parson had asked her to deliver. "I
+ought to have given you this before," she said. "Mr. Christian sent it."
+
+He took it without much apparent interest, put it on the table unread,
+and went to the door with Greta.
+
+The trap was standing in the court-yard, with Natt in the driver's seat,
+and Brother Peter in the seat behind. The snow had ceased to fall, but
+it lay several inches deep on the ground. There was the snow's dumb
+silence on the earth and in the air.
+
+Hugh helped Greta to her place, and then lifted the lamp from the trap,
+and looked on the ground a few yards ahead of the horse. "There are no
+footprints in the snow," he said, with a poor pretence at a
+smile--"none, at least, that go from the house."
+
+Greta herself had begun to doubt. She lacked presence of mind to ask if
+there were any footprints at all except Peter's. The thing was done and
+gone. It all happened three hours ago, and it was easy to suspect the
+evidence of the senses.
+
+Hugh returned the lamp to its loop. "Did you scream," he asked, "when
+you saw--when you saw--it?"
+
+Greta was beginning to feel ashamed. "I might have done. I can not
+positively say--"
+
+"Ah, that explains everything. No doubt mother heard you and was
+frightened. I see it all now. Natt, drive on--cold journey--good-night."
+
+Greta felt her face burn in the darkness. Before she had time or
+impulse to reply, they were rolling away toward home.
+
+At intervals her ear caught the sound of suppressed titters from the
+driver's seat. Natt was chuckling to himself with great apparent
+satisfaction. Since the fire at the mill he had been putting two and two
+together, and he was now perfectly confident as to the accuracy of his
+computation. When folks said that Paul had been at the fire he laughed
+derisively, because he knew that an hour before he had left him at the
+station. But an idea works in a brain like Natt's pretty much as the hop
+ferments. When it goes to the bottom it leaves froth and bubbles at the
+top. Natt knew that there was some grave quarrel between the brothers.
+He also knew that there were two ways to the station and two ways back
+to Newlands--one through the town, the other under Latrigg. Mr. Paul
+might have his own reasons for pretending to go to London, and also his
+own reasons for not going. Natt had left him stepping into the station
+at the town entrance. But what was to prevent him from going out again
+at the entrance from Latrigg? Of course that was what he had done. And
+he had never been out of the county. Deary me, how blind folks were, to
+be sure! Thus Natt's wise head chuckled and clucked.
+
+At one moment Natt twisted his sapient and facetious noddle over his
+shoulder to where Brother Peter sat huddled into a hump and in gloomy
+silence. "Mercy me, Peter!" he cried, in an affrighted whisper, and with
+a mighty tragical start, "and is that thee? Dusta know I thowt it were
+thy ghost?"
+
+"Don't know as it's not--dragging a body frae bed a cold neet like
+this," mumbled Peter, numbed up to his tongue, but still warm enough
+there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Hugh Ritson was content that Greta should think she had been the victim
+of a delusion. He was not unwilling that she should be tortured by
+suggestions of the supernatural. If she concluded that Paul had deceived
+her as to his departure from Newlands, he would not be unlikely to
+foster the delusion. The one thing of all others which Hugh Ritson was
+anxious to prevent was that Greta should be led to draw the purely
+matter-of-fact inference that when she thought she saw Paul she had
+really seen another man.
+
+But that was his own conviction. He was now sure beyond the hope of
+doubt that there was a man alive who resembled Paul Ritson so closely
+that he had thrice before, and now once again, been mistaken for him by
+unsuspecting persons. That other man was to be the living power in his
+own life, in his brother's life, in his mother's life, in Greta's life.
+Who was he?
+
+Left alone in the court-yard when the trap drove away, Hugh Ritson
+shuddered and looked round. He had laughed with the easy grace of a man
+no longer puzzled as he bid Greta good-night, but suspense was gnawing
+at his heart. He returned hastily to his room, sat down at the table,
+picked up the paper which Parson Christian had sent him, and read it
+with eager eyes.
+
+He read it and reread it; he seemed to devour it line by line, word by
+word. When he would have set it down his fingers so trembled that he let
+it fall, and he rose from his chair with rigid limbs.
+
+What he had dreaded he now knew for certainty. He had stumbled into an
+empty grave. He opened a drawer and took out three copies of
+certificates that Mr. Bonnithorne had brought him. Selecting the
+earliest of these in order of date, he set it side by side with the copy
+of the extract from Parson Christian's diary.
+
+By the one--Paul, the son of Grace Ormerod, by her husband Robert
+Lowther, was born August 14, 1845.
+
+By the other--Paul, the reputed son of Grace Ormerod by her husband,
+Allan Ritson, was an infant still in arms on November 19, 1847.
+
+Paul Ritson could not be Paul Lowther.
+
+Paul Ritson could not be the half-brother of Greta Lowther.
+
+Hugh Ritson fell back as one who had been dealt a blow. For months he
+had been idly hatching an addled villainy. The revenge that he had
+promised himself for spurned and outraged love--the revenge that he had
+named retribution--was but an impotent mockery.
+
+For an hour he strode up and down the room with flushed face and limbs
+that shook beneath him. Natt came home from the vicarage, put in his
+horse, and turned into the kitchen--now long deserted for the night. He
+heard the restless footstep backward and forward, and began to wonder if
+anything further had gone wrong. At last he ventured upstairs, opened
+noiselessly the door, and found his master with a face aflame and a look
+of frenzy. But the curious young rascal with the sleepy eyes had not
+time to proffer his disinterested services before he was hunted out with
+an oath. He returned to the kitchen with a settled conviction that
+somewhere in that mysterious chamber his master kept a capacious
+cupboard for strong drink.
+
+Like master, like man: Natt brewed himself an ample pint of hot ale,
+pulled off his great boots, and drew up to warm himself before the
+remains of a huge fire.
+
+Hugh Ritson's bedroom opened off his sitting-room. He went to bed; he
+tried to sleep, but no sleep came near him; he tossed about for an hour,
+rose, walked the room again, then went to bed once more.
+
+He was feeling the first pangs of honest remorse. A worse man would have
+accommodated himself more speedily to the altered conditions when he
+found that he had pursued a phantasm. To do this erring man justice, he
+writhed under it. A better man would have fled from it. If, at the
+outset, if when the first step in the descent had been taken, he had
+seen clearly that villainy lay that way, he would not have gone
+further. But now he had gone too far. To go on were as easy as to go
+back; and go on he must.
+
+While he honestly believed that Greta was half-sister to the man known
+to the world as Paul Ritson and his brother, he could have stood aside
+and witnessed without flinching the ceremony that was to hold them
+forever together and apart. Then without remorse he could have come down
+and separated them, and seen that woman die of heart's hunger who had
+starved to death the great love he bore her. There would have been a
+stern retribution in that, and the voice of nature would have whispered
+him that he did well.
+
+But when it was no longer possible to believe that Greta and Paul were
+anything to each other, the power of sophistry collapsed, and
+retribution sunk to revenge.
+
+He might go on, but there could be no self-deception. The blind
+earthworms of malice might delude themselves if they liked, but he could
+see, and he must face the truth. If ever he did what he had proposed to
+do, then he was a scoundrel, and a conscious scoundrel!
+
+Hugh Ritson leaped out of his bed. The perspiration rolled in big beads
+from his forehead. His tongue grew thick and stiff in his mouth. The
+great veins in his neck swelled.
+
+Without knowing whither he went, he walked out of his own into his
+mother's room. A candle still burned on the table. The fire had
+smoldered out. A servant-maid sat by the bedside with head aslant,
+sleeping the innocent sleep. He approached the bed. His mother was
+breathing softly. She had fallen into a doze; the pale face was very
+quiet; the weary look of the worn cheeks was smoothed out; the absent
+eyes were lightly closed. Closed, too, on the rough world was the poor
+soul that was vexed by it.
+
+Hugh Ritson was touched. Somewhere deep down in that frozen nature the
+angel of love troubled the still waters.
+
+Bending his head, he would have touched the cold forehead with his
+feverish lips. But he drew back. No, no, no! Tenderness was not for
+him. The good God gave it to some as manna from heaven. But here and
+there a man, stretched on the rack of life, had not the drop of water
+that would cool his tongue.
+
+With stealthy steps, as of one who had violated the chamber of chastity,
+Hugh Ritson crept back to his own room. He took brandy from a cupboard
+and drank a glass of it. Then he lay down and composed himself afresh to
+sleep. Thoughts of Greta came back to him. Even his love for her was
+without tenderness. It was a fiery passion. It made him weep,
+nevertheless. Galling tears, hot, bitter, smarting tears, rolled from
+his eyes. And down in that deep and hidden well of feeling, where he,
+too, was a man like other men, Hugh Ritson's strong heart bled. He would
+have thought that love like his must have subdued the whole world to its
+will; that when a woman could reject it the very stones must cry out.
+Pshaw!
+
+Would sleep never come? He leaped up, and laughed mockingly, drank
+another glass of brandy, and laughed again. His door was open, and the
+hollow voice echoed through the house.
+
+He put on a dressing-gown, took his lamp in his hand, and walked
+down-stairs and into the hall. The wind had risen. It moaned around the
+house, then licked it with hissing tongues. Hugh Ritson walked to the
+ingle, where no fire burned. There he stood, scarcely knowing why. The
+lamp in his hand cast its reflection into the mirror on the wall. Behind
+it was a flushed face, haggard, with hollow eyes and parted lips.
+
+The sight recalled another scene. He stepped into the little room at the
+back. It was in that room his father died. Now it was empty; a bare
+mattress, a chair, a table--no more.
+
+Hugh Ritson lifted the lamp above his head and looked down. He was
+enacting the whole terrible tragedy afresh. He crept noiselessly to the
+door, opened it slightly, and looked cautiously out. Then, leaving it
+ajar, he stood behind it with bent head and inclining ear. His face wore
+a ghastly smile.
+
+The wind soughed and wept without.
+
+Hugh Ritson threw the door open and stepped back into the hall. There he
+stood some minutes with eyes riveted on one spot. Then he hurried away
+to his room. As he went up the stairs he laughed again.
+
+Back at his bedside he poured himself another glass of brandy, and once
+more lay down to sleep. He certainly slept this time, and his sleep was
+deep.
+
+Natt's dreamy ear heard a voice in the hall. He had drunk his hot ale,
+and from the same potent cause as his master, he also had slept, but
+with somewhat less struggle. Awakened in his chair by the unaccustomed
+sound, he stole on tiptoe to the kitchen door. He was in time to see
+from behind the figure of a man ascending the stairs carrying a lamp
+before him. Natt's eyes were a shade hazy at the moment, but he was
+cock-sure of what he saw. Of course it was Mister Paul, sneaking off to
+bed after more "straitforrad" folk had got into their nightcaps and
+their second sleep. That was where Natt soon put himself.
+
+When all was still in that troubled house, the moon's white face peered
+through a rack of flying cloud and looked in at the dark windows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Next morning, Tuesday morning, Hugh Ritson found this letter on his
+table:
+
+   "Dearest,--I do not know what is happening to me, but my eyes get
+   worse and worse. To-day and yesterday I have not opened them. Oh,
+   dear, I think I am losing my sight; and I have had such a fearful
+   fright. The day after I wrote to you, Mrs. Drayton's son came home,
+   and I saw him. Oh, I thought it was your brother Paul, and his name
+   is Paul, too, but I think now it must be my eyes--they were very bad,
+   and perhaps I did not see plain. He asked me questions, and went away
+   next morning. Do not be long writing, I am, oh, so very lonely. When
+   are you coming to me? Write soon.
+
+   Your loving,
+
+   Mercy."
+
+Hugh Ritson had risen in a calmer mood. He was prepared for a disclosure
+like this. Last night he had been overwhelmed by the discovery that Paul
+Ritson was not the son of Robert Lowther. With the coming of daylight a
+sterner spirit of inquiry came upon him. The question that now agitated
+him was the identity of the man who had been mistaken for Paul.
+
+After Mercy's letter the mystery was in a measure dispelled. There could
+hardly be the shadow of a doubt that the man who had slept at the Pack
+Horse--the man who had been seen by many persons at the fire--the man
+who Greta had encountered in the lane--was one and the same with the man
+whom Mercy knew for Paul Drayton, the innkeeper at Hendon.
+
+But so much light on one small spot only made the surrounding gloom more
+dark. Far more important than any question of who this man was by repute
+was the other question of why he was there. Wherefore had he come? Why
+did he not come openly? What hidden reason had he for moving like a
+shadow where he knew no one and was known of none?
+
+Hugh thought again of the circumstance of his mother's strange seizure.
+Last night he had formulated his theory respecting it. And it was simple
+enough. The second man, whoever he was, had, for whatever reason, come
+to the house, and, failing to attract attention in the hall, had
+wandered aimlessly upstairs to the first room in which he heard a noise.
+That room happened to be his mother's, and when the stranger, with the
+fatal resemblance to her absent son, presented himself before her in
+that strange way, at that strange hour, in that strange place, the fear
+had leaped to her heart that it was his wraith warning her of his death,
+and she had fainted and fallen.
+
+The theory had its serious loop-holes for incredulity, but Hugh Ritson
+minded them not at all. Another and a graver issue tortured him.
+
+But this morning, by the light of Mercy's letter, his view was clearer.
+If the man who resembled Paul had come secretly to Newlands, he must
+have had his reasons for not declaring himself. If he had wandered when
+none was near into Mrs. Ritson's room, it must have been because he had
+a purpose there. And his mother's seizure might not have been due to
+purely superstitious fears, or her silence to shattered nerves.
+
+There was one thing to do, and that was to get at the heart of this
+mystery. Whoever he was, this second man was to be the living influence
+in all their lives.
+
+Thus far, one thing only was plain--that Paul Ritson was not the
+half-brother of Greta.
+
+Hugh determined to travel south forthwith. If the other man was still
+beating about Newlands, so much the better. Hugh would be able to see
+the old woman, his mother, and talk with her undisturbed by the
+suspicions of a cunning man.
+
+Hugh spent most of that day in his office at the pit-head, settling up
+such business as could not await his return. On Wednesday morning early
+he dispatched Natt on foot with a letter to Mr. Bonnithorne, explaining
+succinctly, but with shrewd reservations, the recent turn of events.
+Then he stepped for a moment into his mother's room.
+
+Mrs. Ritson had risen, and was sitting by the fire writing. Hugh
+observed, as she rose, that there were tears in her eyes, and that the
+paper beneath her pen was stained with great drops that had fallen as
+she wrote. A woman was busy on her knees on the floor sorting linen into
+a trunk. This garrulous body, old Dinah Wilson, was talking as Hugh
+entered.
+
+"It caps all--you niver heard sec feckless wark," she was saying. "And
+Reuben threept me down, too. There he was in the peat loft when I went
+for the peats, and he had it all as fine as clerk after passon. 'It was
+Master Paul at the fire, certain sure,' he says, ower and ower again.
+'What, man, get away wi' thy botheration--Mister Paul was off to
+London!' I says. 'Go and see if tha can leet on a straight waistcoat any
+spot,' I says. But he threept and he threept. 'It was Master Paul or his
+own birth brother,' he says."
+
+"Hush, Dinah!" said Mrs. Ritson.
+
+Hugh told his mother, in a quiet voice, that business was taking him
+away. Then he turned about and said "Good-day" without emotion.
+
+She held out her hand to him and looked him tenderly in the eyes.
+
+"Is this our parting?" she said, and then leaned forward and touched his
+cheek with her lips.
+
+He seemed surprised, and turned pale; but he went out calmly and without
+speaking. In half an hour he was walking rapidly over the snow-crusted
+road to the station.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+When Paul parted from Natt at the station on Saturday night, he had told
+the stableman to meet him with the trap at the same spot and at the same
+hour on Wednesday. Since receiving these instructions, however, Natt
+had, as we have seen, arrived at conclusions of his own respecting
+certain events. The futility of doing as he had been bidden began to
+present itself to his mind with peculiar force. What was the good of
+going to the station for a man who was not coming by the train? What was
+the use of pretending to bring home a person who had never been away?
+These and other equivocal problems defied solution when Natt essayed
+them.
+
+He revolved the situation fully on his way home from Mr. Bonnithorne's,
+and decided that to go to the station that night at eight o'clock would
+be only a fine way of making a fool of a body. But when he reached the
+stable, and sat down to smoke, and saw the hour approaching, his
+instinct began to act automatically, and in sheer defiance of the thing
+he called his reason. In short, Natt pulled off his coat and proceeded
+to harness the mare.
+
+Then it was that, relieved of the weight of abstract questions, he made
+two grave discoveries. The first was that the horse bore marks of having
+been driven in his absence; the next, that the harness was not hanging
+precisely on those hooks where he had last placed it. And when he drew
+out the trap he saw that the tires of the wheels were still crusted with
+unmelted snow.
+
+These concrete issues finally banished the discussion of general
+principles. Natt had not entirely accounted for the strange
+circumstances when he jumped into his seat and drove away. But the old
+idea of Paul's dubious conduct was still fermenting; the froth and
+bubbles were still rising.
+
+Natt had not gone half-way to the station when he almost leaped out of
+the trap at the sudden advent of an original thought: The trap had been
+driven out before! He had not covered a mile more before that thought
+had annexed another: And along this road, too! After this the sequence
+of ideas was swift. In less than half a league, Natt had realized that
+Paul Ritson himself had driven the mare to the station in order that he
+might be there to come home at eight o'clock, and thus complete the
+deception which he had practiced on gullible and slow-witted persons.
+But in his satisfaction at this explanation Natt overlooked the trifling
+difficulty of how the trap had been got home again.
+
+Driving up into the station, he was greeted by a flyman waiting for
+hire.
+
+"Bad on the laal mare, ma man--two sec journeys in ya half day. I reckon
+tha knows it's been here afore?"
+
+Natt's face broadened into a superior smile, which seemed to desire his
+gratuitous informant to tell him something he didn't know. This unspoken
+request was about to be gratified.
+
+"Dusta ken who came down last?"
+
+Natt waved his hand in silent censure of so much unnecessary zeal, and
+passed on.
+
+Promptly as the clock struck eight, the London train drew up at the
+station, and a minute afterward Paul Ritson came out. "Here he be, of
+course," thought Natt.
+
+Paul was in great spirits. His face wore the brightest smile, and his
+voice had the cheeriest ring. His clothes, seen by the lamp, looked a
+little draggled and dirty.
+
+He swung himself into the trap, took the driver's seat and the reins and
+rattled along with cheerful talk.
+
+It was months since Natt had witnessed such an access of geniality on
+Paul's part.
+
+"Too good to be true," thought Natt, who, in his own wise way, was
+silently making a study in histrionics.
+
+"Anything fresh while I've been away?" asked Paul.
+
+"Humph!" said Natt.
+
+"Nothing new? Nobody's cow calved? The mare not lost her hindmost
+shoe--nothing?" asked Paul, and laughed.
+
+"I know no more nor you," said Natt, in a grumpy tone.
+
+Paul looked at him and laughed again. Not to-night were good spirits
+like his to be quenched by a servant's ill humor.
+
+They drove some distance without speaking, the silence being broken only
+by Paul's coaxing appeals to the old mare to quicken the pace that was
+carrying him to somebody who was waiting at the vicarage.
+
+Natt recovered from his natural dudgeon at an attempt to play upon him,
+and began to feel the humor of the situation. It was good sport, after
+all--this little trick of Master Paul. And the best of it was that
+nobody saw through it but Natt himself. Natt began to titter and look up
+significantly out of his sleepy eyes into Paul's face. Paul glanced back
+with a look of bewilderment; but of course that was only a part of the
+game.
+
+"Keep it up," thought Natt; "how we are doing 'em!"
+
+The landscape lying south was a valley, with a double gable of mountains
+at the top; the mill stood on a knoll two miles further up, and on any
+night but the darkest its black outlines could be dimly seen against the
+sky that crept down between these fells. There was no moon visible, but
+the moon's light was behind the clouds.
+
+"What has happened to the mill?" said Paul, catching sight of the
+dismantled mass in the distance.
+
+"Nowt since Saturday neet, as I've heard on," said Natt.
+
+"And what happened then?"
+
+"Oh, nowt, nowt--I's warrant not," said Natt, with a gurgling titter.
+
+Paul looked perplexed. Natt had been drinking, nothing surer.
+
+"Why, lad, the wheel is gone--look!"
+
+"I'll not say but it is. We know all about that, we do!"
+
+Paul glanced down again. Liquor got into the brains of some folk, but it
+had gone into Natt's face. With what an idiotic grin he was looking into
+one's eyes!
+
+But Paul's heart was full of happiness. His bosom's lord sat lightly on
+its throne. Natt's face was excruciatingly ridiculous, and Paul laughed
+at the sight of it. Then Natt laughed, and they both laughed together,
+each at, neither with, the other. "I don't know nothing, I don't. Oh,
+no!" chuckled Natt, inwardly. Once he made the remark aloud.
+
+When they came to the vicarage Paul drew up, threw the reins to Natt,
+and got down.
+
+"Don't wait for me," he said; "drive home."
+
+Natt drove as far homeward as the Flying Horse, and then turned in there
+for a crack, leaving the trap in the road. Before he left the inn, a
+discovery yet more astounding, if somewhat less amusing, was made by his
+swift and subtle intellect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+An itinerant mendicant preacher had walked through the valley that day,
+and when night fell in he had gravitated to the parson's door.
+
+"Seeing the sun low," he said, "and knowing it a long way to Keswick,
+and I not being able to abide the night air, but sure to catch a cold, I
+came straight to your house."
+
+Like other guests of high degree, the shoeless being made a virtue of
+accepting hospitality.
+
+"Come in, brother, and welcome," said Parson Christian; and that night
+the wayfarer lodged at the vicarage. He was a poor, straggle-headed
+creature, with a broken brain as well as a broken purse, but he had the
+warm seat at the ingle.
+
+Greta heard Paul's step on the path and ran to meet him.
+
+"Paul, Paul! thank God you are here at last!"
+
+Her manner was warm and impulsive to seriousness, but Paul was in no
+humor to make nice distinctions.
+
+Parson Christian rose from his seat before the fire and shook hands with
+feeling and gravity.
+
+"Right glad to see you, good lad," he said. "This is Brother Jolly," he
+added, "a fellow-soldier of the cross, who has suffered sore for
+neglecting Solomon's injunction against suretyship."
+
+Paul took the flaccid hand of the fellow-soldier, and then drew Greta
+aside into the recess of the square window.
+
+"It's all settled," he said, eagerly; "I saw my father's old friend, and
+agreed to go out to his sheep runs as steward, with the prospect of
+farming for myself in two years' time. I have been busy, I can tell you.
+Only listen. On Monday I saw the good old gentleman--he's living in
+London now, and he won't go back to Victoria, he tells me--wants to lay
+his bones where they were got, he says--funny old dog, rather--says he
+remembers my father when he wasn't as solemn as a parish clerk on Ash
+Wednesday. Well, on Monday I saw the old fellow, and settled terms and
+things--liberal old chap, too, if he has got a hawk beak--regular
+Shylock, you know. Well--where was I? Oh, of course--then on Tuesday I
+took out our berths--yours, mother's, and mine--the ship is called the
+'Ballarat'--queer name--a fine sea-boat, though--she leaves the London
+docks next Wednesday--"
+
+"Next Wednesday?" said Greta, absently, and with little interest in her
+tone.
+
+"Yes, a week to-day--sails at three prompt--pilot comes on at a quarter
+to--everybody aboard at twelve. But it didn't take quite four-and-twenty
+hours to book the berths, and the rest of the day I spent at a lawyer's
+office. Can't stomach that breed, somehow; they seem to get all the
+clover--maybe it's because they're a drift of sheep with tin cans about
+their necks, and can never take a nibble without all the world knowing.
+Ha! ha! I wish I'd thought of that when I saw old Shylock."
+
+Paul was rattling on with a glib tongue, and eyes that danced to the
+blithe step of an emancipated heart.
+
+In the slumberous fire-light the parson and the itinerant preacher
+talked together of the dust and noise in the great world outside these
+sleepy mountains.
+
+Greta drew back into the half-light of the window recess, too greedy of
+Paul's good spirits to check them.
+
+"Yes, I went to the lawyer's office," he continued, "and drew out a
+power of attorney in Hugh's name, and now he can do what he likes with
+the Ghyll, just as if it were his own. Much luck to him, say I, and some
+bowels, too, please God! But that's not all--not half. This morning--ah,
+now, you wise little woman, who always pretend to know so much more than
+other folks, tell me what I did in London before leaving it this
+morning?"
+
+Greta had hardly listened. Her eyes had dropped to his breast, her arms
+had crept about his neck, and her tears were falling fast. But he was
+not yet conscious of the deluge.
+
+"What do you think? Why, I went to Doctors' Commons and bought the
+license--dirt cheap, too, at the price--and now it can be done any
+day--any day--- think of that! So ho! so ho! covering your face,
+eh?--up, now, up with it--gently. Do you know, they asked me your
+complexion, the color of your eyes, or something--that old Shylock or
+somebody--and I couldn't tell for the life of me--there, a peep, just
+one wee peep! Why, what's this--what the d---- What villain--what in the
+name of mischief is the ma--Why, Greta, you're cry--yes, you are--you
+are crying!"
+
+Paul had forced up Greta's face with gentle violence, and now he held
+her at arm's length, surveying her with bewildered looks.
+
+Parson Christian twisted about in his chair. He had not been so much
+immersed in wars and rumors of wars as to be quite ignorant of what was
+going on around him. "Greta is but in badly case," he said, pretending
+to laugh. "She has fettled things in the house over and over again, and
+she has if't and haffled over everything. She's been longing, surely."
+The deep voice had a touch of tremor in it this time, and the twinkling
+old eyes looked hazy.
+
+"Ah, of course!" shouted Paul, in stentorian tones, and he laughed about
+as heartily as the parson.
+
+Greta's tears were gone in an instant.
+
+"You must go home at once, Paul," she said; "your mother must not wait a
+moment longer."
+
+He laughed and bantered and talked of his dismissal. She stopped him
+with a grave face and a solemn word. At last his jubilant spirit was
+conquered; he realized that something was amiss. Then she told him what
+happened at the Ghyll on Monday night. He turned white, and at first
+stood tongue-tied. Next he tried to laugh it off, but the laughter fell
+short.
+
+"Must have been my brother," he said; "it's true, we're not much alike,
+but then it was night, dark night, and you had no light but the dim
+lamp--and at least there's a family resemblance."
+
+"Your brother Hugh was sitting in his room."
+
+Paul's heart sickened with an indescribable sensation.
+
+"You found the door of my mother's room standing open?"
+
+"Wide open."
+
+"And Hugh was in his own room?" said Paul, his eyes flashing and his
+teeth set.
+
+"I saw him there a moment later."
+
+"My features, my complexion, my height, and my build, you say?"
+
+"The same in everything."
+
+Paul lifted his face, and in that luminous twilight it were an
+expression of peculiar horror: "In fact, myself--in a glass?"
+
+Greta shuddered and answered, "Just that, Paul; neither more nor less."
+
+"Very strange," he muttered. He was shaken to the depths. Greta crept
+closer to his breast.
+
+"And when my mother recovered she said nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You did not question her?"
+
+"How could I? But I was hungering for a word."
+
+Paul patted her head with his tenderest touch.
+
+"Have you seen her since?"
+
+"Not since. I have been ill--I mean, rather unwell."
+
+Parson Christian twisted again in his chair. "What do you think, my lad?
+Greta in a dream last night rose out of bed, went to the stair-head, and
+there fell to the ground."
+
+"My poor darling," said Paul, the absent look flying from his eyes.
+
+"But, blessed be God, she has no harm," said the parson, and turned once
+more to his guest.
+
+"Paul, you must hurry away now. Good-bye for the present, dearest. Kiss
+me good-bye."
+
+But Paul stood there still.
+
+"Greta, do you ever feel that what is happening now has happened
+before--somehow--somewhere--and where?--when?--the questions keep
+ringing in your brain and racking your heart--but there is no
+answer--you are shouting into a voiceless cavern."
+
+His face was as pale as ashes, his eyes were fixed, and his gaze was far
+away. Greta grew afraid of the horror she had awakened.
+
+"Don't think too seriously about it," she said. "Besides, I may have
+been mistaken. In fact, Hugh said--"
+
+"Well, what did he say?"
+
+"He made me ashamed. He said I had imagined I saw you and screamed, and
+so frightened your mother."
+
+"There are men in the world who would see the Lord of Hosts come from
+the heavens in glory and say it was only a water-spout."
+
+"But, as you said yourself, it was in the night, and very dark. I had
+nothing but the feeble oil-lamp to see by. Don't look like that, Paul."
+
+The girl lifted a nervous hand and covered his eyes, and laughed a
+little, hollow laugh.
+
+Paul shook himself free of his stupor.
+
+"Good-night, Greta," he said, tenderly, and walked to the door. Then the
+vacant look returned.
+
+"The answer is somewhere--somewhere," he said, faintly. He shook himself
+again, and shouted, in his lusty tones:
+
+"Good-night, all--good-night, good-night!"
+
+The next instant he was gone.
+
+Out in the road, he began to run; but it was not from exertion alone
+that his breath came and went in gusts. Before he reached the village
+his nameless sentiment of dread of the unknown had given way to anxiety
+for his mother. What was this strange illness that had come upon her in
+his absence? Her angel-face had been his beacon in darkness. She had
+lifted his soul from the dust. Tortured by the world and the world's
+law, yet Heaven's peace had settled on her. Let the world say what it
+would, into her heart the world had not entered.
+
+He hurried on. What a crazy fool he had been to let Natt go off with the
+trap! Why had not that coxcomb told him what had occurred? He would
+break every bone in the blockhead's skin.
+
+How long the road was, to be sure! A hundred fears suggested themselves
+on the way. Would his mother be worse? Would she be still conscious?
+Why, in God's name, had he ever gone away?
+
+He came by the Flying Horse, and there, tied to the blue post, stood the
+horse and trap. Natt was inside. There he was, the villain, in front of
+the fire, laughing boisterously, a glass of hot liquor in his hand.
+
+Paul jumped into the trap and drove away.
+
+It was hardly in human nature that Natt should resist the temptation to
+show his cronies by ocular demonstration what a knowing young dog he
+could be if he liked. Natt never tried to resist it.
+
+"Is it all die-spensy?" he asked, with a wink, when, with masterly
+circumlocution, he had broached his topic.
+
+"It's a fate, I tell tha'," said Tom o' Dint, taking a churchwarden from
+between his lips; and another thin voice, from a back bench--it was
+little Jacob Berry's--corroborated that view of the mystery.
+
+A fine scorn sat on the features of Natt as he exploded beneath their
+feet this mine of supernaturalism.
+
+"Shaf on your bogies and bodderment, say I," he cried; "there are folks
+as won't believe their own senses. If you'll no' but show me how yon
+horse of mine can be in two places at once, I'll maybe believe as Master
+Paul Ritson can be here and in London at the same time. Nowt short o'
+that'll do for me, I can tell you."
+
+And at this conclusive reasoning Natt laughed, and crowed, and stirred
+his steaming liquor. It was at that moment that Paul whipped up into the
+trap and drove away.
+
+"Show me as my horse as I've tied to the post out there is in his stable
+all the time, and I's not be for saying as maybe I won't give in."
+
+Gubblum Oglethorpe came straggling into the room at that instant, and
+caught the words of Natt's clinching argument.
+
+"What see a post?" he asked.
+
+"Why, the post afore the house, for sure!"
+
+"Well, I wudna be for saying but I's getten a bit short-sighted, but if
+theer's a horse tied to a post afore this house, I's not be for saying
+as I won't be domd!"
+
+Natt ran to the door, followed by a dozen pairs of quizzing eyes. The
+horse was gone. Natt sat down on the post and looked around in blank
+astonishment.
+
+"Well, I will be domd!" he said.
+
+At last the bogies had him in their grip.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+By the time that Paul had got to the Ghyll his anxiety had reached the
+point of anguish. Perhaps it had been no more than a fancy, but he
+thought as he approached the house that a mist hung about it. When he
+walked into the hall his footsteps sounded hollow to his ear, and the
+whole place seemed empty as a vault. The spirit-deadening influence of
+the surroundings was upon him, when old Dinah Wilson came from the
+kitchen and looked at him with surprise. Clearly he had not been
+expected. He wanted to ask twenty questions, but his tongue cleaved to
+his mouth. The strong man trembled and his courage oozed away.
+
+Why did not the woman speak? How scared she looked, too! He was brushing
+past her, and up the stairs, when she told him, in faltering tones, that
+her mistress was gone.
+
+The word coursed through his veins like poison. "Gone! how gone?" he
+said. Could it be possible that his mother was dead?
+
+"Gone away," said Dinah.
+
+"Away! Where?"
+
+"Gone by train, sir, this afternoon."
+
+"Gone by train," Paul repeated, mechanically, with absent manner.
+
+"There's a letter left, sir; it's on the table in her room."
+
+Recovering his self-possession, Paul darted upstairs at three steps a
+stride. His mother's room was empty; no fire in the grate; the pictures
+down from the walls; the table coverless; the few books gone from the
+shelf; all chill, voiceless, and blind.
+
+What did it mean? Paul stood an instant on the threshold, seeing all in
+one swift glance, yet seeing nothing. Then, with the first return of
+present consciousness, his eye fell on the letter that lay on the table.
+He took it up with trembling fingers. It was addressed in his mother's
+hand to him. He broke the seal. This is what he read:
+
+   "I go to-day to the shelter of the Catholic Church. I had long
+   thought to return to this refuge, though I had hoped to wait until
+   the day your happiness with Greta was complete. That, in Heaven's
+   purposes, was not to be, and I must leave you without a last
+   farewell. Good-bye, dear son, and God bless and guide you. If you
+   love me, do not grieve for me. It is from love of you I leave you.
+   Think of me as one who is at peace, and I will bless you even in
+   heaven. If ever the world should mock you with your mother's name,
+   remember that she is your mother still, and that she loved you to
+   the last. Good-bye, dear Paul; you may never know the day when this
+   erring and sorrowing heart will be allowed, in His infinite pity, to
+   join the choirs above. Then, dearest, from the hour when you read
+   this letter, think of me as dead, for I shall be dead to the world."
+
+Paul held the letter before him, and looked at it long with vacant eyes.
+Feeling itself seemed gone. Not a tear came from him, not a sigh, not
+one moan of an overwrought heart escaped him. All was blind, pulseless
+torpor. He stood there crushed and overwhelmed, a shaken, shattered man.
+A thousand horrors congealed within him to one deep, dead stupor.
+
+He turned away in silence, and walked out of the house. The empty
+chambers seemed, as he went, to echo his heavy footsteps. He took the
+road back toward the vicarage, turning neither to the right nor the
+left, looking straight before him, and never once shifting his gaze. The
+road might be long, but now it fretted him no more. The night might be
+cold, but colder far was the heart within him. The moon might fly behind
+the cloud floes, and her light burst forth afresh; but for him all was
+blank night.
+
+In the vicarage the slumberous fire was smoldering down. The
+straggle-brained guest had been lighted to his bed, and the good parson
+himself was carrying to his own tranquil closet a head full of the great
+world's dust and noise. Greta was still sitting before the dying fire,
+her heart heavy with an indefinable sensation of dread.
+
+When Paul opened the door his face was very pale and his eyes had a
+strange look; but he was calm, and spoke quietly. He told what had
+occurred, and read aloud his mother's letter. The voice was strong in
+which he read it, and never a tremor told of the agony his soul was
+suffering. Then he sat some time without speaking, and time itself had
+no reckoning.
+
+Greta scarcely spoke, and the old parson said little. What power had
+words to express a sorrow like this? Death had its solace; but there
+was no comfort for death in life.
+
+At last Paul told Parson Christian that he wished the marriage to take
+place at once--- to-morrow, or, at latest, the day after that. He told
+of their intention to leave England, of his father's friend, and, in
+answer to questions, of the power of attorney drawn up in the name of
+his brother.
+
+The old man was deeply moved, but his was the most unselfish of souls.
+He understood very little of all that was meant by what had been done,
+and was still to do. But he said, "God bless you and go with you!"
+though his own wounded heart was bleeding. Greta knelt at his chair, and
+kissed the tawny old face lined and wrinkled and damp now with a furtive
+tear. It was agreed that the marriage should take place on Friday. This
+was Wednesday night.
+
+Paul rose and stepped to the door, and Greta followed him to the porch.
+
+"It is good of you to leave all to your brother," she said.
+
+"We'll not speak of it," he answered.
+
+"Is there not something between you?" she asked.
+
+"Another time, darling."
+
+Greta recalled Hugh Ritson's strange threat. Should she mention it to
+Paul? She had almost done so, when she lifted her eyes to his face. The
+weary, worn expression checked her. Not now; it would be a cruelty.
+
+"I knew the answer to that omen was somewhere," he said, "and it has
+come."
+
+He stepped over the threshold and stood one pace outside. The snow still
+lay under foot, crusted with frost. The wind blew strongly, and soughed
+in the stiff and leafless boughs. Overhead the flying moon at that
+moment broke through a rack of cloud. At the same instant the red glow
+of the fire-light found its way through the open door, and was reflected
+on Paul's pallid face.
+
+Greta gasped; a thrill passed through her. There, before her, eye to eye
+with her once again, was the face she saw at the Ghyll!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Paul went back home, carrying with him a crushed and broken spirit He
+threw himself into a chair in a torpor of dejection. When the servants
+spoke to him, he lifted to their faces two clouded eyes, heavy with
+suffering, and answered their questions in few words. The maid laid the
+supper, and told him it was ready. When she returned to clear the cloth,
+the supper was untouched. Paul stepped up to his mother's room, and sat
+down before the cold grate. The candle he carried with him burned out.
+
+In the kitchen the servants of the farm and house gossipped long and
+bickered vigorously. "Whatever ails Master Paul?" "Crossed in love,
+maybe." "Shaf on sec woman's wit!" "Wherever has mistress gone?" "To buy
+a new gown, mayhap." "Sista now how a lass's first thowt runs on
+finery!" "Didsta hear nowt when you drove mistress to the rail, Reuben?"
+"Nay, nowt." "Dusta say it war thee as drove to the station this
+afternoon." "I wouldn't be for saying as it warn't." "Wilta be meeting
+Master Hugh in the forenoon, Natt?" "Nay, ax Natt na questions. He's
+fair tongue-tied to-neet, Natt is. He's clattering all of it to
+hisself--swearing a bit, and sec as that."
+
+When the servants had gone to bed, and the house was quiet, Paul still
+sat in his mother's abandoned room. No one but he knew what he suffered
+that night. He tried to comprehend the disaster that had befallen him.
+Why had his mother shut herself in a convent? How should her love for
+him require that she should leave him? To demand answers to these
+questions was like knocking at the door of a tomb; the voice was silent
+that could reply; there came no answer save the dull, heavy, hollow echo
+of his own uncertain knock. All was blind, dumb, insensate torpor. No
+outlook; no word; no stimulating pang.
+
+His stupor was broken by a vision that for long hours of that dead
+night burned in his brain like molten lead. The face which Greta had
+seen, and which his mother must also have seen, seemed to rise up before
+him as he sat in that deserted chamber. He saw his own face as he might
+have seen it in a glass. Not even the blackness of night could conceal
+it. Clear as a face seen in the day it shone and burned in that dark
+room. He closed his eyes to shut it out, but it was still before him. It
+was within him. It was imprinted in features of fire on his brain. He
+trembled with fear, never until that hour knowing what fear was. It
+acted upon him like his own ghost.
+
+He knew it was but a phantasy, but no phantasy was ever more horrible.
+He got up to banish it, and it stood before him face to face. He sunk
+down again, and it sat beside him eye to eye.
+
+Then it changed. For a moment it faded away into a palpitating mist, and
+the tension of his gaze relaxed. How blessed was that moment's respite!
+His thought returned to his mother. "If ever the world should mock you
+with your mother's name, remember that she is your mother still, and
+that she loved you to the last." Dear, sacred soul. Little fear that he
+should forget it! Little fear that the wise world should tarnish the
+fair shrine of that holy love! Tears of tenderness rose to his eyes, and
+in the midst of them he thought his mother sat before him. Her head was
+bent; an all-eating shame was crimsoning her pale cheek. Then he knew
+that other eyes were upon her, looking into her heart, prying deep down
+into her dead past, keeping open the heavy eyelids that could never
+sleep. He looked up; his own shadow was silently gazing down upon both
+of them.
+
+Paul leaped to his feet and ran out of the room. Surely the spirit of
+his mother still inhabited the deserted chamber. Surely this was the
+shadow that had driven her away. Big drops of sweat rolled in beads from
+his forehead. He went out of the house. Heavy black clouds were adrift
+in a stormy sky; behind them, the bright moon was scudding.
+
+He walked among the naked trees of the gaunt wood at the foot of
+Coledale, and listened to the short breathings of the wind among the
+frost-covered boughs. At every second step he gave a quick glance
+backward. But at last he saw the thing he looked for--it was walking
+with him side by side, pace for pace.
+
+He passed slowly out of the wood, not daring now to run. The white fell
+rose sheer up to the grim, gray crags that hung in shaggy, snowy masses
+over the black seams of the ravines; and the moon's light rested on them
+for an instant. Without thought or aim he began to climb. The ascent was
+perilous at any hour to any foot save that of a mountaineer. The
+exertion and the watchfulness banished the vision, and his liberated
+mind turned to Greta. What was life itself now without Greta's love?
+Nothing but a succession of days. She was the savior of his outcast
+state; she was his life's spring, whence the waters of content might
+flow. And a flood of emotion came over him, and in his heart he blessed
+her. It was then that on that gaunt headland he seemed to see her at his
+side. But between them, and dividing them, stalked the spectre of
+himself.
+
+All to the east was dense gloom, save where the pulsating red of the
+smelting house burned in the distance. With no rest for his foot, Paul
+walked in the direction of the light, and the shadow of his face walked
+with him. As the wind went by him it whistled in his ear, and it sounded
+in that solitude like the low cry of the thing at his side.
+
+Old Laird Fisher was at his work of wheeling the refuse of the ore from
+the mouth of the furnace, and shooting it down the bank. The glow of the
+hot stone in the iron barrow that he trundled was reflected in sharp
+white lights on his wrinkled face.
+
+"Ista theer, Mister Paul?" he said, catching his breath and coughing
+amid the smoke, and shouting between the gusts of wind.
+
+The slow beat of the engine and the clank of the chain of the cage in
+the shaft deadened the wind's shrill whistle. The smoke from the bank
+shot up and swirled away like a long flight of swallows.
+
+Standing there, the vision troubled him no longer. It had been merely a
+waking phantasy, bred of what Greta said she saw in the snow, and
+heightened by the shock to his nerves caused by his mother's departure.
+The sight of Matthew helped to beat it off. His submissive face was the
+sign of his broken spirit. A tempest had torn up his only hold on the
+earth. He was but a poor naked trunk flung on the ground, without power
+of growth or grip of the soil. He was old and he had no hope. Yet he
+lived on and worked submissively. Paul's own case was different. Destiny
+had dashed him in unknown seas against unseen rocks. But he was young,
+he had the power of life, and the stimulus of love. Yet here he was, the
+prey to an idle fancy, tortured by an agony of fear.
+
+"Good-night to you, Matthew!" he shouted cheerily above the wind, and
+went away into the night.
+
+He would go home and sleep the fever out of his blood; he took the road;
+and as he went, the monotonous engine-throb died off behind him. He
+passed through the village; the street was empty, and it echoed loud to
+the sound of his footfall. Large shadows fell about him when for an
+instant the moon shot clear of a cloud. A light burned in a cottage
+window. Poor Mrs. Truesdale's sick life was within that sleepless
+chamber lingering out its last days. The wind fell to silence at one
+moment, and then a child's little cry came out to him in the night.
+
+He walked on, and plunged again into the darkness of the road beyond.
+The dogs were howling at the distant Ghyll. A sable cloud floated in the
+sky, and at its back the moon sailed. It was like black hair silvered
+with gray. But on one spot on the road before him the moon shone clear
+and white. The place fascinated him like a star. He quickened his pace
+until he came into the moon's open light. Then it turned to an ashy
+tint; it lay over the church-yard. His father's grave was only a few
+paces from the road.
+
+What unseen power had drawn him there? Was it meant that he should
+understand that all the stings that fate had in store for him were to be
+in some unsearchable way the refuse of his father's deed? His mind went
+back to the night of his father's death. He thought of his mother's
+confession--a confession more terrible to make more fearful to listen
+to, than a mother ever made before or a son ever heard. And now again,
+was the disaster of this very night a link in the chain of destiny?
+
+Let no man compare the withering effects of a father's curse with the
+blasting influence of a father's sin. If the wrath of Providence should
+fail in its stern and awful retribution, the world in its mercy would
+not forget that the sins of the fathers must be visited upon the
+children.
+
+Paul entered the lych-gate and entered the church-yard. The night dew on
+his cheeks was not colder than his tears as he knelt by his father's
+grave. At one instant he cursed the world and the world's cruel law.
+Then there stole into his heart a poison that corroded its dearest
+memory: he thought of his father with bitterness.
+
+At that moment a strange awe crept over him. He knew, though still only
+by the eyes of his mind, that the vision had returned. He knew it was
+standing against the night-sky as a ghastly headstone to the grave. But
+when he raised his eyes what he saw was more terrible. The face was
+before him, but it was a dead face now. He saw his own corpse stretched
+out on his father's grave.
+
+His head fell on the cold sod. He lay like the dead on the grave of the
+dead. Then he knew that it was ordered above that the cloud of his
+father's sin should darken his days; that through all the range and
+change of life he was to be the lonely slave of a sin not his own. His
+fate was sin-inherited, and the wages of sin is death.
+
+Was it strange that at that moment, when all the earth seemed gloomed by
+the shadow of a curse that lay blackest over him--when reverence for a
+father's memory and love learned at a mother's knee were deadened by a
+sense of irremediable wrong--was it strange that there and then peace
+fell on him like a dove from heaven?
+
+Orphaned in one hour--now, and not till now--foredoomed to writhe like a
+worm amid the dust of the world--the man in him arose and shook off its
+fear.
+
+It was because he came to know--rude man as he was, unlettered, but
+strong of soul--that there is a Power superior to fate, that the
+stormiest sea has its Master, that the waif that is cast by the roughest
+wave on the loneliest shore is yet seen and known.
+
+And the voice of an angel seemed to whisper in his heart the story of
+Hagar and her son; how the boy was the first-born of his father; how the
+second-born became the heir; how the woman and son were turned away; how
+they were nigh to death in the desert; and how, at last, the cry came
+from heaven, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is."
+
+The horror of the vision had gone. It would come back no more. Paul
+walked home, went up to his own room, and slept peacefully.
+
+When he awoke the pink and yellow rose of a wintery sunrise bloomed over
+the head of the Eel Crags. The tinkle of the anvil came from across the
+vale. Sheep were bleating high up on the frost-nipped side of the fell.
+The echo of the ax could be heard from the wood, and the muffled lowing
+of the kine from the shippon in the yard behind. The harsh scrape of
+Natt's clogs was on the gravel. A robin with full throat perched on the
+window-ledge and warbled cheerily.
+
+Last night was gone from him for all eternity. Before him was the day,
+the world, and life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+That day--the day before the wedding--all the gossiping tongues in
+Newlands were cackling from morning till night. Natt had been sent round
+the dale with invitations addressed to statesmen, their wives, sons and
+daughters. Parson Christian himself made the round of the homes of the
+poor.
+
+"'The poor ye have always with you,' but not everywhere, and not often
+in Cana of Galilee," he said to Greta on setting out.
+
+And the people of the highways and hedges were nothing loath to come in
+to the feast. "God luck to the weddiners!" they said, "and may they
+never lick a lean poddish-stick."
+
+There was not much work done in the valley that day. The richest heiress
+on the country-side was about to be married to the richest statesman in
+the dale. On the eve of such an event it was labor enough to drop in at
+the Flying Horse and discuss mathematics. The general problem was one in
+simple addition, namely, how much Paul Ritson would be worth when he
+married Greta Lowther. And more than once that day twice two made a
+prodigious five.
+
+The frost continued and the roads were crisp. Heavy rains had preceded
+the frost, and the river that ran down the middle of the valley had
+overflowed the meadows to the width of a wide carriage-way. This was now
+a road of ice five miles long, smooth as glass, and all but as straight
+as an arrow.
+
+Abraham Strong, the carpenter, had been ordered to take the wheels off a
+disused landau and fix instead two keels of wood beneath the axles. This
+improvised sledge, after it had been shod in steel by the blacksmith,
+was to play a part in to-morrow's ceremony.
+
+Early in the day Brother Peter was dispatched to the town to fetch Mr.
+Bonnithorne. The four miles' journey afoot seemed to him a bigger candle
+than the entire game was worth.
+
+"Don't know as I see what the lass wants mair nor she's got," he told
+himself, grumpily, as he plodded along the road. "What call has she for
+a man? Hasn't she two of 'em as she is? I made her comfortable enough
+myself. But lasses are varra ficklesome."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne gathered enough from Brother Peter's "Don't know as
+there's not a wedding in t' wind," to infer what was afoot. Hugh Ritson
+was away from home, and his brother Paul was availing himself of his
+absence to have the marriage ceremony performed.
+
+This was the inference with which Mr. Bonnithorne had walked from the
+town; but before reaching the vicarage he encountered Paul himself, who
+was even then on the way to his office. Few words passed between them.
+Indeed, the young dalesman was civil, and no more. He gave scant
+courtesy, but then he also gave something that was more substantial, and
+the severity of the lawyer's cynicism relaxed. Paul handed Mr.
+Bonnithorne, without comment, the deed drawn up in London. Mr.
+Bonnithorne glanced at it, pocketed it, and smiled. His sense of Paul's
+importance as a dangerous man sunk to nothing at that moment. They
+parted without more words.
+
+Parson Christian got home toward evening, dead beaten with fatigue. He
+found the lawyer waiting for him. The marriage had been big in his eyes
+all day, and other affairs very little.
+
+"So you shall give her away, Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, without
+superfluous preface of any kind.
+
+"I--I?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, with elevated brows.
+
+"Who has more right?" said the parson.
+
+"Well, you know, you--you--"
+
+"Me! Nay, I must marry them. It is you for the other duty."
+
+"You see, Mr. Christian, if you think of it, I am--I am--"
+
+"You are her father's old friend. There, let us look on it as settled."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne looked on it as awkward. "Well, to say the truth, Mr.
+Christian, I'd--I'd rather not."
+
+The old parson lifted two astonished eyes, and gazed at Mr. Bonnithorne
+over the rims of his spectacles. The lawyer's uneasiness increased. Then
+Parson Christian remembered that only a little while ago Mr. Bonnithorne
+had offered reasons why Paul should not marry Greta. They were rather
+too secular, those same reasons, but no doubt they had appealed honestly
+to his mind as a friend of Greta's family.
+
+"Paul and Greta are going away," said the parson.
+
+"So I judged."
+
+"They go to Victoria to farm there," continued the parson.
+
+"On Greta's money," added the lawyer.
+
+Parson Christian looked again over the rims of his spectacles. Then for
+once his frank and mellow face annexed a reflection of the curl on the
+lawyer's lip. "Do you know," he said, "it never once came into my
+simple old pate to ask which would find the dross and which the honest
+labor?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne winced. The simple old pate could, on occasion, be more
+than a match for his own wise head.
+
+"Seeing that I shall marry her, I think it will be expected that you
+should give her to her husband; but if you have an objection--"
+
+"An objection?" Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "I don't know that my
+feeling is so serious as that."
+
+"Then let us leave it there, and you'll decide in the morning," said
+Parson Christian.
+
+So they left it there, and Mr. Bonnithorne, the dear friend of the
+family, made haste to the telegraph office and sent this telegram to
+Hugh Ritson in London: "They are to be married to-morrow. If you have
+anything imperative to say, write to-night, or come."
+
+Paul and Greta saw each other only for five minutes that day amid the
+general hubbub; but their few words were pregnant with serious issues.
+Beneath the chorus of their hearts' joy there was an undersong of
+discord; and neither knew of the other's perplexity.
+
+Greta was thinking of Hugh Ritson's mysterious threat. Whether or not
+Hugh had the power of preventing their marriage was a question of less
+consequence to Greta at this moment than the other question of whether
+or not she could tell Paul what Hugh had said. As the day wore on, her
+uncertainty became feverish. If she spoke, she must reveal--what
+hitherto she had partly hidden--the importunity and unbrotherly
+disloyalty of Hugh's love. She must also awaken fresh distress in Paul's
+mind, already overburdened with grief for the loss of his mother.
+Probably Paul would be powerless to interpret his brother's strange
+language. And if he should be puzzled, the more he must be pained.
+Perhaps Hugh Ritson's threat was nothing but the outburst of a
+distempered spirit--the noise of a bladder that is emptying itself.
+Still, Greta's nervousness increased; no reason, no sophistry could
+allay it. She felt like a blind man who knows by the current of air on
+his face that he has reached two street crossings, and can not decide
+which turn to take.
+
+Paul, on his part, had a grave question to revolve. He was thinking
+whether it was the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in
+ignorance of the fact that he was not his father's legitimate son. Yet
+he could never tell her. The oath he had taken over his father's body
+must seal his lips forever. His mother's honor was wrapped up in that
+oath. Break the one, and the other was no longer inviolate. True, it
+would be to Greta, and Greta alone, and she and he were one. True, too,
+his mother was now dead to the world. But the oath was rigid:
+
+"Never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act, or her
+shame." He had sworn it, and he must keep it. The conflict of emotion
+was terrible. Love was dragging him one way, and love the other. Honor
+said yes, and honor said no. His heart's first thought was to tell Greta
+everything, to keep nothing back from her whose heart's last thought was
+his. But the secret of his birth must lie as a dead and speechless thing
+within him.
+
+If it was not the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in
+ignorance of his birth, there was only one escape from the dishonor--not
+to let her marry him at all. If they married, the oath must be kept. If
+the oath were kept, the marriage might be dishonored--it could not be
+the unreserved and complete union of soul with soul, heart with heart,
+mind with mind, which true marriage meant. It would be laying the
+treasure at the altar and keeping back part of the price.
+
+Paul was not a man of subtle intellect, or perhaps such reflections
+would have troubled him too deeply. Love was above everything, and to
+give up Greta was impossible. If Circumstance was the evil genius of a
+man's life, should it be made the god of it also?
+
+At all hazards Paul meant to marry Greta. And after all, what did this
+question of honor amount to? It was a mere phantasm. What did it matter
+to Greta whether he were high or basely born? Should he love her less or
+more? Would he be less or more worthy of her love? And how was his
+birth base? Not in God's eyes, for God had heard the voice of Hagar's
+son. Only in the eyes of the world. And what did that mean? It meant
+that whether birth was high or base depended one part on virtue and nine
+hundred and ninety-nine parts on money. Where had half the world's
+titled great ones sprung from? Not--like him--from their father and
+their father's fathers, but from a monarch's favorite.
+
+Thus Paul reasoned with himself at this juncture. Whether he was wholly
+right or wholly wrong, or partly right and partly wrong, concerns us not
+at all. It was natural that such a man, in such a place, at such an
+hour, should decide once for all to say not a word to Greta. It was just
+as natural that his reticence should produce the long series of
+incidents still to be recorded.
+
+Thus it was not a word was said between them of what lay nearest to the
+hearts of both.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+The morning was brilliant--a vigorous, lusty young day, such as can
+awake from the sleep of the night only in winter and in the north. The
+sun shone on the white frost; the air was hazy enough to make the
+perspective of the fells more sharp, and leave a halo of mystery to hang
+over every distant peak and play about every tree.
+
+The Ghyll was early astir, and in every nook and corner full of the buzz
+of gossip.
+
+"Well, things is at a pass, for sure!" "And never no axings nowther."
+"And all cock-a-hoop, and no waiting for the mistress to come back."
+"Shaf, what matter about the mistress--she's no' but a kill-joy. There'd
+be no merry neet an' she were at home." "Well, I is fair maizelt 'at he
+won't wait for Master Hugh--his awn brother, thoo knows." "What, lass,
+dusta think as he wad do owt at the durdum to-neet? Maybe tha's
+reckoning on takin' a step wi' him, eh?" "And if I is, it's nowt sa
+strange." "Weel, I wadna be for saying tha's aiming too high, for I mind
+me of a laal lass once as they called Mercy Fisher, and folks did say
+as somebody were partial to her." "Hod thy tongue about the bit thing;
+don't thoo misliken me to sec a stromp!"
+
+Resplendent in a blue cloth coat, light check trousers, a flowered
+yellow silk waistcoat, and a white felt hat, Natt was flying up and down
+the stairs to and from Paul's room. Paul himself had not yet been seen.
+Rumor in the kitchen whispered that he had hardly taken the trouble to
+dress, and had not even been at the pains to wash. Natt had more than
+once protested his belief that his master meant to be married in his
+shirt-sleeves. Nothing but "papers and pens and sealing-wax and things"
+had he asked for.
+
+Outside the vicarage a motley group had gathered. There was John
+Proudfoot, the blacksmith, uncommonly awkward in a frock coat and a pair
+of kid gloves that sat on his great hands like a clout on a pitchfork.
+Dick, the miller, was there, too, with Giles Raisley, the miner; and Job
+Sheepshanks (by the way of treaty of peace) stood stroking the tangled
+mane of Gubblum Oglethorpe's pony. Children hung on the fence, women
+gathered about the gate, dogs capered on the path. Gubblum himself had
+been in the house, and now came out accompanied by Brother Peter Ward
+and a huge black jug. The jug was passed round with distinct
+satisfaction.
+
+"Is the laal man ever coming?" said Gubblum, smacking his lips and
+taking a swift survey of the road.
+
+"Why, here he is at sec a skufter as'll brak' his shins!"
+
+At the top of his speed, and breathless, clad in a long coat whose tails
+almost swept the ground, grasping a fiddle in one hand and a paper in
+the other, Tom o' Dint came hurrying up.
+
+"Tha's here at last, Tom, ma man. Teem a glass into him, Peter, and
+let's mak' a start."
+
+"Ye see, I's two men, I is," said the small man, apologetically. "I had
+my rounds with my letters to do first, and business afore pleasure, you
+knows."
+
+"Pleasure afore business, say I," cried Gubblum. "Never let yer wark get
+the upper hand o' yer wages--them's my maxims."
+
+Two coaches came up at the moment, having driven four miles for the
+purpose of driving four furlongs.
+
+John Proudfoot, without needless courtesy, took the fiddler-postman by
+the neck of his coat and the garment beneath its tails, and slung him,
+fiddle and all, on to the saddle of the pony, and held him there a
+moment, steadying him like a sack with an open mouth.
+
+"Sit thee there as steady as a broody hen; and now let's mak' shift,"
+said the blacksmith.
+
+"But I must go inside first," said the fiddler; "I've a letter for
+Lawyer Bonnithorne."
+
+"Shaf on thee and thy letter! Away with thee! Deliver it at the church
+door."
+
+The men dropped into a single file, with Tom o' Dint riding at their
+head, and Gubblum walking by the pony's side and holding the reins.
+
+"Strike up!" shouted Job Sheepshanks. "Ista ever gaen to begin?"
+
+Then the fiddler shouldered his fiddle, and fell to, and the first long
+sweeps of his wedding-march awoke the echoes of the vale.
+
+The women and children followed the procession a few hundred yards, and
+then returned to see the wedding-party enter the coaches.
+
+Inside the vicarage all was noise and bustle. Greta was quiet enough,
+and ready to set out at any time, but a bevy of gay young daleswomen
+were grouped about her, trying to persuade her to change her brown
+broche dress for a pale-blue silk, to have some hothouse plants in her
+hair, and at least to wear a veil.
+
+"And mind you keep up heart, darling, and speak out your responses; and,
+dearest, don't cry until the parson gets to 'God bless you!'"
+
+Greta received all this counsel with equal thanks. She listened to it,
+affected to approve of it, and ignored it. Her face betrayed anxiety.
+She hardly understood her own fears, but whenever the door opened, and a
+fresh guest entered, she knew that her heart leaped to her mouth.
+
+Parson Christian stood near her in silk gaiters and a coat that had been
+old-fashioned even in his youth. But his Jovian gray head and fine old
+face, beautiful in its mellowness and child-like simplicity, made small
+demand of dress. He patted Greta's hair sometimes with the affectionate
+gesture that might be grateful to a fondled child.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne arrived early, in a white waistcoat and coat adorned by
+a flower. His brave apparel was scarcely in keeping with the anxiety
+written on his face. He could not sit down for more than a moment in the
+same seat. He was up and down, walking to and fro, looking out of the
+window, and diving for papers into his pocket.
+
+The procession, headed by Tom o' Dint, had not long been gone, when word
+was given, and the party took to the coaches and set off at a trot. Then
+the group of women at the gate separated with many a sapient comment.
+
+"Weel, he's getten a bonny lass, for sure."
+
+"And many a sadder thing med happen to her, too."
+
+The village lay midway between the vicarage and the church, and the
+fiddler and his company marched through it to a brisk tune, bringing
+fifty pairs of curious eyes to the windows and the doors. Tom o' Dint
+sat erect in the saddle, playing vigorously, and when a burst of
+cheering hailed the procession as it passed a group of topers gathered
+outside the Flying Horse, Tom accepted it as a tribute to his playing,
+and bowed his head with becoming dignity, and without undue familiarity,
+always remembering that courtesy comes after art, as a true artist is in
+loyalty bound to do.
+
+Once or twice the pony slipped its foot on the frosty road, and then Tom
+was fain to abridge a movement in music and make a movement in
+gymnastics toward grasping the front of the saddle.
+
+But all went well until the company came within fifty paces of the
+church door, and there a river crossed the road. Being shallow and very
+swift, the river head escaped the grip of the frost, and slipped through
+its fingers. There was a foot-bridge on one side, and the men behind the
+fiddler fell out of line to cross by it.
+
+Gubblum dropped the reins and followed them; but, as bridges are not
+made for the traffic of ponies, Tom o' Dint was bound to go through the
+water. Never interrupting the sweep and swirl of the march he was
+playing, he gave the pony a prod with his foot, and it plunged in. But
+scarcely had it taken two steps and reached the depth of its knees,
+when, from the intenser cold, or from coming sharply against a submerged
+stone, or from indignation at the fiddler's prod, or from the occult
+cause known as pure devilment, it shied up its back legs, and tossed
+down its tousled head, and pitched the musician head-foremost into the
+stream.
+
+Amid a burst of derisive cheers, Tom o' Dint was drawn, wet as a sack,
+to the opposite bank, and his fiddle was rescued from a rapid voyage
+down the river.
+
+Now, the untoward adventure had the good effect of reducing the
+fiddler's sense of the importance of his artistic function, and bringing
+him back to consciousness of his prosaic duties as postman. He put his
+hand into his pocket, feeling as if he had dipped it into a bag of eels,
+and drew out the lawyer's letter. It was wet, and the ink of the
+superscription was beginning to run.
+
+Tom o' Dint also began to run. Fearing trouble, he left his
+unsympathetic cronies, hurried on to the church, went into the vestry,
+where he knew there would be a fire, and proceeded to dry the letter.
+The water had softened the gum, and the envelope had opened.
+
+"So much the mair easier dried," thought Tom, and, nothing loath, he
+drew out the letter, unfolded it, and held it to the fire.
+
+The paper was smoking with the heat, and so was Tom, when he heard
+carriage-wheels without, and then a mighty hubbub, and loud voices
+mentioning his own name without reverence: "Where's that clothead of a
+fiddler?" and sundry other dubious allusions.
+
+Tom knew that he ought to be at the gate striking up a merry tune to
+welcome the bride. But then the letter was not dry. There was not a
+moment to lose. Tom spread the paper and envelope on the fender,
+intending to return for them, and dashed off with his fiddle to the
+discharge of his artistic duty.
+
+As Tom o' Dint left the vestry, Parson Christian entered it. The parson
+saw the papers on his fender, picked them up, and in all innocence read
+them. The letter ran as follows:
+
+     "Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square, Nov. 28.
+
+   "Dear Bonnithorne,--The man who was in Newlands is Paul Lowther,
+   Greta's half-brother. Paul Ritson is my own brother, my father's son.
+   Keep this to yourself as you value your salvation, your pride, or
+   your purse, or whatever else you hold most dear. Send me by wire
+   to-day the name of their hotel in London, the time of their train
+   south, and who, if any, are with them.
+
+     Yours,
+
+     "HUGH RITSON."
+
+     "P.S.--The girl Mercy will be troublesome."
+
+The parson had scarcely time to understand the words he read, when he,
+too, was compelled to leave the vestry. The bride and bridegroom had met
+at the church door. It was usual to receive them at the altar with
+music. The fiddler's function was at an end for the present. Parson
+Christian could not allow the fiddle to be heard in church. There a less
+secular instrument was required. The church was too poor for an organ;
+it had not yet reached the dignity of a harmonium; but it had an
+accordion, and among the parson's offices was the office of
+accordionist. So, throwing his gown over his head, he walked into the
+church, stepped into the pulpit, whipped up his instrument from the
+shelf where he kept it, and began to play.
+
+Now it chanced that Mr. Bonnithorne in his legal capacity held certain
+documents for signature, and having accompanied the bride to the altar
+rail, he hurried to deposit them in the vestry. The gloom had still hung
+heavy on his brow as he entered the church. He was brooding over a
+letter that he had expected and had not received. Perhaps it was his
+present hunger for a letter that made his eye light first on the one
+which the fiddler-postman had left to dry. The parson had dropped it on
+the mantel-shelf. At a glance Mr. Bonnithorne saw it was his own.
+
+Tom o' Dint had been compelled to come up the aisle at the tail of the
+wedding-party. He saw Mr. Bonnithorne, who was at the head of it, go
+into the vestry. Dripping wet as he was, and with chattering teeth, the
+sweat stood on his forehead. "Deary me, what sec a character will I
+have!" he muttered. He elbowed and edged his way through the crowd, and
+got into the vestry at last. But he was too late. With an eye that
+struck lightning into the meek face of the fiddler, Mr. Bonnithorne
+demanded an explanation.
+
+The request was complied with.
+
+"And who has been in the room since you left it?"
+
+"Nay, nobody, sir."
+
+"Sure of that?"
+
+"For sure," said Tom.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne's countenance brightened. He had read the letter, and,
+believing that no one else had read it, he was satisfied. He put it in
+his pocket.
+
+"Maybe I may finish drying it, sir?" said Tom o' Dint.
+
+The lawyer gave a contemptuous snort, and turned on his heel.
+
+When Paul walked with a firm step up the aisle, he looked fresh and
+composed. His dress was simple; his eyes were clear and bright, and his
+wavy brown hair fell back from a smooth and peaceful brow.
+
+Greta, at Paul's side, looked less at ease. The clouds still hung over
+her face. Her eyes turned at intervals to the door, as if expecting some
+new arrival.
+
+The service was soon done, and then the parson delivered a homily. It
+was short and simple, telling how the good bishop had said marriage was
+the mother of the world, filling cities and churches, and heaven itself,
+whose nursery it was. Then it touched on the marriage rite.
+
+"I do not love ceremonies," said the parson, "for they are too often
+'devised to set a gloss on faint deeds,' and there are such of them as
+throw the thing they celebrate further away than the wrong end of a
+telescope."
+
+Then he explained that though the marriage ceremony was unknown to the
+early Christians, and never referred to in the old Bible, where Abraham
+"took" Sarah to wife, and Jacob "took" Rachel, yet that the marriage of
+the Church was a most holy and beautiful thing, symbolizing the union of
+Christ with His people. Last of all, he spoke of the stainless and pious
+parentage of both bride and bridegroom, and warned them to keep their
+name and fame unsullied, for "What is birth to man or woman," said the
+teacher, "if it shall be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such
+offspring?"
+
+Greta bowed her head meekly, and Paul stood, while the parson spoke,
+with absent eyes fixed on the tablets on the wall before him, spelling
+out mechanically the words of the commandments.
+
+In a few moments the signatures were taken, the bell in the little
+turret was ringing, and the company were trooping out of the church. It
+was a rude old structure, with great bulges in the walls, little square
+lead lights, and open timbers untrimmed and straight from the tree.
+
+The crowd outside had gathered about the wheelless landau which the
+carpenter and blacksmith had converted into a sledge. On the box seat
+sat Tom o' Dint, his fiddle in his hand, and icicles hanging in the
+folds of his capacious coat. The bride and bridegroom were to return in
+this conveyance, which was to be drawn down the frozen river by a score
+of young dalesmen shod in steel. They took their seats, and had almost
+set off, when Greta called for the parson.
+
+"Parson Christian, Parson Christian!" echoed twenty voices. The good
+parson was ringing the bell, being bell-ringer also. Presently the
+brazen tongue ceased wagging, and Parson Christian reappeared.
+
+"Here's your seat, parson," said Paul, making space.
+
+"In half a crack," replied Parson Christian, pulling a great key out of
+his pocket and locking the church door. He was sexton as well.
+
+Then he got up into the sledge, word was called, the fiddle broke out,
+and away they went for the river-bank. A minute more and they were
+flying over the smooth ice with the morning sunlight chasing them, and
+the music of fifty lusty voices in their ears.
+
+They had the longer journey, but they reached the vicarage as early as
+the coaches that had returned by the road. Then came the breakfast--a
+solid repast, fit for appetites sharpened by the mountain air. Parson
+Christian presided in the parlor, and Brother Peter in the kitchen, the
+door between being thrown open. The former radiated smiles like April
+sunshine; the latter looked as sour as a plum beslimed by the
+earthworms, and "didn't know as he'd ever seen sec a pack of hungry
+hounds."
+
+After the breakfast the toasts, and up leaped Mr. Bonnithorne. That
+gentleman had quite cast off the weight of his anxiety. He laughed and
+chaffed, made quips and cranks.
+
+"Our lawyer is foreclosing," whispered a pert young damsel in Greta's
+ear. "He's getting drunk."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne would propose "Mr. and Mrs. Ritson." He began with a few
+hoary and reverend quotations--"Men are April when they woo, December
+when they wed." This was capped by "Maids are May when they are maids,
+but the sky changes when they are wives." Mr. Bonnithorne protested that
+both had been true, only with exceptions.
+
+Paul thanked the company in a dozen manly and well-chosen phrases, and
+then stepped to the kitchen door and invited the guests over whom
+Brother Peter presided to spend the evening at the Ghyll.
+
+The ladies had risen and carried off Greta to prepare for her journey,
+when Gubblum Oglethorpe got on his feet and insisted on proposing "the
+lasses." What Gubblum had to say on the subject it is not given to us to
+record. By some strange twist of logic, he launched out on a very
+different topic. Perhaps he sat in the vicinity of Nancy Tantarum, for
+he began with the story of a funeral.
+
+"It minds me," he said, "of the carriers at Adam Strang's funeral, at
+Gosforth, last back-end gone twelvemonth. There were two sets on 'em,
+and they'd a big bottle atween 'em--same as that one as auld Peter, the
+honey, keeps to hissel at yon end of the table. Well, they carried Adam
+shoulder high from the house to the grave-yard, first one set and then
+t'other, mile on mile apiece, and when one set got to the end of their
+mile they set down the coffin and went on for t'other set to pick it
+up. It were nine mile from Branthet Edge to Gosforth, so they had nine
+shifts atween 'em, and at every shift they swigged away at the big
+bottle--this way with it, Peter. Well, the mourners they crossed the
+fields for shortness, but the bearers, they had to keep the corpse road.
+All went reet for eight mile, and then one set with Adam were far ahead
+of the other with the bottle. They set the coffin on a wall at the
+roadside and went on. Well, when the second set came up they didn't see
+it--they couldn't see owt, that's the fact--same as I expect I'll be
+afore the day's gone, but not with Peter's good-will, seemingly. Well,
+they went on, too. And when all of 'em coom't up to the church togither,
+there was the parson in his white smock and his bare poll and big book
+open to start. But, you see, there warn't no corpse. Where was it? Why,
+it was no' but resting quiet all by itsel' on the wall a mile away."
+
+Gubblum was proceeding to associate the grewsome story with the
+incidents of Paul's appearance at the fire while he was supposed to be
+in London; but Greta had returned to the parlor, muffled in furs, Paul
+had thrown on a long frieze ulster, and every one had risen for the last
+leave-taking. In the midst of the company stood the good old Christian,
+his wrinkled face wet with silent tears. Greta threw herself into his
+arms and wept aloud. Then the parson began to cast seeming merry glances
+around him, and to be mighty jubilant all at once.
+
+The improvised sledge was at the door, laden with many boxes.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!"
+
+A little cheer, a little attempt at laughter, a suppressed sigh, then a
+downright honest cry, and away they were gone. The last thing seen by
+Greta's hazy eyes was a drooping white head amid many bright girl faces.
+
+How they flew along. The glow of sunset was now in their faces. It
+crimsoned the west, and sparkled like gold on the eastern crags. Between
+them and the light were the skaters drawing the sledge, sailing along
+like a flight of great rooks, their voices echoing in unseen caverns of
+the fells.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne sat with Paul and Greta.
+
+"Where did you say you would stay in London?" he asked.
+
+"At Morley's Hotel," said Paul.
+
+With this answer the lawyer looked unreasonably happy.
+
+The station was reached in twenty minutes. The train steamed in. Paul
+and Greta got into the last carriage, all before it being full. A moment
+more, and they were gone.
+
+Then Mr. Bonnithorne walked direct to the telegraph office. But the
+liquor he had taken played him false. He had got it into his stupefied
+head that he must have blundered about Morley's Hotel. That was not
+Paul's, but Hugh's address. So he sent this telegram:
+
+"Left by train at one. Address, Hawk and Heron."
+
+Then he went home happy.
+
+That night there was high revel at the Ghyll. First, a feast in the
+hall: beef, veal, mutton, ham, haggis, and hot bacon pie. Then an
+adjournment to a barn, where tallow candles were stuck into cloven
+sticks, and hollowed potatoes served for lamps. Strong ale and trays of
+tobacco went round, and while the glasses jingled and the smoke wreathed
+upward, a song was sung:
+
+     "A man may spend
+     And God will send,
+   If his wife be good to owt;
+     But a man may spare
+     And still be bare,
+   If his wife be good to nowt."
+
+Then blindman's buff. "Antony Blindman kens ta me, sen I bought butter
+and cheese o' thee? I ga' tha my pot, I ga' tha my pan, I ga' all I had
+but a rap ho' penny I gave a poor auld man."
+
+Last of all, the creels were ranged round the hay-mows, and the floor
+was cleared of everything except a beer-barrel. This was run into the
+corner, and Tom o' Dint and fiddle were seated on top of it. Dancing was
+interrupted only by drinking, until Tom's music began to be irregular,
+whereupon Gubblum remonstrated; and then Tom, with the indignation of an
+artist, broke the bridge of his fiddle on Gubblum's head, and Gubblum
+broke the bridge of Tom's nose with his fist, and both rolled on to the
+floor and lay there, until Gubblum extricated himself with difficulty,
+shook his lachrymose noddle, and said:
+
+"The laal man is as drunk as a fiddler."
+
+The vicarage was quiet that night. All the guests save one were gone.
+Parson Christian sat before the smoldering fire. Old Laird Fisher sat
+with him. Neither spoke. They passed a long hour in silence.
+
+
+
+
+_BOOK III._
+
+
+THE DECLIVITY OF CRIME.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+A way-side hostelry, six miles from London, bearing its swinging sign of
+the silver hawk and golden heron. It was a little, low-roofed place,
+with a drinking-bar in front as you entered, and rooms opening from it
+on either hand.
+
+The door of the room to the left was shut. One could hear the voices of
+children within, and sometimes a peal of their merry laughter. The room
+to the right stood open to the bar. It was a smoky place, with a few
+chairs, a long deal table, a bench with a back, a form against the wall,
+pipes that hung on nails, and a rough beam across the low ceiling.
+
+A big fire burned in an open grate on a hearth without a fender. In
+front of it, coiled up in a huge chair like a canoe, that had a look of
+having been hewn straight from the tree, sat the only occupant of the
+room. The man wore a tweed suit of the indefinite pattern known as
+pepper and salt. His hat was drawn heavily over his face to protect his
+eyes from the glare of the fire-light. He gave satisfactory evidence
+that he slept.
+
+Under any light but that of the fire, the place must have looked
+cheerless to desolation, but the comfortless room was alive with the
+fire's palpitating heart. The rosy flames danced over the sleeper's
+tawny hair, over the sanded floor, over the walls adorned with gaudy
+prints. They threw shadows and then caught them back again; flashed a
+ruddy face out of the little cracked window, and then lay still while
+the blue night looked in.
+
+An old woman, with a yellow face deeply wrinkled, served behind the bar.
+Two or three carriers and hawkers sat on a bench before it. One of these
+worthies screwed up the right side of his face with an expression of
+cutting irony.
+
+"Burn my body, though, but what an inwalable thing to have a son wot
+never need do no work!"
+
+The old woman lifted her eyes.
+
+"There, enough of that," she said, and then jerked her head toward the
+room from whence came measured snores. "He'll be working at throwing you
+out, some of you, same as he did young Bobby on Sunday sennight."
+
+"Like enough. He don't know which side his bread is buttered, he don't."
+
+"His bread?" said another, an old road-mender, with a scornful dig of
+emphasis. "His old mother's, you mean. Don't you notice as folks as eat
+other folks' bread, and earn none for theirselves, never knows no more
+nor babbies which side the butter is on?"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Luke Sturgis!" said the old woman. "Mayhap you think
+it's you're pint of half-and-half as keeps us all out of the union."
+
+"Now you're a-goin' to get wexed, Mrs. Drayton. So wot's to prevent me
+having another pint, just to get that fine son of yourn an extra cigar
+or so. Hold hard with the pewter, though. I'll drain off what's left, if
+convenient."
+
+A drowsy-eyed countryman, with a dog snoring at his feet, said:
+
+"Been to Lunnon again," and pointed the shank of his pipe in the
+direction of the sleeping man. "Got the Lunnon smell on his clothes. I
+allus knows it forty perches off."
+
+"You're wrong, then, Mr. Wiseman," said the old woman, "and he ain't got
+no smell of no Lunnon on his clothes this day, anyways. For he's been
+where there ain't no smell no more nor in Hendon, leastways unless the
+mount'ins smells and the cataracks and the sheeps."
+
+"The mount'ins? And has Master Paul been along of the mount'ins?"
+
+"Yes; Cummerland, that's the mountains, and fur off, too, I've heerd."
+
+"Cummerland? Ain't that the part as the young missy comes from?"
+
+"Mayhap it is; I wouldn't be for saying no to that."
+
+"So that's the time o' day, is it?" The speaker gave a prolonged whistle
+and turned a suggestive glance into the faces of his companions. "Well,
+I allus says to my old woman, 'Bide quiet,' I says, 'and it'll leak
+out,' and sure enough, so it has."
+
+The landlady fired up.
+
+"And I allus says to your missus, 'Mistress Sturgis,' I says, 'it do
+make me that wexed to see a man a-prying into other people's business
+and a-talking and a-scandalizing, which it is bad in a woman, where you
+expects no better, as the saying is, but it ain't no ways bearsome in a
+man--and I wish you'd keep him,' I says, 'from poking his nose, as you
+might say, into other people's pewters.' There--that's what I allus says
+to your missis."
+
+"And very perwerse of you, too," said the worthy addressed, speaking
+with the easy good-nature of one who could afford to be rated. "And
+wot's to prevent me having a screw of twist on the strength of it,"
+putting a penny on the counter.
+
+The landlady threw down the paper of tobacco, picked up the penny, and
+cast it into the till.
+
+"On'y, as I say, there's no use denying now as Mister Paul Drayton has a
+finger in the young missy's pie."
+
+"There, that's enough o' that. I told you afore she never set eyes on
+him till a fortnight come Sunday."
+
+Two women came into the bar with jugs.
+
+"And how is the young missy?" asked the elder of the two, catching up
+the conversation as the landlady served her.
+
+"She's there," said the landlady, rather indefinitely, indicating with a
+sidelong nod the room to the left with the closed door.
+
+At that moment the laughter of the children could be heard from within.
+
+"She's merry over it, at any rate, though I did hear a whisper," said
+the woman, "as she feeds two when she eats her wittals, as the saying
+is."
+
+The men laughed.
+
+"That's being overcur'ous, mistress," said one, as the woman passed out
+sniggering.
+
+"Such baggage oughtn't to be taken in to live with respectable people,"
+said the other woman, the younger one, who wore a showy bonnet and a
+little gay ribbon at her neck.
+
+"And that's being overcharitable," said another voice. "It's the women
+for charity, especially to one of themselves."
+
+"It's cur'osity as is the mischief i' this world," said the drowsy-eyed
+countryman. "People talk o' the root o' all evil, and some says drink,
+and some says money, and some says rheumatis, but I says cur'osity. Show
+me the man as ain't cur'ous, and he don't go a-poking his nose into
+every stink-pot, as you might say."
+
+"Of course not," said the gentleman addressed as Luke Sturgis. "And show
+me the man as ain't cur'ous" he said, with a wink, "and I'll show you
+the man as is good at a plough and inwalable at a ditch, and wery near
+worth his weight in gold at gapping a hedge, and mucking up a
+horse-midden, and catching them nasty moles wot ruin the county worse
+nor wars and publicans and parsons."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It was Mercy Fisher who sat in the room to the left of the bar, and
+played with the children, and laughed when they laughed, and tried to
+forget that she was not as young as they were, and as happy and as free
+from thought, living as they lived, from hour to hour, with no past, and
+without a future, and all in the living present. But she was changed,
+and was now no longer quite a child, though she had a child's heart that
+would never grow old, but be a child's heart still, all the same that
+the weight of a woman's years lay upon it, and the burden of a woman's
+sorrow saddened it. A little older, a little wiser, perhaps, a little
+graver of face, and with eyes a little more wistful.
+
+A neighbor who had gone to visit a relative five miles away had brought
+round her children, begging the "young missy" to take care of them in
+her absence. A curly-headed boy of four sat wriggling in Mercy's lap,
+while a girl of six stood by her side, watching the needles as she
+knitted. And many a keen thrust the innocent, prattling tongues sent
+straight as an arrow to Mercy's heart. The little fellow was revolving a
+huge lozenge behind his teeth.
+
+"And if oo had a little boy would oo give him sweets ery often--all
+days--sweets and cakes--would oo?"
+
+"Yes, every day, darling; I'd give him sweets and cakes every day."
+
+"I 'ikes oo. And would oo let him go out to play with the big boys, and
+get birds' nests and things, would oo?"
+
+"Yes, bird's nests, and berries, and everything."
+
+"I 'ikes oo, I do. And let him go to meet daddy coming home at night,
+and ride on daddy's back?"
+
+A shadow shot across the girl's simple face, and there was a pause.
+
+"Would oo? And lift him on daddy's shoulder, would oo?"
+
+"Perhaps, dear."
+
+"Oh!" the little chap's delight required no fuller expression.
+
+"Ot's oo doing?"
+
+"Knitting, darling--there, rest quiet on my knee."
+
+"Ot is it--knitting--stockings for oo little boy?"
+
+"I have no little boy, sweetheart. They are mittens for a gentleman."
+
+"How pooty! Ot's a gentleman?"
+
+"A man, dear. Mr. Drayton is a gentleman, you know."
+
+"Oh!" Then after a moment's sage reflection, "Me knows--a raskill."
+
+"Willy!"
+
+"'At's what daddy says he is."
+
+All this time the little maiden at Mercy's side had been pondering her
+own peculiar problem. "What would you do if you had a little girl?"
+
+"Well, let me see; I'd teach her to knit and to sew, and I'd comb her
+hair so nice, and make her a silk frock with flounces, and, oh! such a
+sweet little hat."
+
+"How nice! And would you take her to market and to church, and to see
+the dolls in Mrs. Bicker's window?"
+
+"Yes, dearest, yes."
+
+"And never whip her?"
+
+"My little girl would be very, very good, and oh! so pretty."
+
+"And let her go to grandma's whenever she liked, and not tell grandpa
+he's not to give her ha'pennies, would you?"
+
+"Yes ... dear ... yes ... perhaps."
+
+"Are your eyes very sore to-day, Mercy, they are so red?"
+
+But the little one of all was not interested in this turn of the
+conversation: "Well, why don't oo have a little boy?"
+
+A dead silence.
+
+"Wont oo, eh?"
+
+Willy was put to the ground. "Let us sing something. Do you like
+singing, sweetheart?"
+
+The little fellow climbed back to her lap in excitement. "Me sing, me
+sing. Mammy told I a song--me sing it oo."
+
+And without further ceremony the little chap struck up the notes of a
+lullaby.
+
+Mercy had learned that same song, as her mother crooned it long ago by
+the side of her cot. A great wave of memory and love and sorrow and
+remorse, in one, swept over her. It cost her a struggle not to break
+into a flood of tears. And the little innocent face looked up at the
+ceiling as the sweet child-voice sung the familiar words.
+
+There was a new-comer in the bar outside. It was Hugh Ritson, clad in a
+long ulster, with the hood drawn over his hat. He stepped up to the
+landlady, who courtesied low from behind the counter. "So he has
+returned?" he said, without greeting of any kind.
+
+"Yes, sir, he is back, sir; he got home in the afternoon, sir."
+
+"You told him nothing of any one calling?"
+
+"No, sir--that is to say, sir--not to say told him, sir--but I did
+mention--just mention, sir, that--"
+
+Hugh Ritson smiled coldly. "Of course--precisely. Were you more prudent
+with the girl?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, being as you told me not to name it to the missy--"
+
+"He is asleep, I see."
+
+"Yes, sir; he'd no sooner taken bite and sup than he dropped off in his
+chair, same as you see, sir; and never a word since. He must have
+traveled all night."
+
+"He did not explain?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir; he on'y called for his cold meat and his ale, sir, and--"
+
+"You see, his old mother ain't noways in his confidence, master," said
+one of the countrymen on the bench.
+
+"Nor you in mine, my friend," said Hugh Ritson, facing about. Then
+turning again to the landlady, he said: "Tell him some one wants to
+speak with him. Or, wait, I'll tell him myself."
+
+He stepped into the room with the sleeping man, and closed the door
+after him.
+
+"Luke Sturgis," said the landlady, with sudden austerity, "I'll have you
+know as it's none of your business saying words what's onpleasant--and
+me his mother, too. What's it you say? Cloven hoof? He's a personable
+gentleman, if he has got summat a matter with a foot, and a clever face
+how-an'-ever!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Alone with the sleeping man, Hugh Ritson stood and looked down at him
+intently. The fire had burned to a steady glow of red coal without
+flame. There was no other light in the room.
+
+The sleeper began to stir with the uneasy movement of one who is
+struggling against the effect of a fixed gaze bent upon him. Then, with
+a shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders, he sat up in his
+chair. He tossed his hat back from his forehead, and a tuft of wavy
+brown hair tumbled over it. His head was held down, and his eyes were on
+the fire. Hugh Ritson took a step toward him and put one hand on his
+arm.
+
+"Paul Drayton," he said, and the man shrunk under his touch and slowly
+turned his face full upon him.
+
+When their eyes met Hugh Ritson saw what he had expected to see--the
+face of Paul Ritson. In that low, red light, every feature was the same.
+By the swift impulse of sense it seemed as if it could be the same man
+and no other; as if Paul Drayton and Paul Ritson were one man.
+
+Drayton got on to his feet with an uncertain shuffle, and then in a
+moment the hallucination was dispelled. He kicked, with a heavy boot, at
+the slumbering coals, and the fire broke into a sharp crackle and bright
+blaze. The white light fell on his face. It was a fine face brutalized
+by excess. The features were strong, manly, and impressive. What God had
+done was very good; but the eyes were bleared, and the lips discolored,
+and the expression, which might have been frank, was sullen.
+
+"I don't wonder that you were tired after your journey; it was a long
+one," said Hugh Ritson. He affected an easy manner, but there was a
+tremor in his voice. "You caught the early Scotch mail from Penrith," he
+added, and drew a bench nearer to the fire and sat down.
+
+Drayton made a half-dazed scrutiny of his visitor, and said:
+
+"Damme, if you're not the fence as was here afore, criss-crossing at our
+old woman! Tell us your name."
+
+The voice was husky, but it had, nevertheless, a note or two of the
+voice of Paul Ritson.
+
+"That will be unnecessary," said Hugh Ritson, with complete
+self-possession. "We've met before," he added, smiling.
+
+"The deuce we have--where?"
+
+"You slept at the Pack Horse at Keswick rather more than a week ago,"
+said Hugh.
+
+Drayton betrayed no surprise.
+
+"Last Saturday night you were active at the fire that almost destroyed
+the old mill at Newlands."
+
+Drayton's sullen face was immovable.
+
+"By the way," said Hugh, elevating his voice and affecting a sudden flow
+of spirits, "I owe you my personal thanks for your exertions. What do
+you drink--brandy?"
+
+Going to the door, he called for a bottle of brandy and glasses.
+
+"Then, again, on Monday night," he added, turning into the room, "you
+did me the honor to visit my own house."
+
+Drayton was still standing.
+
+"I know you," he said. "Shall I tell you your name?"
+
+Hugh smiled with undisturbed humor. "That also will be unnecessary," he
+said; and leisurely drew off his gloves.
+
+"What d'ye want? I ain't got no time to waste--that's flat."
+
+"Well, let me see, it's just ten o'clock," said Hugh Ritson, taking out
+his watch. "I want you to earn twenty pounds before twelve."
+
+Mr. Drayton gave vent to a grim laugh.
+
+"I'll pound it as I'm fly to what that means! You're looking to earn two
+hundred before midnight."
+
+Mr. Drayton gave Hugh a sidelong glance of great astuteness.
+
+Hugh lifted his eyebrows and shook his head.
+
+"Money is not my object."
+
+"Oh, it ain't, eh? Well, I'm not afraid for you to know as it's
+mine--very much so." And Mr. Drayton gave vent to another grim laugh.
+
+Mrs. Drayton entered the room at this moment, and set down the brandy,
+two glasses, and a water-bottle on the deal table.
+
+"Let me offer you a little refreshment," and Hugh took up the brandy and
+poured out half a tumbler.
+
+"Thankee, thankee!"
+
+"Water? Say when."
+
+But Mr. Drayton stopped the dilution by snatching up his tumbler. His
+manner had undergone a change. The watchfulness of a ferocious creature
+dogged and all but trapped gave way to reckless abandonment, bravado and
+audacity.
+
+"What's the lay?" he said, with a chuckle.
+
+"To accompany a lady to Kentish Town Junction, and see her safe into the
+midnight train--that's all."
+
+Drayton laughed outright.
+
+"Of course it is," he said.
+
+"The lady will be here shortly before midnight."
+
+"Of course she will."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face lost its smiles.
+
+"Don't laugh like that--I won't have it!"
+
+Mr. Drayton made another application to the spirit bottle, and then
+leaned toward Hugh Ritson over the arm of his chair.
+
+"Look here," he said, "it's just a matter o' thirty years gone August
+since my mother put me into swaddling clothes, and deng my buttons if
+I'm wearing 'em yet!"
+
+"What do you mean, my friend?" said Hugh.
+
+Drayton chuckled contemptuously.
+
+"Speak out plain," he said. "Give the work its right name. I ain't
+afraid for you to say it. A man don't give twenty pounds for the like o'
+that. Not if he works for it honest, same as me. I'm a licensed
+victualer, and a gentleman--that's what I am, if you want to know."
+
+Hugh Ritson repudiated all unnecessary curiosity, whereupon Mr. Drayton
+again had recourse to the spirit bottle, mentioned afresh his profession
+and pretensions, and wound up by a relative inquiry, "And what do you
+call yourself?"
+
+Hugh did not immediately gratify Mr. Drayton's curiosity.
+
+"Quite right, Mr. Drayton," he said; "I know all about you. Shall I tell
+you why you went to Cumberland?"
+
+Remarking that it was easy to repeat an old woman's gossip, Mr. Drayton
+took out of his pocket a goat-skin tobacco-pouch, and proceeded to
+charge a discolored meerschaum pipe.
+
+"Thirty years ago," said Hugh Ritson, "a young lady tried to drown
+herself and her child. She was rescued and committed to an asylum. Her
+child, a son, was given into the care of the good woman with whom she
+had lodged."
+
+Mr. Drayton interrupted. "Thankee; but, as the wice-chairman says,
+'we'll take it as read,' so we will."
+
+Hugh Ritson nodded his head, and continued, while Mr. Drayton smoked
+vigorously: "You have never heard of your mother from that hour to this;
+but one day you were told by the young girl whom circumstances had cast
+on your foster-mother's care, that among the mountains of Cumberland
+there lived another man who bore you the most extraordinary resemblance.
+That excited your curiosity. You had reasons for thinking that if your
+mother were alive she might be rich. Now, you yourself had the
+misfortune to be poor."
+
+"And I'm not afraid for anybody to know it," interrupted Mr. Drayton.
+"Come to the point honest. Look here, we are like two hyenas I saw one
+day at the Zoo. One got a bone in his tooth at feeding time, and blest
+if the other didn't fight for that bone I don't know how long and all."
+
+"Well," continued Hugh Ritson, with a dubious smile that the cloud of
+smoke might have hidden from a closer observer, "being a man of spirit,
+and not without knowledge of the world, having inherited brains, in
+short, from the parents who bequeathed you nothing else--"
+
+Mr. Drayton puffed volumes, then poured himself half a tumbler of the
+raw spirit and tossed it off.
+
+--"You determined on seeing if, after all, this were only a fortuitous
+resemblance."
+
+Mr. Drayton raised his hand. "I am a licensed victualer, that's what I
+am, and I ain't flowery," he said, in an apologetic tone; "I hain't had
+the chance of it, being as I'd no schooling--but, deng me, you've just
+hit it!" And the gentleman who could not be flowery shook hands
+effusively with the gentleman who could.
+
+"Precisely, Mr. Drayton, precisely," said Hugh Ritson. He paused and
+watched Drayton closely. That worthy had removed his pipe, and was
+staring, with stupid eyes and open mouth, into the fire.
+
+"But you found nothing."
+
+"How d'ye know?"
+
+"Your face at this moment says so."
+
+"Pooh! Don't you go along trusting this here time-piece for the time o'
+day. It ain't been brought up in habits o' truthfulness same as yours."
+
+Hugh Ritson laughed.
+
+"You and I are meant to be friends, Mr. Drayton," he said. "But let us
+first understand each other. Your idea that you could find your parents
+in Cumberland was a pure fallacy."
+
+"Eh! Why?"
+
+"Because your mother is dead."
+
+Drayton shook off the stupor of liquor, and betrayed a keen if momentary
+interest.
+
+"The book of the asylum in which she was confined, after the attempted
+suicide, contains the record--"
+
+"But she escaped," interrupted Drayton.
+
+"Contains the record of her escape and subsequent recovery--dead. The
+body was picked out of the river, recognized by the authorities as that
+of the unknown woman, and buried in the name she gave."
+
+"What name?" said Drayton.
+
+Hugh Ritson's face underwent a momentary change.
+
+"That is indifferent," he said; "I forget."
+
+"Sure you forget?" said Drayton. "Couldn't be Ritson, eh?"
+
+Hugh struck the table.
+
+"Assuredly not--the name was not Ritson."
+
+The tone irritated Mr. Drayton. He glanced down with a look that seemed
+to say that Hugh Ritson had his Maker to thank for giving him the
+benefit of an infirm foot.
+
+Hugh Ritson mollified him by explaining that if he had any curiosity as
+to the name, he could discover it for himself. "Besides," said Hugh,
+"what matter about the name if your mother is dead?"
+
+"That's true," said Drayton, who, being now appeased, began to see that
+his anger had been puerile.
+
+"Depend upon it, your father, wherever he is, is a cipher," said Hugh
+Ritson.
+
+Drayton got on to his feet and trudged the floor uneasily. An idea had
+occurred to him. "The person picked out of the river may have been
+another woman. I've heard of such."
+
+"Possibly; but the chance of error is worth little to you." Hugh looked
+uncomfortable as he said this, but Drayton saw nothing.
+
+"Bah! What matter?" said Drayton, and, determined to cudgel his brains
+no longer, he reached for the brandy and drank another half glass. There
+was then an interchange of deep amity.
+
+"Tell me," said Hugh, "what passed at the Ghyll on Monday night?"
+
+"The Ghyll? Monday? That was the night of the snow. What passed?
+Nothing."
+
+"Why did you go?"
+
+"Wanted to see your mother. Saw your brother one night late at the door
+of the parson's house. Saw you at the fire. At the fire?--certainly.
+Stood a matter of a dozen yards away when that young buck of a stableman
+drove up with the trap. What excuse for going? Blest if I
+remember--summat or other; knocked, and no one came. I don't know how
+long and all I stood cooling my heels at the door. Then I saw a light
+coming from a room on the first floor, and up I went and knocked. 'Come
+in,' says somebody. I went in. Withered old party got up. Black crape
+and beads, you know. But, afore I could speak, she reeled like a top and
+fell all of a heap. Blest if the old girl didn't take me for a ghost!"
+Mr. Drayton elevated his eyebrows, and added with emphasis, "I got out."
+
+"And on the way back you frightened a young lady in the lane, who, like
+my mother, mistook you for the ghost of my brother Paul. Well, that
+young lady was married to my brother this morning. They are now on their
+way to London. They intend to leave England on Wednesday next, and they
+mean to pass to-night in your house."
+
+Mr. Drayton's eyebrows went up again.
+
+"It is certainly hard to understand--but look," and Hugh Ritson handed
+to Drayton the telegram he had received from Bonnithorne. That worthy
+examined it minutely, back and front, with bleared and bewildered eyes,
+and then looked to his visitor for explanation.
+
+"The lady must not leave England," said Hugh.
+
+Drayton steadied himself, and tried hard to look appalled.
+
+"Upon my soul, you make my flesh creep!" he said. "What do you want for
+your twenty pounds? Speak out plain. I'm not flowery, I'm not. I'm a
+licensed victualer and a gentleman--"
+
+"What do I want? Only that you should send the lady home again by the
+first train."
+
+Drayton began to laugh.
+
+"You see, there was no cause for alarm," said Hugh, with an innocent
+smile.
+
+Drayton's laughter became boisterous.
+
+"I am to decoy the young thing away by making her believe as I'm her
+husband, eh?"
+
+"Mr. Drayton, you are a shrewd fellow."
+
+"And what about the husband--ain't he another shrewd fellow?"
+
+"Leave him to me. When the time comes, make no delay. Don't expose
+yourself unnecessarily. Wear that ulster you have on at present. Say as
+little as possible--nothing if practicable. Get the lady into the fly
+that shall be waiting at the door; drive to the station; book her to
+Keswick; put her into the carriage at the last moment; then clear away
+with all expedition. The midnight train never stops this side of
+Bedford."
+
+Drayton was shuffling across the room, chuckling audibly. "He, he, he!
+haw! haw!--so I'm to leave her at the station, eh? Poor young thing; I
+hain't got the heart--I hain't got it in me to be so cruel. No, no, I
+couldn't be such a vagabond of a husband--he, he! haw, haw!--and on the
+poor thing's wedding day, too."
+
+Hugh Ritson rose to his feet.
+
+"If you go an inch further than the station, you'll repent it to your
+dying day!" he said, once more bringing down his fist heavily on the
+table.
+
+At this Drayton chuckled and crowed yet louder, and declared that it
+would be necessary to have another half glass in order to take the taste
+of the observation out of his mouth.
+
+Then his laughter ceased.
+
+"Look here: you want me to do a job as can only be done by one man
+alive. And what do you offer me--twenty pounds? Keep it," he said; "it
+won't pass, sir!"
+
+The fire had burned very low, the cheerless room was dense with smoke
+and noisome with the smell of dead tobacco. Drayton buttoned up to the
+throat the long coat he wore.
+
+"I've summat on," he said; "good-night."
+
+The sound of children's voices came from the bar. The little ones were
+going home.
+
+"Good-night, missy, and thank you." It was a woman's voice.
+
+"Good-night, Mercy," cried the children.
+
+Drayton was opening the door.
+
+"Think again," said Hugh Ritson. "You run no risk. Eleven forty-five
+prompt will do."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+When Drayton went out, Hugh Ritson walked into the bar. The gossips had
+gone. Only the landlady was there. The door to the room opposite now
+stood open.
+
+"Mrs. Drayton," said Hugh, "have you ever seen this face before?"
+
+He took a medallion from his pocket and held it out to her.
+
+"Lor's a mercy me!" cried the landlady; "why, it's her herself as plain
+as plain--except for the nun's bonnet."
+
+"Is that the lady who lodged with you at Pimlico--the mother of Paul?"
+
+"As sure as sure! Lor's, yes; and to think the poor young dear is dead
+and gone! It's thirty years since, but it do make me cry, and my
+husband--he's gone, too--my husband he said to me, 'Martha,' he said,
+'Martha--'"
+
+The landlady's garrulity was interrupted by a light scream: "Hugh,
+Hugh!"
+
+Mercy Fisher stood in the door-way, with wonder-stricken eyes and
+heaving breast.
+
+In an instant the poor little soul had rushed into Hugh Ritson's arms
+with the flutter of a frightened bird.
+
+"Oh, I knew you would come--I was sure you would come!" she said, and
+dried her eyes, and then cried again, and then dried them afresh, and
+lifted her pouting lips to be kissed.
+
+Hugh Ritson made no display. A shade of impatience crossed his face at
+first, but it was soon gone. He tried to look pleased, and bent his head
+and touched the pale lips slightly.
+
+"You look wan, you poor little thing," he said, quietly. "What ails
+you?"
+
+"Nothing--nothing, now that you have come. Only you were so long in
+coming, so very long."
+
+He called up a brave word to answer her.
+
+"But you see I keep my word, little woman," he said, and smiled down at
+her and nodded his head cheerfully.
+
+"And you have come to see me at last! All this way to see poor little
+me!"
+
+The mute weariness that had marked her face fled at that moment before a
+radiant smile.
+
+"One must do something for those who risk so much for one," he said, and
+laughed a little.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The first surprise over, the joy of that moment was beyond the gift of
+speech. Her arms encircled his neck, and she looked up at his face in
+silence and with brightening eyes.
+
+"And so you found the time long and tedious?" he said.
+
+"I had no one to talk to," she said, with a blank expression.
+
+"Why, you ungrateful little thing! you had good Mrs. Drayton here, and
+her son, and all the smart young fellows of Hendon who came to drink at
+the bar and say pretty things to the little bar-maid, and--"
+
+"It's not that--I had no one who knew you," she said, and dropped her
+voice to a whisper.
+
+"But you go out sometimes--into the village--to London?" he said.
+
+"No, I never go out--never now."
+
+"Then your eyes are really worse?"
+
+"It's not my eyes. But, never mind. Oh, I knew you would not forget me.
+Only sometimes of an evening, when the dusk fell in, and I sat by the
+fire all alone, something would say, 'He doesn't want me,' 'He won't
+come for me.' But that was not true, was it?"
+
+"Why, no; of course not."
+
+"And then when the children came--the neighbor's children,--and I put
+the little darlings to bed, and they said their prayers to me, and I
+tried to pray, too--sometimes I was afraid to pray--and then, and then,"
+(she glanced round watchfully and dropped her voice) "something would
+say, 'Why didn't he leave me alone? I was so happy!'"
+
+"You morbid little woman! You shall be happy again--you are happy now,
+are you not?" he said.
+
+Her eyes, bleared and red, but bright with the shafts of love, looked up
+at him in the dumb joy that is perfect happiness.
+
+"Ah!" she said, and dropped her comely head on his breast.
+
+"But you should have taken walks--long, healthy, happy walks," he said.
+
+"I did--while the roses bloomed and the dahlias and things, and I saved
+so many of them against you would come, moss roses and wild white roses;
+but you were so long coming and they withered. And then I couldn't throw
+them away, because, you know, they were yours; so I pressed them in the
+book you gave me. See, let me show you."
+
+She stepped aside eagerly to pick up a little gilt-edged book from the
+table in the inner room. He followed her mechanically, hardly heeding
+her happy prattle.
+
+"And was there no young fellow in all Hendon to make those lonely walks
+of yours more cheerful?"
+
+She was opening her book with nervous fingers, and stopped to look up
+with blank eyes.
+
+"Eh? No handsome young fellow who whispered that you were a pretty
+little thing, and had no right to go moping about by yourself? None?
+Eh?"
+
+Her old look of weariness was creeping back.
+
+"Come, Mercy, tell the truth, you sly little thing--eh?"
+
+She was fumbling his withered roses with nervous fingers. Her throat
+felt parched.
+
+He looked down at her saddening face, and then muttered, as if speaking
+to himself: "I told that Bonnithorne this hole and corner was no place
+for the girl. He should have taken her to London."
+
+The girl's heart grew sick. The book was closed and dropped back on to
+the table.
+
+"And now, Mercy," said Hugh Ritson, "I want you to be a good little
+woman, and do as I bid you, and not speak a word. Will you?"
+
+The child-face brightened, and Mercy nodded her head, a little tear
+rolling out of one gleaming eye. At the same moment she put her hand in
+the pocket of her muslin apron, and took out a pair of knitted mittens,
+and tried to draw them on to Hugh's wrists.
+
+He looked at the gift, and smiled, and said: "I won't need these--not
+to-day, I mean. See, I wear long gloves, with fur wristbands--there,
+I'll store your mittens away in my pocket. What a sad little
+soul--crying again?"
+
+Mercy's pretty dreams were dying one by one. She lifted now a timid hand
+until it rested lightly on his breast.
+
+"Listen. I'm going out, but I'll soon be back. I must talk with Mrs.
+Drayton, and I've something to pay her, you know."
+
+The timid hand fell to the girl's side.
+
+"When I return there may be some friends with me--a lady and a
+gentleman--but I want to see them alone, quite alone, and I don't want
+them to see you--do you understand?"
+
+A great dumb sadness was closing in on Mercy's heart.
+
+"But they will soon be gone, and then to-morrow you and I must talk
+again, and try to arrange matters so that you won't be quite so lonely,
+but will stir about, and see the doctor for your eyes, and get well
+again, and try to forget--"
+
+"Forget!" said the girl, faintly. Her parched throat took away her
+voice.
+
+"I mean--that is to say--I was hoping--of course, I mean forget all the
+trouble in Cumberland. And now get away to bed like a good little girl.
+I must be off. Ah, how late!--see, a quarter to eleven, and my watch is
+slow."
+
+He walked into the bar, buttoning up his coat to his ears. The girl
+followed him listlessly. Mrs. Drayton was washing glasses behind the
+counter.
+
+"Mind you send this little friend of mine to bed very soon," said Hugh
+to the landlady. "Look how red her eyes are! And keep a good fire in
+this cozy parlor on the left--you are to have visitors--you need not
+trouble about a bedroom--they won't stay long. Let me see, what do they
+say is the time of your last up-train?"
+
+"To London? The last one starts away at half past twelve," said the
+landlady.
+
+"Very good. I'll see you again, Mrs. Drayton. Good-night, Mercy, and do
+keep a brighter face. There--kiss me. Now, good-night--what a silly,
+affectionate little goose--and mind you are in bed and asleep before I
+return, or I shall be that angry--yes, I shall. You never saw me angry.
+Well, never mind. Good-night."
+
+The door opened and closed. Mercy went back into the room. It was
+cheerless and empty, and the children's happy voices lived in it no
+more. The girl's heart ached with a dull pain that had never a pang at
+all, but was dumb and dead and cold; and Mercy was all alone.
+
+"Perhaps he was only in fun when he said that about walking out with
+somebody and trying to forget, and not being seen," she thought. "Yes;
+he must have been only in fun," she thought, "because he knew how I
+waited and waited."
+
+Then she took up again the book that he had hardly glanced at. It fell
+open at a yellow, dried-up rose that had left the stain of its heart's
+juice on the white leaf.
+
+"Yes, he was only in fun," she said, and then laughed a little; and then
+a big drop fell on to the open page and on to the dead flower.
+
+Then she tried to be very brave.
+
+"I must not cry; it makes my eyes, oh! so sore. I must get them well and
+strong--oh, yes! I must be well and strong against--against--then."
+
+She lifted her head slowly where she stood alone, and a smile, like a
+summer breeze on still water, rippled over her mouth.
+
+"He kissed me," she thought, "and he came to see me--all this long, long
+way."
+
+A lovely dream shone in her face now.
+
+"And if he does not come again until--until then--he will be glad--oh,
+he will be very glad!"
+
+The thought of a future hour when the poor little soul should be rich
+with something of her own that would be dearest of all because not all
+her own, shone like a sleeping child's vision in her face. She went out
+into the bar and lighted a candle.
+
+"So that's your sweetheart--not the lawyer man, eh?" said Mrs. Drayton,
+bustling about.
+
+"I've no call to hide my face now--not now that he has come--have I?"
+said Mercy.
+
+"Well, he is free of his money, and I'se just been hoping you get some
+of it, for, as I says, you want things bad, and them as has the looking
+to it should find 'em, as is only reasonable."
+
+Mercy did as she had been bidden: she went off to her bedroom. But her
+head was too full of thoughts for sleep. She examined her face in the
+glass, and smiled and blushed at it because he called it pretty. It was
+prettier than ever to her own eyes now. After half an hour she
+remembered that she had left the book on the table in the parlor, and
+crept down-stairs to recover it. When she was on the landing at the
+bottom, she heard a hurried knock at the outer door.
+
+Thereafter all her dreams died in an instant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+When Hugh Ritson stepped out into the road, the night was dark. Fresh
+from the yellow light of the inn, his eyes could barely descry the
+footpath or see the dim black line of the hedge. The atmosphere was
+damp. The moisture in the air gathered in great beads on his eyebrows
+and beard, stiffening them with frost. It was bitterly cold. The mist
+that rose from the river spread itself over the cold, open wastes of
+marshy ground that lay to the right and to the left. The gloomy road was
+thick with half-frozen mud.
+
+Hugh Ritson buttoned his coat yet closer and started at a brisk pace.
+
+"No time to lose," he thought, "if I've to be at the station when the
+north train goes through. Would have dearly liked to keep an eye on my
+gentleman. Should have done it, but for the girl. 'Summat on,' eh? What
+is it, I wonder? It might be useful to know."
+
+With a cutting wind at his back he walked faster as his eyes grew
+familiar with the darkness. He was thinking that Bonnithorne's telegram
+might be an error. Perhaps it had even been tampered with. It was barely
+conceivable that Paul and Greta had ever so much as heard of the Hawk
+and Heron. And what possible inducement could they have to sleep in
+Hendon when they would be so near to London?
+
+His mind went back to Mercy Fisher. At that moment she was dreaming
+beautiful dreams of how happy she was very soon to make him. He was
+thinking, with vexation, that the girl was a connecting link with the
+people in Cumberland. Yes--and the only link, too. Could it be that
+Mercy--No; the idea of Mercy's disloyalty to him was really too
+ridiculous. If he could get to the station before the train from the
+north was due to stop there, he would see for himself whether Paul and
+Greta alighted. If they did not, as they must be in that train, he would
+get into it also, and go on with them to London. Bonnithorne might have
+blundered.
+
+The journey was long, and the roads were heavy for walking. It seemed a
+far greater distance than he had thought. At the angle of a gate and a
+thick brier hedge he struck a match and read the time by his watch.
+Eleven o'clock. Too late, if the watch were not more than a minute slow.
+
+At that moment he heard the whistle of a train, and between the whirs of
+the wind he heard the tinkle of the signal bell. Too late, indeed. He
+was still a quarter of a mile from the station.
+
+Still he held on his way, without hope for his purpose, yet quickening
+his pace to a sharp run.
+
+He had come within three hundred yards of the station when he heard an
+unearthly scream, followed in an instant by a great clamor and tumult of
+human voices. Shrieks, shouts, groans, sobs, wails--all were mingled
+together in one agonized cry that rent the thick night air asunder.
+
+Hugh Ritson ran faster.
+
+Then he saw haggard men and women appearing and disappearing before him
+in the light of a fire that panted on the ground like an overthrown
+horse.
+
+The north train had been wrecked.
+
+Within a dozen yards from the station the engine and three of the front
+carriages had broken from their couplings and plunged on to the bank.
+The last four carriages, free of the fatal chain, had kept the rails and
+were standing unharmed above.
+
+Women who had been dragged through the tops of the overturned carriages
+fled away with white faces into the darkness of the fields. Men, too,
+with panic-stricken eyes, sat down on the grass, helpless and useless.
+Some resolute souls, roused to activity, were pulling at the carriages
+to set them right. Men from the station came with lanterns, and rescued
+the injured, and put them to lie out of harm's way.
+
+The scene was harrowing, and only two of its incidents are material to
+this history. Over all the rest, the clamor, the tumult, the agony, the
+abject fear, and the noble courage, let a veil be drawn.
+
+Fate had brought together, in that hour of disaster, three men whose
+lives, hitherto apart, were henceforth to be bound up as one life for
+good or ill.
+
+Hugh Ritson rushed here and there like a man distraught. He peered into
+every face. He caught up a lantern that some one had set down, and ran
+to and fro in the darkness, stooping to let the light fall on those on
+the ground, holding up the red glare to the windows of the uninjured
+carriages.
+
+At that moment all his frozen soul seemed to melt. Face to face with the
+pitiless work of destiny, his own heartless schemes disappeared. At last
+he saw the face he looked for. Then he dropped the lantern to his side,
+and turned the glass of it from him.
+
+"Stay here, Greta," said a voice he knew. "I shall be back with you
+presently. Let me lend them a hand over yonder." The man went by him in
+the darkness.
+
+Hark!
+
+Hugh Ritson heard a cry from the field beyond the bank. It was there
+that they had placed the injured.
+
+"Help! help! I am robbed--- help!" came out of the darkness.
+
+"Where are you?" asked another voice.
+
+"Here! Help! help!"
+
+Hugh Ritson ran toward the place whence the first voice came, and saw
+the figure of a man stooping over something that lay on the ground. At
+the same moment another man rushed up and laid strong hold of the
+stooping figure. There was a short, sharp struggle. The two men were of
+one stature, one strength. There was a sound as of cloth ripped asunder.
+
+At the next moment one of the men went by like the wind and was lost in
+the blackness of the fields. But Hugh Ritson had held up the lantern as
+the man passed, and caught one swift glimpse of his face. He knew him.
+
+A group had gathered about the injured person on the ground and about
+the other man who had struggled to defend him.
+
+"Could you not hold the scoundrel?" said one.
+
+"I held him till his coat came to pieces in my hand. See here," said the
+other.
+
+Hugh Ritson knew the voice.
+
+"A piece of Irish frieze, I should say" (feeling it).
+
+"You must have gripped him by the lappel of his ulster. Let me keep
+this. I am a police sergeant. What is your name, sir?"
+
+"Paul Ritson."
+
+"And your address?"
+
+"I was on my way to Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square. What place is
+this?"
+
+"Hendon."
+
+"Could one get accommodation here for the night? A lady is with me."
+
+"Best go up by the twelve-thirty, sir."
+
+"The lady is too much worn and excited. Any hotel, inn, lodging-house?"
+
+A porter came up.
+
+"The Hawk and Heron's handiest. A mile, sir. Drayton--it's him as keeps
+it--he's here somewhere. Drayton!" (calling).
+
+"Can you get me a fly, my good fellow?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The police sergeant moved off.
+
+"Then I may look for you at the Hawk and Heron?" he said.
+
+Hugh Ritson heard all. He kept the lantern down. In the darkness not a
+face of that group was seen of any man.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, Hugh Ritson, panting for breath, was
+knocking at the door of the inn. The landlady within fumbled with the
+iron bar behind it.
+
+"Come, quick!" said Hugh.
+
+The door opened, and he stepped in sharply, bathed in perspiration.
+
+"Is your son back?" he said, catching his breath.
+
+"Back, sir? No, sir; it's a mercy if he gets home afore morning, sir;
+he's noways--"
+
+"Stop your clatter. The girl is in her room. Go and turn the key on
+her!"
+
+It was at that moment that Mercy, having stood an instant at the bottom
+of the stairs, had ventured nervously into the bar. Turning about, Hugh
+Ritson came face to face with her. At the sight of her his crimsoning
+cheeks became white with wrath.
+
+"Didn't I tell you to be in bed?" he muttered, in a low, hoarse whisper.
+
+"I've only come for ... I came down for ... Hugh, don't be angry with
+me."
+
+"Come, get back, then; don't stand there. Quick--and mind you lock your
+door."
+
+"Yes, I'm going. You wouldn't be angry with me, would you?"
+
+"Well, no, perhaps not; only get off--and quick! Do you hear? Why don't
+you go?"
+
+"I only came down for ... I only came...."
+
+"God! what foolery is this? The girl's fainting. Never mind. Here,
+landlady, bring a light! Lead the way. She's not too heavy to carry.
+Upstairs with you. What a snail you are, old woman! Which room?"
+
+Another knock at the outer door. Another and another in rapid
+succession.
+
+"I'm a-coming, I'm a-coming!" cried the landlady from the floor above.
+
+She bustled down the stairs as fast as her stiff joints would let her,
+but the knock came again.
+
+"Mercy me, mercy me! and whoever is it?"
+
+"Damme, move your bones, and let me in!"
+
+The door flew open with pressure from without. Ghastly white, yet
+dripping with perspiration, his breath coming in short, thick gusts, his
+neck bare, his shirt-collar torn aside, the lappel of the frieze ulster
+gone, and the rent of the red flannel lining exposed, Paul Drayton
+entered. He was sober now.
+
+"Where is he?" with an oath.
+
+"I'm here," said Hugh Ritson, walking through the bar and into the
+bar-room to the right, and candle in hand.
+
+Drayton followed him, trying to laugh.
+
+"Am I in time?"
+
+"Of course you are," with a hard smile.
+
+"Fearing I might be late."
+
+"Of course you were."
+
+"Ran all the way."
+
+"Of course you did."
+
+"What are you sniggering and mocking at?" with another oath.
+
+Hugh Ritson dropped his banter, and pointed without a word to the torn
+ulster and the disordered shirt-collar. Drayton glanced down at his
+dress in the light of the candle.
+
+"Crossed the fields for shortness, and caught in a bramble-bush," he
+said, muttering.
+
+"Drop it," said Hugh. "There's no time for it. Look here, Drayton, I'm a
+downright man. Don't try it on with me. As you say, it won't pass. Shall
+I tell you where the collar of that coat is now? It's at the
+police-station."
+
+Drayton made an uneasy movement and glanced up furtively. There was no
+mistaking what he saw in Hugh Ritson's face.
+
+"I've my own suspicions as to what caused that accident," said Hugh.
+
+Drayton shuddered and shrunk back.
+
+"No, damme! That shows what you are, though. Show me the man as allus
+suspects others of lying, and I'll show you a liar. Show me the man as
+allus suspects others of stealing, and I'll show you a thief. You
+suspect me of that, d'ye? I know you now!"
+
+"No matter," said Hugh, impatiently; "your sense of the distinction
+between crimes is a shade too nice. One crime I do not suspect you of--I
+saw you commit it. Is that enough?"
+
+Drayton was silent.
+
+"You'll go to the station with the lady. The gentleman will go to London
+with me. They are to come here, after all, though my first advice was a
+blunder."
+
+"I'll take the twenty," Drayton mumbled.
+
+"Will you now? We'll discuss that matter afterward."
+
+Drayton seemed stupefied for a moment. Then he lifted his haggard face
+and grinned. Hugh Ritson understood him in an instant.
+
+"No tricks, I tell you. If you don't put the lady in the train--the
+right train--and be back here at half past one to-morrow, you shall
+improve your acquaintance with the Old Bailey."
+
+Drayton carried his eyes slowly up to Hugh Ritson's face, then dropped
+them suddenly.
+
+"If I'm lagged, it will be a lifer!" he muttered. He fumbled his torn
+ulster. "I must change my coat," he said.
+
+"No."
+
+"She'll see the rent."
+
+"So much the better."
+
+"But the people at the junction will see it."
+
+"What matter?--you will be there as Paul Ritson, not Paul Drayton."
+
+Drayton began to laugh, to chuckle, to crow.
+
+"Hush!"
+
+The sound of carriage-wheels came from the road.
+
+"They're here," said Hugh Ritson. "Keep you out of sight, as you value
+your liberty. Do you hear? Take care that he doesn't see you, and that
+she doesn't see you until he is gone."
+
+Drayton was tramping about the floor in the intensity of his energy.
+
+"Here's the bar-slide. I'll just lift it an inch."
+
+"Not half an inch," said Hugh, and he blew out the candle.
+
+Then he took the key out of the inside of the lock, and put it on the
+outside.
+
+"What! am I to be a prisoner in my own house?" said Drayton.
+
+"I'll put the key on the bar-slide," whispered Hugh. "When you hear the
+door close after us, let yourself out--not a moment sooner."
+
+The carriage-wheels stopped outside. There was a sound as of the driver
+jumping from the box. Then there came a knock.
+
+Hugh Ritson stepped back to Drayton and whispered:
+
+"This is the very man who tried to hold you--keep you close."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+"This way, sir; this way, my lady; we knew you was a-coming, so we kep'
+a nice warm fire in the parlor. This way, my lady, and mind the step up.
+Yes, it air dark, but it's clean, sir; yes, it is, sir; but there's a
+light in here, sir."
+
+Paul and Greta followed the landlady through the dark bar.
+
+"We'll find our way, my good woman. Ah, and how cozy you are here! As
+warm as toast on a cold night. Thank you, thank you--and--why, surely
+we've--we've surprised you. Did you say you were expecting somebody? Ah,
+I see!"
+
+Mrs. Drayton was backing out of the room with a pallid face, and
+twitching at the string of her apron. When she got to the bar she was
+trembling from head to foot.
+
+"I don't believe in ghosts," she muttered to herself, "but if so be as I
+did believe in ghosts, and afeart of 'em, I don't know as ... Lor's a
+mercy me! Who was a-saying as our Paul was like some one? And now here's
+some one as is like our Paul. And as much a match as two pewters, on'y
+one more smarter, mayhap, and studdier."
+
+"Whatever ails the old lady?" said Greta, faintly.
+
+Paul stood a moment and laughed.
+
+"Strange, but we can't trouble now. What a mercy we're safe and
+unharmed."
+
+"A fearful sight--I'll never, never forget it," said Greta, and she
+covered her face.
+
+Paul stepped to the door. The flyman was bringing in the luggage.
+
+"Leave the boxes in the bar, driver--there, that will do. Many of them,
+eh? Rather. Here's for yourself. Why, bless my soul, who's this? What,
+Hugh!"
+
+Hugh Ritson walked into the room calm and smiling, and held out his hand
+to Greta and then to his brother.
+
+"I came up to meet your train," he said, in answer to the look of
+inquiry.
+
+"Well, that was good of you. Of course, you know of the accident. How
+did you find us here?"
+
+"I heard at the station that a lady and gentleman had gone to the Hawk
+and Heron."
+
+"And you followed? Well, Hugh, I must say that was brotherly of you,
+after all. Wasn't it, Greta?"
+
+"Yes, dear," said Greta, faintly, her voice trembling.
+
+Paul observed her agitation.
+
+"My poor girl, you are upset. I don't wonder at it. You must get off for
+the night. Hugh, you must excuse her. It was a terrible scene, you know.
+Our new life begins with a great shock to you, Greta. Never mind; that
+only means that the bright days are before us."
+
+Paul stepped to the door again, and called to Mrs. Drayton.
+
+"Here, my good landlady, take my wife to her room."
+
+The landlady hobbled up.
+
+"Room, sir, room? The gentleman didn't say nothing--"
+
+"Take the lady to your best room upstairs," said Hugh, with a
+significant look.
+
+Greta was going. Her step was slow and uncertain.
+
+"Won't you say good-night, Greta?" said Hugh.
+
+"Good-night," she said, so faintly as hardly to be heard.
+
+The brothers looked after her.
+
+"God bless her!" said Paul, fervently. "The days before her shall be
+brighter, if I can make them so."
+
+Hugh Ritson closed the door.
+
+"Paul," he said, "you and your wife must never meet again."
+
+Paul Ritson turned red, and then ashy pale. A scarcely perceptible
+tremble of the eyelids, then a jaunty laugh, and then an appalling
+solemnity.
+
+"What d'ye mean, man?" he said, with a vacant stare.
+
+"Sit down and listen," said Hugh, seating himself, and lifting the poker
+to draw the fire together.
+
+"Quick, tell me what it, is!" said Paul again.
+
+"Paul, don't chafe. We are hot-tempered men, both, at bottom," said
+Hugh, and his eye perused his brother with searching power.
+
+"Don't look at me like that," said Paul. "Don't try to frighten me.
+Speak out, and quickly."
+
+"Be calm," said Hugh.
+
+"Bah! you take me blindfold to the edge of a precipice, and tell be to
+'be calm.'"
+
+"You are wrong. I find you there, and remove the bandage," said Hugh.
+
+"Quick! what is it? In another moment I shall cry out!"
+
+Hugh Ritson rose stiffly to his feet.
+
+"Paul, did you tell Greta she was marrying a bastard?"
+
+With one look of anguish Paul fell back mute and trembling.
+
+"Did you tell her?" said Hugh, with awful emphasis.
+
+Paul's eyes were on the ground, his head bent forward. He was silent.
+
+"I thought you did not mean to tell her," said Hugh, coldly. His eyes
+looked steadfastly at Paul's drooping head. "I think so still."
+
+Paul said nothing, but drew his breath hard. Hugh watched him closely.
+
+"To marry a woman under a false pretense--is it the act of an honorable
+man? Is it a cheat? Give it what name you will."
+
+Paul drew himself up; his lips were compressed, and he smiled.
+
+"Is this all?" he asked.
+
+"Why did you not tell her?" said Hugh.
+
+"Because I had sworn to tell no one. You will read that secret, as you
+have read the other."
+
+Hugh smiled.
+
+"Say, rather, because you dare not do so; because, had you told her, she
+had never become your wife."
+
+Paul laughed vacantly.
+
+"We shall see. My own lips are sealed, but yours are free. You shall
+tarnish the memory of our father and blacken the honor of our mother.
+You shall humble me, and rob me of my wife's love--if you will and
+can."
+
+Saying this, Paul stepped hastily to the door, flung it open, and cried:
+"Greta! Greta!"
+
+Hugh followed him and caught him arm.
+
+"What are you doing?" he said, in a hoarse whisper; "be quiet, I tell
+you--be quiet."
+
+Paul turned about.
+
+"You say I am afraid to tell her. You charge me with trapping her into
+marrying me. You shall tell her yourself, now, here, and before my very
+face!"
+
+"Come in and shut the door," said Hugh.
+
+"It would do no good, and perhaps some harm. No matter, you shall tell
+her. I challenge you to tell her."
+
+"Come in, and listen to me," said Hugh, sullenly; and putting himself
+between Paul and the door, he closed it. "There is more to think of than
+what Greta may feel," he added. "Have you nothing to say to me?"
+
+Paul's impetuous passion cooled suddenly.
+
+"I have made you atonement," he said, faintly, and dropped into a seat.
+
+"Atonement!"
+
+Hugh Ritson smiled bitterly.
+
+"When you return you will see," said Paid, his eyes once more on the
+ground.
+
+"You are thinking of the deed of attorney--I have heard of it already,"
+said Hugh. A cold smile played on his compressed lips.
+
+"It was all that was left to do," said Paul, his voice hardly stronger
+than a whisper. His proud spirit was humbled, and his challenge dead.
+
+"Paul, you have robbed me of my inheritance, consciously, deliberately.
+You have stood in my place. You stand there still. And you leave me your
+pitiful deed by way of amends!"
+
+A black frown crossed Hugh Ritson's face.
+
+"Atonement! Are you not ashamed of such mockery? What atonement is there
+for a wrong like that?"
+
+"I did it for the best; God knows I did!" said Paul, his head fell on
+the table.
+
+Hugh Ritson stood over him, pale with suppressed wrath.
+
+"Was it best to hold my place until my place was no longer worth
+holding, and then to leave it with an empty show of generosity? Power of
+attorney! What right have you to expect that I will take that from you?
+Take my own from the man who robbed me of it, and to receive it back on
+my knees! To accept it as a gift, whereof the generosity of giving is
+yours, and the humility of receiving is mine!"
+
+A strong shudder passed over Paul's shoulders.
+
+"I was helpless--I was helpless!" he said.
+
+"Understand your true position--your legal position. You were your
+mother's illegitimate son--"
+
+"I did it to protect her honor!"
+
+"You mean--to hide her shame!"
+
+"As you will. I was helpless, and I did it for the best."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face grew dark.
+
+"Was it best to be a perjured liar?" he said.
+
+Paul gasped, but did not reply.
+
+"Was it best to be a thief?"
+
+Paul leaped to his feet.
+
+"God, give me patience!" he muttered.
+
+"Was it best to be an impostor?"
+
+"Stop, for God's sake, stop!"
+
+"Was it best to be a living lie--and all for the sake of honor? Honor,
+forsooth! Is it in perjury and robbery that honor lies?"
+
+Paul strode about the room in silence, ashy pale, his face convulsed and
+ugly. Then his countenance softened, and his voice was broken as he
+said:
+
+"Hugh, I have done you too much wrong already. Don't drive me into more;
+don't, don't, I beseech you!"
+
+Hugh laughed lightly--a little trill that echoed in the silent room.
+
+At that heartless sound all the soul in Paul Ritson seemed to freeze. No
+longer abashed, he lifted his head and put his foot down firmly.
+
+"So be it," he said, and the cloud of anguish fell from his face. "I say
+it was to save our mother's good name that I consented to do what I
+did."
+
+"Consented?" said Hugh, elevating his eyelids.
+
+"You don't believe me? Very well; let it pass. You say my atonement is a
+mockery. Very well, let us say it is so. You say I have kept your place
+until it is no longer worth keeping. You mean that I have impoverished
+your estate. That is not true. And you know it is not true. If the land
+is mortgaged, you yourself have had the money!"
+
+"And who had a better right to it?" said Hugh, and he laughed again.
+
+Paul waved his hand, and gulped down the wrath that was rising.
+
+"You have led me the life of the damned. You know well what bitter cup
+you have made me drink. If I have stood to the world as my father's
+heir, you have eaten up the inheritance If my father's house was mine, I
+was no more than a cipher in it. I have had the shadow, and you the
+substance. You have undermined me inch by inch!"
+
+"And, meantime, I have been as secret as the grave," said Hugh, and once
+more he laughed lightly.
+
+"God knows your purpose--you do nothing without one," said Paul. "But it
+is not I alone that have suffered. Do you think that all this has been
+going on under our mother's eyes without her seeing it?"
+
+Hugh Ritson dropped the bantering tone.
+
+Paul's face grew to an awful solemnity.
+
+"When our father died, it was to be her honor or mine to die with him.
+That was the legacy of his sin, Heaven forgive him. I did not hesitate.
+But since that hour she has wasted away."
+
+"Is this my fault?" Hugh asked.
+
+"Heaven knows, and Heaven will judge between you," said Paul. "She could
+bear it no longer." Paul's voice trembled as he added, "She's gone!"
+
+There was a moment's silence. It was as if an angel went by weeping.
+
+"I know it," said Hugh, coldly. "She has taken the veil. I have since
+seen her."
+
+Paul glanced up.
+
+"She is in the Catholic Convent at Westminster," said Hugh.
+
+Paul's face quivered.
+
+"Miserable man! but for you, how happy she might have been!"
+
+"You are wrong," said Hugh. "It came of her own misdeed--and yours."
+
+Paul strode toward his brother with uplifted hand.
+
+"Not another word of that," he said, and his voice was low and deep.
+
+"How could she examine her conscience and be happy? She had put an
+impostor in the place of my father's heir," said Hugh.
+
+"She had put there your father's first-born son," said Paul.
+
+"It is false! She had put there her bastard by another man!"
+
+Silent and awful, Paul stood a moment, with an expression of agony so
+horrible that for an instant even Hugh Ritson quailed before it.
+
+"Go on," he said, huskily, and crouched down into his seat.
+
+"Your mother was married before," said Hugh, "and her marriage was
+annulled. It was invalid. A child was born of that union."
+
+Paul lifted his head.
+
+"I won't believe it!"
+
+"It is true, and you shall believe it!"
+
+Paul's heart sickened with dread.
+
+"Your father married again, and had a daughter. Your mother married
+again, and had a son. Your father's daughter is now living. Shall I tell
+you who she is? She is your wife--the woman you have married to-day!"
+
+Paul sprung to his feet.
+
+"It is a lie!" he cried.
+
+"See for yourself," said Hugh Ritson; and taking three papers from his
+pocket, he threw them on to the table. They were the copies of
+certificates which Bonnithorne had given him.
+
+Paul glanced at them with vacant and wandering eyes, fell back in his
+chair, dropped his head on to the table, and groaned.
+
+"Oh, God! can this thing be?"
+
+"When your mother told you that you were an illegitimate son, she
+omitted to say by what father. That was natural in her, but cruel to
+you. I knew the truth from the first."
+
+"Then you are a scoundrel confessed!" cried Paul.
+
+Hugh rolled his head slightly, and made a poor pretense to smile.
+
+"I knew how she had passed from one man to another; I knew what her
+honor counted for. And yet I was silent--silent, though by silence I
+lost my birthright. Say, now, if you will, which of us--you or I--has
+been the true guardian of our mother's name?"
+
+Paul got up again, abject, crushed, trembling in every limb.
+
+"Man, man, don't gnaw my heart away! Unsay your words! Have pity on me,
+and confess that it is a lie--a black, foul lie! Think of the horror of
+it--only think of it, and have pity!"
+
+"It is true!"
+
+Then Paul fell on his knees and caught his brother by the arm.
+
+"Hugh, Hugh! my brother, confess it is false! Don't let my flesh consume
+away with horror! Don't let me envy the very dead who lie at peace in
+their graves! Pity her, if you have no pity left for me!"
+
+"I would save you from a terrible sin."
+
+Paul rose to his feet.
+
+"Now I know it is a lie!" he said, and all the abject submission of his
+bearing fell away in one instant.
+
+Hugh Ritson's face flushed.
+
+"There is that here," said Paul, throwing up his head and striking his
+breast, "that tells me it is false!"
+
+Hugh smiled coldly, and regained his self-possession.
+
+"My mother knew all. If Greta had been my half-sister, would she have
+stood by and witnessed our love?"
+
+Hugh waved his hand deprecatingly.
+
+"Your mother was as ignorant of the propinquity as you were. Robert
+Lowther was dead before she settled at Newlands. The survivors knew
+nothing of each other. The secret of that early and ill-fated marriage
+was buried with him."
+
+"Destiny itself would have prevented it, for destiny shapes its own
+ends, and shapes them for the best," said Paul.
+
+"Yes, destiny is shaping them now," said Hugh, "here, and in me. This is
+the point to which the pathways of your lives have tended. They meet
+here--and part."
+
+Paul's ashy face smiled.
+
+"Then nature would have prevented it," he said. "If this thing had been
+true, do you think we should not have known it--she and I--in the
+natural recoil of our own hearts? When true hearts meet, there is that
+within which sanctions their love, and says it is good. That is Heaven's
+own license. No sanction of the world or the world's law, no earthly
+marriage is like to that, for it is the marriage first made by nature
+itself. Our hearts have met, hers and mine, and the same nature has
+sanctioned our love and sanctified it. And against that last, that
+first, that highest arbiter, do you ask me to take the evidence of these
+poor, pitiful papers? Away with them!" Paul's eyes were bright, his face
+had lost its shadows.
+
+"That is very beautiful, no doubt," said Hugh, and he smiled deeply.
+"But I warn you to beware."
+
+"I have no fear," said Paul.
+
+"See to it, I tell you. These lofty emotions leave a void that only a
+few homely facts can fill. Verify them."
+
+"I will, please God!"
+
+"Accept my statements and these papers, or--disprove both."
+
+"I will disprove them."
+
+"Meantime, take care. Leave your wife in this house until morning, but
+do you go elsewhere."
+
+"What!"
+
+Paul's anger was boiling up.
+
+"If you have wronged Greta--"
+
+"I have done her no wrong," said Paul, growing fiercer.
+
+"I say, if you have wronged her, and would have it in your power to
+repair the injury, you must pass this night apart."
+
+"Hugh!" cried Paul, in white rage, rising afresh to his feet, "you have
+tortured me and broken the heart of my mother; you have driven me from
+my home and from the world; you have thrust yourself between me and the
+woman who loves me, and now, when I am stripped of all else but that
+woman's love, and am going out to a strange land, a stranger and with
+empty hands, you would take her from me also and leave me naked!"
+
+"I would save you from a terrible sin," said Hugh Ritson, once again.
+
+"Out of my way!" cried Paul, in a thick voice, and he lifted his
+clinched fist.
+
+"Take care, I tell you," said Hugh.
+
+Paul looked dangerous; his forehead contracted into painful lines; his
+quick breathing beat on Hugh's face.
+
+"For the love of Heaven, get out of my way!"
+
+But with awful strength and fury his fist fell at that moment, and Hugh
+Ritson was dashed to the ground.
+
+In an instant Paul had lifted his foot to trample him, but he staggered
+back in horror at the impulse, his face ghastly white, his eyes red like
+the sun above snow. Then there was silence, and then Paul gasped in a
+flood of emotion:
+
+"Get up! get up! Hugh, Hugh! get up!"
+
+He darted to the door and threw it open.
+
+"Come in, come in! will nobody come?" he cried.
+
+The landlady was in the room at a stride. She had been standing,
+listening and quivering, behind the door.
+
+In another moment Greta hurried down-stairs, and hastened to Paul's
+side.
+
+Paul was leaning against the wall, his face buried in his hands.
+
+"Take him away," he groaned, "before I rue the day that I saw him!"
+
+Hugh Ritson rose to his feet.
+
+"Paul, what has happened?" cried Greta.
+
+"Take him away."
+
+And still Paul covered his eyes from the sight of what he had done and
+had been tempted to do.
+
+"Hugh, what is it?"
+
+Hugh Ritson stepped to the door.
+
+"Ask your husband," he said, with emphasis, and an appalling calmness.
+"And remember this night. You shall never forget it!"
+
+Then he halted out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Hugh Ritson walked to the bare room opposite. The handle of the door did
+not turn in his hand. Drayton held it at the other side, and with head
+bent low he crouched there and listened.
+
+"Who is it?" he whispered, when Hugh Ritson unlocked the door and pushed
+at it.
+
+"Let me in," said Hugh, sullenly.
+
+"Does he suspect?" whispered Drayton, when the door closed again. "Did
+he follow me? What are you going to do for a fellow? Damme, but I'll be
+enough for him!"
+
+And Drayton groped in the dark room among the dead cinders on the
+hearth, and picked up the poker.
+
+"You fool!" said Hugh, in a low voice. "Put that thing down."
+
+"Isn't he after me? D'ye think I'm going to be taken? Let him come here
+and see!"
+
+Drayton tramped the room, and the floor creaked beneath his heavy tread.
+
+"Speak lower, you poltroon!" Hugh whispered, huskily. "He knows nothing
+about you. He has never heard of you. Be quiet. Do you hear?"
+
+There was a light, nervous knock at the door.
+
+"Who's there?" said Hugh.
+
+"It's only me, sir," said Mrs. Drayton, from without, breathing audibly,
+and speaking faintly amid gusts of breath.
+
+Hugh Ritson opened the door, and the landlady entered.
+
+"Lor's a mercy me! whatever ails the gentleman? Oh, is it yourself in
+the dark, Paul? I'm that fearsome, I declare I shiver and quake at
+nothing. And the gentleman so like you, too! I never did see nothing
+like it, I'm sure!"
+
+"Hush! Stop your clatter. What does he say?" said Hugh.
+
+"The gentleman? He says and says and says as nothing and nothing and
+nothing will make him leave the lady this night."
+
+"He'll think better of that."
+
+"And wherever can I put them? And me on'y one room, forby Paul's. And no
+cleaning and airing, and nothing. That's what worrits me."
+
+"Hold your tongue! Put the lady in your son's room. Your son won't need
+it to-night."
+
+"That's where I did put her."
+
+"Very well; leave her there."
+
+"And the gentleman, too, belike?"
+
+"The gentleman will go back with me. Come, get away!"
+
+"Quite right; on'y there's no airing and cleaning; and I declare I'm
+that fearsome--"
+
+Hugh Ritson had taken the landlady by the shoulders and was pushing her
+out of the room.
+
+"One moment," he whispered, and drew her back. "Anything doing
+upstairs?"
+
+"Upstairs?--the bed--airing--"
+
+"The girl? Has she made any noise yet? Is she conscious?"
+
+"Not as I know of. I went up and listened, and never a sound. Deary me,
+deary me! I'm that fearsome--"
+
+"Go up again, and put your ear to the door."
+
+"I'm afeart she'll never come round, and her in that way, and weak, too,
+and--"
+
+At that instant there came from the dark road the sound of
+carriage-wheels approaching. Hugh Ritson thrust the landlady out of the
+room, slammed the door to, and locked it.
+
+"What's that?" said Drayton, in a husky whisper. "Who do they want?
+You've not rounded on a fellow, eh?"
+
+"It's the carriage that is to take you and the lady to Kentish Town,"
+said Hugh. "Hush! Listen!"
+
+The driver rapped at the door with the end of his whip, and shouted from
+his seat: "Heigho, heigho--ready for Kentish Town? Eleven o'clock struck
+this half hour!" Then he could be heard beating his crossed arms under
+his armpits to warm his hands.
+
+"The fool!" muttered Hugh, "can't he keep his tongue in his mouth?"
+
+"Quite right," shouted Mrs. Drayton, in a shrill voice, putting her face
+to the window-pane. "Belike it's for the gentleman," she explained to
+herself, and then, with candle in hand, she began to mount the stairs.
+
+The door of the room to the left opened, and Paul Ritson came out. His
+great strength seemed to be gone--he reeled like a drunken man.
+
+"Landlady," he said, "when does your last train go up to London?"
+
+"At half past twelve," said Mrs. Drayton, from two steps up the stairs.
+
+"Can I get a fly, my good woman, at this hour of the night?"
+
+"The fly's at the door, sir--just come, sir."
+
+Paul went back into the room where he had left his wife.
+
+The two men in the dark room opposite listened intently.
+
+"Be quiet," whispered Hugh Ritson. "I knew he must think better of it.
+He is going. Keep still. Five minutes more, and you start away with the
+lady for Kentish Town. He shall walk to the station with me. The instant
+we leave the house, you go to the lady and say, 'I have changed my mind,
+Greta. We must go together. Come.' Not a word more; hurry her into the
+fly, and away."
+
+"Easier said nor done, say I."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Alone with Greta, Paul kissed her fervently, and his head fell on her
+shoulder. The strong man was as feeble as a child now. He was prostrate.
+"The black lie is like poison in my veins!" he said.
+
+"What is it?" said Greta, and she tried to soothe him.
+
+"A lie more foul than man ever uttered before--more cruel, more
+monstrous."
+
+"What is it, dearest?" said Greta again, with her piteous, imploring
+face close to his.
+
+"I know it's a lie. My heart tells me it is a lie. The very stones cry
+out that it is a lie!"
+
+"Tell me what it is," said Greta, and she embraced him tenderly.
+
+But even while he was struggling with the poison of one horrible word,
+it was mastering him. He put his wife from him with a strong shudder, as
+if her proximity stung him.
+
+Her bosom heaved. She looked appealingly into his face.
+
+"If it is false," she said, "whatever it is, why need it trouble you?"
+
+"That is true, my darling," he said, gulping down his fear and taking
+Greta in his arms, and trying to laugh lightly. "Why, indeed? Why need
+it trouble me?"
+
+"Can you not tell me?" she said, with an upward look of entreaty. She
+was thinking of what Hugh Ritson had said of an impediment to their
+marriage.
+
+"Why should I tell you what is false?"
+
+"Then let us dismiss the thought of it," she said, soothingly.
+
+"Why, yes, of course, let us dismiss the thought of it, darling," and he
+laughed a loud, hollow laugh. His forehead was damp. She wiped away the
+cold sweat. His temples burned. She put her cool hand on them. He was
+the very wreck of his former self--the ruin of a man. "Would that I
+could!" he muttered to himself.
+
+"Then tell me," she said. "It is my right to know it. I am your wife
+now--"
+
+He drew himself away. She clung yet closer. "Paul, there can be no
+secrets between you and me--nothing can be kept back."
+
+"Heavenly Father!" he cried, uplifting a face distorted with agony.
+
+"If you can not dismiss it, let it not stand between us," said Greta.
+Could it be true that there had been an impediment?
+
+"My darling, it would do no good to tell you. When I took you to be my
+wife, I vowed to protect and cherish you. Shall I keep my vow if I
+burden you with a black lie that will drive the sunshine out of your
+life? Look at me--look at me!"
+
+Greta's breast heaved heavily, but she smiled with a piteous sweetness
+as she laid her head on his breast, and said, "No, while I have you, no
+lie can do that!"
+
+Paul made no answer. An awful burden of speech was on his tongue. In the
+silence they heard the sound of weeping. It was as if some poor woman
+were sobbing her heart out in the room above.
+
+"Dearest, when two hearts are made one in marriage they are made one
+indeed," said Greta, in a soft voice. "Henceforth the thought of the one
+is the thought of both; the happiness of one is the happiness of both,
+the sorrow of one is the sorrow of both. Nothing comes between. Joy is
+twofold when both share it, and only grief is less for being borne by
+two. Death itself, cruel, relentless death itself, even death knits that
+union closer. And in sunshine and storm, in this world and in the next,
+the bond is ever the same. The tie of the purest friendship is weak
+compared with this tie, and even the bond of blood is less strong!"
+
+"Oh, God of heaven, this is too much!" said Paul.
+
+"Paul, if this union of thought and deed, of joy and grief, begins with
+marriage and does not end even with death, shall we now, here, at the
+threshold of our marriage, do it wrong?"
+
+A great sob choked Paul's utterance. "I can not tell you," he cried; "I
+have sworn an oath."
+
+"An oath! Then, surely, this present trouble was not that which Hugh
+Ritson has threatened?"
+
+"Greta, if our union means anything, it means trust. Trust me, my
+darling. I am helpless. My tongue is sealed. I dare not speak. No, not
+even to you. Scarcely to God Himself!"
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"That is enough," she said, very tenderly, and now the tears coursed
+down her own cheeks. "I will not ask again. I do not wish to know. You
+shall forget that I asked you. Come, dearest, kiss me. Think no more of
+this. Come, now." And she drew his head down to hers.
+
+Paul threw himself into a chair. His prostration was abject.
+
+"Come, dearest," said Greta, soothingly, "be a man."
+
+"There is worse to come," he said.
+
+"What matter," said Greta, and smiled. "I shall not fear if I have you
+beside me."
+
+"I can bear it no more," said Paul. "The thing is past cure."
+
+"No, dearest, it is not. Only death is that."
+
+"Greta, you said death would bind us closer together, but this thing
+draws us apart."
+
+"No, dearest, it does not. That it can not do."
+
+"Could nothing part us?" said Paul, lifting his face.
+
+"Nothing. Though the world divided us, yet we should be together."
+
+Again the loud sobs came from overhead.
+
+Paul rose to his feet, a shattered man no more. His abject mien fell
+from him like a garment. "Did I not say it was a lie?" he muttered,
+fiercely. "Greta, I am ashamed," he said; "your courage disgraces me.
+See what a pitiful coward you have taken for your husband. You have
+witnessed a strange weakness. But it has been for the last time. Thank
+God, I am now the man of yesterday!"
+
+Her tears were rolling down her cheeks, but her eyes were very bright.
+"What do you wish me to do?" she whispered. "Is it not something for me
+to do?"
+
+"It is, darling. You said rightly that the thought of one is the thought
+of both."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"A terrible thing!"
+
+"No matter. I am here to do it. What?"
+
+"It is to part from me to-night--only for to-night--only until
+to-morrow."
+
+Greta's face broke into a perfect sunshine of beauty. "Is that all?" she
+asked.
+
+"My darling!" said Paul, and embraced her fervently and kissed the
+quivering lips, "I am leading you through dark vaults, where you can see
+no single step before you."
+
+"But I am holding your hand, my husband," Greta whispered.
+
+Speech was too weak for that great moment. Again the heart-breaking sobs
+fell on the silence. Then Paul drew a cloak over Greta's shoulders and
+buttoned up his ulster. "It is a little after midnight," he said with
+composure. "There is a fly at the door. We may catch the last train up
+to London. I have a nest for you there, my darling."
+
+Then he went out into the bar. "Landlady," he said, "I will come back
+to-morrow for our luggage. Meantime, let it lie here, if it won't be in
+your way. We've kept you up late, old lady. Here, take this--and thank
+you."
+
+"Thankee! and the boxes are quite safe, sir--thankee!"
+
+He threw open the door to the road, and hailed the driver of the fly,
+cheerily. "Cold, sleety night, my good fellow. You'll have a sharp
+drive."
+
+"Yes, sir; it air cold waiting, very, specially inside, sir, just for
+want of summat short."
+
+"Well, come in quick and get it, my lad."
+
+"Right, sir."
+
+When Paul returned to the room to call Greta, he found her examining
+papers. She had picked them up off the table. They were the copies of
+certificates which Hugh Ritson had left there. Paul had forgotten them
+during the painful interview. He tried to recover them unread, but he
+was too late.
+
+"This," she said, holding out one of them, "is not the certificate of
+your birth. This person, Paul Lowther, is no doubt my father's lost
+son."
+
+"No doubt," said Paul, dropping his head.
+
+"But he is thirty years of age--see! You are no more than twenty-eight."
+
+"If I could but prove that, it would be enough," he said.
+
+"I can prove it, and I will!" she said.
+
+"You! How?"
+
+"Wait until to-morrow, and see," she said.
+
+He had put one arm about her waist, and was taking her to the door.
+
+She stopped. "I can guess what the black lie has been," she whispered.
+
+"Now, driver, up and away."
+
+"Right, sir. Kentish Town Junction?"
+
+"The station, to catch the 12:30."
+
+The carriage door was opened and closed. Then the bitter weeping from
+the upper room came out to them in the night.
+
+"Poor girl! whatever ails her? I seem to remember her voice," said
+Greta.
+
+"We can't wait," Paul answered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The clocks of London were striking one when Paul and Greta descended the
+steps in front of St. Pancras Station. The night was dark and bitterly
+cold. Dense fog hung in the air, and an unaccustomed silence brooded
+over the city. A solitary four-wheeled cab stood in the open square. The
+driver was inside, huddled up in his great-coat, and asleep. A porter
+awakened him, and he made way for Greta and Paul. He took his apron from
+the back of his horse, wrapped it about his waist, and snuffed the wicks
+of his lamps--they burned low and red, and crackled in the damp
+atmosphere.
+
+"What hotel, sir?"
+
+"The convent, Westminster."
+
+"Convent, sir? Did you say the convent, sir? St. Margaret's,
+Westminster, sir?"
+
+"The Catholic convent."
+
+Greta's hand pressed Paul's arm.
+
+The cabman got on to his box, muttering something that was inaudible. As
+he passed the gate lodge he drew up while the porter on duty came out
+with a lamp, and took the number of the cab.
+
+The fog grew more dense at every step, and the pace at which they
+traveled was slow. To avoid the maze of streets that would have helped
+them to a shorter cut on a clearer night, the driver struck along Euston
+Road to Tottenham Court Road, and thence south toward Oxford Street.
+This straighter and plainer course had the disadvantage of being more
+frequented. Many a collision became imminent in the uncertain light.
+
+The cabman bought a torch from a passer-by, and stuck it in his
+whip-barrel. As they reached the busier thoroughfares he got down from
+his box, took the torch in one hand and the reins in the other, and
+walked at his horse's head.
+
+The pace was now slower than before. It was like a toilsome passage
+through the workings of an iron mine. Volumes of noisome vapor rolled
+slowly past them. The air hung close over their heads like an unseen,
+vaulted roof. Red lights gleamed like vanishing stars down the elastic
+vista. One light would turn out to be a coffee-stall, round which a
+group of people gathered--cabmen muffled to the throat, women draggled
+and dirty, boys with faces that were old. Another would be a
+potato-engine, with its own volumes of white vapor, and the clank of its
+oven door like the metallic echo of the miner's pick. The line of
+regular lamps was like the line of candles stuck to the rock, the cross
+streets were like the cross-workings, the damp air settling down into
+streaks of moisture on the glass of the cab window was like the ceasless
+drip, drip of the oozing water from overhead.
+
+And to the two laden souls sitting within in silence and with clasped
+hands, the great city, nay, the world itself, was like a colossal mine,
+which human earthworms had burrowed underground, while the light and
+the free air were both above.
+
+At one point, where a patch of dry pavement indicated a bake-house under
+the street, three or four squalid creatures crouched together and slept.
+The streets were all but noiseless. It would be two hours yet before the
+giant of traffic would awake. The few cabmen hailed each other as they
+passed unrecognized, and their voices sounded hoarse. When the many
+clocks struck two, the many tones came muffled through the dense air.
+
+The journey was long and wearisome, but Paul and Greta scarcely felt it.
+They were soon to part; they knew not when they were to meet again.
+Perhaps soon, perhaps late; perhaps not until a darkness deeper than
+this should cover the land.
+
+Turning into Oxford Street, the cabman struck away to the west, in order
+to come upon Westminster by the main artery of Regent Street. The great
+thoroughfare was quiet enough now. Fashion was at rest, but even here,
+and in its own mocking guise, misery had its haunt. A light laugh broke
+the silence of the street, and a girl, so young as to be little more
+than a child, dressed in soiled finery, and reeling with unsteady step
+on the pavement, came up to the cab window and peered in.
+
+At the open door of a hotel, from whence a shaft of light came out into
+the fog, the cabman drew up. "Comfortable hotel, sir; think you'd like
+to put up, sir?"
+
+Paul dropped the window. "We want the Catholic convent at Westminster,
+my man."
+
+The cabman had put up his torch and was flapping his arms under his
+armpits. "Cold job, sir. Think I've had enough of it. Ha'past two, and a
+mile from St. Margaret's yet, sir. Got a long step home, sir, and the
+missis looking out for me this hour and more."
+
+The night porter of the hotel had opened the cab door, but not for an
+instant did Paul's purpose waver. "I'm sorry, my good fellow, but we
+must reach the convent, as I tell you."
+
+"Won't to-morrow do, sir? Comfortable quarters, sir. Can recommend 'em,"
+with a tip of his hand over his shoulder.
+
+"We must get to the convent to-night, my man."
+
+The cabman returned to his horse's head with a grunt of dissatisfaction.
+"Porter, can you keep a bed for me here? I shall be back in an hour,"
+said Paul. The porter signified assent, and once again the cab moved off
+on its slow journey.
+
+As it passed out of Trafalgar Square by way of Charing Cross, the air
+suddenly lightened. It was as if waves of white mist rolled over the
+yellow vapor. The cabman threw away his torch, mounted his box, and set
+off at a trot. When he reached Parliament Square the fog was gone. The
+great clock of Westminster was striking three; the sky was a dun gray
+behind the clocktower, and the dark mass of the abbey could be dimly
+seen.
+
+The cab drew up on the south-west of Abbey Gardens and before a portico
+railed in by an iron gate. The lamp burning on the sidewalk in front
+cast a hazy light on what seemed to be a large brick house plain in
+every feature.
+
+"This is Saint Margaret's, sir. Eight shillings, sir, if you please."
+
+Paul dismissed the cabman and rang the bell; the hollow tongue sent out
+a startling reverberation into the night. The sky to the east was
+breaking; thin streaks of a lighter gray foretold the dawn.
+
+The door opened and the iron gate swung back. A sister carrying an open
+oil lamp motioned them to enter.
+
+"Can I see the superior?" said Paul.
+
+"She is newly risen," said the sister, and she fixed the lamp to a
+bracket in the wall and went away. They were left in a bare, chill,
+echoing hall.
+
+The next moment a line of nuns in their coifs passed close by them with
+quick and silent steps. At that gray hour they had risen for matins.
+Some of them were pale and emaciated, and one that was palest and most
+worn went by with drooping head and hands that inlaced her rosary. Paul
+stepped back a pace. The nun moved steadily onward with the rest. Never
+a sign of recognition, never an upward glance, only the quivering of a
+lip--but it was his mother!
+
+He, too, dropped his head, and his own lips trembled. The mother
+superior was standing with them before he was aware. For an instant his
+voice was suspended, but he told her at length that a great calamity had
+befallen them, and begged her to take his wife for a time into her care.
+
+"Charity is our office," said the mother, when she had heard his story.
+"Come, my sister, the Church is peace. Your poor laden soul may put off
+its load while you are here."
+
+Paul begged to be allowed a moment to say farewell, and the good mother
+left them together.
+
+Then from an inner chamber came the solemn tones of an organ and the
+full voices of a choir. The softened harmonies seemed to float into
+their torn hearts, and they wept. The gray dawn was creeping in. It
+blurred the red light of the lamp.
+
+"Good-bye, darling, good-bye!" Paul whispered; but even while he spoke
+he clung the closer.
+
+"Good-bye for the present, dear husband," said Greta, and smiled.
+
+"Who would have thought that this calamity could wait for you at the
+very steps of God's altar?"
+
+"A day will turn all this evil into good."
+
+"At the threshold of our life together to be torn apart!"
+
+"Think of it no more, dearest. Our lives will yet be the brighter for
+this calamity. Do you remember what Parson Christian used to say? The
+happiest life is not that which is always in the sunlight, but rather
+that over which a dark cloud has once lowered and passed away."
+
+Paul shook his head. "My lips are sealed. You do not know all. It is a
+cruel lie that separates us. But what if it can not be disproved?"
+
+Greta's eyes were full of a radiant hopefulness. "It can, and shall!"
+
+Paul bent his head and touched her forehead with his lips. "The past is
+a silence that gives back no answer," he said. "My mother alone could
+disprove it, and she is dead to the world."
+
+"Not alone, dearest. I can disprove it. Wait and see!"
+
+Paul smiled coldly, and once more shook his head. "You don't know all,"
+he said again, and kissed her reverently. "What if to-morrow, and
+to-morrow, and to-morrow brings no light to unravel this mystery?"
+
+"Never fear it. The finger of Heaven is in this," said Greta.
+
+"Say, rather, the hand of destiny. And how little we are in the presence
+of that pitiless power!"
+
+"God sees all," said Greta. "He has led me in here, and He will guide me
+out again."
+
+"What if I brought you for a day, and you remain for a year, for life?"
+
+"Then think that God Himself has taken your wife at your hands."
+
+Paul's face, that had worn a look of deep dejection, became distorted
+with pain. "Oh, it is horrible! And this cloister is to be your
+marriage-bed!"
+
+"Hush! All is peace here. Good-bye, dearest Paul. Be brave, my husband."
+
+"Brave? Before death a man may be brave; but in the face of a calamity
+like this, what man could be brave?"
+
+"God will turn it away."
+
+"God grant it. But I tremble to ask for the truth. The future is not
+more awful to me now than the past."
+
+"Keep up heart, dear Paul. You know how pleasant it is to fall asleep
+amid storms that shake the trees, and to awake in the stillness and the
+sunshine, and amid the songs of the birds. To-morrow the falsehood will
+be outfaced, and you will return to fetch me."
+
+"Yes," said Paul, "or else drag out my days as an outcast in the world."
+
+"No, no, no. Good-bye, dearest." Then the voice of the comforter failed
+her, and she dropped her head on his breast.
+
+The choir within chanted the matin service. Paul removed the iron bar
+that crossed the door, and opened it. The opposite side of the street
+was a blank wall, with gaunt boughs of leafless trees behind it and
+above it, and beyond all was the dim sanctuary. Traffic's deep buzz
+flowed in the distance. The dawn had reddened the eastern sky, and the
+towers of the abbey were black against the glory of the coming day.
+
+"It may be that there is never a sunrise on this old city but it awakens
+some one to some new calamity," said Paul; "yet surely this is the
+heaviest stroke of all Good-bye, my darling!"
+
+"Good-bye, my husband!"
+
+"Yonder gray old fabric has looked on the scarred ruins of many a life,
+but never a funeral that has passed down its aisles was so sad as this
+parting. Good-bye, dearest wife, good-bye!"
+
+"Good-bye, Paul!"
+
+He struck his breast and drew his breath audibly, "I must go. The thing
+is not to be thought of and endured!"
+
+"Good-bye, Paul!" Her face was buried in his breast, to hide it from his
+eyes.
+
+"They say that the day a dear friend is lost to us is purer and calmer
+in remembrance than the day before. May it be so with us!"
+
+"Hush! You will soon be back to take me away." And Greta nestled closer
+to his breast.
+
+"If not--if not"--his hot breathing beat fast on her drooping head--"if
+not, then--as the world is dead to both without the other's love--remain
+here--in this house--forever. Good-bye! Good-bye!"
+
+He disengaged her clinging arms. He pressed her cold brow with his
+quivering lips. Her fears conquered her brave heart at last. A mist was
+fast hiding her from him.
+
+"Good-bye! good-bye!"
+
+A moment's silence, a breaking sigh, a rising sob, a last lingering
+touch of the inlaced fingers, and then the door closed behind him. She
+was alone in the empty hall; her lips were cold; her eyes were shut. The
+rosy hues of morning were floating in the air, now rich and sweet and
+balmy and restful, with the full, pure, holy harmonies of the choir.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+It was merely a momentary vexation which Hugh Ritson felt when the
+course that Paul had taken falsified his prescience. "No matter," he
+said, "it is only a question of a day, more or less. The thing must be
+done."
+
+Drayton made no attempt to conceal his relief when the door closed and
+the fly drove off. "I ain't sorry the fence is gone, and that's flat!"
+
+"Only, being gone, you will have a bigger risk to run now, my friend,"
+said Hugh Ritson, with undisguised contempt.
+
+Drayton looked up with a glance half of fear, half of suspicion. "You
+ain't gone and rounded on a fellow, after all? You ain't told him as I'm
+here?"
+
+"Don't be a fool! Get off to bed. Wait, you must put me up for the
+night. You'll take care of yourself if you're wise. The police will be
+here in the morning; take my word for that."
+
+"Here? In the morning? No!"
+
+"When they asked for his address, he gave them the name of this house.
+They'll not forget it. Men of that sort don't forget."
+
+"I'll pound if they don't."
+
+"They have memories for other things besides addresses. Consider if they
+have any other reason to remember the landlord of your house."
+
+"No criss-crossing! you don't do me the same as the old woman."
+
+"No matter. You know best. Take care of yourself, Mr. Drayton."
+
+Drayton buttoned his coat as near to the throat as the torn lapel would
+allow. "That's what I mean to do. I ain't going to be lagged. It's a
+lifer this time, and that would take the stiff'ning out of a man."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"No criss-crossing, I say."
+
+"Leave this house, and they'll have you in twenty-four hours."
+
+"Stay here, and they'll lag me in twelve. Being as that's twelve to the
+good, I'm off."
+
+Drayton's hand was on the door-handle. Hugh Ritson snatched it away. "An
+idiot like you deserves to be taken. Such men ought to be put away."
+
+Drayton lifted his fist. "Damme, but I'll put you away if--if--"
+
+Hugh Ritson did not flinch. "What if I show you how to escape the
+consequences of to-night's work altogether?"
+
+Drayton's uplifted hand fell. "I ain't objecting to that," he growled.
+"How?"
+
+"By putting another man in your place."
+
+Drayton's eyes opened in a stare of blank amazement.
+
+"And what about me?" he asked.
+
+"You," said Hugh Ritson, and a scarcely perceptible sneer curled his
+lip--"you shall stand in his shoes."
+
+A repulsive smile crossed Drayton's face. He fumbled the torn lapel with
+restless fingers. His eyes wandered to the door. There was a moment's
+silence.
+
+"Him?" he said, with an elevation of the eyebrows.
+
+Hugh Ritson bent his head slightly. Drayton stood with mouth agape.
+
+Old Mrs. Drayton was pottering around the bar preparatory to going to
+bed.
+
+"I'll be a-bidding you good-night, sir. Paul, you'll lock up after the
+gentleman."
+
+"Good-night, Mrs. Drayton."
+
+The landlady hobbled away. But from midway up the stairs her querulous
+voice came again. "The poor young thing--I declare she's a-crying her
+eyes out."
+
+"Why d'ye mean to do?" asked Drayton.
+
+"To get him here."
+
+"How'll ye track him? He's gone to London, ain't he? That's a big
+haystack to find a needle in, ain't it?"
+
+"London is not a haystack, Mr. Drayton. It's a honey-comb, and every
+cell is labeled. On getting out of the train at St. Pancras Station they
+will either hire a cab or they will not. If they hire one, then the
+number will be taken at the lodge. By that number the cabman can be
+found. He will know where he drove his fare. If my brother left his wife
+at one place, and settled himself at another, the cabman will know that
+also. If they do not hire a cab, then, as the hour is late, and one of
+them is a lady, they must be somewhere in the vicinity of the station.
+Thus, in that vast honey-comb, their particular cells are already marked
+out for us. That's enough for the present. Who sleep in this house
+beside yourselves--and the girl?"
+
+"Nobody but a lad--a pot-boy."
+
+"Where is he now--in bed?"
+
+"Four hours agone."
+
+"Where does he sleep?"
+
+"Up in the attic."
+
+"Don't let that lad see you. On which side of the house does the attic
+lie?"
+
+"In the gable, this end."
+
+"Is there an attic in the other gable?"
+
+"Yes, a bad one."
+
+"No matter. Get a mattress and sleep there yourself, and lie close all
+day to-morrow. Take food, but no liquor, mind that. I'll come for you
+when all is clear. And now show me to your room."
+
+After some preparation the two men went upstairs, carrying the only
+remaining light.
+
+"Give me the candle. You had best go up to your attic in the dark. Here,
+put this key in the girl's door and unlock it. She's quiet enough now.
+Hush--! No; it was only the wind. Good-night--and mind what I say, don't
+let that boy see you--and, listen, no liquor!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The day had not yet dawned, and all lay still in that house when Mercy
+Fisher opened noiselessly the door of her room and crept stealthily down
+the stairs. It was very dark in the bar below, and she had no light. The
+sickening odor of dead tobacco was in the air. She carried a little
+bundle in one hand, and with the other she felt her way around the walls
+until she came to the outer door. A heavy chain fastened it, and with
+nervous fingers she drew it out of the slide. When free of its groove,
+it slipped from her hand, and fell against the door-jamb with a clang.
+The girl's heart leaped to her throat. At first she crouched in fear,
+then lifted the latch, opened the door, and fled away into the gloom
+without, leaving the door wide open.
+
+Never to the last day of her life did she know what purpose guided her
+in that hour. She had no object, no aim. Only to fly away from a broken
+heart. Only to lie down on the earth and know no more, with all the
+heartache over. But she was drifting in her blind misery to that
+reservoir of life, London.
+
+She hurried down the road, never once looking back. The leafless trees
+were surging in the night-wind; their gaunt branches were waving grimly
+over her head. The hedges took fantastic shapes before her, and beside
+her. Her limbs trembled and her teeth chattered, yet she hastened on.
+Her head ached. She felt suffocated. The world was so cruel to her. If
+only she could fly from it and forget--only forget!
+
+The day was dawning; the deep blue of the sky to the left of her was
+streaked with thin bars. All before her was a blank void of dun gray. A
+veil of vapor beat against her cheeks. The wide marshy lands lay in mist
+around her. Not a sound but her own footstep on the road. Not a bird in
+the empty air, not a cloud in the blank sky. It was a dreary scene;
+neither day nor night.
+
+And through this grim realm that is aloof from all that is human, one
+poor, broken-hearted girl hurried on, her little bundle in her hand, a
+shawl wrapped about her shoulders, her red, tearless eyes fixed in front
+of her.
+
+Like the spirit of unrest, the wind moaned and soughed. Now and then a
+withered leaf of last year went by her with a light rustle and stealthy
+motion. Desolate as the heart within her was the waste ground.
+
+Bit by bit the gray sky lightened; the east was fretted over with pink,
+and a freshness was breathed into the air. Then she began to run. Behind
+her were all her pretty dreams, and they were dead. Behind her was the
+love she had cherished, and that was dead, too. From a joyful vision she
+had awakened to find the idol cold at her breast.
+
+Running hard along the gloomy road, under the empty sky, through the
+surging wind, the outcast girl cried in her tearless grief as a little
+child cries for the mother who is in her grave--never knowing its loss
+until it has grown tired, and weary, and sick, and the night is very
+near.
+
+She came to a brick-kiln that stood back from the road. Its wreathing
+smoke coiled slowly upward in the smoke-like atmosphere. The red haze
+drew her to it, as it drew the shivering waifs of the air. Cold and
+tired, she crept up and stood some minutes in the glow; but a step fell
+on her ear from behind the kiln, and she stole away like a guilty thing.
+
+Away, away, she knew not where. On, on, she knew not why.
+
+The day had dawned now. In the brightness of morning her heart sunk
+lower. Draggled and soiled, her hair still damp with the dew, and the
+odor of night in her dress, she walked on in the golden radiance of the
+risen sun.
+
+Oh, to bury herself forever, and yet not to die--no, no, not to die!
+
+At a cross-road there was a finger-post, and it read, "To Kilburn."
+Beyond it there was a wood, and the sunlight played on the pine-trees
+and reddened the dead leaves that still clung to an oak. She was warm
+now, but, oh! so tired. Behind the ambush of a holly-bush, close to the
+road, Mercy crouched down on a drift of withered leaves at the foot of a
+stout beech. She dozed a little and started. All was quiet. Then weary
+nature conquered fear, and overcame sorrow, and she slept.
+
+And sleep--that makes kings and queens of us all--gracious sleep, made a
+queen of the outcast girl, a queen of love; and she dreamed of her home
+among the mountains.
+
+Mercy was still sleeping when a covered wagon, such as carriers use,
+came trundling along the road. The driver, a bright-eyed man, with the
+freshness of the fields in his face, sat on the front rail and
+whistled. His horse shied at something, and this made him get up. He was
+at that moment in front of the holly-bush, and he saw Mercy lying behind
+it.
+
+Her face was worn and pale, her bonnet fallen back from her forehead,
+her head leaning against the trunk of the tree, one hand on her breast,
+the other straying aside on the drift of yellow leaves, where a little
+bundle covered by a red handkerchief had fallen from her graspless
+fingers, and the radiant morning sunlight over all.
+
+The driver of the wagon jumped to the ground. At the same moment Mercy
+awoke with a frightened look. She rose to her feet, and would have
+hurried away.
+
+"Young to be wagranting about, ain't ye, miss?" said the driver. His
+tone was kindlier than his words.
+
+"Let me go, please," said Mercy, and she tried to pass.
+
+"Coorse, coorse; if yer wants to."
+
+Mercy thanked him, her eyes on the ground. She was already on the road.
+
+"Being as you're going my way, I ain't objecting to giving you a lift."
+
+"No, thank you. I have no--I've no money. I must run."
+
+"You'll wait till I ax for it, won't ye, missy? Come, get up."
+
+"And will you let me go down whenever I like?"
+
+"Coorse I will; why not? Up with ye! There, easy, kneel on the shaft,
+that's the size of it. Now, go set yourself down on them sacks. Them's
+apples, them is. Right? Very well. We're off, then."
+
+The wagon was about half full of sacks, and Mercy crept down in the
+furthest corner.
+
+"I ain't in the apple line reg'lar. I'm a fern-gatherer, that's wot I
+am. On'y nature don't keep ferning all the year round, so I'se forced to
+go fruiting winter times--buying apples same as them from off'n the
+farmers down the country, and bringing 'em up to Covent Garden. That's
+where I'm going now, that is. And got to be there afore the sales
+starts."
+
+Mercy listened, but said nothing.
+
+"You know Covent Garden--not fur from Leicester Square and the
+Haymarket?"
+
+Mercy shook her head.
+
+"What! Never been there--and that near?"
+
+Mercy shook her head again and dropped her eyes.
+
+The driver twisted about to look at her. "Let a be, she's feeling it
+bad," he thought, and was silent for a moment. Then he twisted about for
+another look.
+
+"I say, missy, got bad eyes?"
+
+"They're sore, and a little dim," said Mercy.
+
+"Blest if you don't look the spitting image of a friend of mine--'boutn
+the eyes, I mean--red and swelled up and such. It was Tom Crow, a
+partner of mine, in fact. Tom caught cold sleeping out one night as we
+was ferning down Roger Tichborne's estates--him as was the claimant for
+'em, you know, on'y he didn't get 'em. The cold flew to Tom's eyes
+straight, and blest if he ain't gone blind as a mole."
+
+Mercy's lips quivered. The driver stopped his chatter, conscious that he
+had gone too far, and then, with somewhat illogical perversity, he
+proceeded to express his vexation at himself by punishing his horse.
+
+"Get along, you stupid old perwerse old knacker's crutch!"
+
+The horse set off at a trot. They passed through a village, and Mercy
+read the name "Child's Hill" printed on the corner of a house.
+
+"Is it London you are going to?" said Mercy, timidly; "Covent Garden--is
+that London?"
+
+"Eh?" The driver opened his eyes very wide in a blank stare.
+
+Mercy trembled and held down her head. They jogged on awhile in silence,
+and then the driver, who had cast furtive glances at the girl, drew
+rein, and said: "I'm wexed as I said Tom Crow was as blind as a mole.
+How-and-ever, a mole ain't blind, and it's on'y them coster chaps as
+think so, but I've caught a many of 'em out ferning. Besides, Tom was
+a-worrited with his missus, Tom was, and happen that was worse nor his
+cold.
+
+("Git along, you old perwerse old file!)
+
+"You see, Tom's missus cut away and left him. As young as you, and
+maybe as good to look at, but a bad 'un; and she broke Tom's heart, as
+the saying is. So Tom left the ferning. He hadn't no heart for it.
+Ferning's a thing as wants heart, it do. He started costering first, and
+now Tom's got a 'tater-ingine, on'y being as he's blind he has a boy to
+wheel it. And that woman, she done it all. 'Jim Groundsell,' he says to
+me--that's my name--'Jim,' he says, 'don't fix your heart on nothing,'
+he says, 'and keep to your sight and the ferning.'
+
+("Well, you perwerse old crutch! Get along with you!)
+
+"But I went and done it myself. And now my missus, she's a invalide, as
+they say, and she ain't out o' bed this twelvemonth come Christmas, and
+she gets lonesome lying all by herself, and frets a bit maybe, and--
+
+("Git along, will you, you wexing old fence!")
+
+There was a long silence this time. They were leaving the green fields
+behind them, and driving through longer streets than Mercy had ever seen
+before. Though the sun was shining feebly, the lamps on the pavement
+were still burning. They passed a church, and Mercy saw by the clock
+that it was hard on eight. They drove briskly through Camden Town into
+St. Giles's, and so on to Long Acre.
+
+The streets were thronged by this time. Troops of people were passing to
+and fro. Cabs and omnibuses were rattling hither and thither. At every
+turn the crowd became denser and the noise louder. Mercy sat in her
+corner, bewildered. The strange city frightened her. For the time it
+drove away the memory of her sorrow.
+
+When they reached Covent Garden, Jim, the driver, drew up with a jerk,
+and nodded to some of the drivers of similar wagons, and hailed others
+with a lusty shout. All was a babel to the girl's dazed sense: laughter,
+curses, yelling, whooping, quarreling.
+
+Mercy's head ached. She got down, hardly knowing what to do next. Where
+was she to go? In that wilderness of London, more desolate than the
+trackless desert, what was she?
+
+She stood a moment on the pavement, her little bundle in her hand, and
+all the bewildering scene went round and round. The tears rose to her
+eyes, and the glare and noise and the tumult were blotted out.
+
+The next instant she felt herself being lifted back into the wagon, and
+then she remembered nothing more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Two days later Hugh Ritson entered the convent church of St. Margaret.
+It was evening service, and the nave was thronged from chancel to porch.
+The aisles, which were bare of seats, were filled only half-way down,
+the rest of the pavement being empty save for a man here and there who
+leaned lightly against the great columns of the heavy colonnade.
+
+The sermon had already begun. Hugh Ritson walked up the aisle
+noiselessly until he came close behind the throng of people standing
+together. Then he stood at the side of a column and looked around on
+those in the nave.
+
+He was within range of the preacher's voice, but he hardly listened. His
+eyes traversed the church until at last they rested on one spot in the
+south transept, where a company of nuns sat with downcast eyes half
+closed. The face of one of them was hidden beneath her drooping coif;
+the rosary held to her breast was gripped with nervous fingers. Near at
+hand there was another face that riveted Hugh Ritson's gaze. It was the
+face of Greta, radiant in its own beauty, and tender with the devotional
+earnestness of parted lips and of lashes wet with the dew of a bruised
+spirit.
+
+From these two his eyes never wandered for longer than a minute!
+Languidly he listened to the words that floated over the people, and
+held them mute. The preacher was a slight young man, emaciated, pale,
+with lustrous eyes, and a voice that had a thin, meek pipe. But the
+discourse was in a strain of feverish excitement, a spirit of hard
+intolerance, a tone of unrelenting judgment, that would have befitted
+the gigantic figure and thunderous accents of the monk Jerome.
+
+"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is
+death." This was the text, twenty times repeated. Men talked of the
+rights of conscience, as if conscience were God's law. They babbled of
+toleration, as if any heresy were to be endured, if only it were
+believed. Conscience! It was the slave of Circumstance. Toleration! It
+was the watchword at the gate of hell.
+
+Hugh Ritson listened with a vague consciousness, his eyes fixed
+alternately on the nun with the drooping coif and on the fair, upturned
+face beside her. At last a word struck him, and made his whole soul to
+vibrate. Men, women, the great mute throng, pillars, arches, windows of
+figured saints, altar aflame with candles, the surpliced choir, and the
+pale, thin face with the burning eyes in the pulpit above--all vanished
+in an instant.
+
+What was true, said the preacher, in the realm of thought, could not be
+false in the world of life. Men did evil deeds, and justified them to
+their own enslaved minds. No way so dark but it had appeared to be the
+path of light; none so far wrong but it had seemed to be right. Let man
+beware of the lie that he told to his own heart. The end thereof is
+death.
+
+Staring from a bloodless face, Hugh Ritson reeled a step backward, and
+then clung with a trembling hand to the pillar against which he had
+leaned. The harsh scrape of his foot was heard over the hushed church,
+and here and there a neck was craned in his direction. His emotion was
+gone in an instant. A light curl of the hard lip told that the angel
+within him had once again been conquered.
+
+The sermon ended with a rapturous declaration of the immutability of
+God's law, and the eternal destinies of man. The world was full of
+change, but man, who seemed to change most, changed least. The stars
+that hung above had seen the beginning and the end of ages. Before man
+was, they were. The old river that flowed past the old city that night
+had flowed there centuries ago, and generations of men had lived and
+died in joy and sorrow, and still the same waters washed the same
+shore. But the stars that measure time itself, and the sea that recorded
+it, would vanish away, and man should be when time would be no more.
+"They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. They shall wax old as doth a
+garment.... But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."
+
+The preacher finished, and the buzz and rustle of the people shifting in
+their seats told of the tension that had been broken. Faces that had
+been distorted with the tremors of fear, or contracted with the
+quiverings of remorse, or glorified with the lights of ecstasy, resumed
+their normal expression.
+
+The vesper hymn was sung by the whole congregation, standing. It floated
+up to the blue roof, where the lights that burned low over the people's
+heads left in the gloom the texts written on the open timbers and the
+imaged Christ hung in the clerestory. There was one voice that did not
+sing the vesper hymn; and the close-locked lips of Hugh Ritson were but
+the symbol of the close-locked heart.
+
+He was asking himself, was it true that when the fire of the stars
+should be burned to ashes, still man would endure? Pshaw! What was man?
+These throngs of men, whose great voice swelled like the sea, what were
+they? In this old church where they sung, other men had sung before
+them, and where were they now? Who should say they had not perished?
+Living, believing, dying, they were gone: gone with their sins and
+sorrows; gone with their virtues and rewards; gone from all sight and
+all memory; and no voice came from them, pealing out of the abyss of
+death to join this song of hope. Hope! It was a dream. A dream that
+great yearning crowds like these, filling churches and chapels, dreamed
+age after age. But it was a dream from which there would be no awakening
+to know that it was not true.
+
+The priest and choir left the church. Then the congregation broke up and
+separated. Hugh Ritson stood awhile, still leaning against the column of
+the colonnade. The nuns in the south transept rose last, and went out by
+a little aperture opening from the south aisle. Hugh watched them pass
+at the distance of the width of the nave. Greta walked a few paces
+behind them. When the people had gone, and she rose from her seat, her
+eyes fell on Hugh. Then she dropped her head, and walked down the aisle
+with a hurried step. Hugh saw her out; the church was now empty, and the
+voluntary was done. He followed her through the door, and entered into
+the sacristy.
+
+Before him was another door; it led into the convent. The last of the
+line of nuns was passing through it. Greta stood in the sacristy, faint,
+with a scared face, one hand at her breast, the other on the base of a
+crucifix that stood by the wall. When she saw that he had followed her,
+her first impulse was to shrink away; her second was to sink to her
+knees at his feet. She did neither. Conquering her faintness, but still
+quivering from head to foot, she turned upon him with a defiant look.
+"Why do you come here? I do not wish to speak with you. Let me pass,"
+she said.
+
+Hugh Ritson made no effort to detain her. He stood before her with
+downcast eyes, his infirm foot bent under him. "I come to bid you
+farewell," he said, calmly; "I come to say that we meet no more."
+
+"Would that we had parted forever before we met the last time!" said
+Greta, fervently.
+
+"Would that we had never met!" said Hugh, in a low voice.
+
+"That was a lie with which you parted me from my husband," she said.
+
+"It was--God forgive me."
+
+"And you knew it was a lie?" said Greta.
+
+"I knew it was a lie."
+
+"Then where is your shame, that you can look me in the face? Have you no
+shame?" she said.
+
+"Have you no pity?" said Hugh.
+
+"What pity had you for me? Have you not done me wrong enough already?"
+
+"God knows it is true. And He knows I am a miserable man. Have pity and
+forgive me, and say farewell!"
+
+Something of contrition in the tone touched her. She was silent.
+
+"The preacher was wrong," he said. "There is no spirit of evil. We are
+betrayed by our own passions, and the chief of those passions is love.
+It is the Nemesis that stalks through the world, haunting all men, and
+goading some to great wrong."
+
+"It was of your doing that I came here," said Greta.
+
+"Would to God it may be of my doing that you remain here," said Hugh.
+
+"That is a prayer He will not hear. I am leaving this house to-night.
+There is some one coming who can unmask your wicked falsehood."
+
+"Parson Christian?" said Hugh.
+
+Greta made no answer, and Hugh continued, "His journey is needless. A
+word from my mother would have done all. She is in this house."
+
+"Yes, Heaven forgive you, she is here!" said Greta.
+
+"You are wrong; you do not know all. Where is your husband?"
+
+Greta shook her head. "I have neither seen him nor heard from him since
+we parted at these doors," she said.
+
+"And when you leave them to-night, do you leave him behind you?" said
+Hugh.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said Greta, passionately.
+
+Hugh Ritson's bloodless face was awful to look upon. "Greta," he said,
+in a tone of anguish, "give up the thought. Look on that false union as
+broken forever, and all this misery will end. It was I and you--you and
+I. But that is over now. I do not come between you. It is useless to
+think of that. I do not offer you my love; you refused it long ago. But
+I can not see you my brother's wife. That would be too much for me to
+endure. I will not endure it. Have pity upon me. If I have no claim to
+your love, have I no right to your pity? What have I suffered for your
+love? A life's misery. What have I sacrificed to it? My name--my
+place--my inheritance."
+
+Greta lifted her eyes with a look of inquiry.
+
+"What? Has he not even yet told you all?" said Hugh. "No matter. What
+has he done to earn your love that I have not done? What has he
+suffered? What has he sacrificed?"
+
+"If this is love, it is selfish love," said Greta, in a broken voice.
+
+"Selfish?--be it so. All love is selfish."
+
+"Leave me--leave me!"
+
+Hugh Ritson paused; the warmth of his manner increased. "I will leave
+you," he said, "and never seek you again; I will go from you forever,
+and crush down the sorrow that must be with me to the end, if you will
+promise me one thing."
+
+"What is it?" said Greta, her eyes on the ground.
+
+"It is much," said Hugh, "but it is not all. If the price is great,
+think of the misery that it buys--and buries. You would sacrifice
+something for me, would you not?"
+
+His voice swelled as he spoke, and his pale face softened, and the light
+of hopeless love was in his great eyes.
+
+"Say that you would--for me--me!" He held out his arms toward her as if
+soul and body together yearned for one word, one look of love.
+
+Greta stood there, silent and immovable. "What is it?" she repeated.
+
+"Let me think that you would do something for my sake--mine," he
+pleaded. "Let me carry away that solace. Think what I have suffered for
+you, and all in vain. Think that perhaps it was no fault of mine that
+you could not love me; that another woman might have found me worthy to
+be loved who had not been unworthy of love from me."
+
+"What is it?" repeated Greta, coldly, but her drooping lashes were wet
+with tears.
+
+"Think that I am of a vain, proud, stubborn spirit; that in all this
+world there is neither man nor woman, friend nor enemy, to whom I have
+sued for grace or favor; that since I was a child I have never even
+knelt in prayer in God's house that man might see or God might hear.
+Then think that I am at your feet, a miserable man."
+
+"What is it?" said Greta, again.
+
+Hugh Ritson paused, and then added, more calmly: "That you should take
+the vows and the veil, and stay here until death."
+
+Greta lifted her eyes. Hugh's eyes were bent upon her.
+
+"No, I can not. I should be false to my marriage vows," she said,
+quietly.
+
+"To be true to them is to be false to yourself, to your husband, and to
+me," said Hugh.
+
+"I love my husband," said Greta, with an eloquent glance. "To be true to
+them is to be true to him."
+
+There was a pause. Hugh Ritson's manner underwent a change. It was the
+white heat of high passion that broke the silence when he spoke again.
+
+"Greta," he said, and his deep voice had a strong tremor, "if there is
+any truth in what that priest told us to-night--if it is not a dream and
+a solemn mockery made to enchant or appal the simple--if there is a God
+and judgment--my soul is already too heavily burdened with sins against
+you and yours. I would have eased it of one other sin more black than
+these; but it was not to be."
+
+"What do you mean?" said Greta. Her face was panic-stricken.
+
+Hugh Ritson came a step nearer.
+
+"That your husband is in my hands--that one word from me would commit
+him to a doom more dreadful than death--that if he is to be saved as a
+free man, alive, you must renounce him forever."
+
+"Speak plain. What do you mean?" said Greta.
+
+"Choose--quick! Which shall it be? You for this convent, or your husband
+for lifelong imprisonment?"
+
+Greta's mind was in a whirl. She was making for the door in front of
+them. He stepped before her.
+
+"I parted you with a lie," he said, "but to me it was not always a lie.
+I believed it once. Do you think I should have denied my self my
+inheritance, and let a bastard stand in my place, if I had not believed
+it?"
+
+"What further lie is this?" said Greta.
+
+"No matter. Heaven knows. And all I did was for love of you. Is it so
+guilty a thing that I have loved you--to all lengths and ends of love? I
+meant to put a hemisphere between you--to send him to Australia, and
+you back home to Cumberland. What if the lie had then been outfaced? I
+should have parted you, and that would have been enough."
+
+"And now, when your revenge falls idle at your feet, you come to me on
+your knees," said Greta.
+
+"Revenge? That was but a feeble revenge," said Hugh. "He would have
+learned the truth and come back to claim you. There would have been no
+peace for me while he was alive and free. Do I come to you on my knees?
+Yes; but it is to pray of you to save your husband. Is it so much that I
+ask of you? Think what is earned by it. If you have no pity for me, have
+you none for him?"
+
+She was struggling to pass him.
+
+"Greta," he said, "choose, and at once. It is now or never.
+To-night--to-morrow will be too late. You for a holy life of
+self-renouncement, or your husband to drag out his miserable days in
+penal servitude."
+
+"This is only another lie. Let me pass," she said.
+
+"It is the truth, as sure as God hears us," said Hugh.
+
+"I shall never believe it."
+
+"I will swear it." He laid a strong hand on her wrist. "I will swear it
+at the very foot of God's altar."
+
+He tried to draw her back into the church. She resisted.
+
+"Let me go; I will cry for help."
+
+He dropped her wrist, and fell back from her. She drew herself up in
+silence, and walked slowly away.
+
+He stood a moment alone in the sacristy. Then he went out through the
+church. It was empty and all but dark. The sacristan, with a long rod,
+was putting out the lights one by one. He turned, with arm uplifted, to
+look after the halting figure that passed down the aisle and out at the
+west porch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Abbey Gardens, the street in front, was dark and all but deserted. Only
+a drunken woman went reeling along. But the dull buzz in the distance,
+and the white sheet in the sky, told that, somewhere near, the wild
+heart of the night beat high.
+
+Hugh Ritson looked up at the heavy mass of the convent building as he
+crossed the street. The lights were already out, and all was dark
+within. He went on, but presently stopped by a sudden impulse, and
+looked again.
+
+It was then he was aware that something moved in the deep portico. The
+lamp on the pavement sent a shaft of light on to the door, and there,
+under the gas-light, with the face turned from him, was the figure of a
+woman. She seemed to cast cautious and stealthy glances around, and to
+lift a trembling hand to the bell that hung above her. The hand fell to
+her side, but no ring followed. Once again the hand was lifted, and once
+again it fell back. Then the woman crept totteringly down the steps and
+turned to go.
+
+Hugh Ritson recrossed the street. Amid all the turmoil of his soul, the
+incident had arrested him.
+
+The woman was coming toward him. He put himself in her path. The light
+fell full upon her, and he saw her face.
+
+It was Mercy Fisher.
+
+With a low cry, the girl sunk back against the railings of the convent,
+and covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Is it you, Mercy?" said Hugh.
+
+She made no answer. Then she tried to steal away, but he held her with
+gentle force.
+
+"Why did you leave Hendon?" he asked.
+
+"You did not want me," said the girl, in a tone of unutterable pain. And
+still her face was buried in her hands.
+
+He did not reply. He let her grief spend itself.
+
+Just then a drunken woman reeled back along the pavement and passed them
+close, peering into their midst, and going by with a jarring laugh.
+
+"What's he a-doing to ye, my dear, eh?" she said, jeeringly. "Sarve ye
+right!" she added, and laughed again. She was a draggled, battered
+outcast--a human ruin, such as night, the pander, flings away.
+
+Mercy lifted her head. A dull, weary look was in her eyes.
+
+"You know how I waited and waited," she said, "and you were so long in
+coming, so very long." She turned her eyes aside. "You did not want me;
+in your heart you did not want me," she said.
+
+The wave of bitter memory drowned her voice. Not unmoved, he stood and
+looked at her, and saw the child-face wet with tears, and the night
+breeze of the city drift in her yellow hair.
+
+"Where have you been since?" he said.
+
+"A man going to market brought me up in his wagon. I fainted, and then
+he took me to his home. He lives close by, in the Horse and Groom Yard.
+His wife is bedridden, and such a good creature, and so kind to me. But
+they are poor, and I had no money, and I was afraid to be a burden to
+them; and besides--besides--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She saw that I was--she saw what was going to--being a woman, she knew
+I was soon--"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Hugh, stopping another flood of tears with a light
+touch of the hand. "How red your eyes look. Are they worse?"
+
+"The man was very good; he took me to the doctors at a hospital, and
+they said--oh, they said I might lose my sight!"
+
+"Poor little Mercy!" said Hugh.
+
+He was now ashamed of his own sufferings. How loud they had clamored
+awhile ago; yet, what were they side by side with this poor girl's
+tangible sorrows! Mere things of the air, with no reality.
+
+"But no matter!" she burst out. "That's no matter."
+
+"You must keep up heart, Mercy. I spoke angrily to you the other night,
+but it's over now, is it not?"
+
+"Oh, why didn't you leave me alone?" said the girl.
+
+"Hush, Mercy; it will be well with you yet." His own eyes were growing
+dim, but even then his heart was bitter. Had he not said in his wrath
+that passion was the demon of the world? He might say it in his sorrow,
+too. The simple heart of this girl loved him, even as his own lustier
+soul loved Greta. He had wronged her. But that was only a tithe of the
+trouble. If she could but return him hate for wrong, how soon everything
+would be right with her! "What brought you here, Mercy?"
+
+"One of the sisters--they visit the sick--one of them visited the house
+where they gave me lodgings, and I heard that they sometimes took
+homeless girls into the convent. And I thought I was homeless, now,
+and--and--"
+
+"Poor little woman!"
+
+"I came the night before last, but saw your brother Paul walking here in
+front. So I went away."
+
+"Paul?"
+
+"Then I came last night, and he was here again. So I went away once
+more, and to-night I came earlier, and he wasn't here, but just as I was
+going to ring the bell, and say that I had no home, and that my eyes
+were growing worse, something seemed to say they would ask if I had a
+father, and why I had left him; and then I couldn't ring--and then I
+thought if only I could die--yes, if only I could die and forget, and
+never wake up again in the morning--"
+
+"Hush, Mercy. You shall go back home to your father."
+
+"No, no, no!"
+
+"Yes; and I shall go with you."
+
+There was silence. The bleared eyes looked stealthily up into his face.
+A light smile played there.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+A bright vision came to her of a fair day when, hand in hand with him
+she loved, she should return to her forsaken home in the mountains, and
+hold up her head, and wipe away her father's tears. She was in the dark
+street of the city, then; she and her home were very far apart.
+
+He laughed inwardly at a different vision. In a grim spirit of humor he
+saw all his unquenchable passion conquered, and he saw himself the
+plain, homely, respectable husband of this simple wife.
+
+"Was Paul alone when you saw him?" said Hugh.
+
+"Yes. And would you tell them all?"
+
+The girl's sidelong glance was far away.
+
+"Mercy, I want you to do something for me."
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+Again the sidelong glance.
+
+Hugh lifted the girl's head with his hand to recall her wandering
+thoughts.
+
+"Paul will come again to-night. I want you to wait for him and speak to
+him."
+
+"Yes, yes; but won't he ask me questions?"
+
+"What if he does? Answer them all. Only don't say that I have told you
+to speak to him. Tell him--will you remember it?--are you
+listening?--look me in the face, little woman."
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"Tell him that Mr. Christian--Parson Christian, you know--has come to
+London and wishes to see him at once. Say he has looked for him at the
+hotel in Regent Street and not found him there, and is now at the inn in
+Hendon. Will you remember?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where were you going, Mercy--back to your poor friends?"
+
+"No. But will he be sure to come to-night?"
+
+"No doubt. At what time was he here last night?"
+
+"Ten o'clock."
+
+"It is now hard on nine. Tell him to go to Hendon at once, and when he
+goes, you go with him. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't forget--to-night; to-morrow night will not do. If he does not
+come, you must follow me to Hendon and tell me so. I shall be there.
+Don't tell him that--do you hear?"
+
+The girl gave a meek assent.
+
+"And now good-bye for an hour or two, little one."
+
+He turned away, and she was left alone before the dark convent. But, she
+was not all alone. A new-born dream was with her, and her soul was
+radiant with light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Hugh Ritson walked rapidly through Dean's Yard in the direction of the
+sanctuary. As he turned into Parliament Street the half moon rose above
+the roof of Westminster Hall. But the night was still dark.
+
+He passed through Trafalgar Square and into the Haymarket. The streets
+were thronged. Crowds on crowds went languidly by. Dim ghosts of men and
+women, most of them, who loitered at this hour in these streets. Old
+men, with the souls long years dead within them, and the corruption
+reeking up with every breath to poison every word, or lurking like
+charnel lights in the eyes to blink contagion in every glance. Young
+girls hopping like birds beside them, the spectres of roses in their
+cheeks, but the real thorns at their hearts. There had been no way for
+them but this--this and one other way: either to drift into the Thames
+and be swallowed up in the waters of death, or to be carried along for a
+brief minute on the froth of the waves of life.
+
+Laughing because they might not weep; laughing because their souls were
+dead; laughing in their conscious travesty of the tragedy of
+pleasure--they tripped and lounged and sauntered along. And the lamps
+shone round them, and above them was the glimmering moon.
+
+As Hugh Ritson went up the steep Haymarket, his infirmity became more
+marked, and he walked with a sliding gait. Seeing this, a woman who
+stood there halted and limped a few paces by his side, and pretending
+not to see him, shouted with a mocking laugh, "What is it--a man or a
+bat?"
+
+How the wild, mad heart of the night leaped up!
+
+A man passed through the throng with eyes that seemed to see nothing of
+its frantic frenzy and joyless joy--a stalwart man, who strode along
+like a giant among midgets, his vacant eyes fixed before him, his strong
+white face expressionless. Hugh Ritson saw him. They passed within two
+paces, but without recognition. The one was wandering aimlessly in his
+blind misery toward the Convent of St. Margaret, the other was making
+for the old inn at Hendon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later Hugh Ritson was standing in the bar of the Hawk and Heron.
+His mind was made up; his resolve was fixed; his plan was complete.
+
+"Anybody with him?" he said to the landlady, motioning toward the
+stairs.
+
+"Not as I knows on, sir, but he do seem that restless and off his
+wittals, and I don't know as I quite understands why--"
+
+Hugh Ritson stopped her garrulous tongue. "I have found the girl. She
+will come back to you to-night, Mrs. Drayton. If she brings with her the
+gentleman who left these boxes in your care, take him to your son's
+bedroom and tell him the person he wishes to see has arrived, and will
+be with him directly."
+
+With this he went up the stairs. Then, calling down, he added: "The
+moment he is in the room come up and tell me."
+
+A minute later he called again: "Where's the key to this door? Let me
+have it."
+
+The landlady hobbled up with the key to Drayton's bedroom; the room was
+empty and the door stood open. Hugh Ritson tried the key in the lock and
+saw that the wards moved freely. "That will do," he said, in a satisfied
+tone.
+
+The old woman was hobbling back. Hugh was standing in thought, with head
+bent, and the nail of his forefinger on his cheek.
+
+"By the way, Mrs. Drayton," he said, "you should get the girl to help
+you a little sometimes."
+
+"Lor's, sir, I never troubles her, being as she's like a visitor."
+
+"Nonsense, Mrs. Drayton. She's young and hearty, and your own years are
+just a little past their best, you know. How's your breathing
+to-day--any easier?"
+
+"Well, I can't say as it's a mort better, neither, thanking you the
+same, sir," and a protracted fit of coughing bore timely witness to the
+landlady's words.
+
+"Ah! that's' a bad bout, my good woman."
+
+"Well, it is, sir; and I get no sympathy, neither--leastways not from
+him as a mother might look to--in a manner of speaking."
+
+"Bethink you. Is there nothing the girl can do for you when she comes?
+Nothing wanted? No errand?"
+
+"Well, sir, taking it kindly, sir, there's them finings in the cellar
+a-wants doing bad, and the boy as ought to do 'em, he's that grumpysome,
+as I declare--"
+
+"Quite right, Mrs. Drayton. Send the girl down to them the moment she
+comes in, and keep her down until bed-time."
+
+"Thank you, sir! I'm sure I takes it very kind and thoughtful of a
+gentleman to say as much, and no call, neither."
+
+The landlady shuffled down-stairs, wagging gratefully her dense old
+noddle; the thoughtful gentleman left the key of Drayton's room in the
+lock on the outside of the door, and ascended a ladder that went up from
+the end of the passage. He knocked at a door at the top. At first there
+was no answer. A dull shuffling of feet could be heard from within.
+"Come, open the door," said Hugh, impatiently.
+
+The door was opened cautiously. Drayton stood behind it. Hugh Ritson
+entered. There was no light in the room; the red, smoking wick of a
+tallow candle, newly extinguished, was filling the air with its stench.
+
+"You take care of yourself," said Hugh. "Let us have a light."
+
+Drayton went down on his knees in the dark, fumbled on the floor for a
+box of lucifers, and relighted the candle. He was in his shirt-sleeves.
+
+"Cold without your coat, eh?" said Hugh. A sneer played about his lips.
+
+Without answering, Drayton turned to a mattress that lay in the gloom of
+one corner, lifted it, took up a coat that lay under it, and put it on.
+It was the ulster with the torn lapel.
+
+Hugh Ritson followed Drayton's movements, and laughed slightly. "Men
+like you are always cautious in the wrong place," he said. "Let them lay
+hands on you, and they won't be long finding your--coat." The last word
+had a contemptuous dig of emphasis.
+
+"Damme if I won't burn it, for good and all," muttered Drayton. His
+manner was dogged and subdued.
+
+"No, you won't do that," said Hugh, and he eyed him largely. The garret
+was empty save for the mattress and the blanket that lay on it, and two
+or three plates, with the refuse of food, on the floor. It was a low
+room, with a skylight in the rake of the roof, which sloped down to a
+sharp angle. There was no window. The walls were half timbered, and had
+once been plastered, but the laths were now bare in many places.
+
+"Heard anything?" said Drayton, doggedly.
+
+"Yes; I called and told the police sergeant that I thought I was on the
+scent."
+
+"What? No!"
+
+The two men looked at each other--Drayton suspicious, Hugh Ritson with
+amused contempt.
+
+"Tell you what, you don't catch me hobnobbing with them gentry," said
+Drayton, recovering his composure.
+
+Hugh Ritson made no other answer than a faint smile. As he looked into
+the face of Drayton, he was telling himself that no man had ever before
+been at the top of such a situation as that of which he himself was then
+the master. Here was a man who was the half-brother of Greta, and the
+living image of her husband. Here was a man who, despite vague
+suspicions, did not know his own identity. Here was a man over whom hung
+an inevitable punishment. Hugh Ritson smiled at the daring idea he had
+conceived of making this man personate himself.
+
+"Drayton," he said, "I mean to stand your friend in this trouble."
+
+"Tell you again, the best friend to me is the man as helps me to make my
+lucky."
+
+"You shall do it, Drayton, this very night. Listen to me. That man, my
+brother, as they call him--Paul Ritson, as his name goes--is not my
+father's son. He is the son of my mother by another man, and his true
+name is Paul Lowther."
+
+"I don't care what his true name is, nor his untrue, neither. It ain't
+nothing to me, say I, and no more is it."
+
+"Would it be anything to you to inherit five thousand pounds?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Paul Lowther is the heir to as much. What would you say if I could put
+you in Paul Lowther's place, and get you Paul Lowther's inheritance?"
+
+"Eh? A fortune out of hand--how?"
+
+"The way I described before."
+
+There was a slight scraping sound, such as a rat might have made in
+burrowing behind the partition.
+
+"What's that?" said Drayton, his face whitening, and his watchful eyes
+glancing toward the door. "A key in the lock?" he whispered.
+
+"Tut! isn't your own key on the inside?" said Hugh Ritson.
+
+Drayton hung his head in shame at his idle fears.
+
+"I know--I haven't forgot," he muttered, covering his discomfiture.
+
+"It's a pity to stay here and be taken, when you might as easily be
+safe," said Hugh.
+
+"So it is," Drayton mumbled.
+
+"And go through penal servitude for life, when another man might do it
+for you," added Hugh, with a ghostly smile.
+
+"I ain't axing you to say it over. What's that?" Drayton cowered down.
+The bankrupt garret had dropped a cake of its rotten plaster. Hugh
+Ritson moved not a muscle; only the sidelong glance told of his contempt
+for the hulking creature's cowardice.
+
+"The lawyer who has charge of this legacy is my friend and comrade," he
+said, after a moment's silence. "We should have no difficulty in that
+quarter. My mother is--Well, she's gone. There would be no one left to
+question you. If you were only half shrewd the path would be clear."
+
+"What about her?"
+
+"Greta? She would be your wife."
+
+"My wife?"
+
+"In name. You would go back, as I told you, and say: 'I, whom you have
+known as Paul Ritson, am really Paul Lowther, and therefore the
+half-brother of the woman with whom I went through the ceremony of
+marriage. This fact I learned immediately on reaching London. I bring
+the lady back as I found her, and shall ask that the marriage--which is
+no marriage--be annulled. I deliver up to the rightful heir, Hugh
+Ritson, the estates of Allan Ritson, and make claim to the legacy left
+me by my father, Robert Lowther.' This is what you have to say and do,
+and every one will praise you for an honest and upright man."
+
+"Very conscientious, no doubt; but what about him?"
+
+"He will then be Paul Drayton, and a felon."
+
+Drayton chuckled. "And what about her?"
+
+"If he is in safe keeping, she will count for nothing."
+
+"So I'm to be Paul Lowther."
+
+"You are to pretend to be Paul Lowther."
+
+"I told you afore, as it won't go into my nob, and no more it will,"
+said Drayton, scratching his head.
+
+"You shall have time to learn your lesson; you shall have it pat," said
+Hugh Ritson. "Meantime--"
+
+At that instant Drayton's eyes were riveted on the skylight with an
+affrighted stare.
+
+"Look yonder!" he whispered.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The face on the roof!"
+
+Hugh Ritson plucked up the candle and thrust it over his head and
+against the glass. "What face?" he said, contemptuously.
+
+Again Drayton's head fell in shame at his abject fear.
+
+There was a shuffling footstep on the ladder outside. Drayton held his
+head aside, and listened. "The old woman," he mumbled. "What now?
+Supper, I suppose."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+At that moment there was a visitor in the bar down-stairs. He was an
+elderly man, with shaggy eyebrows and a wizened face; a diminutive
+creature with a tousled head of black and gray. It was Gubblum
+Oglethorpe. The mountain peddler had traveled south to buy chamois
+leather, and had packed a great quantity of it into a bundle, like a
+panier, which he carried over one arm.
+
+Since the wedding at Newlands, three days ago, Gubblum's lively
+intelligence had run a good deal on his recollection of the man
+resembling Paul Ritson, whom he had once seen in Hendon. He had always
+meant to settle for himself that knotty question. So here, on his first
+visit to London, he intended to put up at the very inn about which the
+mystery gathered.
+
+"How's ta rubbun on?" he said, by way of salute on entering. When Mrs.
+Drayton had gone upstairs she had left the pot-boy in charge of the bar.
+He was a loutish lad of sixteen, and his name was Jabez.
+
+Jabez slowly lifted his eyes from the pewters he was washing, and a
+broad smile crossed his face. Evidently the new-comer was a countryman.
+
+"Cold neet, eh? Sharp as a step-mother's breath," said Gubblum, throwing
+down the panier and drawing up to the fire.
+
+The smile on the face of Jabez broadened perceptibly, and he began to
+chuckle.
+
+"What's ta snertan at, eh?" said Gubblum. "I say it's hot weather varra.
+Hasta owt agenn it?"
+
+Jabez laughed outright. Clearly the countryman must be crazy.
+
+"What's yon daft thingamy aboot?" thought Gubblum. Then aloud, "Ay, my
+lad, gie us a laal sup o' summat."
+
+Jabez found his risible faculties sorely disturbed by this manner of
+speech. But he proceeded to fill a pewter. The pot-boy's movements
+resembled those of a tortoise in celerity.
+
+"He's a stirran lad, yon," thought Gubblum. "He's swaddering like a duck
+in a puddle."
+
+"Can I sleep here to-neet?" he asked, when Jabez had brought him his
+beer.
+
+Then the sapient smile on the pot-boy's face ripened into speech.
+
+"I ain't answering for the sleeping," said Jabez, "but happen you may
+have a bed--he, he, he! I'll ask the missis--he, he, haw!"
+
+"The missis? Hasta never a master, then?" said Gubblum.
+
+Now, Jabez had been warned, with many portentous threats, that in the
+event of any one asking for the master he was to be as mute as the
+grave. So in answer to the peddler's question he merely shook his wise
+head and looked grave and astonishingly innocent.
+
+"No? And how lang hasta been here?"
+
+"Three years come Easter," said Jabez.
+
+"And how lang dusta say 'at missis has been here?"
+
+"Missis? I heard father say as Mistress Drayton has kep' the Hawk and
+Heron this five-and-twenty year."
+
+"Five-and-twenty! Then I reckon that master would be no'but a laal wee
+barn when she coomt first," said Gubblum.
+
+"Happen he were," said Jabez. Then, recovering the caution so
+unexpectedly disturbed, Jabez protested afresh that he had no master.
+
+"It's slow wark suppen buttermilk wi' a pitchfork," thought Gubblum, and
+he proceeded to employ a spoon.
+
+"Sista, my lad, wadsta like me to lend thee a shilling?"
+
+Jabez grinned, and closed his fat fist on the coin thrust into his palm.
+
+"I once knew a man as were the varra spitten picter of your master,"
+said Gubblum. "In fact, his varra sel', upsett'n and doon thross'n. I
+thowt it were hissel', that's the fact. But when I tackled him he
+threept me down, and I was that vexed I could have bitten the side out
+of a butter-bowl."
+
+"But I ain't got no master," protested Jabez.
+
+"I were riding by on my laal pony that day, but now I'm going shankum
+naggum," continued Gubblum, unmindful of the pot-boy's mighty innocent
+look. "'A canny morning to you, Master Paul,' I shouted, and on I went."
+
+"Then you know his name?" said Jabez, opening wide his drowsy eyes.
+
+"'Master Paul's half his time frae home,' says the chap on t'road.
+'Coorse he is,' I says: 'it's me for knowing that,' Ah, I mind it same
+as it were yesterday. I looked back, and there he was standing at the
+door, and he just snitit his nose wi' his finger and thoom. Ey, he did,
+for sure."
+
+Jabez found his conscience abnormally active at that moment. "But I
+ain't got none," he protested afresh.
+
+"None what?"
+
+"No master."
+
+"That's a lie, my lad, for I see he's been putten a swine ring on yer
+snout to keep ye frae rooting up the ground."
+
+After this Gubblum sat a good half-hour in silence. Mrs. Drayton came
+down-stairs and arranged that Gubblum should sleep that night in the
+house. His bedroom was to be a little room at the back, entered from the
+vicinity of the ladder that led to the attics.
+
+Gubblum got up, said he was tired, and asked to be shown to his room.
+Jabez lighted a candle, and they went off together.
+
+"Whereiver does that lead to?" said Gubblum, pointing to the ladder near
+his bedroom door.
+
+"I dunno," said Jabez, moodily. He had been ruminating on Gubblum's
+observation about the swine ring.
+
+"He's as sour as vargis," thought Gubblum.
+
+There was the creak of a footstep overhead.
+
+"Who sleeps in the pigeon loft?" Gubblum asked, tipping his finger
+upward.
+
+"I dunno," repeated Jabez.
+
+"His dander's up," thought Gubblum.
+
+Just then the landlady in the bar heard the sound of wheels on the road,
+and the next moment a carriage drew up at the open door.
+
+"I say there, lend a hand here, quick!" shouted the driver.
+
+Mrs. Drayton hobbled up. The flyman was leaning through the door of the
+fly, helping some one to alight.
+
+"Take a' arm, missy; there, that's the size of it. Now, sir, down,
+gently."
+
+The person assisted was a man. The light from the bar fell on his face,
+and the landlady saw him clearly. It was Paul Ritson. He was flushed,
+and his eyes were bloodshot. Behind him was Mercy Fisher, with recent
+tears on her cheeks.
+
+"Oh, he's ill, Mrs. Drayton," said Mercy.
+
+Paul freed one of his arms from the grasp of the girl, waved with a
+gesture of deprecation, smiled a jaunty smile, and said:
+
+"No, no, no; let me walk; I'm well--I'm well."
+
+With this he made for the house, but before he had taken a second step
+he staggered and fell against the door-jamb.
+
+"Deary me, deary me, the poor gentleman's taken badly," said Mrs.
+Drayton, fussing about.
+
+Paul Ritson laughed a little, lifted his red eyes, and said:
+
+"Well, well! But it's nothing. Just dizzy, that's all. And
+thirsty--very--give me a drink, good woman."
+
+"Bring that there bench up, missy, and we'll put him astride it," said
+the driver. "Right; that's the time o' day. Now, sir, down."
+
+"Deary me, deary me, drink this, my good gentleman. It'll do you a mort
+o' good. It's brandy."
+
+"Water--bring me water," said Paul Ritson, feebly; "I'm parched."
+
+"How hot his forehead is," said Mercy.
+
+"And no light 'un to lift, neither," said the driver. "Does he live
+here, missis?"
+
+Mrs. Drayton brought a glass of water. Paul drained it to the last drop.
+
+"No, sir; I mean yes, driver," said the landlady, confusedly.
+
+"He warn't so bad getting in," the driver observed.
+
+"Oh, dear, oh, dear! where is Mr. Christian--Parson Christian?" said
+Mercy, whose distracted eyes wandered around.
+
+"The gentleman's come, sir; he's upstairs, sir," said the landlady, and,
+muttering to herself, Mrs. Drayton hobbled away.
+
+Paul Ritson's head had fallen on his breast. His hat was off, and his
+hair tumbled over his face. The strong man sat coiled up on the bench.
+Then he shook himself and threw up his head, as if trying to cast off
+the weight of stupor that sat on him.
+
+"Well, well! who'd have thought of this? Water--more water!" he mumbled
+in a thick voice.
+
+Mercy stood before him with a glass in her hand.
+
+"Is it good for him, I wonder?" she said. "Oh, where is Mr. Christian?"
+
+Paul Ritson saw the glass, clutched at it with both hands, then smiled a
+poor, weak smile, as if to atone for his violence, and drank every drop.
+
+"Well, well!--so hot--and dizzy--and cold!" he muttered, incoherently.
+
+Then he relapsed into silence. After a moment, the driver, who was
+supporting him at the back, looked over at his face. The eyes were
+closed, and the lips were hanging.
+
+"He's gone off unconscious," said the flyman. "Ain't ye got a bed
+handy?"
+
+At that moment Mrs. Drayton came hastily down-stairs, in a fever of
+agitation.
+
+"You've got to get him up to his room," she said, between gusts of
+breath.
+
+"That's a job for two men, ain't it, missis?" said the driver.
+
+Mercy had loosened Paul's collar, and with a nervous hand she was
+bathing his burning forehead.
+
+"Oh, tell Mr. Christian," she said; "say he has fainted."
+
+Mrs. Drayton hobbled back. In another instant there was a man's step
+descending the stairs. Hugh Ritson entered the bar. He looked down at
+the unconscious man and felt his pulse. "When did this happen?" he
+asked, turning to Mercy.
+
+"He said he was feeling ill when I met him; then he was worse in the
+train, and when we reached Hendon he was too dizzy to stand," said
+Mercy.
+
+"His young woman, ain't it?" said the flyman, aside, to Hugh.
+
+Hugh nodded his head slightly. Then, turning toward Mrs. Drayton, with a
+significant glance, "Your poor son is going to be ill," he said.
+
+The landlady glanced back with a puzzled expression, and began in a
+blundering whimper, "The poor gentleman--"
+
+"The old lady's son?" said the flyman, tipping his finger in the
+direction of the landlady.
+
+"Paul Drayton," said Hugh.
+
+Mercy saw and heard all. The tears suddenly dried in her eyes, which
+opened wide in amazement. She said nothing.
+
+Hugh caught the altered look in her face.
+
+"Mrs. Drayton," he said, "didn't you say you had something urgent for
+Mercy to do? Let her set about it at once. Now, driver, lend a
+hand--upstairs; it's only a step."
+
+They lifted Paul Ritson between them, and were carrying him out of the
+bar.
+
+"Where's the boy?" asked Hugh. "Don't let him get in the way. Boys are
+more hindrance than help," he added, in an explanatory tone.
+
+They had reached the foot of the stair. "Now, my man, easy--heavy, eh?
+rather."
+
+They went up. Mercy stood in the middle of the floor with a tearless and
+whitening face.
+
+Half a minute later Hugh Ritson and the flyman had returned to the bar.
+The phantom of a smile lurked about the flyman's mouth. Hugh Ritson's
+face was ashen, and his lips quivered.
+
+The boxes and portmanteaus which Paul and Greta had left in the bar
+three nights ago still lay in one corner. Hugh pointed them out to the
+driver. "Put them on top of the cab," he said. The flyman proceeded to
+do so.
+
+When the man was outside the door, Hugh Ritson turned to Mrs. Drayton.
+The landlady was fussing about, twitching her apron between nervous
+fingers. "Mrs. Drayton," said Hugh, "you will go in this fly to the
+Convent of St. Margaret, Westminster. There you will ask for Mrs.
+Ritson, the lady who was here on Friday night. You will tell her that
+you have her luggage with you, and that she is to go with you to St.
+Pancras Station to meet her husband, and return to Cumberland by the
+midnight train. You understand?"
+
+"I can't say as I do, sir, asking pardon, sir. If so be as the lady axes
+why her husband didn't come for her hisself--what then?"
+
+"Then say what is true--nothing more, Mrs. Drayton."
+
+"And happen what may that be, sir?"
+
+"That her husband is ill--but mind--not seriously."
+
+"Oh, well, I can speak to that, sir, being as I saw the poor gentleman."
+
+Mrs. Drayton was putting on her bonnet and shawl. The flyman had fixed
+the luggage on top of the cab, and was standing in the bar, whip in
+hand.
+
+"A glass for the driver," said Hugh. Mrs. Drayton moved toward the
+counter. "No, you get into the cab, Mrs. Drayton; Mercy will serve."
+
+Mercy went behind the counter and served the liquor in an absent manner.
+
+"It's now ten-thirty," said Hugh, looking at his watch. "You will drive
+first to the convent, Westminster, and from there to St. Pancras, to
+catch the train at twelve."
+
+Saying this, he walked to the door and put his head through the window
+of the cab. The landlady was settling herself in her seat. "Mrs.
+Drayton," he whispered, "you must not utter a syllable about your son
+when you see the lady. Mind that. You understand?"
+
+"Well, sir, I can't say--being as I saw the gentleman--wherever's Paul?"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+The driver came out. He leaped to his seat. In another moment the cab
+rattled away.
+
+Hugh Ritson walked back into the house. The boy Jabez had come
+down-stairs. "When do you close the house?" Hugh asked.
+
+"Eleven o'clock, sir," said Jabez.
+
+"No one here--you might almost as well close now. No matter--go behind
+the bar, my lad. Mercy, your eyes are more inflamed than ever; get away
+to bed immediately."
+
+Mercy's eyes were not more red than their expression was one of
+bewilderment. She moved off mechanically. When she reached the foot of
+the stairs she turned and tried to speak. The words would not come. At
+length she said, in a strange voice: "You did not tell me the truth."
+
+"Mercy!"
+
+"Where's Parson Christian?" said Mercy, and her voice grew stern.
+
+"You must not use that tone to me. Come, get away to bed, little one."
+
+Her eyes dropped before his. She turned away. He watched her up the
+stairs. So sure of hand was he that not even at that moment did he doubt
+his hold of her. But Mercy did not go to bed. She turned in at the open
+door of Drayton's room. The room was dark; only a fitful ray of bleared
+moonlight fell crosswise on the floor; but she could see that the
+unconscious figure of Paul Ritson lay stretched upon the bed.
+
+"And I have led you here with a lie!" she thought. Then her head swam
+and fell on to the counterpane. Some minutes passed in silence. She was
+aroused by footsteps in the passage outside. They were coming toward
+this room. The door, which stood ajar, was pushed open. There was no
+time for Mercy to escape, so she crept back into the darkness of a
+narrow space between the foot of the bed and the wall.
+
+Two men entered. Mercy realized their presence in the dark room rather
+by the sense of touch than by the sense of hearing or sight. They walked
+lightly, the darkness hid them, but the air seemed heavy with their hot
+breath. One of them approached the bedside; Mercy felt the bed quiver.
+The man leaned over it, and there was a pause. Only the scarcely
+perceptible breathing of the insensible man fell on the silence.
+
+"He's safe enough still," said a voice that thrilled her through and
+through. "Now for it--there's no time to lose!"
+
+The girl crouched down and held her breath.
+
+"Damme if I ain't wishing myself well out of it!" muttered another
+voice.
+
+Mercy knew both men. They were Hugh Ritson and Paul Drayton.
+
+Hugh closed the door. "What simpleton says fortune favors the brave?"
+he said, in a low, derisive tone. "Here is fortune at the feet of a man
+like you!"
+
+Drayton growled, and Mercy heard the oath that came from beneath his
+breath. "I'm wanting to be out of this, and I ain't ashamed for you to
+know it."
+
+Hugh Ritson's light laugh came from the bedside. He was still standing
+by Paul Ritson's head. "If the lord mayor came for you in his carriage,
+with a guard of flunkies, you would leave this house in less safety," he
+said. Then he added, impatiently: "Come, waste no words; strip off that
+tell-tale coat."
+
+With this he leaned over the bed, and there was a creak of the spring
+mattress.
+
+"What's that?" said Drayton, in an affrighted tone.
+
+"For God's sake, be a man!" said Hugh, bitterly.
+
+"D'ye call this a man's work?" muttered Drayton.
+
+The light laugh once more. "Perhaps not so manly as robbing the dead and
+dying," said Hugh Ritson, and his voice was deep and cold.
+
+Mercy heard another muttered oath. Dear God! what was about to be done?
+Could she escape? The door was closed. Still, if she could but reach it,
+she might open it and fly away.
+
+At that instant, Hugh Ritson, as if apprehending her thought, said,
+"Wait," and then stepped back to the door and drew the snap bolt. Mercy
+leaned against the wall, and heard the beating of her heart. In the
+darkness she knew that Paul Drayton had thrown off his coat. "A good
+riddance!" he muttered, and the heavy garment fell with a thud.
+
+Hugh Ritson had returned to the bed-head. "Give me a hand," he said;
+"raise him gently--there, I'll hold him up--now draw off his
+coat--quietly, one arm at a time. Is it free? Then, lift--away."
+
+Another heavy garment fell with a thud.
+
+"What's the fence got in his other pockets, eh?"
+
+"Come, lend your hand again--draw off the boots--they're Cumberland
+make, and yours are cockney style--quick!"
+
+Drayton stepped to the bottom of the bed and fumbled at the feet of the
+insensible man. He was then within a yard of the spot where the girl
+stood. She could feel his proximity, and the alcoholic fumes of his
+breath rose to her nostrils. She was dizzy, and thought she must have
+fallen. She stretched out one hand to save herself, and it fell on to
+the bed-rail. It was within a foot of Drayton's arm.
+
+"Take off his stockings--they're homespun--while I remove the cravat.
+The pin was a present; it has his name engraved on the plate behind."
+
+The slant of the moonlight had died off the floor, and all was dark.
+
+Drayton's craven fears seemed to leave him. He laughed and crowed. "How
+quiet the fence is--very obliging, I'm sure--just fainted in the nick of
+time. Will it last?"
+
+"Quick! strip off your own clothes and put them where these have come
+from. The coat with the torn lapel--where is it? Make no mistake about
+that."
+
+"I'll pound it, no!" Drayton laughed a short, hoarse laugh.
+
+There was some shuffling in the darkness. Then a pause.
+
+"Hush!"
+
+Mercy knew that Hugh Ritson had grasped the arm of Drayton, and that
+both held their breath. At that moment the moonlight returned, and the
+bleared shaft that had once crossed the floor now crossed the bed. The
+light fell on the face of the prostrate man. His eyes were open.
+
+"Water--water!" said Paul Ritson, very feebly.
+
+Hugh Ritson stepped out of the moonlight and went behind his brother.
+Then Mercy saw a hand before Paul's face, putting a spirit flask to his
+mouth.
+
+When the hand was raised the face twitched slightly, the eyes closed
+with a convulsive tremor, and the half-lifted head fell back on to the
+pillow.
+
+"He'll be quieter than ever now," said Hugh Ritson, softly. Mercy
+thought she must have screamed, but the instinct of self-preservation
+kept her still. She stirred not a limb. Her head rested against the
+wall, her eyes peered into the darkness, her parched tongue and parted
+lips burned like fire.
+
+"Quick! put his clothes on to your own back, and let us be gone."
+
+Drayton drew on the garments and laughed hoarsely. "And a good fit,
+too--same make of a man to a T--ex--act--ly!"
+
+The window and the door stood face to face; the bed was on the left of
+the door, with the head at the door-end. The narrow alcove in which the
+girl stood was to the left of the window, and in front of the window
+there was a dressing-table. Drayton stepped up to this table to fix the
+cravat by the glass. The faint moonlight that fell on his grinning face
+was reflected dimly into the mirror.
+
+At that moment Mercy's sickening eyes turned toward the bed. There, in
+repose that was like death itself, lay the upturned face of Paul Ritson.
+Two faces cast by nature in the same mold--one white and serene and
+peaceful, the other bloated, red, smirking, distorted by passion, with
+cruel eyes and smoking lips.
+
+"The very thing--the very thing--damme if his own mother wouldn't take
+me for her son!"
+
+Hugh Ritson stepped to Drayton's side. When he spoke his voice was like
+a cold blast of wind.
+
+"Now listen: From this moment at which you change your coat for his you
+cease to be Paul Drayton, and become Paul Ritson."
+
+"Didn't you say I was to be Paul Lowther?"
+
+"That will come later."
+
+"As I say, it won't go into my nob."
+
+"No matter; say nothing to yourself but this, 'I am to pretend to be
+Paul Ritson.'"
+
+"Well, now for it!"
+
+"Ready?" asked Hugh. He returned to the bed-head.
+
+"Ready."
+
+"Then give a hand here. We must put him up into your garret. When the
+police come for him he must seem to be in hiding and in drink. You
+understand?"
+
+A low, hoarse laugh was the only answer.
+
+Then they lifted the unconscious man from the bed, opened the door, and
+carried him into the passage.
+
+Mercy recovered her stunned senses. When the men were gone she crept out
+on tiptoe and tripped down the passage to her own room. At the door she
+reeled and fell heavily. Then, in a vague state of consciousness, she
+heard these words passed over her--"Carry her back into her room and
+lock her in." At the same instant she felt herself being lifted in a
+strong man's arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Before Gubblum Oglethorpe parted with Jabez, he tried to undo the
+mischief he had done. "Give us a shak' o' thy daddle," he said, holding
+out his hand. But Jabez had not forgotten the similitude of the swine
+ring. He made no response.
+
+"Dang him for a fool!" thought Gubblum. "He's as daft as a besom." Then
+Gubblum remembered with what lavish generosity he had bribed the pot-boy
+to no purpose. "He cover't a shilling dammish," he thought; "I'll dang
+his silly head off!"
+
+Jabez put down the candle and backed out of the room, his eyes fixed on
+the peddler with a ghostly stare.
+
+"You needn't boggle at me. I'll none hurt ye," said Gubblum. Jabez
+pulled the door after him. "His head's no'but a lump of puddin' and a
+daub o' pancake," thought Gubblum.
+
+Then the peddler sat on the bed and began to wonder what possible reason
+there might be for the lad's sudden change of temper. He sat long, and
+many crude notions trotted through his brain. At last he recalled the
+fact that he had said something about Jabez's snout carrying a swine
+ring. That was the rub, sure enough. "I mak' no doobt he thowt it was a
+by-wipe," thought Gubblum.
+
+Just as the peddler had arrived at this sapient conclusion, he heard
+heavy footsteps ascending and descending the ladder that stood in the
+passage outside. Gubblum understood the sounds to mean that the inn was
+so full of visitors that some of them had to be lodged even in the
+loft. "Ey, I shouldn't wonder but this is a bonny paying consarn," he
+thought.
+
+He undressed, got into bed, and blew out his light. He lay awhile
+waiting for sleep, and thinking of the failure of his plummets to sound
+the depths of Jabez. Then he remembered with vexation that the lad had
+even laughed at him in spite of the "shilling dammish."
+
+"Shaf, it was no'but his guts crowkin'," thought Gubblum; and he rolled
+over, face to the wall, and began to pay nasal tribute to sleep.
+
+From the slowly tightening grip of unconsciousness Gubblum was roused to
+sudden wakefulness. There was a noise as of heavy shuffling feet outside
+his door. The peddler raised himself and listened.
+
+"Too dark in this corner," said a voice. "Get a light."
+
+Gubblum crept out of bed, held his head to the door, and listened.
+
+There were retreating steps. Then the man who had spoken before spoke
+again. "Quick, there! we must catch the train at eleven fifteen."
+
+The voice pealed in Gubblum's memory. He knew it. It was the voice of
+the last man he should have looked for in this house--Hugh Ritson.
+
+Presently the footsteps approached, and thin fingers of light shot over
+Gubblum's head into his dark room. He looked up at the door. Three small
+round holes had been pierced into the styles for ventilation.
+
+"Put the candle on the floor and take the feet--I'll go up first," said
+the same voice.
+
+Gubblum raised himself on tiptoe and tried to peer through the
+perforations. He was too small a man to see through. There was a chair
+by the side of his bed, and his extinguished candle stood on it. He
+removed the candlestick, lifted the chair cautiously, placed its back to
+the door, and mounted it. Then he saw all.
+
+There were two men, and he knew both--the brothers Ritson. Ah! had he
+not said that Paul Ritson kept this inn? "I'll shut up the whole boilin'
+of 'em next time," thought the peddler, "Wait! what are they lugging
+into the pigeon loft?"
+
+"Easy!--damme, but the fence is a weight!"
+
+It was the hoarse voice of the other man. The candle was behind him and
+on the floor. It cast its light on his back. "If I could no'but get a
+blink frae the cannel, I'd see what's atween them," thought Gubblum.
+
+The men with their burden were now at the top of the ladder.
+
+"Twist about, and go in sideways," muttered the voice first heard.
+
+The man below twisted. This movement brought the full light of the
+candle on to the faces of all three.
+
+"Lord A'mighty, whativer's this?" Gubblum thought.
+
+The burden was a man's body. But it was the face that startled the
+peddler--the face of Paul Ritson.
+
+Gubblum's eyes passed over the group in one quick glance. He saw two
+Paul Ritsons there, and one of them lay as still as the dead.
+
+A minute more of awful tension, and the door of the loft above was
+slammed and shut, the heavy feet of the two men descended the ladder
+quickly, and went down the stairs into the bar.
+
+Gubblum listened as if with every sense. He knew that the outer door to
+the road had opened and closed. He heard footsteps dying away in the
+distance without. All was silent within the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two men hastening in the night to the Hendon railway station paused at
+that turn of the road which leads to the police offices and jail.
+
+"You go on and take care of yourself--I'll follow in five minutes," said
+one.
+
+"You ain't going to give a man away?" said the other.
+
+There was only a contemptuous snort for answer. The first speaker had
+turned on his heel. When he reached the police offices, he rang the
+bell. The door was answered by a sergeant in plain clothes. "I've found
+your man for you," said Hugh Ritson.
+
+"Where, sir?"
+
+"At the Hawk and Heron."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Paul Drayton. You'll find him lying in the garret at the west end of
+the gable--drunk. Lose not an hour. Go at once."
+
+"Is the gentleman who struggled with him still staying there--Mr. Paul
+Ritson?"
+
+"No; he goes back home to-night."
+
+"What's his address in the country?"
+
+"The Ghyll, Newlands, Cumberland."
+
+"And yours, sir?"
+
+"I am his brother, Hugh Ritson, and my address is the same."
+
+"We'll go this instant."
+
+"Well, take your piece of frieze with you and see if it fits. It was by
+the torn ulster that I recognized your man. Good-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+As soon as the noise of the retiring steps had died away on Gubblum's
+ear, he dressed himself partially, opened the door of his bedroom
+cautiously, and stepped into the passage. He was still in the dark, and
+groping with one hand, he felt for the ladder by which the two men had
+carried their burden to the loft above. He had grasped the lowest rungs
+of it, and was already some steps up, when he heard a singular noise. It
+was something between the cry of a child and the deep moan of a sick
+man. Did it come from the loft? Gubblum held his head in that direction
+and listened. No; the sound was from the other end of the passage. Now
+it was gone, and all was quiet. What a strange house was this!
+
+"Can't see a styme," thought Gubblum. "I'll away for the cannel."
+
+Back in his bedroom he struck a match, and then stepped afresh into the
+passage, guarding the newly lighted candle with the palm of his hand.
+Then there came a shrill cry. It seemed to be before him, above him,
+behind him, everywhere about him. Gubblum's knees gave way, but the
+stubborn bit of heart in him was not to be shaken.
+
+"A rayder queerly sort of a house," he thought; and at that instant
+there were heavy lunges at a door at the further end of the passage, and
+a cry of "Help! help!"
+
+Gubblum darted in the direction of the voice.
+
+"Let me out!" cried the voice from within.
+
+Gubblum tried the door. It was locked.
+
+"Help! help!" came again.
+
+"In a sniffer; rest ye a bit!" shouted Gubblum, and putting the light on
+the floor, he planted his shoulder against the door, and one foot
+against the opposite wall.
+
+"Help! help! let me out! quick, quick!" came once more from within.
+
+"Sec a skrummidge!" shouted Gubblum, panting for breath.
+
+Then the lock gave way and the door flew open. In the midst of the bad
+light Gubblum saw nothing at first. Then a woman with wild eyes and a
+face of anguish came out on him from the dark room. It was Mercy Fisher.
+
+When they recognized each other there was a moment of silence. But it
+was only a moment, and that moment was too precious to be lost. In a
+flood of tears the girl told him what had happened.
+
+Gubblum understood no more than that villainy had been at work. Mercy
+saw nothing but that she had been deceived and had been herself the
+instrument of deception. This was enough.
+
+"The raggabrash! I'd like to rozzle their backs with an ash stick," said
+Gubblum.
+
+"Oh, where have they taken him--where, where?" cried Mercy, wringing her
+hands.
+
+"Don't put on wi' thee--I know," said Gubblum. "I questit them up the
+stairs. Come along wi' me, lass, and don't slobber and yowl like a
+barn."
+
+Gubblum whipped up his candle, and hurried along the passage and up the
+ladder like a monkey, Mercy following at his heels.
+
+"Belike they've locked this door forby," he said.
+
+But no, the key was in the lock. Gubblum turned it and pushed it open.
+Then he peered into the garret, holding the candle above his head. When
+the light penetrated the darkness, they saw a man's figure outstretched
+on a mattress that lay on the bare floor of the empty room. They ran up
+to it, and raised the head.
+
+"It's his fadder's son, I'll uphod thee," said Gubblum. "And yon
+riff-raff, his spitten picter, is no'but some wastrel merry-begot."
+
+Mercy was down on her knees beside the insensible man, chafing his
+hands. There was a tremulous movement of the eyelids.
+
+"Sista, he's coming tul't. Slip away for watter, lass," said Gubblum.
+
+Mercy was gone and back in an instant.
+
+"Let a be, let a be--he'll come round in a crack. Rub his forehead--stir
+thy hand, lass--pour the watter--there, that's enough--plenty o' butter
+wad sto a dog. Sista, he's coming tul't fast."
+
+Paul Ritson had opened his eyes.
+
+"Slip away for mair watter, lass--there, that's summat like--rest ye, my
+lad--a drink?--ey, a sup o' watter."
+
+Paul looked around him. His filmy eyes were full of questions. But at
+first his tongue would not speak. He looked up at the bare skylight and
+around at the bleached walls, and then back into the face of the
+peddler. He noticed Mercy, and smiled.
+
+"Where are we, my girl?" he said, faintly.
+
+"This is the Hawk and Heron," she answered.
+
+"How do I come to be here?" he asked.
+
+Mercy covered her face, and sobbed.
+
+"I brought you," she said, at length.
+
+Paul looked at her a moment with bewildered eyes. Then the tide of
+memory flowed back upon his mind.
+
+"I remember," he said, quietly; "I was feeling dizzy--hadn't slept two
+nights--not even been in bed--walked the streets the long hours
+through."
+
+Everything had rushed over him in a moment, and he closed his eyes with
+a deep groan. At his feet Mercy buried her face and sobbed aloud.
+
+Paul drew himself feebly up on his elbow.
+
+"Where is Parson Christian?" he asked, and gazed around, with a faint
+smile.
+
+The girl's anguish overflowed.
+
+"That was a lie I told you," she sobbed.
+
+The smile fled away.
+
+"A lie! Why a lie?"
+
+He was struggling with a dazed sense.
+
+"I told you that Parson Christian was here and wanted you. He is not
+here."
+
+And Mercy's weeping seemed to choke her.
+
+"My good girl, and why?"
+
+"They brought you to this room and left you, and now they are gone."
+
+"They! Who?"
+
+"Your brother Hugh and Mr. Drayton."
+
+Paul looked deadly sick at heart.
+
+"Who is this Drayton?"
+
+"The spitten picter of yourself, my lad," said Gubblum; "the man I telt
+ye of lang ago--him as keeps this house."
+
+Paul's eyes wandered vacantly. His nervous fingers twitched at the
+ulster that he wore.
+
+"What's this?" he said, and glanced down at his altered dress.
+
+"When you were insensible they stripped you of your clothes and put
+others on you," said Mercy.
+
+"Whose clothes are these?"
+
+"Mr. Drayton's."
+
+Paul Ritson rose to his feet.
+
+"Where are the men?" he said, in a husky voice.
+
+"Gone."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To the station--that was all I heard."
+
+Paul gazed about with hazy eyes. Mercy flung herself at his feet and
+wept bitterly.
+
+"Forgive me! oh, forgive me!"
+
+He looked down at her with a confused expression. His brain was
+benumbed. He drew one arm across his face as though struggling to
+recover some lost link of memory.
+
+"Why, my good lass, what's this?" he said, and then smiled faintly and
+made an attempt to raise her up.
+
+"Who is at the convent at Westminster?" she asked.
+
+Then all his manner changed.
+
+"Why?--what of that?" he said.
+
+"Mrs. Drayton was sent there in a cab to tell Mrs. Ritson to be at St.
+Pancras Station at midnight to meet her husband and return to
+Cumberland."
+
+The face that had been pale became suddenly old and ghastly. There was
+an awful silence.
+
+"Is this the truth?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, yes," cried the girl.
+
+"I think I see it all now--I think I understand," he faltered.
+
+"Forgive me!" cried the girl.
+
+He seemed hardly to see her.
+
+"I have been left in this room insensible, and the impostor who
+resembles me--where is he now?"
+
+He struggled with the sickness that was mastering him. His brain reeled.
+The palms of his hands became damp. He staggered and leaned against the
+wall.
+
+"Rest ye a bit, my lad," said Gubblum. "You'll be gitten stanch agen
+soon."
+
+He recovered his feet. His face was charged with new anger.
+
+"And the wicked woman who trapped me to this house is still here," he
+said, in a voice thick with wrath.
+
+"Forgive me! forgive me!" wept the girl at his feet.
+
+He took her firmly by the shoulders, raised her to her knees, and turned
+her face upward till her eyes met his.
+
+"Let me look at her," he said, hoarsely. "Who would have believed it?"
+
+"Forgive me! forgive me!" cried the girl.
+
+"Woman, woman! what had I done to you--what, what?"
+
+The girl's sobs alone made answer.
+
+In his rage he took her by the throat. A fearful purpose was written in
+his face.
+
+"And this is the woman who bowed down the head of her old father nigh to
+the grave," he said, bitterly, and flung her from him.
+
+Then he staggered back. His little strength had left him. There was
+silence. Only the girl's weeping could be heard.
+
+The next instant, strangely calm, without a tear in his sad eyes, he
+stepped to her side and raised her to her feet.
+
+"I was wrong," he said; "surely I was wrong. You could not lie to me
+like that, and know it. No, no, no!"
+
+"They told me what I told you," said the girl.
+
+"And I blamed you for it all, poor girl."
+
+"Then you forgive me?" she said, lifting her eyes timidly.
+
+"Forgive you?--ask God to forgive you, girl. I am only a man, and you
+have wrecked my life."
+
+There was a foot on the ladder, and Jabez, the boy, stepped up, a candle
+in his hand. He had been waiting for the landlady, when he heard voices
+overhead.
+
+"The varra man!" shouted Gubblum. "Didsta see owt of thy master
+down-stairs?"
+
+Jabez grinned, and glanced up at Paul Ritson.
+
+"Hark ye, laal man, didsta see two men leaving the house a matter of
+fifteen minutes ago?"
+
+"Belike I did," said Jabez. "And to be sure it were the gentleman that
+come here afore--and another one."
+
+"Another one--your master, you mean?"
+
+Jabez grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"Didsta hear owt?"
+
+"I heard the gentleman say they had to be at St. Pancras at midnight."
+
+Paul fumbled at his breast for his watch. It was gone.
+
+"What's o'clock?" he asked.
+
+"Fifteen after eleven, master," said Jabez. "I've just bolted up."
+
+Paul's face was full of resolution.
+
+"I'll follow," he said; "I've lost time enough already."
+
+"What, man! you'll never manish it--and you as weak as watter forby.
+You'll be falling swat in the road like a wet sack."
+
+Paul had pulled the door open. Excitement lent him strength. The next
+moment he was gone.
+
+"Where's the master off to? St. Pancras?" asked Jabez.
+
+"Fadge-te-fadge, gang out of my gate! Away, and lig down your daft head
+in bed!" said Gubblum.
+
+Jabez did not act on the peddler's advice. He returned to the bar to
+await the return of Mrs. Drayton, whose unaccustomed absence gave rise
+to many sapient conjectures in the boy's lachrymose noddle. He found
+the door to the road open, and from this circumstance his swift
+intelligence drew the conclusion that his master had already gone. His
+hand was on the door to close and bolt it, when he heard rapid footsteps
+approaching. In an instant two men pushed past him and into the house.
+
+"Where's Mr. Drayton," said one, panting from his run.
+
+"He's this minute gone," said Jabez.
+
+"Is that true, my lad?" the man asked, laying a hand on the boy's
+shoulder.
+
+"He's gone to St. Pancras, sir. He's got to be there at midnight," said
+Jabez.
+
+The boy had recognized the visitors, and was trembling.
+
+The men glanced into each other's faces.
+
+"That was Drayton--the man that ran past us down the road," said one.
+
+"Make sure of it," said the other. "Search the place; I'll wait for you
+here."
+
+In two minutes more the men had left the house together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A quarter of an hour later the night porter at the Hendon railway
+station saw a man run across the platform and leap into the up train
+just as the carriages were moving away. He remarked that the man was
+bareheaded, and wore his clothes awry, and that a rent near the collar
+of his long frieze ulster exposed a strip of red flannel lining. He
+thought he knew him.
+
+The train had barely cleared the platform when two men ran up and came
+suddenly to a stand in front of the porter.
+
+"Gone!" said one of them, with vexation.
+
+"That would be the 11:35," said the other, "to King's Cross. Did any one
+get into it here, porter?"
+
+"Yes, sergeant--Drayton, of the Hawk and Heron," said the porter.
+
+"Your next up is 11:45 to St. Pancras?"
+
+"Yes, sir, due at twelve."
+
+"Is it prompt?"
+
+"To the second."
+
+The two men faced about.
+
+"Time enough yet," said one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+The cab that drove Mrs. Drayton into London carried with it a world of
+memories. Thought in her old head was like the dip of a sea-bird in the
+sea--now here, now there, now a straight flight, and now a backward
+swirl. As she rattled over the dark roads of Child Hill and the New End,
+she puzzled her confused brain to understand the business on which she
+had been sent. Why had the gentleman been brought out to Hendon? Why,
+being ill, was he so soon to be removed? Why, being removed, was he not
+put back into this cab, and driven to the station for Cumberland? What
+purpose could be served by sending her to the convent for the
+gentleman's wife, when the gentleman himself might have been driven
+there? Why was the lady in a convent? The landlady pursed up her lips
+and contracted her wrinkled brows in a vain endeavor to get light out of
+the gloom of these mysteries.
+
+The thought of the gentleman lying ill at her house suggested many
+thoughts concerning her son. Paul was not her son, and his name was not
+Drayton. Whose son he was she never knew, and what his name was she had
+never heard. But she had fixed and done for him since he was a baby, and
+no mother could have loved a son more than she had loved her Paul. What
+a poor, puling little one he was, and how the neighbors used to shake
+their heads and say:
+
+"You'll never rear it; there's a fate on it, poor, misbegotten mite!"
+
+That was thirty long years ago, and now Paul was the lustiest young man
+in Hendon. Ah! it was not Hendon then, but London, and her husband, the
+good man, was alive and hearty.
+
+"It'll thrive yet, Martha," he would say, and the little one would seem
+to know him, and would smile and crow when he cracked his fingers over
+its cot.
+
+Then the landlady thought of the dark days that followed, when bread was
+scarce and the gossips would say:
+
+"Serve you right. What for do you have an extra mouth to feed?--take the
+brat to the foundling."
+
+But her husband, God bless him, had always said:
+
+"What's bite and sup for a child? Keep him, Martha; he'll be a comfort
+to ye yet, old woman."
+
+Mrs. Drayton wiped her eyes as she drove in the dark.
+
+Then the bad times changed, and they left the town and took the inn at
+Hendon, and then the worst times of all came on them, for as soon as
+they were snug and comfortable the good man himself died. He lay dying a
+week, and when the end came he cried for the child.
+
+"Give me the boy," he said, and she lifted the child into his arms in
+bed. Then he raised his thin white hand to stroke the wavy hair, but the
+poor hand fell into the little one's face.
+
+Mrs. Drayton shifted in her seat, and tried to drive away the memories
+that trod on the heels of these recollections; but the roads were still
+dark, and nothing but an empty sky was to be seen, and the memories
+would not be driven away. She recalled the days when young Paul grew to
+be a lusty lad--daring, reckless, the first in mischief, the deepest in
+trouble. And there was no man's hand to check him, and people shook
+their heads and whispered, "He'll come to a bad end; he has the
+wickedness in his blood." Poor lad, it was not his fault if he had
+turned out a little wild and wayward and rough, and cruel to his own
+mother, as you might say, jostling her when he had a drop to drink, and
+maybe striking her when he didn't know what he was doing, and never
+turning his hand to honest work, but always dreaming of fortunes coming
+some day, and betting and racing, and going here and there, and never
+resting happy and content at home. It was not his fault: he had been led
+astray by bad companions. And then she didn't mind a blow--not she.
+Every woman had to bear the like of that. You want a world of patience
+if you have men creatures about you--that's all.
+
+Thinking of bad companions suggested to the landlady's mind, by some
+strange twist of which she was never fully conscious, the idea of Hugh
+Ritson. The gentleman who had come so strangely among them appeared to
+have a curious influence over Paul. He seemed to know something of
+Paul's mother. Paul himself rummaged matters up long ago, and found that
+the lady had escaped from the asylum, and been lost. And now the strange
+gentleman came with her portrait and said she was dead.
+
+Poor soul, how well Mrs. Drayton remembered her! And that was thirty
+years ago! She had never afterward set eyes on the lady, and never heard
+of her but once, and even that once must be five-and-twenty years since.
+One day she went for coal to the wharf at Pimlico, and there she met an
+old neighbor, who said: "Mrs. Drayton, your lodger, she that drowned
+herself, came back for the babby, but your man and you were shifted
+away." And to think that the poor young thing was dead and gone now, and
+she herself, who had thought she was old even in those days, was alive
+and hearty still!
+
+By this time the cab was rattling through the busy streets of London,
+and the train of the landlady's thoughts was broken. Only in a vague way
+did she know where she was going. The cab was taking her there, and it
+would take her back again. When they reached the convent she had to ask
+for Mrs. Ritson, and say she was sent to take her to St. Pancras Station
+to meet her husband there, and return to Cumberland by the train at
+midnight. That was all.
+
+The clock of the abbey was marking the half-hour after eleven as the cab
+passed into Parliament Square. In another minute they drew up before the
+convent in Abbey Gardens.
+
+The cabman jumped from the box, rang the bell, and helped Mrs. Drayton
+to alight. The iron gate and the door in the portico swung open
+together, and a nun stood on the threshold, holding a lamp in her hand.
+Mrs. Drayton hobbled up the steps and entered the hall. A deep gloom
+pervaded the wide apartment, in which there were but two wicker chairs
+and a table. The nun wore a gray serge gown, with a wimple cut square
+on her chest, a girdle about her waist, and a rosary hanging by her
+side.
+
+"Can I see a lady boarder--Mrs. Ritson?" said the landlady.
+
+The nun started a little, and then answered in a low, melancholy voice,
+in which the words she spoke were lost. Mrs. Drayton's eyes were now
+accustomed to the gloom, and she looked into the nun's face. It was a
+troubled and clouded face, and when it was lifted for an instant to her
+own, Mrs. Drayton felt chilled, as if a death's-hand had touched her.
+
+It was the face of the mother of Paul! Older, sadder, calmer, but the
+same face still.
+
+The nun dropped her eyes, and made the sign of the cross. Then she
+walked with a quick and noiseless step to the other end of the hall, and
+sounded a deep gong. In a moment this summoned a sister--a novice,
+dressed like the first, except all in white. Mrs. Drayton was now
+trembling from head to foot, but she repeated her question, and was led
+into a bare, chill room, and left alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+When Greta parted from Hugh Ritson three hours before, she was in an
+agony of suspense. Another strange threat had terrified her. She had
+been asked to make choice of one of two evils; refusing to believe in
+Hugh Ritson's power, she had rejected both. But the uncertainty was
+terrible. To what lengths might not passion, unrequited passion,
+defeated passion, outraged passion, lead a man like Hugh Ritson? Without
+pity, without remorse, with a will that was relentless and a heart that
+never knew truth, he was a man to flinch at no extremity. What had he
+meant?
+
+Greta's first impulse had been to go in search of her husband, but this
+was an idle and a foolish thought. Where should she look? Besides this,
+she had promised to remain in the convent until her husband should come
+for her, and she must keep her word. She did not go to supper when the
+gong sounded, but crept up to her room. The bell rang for vespers, and
+Greta did not go to the chapel. She lay down in anguish and wept
+scalding tears. The vesper hymn floated up to her where she lay, and she
+was still weeping. There was no light in this dark place; there was no
+way out of this maze but to wait and suffer.
+
+And slowly the certainty stole upon her that Hugh Ritson had made no
+idle threat. He was a resolute man; he had given her a choice of two
+courses, and had she not taken a selfish part? If Paul, her husband,
+were indeed in danger, no matter from what machination of villainy--was
+it much to ask that she, his wife, should rescue him by a sacrifice that
+fell heaviest upon herself? Hugh Ritson had been right--her part had
+been a selfish one. Oh, where was Mr. Christian? She had telegraphed for
+him, and he had answered that he would come; yet hour had followed hour,
+and still he had not arrived.
+
+Three hours she tossed in agony. She heard the sisters pass up the
+echoing stone staircase to their dormitories, and then the silent house
+became as dumb as a vault. Not a ripple flowed into this still tarn from
+the great stream of the world that rushed and surged and swelled with
+the clangor of a million voices around its incrusted sides.
+
+Her window overlooked the Abbey Gardens. All was quiet beneath. Not a
+step sounded on the pavement. Before her the blank wall was black, and
+the dark, leafless trees stood out from the vague green of the grass
+beyond. Against the sky were the dim outlines of the two towers of the
+old abbey--by day a great rock for the pigeons that wheeled above the
+tumbling sea of the city, by night a skull of stone from which the voice
+of the bell told of the flight of time.
+
+Out of the calm of a moment's stupefaction Greta was awakened by a knock
+at her door. The novice entered and told her that a woman waited below
+to speak with her. Greta betrayed no surprise, and she was beyond the
+reach of fresh agitation. Without word or question she followed the
+novice to the room where Mrs. Drayton sat.
+
+She recognized the landlady and heard her story. Greta's heart leaped up
+at the thought of rejoining her husband. Here was the answer to the
+prayer that had gone up she knew not how often from her troubled heart.
+Soon she would be sure that Hugh Ritson's threat was vain. Soon she
+would be at Paul's side and hold his hand, and no earthly power should
+separate them again. Ah, thank God, the merciful Father, who healed the
+wounded hearts of His children, she should very soon be happy once more,
+and all the sorrows of these past few days would fade away into a dim
+memory.
+
+"Twelve o'clock at St. Pancras, and you have the luggage in a cab at the
+door, you say?"
+
+"Yes; and there's no time to lose, for, to be sure, the night is going
+fast," said Mrs. Drayton.
+
+"And he will be there to meet me?" asked Greta. Her eyes, still wet with
+recent tears, danced with a new-found joy.
+
+"Yes, at St. Pancras," said the landlady.
+
+Greta's happiness overflowed. She took the old woman in her arms and
+kissed her wizened cheeks.
+
+"Wait a minute--only a minute," she said, and tripped off with the swift
+glide of a lapwing. But when she was half-way up the stairs her ardor
+was arrested, and she returned with drooping face and steps of lead.
+
+"But why did he not come for me himself?" she asked.
+
+"The gentleman is not well--he is ill," said Mrs. Drayton.
+
+"Ill? You say he is ill? Then he could not come. And I blamed him for
+not coming!"
+
+"The gentleman is weak, but noways worse; belike he will go straight off
+and meet you at the station."
+
+Greta turned away once again, and went upstairs slowly. At a door on the
+first landing she tapped lightly, and when a voice answered from within
+she entered the room.
+
+The superior was on her knees at a table. She lifted a calm and
+spiritual face as Greta approached.
+
+"Reverend mother," said Greta, "I am leaving you this moment."
+
+"So soon, my daughter?"
+
+"My husband has sent for me; he will meet me at the railway station at
+twelve."
+
+"Why did he not come himself?"
+
+"He is ill; he has gone direct."
+
+"The hour is late and the message is sudden. Are you satisfied?"
+
+"I am anxious, reverend mother--"
+
+"What is it, my daughter?"
+
+"An old gentleman, a clergyman, Mr. Christian, is coming from
+Cumberland. I have expected him hourly, but he is not yet arrived. I
+cannot wait; I must rejoin my husband. Will you order that a message be
+left for the clergyman?"
+
+"What is the message, my child?"
+
+"Simply that I have returned with my husband by the train leaving St.
+Pancras at midnight."
+
+"The lay sister in the hall shall deliver it."
+
+"Who is the sister?"
+
+"Sister Grace."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Reverend mother, has Sister Grace ever spoken of the past?"
+
+The superior told a few beads.
+
+"The past is as nothing to us here, my daughter. Within these walls the
+world does not enter. In the presence of the Cross the past and the
+future are one."
+
+Greta drew a long breath. Then she stooped and kissed the hand of the
+superior, and turned softly away.
+
+Greta and the landlady passed out through the deep portico, and the same
+nun who had opened the door closed it behind them. Mrs. Drayton clung to
+Greta's arm as they went through, and her hand trembled perceptibly.
+
+"Who is she?" whispered the landlady, when they were seated in a cab.
+
+"Sister Grace," said Greta, and turned her head aside.
+
+"I could ha' sworn as she were the mother of my Paul," murmured Mrs.
+Drayton.
+
+Greta faced about, but the landlady saw nothing of the look of inquiry;
+her eyes, like her thoughts, were far away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+Though the hour was late, the streets were thronged. The people were
+trooping home from the theaters; and the Strand, as Greta and the
+landlady crossed it, was choked with cabs and omnibuses. The cab drove
+through the Seven Dials, and there the public-houses were disgorging at
+every corner their poor ruins of men and women. Shouts, curses,
+quarreling, and laughter struck upon the ear above the whir of the
+wheels. Unshaven men and unwashed women, squalid children running here
+and there among the oyster and orange stalls, thieves, idlers, vagabonds
+of all conditions, not a few honest people withal, and among them the
+dark figures of policemen.
+
+Greta's heart beat high that night. Her spirit was full of a new
+alacrity. Every inch of the way, as they flew over the busy streets,
+seemed to awake in her soul some fresh sensibility. She wondered where
+the multitudes of people came from, and whither they were going--vast
+oceans on oceans of humanity, flowing and ebbing without tide.
+
+She wanted to alight a hundred times, and empty her pockets of all her
+money. A blind man, playing a tin whistle, and leading a small dog held
+by a long string, awoke her special pity; the plaintive look in the eye
+of the cur was an object of peculiar sympathy. A filthy woman, reeling
+drunk and bareheaded across the street, almost under the feet of the
+horses, her discolored breast hanging bare, and a puny infant crying
+feebly in her arms, was another occasion for solicitude. A tiny mite
+that might have been a dirty boy, coiled up in a ball on a doorstep like
+a starved cat, was an object of all but irresistible attraction. But she
+dare not stop for an instant; and, at last, with this certainty, she lay
+back and shut her eyes very resolutely, and wondered whether, after all,
+it were not very selfish to be very happy.
+
+The cab stopped with a jolt; they were at St. Pancras station.
+
+"Has he come?" asked Greta, eagerly, and looked about her with eyes that
+comprehended everything at a glance.
+
+She could not see Paul, and when a porter opened the cab and helped her
+to alight, it was on her tongue to ask the man if he had seen her
+husband. But no, she would not do that. She must look for him herself,
+so that she might be the first to see him. Oh, yes, she must be the very
+first to see him, and she was now obstinately determined to ask no one.
+
+The porter brought round the truck, and wheeled the luggage onto the
+platform, and Greta and Mrs. Drayton followed it. Then the wide eyes
+that half smiled and looked half afraid beneath their trembling lids
+glanced anxiously around. No, Paul was not there.
+
+"What is the time?" she asked, her eyes still wandering over the
+bustling throng about her.
+
+"Ten to twelve, miss," announced the porter.
+
+"Oh," she said, with a sigh of relief, "then he will soon be here."
+
+"Will you sit in the waiting-room, miss?" asked the porter; and almost
+unconsciously she followed him when he led the way. Mrs. Drayton hobbled
+behind her.
+
+"What did he say about being ill?" she asked, when they were left
+together.
+
+"That he was only a bit dizzy. Mayhap he's noways 'customed to illness,"
+said the landlady.
+
+"That is true. And what did you say then?"
+
+"I coaxed him to rest him a bit, and take a drop o' summat, and he
+smiled and said, 'Thank you, my good woman.'
+
+"You were in the right, you dear old soul," said Greta. And she put her
+arms about the landlady and hugged her. "I'm sure you've been very good
+to my husband, and watched him tenderly, while I, who should have nursed
+him, have been away. Thank you, thank you!"
+
+Mrs. Drayton was feeling uneasy. "Well, d'ye know, I can't bear to see a
+fellow creatur' suffer. It goes agen me someways."
+
+Greta had risen to her feet. "Stay here, Mrs. Drayton--Drayton, isn't
+it?--stay here while I go on to the platform. He might come and not see
+me. Ah, yes, he may be looking everywhere for me now."
+
+She went out and elbowed her way among the people who were hurrying to
+and fro; she dodged between the trucks that were sliding luggage on to
+the weighing machine and off to the van. The engines were puffing
+volumes of smoke and steam up to the great glass roof, where the whistle
+of the engine-man echoed sharp and shrill. Presently she returned to the
+waiting-room.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Drayton," she said, "I dreamed a fearful dream last night.
+What do you think? Will he be well enough to come?"
+
+"Coorse, coorse, my dear. 'Tell her to meet her husband at twelve.'
+Them's the gentleman's own words."
+
+"How happy I shall be when we are safe at home! And if he is ill, it
+will be for me to nurse him then."
+
+The light in the dove-like eyes at that moment told plainly that to the
+poor soul even illness might bring its compensating happiness.
+
+"And as to dreams, to be sure, they are on'y dreams; and what's dreams,
+say I?"
+
+"You are right, Mrs. Drayton," said Greta, and once more she shot away
+toward the platform. Her mind had turned to Parson Christian. Could it
+be possible that he had arrived? The porter who had brought in her
+luggage was still standing beside it, and with him there was another
+porter. Their backs were toward Greta as she came out of the
+waiting-room, and, tripping lightly behind them, she overheard a part of
+their conversation before they were aware that she was near.
+
+"See the old file in the gaiters by the eleven up?" said one.
+
+"Rather. A reg'lar grandmother's great-grandfather just out of the year
+one. Talk about swallows, eh?--and the buckles--and the stockings!"
+
+"Good sort, how-an'-ever."
+
+"Good for a tip, eh? Wouldn't ha' thought it."
+
+"No, but a real good-hearted 'un an' if he is a Pape."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"To be sure. Got me to put him in a fly for the Catholic Convent up
+Westminster way."
+
+Greta could restrain herself no longer, but burst in upon them with
+twenty questions. When had the parson arrived? When had he left? Was it
+in a fly? Would it go quickly? Could there be time for it to get back?
+
+"What's your train, miss--twelve to the north?"
+
+"Yes; will he catch it?"
+
+"Scarce get back at twelve," said the porter. But, in spite of this
+discouraging prophecy, Greta was so elated at the fresh intelligence
+that she drew out her purse and gave the man five shillings. She had no
+other change than two half crowns and two pennies, and in her present
+elevation of soul there could be no choice, between the silver and the
+copper, as to which the bearer of such news deserved.
+
+The man stared, and then smiled, but he quickly reconciled himself to
+the unexpected. With extraordinary alacrity he labeled the luggage, and
+bowled off to the north train, which was already at the platform.
+
+It was now within three minutes of midnight, and Mrs. Drayton had joined
+Greta in the bustling throng on the platform.
+
+"Oh, I feel as if a thousand hearts were all swelling and beating in my
+breast at once," said Greta. "Mrs. Drayton, is it certain that he will
+come? Porter, have you put the luggage in the van? Which is the
+train--the left?"
+
+"No, miss, the left's going out to make room for the local train up from
+Kentish Town and Hendon. The right's your train, miss. Got your ticket,
+miss?"
+
+"Not yet. Must I get it, think you? Is the time short? Yes, I will get
+two tickets myself," she added, turning to the landlady. "Then when he
+comes he will have nothing to do but step into the carriage."
+
+"You'll have to be quick, miss--train's nigh due out--only a minute,"
+said the porter.
+
+Greta's luminous eyes were peering over the heads of the people that
+were about her. Then they brightened, with a flash more swift than
+lightning, and all her face wore in an instant a heavenly smile. "Ah, he
+is there--there at the back--at the booking-office--run to him, run my
+good, dear creature; run and tell him I am here! I'll find a compartment
+and have the door open."
+
+Greta tripped along the platform with the foot of a deer. In another
+moment she had a carriage door open, and she stood there with the handle
+in her hand. She saw him coming who was more than all the world to her.
+But she did not look twice. No, she would not look twice. She would wait
+until they were within, alone, together.
+
+Side by side with him walked Hugh Ritson. Could it be possible? And was
+it he who had brought her husband? Ah! he had repented, and it was only
+she who had been bitter to the end. How generous of him! how cruel of
+her!
+
+Her eyes fell, and a warm flush overspread her cheeks as he who came
+first stepped into the carriage. She did not look again at him, nor did
+he look again at her. She knew he did not, though her eyes were down.
+"Oh, when we are alone!" she thought, and then she turned to Hugh
+Ritson.
+
+The heavenly smile was still on her beautiful face, and the deep light
+in her eyes spoke of mingled joy and grief.
+
+"Hugh, I fear, I fear," she faltered, "I have been hard and cruel. Let
+us be friends; let me be your dearest sister."
+
+He looked at her in silence. His infirm foot trailed a pace. He saw what
+was in her heart, and he knew well what was in his own heart, too; he
+thought of the blow that he was about to strike her.
+
+She held out her hand, and took in hers his own unresisting fingers. Ay,
+he knew that there and then he was about to break that forgiving heart
+forever. He knew who had stepped into that carriage.
+
+She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. The man in him could bear up no
+longer. He broke down; he could not speak; he was choked with emotion.
+
+She turned to the landlady, who stood near, twitching at the ribbons of
+her bonnet and peering into the carriage.
+
+"Good-bye, Mrs. Drayton, and God bless you for what you have done for my
+husband!"
+
+The landlady muttered something that was inaudible; she was confused;
+she stammered, and then was silent.
+
+Greta stepped into the carriage. The guard was standing at the door. The
+bell had been rung. The train had been signaled. The whistle had
+sounded. The clocks were striking midnight.
+
+"Wait! Wait!"
+
+It was a voice from the end of the platform. The guard turned with a
+smile to see who called on a train to wait. An old gentleman in silk
+stockings and gaiters, with long white hair flowing under the broad brim
+of a low-crowned hat, came panting to the only door that was still open.
+
+"Quick, sir, it's moving; in with you!"
+
+"Mr. Christian!" cried Greta, and throwing her arms about him, she drew
+him into the carriage. Then the train began to move away.
+
+At that instant another train--the local train from Kentish Town and
+Hendon--steamed up to the opposite side of the platform. Before it had
+stopped two men leaped out. They were the two police-sergeants.
+Instantly--simultaneously--a man burst through the barrier and ran on to
+the platform from the street. He was bareheaded, and his face was
+ghastly white. In one moment the police-sergeants had laid hands upon
+him. The train to the north had not yet cleared the platform. He saw it
+passing out. He took hold of the hands by which he was held and threw
+them off, as if their grasp had been the grasp of a child. Then he
+bounded away toward the retreating train. It was now moving rapidly. It
+was gone; it was swallowed up in the dark mouth beyond, and the man
+stood behind, bareheaded, dripping with perspiration, yet white as
+ashes, his clothes awry, the collar of his frieze ulster torn away, and
+a strip of red flannel lining exposed.
+
+It was Paul Ritson.
+
+The police-sergeants hurried up with the re-enforcement of two porters
+to recover their man. But he was quiet enough now. He did not stir a
+muscle when they handcuffed him. He looked around with vague, vacant
+eyes, hardly seeming to realize where he was or what was being done with
+him. His frenzy was gone.
+
+They led him down the platform. Hugh Ritson was standing on the spot
+where Greta had left him one minute before. When the company neared that
+spot the prisoner stopped. He looked across at Hugh Ritson in silence,
+and for an instant the dazed look died off his face. Then he turned his
+head aside, and allowed himself to be led quietly away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+A morning paper, of November--, contained the following paragraph:
+
+   "It will be remembered that in the reports of the disastrous railway
+   collision, which occurred at Hendon on Friday last, it was mentioned
+   as a ghastly accessory to the story of horror that an injured
+   passenger, who had been lifted from the debris of broken carriages,
+   and put to lie out of harm's way in a field close at hand, was
+   brutally assaulted and (apparently) robbed by some unknown scoundrel,
+   who, though detected in the act itself, tore himself from the grasp
+   of Police-Sergeant Cox, of the Hendon division of the metropolitan
+   police force, and escaped in the darkness. The authorities were
+   determined that their vigilance should not be eluded, and a person
+   named Paul Drayton is now in custody, and will be brought up at Bow
+   Street this morning. It turns out that Drayton is an innkeeper at
+   Hendon, where he has long borne a dubious character. He was arrested
+   at midnight in St. Pancras Station, in a daring and mad attempt to
+   escape by the north-bound train, and it is understood that the
+   incident of his capture is such as reflects the highest credit on the
+   resolution, energy, and intrepidity of the force."
+
+The same paper, of the day after, contained this further paragraph:
+
+   "The man Drayton, who was yesterday formally committed to take his
+   trial at the Central Criminal Court, will be brought up at the Old
+   Bailey to-morrow; and as the evidence is said to be of a simple and
+   unconflicting character, it is not expected that the hearing will
+   extend over a single day. It is stated that the accused, who observed
+   a rigid silence during yesterday's proceedings, will, on his trial,
+   set up the extraordinary defense of mistaken identity."
+
+An evening paper of Friday, November--, contained the following remarks
+in the course of a leading note:
+
+   "It is a familiar legal maxim that a plea of alibi that breaks down
+   is the worst of all accusations. The scoundrel that attempted to rob
+   a dying man, who lay helpless and at his mercy amid the confusion of
+   Friday night's accident at Hendon, was audacious enough to put forth
+   the defense that he was not the man he was taken for. Cases of
+   mistaken identity are, of course, common enough in the annals of
+   jurisprudence, but we imagine the instances are rare indeed of
+   evidence of identity so exceptional and conclusive as that which
+   convicted the Hendon innkeeper being susceptible of error. The very
+   clothes he wore in the dock bore their own witness to his guilt, and
+   the court saw the police-sergeant produce a scrap of cloth torn from
+   the guilty man's back, which exactly fitted a rent in the prisoner's
+   ulster. The whole case would be a case of criminality too gross and
+   palpable to merit a syllable of comment but for the astounding
+   assurance with which the accused adhered to his plea in the face of
+   evidence that was so complete as to make denial little more than a
+   farce. He denied that he was Paul Drayton, and said his name was Paul
+   Ritson. He was identified as Drayton by several witnesses who have
+   known him from infancy; among others by his old mother, Martha
+   Drayton, whose evidence (given with reluctance, and with more tears
+   than a son so unnatural deserved) was at once as damning and as
+   painful as anything of the kind ever heard in a court of justice. The
+   claim to be Paul Ritson was answered by the evidence of Mr. Hugh
+   Ritson, mine-owner in Cumberland, and brother of the gentleman whom
+   the prisoner wished to personate. Mr. H. Ritson admitted a
+   resemblance, but had no hesitation in saying that the accused was not
+   his brother. The prisoner thereupon applied to the court that the
+   wife of Paul Ritson should be examined, but, as it was explained that
+   both husband and wife were at present ill in Cumberland, the court
+   wisely ruled against the application. As a final freak of defense,
+   the prisoner asked for the examination of one Mercy Fisher, who, he
+   said, would be able to say by what circumstances he came to wear the
+   clothes of the guilty man. The court adjourned for an hour in order
+   that this person might be produced, but on reassembling it was
+   explained that the girl, who turned out to be a mistress whom Drayton
+   had kept at his mother's house, had disappeared. Thus, with a
+   well-merited sentence of three years' penal servitude, ended a trial
+   of which the vulgarity of detail was only equalled by the audacity of
+   defense."
+
+A week passed, and the public had almost forgotten the incidents of the
+trial, when the following paragraph appeared in a weekly journal:
+
+   "I have heard that the man who was sentenced to three years' penal
+   servitude for robbery at the scene of the Hendon accident was seized
+   with an attack of brain fever immediately upon his arrival at
+   Millbank. The facts that transpire within that place of retirement
+   are whispered with as much reserve as guards the secrets of another
+   kind of confessional, but I do hear that since the admission of the
+   man who was known on his trial as Paul Drayton, and who is now
+   indicated by a numerical cognomen, certain facts have come to light
+   which favor the defense he set up of mistaken identity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+The chapter room of St. Margaret's Convent was a chill, bare chamber
+containing an oak table and four or five plain oak chairs. On the
+painted walls, which were of dun gray, there was an etching by a
+Florentine master of the flight into Egypt, and a symbolic print of the
+Sacred Heart. Besides these pictures there was but a single text to
+relieve the blindness of the empty walls, and it ran: "Where the tree
+falls, there it must lie."
+
+Four days after Greta's departure from the house wherein she had been
+received as a temporary boarder, the superior sat in the chapter room,
+and a sister knelt at her feet. The sister's habit was gray and her
+linen cape was plain. She wore no scapular, and no hood above the close
+cap that hid her hair and crossed her forehead. She was, therefore, a
+lay sister; she was Sister Grace.
+
+"Mother, hear my sin," she said in a trembling whisper.
+
+"Speak on, daughter."
+
+"We were both at Athlone in the year of the great famine. He was an
+officer in a regiment quartered there. I was a novice of the choir in
+the Order of Charity. We met in scenes sanctified by religion. Oh,
+mother, the famine was sore, and he was kind to the famished people!
+'The hunger is on us,' they would cry, as if it had been a plague of
+locusts. It was thus, with their shrill voices and wan faces, that the
+ragged multitudes followed us. Yes, mother, he was very, very kind to
+the people."
+
+"Well?"
+
+The penitent bowed her head yet lower. "My mother, I renounced the vows,
+and--we were married."
+
+The lips of the superior moved in silent prayer.
+
+"What was his name, my daughter?"
+
+"Robert Lowther. We came from Ireland to London. A child was born, and
+we called him Paul. Then my husband's love grew chill and died. I
+grieved over him. Perhaps I was but a moody companion. At last he told
+me--"
+
+The voice faltered; the whole body quivered.
+
+"Well, my child?"
+
+"Oh, mother, he told me I was not his wife; that I was a Catholic, but
+that he was a Protestant; that a Catholic priest had married us in
+Ireland without question or inquiry. That was not a valid marriage by
+English law."
+
+"Shame on the English law! But what do we know of the law at the foot of
+the Cross? Well?"
+
+"He left me. Mother, I flung God's good gift away. I tried to drown
+myself, and my little child with me; but they prevented me. I was placed
+in an asylum for the insane, and my baby--my Paul--was given into the
+care of a woman with whom I had lodged. Have I not sinned deeply?"
+
+"Your sins are great, my daughter, but your sufferings have also been
+great. What happened then?"
+
+"I escaped from the asylum and returned for my child. It was gone. The
+woman had removed to some other part of London, none knew where, and my
+Paul, my darling, was lost to me forever. My mother, it was then that I
+sinned deepest of all."
+
+Her head was bowed to her trembling knees, and her voice was all but
+suspended in an agony of shame.
+
+"Mother, I flung away God's better gift than life! Oh, how shall I tell
+you? Your foot trembles, reverend mother. You are a holy woman, and know
+nothing of the world's temptations."
+
+"Hush, my daughter; I am as great a sinner as yourself."
+
+"I cannot tell you. Mother, mother, you see I cannot."
+
+"It is for your soul's weal, my daughter."
+
+"I had tried to serve God, and He had seen my shame. What was left to me
+but the world, the world, the world! Perhaps the world itself would have
+more mercy. My kind mother, have I not told you yet?"
+
+The superior made the sign of the cross.
+
+"Ah, my daughter! the enemy of your soul was with you then. You should
+not have ceased to lift your hands to Heaven in supplication and prayer.
+You should have prostrated yourself three days and nights in the tribune
+before the Holy Sacrament."
+
+The penitent raised her pale face.
+
+"In less time I was a lost and abandoned woman."
+
+The superior told a few beads with trembling fingers. Then she lifted
+the cross that hung from her girdle, and held it out to the sister.
+
+"I thought of my child, and prayed that he might be dead. I thought of
+him who was not my husband, and my heart grew cold and hard. Mother, my
+redemption came. Yes, but with it came the meaning of the fearful
+words, too late. Amid the reeling madness of the life that is mocked
+with the name of gay, I met a good man. Yes, holy mother, a good man.
+Mother, he now sleeps there!"
+
+Her pale face, serene and solemn, was lifted again, and the hand that
+held the crucifix was raised above her head.
+
+"I loathed my life. He took me away from it--to the mountains--to
+Scotland, and a child was born. Mother, it was only then that I awoke as
+from a trance. It seemed as if a ring of sin begirt me. Tears--ah, me!
+what tears were shed. But rest and content came at last, and then we
+were married."
+
+"My daughter, my daughter, little did I think when I received your vows
+that the enemy of your soul had so mastered you."
+
+"Listen a little longer, holy mother. The child grew to be the image of
+my darling, my Paul--every feature, every glance the same. And partly to
+remind me of my lost one, and partly to make me forget him forever, I
+called the second child Paul. Mother, the years went by in peace. The
+past was gone from me. Only its memory lay like a waste in my silent
+heart. I had another son, and called him Hugh. After many years my
+husband died." The penitent paused.
+
+"Mother, another thing comes back to me; but I have confessed it
+already. Shall I repeat it?"
+
+"No, my daughter, not if it touches the oath that lay heavy on your
+heart."
+
+"I thought my first child was dead. For thirty years I had not seen him.
+But the pathways of our lives crossed at last, and the woman who nursed
+him came to this house four days ago."
+
+"Here?"
+
+"Mother, my son, the child of that first false union, my darling, for
+whom I wept scalding tears long, long years ago; my Paul, whose loss was
+all but the loss of his mother's soul, my son is a thief and an
+outcast."
+
+The lips of the superior moved again in prayer.
+
+"He is the man known to the world as Paul Drayton--to me as Paul
+Lowther."
+
+"My dear daughter, humble yourself in the midst of so awful a judgment.
+Do you say Drayton?--Drayton, who, as I hear, was to-day tried and
+sentenced?"
+
+"No--yes--how shall I tell you?--the same and not the same. Mother, the
+crime was committed by my son Paul Lowther, the sentence was pronounced
+on my son Paul Ritson."
+
+"My dear daughter--"
+
+"I was in the court and heard all; and I alone knew all--I alone, alone!
+Bear with me that I transgressed the law of this holy order. Think, oh!
+my kind mother, think that the nun was yet the woman, and, above all,
+the mother. Yes, I heard all. I heard the charge that convicted my son
+Paul Lowther. He was guilty before God and man. But the prisoner in the
+dock was my son Paul Ritson. I knew him, and believed him when he denied
+the name they gave him. Ah, me, my heart bled!"
+
+"What did you do, my daughter?"
+
+"Mother, I was weak, very weak. I could not see my duty clearly. An
+awful conflict was rife within me. I could not justify the one man
+without condemning the other. And both were the children of my bosom."
+
+"Fearful, fearful! But, my daughter, the one was guilty and the other
+innocent."
+
+"Yes, yes; a thousand times yes; but then there was myself. How could I
+punish the guilty without revealing the secret sin that had been thirty
+years hidden in my heart? And my poor, weak spirit shrunk within me, and
+I sat silent amid all."
+
+"My daughter, we must crucify our spiritual pride."
+
+"Yes, yes; but there was the love of my son, Paul Ritson--he thought me
+a good woman even yet. How could I confess to that sinful past and not
+loose the love of the only human soul that held me pure and true?
+Mother, it is very sweet to be loved."
+
+"Oh, my daughter, my daughter, a terrible situation, terrible,
+terrible!"
+
+"Mother, I have told you everything. Tell me now what hope is left. Give
+me your direction."
+
+"My daughter, let us humble ourselves before God, and pray that He may
+reveal the path of duty. Come."
+
+The superior rose, took her crozier in her hand, and walked out of the
+room. The sister followed her. They passed through the sacristy into the
+empty church.
+
+It was evening. The glow of a wintery sunset came through the windows to
+the west, and fell in warm gules on the altar. There was the hush of the
+world's awe here as day swooned into night. Without these walls were
+turmoil and strife. Within was the balm of rest--the rest that lies in
+the heart of the cyclone.
+
+And the good mother and the sister went down on their knees together,
+and prayed for light and guidance. The mother rose, but the sister knelt
+on; darkness fell, and she was still kneeling, and when the east was
+dabbled with the dawn, the gray light fell on her bowed head and
+uplifted hands.
+
+
+
+
+_BOOK IV._
+
+
+THE WATERS OF MARAH ARE BITTER.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IN THE YEAR 1877.
+
+
+The dale lay green in the morning sunlight; the river that ran through
+its lowest bed sparkled with purple and amber; the leaves prattled low
+in the light breeze that souched through the rushes and the long grass;
+the hills rose sheer and white to the smooth blue lake of the sky, where
+only one fleecy cloud floated languidly across from peak to peak. Out of
+unseen places came the bleating of sheep and the rumble of distant
+cataracts, and above the dull thud of tumbling waters far away was the
+thin caroling of birds overhead.
+
+But the air was alive with yet sweeter sounds. On the breast of the fell
+that lies over against Cat Bells a procession of children walked, and
+sung, and chattered, and laughed. It was St. Peter's Day, and they were
+rush-bearing: little ones of all ages, from the comely girl of fourteen,
+just ripening into maidenhood, who walked last, to the sweet boy of four
+in the pinafore braided with epaulets, who strode along gallantly in
+front. Most of the little hands carried rushes, but some were filled
+with ferns, and mosses, and flowers. They had assembled at the
+school-house, and now, on their way to the church, they were making the
+circuit of the dale.
+
+They passed over the road that crosses the river at the head of
+Newlands, and turned down into the path that follows the bed of the
+valley. At that angle there stands a little group of cottages
+deliciously cool in their white-wash, nestling together under the heavy
+purple crag from which the waters of a ghyll fall into a deep basin that
+reaches to their walls. The last of the group is a cottage with its end
+to the road, and its open porch facing a garden shaped like a wedge. As
+the children passed this house an old man, gray and thin and much bent,
+stood by the gate, leaning on a staff. A colly, with the sheep-dog's
+wooden bar suspended from its shaggy neck, lay at his feet. The hum of
+voices brought a young woman into the porch. She was bareheaded and wore
+a light print gown. Her face was pale and marked with lines. She walked
+cautiously, stretching one hand before her with an uncertain motion, and
+grasping a trailing tendril of honeysuckle that swept downward from the
+roof. Her eyes, which were partly inclined upward and partly turned
+toward the procession, had a vague light in their bleached pupils. She
+was blind. At her side, and tugging at her other hand, was a child of a
+year and a half--a chubby, sunny little fellow with ruddy cheeks, blue
+eyes, and fair curly hair.
+
+Prattling, laughing, singing snatches, and waving their rushes and ferns
+above their happy, thoughtless heads, the children rattled past. When
+they were gone the air was empty, as it is when the lark stops in its
+song.
+
+The church of Newlands stands in the heart of the valley, half hidden by
+a clump of trees. By the lych-gate Parson Christian stood that morning,
+aged a little, the snow a thought thicker on his bushy hair, the face
+mellower, the liquid eyes full of the sunlight behind which lies the
+shower. Greta stood beside him; quieter of manner than in the old days,
+a deeper thoughtfulness in her face, her blue eyes more grave and less
+restless, her fair hair no longer falling in waves behind her, but
+gathered up into a demure knot under her hat.
+
+"Here they come, bless their innocent hearts!" said Parson Christian,
+and at that moment the children turned an angle of the road.
+
+The pink and white of their frocks and pinafores were all but hidden by
+the little forest of green that they carried before and above them.
+
+"'Till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane," muttered Greta, smiling.
+
+When the rush-bearers came up to the front of the church, the lych-gate
+was thrown open and they filed through.
+
+"How tired he looks, the brave little boy!" said Greta, picking up the
+foremost of the company, the tiny man in the epaulets, now covered with
+the dust of the roads.
+
+"The little ones first, and you great girls afterward," said the parson.
+"Those with flowers go up to the communion and lay them on the form, and
+those with mosses put them on the font, and those with rushes and ferns
+begin under the pulpit and come down the aisle to the porch."
+
+The stalwart little tramp in Greta's arms wriggled his way to the
+ground. He had mosses in his hands and must go first. Then the children
+trooped into the church, and in an instant the rude old place was alive
+with the buzz of prattling tongues.
+
+The floor covered many a tomb. Graven on the plain slabs that formed the
+pathway down the middle of the church were the names of the men and
+women who had lived and died in the dale generations gone by. In their
+own day they were children themselves; and now other children--their own
+children's children's children--with never a thought about what lay
+beneath, with only love in their eyes, and laughter on their lips, and
+life in their limbs--were strewing rushes down the path above them.
+
+In ten minutes there was not an inch of the flagged aisle visible. All
+was green from the communion to the porch. Here and there an adventurous
+lad, turning to account the skill at climbing acquired at
+birds'-nesting, had clambered over the pews to the rude cross-trees, and
+hung great bunches of rushes from the roof.
+
+"Now, children, let us sing," said the parson, and taking up the
+accordion, he started a hymn.
+
+The leaded windows of the old church stood open, and the sweet young
+voices floated away, and far away, over the uplands and the dale. And
+the birds still sung in the blue sky, and the ghylls still rumbled in
+the distance, and the light wind still souched through the long grass,
+and the morning sunlight shone over all.
+
+There was a cloud of dust on the road, and presently there came trooping
+down from the village a company of men, surrounded by a whole circuit of
+dogs. Snarls, and yaps, and yelps, and squawks, and guffaws, and
+sometimes the cachinnation and crow of cocks, broke upon the clear air.
+The roystering set would be as many as a dozen, and all were more or
+less drunk. First came John Proudfoot, the blacksmith, in his
+shirt-sleeves, with his leathern apron wrapped in a knot about his
+waist, and a silver and black game-cock imprisoned under his arm. Lang
+Geordie Moore, his young helper, carried another fowl. Dick o' the Syke,
+the miller, in a brown coat whitened with flour, walked abreast of
+Geordie and tickled the gills of the fowl with a straw. Job Sheepshanks,
+the letter-cutter, carried a pot of pitch and a brush, and little Tom o'
+Dint hobbled along with a handful of iron files. Behind these came the
+landlord of the Flying Horse, with a basket over one arm, from which
+peeped the corks of many bottles, and Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll,
+carried a wicker cage, in which sat a red bantam-cock with spurs that
+glittered in the light.
+
+There was one other man who walked with the company, and he was the soul
+of the noisy crew; his voice was the loudest, his laugh the longest, and
+half of all that was said was addressed to him. He was a lusty man with
+a florid face; he wore a suit of tweeds plaided in wide stripes of buff
+and black.
+
+It was Paul Drayton.
+
+"Burn my body, and what's on now?" he said, as the gang reached the
+church.
+
+"Rush-bearing, I reckon," answered Tom o' Dint.
+
+"And what's rush-bearing?"
+
+"You know, Mister Paul," said the postman, "rush-bearing--the barns
+rush-bearing--St. Peter's Day, you know."
+
+"Oh, ay, I know--rush-bearing. Let me see, ain't it once a year?"
+
+"What, man, but you mind the days when you were a bit boy and went
+a-rushing yersel'?" said the blacksmith.
+
+"Coorse, coorse, oh, ay, I ain't forgotten them days. Let me see, it's a
+kind of a harvest-home, ain't it?"
+
+"Nowt o' the sort," said Dick, the miller, testily. "Your memory's
+failing fast, Mister Ritson."
+
+"And that's true, old fence. I'll never be the same man again after that
+brain fever I had up in London--not in the head-piece, you know."
+
+The group of men and dogs had drawn up in front of the church just as
+Brother Peter crossed the church-yard to the porch, carrying a red paper
+in his hand.
+
+"Who's that--the Methodee man?"
+
+"It's the Methodee, for sure," said the blacksmith.
+
+"Ey, it's the parson's Peter," added the postman, "and yon paper is a
+telegraph--it's like he's takin' it to somebody."
+
+"Hold hard, my boys," said Drayton; and, leaving his cronies he strode
+through the lych-gate and down the path, the dogs yapping around him.
+
+Brother Peter had drawn up at the door of the porch; the children were
+still singing.
+
+"If that telegram is for my wife, you may hand it over to me," said
+Drayton, and reached out his hand to take it.
+
+Brother Peter drew back.
+
+"It'll be all right, old fellow--I'll see she gets it."
+
+"Ey, thoo'll manish that, I's warn," said Peter, in a caustic voice.
+
+"Come, don't you know that what belongs to the wife belongs to the
+husband?"
+
+"Don't know as I do. I'se never been larn't sec daftness," said Peter.
+
+"Hand it over. Come, be quick!"
+
+"Get ower me 'at can," said Peter, with a decisive twinkle.
+
+"Gi'e him a slab ower the lug," shouted the miller from the road.
+
+"You hear what they say? Come, out with it."
+
+"Eh, you've rowth o' friends, you're a teeran crew, but I cares laal for
+any on you."
+
+Drayton turned away with a contemptuous snort.
+
+"Damme, what a clatter!" he shouted, and leaped on to the raised mound
+of a grave to look in at an open window. As he did so he kicked a glass
+for flowers that lay upon it, and the broken frame tumbled in many
+pieces. "I've done for somebody's money," he said with a loud guffaw.
+
+"What, man, but it were thy awn brass as bought it," said the
+blacksmith.
+
+"Ey, it's thy fadder's grave," said Job Sheepshanks.
+
+Drayton glanced down at the headstone.
+
+"Why, so it is!" he said; "d'ye see, I hain't been here since the day I
+buried him."
+
+"Nay, that's all stuff and nonsense," said Job. "I mind the morning I
+found ye lying wet and frostit on the top of that grave."
+
+"D'ye say so? Well, I ain't for denying it; and now I think of it, I
+was--yes, I was here that morning."
+
+"Nay, you warn't nowt o' the sort," said the blacksmith. "That were the
+varra morning as Giles Raisley saw you at the Pack Horse sleeping. I
+mind the fratch Job had with laal Gubblum about it long ago."
+
+"It's all stuff and nonsense," replied Job. "He were here."
+
+"The Pack Horse? Well, now, I remember, I was there, too."
+
+The singing had ceased, and Greta came out into the porch on tiptoe,
+carrying in her arms a tiny mite, who was crying. Peter handed her the
+telegram, and turned up the path.
+
+Drayton had rejoined his companions, and was in the act of knocking the
+neck off a bottle by striking it against the wall, when Peter walked
+through the lych-gate.
+
+"Tee a pint o' yal down the Methodee's back," shouted Dick, the miller,
+and in another moment Brother Peter was covered with the contents of the
+broken bottle.
+
+A loud, roystering laugh filled the air, and echoed from the hills.
+
+"What a breck!" tittered the postman.
+
+"What a breck!" shouted the blacksmith.
+
+"What a breck!" roared the miller.
+
+"Get ower me 'at can!" mimicked Natt.
+
+"He's got a lad's heart, has Mister Paul," said the landlord of the
+Flying Horse.
+
+"Ey, he's a fair fatch," echoed little Tom o' Dint.
+
+Leaving Peter to shake himself dry of the liquor that dripped from him
+in froth, the noisy gang reeled down the road, the yelping dogs
+careering about them, and the cocks squawking with the hugs they
+received from the twitching arms of the men convulsed with laughter.
+
+At the head of the Vale of Newlands there is a clearing that was made by
+the lead miners of two centuries ago. It lies at the feet of an
+ampitheater of hills that rise peak above peak, and die off depth beyond
+depth. Of the old mines nothing remains but the level cuttings in the
+sides of the fells, and here and there the washing-pits cut out of the
+rock at your feet. Fragments of stone lie about, glistening with veins
+of lead, but no sound of pick or hammer breaks the stillness, and no
+cart or truck trundles over the rough path. It is a solitude in which
+one might forget that the world is full of noise.
+
+To this spot Drayton and his cronies made their way. At one of the old
+washing troughs they drew up, and sat in a circle on its rocky sides.
+They had come for a cock fight. It was to be the bantam (carried by Natt
+and owned by his master) against all comers. Drayton and the blacksmith
+were the setters-on. The first bout was between the bantam and Lang
+Geordie's ponderous black Spanish. Geordie's bird soon squawked
+dolorously, and made off over the heads of the derisive spectators,
+whereupon Geordie captured it by one of its outstretched wings, and
+forthwith screwed its neck. Then came John Proudfoot's silver and black,
+and straightway steel gaffs were affixed to the spurs. When the cocks
+felt their feet they crowed, and then pecked the ground from side to
+side. An exciting struggle ensued. Up and down, over and under, now
+beating the breast, now trailing the comb, now pecking at the gills. And
+the two men at opposite sides of the pit--the one in his shirt-sleeves
+rolled up to the elbows, the other in his sporting plaid--stooped with
+every lunge and craned their necks at every fall, and bobbed their heads
+with every peck, their eyes flashing, their teeth set.
+
+At one moment they drew off their birds, called for the files, and
+sharpened up the spurs. Later on they seized the cocks by the necks,
+shouted for the pitch-pot and patched up the bleeding combs. The birds
+were equally matched, and fought long. At last their strength ebbed
+away. They followed each other feebly, stretching their long, lagging
+throats languidly, opening their beaks and hanging out their dry, white
+tongues, turning tail, then twisting about and fighting again, until
+both lay stretched out on the pit bottom.
+
+As the energy of the cocks subsided, the ardor of the men waxed
+sensibly. They yelled excitedly, protested, reviled, swore, laughed,
+jeered, and crowed.
+
+At length, when the bantam fell and gave no signs of speedy
+resurrection, the anger of Drayton could not be supported. He leaped
+across the pit, his face red as his cock's comb, and shouting, "Damme,
+what for did ye pick up my bird?" he planted a blow full on the
+blacksmith's chest.
+
+A fight of yet fiercer kind followed. Amid shouts, and in the thick of a
+general scuffle, the blacksmith closed with his powerful adversary,
+gripped him about the waist, twisted him on his loins, and brought him
+to the ground with a crash. Then he stood over him with fierce eyes.
+
+"I mak' no doubt you're not hankerin' for another of that sort!" he
+puffed.
+
+"John's given him the cross-buttock," said the miller.
+
+"The master's lost all his wrustling," said Natt, blinking out of his
+sleepy eyes.
+
+"I mind the day when he could have put John down same as a bit boy,"
+said the little postman.
+
+Natt helped Drayton to his feet. He was quiet enough, now, but as black
+in the face as a thunder-cloud.
+
+"This comes of a gentleman mixing with them as is beneath him," he
+muttered, and he mopped his perspiring forehead with a bandanna
+handkerchief.
+
+The miller snorted, the mason grunted, the little postman laughed in his
+thin pipe.
+
+Drayton's eyes flashed.
+
+"I'm a gentleman, I am, if you want to know," he said, defiantly.
+
+The blacksmith stood by, leisurely rolling down his shirt-sleeves.
+
+"Ey, for fault of wise folk we call you so," he said, and laughed. "But
+when I leet of a man, I's rather have him nor a hundred sec gentlemen as
+you!"
+
+"Thoo's reet for once, John!" shouted Dick o' the Syke, and there was
+some general laughter.
+
+"Gentleman! Ax the women-folk what they mak' of sec a gentleman,"
+continued the blacksmith with contemptuous emphasis. "Him as larn't
+folks to fill the public and empty the cupboard."
+
+There was a murmur among the men as they twisted about.
+
+"Ax them what they mak' of him 'at spent four days in Lunnon and came
+back another man--ax the women-folk; they're maistly reet, I reckon."
+
+Another uneasy movement among the men.
+
+"Burn my body! and what's the women to me?" said Drayton.
+
+"Nay, nowt," answered the blacksmith. "Your awn wife seems nowdays
+powerful keen for your company."
+
+Drayton's eyes were red, but the fire died out of them in an instant. He
+stepped up to the blacksmith and held out his hand.
+
+"You've licked me," he said, in another tone, "but I ain't the man to
+keep spite, I ain't; so come along, old fence, and let's wet it."
+
+"That's weel said," put in Tommy Lowthwaite, the landlord.
+
+"It's no'but fair," said Dick, the miller.
+
+"He's a reet sort, after all," said Job, the mason.
+
+"He's his awn fadder's son, is Paul Ritson," said Tom o' Dint.
+
+In two minutes more the soiled company were trampling knee-deep through
+rank beds of rushes on their way to the other side of the dale. They
+stopped a few yards from a pit shaft with its headgear and wheel.
+
+"Let's take my brother's ken for it," said Drayton, and they turned into
+a one-story house that stood near.
+
+It was a single capacious chamber, furnished more like a library than an
+office; carpets, rugs, a cabinet, easychairs, and a solid table in the
+middle of the floor. The cock-fighters filed in and sat down on every
+available chair, on the table, and at last on the floor.
+
+"Squat and whiff," said Drayton, "and, Tommy, you out with the corks,
+quick."
+
+"It must be a bonny money-making consarn to keep up the likes of this,"
+said the miller, settling himself uneasily in an easy-chair.
+
+Dick was telling himself what a fool he had been not to ask more than
+the fifty pounds he received for the damage once done by fire to his
+mill.
+
+"Have you never heard as it ain't all gold as glitters?" said Drayton;
+and he struck a lucifer match on the top of the mahogany table.
+
+"What, man, dusta mean as the pit's not paying?" said the blacksmith.
+
+Drayton gave his head a sidelong shake of combined astuteness and
+reserve.
+
+"I mak' no doubt now as you have to lend Master Hugh many a gay penny,"
+said Tom o' Dint in an insinuating tone.
+
+"Least said, soonest mended," said Drayton, sententiously, and smiled a
+mighty knowing smile.
+
+Then the men laughed, and the landlord handed the bottles round, and all
+drank out of the necks, and puffed dense volumes of smoke from their
+pipes, and spat on the carpet.
+
+And still the birds sung in the clear air without, and still the ghylls
+rumbled, and still the light wind souched through the grass, and still
+the morning sunlight shone over all.
+
+The door opened, and Hugh Ritson entered, followed by the lawyer, Mr.
+Bonnithorne. There was a steely glimmer in his eyes as he stood just
+inside the threshold and looked round.
+
+"Come, get out of this!" he said.
+
+The men shuffled to their feet and were elbowing their way out. Drayton,
+who sat on the table, removed his pipe from between his teeth and called
+on them to remain.
+
+Hugh Ritson stepped up to Drayton and touched him on the shoulder.
+
+"I want to speak with you," he said.
+
+"What is it?" demanded Drayton.
+
+"I want to speak with you," repeated Hugh.
+
+"What is it? Out with it. You've got the gift of the gab, hain't ye?
+Don't mind my friends."
+
+Hugh Ritson's face whitened, and a cold smile passed over it.
+
+"Your time is near," he muttered, and he turned on his heel.
+
+As he stepped out of the noisesome chamber, a loud, hoarse laugh
+followed him. He drew a long breath.
+
+"Thank God it will soon be over!" he said.
+
+Bonnithorne was at his side.
+
+"Is it to be to-morrow?" asked the lawyer.
+
+"To-morrow," said Hugh Ritson.
+
+"Have you told him?"
+
+"Tell him yourself, Bonnithorne. I can bear with the man no longer. I
+shall be doing something that I may repent."
+
+"Have you apprised Parson Christian?"
+
+Hugh Ritson bent his head.
+
+"And Greta?"
+
+"She won't come," said Hugh. "The girl could never breathe the same air
+as that scoundrel for five minutes together."
+
+"And yet he's her half-brother," said the lawyer, softly; and then he
+added, with the conventional smile: "Odd, isn't it?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+When the procession of children had passed the little cottage at the
+angle of the roads, the old man who leaned on his staff at the gate
+turned about and stepped to the porch.
+
+"Did the boy see them?--did he see the children?" said the young woman
+who held the child by the hand.
+
+"I mak' na doot," said the old man.
+
+He stooped to the little one and held out one long, withered finger. The
+soft baby hand closed on it instantly.
+
+"Did he laugh? I thought he laughed," said the young woman.
+
+A bright smile played on her lips.
+
+"Maybe so, lass."
+
+"Ralphie has never seen the children before, father. Didn't he look
+frightened--just a little frightened--at first, you know? I thought he
+crept behind my gown."
+
+"Maybe, maybe."
+
+The little one had dropped the hand of his young mother, and, still
+holding the bony finger of his grandfather, he toddled beside him into
+the house.
+
+Very cool and sweet was the kitchen, with white-washed walls and hard
+earthen floor. A table and a settle stood by the window, and a dresser
+that was an armory of bright pewter dishes, trenchers, and piggins
+crossed the opposite wall.
+
+"Nay, but sista here, laal man," said the old charcoal-burner, and he
+dived into a great pocket at his side.
+
+"Have you brought it? Is it the kitten? Oh, dear, let the boy see it!"
+
+A kitten came out of the old man's pocket, and was set down on the rug
+at the hearth. The timid creature sat dazed, then raised itself on its
+hind legs and mewed.
+
+"Where's Ralphie? Is he watching it, father? What is he doing?"
+
+The little one had dropped on hands and knees before the kitten, and was
+gazing up into its face.
+
+The mother leaned over him with a face that would have beamed with
+sunshine if the sun of sight had not been missing.
+
+"Is he looking? Doesn't he want to coddle it?"
+
+The little chap had pushed his nose close to the nose of the kitten, and
+was prattling to it in various inarticulate noises.
+
+"Boo--loo--lal-la--mamma."
+
+"Isn't he a darling, father?"
+
+"It's a winsome wee thing," said the old man, still standing with
+drooping head over the group on the hearth.
+
+The mother's face saddened, and she turned away. Then from the opposite
+side of the kitchen, where she was making pretense to take plates from a
+plate-rack, there came the sound of suppressed sobs. The old man's eyes
+followed her.
+
+"Nay, lass; let's have a sup of broth," he said in a tone that carried
+another message.
+
+The young woman put plates and a bowl of broth on the table.
+
+"To think that I can never see my own child, and everybody else can see
+him!" she said, and then there was another bout of tears.
+
+The charcoal-burner supped at his broth in silence. A glistening bead
+rolled slowly down his wizened cheek, and the interview on the hearth
+went on without interruption:
+
+"Mew--mew--mew." "Boo--loo--lal-la--mamma."
+
+There was a foot on the gravel in front.
+
+"How fend ye, Mattha?" said a voice from without.
+
+"Come thy ways, Gubblum," answered the old man.
+
+Gubblum Oglethorpe entered, dressed differently than of old. He wore a
+suit of canvas stained deeply with iron ore.
+
+"I's thinking maybe Mercy will let me warm up my poddish," said Gubblum.
+
+"And welcome," said Mercy, and took down from the dresser a saucepan and
+porridge thivel. "I'll make it for you while father sups his broth."
+
+"Nay, lass, you're as thrang as an auld peat wife, I's warn. I'll mak'
+it myself. I's rather partic'lar about my poddish, forby. Dusta know how
+many faults poddish may have? They may be sour, sooty, sodden, and
+savorless, soat, welsh, brocken, and lumpy--and that's mair nor enough,
+thoo knows."
+
+Gubblum had gone down on the hearth-rug.
+
+"Why, and here's the son and heir," he said. "Nay, laddie, mind my
+claes--they'll dirty thy brand-new brat for thee."
+
+"Is he growing, Gubblum?"
+
+"Growing?--amain."
+
+"And his eyes--are they changing color?--going brown?"
+
+"Maybe--I'll not be for saying nay."
+
+"Is he--is he very like me?"
+
+"Nay--weel--nay--I's fancying I see summat of the stranger in the laal
+chap at whiles."
+
+The young mother turned her head. Gubblum twisted to where Matthew sat.
+
+"That man and all his raggabrash are raking about this morning. It caps
+all, it does, for sure."
+
+The old charcoal-burner did not answer. He paused with the spoon half
+raised, glanced at Mercy, and then went on with his broth.
+
+"Hasta heard of the lang yammer in the papers about yon matter?" said
+Gubblum.
+
+"Nay," said Matthew, "I hears nowt of the papers."
+
+"He's like to hang a lang crag when he hears about it."
+
+"I mak' na doubt," said Matthew, showing no curiosity.
+
+"It's my belief 'at the auld woman at Hendon is turning tail. You mind
+she was down last back end, and he wadn't have nowt to say to her."
+
+"Ey, I mind her," said Matthew.
+
+"Every dog has his day, and I reckon yon dog's day is nigh amaist done.
+And it wad have been a vast shorter on'y Mercy hadn't her eyes."
+
+"Ey, ey," said Matthew, quietly.
+
+"If the lass had no'but been able to say, 'Yon man is Drayton, and yon
+as you've got in prison is Ritson, and I saw the bad wark done,' that
+would have settled it."
+
+"Na doot," said Matthew, his head in the bowl.
+
+"They warn't for hearing me. When the parson took me up to Lunnon mair
+nor a twelvemonth agone, they sent us baith home with our tails atween
+our legs. 'Bring us the young woman,' they said; 'your evidence will
+stand aside hers, but not alone. Bring the young woman to 'dentify,'
+they says. 'She's gone blind,' we says. 'We can't help that,' they says.
+And that's what they call justice up in Lunnon."
+
+"Ey, ey," said Matthew.
+
+"But then thoo has to mak' 'lowances for them gentry folk--they've never
+been larn't no better, thoo sees."
+
+Gubblum's porridge was bubbling, and the thivel worked vigorously.
+Matthew had picked up the child from the hearth. The little fellow was
+tugging at his white beard.
+
+"It were bad luck that me and Mercy didn't stay a day or so langer in
+Hendon yon time. She had her eyes then. But the lass was badly, and"
+(dropping his voice) "that way, thoo knows, and I warn't to prophesy
+what was to happen to poor Paul Ritson. So I brought her straight away
+home."
+
+"So thoo did, Gubblum," said Matthew, stroking the child's head.
+
+"It's that Hugh as is at the bottom of it all, I reckon. I'm not afraid
+to say it, if he is my master. I allus liked Paul Ritson--the reet one,
+thoo knows, not this taistrel that calls hisself Paul Ritson--but I
+cared so laal for Hugh that I could have taken him and wrowk't the fire
+with him."
+
+The porridge was ready, and Mercy set a wooden bowl on the table. "I's
+fullen thy bicker, my lass," said Gubblum. "I's only a laal man, but I's
+got a girt appetite, thoo sees." Then turning to Matthew he continued:
+"But he's like to pay for it. He brought his raggabash here, and now the
+rascal has the upper hand--that's plain to see."
+
+"So it be," said Matthew.
+
+"Deemoralizin' all the country-side, what with his drinkin' and
+cock-fightin' and terriers, an' I don't know what. Theer's Dick o' the
+Syke, he's a ruined man this day, and John, the blacksmith, he's never
+had a heat on the anvil for a week, and as for Job, the mason, he's
+shaping to be mair nor ever like his Bible namesake, for he won't have
+nowt but his dunghill to sit on soon."
+
+"Dusta think they dunnot ken he's the wrong man?" asked Matthew.
+
+"Nay, Mattha, but a laal bit of money's a wonderful thing, mind ye."
+
+"It is for sure."
+
+"One day he went to clogger Kit to be measur't for new shoes. 'What,
+Master Ritson,' says Kit, 'your foot's langer by three lines nor when I
+put the tape on it afore.'"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Next day Kit had an order for two pairs, forby a pair of leggins and
+clogs for Natt. That's the way it's manish'd."
+
+Mercy had taken her child from her father's knee, and was sitting on the
+sconce bench with it, holding a broken piece of a mirror before its
+face, and listening for its laugh when it saw itself in the glass.
+
+"But he's none Cummerland--hearken to his tongue," said Matthew.
+
+Gubblum put down his spoon on his plate, now empty.
+
+"That minds me," he said, laughing, "that I met him out one day all
+dressed in his brave claes--them as might do for a nigger that plays the
+banjo. 'Off for a spogue?' I says. 'What's a spogue?' he says, looking
+thunder. 'Nay,' I says, 'you're no'but a dalesman--ax folks up Hendon
+way,' I says. I was peddling then, but Master Hugh 'counters me another
+day, and he says, 'Gubblum,' he says, 'I's wanting a smart laal man,
+same as you, to weigh the ore on the bank-top--pund a week,' he says."
+
+"Ey, I mak' no doot they thowt to buy thee ower," said Matthew.
+
+"They've made a gay canny blunder if they think they've put a swine ring
+on Gubblum's snout. Buy or beat--that's the word. They've bought most of
+the folk and made them as lazy as libbed bitches. But they warn't able
+to buy the Ritson's bitch itself."
+
+"What dusta mean, Gubblum?"
+
+"What, man! thoo's heard how the taistrel killed poor auld Fan? No?
+Weel, thoo knows she was Paul Ritson's dog, Fan was; and when she saw
+this man coming up the lonnin, she frisk't and wag't her tail. But when
+she got close to him she found her mistake, and went slenken off. He
+made shift to coax her, but Fan wad none be coaxed; and folks were
+takin' stock. So what dusta think the taistrel does, but ups with a
+stone and brains her."
+
+"That's like him, for sure," said Matthew. "But don't the folk see that
+his wife as it might be, Miss Greta as was, won't have nowt to say to
+him?"
+
+"Nay, they say that's no'but a rue-bargain, and she found out her mind
+after she wedded--that's all the clot-heads think about it."
+
+"Hark!" said Mercy, half rising from the sconce. "It's Mrs. Ritson's
+foot."
+
+The men listened. "Nay, lass, there's no foot," said Gubblum.
+
+"Yes, she's on the road," said Mercy. Her face showed that pathetic
+tension of the other senses which is peculiar to the blind. A moment
+later Greta stepped into the cottage. The telegram which Brother Peter
+gave her at the church was still in her hand.
+
+"Good-morning, Matthew; good-morning, Gubblum; I have news for you,
+Mercy. The doctors are coming to-day."
+
+Mercy's face fell perceptibly. The old man's head drooped lower.
+
+"There, don't be afraid," said Greta, touching her hand caressingly. "It
+will soon be over. The doctors didn't hurt you before, did they?"
+
+"No; but this time it will be the operation," said Mercy. There was a
+tremor in her voice.
+
+Greta had lifted the child from the sconce. The little fellow cooed
+close to her ear, and babbled his inarticulate nothings.
+
+"Only think, when it's all over you will be able to see your darling
+Ralphie for the first time!"
+
+Mercy's sightless face brightened. "Oh, yes," she said, "and watch him
+play, and see him spin his tops and chase the butterflies. Oh, that will
+be very good!"
+
+"Dusta say to-day, Mistress Ritson?" asked Matthew, the big drops
+standing in his eyes.
+
+"Yes, Matthew; I will stay to see it over, and mind baby, and help a
+little."
+
+Mercy took the little one from Greta's arms and cried over it, and
+laughed over it, and then cried and laughed again. "Mamma and Ralphie
+shall play together in the garden, darling, and Ralphie shall see the
+horses--and the flowers--and the birdies--and mamma--yes, mamma shall
+see Ralphie. Oh, Mrs. Ritson, how selfish I am!--how can I ever repay
+you?"
+
+The tears were trickling down Greta's cheeks. "It is I who am selfish,
+Mercy," she said, and kissed the sightless orbs. "Your dear eyes shall
+give me back my poor husband."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Two hours later the doctors arrived. They had called at the vicarage in
+driving up the valley, and Parson Christian was with them. They looked
+at Mercy's eyes, and were satisfied that the time was ripe for the
+operation. At the sound of their voices, Mercy trembled and turned
+livid. By a maternal instinct she picked up the child, who was toddling
+about the floor, and clasped it to her bosom. The little one opened wide
+his blue eyes at sight of the strangers, and the prattling tongue became
+quiet.
+
+"Take her to her room, and let her lie on the bed," said one of the
+doctors to Greta.
+
+A sudden terror seized the young mother. "No, no, no!" she said, in an
+indescribable accent, and the child cried a little from the pressure to
+her breast.
+
+"Come, Mercy, dear, be brave for your darling's sake," said Greta.
+
+"Listen to me," said the doctor, quietly but firmly. "You are now quite
+blind, and you have been in total darkness for a year and a half. We may
+be able to restore your sight by giving you a few minutes' pain. Will
+you not bear it?"
+
+Mercy sobbed, and kissed the child passionately.
+
+"Just think, it is quite certain that without an operation you will
+never regain your sight," continued the doctor. "You have nothing to
+lose and everything to gain. Are you satisfied? Come, go away to your
+room quietly."
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Mercy.
+
+"Just imagine, only a few minutes' pain, and even of that you will
+scarcely be conscious. Before you know what is doing, it will be done."
+
+Mercy clung closer to her child, and kissed it again and yet more
+fervently.
+
+The doctors turned to each other. "Strange vanity!" muttered the one who
+had not spoken before. "Her eyes are useless, and yet she is afraid she
+may lose them."
+
+Mercy's quick ears caught the whispered words. "It is not that," she
+said passionately.
+
+"No, gentlemen," said Greta, "you have mistaken her thought. Tell her
+she runs no danger of her life."
+
+The doctors smiled and laughed a little. "Oh, that's it, eh? Well, we
+can tell her that with certainty."
+
+Then there was another interchange of half-amused glances.
+
+"Ah, we that be men, sirs, don't know the depth and tenderness of a
+mother's heart," said Parson Christian. And Mercy turned toward him a
+face that was full of gratitude. Greta took the child out of her arms
+and hushed it to sleep in another room. Then she brought it back and put
+it in its cradle that stood in the ingle.
+
+"Come, Mercy," she said, "for the sake of your boy." And Mercy permitted
+herself to be led from the kitchen.
+
+"So there will be no danger," she said. "I shall not leave my boy. Who
+said that? The doctor? Oh, good gracious, it's nothing. Only think, I
+shall live to see him grow to be a great lad!"
+
+Her whole face was now radiant.
+
+"It will be nothing. Oh, no, it will be nothing. How silly it was to
+think that he would live on, and grow up, and be a man, and I lie cold
+in the church-yard, and me his mother! That was very childish, wasn't
+it? But, then, I have been so childish since Ralphie came."
+
+"There, lie and be quiet, and it will soon be over," said Greta.
+
+"Let me kiss him first. Do let me kiss him! Only once. You know it's a
+great risk, after all. And if he grew up--and I wasn't here, if--if--"
+
+"There, dear Mercy, you must not cry again. It inflames your eyes, and
+that can't be good for the doctors."
+
+"No, no, I won't cry. You are very good; everybody is very good. Only
+let me kiss my little Ralphie--just for the last."
+
+Greta led her back to the side of the cot, and she spread herself over
+it with outstretched arms, as the mother-bird poises with outstretched
+wings over her brood. Then she rose, and her face was peaceful and
+resigned.
+
+The Laird Fisher sat down before the kitchen fire, with one arm on the
+cradle-head. Parson Christian stood beside him. The old charcoal-burner
+wept in silence, and the good parson's voice was too thick for the words
+of comfort that rose to his lips.
+
+The doctors followed into the bedroom. Mercy was lying tranquilly on her
+bed. Her countenance was without expression. She was busy with her own
+thoughts. Greta stood by the bedside; anxiety was written in every line
+of her beautiful, brave face.
+
+"We must give her the gas," said one of the doctors, addressing the
+other.
+
+Mercy's features twitched.
+
+"Who said that?" she asked, nervously.
+
+"My child, you must be quiet," said the doctor in a tone of authority.
+
+"Yes, I will be quiet, very quiet; only don't make me unconscious," she
+said. "Never mind me; I will not cry. No; if you hurt me I will not cry
+out. I will not stir. I will do everything you ask. And you shall say
+how quiet I have been. Only don't let me be insensible."
+
+The doctors consulted aside, and in whispers.
+
+"Who spoke about the gas? It wasn't you, Mrs. Ritson, was it?"
+
+"You must do as the doctors wish, dear," said Greta in a caressing
+voice.
+
+"Oh, I will be very good. I will do every little thing. Yes, and I will
+be so brave. I am a little childish sometimes, but I can be brave, can't
+I?"
+
+The doctors returned to the bedside.
+
+"Very well, we will not use the gas," said one. "You are a brave little
+woman, after all. There, be still--very still."
+
+One of the doctors was tearing linen into strips for bandages, while
+the other fixed Mercy's head to suit the light.
+
+There was a faint sound from the kitchen. "Wait," said Mercy. "That is
+father--he's crying. Tell him not to cry. Say it's nothing."
+
+She laughed a weak little laugh.
+
+"There, he will hear that; go and say it was I who laughed."
+
+Greta left the room on tiptoe. Old Matthew was still sitting over a
+dying fire, gently rocking the sleeping child. Parson Christian's eyes
+were raised in prayer.
+
+When Greta returned to the bedroom, Mercy called her, and said very
+softly--"Let me hold your hand, Greta--may I say Greta?--there," and her
+fingers closed on Greta's with a convulsive grasp.
+
+The operation began. Mercy held her breath. She had the stubborn
+north-country blood in her. Once only a sigh escaped. There was a dead
+silence.
+
+In two or three minutes the doctor said: "Just another minute, and all
+will be over."
+
+At the next instant Greta felt her hand held with a grasp of iron.
+
+"Doctor, doctor, I can see you!" cried Mercy, and her words came in
+gusts.
+
+"Be quiet," said the doctor in a stern voice. In half a minute more the
+linen bandages were being wrapped tightly over Mercy's eyes.
+
+"Doctor, dear doctor, let me see my boy," cried Mercy.
+
+"Be quiet, I say," said the doctor again.
+
+"Dear doctor, my dear doctor, only one peep--one little peep--I saw your
+face--let me see my Ralphie's!"
+
+"Not yet, it is not safe."
+
+"But only for a moment. Don't put the bandage on for one moment. Just
+think, doctor, I have never seen my boy; I've seen other people's
+children, but never once my own, own darling. Oh, dear doctor--"
+
+"You are exciting yourself. Listen to me; if you don't behave yourself
+now you may never see your child."
+
+"Yes, yes, I will behave myself; I will be very good. Only don't shut me
+up in darkness again until I see my boy. Greta, bring him to me.
+Listen: I hear his breathing. Go for my darling. The kind doctor won't
+be angry with you. Tell him that if I see my child it will cure me. I
+know it will."
+
+Greta's eyes were swimming in tears.
+
+"Rest quiet, Mercy. Everything may be lost if you disturb yourself now,
+my dear."
+
+The doctors were wrapping bandage over bandage, and fixing them firmly
+at the back of their patient's head.
+
+"Now listen again," said one of them. "This bandage must be kept over
+your eyes for a week."
+
+"A week--a whole week? Oh, doctor, you might as well say forever!"
+
+"I say a week. And if you should ever remove it--"
+
+"Not for an instant? Not raise it a little?"
+
+"If you ever remove it for an instant, or raise it ever so little, you
+will assuredly lose your sight forever. Remember that."
+
+"Oh, doctor, it is terrible! Why did you not tell me so before? Oh, this
+is worse than blindness! Think of the temptation, and I have never seen
+my boy!"
+
+The doctor had fixed the bandage, and his voice was less stern, but no
+less resolute.
+
+"You must obey me," he said; "I will come again this day week, and then
+you shall see your child, and your father, and this young lady, and
+everybody. But, mind, if you don't obey me you will never see anything.
+You will have one glance of your little boy, and then be blind forever,
+or perhaps--yes, perhaps die."
+
+Mercy lay quiet for a moment. Then she said in a low voice:
+
+"Dear doctor, you must forgive me. I am very willful, and I promised to
+be so good. I will not touch the bandage. No, for the sake of my little
+boy, I will never, never touch it. You shall come yourself and take it
+off, and then I shall see him."
+
+The doctors went away. Greta remained all night in the cottage.
+
+"You are happy now, Mercy?" said Greta.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Mercy. "Just think, only a week! And he must be so
+beautiful by this time."
+
+When Greta took the child to her at sunset, there was an ineffable joy
+in her pale face, and next morning, when Greta awoke, Mercy was singing
+softly to herself in the sunrise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+There was a gathering of miners near the pit-head that morning. It was
+pay day. The rule was that the miners on the morning shift should pass
+through the pay-office before going down the shaft at eight o'clock; and
+that those on the night shift should pass through on their way home a
+few minutes afterward. When the morning men passed through the office
+they had found the pay-door shut, and a notice posted over it, saying,
+"All wages due at eight o'clock to-day will be paid at the same hour
+to-morrow."
+
+Presently the men on the night shift came up in the cages, and after a
+brief explanation both gangs, with the banksmen and all top-ground
+hands, except the engine-man, trooped away to a place suitable for a
+conference. There was a worked-out open cutting a hundred yards away. It
+was a vast cleft dug into the side of the mountain, square on its base,
+vertical in its three gray walls, and sweeping up to a dizzy height,
+over which the brant sides of the green fell rose sheer into the sky. It
+was to this natural theatre that the two hundred miners made their way
+in groups of threes and fours, their lamps and cans in their hands,
+their red-stained clothes glistening in the morning sun.
+
+It was decided to send a deputation to the master, asking that the order
+might be revoked and payment made as usual. The body of the men remained
+in the clearing, conversing in knots, while two miners, buirdly fellows,
+rather gruffer of tongue than the rest, went to the office to act as
+spokesmen.
+
+The deputation were approaching the pit-head when the engine-man shouted
+that he had just heard the master's knock from below, and in another
+moment Hugh Ritson, in flannels and fustian, stepped out of the cage.
+
+He heard the request, and at once offered to go to the men and give his
+answer. The miners made way for him respectfully, and then closed about
+him when he spoke.
+
+"Men," he said, with a touch of his old resolution, "let me tell you
+frankly, as between man and man, that I can not pay you this morning,
+because I haven't got the money. I tried to get it, and failed. This
+afternoon I shall receive much more than is due to you, and to-morrow
+you shall be promptly paid."
+
+The miners twisted about and compared notes in subdued voices.
+
+"That's no'but fair," said one.
+
+"He cannut say na fairer," said another.
+
+But there were some who were not so easily appeased; and one of these
+crushed his way through the crowd, and said:
+
+"Mr. Ritson, we're not same as the bettermer folk, as can get credit for
+owt 'at they want. We ax six days' pay because we have to do six days'
+payin' wi' it. And if we're back a day in our pay we're a day back in
+our payin'; and that means clemmin' a laal bit--and the wife and barns
+forby."
+
+There were murmurs of approval from the crowd, and then another
+malcontent added:
+
+"Times has changed to a gay tune sin' we could put by for a rainy day.
+It's hand to mouth now, on'y the mouth's allus ready and the hand's
+not."
+
+"It's na much as we ha' gotten to put away these times," said the first
+speaker. "Not same as the days when a pitman's wife, 'at I ken on, flung
+a five-pound note in his face and axed him what he thowt she were to
+mak' o' that."
+
+"Nay, nay," responded the others in a chorus.
+
+"Men, I'm not charging you with past extravagance," said Hugh Ritson;
+"and it's not my fault if the pit hasn't done as well for all of us as I
+had hoped."
+
+He was moving away, when the crowd closed about him again.
+
+"Mates," shouted one of the miners, "there's another word as some on us
+wad like to say to the master, and that's about the timber."
+
+"What is it?" asked Hugh Ritson, facing about.
+
+"There be some on us 'at think the pit's none ower safe down the bottom
+working, where the seam of sand runs cross-ways. We're auld miners,
+maistly, and we thowt maybe ye wadna tak' it wrang if we telt ye 'at it
+wants a vast mair forks and upreets."
+
+"Thank you, my lads, I'll see what I can do," said Hugh Ritson; and then
+added in a lower tone: "But I've put a forest of timber underground
+already, and where this burying of money is to end God alone knows."
+
+He turned away this time and moved off, halting more noticeably than
+usual on his infirm foot.
+
+He returned to his office near the pit-bank, and found Mr. Bonnithorne
+awaiting him.
+
+"The day is young, but I'm no sluggard, you know," said the lawyer. "I
+thought we might want a word or two before the meeting at the Ghyll."
+
+Hugh Ritson did not notice the explanation. He looked anxious and
+disturbed. While stripping off his pit flannels, and putting on his
+ordinary clothes, he told Mr. Bonnithorne what had just occurred, and
+then added:
+
+"If anything had been necessary to prove that this morning's bad
+business is inevitable, I should have found it in this encounter with
+the men."
+
+"It comes as a fillip to your already blunted purpose," said the lawyer
+with a curious smile. "Odd, isn't it?"
+
+"Blunted!" said Hugh Ritson, and there was a perceptible elevation of
+the eyebrows.
+
+Presently he drew a long breath, and said with an air of relief:
+
+"Ah, well, if she suffers who has suffered enough already, he, at least,
+will be out of the way forever."
+
+Bonnithorne shifted slightly on his seat.
+
+"You think so?" he asked.
+
+Something cynical in the tone caught Hugh Ritson's ear.
+
+"It was a bad change, wasn't it?" added the lawyer; "this one is likely
+to be a deal more troublesome."
+
+Hugh Ritson went on with his dressing in silence.
+
+"You see, by the interchange your positions were reversed," continued
+the lawyer.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the other was in your hands,
+while you are in the hands of this one."
+
+Hugh Ritson's foot fell heavily at that instant, but he merely said,
+with suppressed quietness:
+
+"There was this one's crime."
+
+"Was--precisely," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+Hugh Ritson looked up with a look of inquiry.
+
+"When you gave the crime to the other, this one became a free man," the
+lawyer explained.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"What does it all come to?" said Hugh Ritson, sullenly.
+
+"That your hold of Paul Drayton is gone forever."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Because you can never incriminate him without first incriminating
+yourself," said the lawyer.
+
+"Who talks of incrimination?" said Hugh Ritson, testily. "To-day, this
+man is to take upon himself the name of Paul Lowther--his true name,
+though he doesn't know it, blockhead as he is. Therefore, I ask again:
+What does it all come to?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne shifted uneasily.
+
+"Nothing," he said, meekly, but the curious smile still played about his
+downcast face.
+
+Then there was silence again.
+
+"Do you know that Mercy Fisher is likely to regain her sight?" said
+Hugh.
+
+"You don't say so? Dear me, dear me!" said the lawyer, sincere at last.
+"In all the annals of jurisprudence there is no such extraordinary case
+of identity being conclusively provable by one witness only, and of that
+witness becoming blind. Odd, isn't it?"
+
+Hugh Ritson smiled coldly.
+
+"Odd? Say providential," he answered. "I believe that's what you church
+folk call it when the Almighty averts a disaster that is made imminent
+by your own short-sightedness."
+
+"A disaster, indeed, if her sight ceases to be so providentially short,"
+said the lawyer.
+
+"Get the man out of the way, and the woman is all right," said Hugh. He
+picked a letter out of a drawer, and handed it to Mr. Bonnithorne. "You
+will remember that the other was to have shipped to Australia."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne bowed his head.
+
+"This letter is from the man for whom he intended to go out--an old
+friend of my father. Answer it, Bonnithorne."
+
+"In what terms?" asked the lawyer.
+
+"Say that a long illness prevented, but that Paul Ritson is now prepared
+to fulfill his engagement."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"What then?" Hugh Ritson echoed. "Why, what do you think?"
+
+"Send him?" with a motion of the thumb over the shoulder.
+
+"Of course," said Hugh.
+
+Again the cynical tone caught Hugh Ritson's ear, and he glanced up
+quickly, but made no remark. He was now dressed.
+
+"I am ready," and on reaching the door and taking a last look round the
+room, he added: "I'll have the best of this furniture removed to the
+Ghyll to-morrow. The house has been unbearable of late, and I've been
+forced to spend most of my time down here."
+
+"Then you don't intend to give him much grace?" asked Bonnithorne.
+
+"Not an hour."
+
+The lawyer bent his forehead very low at that moment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The sun was high over the head of Hindscarth, but a fresh breeze was
+blowing from the north, and the walk to the Ghyll was bracing. Mr.
+Bonnithorne talked little on the way, but Hugh Ritson's spirits rose
+sensibly, and he chatted cheerfully on indifferent subjects. It was
+still some minutes short of nine o'clock when they reached the house.
+The servants were bustling about in clean aprons and caps.
+
+"Have the gentlemen arrived?" asked Hugh.
+
+"Not yet, sir," answered one of the servants--it was old Dinah Wilson.
+
+The two men stepped up to Hugh Ritson's room. There the table was spread
+for breakfast. The lawyer glanced at the chairs, and said:
+
+"Then you have invited other friends?"
+
+Hugh nodded his head, and sat down at the organ.
+
+"Three or four neighbors of substance," he said, opening the case. "In a
+matter like this it is well to have witnesses."
+
+Bonnithorne replied with phlegm:
+
+"But what about the feelings of the man who is so soon to be turned out
+of the house?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's fingers were on the keys. He paused and faced about.
+
+"I had no conception that you had such a delicate sense of humor,
+Bonnithorne," he said, with only the shadow of a smile. "Feelings! His
+feelings!"
+
+There was a swift glide up the notes, and other sounds were lost. The
+window was half open; the lawyer walked to it and looked out. At that
+moment the two men were back to back. Hugh Ritson's head was bent over
+the keyboard. Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes were on the tranquil landscape
+lying in the sun outside. The faces of both wore curious smiles.
+
+Hugh Ritson leaped from his seat.
+
+"Ah, I feel like another man already," he said, and took a step or two
+up and down the room, his infirm foot betraying no infirmity. There was
+the noise of fresh arrivals in the hall. A minute later a servant
+entered, followed by three gentlemen, who shook hands effusively with
+Hugh Ritson.
+
+"Delighted to be of service, I'm sure," said one.
+
+"Glad the unhappy connection is to be concluded--it was a scandal," said
+the other.
+
+"You could not go on living on such terms--life wasn't worth it, you
+know," said the first.
+
+The third gentleman was more restrained, but Hugh paid him marked
+deference. They had a short, muttered conference apart.
+
+"Get the other mortgages wiped off the deeds and I have no objection to
+lend you the money on the security of the house and land," said the
+gentleman. At that remark Hugh Ritson bowed his head and appeared
+satisfied.
+
+He rang for breakfast.
+
+"Ask Mr. Paul if he is ready," he said, when Dinah brought the tray.
+
+"Master Paul is abed, sir," said Dinah; and then she added for herself:
+"It caps all--sec feckless wark. It dudn't use to be so, for sure. I'll
+not say but a man may be that changed in a twelvemonth--"
+
+"Ah, I'll go to him myself," said Hugh; and begging to be excused, he
+left the room.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne followed him to the other side of the door.
+
+"Have you counted the cost?" he asked. "It will be a public scandal."
+
+Hugh smiled, and answered with composure:
+
+"Whose will be the loss?"
+
+"God knows!" said the lawyer, with sudden energy.
+
+Hugh glanced up quickly. There was the murmur of voices from within the
+room they had just left.
+
+"Is it that you are too jealous of your good name to allow it to be
+bruited abroad in a scandal, as you say?"
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne's face wore a curious expression at that moment.
+
+"It's not my good name that is in question," he said, quietly, and
+turned back to the door.
+
+"Whose then? His?"
+
+But the lawyer already held the door ajar, and was passing into the
+room.
+
+Hugh Ritson made his way to the bedroom occupied by Paul Drayton. He
+opened the door without knocking. It was dark within. Thin streaks of
+dusty sunlight shot from between a pair of heavy curtains. The air was
+noisome with dead tobacco smoke and the fumes of stale beer. Hugh's
+gorge rose, but he conquered his disgust.
+
+"Who's there?" said a husky voice from behind the dark hangings of a
+four-post bed that was all but hidden in the gloom.
+
+"The friends are here," said Hugh Ritson, cheerily. "How long will you
+be?"
+
+There was a suppressed chuckle.
+
+"All right."
+
+"We will begin breakfast," said Hugh. He was turning to go.
+
+"Is that lawyer man back from Scotland?" asked Drayton.
+
+"Bonnithorne? He's here--he didn't say that he'd been away," said Hugh.
+
+"All right."
+
+Hugh Ritson returned to the bed-head. "Have you heard," he said in a
+subdued voice, "that the doctors have operated on the girl Mercy, and
+that she is likely to regain her sight?"
+
+"Eh? What?" Drayton had started up in bed. Then rolling down his sleeves
+and buttoning them leisurely, he added: "But that ain't nothing to me."
+
+Hugh Ritson left the room. He was in spirits indeed, for he had borne
+even this encounter with equanimity. As he passed through the house,
+Brother Peter entered at the porch with a letter in his hand.
+
+"Is Parson Christian coming?" said Hugh.
+
+"Don't know 'at I've heard," said Peter. "He's boddered me to fetch ye a
+scribe of a line. Here 'tis."
+
+Hugh Ritson opened the envelope. The note ran:
+
+   "I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to break bread with one who
+   has broken the peace of my household; nor is it agreeable to my duty
+   as a minister of Christ to give the countenance of my presence to
+   proceedings which must be a sham, inasmuch as the person concerned is
+   an imposter--with the which name I yet hope to brand him when the
+   proper time and circumstances arrive."
+
+Hugh smiled as he read the letter; then he thrust a shilling into
+Peter's unyielding hand, and shot away.
+
+"The parson will not come," said Hugh, drawing Bonnithorne aside; "but
+that can not matter. If he is Greta's guardian, you are her father's
+executor." Then, raising his voice, "Gentlemen," he said, "my brother
+wishes us to begin breakfast; he will join us presently."
+
+The company was soon seated; the talk was brisk and cheerful.
+
+"Glorious prospect," said a gentleman sitting opposite the open window.
+"Often wonder you don't throw out a bay, Mr. Ritson."
+
+"I've thought of it," said Hugh, "but it's not worth while to spend such
+money until one is master of one's own house."
+
+"Ah, true, true!" said several voices in chorus.
+
+Drayton entered, his eyes red, his face sallow. "Morning, gents," he
+said in his thick guttural.
+
+Two of the gentlemen rose, and bowed with frigid politeness. "Good
+morning, Mr. Ritson," said the third.
+
+The servant had followed Drayton into the room with a beefsteak
+underdone. "Post not come?" he asked, shifting his plates.
+
+"It can't be long now," said Bonnithorne, consulting his watch.
+
+"Sooner the better," Drayton muttered. He took some papers from a
+breast-pocket and counted them; then fixed them in his waistcoat, where
+his watch would have been if he had worn one.
+
+When breakfast was done, Hugh Ritson took certain documents from a
+cabinet. "Be seated, gentlemen," he said. All sat except Drayton, who
+lighted a pipe, and rang to ask if the postman had come. He had not.
+"Then go and sharpen up his heels."
+
+"My duty would be less pleasant," said Hugh Ritson, "if some of the
+facts were not already known."
+
+"Then we'll take 'em as read, so we will," put in Drayton, perambulating
+behind a cloud of smoke.
+
+"Paul, I will ask you to be seated," said Hugh, in an altered tone.
+
+Drayton sat down with a snort.
+
+"I have to tell you," continued Hugh Ritson, "that my brother known to
+you as Paul Ritson, is now satisfied that he was not the heir of my
+father, who died intestate."
+
+There were sundry nods of the grave noddles assembled about the table.
+
+"Fearful shock to any man," said one. "No wonder he has lost heart and
+grown reckless," said another.
+
+"On becoming aware of this fact, he was anxious to relinquish the estate
+to the true heir."
+
+There were further nods, and some muttered comments on the requirements
+of honor.
+
+"I show you here a copy of the register of my father's marriage, and a
+copy of the register of my own birth, occurring less than a year
+afterward. From these, in the absence of extraordinary testimony, it
+must be the presumption that I am myself my father's rightful heir."
+
+The papers were handed about and returned with evident satisfaction.
+
+"So far, all is plain," continued Hugh Ritson. "But my brother has
+learned that he is not even my father's son."
+
+Three astonished faces were lifted from the table. Bonnithorne sat with
+head bent. Drayton leaned an elbow on one knee and smoked sullenly.
+
+"It turns out that he is the son of my mother by another man," said Hugh
+Ritson.
+
+The guests twisted about. "Ah, that explains all," they whispered.
+
+"You will be surprised to learn that my mother's husband by a former
+invalid marriage was no other than Robert Lowther, and that he who sits
+with us now as Paul Ritson is really Paul Lowther."
+
+At this, Hugh placed two further documents on the table.
+
+Drayton cleared his throat noisily.
+
+"Dear me, dear me! yet it's plain enough!" said one of the visitors.
+
+"Then what about Mrs. Ritson--Miss Greta, I mean?" asked another.
+
+"She is Paul Lowther's half-sister, and therefore his marriage with her
+must be annulled."
+
+The three gentlemen turned in their seats and looked amazed, Drayton
+still smoked in silence. Bonnithorne did not raise his head.
+
+"He will relinquish to me my father's estates, but he is not left
+penniless," continued Hugh Ritson. "By his own father's will he inherits
+five thousand pounds."
+
+Drayton snorted contemptuously, then spat on the floor.
+
+"Friends," said Hugh Ritson again, "there is only one further point, and
+I am loath to touch on it. My brother--I speak of Paul Lowther--on
+taking possession of the estates, exercised what he believed to be his
+legal right to mortgage them. I am sorry to say he mortgaged them
+deeply."
+
+There was an interchange of astute glances.
+
+"If I were a rich man, I should be content to be the loser, but I am a
+poor man, and am compelled to ask that those mortgages stand forfeit."
+
+"Is it the law?"
+
+"It is--and, as you will say, only a fair one," Hugh answered.
+
+"Who are the mortgagees?"
+
+"That is where the pity arises--the chief of them is no other than the
+daughter of Robert Lowther--Greta."
+
+Sundry further twists and turns. "Pity for her." "Well, she should have
+seen to his title. Who was her lawyer?"
+
+"Her father's executor, our friend Mr. Bonnithorne."
+
+"How much does she lose?"
+
+"I'm afraid a great deal--perhaps half her fortune," said Hugh.
+
+"No matter; it's but fair, Mr. Ritson is not to inherit an estate
+impoverished by the excesses of the wrong man."
+
+Drayton's head was still bent, but he scraped his feet restlessly.
+
+"I have only another word to say," said Hugh. "In affairs of this solemn
+nature, it is best to have witnesses, or perhaps I should have preferred
+to confer with Paul and Mr. Bonnithorne in private." He dropped his
+voice and added: "You see, there is my poor mother; and though, in a
+sense, she is no longer of this world, her good name must ever be sacred
+with me."
+
+The astute glances again, and two pairs of upraised hands. The lawyer
+had twisted toward the window.
+
+"But our friend Bonnithorne will tell you that the law in effect
+compelled me to evict my brother. You may not know that there is a
+condition of English law in which a bastard becomes a permanent heir;
+that is when he is called, in the language of the law, the bastard
+eigne." There was a tremor in his voice as he added softly: "Believe me,
+I had no choice."
+
+Drayton stamped his heavy foot, threw down his pipe, and jumped to his
+feet. "It's a lie, the lot of it!" he blurted. Then he fumbled at his
+watch-pocket, and pulled out a paper. "That's my register, straight and
+plain."
+
+He stammered it aloud:
+
+"Ritson, Paul; father, Allan Ritson; mother, Grace Ritson. Date of
+birth, April 6, 1847; place, Crieff, Scotland."
+
+Hugh Ritson, a little pale, smiled. The others turned to him in their
+amazement. In an instant he had regained an appearance of indifference.
+
+"Where does it come from?" he asked.
+
+"The registrar's at Edinburgh. D'ye say it ain't right?"
+
+"No; but I say, what is it worth? Gentlemen," said Hugh, turning to the
+visitors, "compare it with the register of my father's marriage.
+Observe, the one date is April 6, 1847; the other is June 12, 1847. Even
+if genuine, does it prove legitimacy?"
+
+Drayton laid his hand on the lawyer's arm. "Here you, speak up, will
+ye?" he said.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne rose, and then Hugh Ritson's pale face became ghastly.
+
+"This birth occurred in Scotland," he said. "Now, if the father happened
+to hold a Scotch domicile, and the mother lived with him as his wife,
+the child would be legitimate."
+
+"Without a marriage?"
+
+"Without a ceremony."
+
+Natt pushed into the room, his cap in one hand, a letter in the other.
+He had knocked twice, and none had heard. "The post, sir; one letter for
+Master Paul."
+
+"Good lad!" Drayton clutched it with a cry of delight.
+
+"But my father had no Scotch domicile," said Hugh, with apparent
+composure.
+
+"Oh, but he had," said Drayton, tearing open his envelope.
+
+"He was a Scotsman born," said Bonnithorne, taking another document from
+Drayton's hand. "See, this is his register. Odd, isn't it?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's eyes flashed. He looked steadily into the face of the
+lawyer, then he took the paper.
+
+The next moment he crushed it in his palm and flung it out of the
+window. "I shall want proof both of your facts and your law," he said.
+
+"Eh, and welcome," said Drayton, shouting in his agitation. "Listen to
+this," and he proceeded to read.
+
+"Wait! From whom?" asked Hugh Ritson. "Some pettifogger?"
+
+"The solicitor-general," said Bonnithorne.
+
+"Is that good enough?" asked Drayton, tauntingly.
+
+"Go on," said Hugh, rapping the table with his finger-tips.
+
+Drayton handed the letter to the lawyer. "Do you read it," he said; "I
+ain't flowery. I'm a gentleman, and--" He stopped suddenly and tramped
+the floor, while Bonnithorne read:
+
+   "If there is no reason to suppose the father lost his Scotch
+   domicile, the son is legitimate. If the husband recognized his wife
+   in registering his son's birth, the law of Scotland would presume
+   that there was a marriage, but whether of ceremony or consent would
+   be quite indifferent."
+
+There was a pause, Drayton took the letter from the lawyer's hands,
+folded it carefully, and put it in his fob-pocket. Then he peered into
+Hugh Ritson's face with a leer of triumph. Bonnithorne had slunk aside.
+The guests were silent.
+
+"D'ye hear?" said Drayton, "the son is legitimate." He gloated over the
+words, and tapped his pocket as he repeated them. "What d'ye say to it,
+eh?"
+
+At first Hugh Ritson struggled visibly for composure, and in an instant
+his face was like marble. Drayton came close to him.
+
+"You were going to give me the go-by, eh? Turn me out-o'-doors, eh?
+Damme, it's my turn now, so it is!"
+
+So saying, Drayton stepped to the door and flung it open.
+
+"This house is mine," he said; "go, and be damned to you!"
+
+At this unexpected blow, Hugh Ritson beat the ground with his foot. He
+looked round at the strangers, and felt like a wretch who was gagged and
+might say nothing. Then he halted to where Drayton stood with
+outstretched arm.
+
+"Let me have a word with you in private," he said in a voice that was
+scarcely audible.
+
+Drayton lifted his hand, and his fist was clinched.
+
+"Not a syllable!" he said. His accent was brutal and frenzied.
+
+Hugh Ritson's nostrils quivered, and his eyes flashed. Drayton quailed
+an instant, and burst into a laugh.
+
+There was a great silence. Bonnithorne was still before the window, his
+face down, his hands clasped behind him, his foot pawing the ground.
+Hugh Ritson walked to his side. He contemplated him a moment, and then
+touched him on the shoulder. When he spoke, his face was dilated with
+passion, and his voice was low and deep.
+
+"There is a Book," he said, "that a Churchman may know, which tells of
+an unjust steward. The master thought to dismiss him from his
+stewardship. Then the steward said within himself, 'What shall I do?'"
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"What did he do?" continued Hugh Ritson, and every word fell on the
+silence like the stroke of a bell. "He called his master's debtors
+together, and said to the first, 'How much do you owe?' 'One hundred
+measures.' Then he said, 'Write a bill for fifty.'"
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"What did that steward mean? He meant that when the master should
+dismiss him from his stewardship, the debtor should take him into his
+house."
+
+Hugh Ritson's manner was the white heat of calm. He turned half round to
+where Drayton stood, and raised his voice.
+
+"That debtor was henceforth bound hand and foot. Let him but parley with
+the steward, and the steward cried, 'Thief,' 'Forger,' 'Perjurer.'"
+
+Bonnithorne shuffled uneasily. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but
+the words would not come. At last he gulped down something that had
+seemed to choke him, smiled between his teeth a weak, bankrupt smile,
+and said:
+
+"How are we to read your parable? Are you the debtor bound hand and
+foot, and is your brother the astute steward?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's foot fell heavily.
+
+"Is it so?" he said, catching at the word. "Then be it so;" and his
+voice rose to a shrill cry. "That steward shall come to the ground, and
+his master with him!"
+
+At that he stepped back to where Drayton stood with eyes as full of
+bewilderment as frenzy.
+
+"Paul Lowther--" he said.
+
+"Call me Paul Ritson," interrupted Drayton.
+
+"Paul Lowther--"
+
+"Ritson!" Drayton shouted, and then, dropping his voice, he said,
+rapidly: "You gave it me, and by God I'll keep it!"
+
+Hugh Ritson leaned across the table and tapped a paper that lay on it.
+
+"That is your name," he said, "and I'll prove it."
+
+Drayton burst into another laugh.
+
+"You daren't try," he chuckled.
+
+Hugh turned upon him with eyes of fire.
+
+"So you measure my spirit by your own. Man, man!" he said, "do you know
+what you are doing?"
+
+There was another brutal laugh from Drayton, but it died suddenly on his
+lips.
+
+Then Hugh Ritson stepped to the door. He took a last look round. It was
+as if he knew that he had reached the beginning of the end--as if he
+realized that he was never again to stand in the familiar room. The
+future, that seemed so near an hour ago, was gone from him forever; the
+cup that he had lifted to his lips lay in fragments at his feet. He saw
+it all in that swift instant. On his face there were the lines of agony,
+but over them there played the smile of resolve. He put one hand to his
+forehead, and then said in a voice so low as to be no more than a
+whisper:
+
+"Wait and see."
+
+When the guests, who stood huddled together like sheep in a storm, had
+recovered their stunned senses, Hugh Ritson was gone from the room.
+Drayton had sunk into a chair near where Bonnithorne stood, and was
+whining like a whipped hound.
+
+"Go after him! What will he do? You know I was always against it!"
+
+But presently he stood up and laughed, and bantered and crowed, and
+observed that it was a pity if a gentleman could not be master in his
+own house, and that what couldn't be cured must be endured.
+
+"Precisely," interposed one of the guests, "and you have my entire
+sympathy, Mr. Ritson. A more cruel deception was never more manfully
+exposed."
+
+"I fully agree with you, neighbor," said another, "and such moral
+tyranny is fearful to contemplate. Paul Lowther, indeed! Now, that is a
+joke."
+
+"Well, it is rather, ain't it?" said Drayton. And then he laughed, and
+they all laughed and shook hands, and were excellent good friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Greta stayed with Mercy until noon that day, begging, entreating, and
+finally commanding her to lie quiet in bed, while she herself dressed
+and fed the child, and cooked and cleaned, in spite of the Laird
+Fisher's protestations. When all was done, and the old charcoal-burner
+had gone out on the hills, Greta picked up the little fellow in her
+arms and went to Mercy's room. Mercy was alert to every sound, and in an
+instant was sitting up in bed. Her face beamed, her parted lips smiled,
+her delicate fingers plucked nervously at the counterpane.
+
+"How brightsome it is to-day, Greta," she said. "I'm sure the sun must
+be shining."
+
+The window was open, and a soft breeze floated through the sun's rays
+into the room. Mercy inclined her head aside, and added, "Ah, you young
+rogue you; you are there, are you? Give him to me, the rascal!" The
+rogue was set down in his mother's arms, and she proceeded to punish his
+rascality with a shower of kisses. "How bonny his cheeks must be; they
+will be just like two ripe apples," and forthwith there fell another
+shower of kisses. Then she babbled over the little one, and lisped, and
+stammered, and nodded her head in his face, and blew little puffs of
+breath into his hair, and tickled him until he laughed and crowed and
+rolled and threw up his legs; and then she kissed his limbs and
+extremities in a way that mothers have, and finally imprisoned one of
+his feet by putting it ankle deep into her mouth. "Would you ever think
+a foot could be so tiny, Greta?" she said. And the little one plunged
+about and clambered laboriously up its mother's breast, and more than
+once plucked at the white bandage about her head. "No, no; Ralphie must
+not touch," said Mercy with sudden gravity. "Only think, Ralphie pet,
+one week--only one--ay, less--only six days now, and then--oh, then--" A
+long hug, and the little fellow's boisterous protest against the
+convulsive pressure abridged the mother's prophecy.
+
+All at once Mercy's manner changed. She turned toward Greta, and said:
+"I will not touch the bandage, no, never; but if Ralphie tugged at it,
+and it fell--would that be breaking my promise?"
+
+Greta saw what was in her heart.
+
+"I'm afraid it would, dear," she said; but there was a tremor in her
+voice.
+
+Mercy sighed audibly.
+
+"Just think, it would be only Ralphie. The kind doctors could not be
+angry with my little child. I would say, 'It was the boy,' and they
+would smile and say, 'Ah, that is different.'"
+
+"Give me the little one," said Greta with emotion.
+
+Mercy drew the child closer, and there was a pause.
+
+"I was very wrong, Greta," she said in a low tone. "Oh! you would not
+think what a fearful thing came into my mind a minute ago. Take my
+Ralphie. Just imagine, my own innocent baby tempted me."
+
+As Greta reached across the bed to lift the child out of his mother's
+lap, the little fellow was struggling to communicate, by help of a
+limited vocabulary, some wondrous intelligence of recent events that
+somewhat overshadowed his little existence. "Puss--dat," many times
+repeated, was further explained by one chubby forefinger with its
+diminutive finger-nail pointed to the fat back of the other hand.
+
+"He means that the little cat has scratched him," said Greta, "but bless
+the mite, he is pointing to the wrong hand."
+
+"Puss--dat," continued the child, and peered up into his mother's
+sightless face. Mercy was all tears in an instant. She had borne
+yesterday's operation without a groan, but now the scratch on her
+child's hand went to her heart like a stab.
+
+"Lie quiet, Mercy," said Greta; "it will be gone to-morrow."
+
+"Go-on," echoed the little chap, and pointed out at the window.
+
+"The darling, how he picks up every word!" said Greta.
+
+"He means the horse," explained Mercy.
+
+"Go-on--man--go-on," prattled the little one, with a child's
+indifference to all conversation except his own.
+
+"Bless the love, he must remember the doctor and his horse," said Greta.
+
+Mercy was putting her lips to the scratch on the little hand.
+
+"Oh, Greta, I am very childish; but a mother's heart melts like butter."
+
+"Batter," echoed the child, and wriggled out of Greta's arms to the
+ground, where he forthwith clambered on to the stool, and possessed
+himself of a slice of bread which lay on the table at the bedside. Then
+the fair curly head disappeared like a glint of sunlight through the
+door to the kitchen.
+
+"What shall I care if other mothers see my child? I shall see him, too,"
+said Mercy, and she sighed. "Yes," she added softly, "his hands and his
+eyes and his feet and his soft hair."
+
+"Try to sleep an hour or two, dear," said Greta, "and then perhaps you
+may get up this afternoon--only perhaps, you know, but we'll see."
+
+"Yes, Greta, yes. How kind you are."
+
+"You will be far kinder to me some day," said Greta, very tenderly.
+
+"No--ah, yes, I remember. How very selfish I am--I had quite forgotten.
+But then it is so hard not to be selfish when you are a mother. Only
+fancy, I never think of myself as Mercy now. No, never. I'm just
+Ralphie's mamma. When Ralphie came, Mercy must have died in some way.
+That's very silly, isn't it? Only it does seem true."
+
+"Man--go-on--batter," was heard from the kitchen, mingled with the
+patter of tiny feet.
+
+"Listen to him. How tricksome he is! And you should hear him cry, 'Oh!'
+You would say, 'That child has had an eye knocked out.' And then, in a
+minute, behold! he's laughing once more. There, I'm selfish again; but I
+will make up for it some day, if God is good."
+
+"Yes, Mercy, He is good," said Greta.
+
+Her arms rested on the door-jamb, and her head dropped on to it; her
+eyes swam. Did it seem at that moment as if God had been very good to
+these two women?
+
+"Greta," said Mercy, and her voice fell to a whisper, "do you think
+Ralphie is like--anybody?"
+
+"Yes, dear, he is like you."
+
+There was a pause. Then Mercy's hand strayed from under the bedclothes
+and plucked at Greta's gown.
+
+"Do you think," she asked, in a voice all but inaudible, "that father
+knows who it is?"
+
+"I can not say--we have never told him."
+
+"Nor I--he never asked, never once--only, you know, he gave up his work
+at the mine, and went back to the charcoal-pit when Ralphie came. But he
+never said a word."
+
+Greta did not answer. There was another pause. Then Mercy said, in a
+stronger voice, "Will it be soon--the trial?"
+
+"As soon as your eyes are better," said Greta, earnestly; "everything
+depends on your recovery."
+
+At that moment the bedroom door was pushed open with a little lordly
+bang, and the great wee man entered with his piece of bread stuck rather
+insecurely on one prong of a fork.
+
+"Toas," he explained complacently, "toas," and walked up to the empty
+grate and stretched his arm over the fender at the cold bars.
+
+"Why, there's no fire for toast, you darling goose," said Greta,
+catching him in her arms, much to his masculine vexation.
+
+Mercy had risen on an elbow, and her face was full of the yearning of
+the blind. Then she lay back.
+
+"Never mind," she said to herself in a faltering voice, "let me lie
+quiet and think of all his pretty ways."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Greta returned to the vicarage toward noon, and overtook Parson
+Christian and Peter in the lonnin, the one carrying a scythe over his
+shoulder, the other a bundle of rushes under his one arm. The parson was
+walking in silence under the noontide sun, his straw hat tipped back
+from his forehead and his eyes on the ground. He was busy with his own
+reflections. It was not until Greta had tripped up to his side and
+slipped his scythe-stone from its strap in the pole that the parson was
+awakened from his reverie.
+
+"Great news, Greta--great news, my lass!" he said in answer to her
+liberal tender in exchange for his thoughts. "How well it's said, that
+he that diggeth a pit for another should look that he fall not into it
+himself."
+
+"What news, Mr. Christian?" said Greta, and her color heightened.
+
+"Well, we've been mowing the grass in the church-yard, Peter and I, and
+the scythe is old like ourselves, and it wanted tempering. So away we
+went to the smithy to have it ground, and who should come up but Robbie
+Atkinson, leading hassocks from Longridge. And Robbie would fain have us
+go with him and be cheerful at the Flying Horse. Well, we'd each had a
+pot of ale and milk, when in came Natt, the stableman at Ritson's, all
+lather like one of his horses after his master has been astride her. And
+Natt was full of a great quarrel at the Ghyll, wherein young Mr. Hugh
+had tried to turn yonder man out of the house in the way I told you of
+before, but the man denied that he was what Hugh called him, and clung
+to it that he was Paul Ritson, and brought documents to show that Paul
+was his father's rightful heir, after all."
+
+"Well, well?" asked Greta, breathlessly.
+
+Peter had shambled on to the house.
+
+"Well, Natt is no very trustworthy chronicler, I fear, but one thing is
+plain, and that is, that Mr. Hugh, who thought to turn yon man out of
+the house, has been turned out of it himself."
+
+Greta stood in the road, trembling from head to foot.
+
+"My poor husband!" she said in a whisper. Then came a torrent of
+questions. "When did this happen? What think you will come of it? Where
+will Hugh go? What will he do? Ah, Mr. Christian, you always said the
+cruel instrument would turn in his hand!"
+
+There was a step behind them. In their anxiety they had not noticed it
+until it was close at their heels. They turned, and were face to face
+with Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+The lawyer bowed, but before they had exchanged the courtesies of
+welcome, a horse's tramp came from the road, and in a moment Drayton
+rode up the lonnin. His face was flushed, and his manner noisy as he
+leaped from the saddle into their midst.
+
+Greta lifted one hand to her breast, and with the other hand she clasped
+that of the parson. The old man's face grew rigid in an instant, and
+all the mellowness natural to it died away.
+
+Drayton made up to Greta and the parson with an air of braggadocio.
+
+"I've come to tell you once for all that my wife must live under my
+roof."
+
+No one answered. Drayton took a step near, and slapped his boot with his
+riding-whip.
+
+"The law backs me up in it, and I mean to have it out."
+
+Still there was no answer, and Drayton's braggadocio gathered assurance
+from the silence.
+
+"Not as I want her. None of your shrinking away, madame." A hoarse
+laugh. "Burn my body! if I wouldn't as soon have my mother for a wife."
+
+"What then?" said the parson in a low tone.
+
+"Appearances. I ain't to be a laughing-stock of the neighborhood any
+longer. My wife's my wife. A husband's a husband, and wants obedience."
+
+"And what if you do not get it?" asked the parson, his old face
+whitening.
+
+"What? Imprisonment--that's what." Drayton twisted about and touched the
+lawyer with the handle of his whip. "Here, you, tell 'em what's what."
+
+Thus appealed to, Mr. Bonnithorne explained that a husband was entitled
+to the restitution of connubial rights, and, in default, to the
+"attachment" of his spouse.
+
+"The law," said Mr. Bonnithorne, "can compel a wife to live with her
+husband, or punish her with imprisonment for not doing so."
+
+"D'ye hear?" said Drayton, slapping furiously at the sole of his boot.
+"Punish her with imprisonment."
+
+There was a pause, and then the parson said, quietly but firmly:
+
+"I gather that it means that you want to share this lady's property."
+
+"Well, what of it? Hain't I a right to share it, eh?"
+
+"You have thus far enjoyed the benefit of her mortgages, on the pretense
+that you are her husband; but now you are going too far."
+
+"We'll see. Here, you," prodding the lawyer, "take proceedings at once.
+If she won't come, imprison her. D'ye hear--imprison her!"
+
+He swung about and caught the reins from the horse's mane, laughing a
+hollow laugh. Greta disengaged her hand from the hand of the parson, and
+stepped up to Drayton until she stood before him face to face, her eyes
+flashing, her lips quivering, her cheeks pale, her whole figure erect
+and firm.
+
+"And what of that?" she said. "Do you think to frighten me with the
+cruelties of the law?--me?--me?" she echoed, with scorn in every
+syllable. "Have I suffered so little from it already that you dare to
+say, 'Imprison her,' as if that would drive me to your house?"
+
+Drayton tried to laugh, but the feeble effort died on his hot lips. He
+spat on the ground, and then tried to lift his eyes back to the eyes of
+Greta, but they fell to the whip that he held in his hand.
+
+"Imprison me, Paul Drayton! I shall not be the first you've imprisoned.
+Imprison me, and I shall be rid of you and your imposture!" she said,
+raising her voice.
+
+Drayton leaped to the saddle.
+
+"I'll do it!" he muttered; and now, pale, crushed, his braggadocio gone,
+he tugged his horse's head aside and brought down the whip on its flank.
+
+Parson Christian turned to Mr. Bonnithorne.
+
+"Follow him," he said, resolutely, and lifted his hand.
+
+The lawyer made a show of explanation, then assumed an air of authority,
+but finally encountered the parson's white face, and turned away.
+
+In another moment Greta was hanging on Parson Christian's neck, sobbing
+and moaning, while the good old Christian, with all the mellowness back
+in his wrinkled face, smoothed her hair as tenderly as a woman.
+
+"My poor Paul, my dear husband!" cried Greta.
+
+"Ah! thanks be to God, things are at their worst now, and they can't
+move but they must mend," said the parson.
+
+He took her indoors and bathed her hot forehead, and dried with his hard
+old hand the tears that fell from eyes that a moment before had flashed
+like a basilisk's.
+
+Toward five o'clock that evening a knock came to the door of the
+vicarage, and old Laird Fisher entered. His manner was more than usually
+solemn and constrained.
+
+"I's coom't to say as ma lass's wee thing is taken badly," he said, "and
+rayder sudden't."
+
+Greta rose from her seat and put on her hat and cloak. She was hastening
+down the road while the charcoal-burner was still standing in the middle
+of the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+When Greta reached the old charcoal-burner's cottage, the little one was
+lying in a drowsy state in Mercy's arms. Its breathing seemed difficult;
+sometimes it started in terror; it was feverish and suffered thirst. The
+mother's wistful face was bent down on it with an indescribable
+expression. There were only the trembling lips to tell of the sharp
+struggle that was going on within. But the yearning for a sight of the
+little flushed countenance, the tearless appeal for but one glimpse of
+the drowsy little eyes, the half-articulate cry of a mother's heart
+against the fate that made the child she had suckled at her breast a
+stranger, whose very features she might not know--all this was written
+in that blind face.
+
+"Is he pale?" said Mercy. "Is he sleeping? He does not talk now, but
+only starts and cries, and sometimes coughs."
+
+"When did this begin?" asked Greta.
+
+"Toward four o'clock. He had been playing, and I noticed that he
+breathed heavily, and then he came to me to be nursed. Is he awake now?
+Listen."
+
+The little one in its restless drowsiness was muttering faintly,
+"Man--go-on--batter--toas."
+
+"The darling is talking in his sleep, isn't he?" said Mercy.
+
+Then there was a ringing, brassy cough.
+
+"It is croup," thought Greta.
+
+She closed the window, lighted a fire, placed the kettle so that the
+steam might enter the room, then wrung flannels out of hot water, and
+wrapped them about the child's neck. She stayed all that night at the
+cottage, and sat up with the little one and nursed it. Mercy could not
+be persuaded to go to bed, but she was very quiet. It had not yet taken
+hold of her that the child was seriously ill. He was drowsy and a little
+feverish, his pulse beat fast and he coughed hard sometimes, but he
+would be better in the morning. Oh, yes, he would soon be well again,
+and tearing up the flowers in the garden.
+
+Toward midnight the pulse fell rapidly, the breathing become quieter,
+and the whole nature seemed to sink. Mercy listened with her ear bent
+down at the child's mouth, and a smile of ineffable joy spread itself
+over her face.
+
+"Bless him, he is sleeping so calmly," she said.
+
+Greta did not answer.
+
+"The 'puss' and the 'man' don't darken his little life so much now,"
+continued Mercy, cheerily.
+
+"No, dear," said Greta, in as strong a voice as she could summon.
+
+"All will be well with my darling boy soon, will it not?"
+
+"Yes, dear," said Greta, with a struggle.
+
+Happily Mercy could not read the other answer in her face.
+
+Mercy had put her sensitive fingers on the child's nose, and was
+touching him lightly about the mouth.
+
+"Greta," she said in a startled whisper, "does he look pinched?"
+
+"A little," said Greta, quietly.
+
+"And his skin--is it cold and clammy?"
+
+"We must give him another hot flannel," said Greta.
+
+Mercy sat at the bedside, and said nothing for an hour. Then all at
+once, and in a strange, harsh voice, she said:
+
+"I wish God had not made Ralphie so winsome."
+
+Greta started at the words, but made no answer.
+
+The daylight came early. As the first gleams of gray light came in at
+the window, Greta turned to where Mercy sat in silence. It was a sad
+face that she saw in the mingled yellow light of the dying lamp and the
+gray of the dawn.
+
+Mercy spoke again.
+
+"Greta, do you remember what Mistress Branthet said when her baby died
+last back-end gone twelvemonth?"
+
+Greta looked up quickly at the bandaged eyes.
+
+"What?" she asked.
+
+"Well, Parson Christian tried to comfort her, and said, 'Your baby is
+now an angel in Paradise,' and she turned on him with 'Shaf on your
+angels--I want none on 'em--I want my little girl.'"
+
+Mercy's voice broke into a sob.
+
+Toward ten o'clock the doctor came. He had been detained. Very sorry to
+disoblige Mrs. Ritson, but fact was old Mr. de Broadthwaite had an
+attack of lumbago, complicated by a bout of toothache, and everybody
+knew he was most exacting. Young person's baby ill? Feverish, restless,
+starts in its sleep, and cough?--Ah, croupy cough--yes, croup, true
+croup, not spasmodic. Let him see; how old? A year and a half? Ah, bad,
+very. Most frequent in second year of infancy. Dangerous, highly so.
+Forms a membrane that occludes air passages. Often ends in convulsions,
+and child suffocates. Sad, very. Let him see again. How long since the
+attack began? Yesterday at four. Ah, far gone, far. The great man soon
+vanished, leaving behind him a harmless preparation of aconite and
+ipecacuanha.
+
+Mercy had heard all, and her pent-up grief broke out in sobs.
+
+"Oh, to think I shall hear my Ralphie no more, and to know his white
+cold face is looking up from a coffin, while other children are playing
+in the sunshine and chasing the butterflies! No, no, it can not be; God
+will not let it come to pass; I will pray to Him and He will save my
+child. Why, He can do anything, and He has all the world. What is my
+little baby boy to Him? He will not let it be taken from me!"
+
+Greta's heart was too full for speech. But she might weep in silence,
+and none there would know. Mercy stretched across the bed and, tenderly
+folding the child in her arms, she lifted him up, and then went down on
+her knees.
+
+"Merciful Father," she said in a childish voice of sweet confidence,
+"this is my baby, my Ralphie, and I love him so dearly. You would never
+think how much I love him. But he is ill, and doctor says he may die.
+Oh, dear Father, only think what it would be to say, 'His little face is
+gone.' And then I have never seen him. You will not take him away until
+his mother sees him. So soon, too. Only five days more. Why, it is quite
+close. Not to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the next, but the day after
+that!"
+
+She put in many another child-like plea, and then rose with a smile on
+her pale lips and replaced the little one on his pillow.
+
+"How patient he is," she said. "He can't say 'Thank you,' but I'm sure
+his eyes are speaking. Let me feel." She put her finger lightly on the
+child's lids. "No, they are shut; he must be sleeping. Oh, dear, he
+sleeps very much. Is he gaining color? How quiet he is! If he would only
+say, 'Mamma!' How I wish I could see him!"
+
+She was very quiet for awhile, and then plucked at Greta's gown
+suddenly.
+
+"Greta," she said eagerly, "something tells me that if I could only see
+Ralphie I should save him."
+
+Greta started up in terror. "No, no, no; you must not think of it," she
+said.
+
+"But some one whispered it. It must have been God Himself. You know we
+ought to obey God always."
+
+"Mercy, it was not God who said that. It was your own heart. You must
+not heed it."
+
+"I'm sure it was God," said Mercy. "And I heard it quite plain."
+
+"Mercy, my darling, think what you are saying. Think what it is you wish
+to do. If you do it you will be blind forever."
+
+"But I shall have saved my Ralphie."
+
+"No, no; you will not."
+
+"Will he not be saved, Greta?"
+
+"Only our heavenly Father knows."
+
+"Well, He whispered it in my heart. And, as you say, He knows best."
+
+Greta was almost distraught with fear. The noble soul in her would not
+allow her to appeal to Mercy's gratitude against the plea of maternal
+love. But she felt that all her happiness hung on that chance. If Mercy
+regained her sight, all would be well with her and hers; but if she lost
+it the future must be a blank.
+
+The day wore slowly on, and the child sunk and sunk. At evening the old
+charcoal-burner returned, and went into the bedroom. He stood a moment,
+and looked down at the pinched little face, and when the child's eyes
+opened drowsily for a moment he put his withered forefinger into its
+palm; but there was no longer a responsive clasp of the chubby hand.
+
+The old man's lips quivered behind his white beard.
+
+"It were a winsome wee thing," he said, faintly, and then turned away.
+
+He left his supper untouched and went into the porch. There he sat on a
+bench and whittled a blackthorn stick. The sun was sinking over the head
+of the Eel Crag; the valley lay deep in a purple haze; the bald top of
+Cat Bells stood out bright in the glory of the passing day. A gentle
+breeze came up from the south, and the young corn chattered with its
+multitudinous tongues in the field below. The dog lay at the
+charcoal-burner's feet, blinking in the sun and snapping lazily at a
+buzzing fly.
+
+The little life within was ebbing away. No longer racked by the ringing
+cough, the loud breathing became less frequent and more harsh. Mercy
+lifted the child from the bed and sat with it before the fire. Greta saw
+its eyes open, and at the same moment she saw the lips move slightly,
+but she heard nothing.
+
+"He is calling his mamma," said Mercy, with her ear bent toward the
+child's mouth.
+
+There was a silence for a long time. Mercy pressed the child to her
+breast; its close presence seemed to soothe her.
+
+Greta stood and looked down; she saw the little lips move once more, but
+again she heard no sound.
+
+"He is calling his mamma," repeated Mercy, wistfully, "and, oh, he seems
+such a long way off!"
+
+Once again the little lips moved.
+
+"He is calling me," said Mercy, listening intently; and she grew
+restless and excited. "He is going away. I can hear him. He is far off.
+Ralphie, Ralphie!" She had lifted the child up to her face. "Ralphie,
+Ralphie!" she cried.
+
+"Give me the baby, Mercy," said Greta.
+
+But the mother clung to it with a convulsive grasp.
+
+"Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie!..."
+
+There was a sudden flash of some white thing. In an instant the bandage
+had fallen from Mercy's head, and she was peering down into the child's
+face with wild eyes.
+
+"Ralphie, Ralphie!... Hugh!" she cried.
+
+The mother had seen her babe at last, and in that instant she had
+recognized the features of its father.
+
+At the next moment the angel of God passed through that troubled house,
+and the child lay dead at the mother's breast.
+
+Mercy saw it all, and her impassioned mood left her. She rose to her
+feet quietly, and laid the little one in the bed. There was never a sigh
+more, never a tear. Only her face was ashy pale, and her whitening lips
+quivered.
+
+"Greta," she said, very slowly, "will you go for him?"
+
+Greta kissed the girl's forehead tenderly. Her own calm, steadfast,
+enduring spirit sunk. All the world was dead to her now.
+
+"Yes, dear," she whispered.
+
+The next minute she was gone from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The evening was closing in; now and then the shrill cries of the birds
+pealed and echoed in the still air; a long, fibrous streak of silver in
+the sky ebbed away over the head of Hindscarth. Greta hastened toward
+the pit-brow. The clank of the iron chain in the gear told that the cage
+in the shaft was working.
+
+It was a year and a half since her life had first been overshadowed by a
+disaster more black and terrible than death itself, and never for an
+instant had the clouds been lifted until three days ago. Then, in a
+moment, the light had pierced through the empty sky, and a way had been
+wrought for her out of the labyrinth of misery. But even that passage
+for life and hope and love seemed now to be closed by the grim
+countenance of doom.
+
+Mercy would be blind forever! All was over and done. Greta's strong,
+calm spirit sunk and sunk. She saw the impostor holding to the end the
+name and place of the good man; and she saw the good man dragging his
+toilsome way through life--an outcast, a by-word, loaded with ignominy,
+branded with crime. And that unhappy man was her husband, and he had no
+stay but in her love--no hope but in her faith.
+
+Greta stopped at the door of Hugh Ritson's office and knocked. A moment
+later he and she were face to face. He was dressed in his pit flannels,
+and was standing by a table on which a lamp burned. When he recognized
+her, he passed one hand across his brow, the other he rested on the
+mantel-piece. There was a momentary twitching of her lips, and he
+involuntarily remarked that in the time that had passed since they last
+met she had grown thinner.
+
+"Come with me," she said in a trembling whisper. "Mercy's child is dead,
+and the poor girl is asking for you in her great trouble."
+
+He did not speak at once, but shaded his eyes from the lamp. Then he
+said, in a voice unlike his own:
+
+"I will follow you."
+
+She had held the door in her hand, and now she turned to go. He took one
+step toward her.
+
+"Greta, have you nothing more to say to me?" he asked.
+
+"What do you wish me to say?"
+
+He did not answer; his eyes fell before her.
+
+There was a slight wave of her hand as she added:
+
+"The same room ought never to contain both you and me--it never should
+have done so--but this is not my errand."
+
+"I have deserved it," he said, humbly.
+
+"The cruel work is done--yes, done past undoing. You have not heard the
+last of it. Then, since you ask me what I have to say to you, it is
+this: That man, that instrument of your malice who is now your master,
+has been to say that he can compel me to live with him, or imprison me
+if I refuse. Can he do it?"
+
+Hugh Ritson lifted his eyes with a blind, vacant stare.
+
+"To live with him? Him? You to live with him?" he said, absently.
+
+"To live under his roof--those were his words. Can he do it? I mean if
+the law recognizes him as my husband?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's eyes wandered.
+
+"Do it? Your husband?" he echoed, incoherently.
+
+"I know well what he wants," said Greta, breathing heavily; "it is not
+myself he is anxious for--but he can not have the one without the
+other."
+
+"The one without the other?" echoed Hugh Ritson in a low tone. Then he
+strode across the room in visible agitation.
+
+"Greta, that man is--. Do you know who he is?"
+
+"Paul Drayton, the innkeeper of Hendon," she answered, calmly.
+
+"No, no; he is your--"
+
+He paused, his brows knit, his fingers interlaced. Her bosom swelled.
+
+"Would you tell me that he is my husband?" she said indignantly.
+
+Hugh Ritson again passed his hand across his brow.
+
+"Greta, I have deserved your distrust," he said, in an altered tone.
+
+"What is done can never be undone," she answered.
+
+His voice had regained its calmness, but his manner was still agitated.
+
+"I may serve you even yet," he said; "I have done you too much wrong; I
+know that."
+
+"What is your remorse worth now?" she asked. "It comes too late."
+
+Then he looked her steadily in the face, and replied:
+
+"Greta, it is well said that the most miserable man in all the world is
+he who feels remorse before he does the wrong. I was--I am--that man. I
+did what I did knowing well that I should repent it--ay, to the last
+hour of my life. But I was driven to it--I had no power to resist
+it--it mastered me then--it would master me now."
+
+The finger-tips of Greta's right hand were pressed close against her
+cheek. Hugh Ritson took a step nearer.
+
+"Greta," he said, and his voice fell to a broken whisper, "there are
+some men to whom love is a passing breath, a gentle gale that beats on
+the face and sports in the hair, and then is gone. To me it is a wound,
+a deep, corrosive, inward wound that yearns and burns."
+
+Greta shuddered; it was as if his words stung her. Then with an
+impatient gesture she turned again toward the door, saying:
+
+"This is the death-hour of your child, and, Heaven pardon you, it seems
+to be the death-hour of your brother's hopes too!" She faced about. "Do
+you think of him?" she added, lifting her voice. "When you see this man
+in his place, wasting his substance and mine, do you ever think of him
+where he is?"
+
+Her voice trembled and broke. There was a moment's silence. She had
+turned her head aside, and he heard the low sound of sobs.
+
+"Yes, I think of him," he answered, slowly. "At night, in the sleepless
+hours, I do think of him where he is; and I think of him as a happy man.
+Yes, a happy man! What if he wears a convict's dress?--his soul is yoked
+to no deadening burden. As for me--well, look at me!"
+
+He smiled grimly.
+
+"I have heard everything," said Greta; "you have sown the wind, and you
+are reaping the whirlwind."
+
+Something like a laugh broke from him. It came from the waters of
+bitterness that lay deep in his heart.
+
+"Not that," he said. "All that will pass away."
+
+She was on the threshold; a force of which she knew nothing held her
+there.
+
+"Greta, I am not so bad a man as perhaps I seem; I am a riddle that you
+may not read. The time is near when I shall trouble the world no more,
+and it will be but a poor wounded name I shall leave behind me, will it
+not? Greta, would it be a mockery to ask you to forgive me?"
+
+"There are others who have more to forgive," said Greta. "One of them
+is waiting for you at this moment; and, poor girl! her heart is broken."
+
+Hugh Ritson bent his head slightly, and Greta pulled the door after her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+The evening had closed in; the watery veil that goes between day and
+night was hanging in the air; the wind had risen, and the trees were
+troubled. When Hugh Ritson reached the cottage, all was dark about the
+house save for the red glow from the peat fire which came out into the
+open porch. The old Laird Fisher was sitting there, a blackthorn stick
+at his feet, his elbows on his knees, his cheeks rested on his hands.
+The drowsy glow fell on his drooping white head. As Hugh Ritson passed
+into the kitchen, the old man lifted to his a countenance on which grief
+and reproach were stamped together. Hugh Ritson's proud spirit was
+rebuked by the speechless sorrow of that look. It was such a look as a
+wounded hound lifts to the eyes of a brutal master.
+
+A sheep-dog was stretched at full length before the slumbering fire. The
+kitchen was empty, and silent too, except for the tick of the clock and
+the colly's labored breathing. But at the sound of Hugh's uncertain step
+on the hard earthen floor, the door of the bedroom opened, and Greta
+motioned him to enter.
+
+A candle burned near the bed. Before a fire, Mercy Fisher sat with
+Parson Christian. Her head lay on a table that stood between, her face
+buried in her encircled arms. One hand lay open beside the long loose
+tresses of yellow hair, and the parson's hand rested upon it
+caressingly. Parson Christian rose as Hugh Ritson entered, and bowing
+coldly, he left the room; Greta had already gone out, and he rejoined
+her in the kitchen.
+
+Mercy lifted her head and looked up at Hugh. There was not a tear in her
+weary, red, swollen eyes, and not a sigh came from her heaving breast.
+She rose quietly, and taking Hugh's hand in her own, she drew him to the
+bedside.
+
+"See where he is," she said in a voice of piercing earnestness, and with
+her other hand she lifted a handkerchief from the little white face.
+Hugh Ritson shuddered. He saw his own features as if memory had brought
+them in an instant from the long past.
+
+Mercy disengaged her hand, and silently hid her face. But she did not
+weep.
+
+"My little Ralphie," she said, plaintively, "how quiet he is now! Oh,
+but you should have seen him when he was like a glistening ray of
+morning light. Why did you not come before?"
+
+Hugh Ritson stood there looking down at the child's dead face, and made
+no answer.
+
+"It is better as it is," his heart whispered at that moment. The next
+instant his whole frame quivered. What was the thought that had risen
+unbidden within him? Better that his child should lie there cold and
+lifeless than that it should fill this desolate house with joy and love?
+Was he, then, so black a villain? God forbid! Yet it was better so.
+
+"All is over now," said Mercy, and her hands fell from her face. She
+turned her weary eyes full upon him, and added: "We have been punished
+already."
+
+"Punished?" said Hugh. "We?" There was silence for a moment; and then,
+dropping his voice until it was scarcely audible, he said: "Your burden
+is heavy to bear, my poor girl."
+
+Her slight figure swayed a little.
+
+"I could bear it no longer," she answered.
+
+"Many a one has thought that before you," he said; "but God alone knows
+what we can not bear until we are tried."
+
+"Well, all is over now," she repeated listlessly.
+
+She spoke of herself as if her days were already ended and past; as if
+her orb of life had been rounded by the brief span of the little
+existence that lay finished upon the bed. Hugh Ritson looked at her, and
+the muscles of his face twitched. Her weary eyes were still dry; their
+dim light seemed to come from far away.
+
+"How I prayed that I might see my Ralphie," she said. "I thought surely
+God had willed it that I should never see my child. Perhaps that was to
+be my punishment for--all that had taken place. But I prayed still. Oh,
+you would not think how much I pray! But it must have been a wicked
+prayer."
+
+She hid her face once more in her hands, and added, with unexpected
+animation:
+
+"God heard my prayer, and answered it--but see!" She pointed to the
+child. "I saw him--yes, I saw him--die!"
+
+Hugh Ritson was moved, but his heart was bitter. At that moment he
+cursed the faith that held in bondage the soul of the woman at his side.
+Would that he could trample it underfoot, and break forever the chains
+by which it held the simple.
+
+"Hugh," she said, and her voice softened, "we are about to part forever.
+Our little Ralphie--yours and mine--he calls me. I could not live
+without him. God would not make me do that. He has punished me already,
+and He is merciful. Only think, our Ralphie is in heaven!"
+
+She paused and bit her lip, and drew her breath audibly inward. Her face
+took then a death-like hue, and all at once her voice overflowed with
+anguish.
+
+"Do you know, something whispered at that instant that God had not
+punished us enough, that Ralphie was not in heaven, and that the sins of
+the fathers--Oh, my darling, my darling!"
+
+With a shrill cry she stopped, turned to the bed, threw her outspread
+arms about the child, and kissed it fervently.
+
+The tears came at length, and rained down on that little silent face.
+Hugh Ritson could support the strain no longer.
+
+"Mercy," he said, and his voice had a deep tremor--"Mercy, if there is
+any sin, it is mine, and if there is to be any punishment hereafter,
+that will be mine too. As for your little boy, be sure he is in heaven."
+He had stepped to the door, and his thumb was on the wooden latch. "You
+say rightly, we shall never meet again," he said in a muffled voice.
+"Good-bye."
+
+Mercy lifted her tearful face. "Give me your hand at parting," she said
+in an imploring tone. He was on the opposite side of the bed from where
+she stood, and she reached her hand across it. He took a step nearer,
+and his hand closed in hers. Between them and beneath their clasped
+hands lay the child. "Hugh, we could not love in this world--something
+went astray with us; but we shall meet again, shall we not?"
+
+He turned his eyes away.
+
+"Perhaps," he answered.
+
+"Promise me," she said--"promise me."
+
+He drew his breath hard.
+
+"If there is a God and a judgment, be sure we shall meet," he said.
+
+His voice broke. He turned abruptly aside and hurried out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The night was now dark; there was no moon, and there were no stars; the
+wind soughed mournfully through the trees. In the occasional lull the
+rumble of the cataracts drifted heavily through the air.
+
+Hugh Ritson walked in the darkness with drooping head. He was not making
+for the pit-brow; he had taken the opposite direction. When he reached
+the village, he stopped at the Flying Horse. Loud peals of laughter came
+from the parlor, hidden by red blinds from the road.
+
+He stood at the door that opened into the bar. The landlady, her face
+turned from him, was talking with obvious animation to a daleswoman who
+stood with a jug in her hand at the other side of the counter.
+
+"What, woman, thoo's surely heard what happen't at the Ghyll this
+morning?"
+
+"Nay, Bessie, I's been thrang as Throp wife, cleaning and tittivating."
+
+"Well, lass, they've telt me as it were shocking. Two brothers, and such
+a fratch! It coom't to blows at last, and they do say 'at Master Hugh is
+nigh amaist dead with a bash the girt fellow gave him."
+
+Hugh Ritson rapped sharply at the door.
+
+"Tell your husband I wish to see him," he said.
+
+The landlady looked up, fumbled with a napkin, and answered nervously,
+"Yes, sir." Then she hobbled to the door of the parlor and opened it. A
+wave of mingled noise, vapor, and foul odors came through the aperture.
+"Tommy!" she screamed above the babel.
+
+The landlord appeared.
+
+"Can you send me a dog-cart at half past four in the morning?" said
+Hugh.
+
+"Maybe--it's a gay canny hour, I reckon," said the landlord.
+
+He pulled at a long pipe as he spoke, and his face, which was flushed,
+wore an impudent smile.
+
+"I have to catch the five-o'clock train," Hugh answered.
+
+"To London?" One cheek was twisted into numerous wrinkles.
+
+"I said the five train," said Hugh, sternly. "Can you do it?"
+
+"I's niver said nay--it'll be three half-crowns."
+
+Hugh put half a sovereign on the counter.
+
+"Let it be sent at half past four promptly.
+
+"To the Ghyll?"
+
+The twist of the cheek was a shade less perceptible.
+
+"To the pit-brow."
+
+The parlor door opened again, and Natt stood on the threshold. The
+stableman's sleepy eyes awakened to a knowing twinkle. Then his flat
+face disappeared, and a thin titter mingled audibly with the clamor
+within. In another moment the door was thrown wide open, and Drayton
+came slouching out. His hair fell back over his forehead, from which his
+hat was tipped back. A cigar was perched between his teeth; the tips of
+his fingers were thrust into his waistcoat pockets.
+
+"Come in; I've summat to show you," he said.
+
+Hugh did not stir, but he lifted his head and looked into the room. Half
+a score of the riff-raff of the dale were seated amid clouds of smoke.
+On the wooden mantel-shelf above the wide ingle a large book stood
+open, and the leaves fluttered with the wind that came through the door.
+
+"I hain't forgotten what you said long ago about the parson's book,"
+said Drayton, "so here it is, and a mighty valuable thing I call it. You
+thought to frighten me with it, but bless yer soul, I like it, I do.
+Listen."
+
+Drayton stepped back into the room, turned the leaves, and began to read
+in a lusty tone:
+
+   "1847.--November 18.--Thomas said Allan was fresh from Scotland,
+   being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and that they had a
+   child called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet walking."
+
+It was the parson's diary.
+
+"That's good enough, ain't it, Master Hugh Ritson?" said Drayton, with
+an ungainly bow, and a vast show of civility, followed instantly by a
+sidelong leer at his cronies about him.
+
+Hugh Ritson held himself stiffly, and merely said:
+
+"Where did you get it?"
+
+At this question there were sundry snorts and titters and muttered
+responses from the men at the tables. Hugh's eyes passed over them with
+a steely glance.
+
+"Stolen it, I suppose," he said quietly.
+
+"Ay," said Drayton, "and a neat job too. Natt 'ticed away the Methodee
+man while I borrowed it."
+
+Drayton seemed to be proud of his share in the transaction, and his
+friends laughed loudly at the adroit turn he had given to the matter.
+Natt's drowsy eyes were preternaturally bright at that great moment.
+
+Hugh Ritson's forehead darkened with ire.
+
+"This is your gratitude to the clergyman," he said.
+
+Sundry further snorts and sniggers went round the tables.
+
+"There's not a man of you who is not beholden to Parson Christian," said
+Hugh, sternly. He twisted sharply round upon one graybeard whose laugh
+still rumbled between his teeth. "Reuben Rae, who nursed your sick wife?
+John Proudfoot," to the blacksmith, "what about your child down with the
+fever?" His quick eye traversed the parlor, and more than one lusty
+crony was fain to bury his face in his breast. "Yet you laugh, brave
+fellows as you are, when the good man's house is broken into by a
+thief."
+
+Drayton took a swift stride toward him.
+
+"Drop it, and quick!" he shouted.
+
+Hugh Ritson governed himself with an effort.
+
+"I'm not here to brawl," he said quietly.
+
+"Pigeon-livered blatherskite!--that's what I call ye--d'ye hear?" said
+Drayton.
+
+Hugh's face flinched, but he turned on his heel, and was on the road at
+the next instant.
+
+Drayton followed him out, laughing boisterously. Hugh made one quick
+step backward and shut the door; then he turned about on Drayton, whose
+cruel face could be dimly seen in the hazy red light that came through
+the blinds.
+
+"You have tried to torture me," he said, "just as you would hang a dog
+by its tail, or draw the teeth of a rat. You have threatened with worse
+torture a good and loyal woman. You are a scoundrel, and you know it!
+But even you would hesitate if you knew for certain who or what you are.
+Let me tell you again, now, when we are alone, and while I have no
+personal interest to serve: You are the man whose name I gave you--Paul
+Lowther, son of Robert Lowther--and that lady, my brother's wife, whom
+for reason of profit you would compel to live under the same roof with
+you, is your own sister!"
+
+Drayton's loud guffaw rang out above the wind's moan in the trees. His
+cronies within heard it and listened.
+
+"It's a rare old story, that is. Let me see; you've told it before, I
+fancy."
+
+"Then it was a lie; now it's God's truth!" said Hugh.
+
+Drayton laughed again.
+
+"And then it was believed, but now it's not. No, no, Master Hugh, it
+won't pass."
+
+"We will see."
+
+Hugh Ritson had swung about and was gone.
+
+Drayton went back to his friends.
+
+"Hasn't the pluck of a pigeon when it comes to the push," he muttered.
+
+"Ey, he wears a bonny white feather in his cap, for sure," said old
+Reuben Rae.
+
+"No fight in'im--no'but tongue lather," said John, the blacksmith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hugh Ritson walked through the darkness to the pit-brow. The glow of the
+furnace lighted up the air to the south, and showed vaguely the brant
+sides of the fell; the dull thud of the engine, the clank of the chain,
+and the sharp crack of the refuse tumbling down the bank from the
+banksman's barrow were the only sounds that rose above the wind's loud
+whistle.
+
+Gubblum was at the mouth of the shaft.
+
+"Oglethorpe," said Hugh, "how many of the gangs are below to-night?"
+
+"All but two--auld Reuben's and Jim South'et's."
+
+"Then they have chosen to work on?"
+
+"Ey, another fortnight--trusting to get their wage afore that, please
+God."
+
+"They shall not be disappointed."
+
+Hugh Ritson turned away. Gubblum trundled his last wheelbarrow to the
+edge of the bank, and then rested and said to himself, "He takes it cool
+enough onyway."
+
+But the outside tranquillity disappeared when Hugh Ritson reached his
+own room on the pit-brow. He bathed his hot forehead again and again.
+His fingers twitched nervously, and he plunged his perspiring hands into
+cold water above the wrists, holding them there for several minutes. Not
+for long did he sit in one seat. He tramped the room uneasily, his
+infirm foot trailing heavily. Then he threw himself on the couch, tossed
+from side to side, rose, and resumed his melancholy walk. Thus an hour
+passed drearily.
+
+His mind recalled one by one the events of the day. And one by one there
+came crowding back upon him the events of the two years that had passed
+since his father's death. A hurricane was upheaving every memory of his
+mind. And every memory had its own particular sting, and came up as a
+blight to fret his soul. He tried to guard himself from himself. What he
+had first thought to do was but in defense of his strict legal rights,
+and if he had gone further--if he had done more, without daring to think
+of it until it was done--then it was love that had led him astray. Was
+it so cruel a thing to be just? So foul a thing to love?
+
+But above the shufflings of remorse, above the stiflings of regret,
+above the plea of a maddening love, was the voice of revenge speaking
+loudly in his soul. That man, his instrument, now his master, Paul
+Lowther, must be brought down, and his time-serving sponsor with him.
+But how? There was but one way--by denouncing himself. Yes, that was the
+sole outlet for his outraged and baffled spirit. He must go to the
+proper quarter and say, "I have perjured myself, and sworn away my
+brother's liberty. The man who was condemned as Paul Drayton is Paul
+Ritson. I did it all."
+
+That would bring this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price!
+The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him.
+And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the
+impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What
+alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light
+dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the
+day of his life was done.
+
+What if he allowed everything to take its course? Well, he was a
+disgraced and ruined man, turned adrift from his father's house, and
+doomed to see a stranger living there. Did he lack gall to make such a
+climax bitter? Bitter, eh! and a thousand times the more bitter because
+he himself had, for ends of his own, first placed the scoundrel where he
+sat.
+
+No, no, no; Paul Lowther must be brought down, and with him must fall
+the poor ruins of a better man. Yes a better man, let the world say what
+it would.
+
+Could it occur that he would not be believed? that when he said "Take
+me, I am a perjurer," they would answer, "No, your self-denunciation is
+only a freak of revenge, a mad attempt to injure the relative who has
+turned you out of his house?" Hugh Ritson laughed as the grim irony of
+such a possible situation flashed upon him: a man self-condemned and
+saved from punishment by the defense of his enemy!
+
+There was a knock at his door. In his stupor he was not at first
+conscious of what the knock meant. At length he recalled himself and
+cried:
+
+"Come in."
+
+Gubblum Oglethorpe entered.
+
+"The men on the twelve o'clock shift are just about ganging down, and
+they want to tak' a few mair forks with them. They've telt me 'at the
+timber is splitting like matchwood under the sandy vein."
+
+Hugh Ritson made an effort to gather the purport of Gubblum's message.
+
+"Tell them to take the forks," he said in a low tone.
+
+Gubblum was backing out, and stopped.
+
+"I reckon thoo's not heard the last frae auld Mattha's," he said in
+another voice.
+
+"What is it, Oglethorpe?" said Hugh, his head bent over the table.
+
+"Robbie South'et's wife has been up to t' brow, and says that Mercy's
+laal thing is gone."
+
+Hugh did not lift his eyes.
+
+"Is that the last?" he said.
+
+"Nay, but warse. The lass herself tore the bandage frae her eyes, and
+she's gone stone blind, and that's foriver."
+
+Hugh's head bent closer over the table.
+
+"Good-night, Oglethorpe," he said.
+
+Gubblum backed out, muttering to himself as he returned to the shaft, "A
+cool hand, how-an'-iver."
+
+The moment the door closed, Hugh Ritson tramped the floor in restless
+perambulations. What had he thought of doing? Delivering himself to
+justice as a perjurer? Had he, then, no duty left in life that he must
+needs gratify his revenge in a kind of death? What of the woman who had
+suffered for him? What of the broken heart and the wretched home? Were
+these as nothing against the humiliation of a proud spirit?
+
+Never for an instant, never in his bitterest agony, did Hugh Ritson lie
+to his own soul and say that the resolution he had formed was prompted
+by remorse for what he had done to Paul Ritson; not revenge for what he
+had suffered from Paul Drayton. To be a saint when sick; to find the
+conscience active when defeat overwhelmed it--that was for the weak
+dregs of humanity. But such paltering was not for him.
+
+On the one hand revenge, on the other duty--which was he to follow? The
+wretched man could come to no decision; and when the fingers of his
+watch pointed to one o'clock he lay down on the couch to rest.
+
+It was not sleep that he wanted; sleep had of late become too full of
+terrors; but sleep overcame him, nevertheless. His face, when he slept,
+was the face of a man in pain; and dreams came that were the distorted
+reflections of his waking thoughts. He dreamed that he had died in
+infancy. Calm, serene, very sweet, and peaceful, his little innocent
+face of childhood looked up from the white pillow. He thought his mother
+bent over him, and shed many tears; but he himself belonged to another
+world of beings, and looked down on both.
+
+"It is better so," he thought, "and the tears she weeps are blest."
+
+At this he awoke, and rose to his feet. What soft nothings men had said
+of sleep! "Oh, sleep, it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole!"
+Gentle! More tyrannous than death. The melancholy perambulation ended,
+and he lay down once more. He slept and dreamed again. This time he had
+killed his own brother. A moment before they had stood face to
+face--vigorous, wrathful, with eyes that flashed, and hands uplifted.
+Now his brother lay quiet and awful at his feet, and the great silence
+was broken by a voice from heaven crying, "A fugitive and a vagabond
+shalt thou be on the earth!"
+
+He started to his feet in terror. "Mercy, mercy!" he cried.
+
+Then he drew his breath hard and looked about him. "A dream--only
+another dream," he said to himself, and laughed between his close-set
+teeth. The lamp still burned on the table. He rose, drew a key from his
+pocket, opened a cupboard, and took out a small bottle. It contained an
+opiate. "Since I must sleep, let my sleep at least be dreamless," he
+said, and he measured a dose. He was lifting the glass to his lips,
+when he caught sight of his face in the glass. "Pitiful! pitiful! A mere
+dream unnerves me. Pitiful enough, forsooth! And so I must needs hide
+myself from myself behind a bulwark like this!" He held the drug to the
+light, and while his hand trembled he laughed. Then he drank it off, put
+out the light, and sat on the couch.
+
+The dawn had fretted the sky, and the first streaks of day crept in at
+the window, when the lamp's yellow light was gone. Hugh Ritson sat in
+the gray gloom, his knees drawn close under his chin, his arms folded
+over his breast, his head bent heavily forward. He was crooning an old
+song. Presently the voice grew thick, the eye became clouded, and then
+the head fell back. He was asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed again. Or
+was it a vision, and not a dream, that came to him now? He thought he
+stood in a room which he had seen before. On the bed some white thing
+lay. It was a child, and the little soul had fled. Beside it a woman
+cowered, and moaned "Guilty, guilty!" Her eyes were fixed on the child,
+yet she saw nothing; the sightless orbs were bleached. But with her
+heart she saw the child; and she saw himself also as he entered. Then it
+seemed that she turned her blind face toward him, and called on him by
+name. The next instant she was gone. Her seat was vacant, the bed was
+empty; only a gray-bearded man sat by a cold grate. With an overpowering
+weight pressing him down, it seemed to Hugh that he threw up his head,
+and again he heard his name.
+
+He leaped to his feet. Big beads of cold sweat stood on his forehead.
+"Mercy is dead," he whispered with awe. "She has gone to put in her plea
+of guilty. She is in God's great hand!"
+
+The next moment a voice shouted, "Mr. Ritson!"
+
+He listened, and in the gray light his stony countenance smiled grimly.
+
+"Mr. Ritson!" once more, followed by the rap of a whip-handle against
+the door.
+
+"Tommy the landlord," said Hugh, and he broke into a harsh laugh. "So
+you were my angel, Tommy, eh?"
+
+Another harsh laugh. The landlord, sitting in the dog-cart outside,
+heard it, and thought to himself, "Some one with him."
+
+Hugh Ritson plunged his head into the wash-basin, and rubbed himself
+vigorously with a rough towel. "My last sleep is over," he said,
+glancing aside with fearful eyes at the couch. "I'll do this thing that
+I am bent upon; but no more sleep, and no more dreams!"
+
+He opened the door, threw a rug up to the landlord, put on an ulster,
+and leaped into the dog-cart. They started away at a quick trot. A chill
+morning breeze swept down the vale. The sun was rising above Cat Bells,
+but Hugh Ritson still felt as if he were traveling toward the deepening
+night. He sat with folded arms, and head bent on his breast.
+
+"Hasta heard what happened at auld Laird Fisher's this morning?" said
+the landlord.
+
+Hugh answered in a low voice:
+
+"I've heard nothing."
+
+"The lass has followed her barn rather sudden't. Ey, she's gone, for
+sure. Died a matter of half an hour ago. I heard it frae the parson as I
+coom't by."
+
+Hugh Ritson bent yet lower his drooping head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+At 2 o'clock that day Hugh Ritson arrived at Euston. He got into a cab
+and drove to Whitehall. At the Home Office he asked for the Secretary of
+State. A hundred obstacles arose to prevent him from penetrating to the
+head of the department. One official handed him over to another, the
+second to a third, the third to a fourth.
+
+Hugh Ritson was hardly the man to be balked by such impediments. His
+business was with the Secretary of State, and none other. Parliament was
+in session, and the Home Secretary was at the afternoon sitting of the
+House. Hugh Ritson sought and found him there. He explained his purpose
+in few words, and was listened to with a faint smile of incredulity.
+
+The secretary was a stolid Yorkshireman, who affected whatever measure
+of bluffness had not been natural to him from birth. He first looked at
+his visitor with obvious doubts of his sanity; and when this suspicion
+had been set at rest by Hugh's incisive explanation, with an equally
+obvious desire to feel his bumps.
+
+But the face of the Yorkshireman soon became complicated by other shades
+of expression than such as come of distrust of a man's reason or
+contempt of his sentimentality.
+
+"Hadn't you better sleep on it, and come to see me at Whitehall in the
+morning?" he said, with more respect than he had yet shown. "Then if you
+are still of the same mind, I will send for the Public Prosecutor."
+
+Hugh Ritson bowed his acquiescence.
+
+"And can I have the order for Portland?" he said.
+
+"Probably. It will be against the new regulation that none may visit a
+convict prison except prison officials and persons interested in prison
+discipline. But we'll see what can be done."
+
+That night, Hugh Ritson called at the Convent of St. Margaret. It was
+late when he entered, and when he came out again, half an hour
+afterward, the lamps were lighted in the Abbey Gardens. The light fell
+on the face of the lay sister who opened the door to him. She wore a
+gray gown, but no veil or scapular, and beneath the linen band that
+covered her hair her eyes were red and swollen.
+
+Hugh Ritson hailed a hansom in the Broad Sanctuary, and drove to Hendon.
+The bar of the Hawk and Heron was full of carriers, carters,
+road-menders, and farm-laborers, all drinking, and all noisy. But,
+despite this evidence of a thriving trade, the whole place had a
+bankrupt appearance as of things going to wreck. Jabez served behind the
+counter. He had developed a good deal of personal consequence, and held
+up his head, and repeatedly felt the altitude of a top-knot that curled
+there, and bore himself generally with the cockety air of the young
+rooster after the neck of the old one has been screwed. Mrs. Drayton sat
+knitting in the room where Mercy and the neighbor's children once played
+together. When Hugh Ritson went in to her, the old body started.
+
+"Lor's a mercy, me, sir, to think it's you! I'm that fearsome, that I
+declare I shiver and quake at nothing. And good for nowt i' the world
+neither, not since my own flesh and blood, as you might say, disowned
+me."
+
+"Do you mean at the trial?" asked Hugh Ritson.
+
+"The trial, sir!" said the landlady, lifting bewildered eyes, while the
+click of the needles ceased. "My Paul weren't there. Cummerland,
+sir--and you heard him yourself what he said of me." A corner of her
+house-wife's apron went up to her face. "Me as had brought him up that
+tender! Well," recovering composure, "I've lost heart, and serve him
+right. I just lets the house and things go, I do. I trusts to
+Providence; and that Jabez, he's no better nor a babby in the public
+line."
+
+When Hugh Ritson left the inn, the old body's agitation increased. She
+had set down the knitting, and was fidgeting, first with her cap and
+then her apron.
+
+"Listen to me," said Hugh. "To-day is Friday. On Monday you must go to
+the convent where you saw the mother of Paul. Ask for Sister Grace. Will
+you remember--Sister Grace? She will tell you all."
+
+It was hard on eleven o'clock when Hugh Ritson returned to town. The
+streets were thronged, and he walked for a long hour amid the crowds
+that passed through the Strand. In all that multitudinous sea of faces,
+there was not a countenance on which the mark of suffering was more
+indelibly fixed than on his own.
+
+His sensibilities were wrought up to an unwonted pitch. He was like a
+waif adrift in unknown waters, a cloud without anchor in a tempestuous
+sky; yet he felt that night as he had never felt before, that he had
+suddenly become possessed of another and most painful sense. Not a face
+in that sea of faces but he seemed to know its secret fear, its joy and
+sorrow, the watchful dread that seared the hidden heart, the fluttering
+hope that buoyed it up.
+
+It was an awful thing to be turned adrift in a world of sin and
+suffering with this agonizing sense. He could look, whether he would or
+not, beneath the smiling and rubicund countenance of the
+hail-fellow-well-met to that corrosive spot within where the trust of
+the widow and fatherless had been betrayed; or see beyond the stolid and
+heavy appearance proper to the ox the quivering features of the man who
+had stood long years ago above the dead body of the woman who had thrown
+her death at his door as sole reward for the life he had wrecked.
+
+Nay, not only did the past write its manual there, but the future wrote
+its sign. He knew that the young girl in pink ribbons who was hurrying
+along with a smile on her lips, from the shop in the west to that
+unknown home in the east where the child of her shame had laughed and
+crowed and climbed up her bosom to her chin, was doomed to find that the
+source of all her joy and half her sorrow lay cold and stiff in its
+crib.
+
+He grew fearful of himself; he shuddered as the unsuspected murderer
+brushed his elbow; he shuddered yet more as a mirror flashed back the
+reflection of his own hard face, and the idea came to him that perhaps
+other eyes could see what his eyes saw.
+
+He turned down Arundel Street and on to the Embankment. No! no! no! the
+merciful God had not willed it that any man should look so deeply into
+the heart of his fellow-man. That was indeed to know good and evil; and
+the thought stole over him that perhaps it was in degree as a man had
+eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of life that he was cursed with
+this bitter knowledge.
+
+Here, on the quiet pavement that echoed to his footsteps, the air was
+free. He uncovered his head, and the light west wind played in his hair
+and cooled his temples. Not a star shone overhead, and the river that
+flowed in the bed below was dark. More dark to him was the sea of
+humanity that flowed above.
+
+He had heard that the death-roll of the Thames was one of every day for
+the year, and he leaned over the granite wall and wondered if the old
+river had claimed its toll for the day that was now almost done. His
+hair seemed to rise from its roots as he thought that perhaps at that
+very instant, in the black waters beneath him, the day's sacrifice was
+washing past.
+
+He walked on, and the dull buzz of the Strand fell on his ear. What,
+after all, was the old god of the river to the Juggernaut of the city?
+And it was now, when the fret of the day had worn down, that Hugh Ritson
+thought of all that he had left behind him in the distant north. There
+in the darkness and the silence, amid the mountains, by the waving trees
+and the rumbling ghylls, lay half the ruins of his ruined life. The glow
+of old London's many lights could not reach so far, but the shadow of
+that dark spot was here.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+The clocks struck midnight, and he returned to the hotel at which he had
+engaged a bed. He did not lie down to sleep, but walked to and fro the
+night through.
+
+Next morning at ten he was at the Home Office again. He saw the
+secretary and some of the law officers of the Crown. When he came out he
+carried in his pocket an order to visit a convict in Portland, and was
+attended by a police-sergeant in plain clothes. They took train from
+Waterloo at two in the afternoon, and reached Weymouth at six. When they
+crossed the strip of sea, the best of the day was gone, and a fresh
+breeze blew across the breakwater.
+
+The Saxon walls of the castle at the foot of the Vern Hill reflected the
+chill blue of the water; but far above, where the rocky coast dipped to
+the beach, the yellow stone, with the bluish clay in its crevices, shone
+in the glow of the sinking sun.
+
+Hugh Ritson and his companion put up for the night at the Portland Arms
+Inn. A ruddy, round-faced man in middle life, clean shaven and dressed
+youthfully, was smoking in the parlor. He exchanged a salutation with
+the cordiality of one who was nothing loath for a chat; then he picked
+up the old Reeve staff, and explained the ancient method of computing
+tithes. But Hugh Ritson was in no humor for conversation, and after
+dinner he set out for a solitary walk. He took the road that turns from
+the beach through the villages of Chiswell and Fortune's Well. When he
+reached the top of the hill the sea lay around him; and beneath him, to
+the right and left of the summit, were the quarries where the convicts
+labored, with two branches of an inclined railway leading down to the
+breakwater. On the summit itself, known as the Grove, was a long, high
+granite wall, with a broad gate-way, and the lancet lights of a lodge at
+one side of it. This was the convict prison, and the three or four
+houses in front of it were the residences of governor, chaplain, and
+chief warder. A cordon of cottages at a little distance were the homes
+of the assistant warders. There were a few shops amid this little group
+of cottages, and one public house, the Spotted Dog.
+
+Hugh Ritson strolled into the tavern and sat down in a little
+"snuggery," which was separated from a similar apartment by a wooden
+partition that stood no higher than a tall man's height, and left a
+space between the top stile and the ceiling. A company of men gossiped
+at the other side of the partition.
+
+"Talk of B 2001," said a guttural voice (Hugh Ritson started at the
+sound), "I took the stiff'ning out of him first go off. When he'd done
+he separates and come on from the moor; I saw he wasn't an old lag, so
+says I to 'im, 'Green 'un,' I says, 'if you're leary, you'll fetch a
+easy lagging, and if you're not, it'll be bellows to mend with you.'
+'What d'ye mean?' he says. 'It's bloomin' 'ard work here,' I says, 'and
+maybe you don't get shin-of-beef soup to do it on. Bread and water, for
+a word,' I says. 'You're in my gang, quarrying, and I won't work you
+'ard except I'm druv to it, but I want wide men in my gang,' I says,
+'and no putting the stick on agen the screw.' 'Don't understand,' he
+says. 'Then follow a straight tip,' I says; 'stand by your warder and
+he'll stand by you.' Blest if that lag as I'd give that good advice to
+didn't get me fined the very next day."
+
+"Never!" said sundry incredulous voices.
+
+"It was a hot afternoon, and I'd just whipped a quid in my mouth and
+leaned atop of my musket for forty winks after dinner. The second-timers
+was codding afront of me, and 2001 and the young chap as was dying of
+the consumption was wheeling and filling ahead. Well, up comes the
+governor right in front of 2001, and shouts, 'Warder,' he shouts,
+'you're fined for inattention.' Then off he goes. All right, Mr. 2001, I
+says, I'll not misremember."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"Do?" (a loud, hollow laugh). "That was when the barracks was building,
+and one day a bit of a newspaper blowed over from the officers'
+quarters, and 2001 came on it, and the botcher picked it up. He'd
+chucked hisself quick. 'Right about face--march.' He got seven stretch,
+a month's marks, and lost his bedding."
+
+A hearty laugh followed this account of a "screw's" revenge on a "green"
+convict. Hugh Ritson listened and shuddered.
+
+"I ain't surprised at anything from that luny," said another voice. "He
+was in my gang at the moor, and I know'd 'im. They put 'im in the
+soap-suds gang first, but he got hisself shifted. Then they sent 'im
+botching with the tailors, but he put out his broom for the governor,
+and said a big lusty man same as 'im wasn't for sitting on a board all
+day. The flat didn't want to fetch a easy lagging, that's the fact."
+
+There was a loud guffaw.
+
+"So they put 'im in my turf gang out on the moor, and one day a old
+clergyman come in gaiters and a broad-brimmer, and a face as if the
+master of the house were a-shaking at his hand, and the missis flopping
+down-stairs to give him a smack of the lips. Well, 2001 saw him in
+Principal Warder Rennell's office, and not afore the bars. So next day I
+says, 'Got anybody outside as would like to send you summat by the
+Underground?' 'The what?' he says, reg'lar black in the face. 'The
+underground railway,' I says, tipping him a wink. 'Get away from me, you
+bloodsucker!' he says. But I pinched 'im. The old lags were laughing at
+one of the grave-digger's oyster-openers, when up comes Rennell. 'Who's
+laughing?' he says. 'It's 2001,' I says; 'he's always idling and
+malingering.'"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! what did he get?"
+
+"Three days' bread and water, a week's marks, and loss of class
+privileges. He didn't mind the grub and the time, but Jack-in-the-box,
+who was warder on his landing, said he took it proper bad as he
+couldn't write home to the missis."
+
+"What's his dose?"
+
+"Three. One of the old lags would do it on his head, and fetch it easy,
+too. He's a scholar, and could get to be a wardsman in the infirmary, or
+medicine factotum for the croaker, or maybe book-keeper for the
+governor. But he's earned no remissions, and he'll fill his time afore
+he slings his hook again."
+
+Hugh Ritson could support the gossip no longer. He got up to leave the
+house, but before doing so he pushed open the door that led to the
+adjoining room, and stood a moment on the threshold, comprehending
+everything and everybody in one quick glance. The air breathed fresh
+outside. He walked in the gathering gloom of evening to the ruins of the
+church by the cliff, and, passing through the lych-gate, he came on the
+beaten track to the rocks. The rocks lay a hundred feet beneath, torn
+from the mainland in craggy masses that seemed ready to slide from their
+base to the deep chasm between. Could it be possible that men who were
+the slaves of hinds like those in yonder tavern could cling to their
+little lives while a deliverance like this beetling cliff stood near? A
+cold smile played on Hugh Ritson's face as he thought that, come what
+would, such slavery was not for him.
+
+The sycamore by the ruined chancel pattered in the breeze, and the
+wheatear's last notes came from its top-most bough. Far below the waves
+were rocking lazily. There were other waves at Hugh Ritson's feet--the
+graves of dead men. Some who were buried there long ago were buried in
+their chains. Under the earth the fettered men--on the ruins of the
+church the singing bird. Across the sea the light was every moment
+fading. In another hour the day would be done, and then the moon would
+look down peacefully on the fettered and the free.
+
+Hugh Ritson returned to the Portland Arms Inn. He found the
+police-sergeant in conversation with the ruddy-faced gentleman who had
+wished to explain to him the mysteries of the Reeve staff.
+
+"He is the doctor at the prison," whispered the sergeant aside.
+
+Presently Hugh turned to the doctor and said:
+
+"Do you happen to know the convict B 2001?"
+
+"Yes--Drayton," said the doctor; "calls himself Ritson. Are you a
+friend?"
+
+Hugh Ritson's face quivered slightly.
+
+"No," he answered, "I am not his friend." Then, after a pause, "But I
+have an order to see him. Besides, I have just heard him discussed by a
+company of wardens in a pot-house on the hill."
+
+"Who were they? What were they like?"
+
+"A tall man, one of them, fifty-five years of age, gray hair, grizzly
+beard, dark, vindictive eyes, a gash on one cheek, and a voice like a
+crow's."
+
+"Humph! Jim-the-ladder--a discharged soldier."
+
+"Another, a cadaverous fellow, with a plausible tongue."
+
+"Horrocks--an old second-classer; served his time at Dartmoor and got
+promotion--doubtful official discipline."
+
+"They both deserve one more and much higher promotion," said Hugh
+Ritson, with emphasis.
+
+"You mean this." The doctor laughed, and put the forefinger of one hand,
+held horizontally, to the tip of the other, held upright.
+
+"Can it be possible that the law is unable to maintain a fair stand-up
+fight with crime, and must needs call a gang of poltroons and
+blackmailers to its assistance?"
+
+"You heard a bad account of B 2001, I judge?"
+
+"I heard of nothing that he had done which the Pope of Rome might have
+feared to acknowledge."
+
+"You are right--he's as good a man as there's on Portland Bill," said
+the doctor, "and if he's not quite as immaculate as his holiness, he's
+in the right of it this time."
+
+Hugh Ritson glanced up.
+
+"You've heard he's in the punishment cells," said the doctor. "By the
+way, you'll not see him until Monday; he can't join his gang before, and
+he hasn't a class privilege left, poor devil."
+
+Hugh inquired the cause.
+
+"Since he came here he's been yoked to a young fellow dying of
+consumption. The lad didn't relish the infirmary--he lost his marks
+toward remission there. He knew the days he had to serve, and used to
+nick them off every night on his wooden spoon. It was a weary way from a
+thousand back, back, back to one. And that Jim-the-ladder took delight
+in keeping up the count by reports. The poor boy wanted to die in his
+mother's arms. He had got his time down to a week, when the 'screw'
+clapped as many marks on to him as added a month to his imprisonment.
+Then he lost heart, and dropped down like a flounder, and when they
+picked him up he was dead."
+
+"Was B 2001 with him as usual?"
+
+"He was; and he broke the strap, sprung on the warder, and tore his
+rifle out of his hands. Jim-the-ladder has been a prize-fighter in his
+day, and there was a tussle. He leaped back on B 2001 with a howl, and
+the blows fell like rain-drops. There was a fearful clamor, the convicts
+screaming like madmen."
+
+"B 2001 is a powerful man," said Hugh Ritson.
+
+The doctor nodded.
+
+"He closed with the warder, gripped him by the waist, twisted him on his
+loins, turned him heels overhead, and brought him down in a sweep that
+would have battered the life out of any other man. Up came the civil
+guard, and the convict was brought into the lodge covered with dust,
+sweat and blood, his eyes flashing like balls of fire. They had the
+lad's body on a stretcher beside him, the lips white, and the cheeks a
+mask of blue. It was a tremendous spectacle, I can tell you."
+
+Hugh Ritson's breast heaved, and somewhere deep down in his soul he
+surprised a feeling of pride. That man was a hero and his own brother!
+
+"And so the convict was punished?"
+
+"Fourteen days' penal class diet, and marks enough for six months. He'll
+be out on Monday, and then he'll wear the blue cap that denotes a
+dangerous man."
+
+Hugh Ritson shuddered.
+
+"Is it impossible to see him to-morrow?" he asked.
+
+"Come up before church in the morning and ask for me, and we'll speak to
+the governor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Early next morning Hugh Ritson showed his order at the prison gates, and
+was admitted to the doctor's quarters. Hugh and the doctor went in
+search of the governor, but learned that he was away from home for the
+day. The deputy-governor was abed with a raging tooth, and there was
+nothing to do but to wait until morning in order to speak with the
+convict.
+
+"You can stay here until to-morrow," said the doctor; "I can give you a
+shake-down. And now let us go off to church. But come this way first."
+
+They walked in the direction of that portion of the parade-ground which
+was marked, in great white letters, "34 gang," with the broad arrow
+beneath. Near to this stood a building composed chiefly of wood and
+iron, and marked in similar letters "E Hall." They entered a corridor
+that led to an open landing in the shape of a many-sided polygon, each
+side being a door. In the middle of the landing there was an iron
+circular staircase that led to landings above and below. A warder
+paraded the open space, which was lighted by gas-jets.
+
+"Hush! Look," said the doctor, standing by the peep-hole in one of the
+doors, and at the same time putting out the gas-jet that burned on the
+door-jamb.
+
+Hugh Ritson approached, and at first he could see nothing in the
+darkness. But he heard a curious clanking noise from within. Then the
+glimmer of a feeble candle came through the bars, and he saw a box-like
+apartment, some seven feet long by four feet broad and eight feet high.
+It was a punishment cell. There was a shelf at the opposite end, and a
+tin wash-basin stood on it.
+
+On the side of the door there must have been a similar shelf, on which
+the candle burned. A broom, a can, and a bowl were on the brick floor.
+There was no other furniture except a hammock swung from end to end,
+and the convict was lying in it at this moment. It could be seen that a
+heavy chain was fastened with riveted rings around each ankle, and
+linked about the waist by a strap. At every movement this chain clanked;
+night and day it was there; if the prisoner shifted in his sleep, its
+grating sound broke on the silence of the cell, and banished the only
+sunshine of his life, the sunshine of his dreams. His head was back to
+the door so that the light of the candle burning on the shelf might fall
+on a slate which rested on his breast. Though he occupied a punishment
+cell he was writing, and Hugh Ritson's quick eyes could decipher the
+words: "Oh, that it would please God to destroy me; that He would but
+loose His hand and cut me off! Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall
+deliver me from the body of this death?" He paused in his writing and
+pecked like a bird at a hard piece of bread beside him.
+
+Hugh Ritson fell back, and as his infirm foot grated along the floor,
+the convict started and turned his face. It was a blank, pale face, full
+of splendid resolution and the nobility of suffering, but without one
+ray of hope.
+
+"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.
+
+But Hugh Ritson's eyes were on the ground, and he made no answer.
+
+They went to church. The civil guard was drawn up under the gallery with
+loaded rifles. Eight hundred convicts attended service; some of them
+were penitent; most of them were trying to make a high profession of
+contrition as a bid for the good graces of the chaplain. The obtrusive
+reverence of one sinister gray-head near at hand attracted Hugh Ritson's
+especial attention. He knelt with his face to the gallery in which the
+choir sat. Beside him was a youth fresh from Millbank. The hoary sinner
+was evidently initiating the green hand into the mysteries of his new
+home. He was loud in his responses, but his voice had a trick of
+dropping suddenly to a whispered conference.
+
+"Who's the fat 'un in the choir? A chap as is doing his ten. His missis
+chared to keep the kids, and one morning early he popped the old girl's
+shoes."
+
+The voice of the chaplain interrupted further explanation; but after
+another loud response the old rascal's mouth was twisted awry with the
+words:
+
+"He's a wide 'un, he is--seat in the choir got comfortable cushions.
+Besides, he gets off Saturday morning's work for practicing--got no more
+voice nor a corn-crake."
+
+Evidently it was no disadvantage here to be the greatest of vagabonds.
+When a cadaverous old Jew came hobbling up the aisle with his gang, the
+gray-head whispered, with awe:
+
+"It's old Mo; he's in the stocking gang; but I did business with him
+when he could ha' sent old Rothschild home for a pauper."
+
+At one moment the attention of the green hand was arrested by a tall man
+in the black and gray that indicated a convict who had attempted to
+escape.
+
+"Says he's in for twenty thousand, but it's a lie," whispered the old
+man; "he only knocked a living out of the religious fake."
+
+The last of the conference that Hugh Ritson overheard was a piece of
+touching advice.
+
+"Them as 'as any pluck in 'em turns savage, same as B 2001; them as
+'asn't, knocks under, same as me; and I says to you, knock under."
+
+After service the sacrament was celebrated. There must have been many
+hundreds of communicants, all humble in their piety. It could be noticed
+that the chaplain had sometimes to keep a tight grip of the goblet
+containing the wine.
+
+That night Hugh Ritson lodged at the doctor's quarters. He did not lie,
+but, as on the night before, he walked the long hours through,
+steadfastly resisting every temptation to sleep. At five in the morning
+he heard the great bell at the gate ring for two minutes, and, shortly
+afterward, the tramp, tramp, tramp of many feet under his window. The
+convicts, to the number of fifteen hundred, were drawn up on the
+parade-ground. They looked chill in the cold light of early morning;
+their gray jackets lay loose on their spare shoulders; their hands hung
+inertly at their sides, and they walked with the oscillating motion of
+men whose feet were sore in their heavy boots. The civil guard was drawn
+up, the chief warder whistled, and then the men fell out into gangs of
+twenty-five each, attended by an assistant warder.
+
+"Rear rank, take two paces to the right--march."
+
+Then the tramp, tramp again. As the outside gangs passed through the
+gate, each officer in charge received his rifle, bayonet, belt, and
+cartridge-box from the armorer at the lodge. The stone-dressing gang
+passed close under the window, and Hugh Ritson reeled back as one of the
+men--a stalwart fellow in a blue cap, who was walking abreast of a
+misshapen creature with a face full of ferocity--lifted his eyes upward
+from the file.
+
+At eight o'clock the governor appeared at his receiving-office. He was a
+slight man with the face and figure of a greyhound. His military
+frock-coat was embossed with Crimean medals, and he was redolent of the
+odor of Whitehall. He received Hugh Ritson's papers with a curious
+mixture of easy courtesy and cold dignity--a sort of combination of the
+different manners in which he was wont to bow to a secretary of state
+and condemn a convict to the chain and bread and water.
+
+"The men are back to breakfast at nine," he said. "Watkins," to the
+chief warder, "have B 2001 brought round to the office immediately 34
+gang returns."
+
+Hugh Ritson had left the receiving-office and was crossing the
+parade-ground when a loud hubbub arose near the lodge.
+
+"The boat!" shouted twenty voices, and a covey of convicts ran in the
+direction of a shed where an eight-oar boat was kept on the chocks. "A
+man has mizzled--run a wagon into the sea and is drifting down the
+race."
+
+How the demons laughed, how they cursed in jest, how they worked, how
+luminous were their eyes and haggard faces at the prospect of
+recapturing one of their fellow-prisoners who had tried to make his
+escape! Every convict who helped to catch a fugitive was entitled to a
+remission of six days. The doctor took Hugh Ritson up on to the lead
+flat that covered his quarters. From that altitude they could see over
+the prison wall to the rocky coast beyond. Near the ruins of the old
+church a gang of convicts were running to and fro, waving their hands,
+and shouting in wild excitement.
+
+"It's gang 34," said the doctor, "Jim-the-ladder's gang."
+
+The sun had risen, the sea was glistening in its million facets, and
+into many a rolling wave a sea-bird dipped its corded throat. In the
+silvery water-way there was something floating that looked as if it
+might have been a tub. It was the wagon that the convict had driven into
+the water for a boat.
+
+"It will sink--it's shod with thick hoops of iron," said the doctor.
+
+The convict could be seen standing in it. He had thrown off his coat and
+cap, and his sleeveless arms were bare to the armpits. The civil guard
+ran to the cliff and fired. One shot hit. The man could be seen to tear
+the coarse linen shirt from his breast and bind it above the wrist.
+
+"Why does he not crouch down?" said Hugh Ritson: he did not know who
+this convict was, but in his heart there was a feverish desire that the
+prisoner should escape.
+
+"He's a doomed man--he's in the race--it's flowing hard, and he'll drift
+back to the island," said the doctor.
+
+Half an hour later a posse of the civil guard, with two assistant
+warders, brought the recaptured fugitive into the governor's
+receiving-office. The stalwart fellow strode between the warders with a
+firm step and head erect. He wore no jacket or cap, and on one bare arm
+a strip of linen was roughly tied. His breast was naked, his eyes were
+aflame, and save for a black streak of blood across the cheek, his face
+was ashy pale. But that man was not crushed by his misfortunes; he
+seemed to crush them.
+
+"Take that man's number," said the governor.
+
+"Ay, take it, and see you take it rightly," said the convict.
+
+"It's B 2001," said the chief warder.
+
+The governor consulted a paper that lay on his table.
+
+"Send for the gentleman," he said to an attendant. "It's well for you
+that you are wanted by the law officers of the Crown," he added, turning
+to the prisoner.
+
+The convict made no answer; he was neither humble nor sullen; his manner
+was frank but fierce, and made almost brutal by a sense of wrong.
+
+The next moment Hugh Ritson stepped into the office. His eyes dropped,
+and his infirm foot trailed heavily along the floor. He twitched at his
+coat with nervous fingers; his nostrils quivered; his whole body
+trembled perceptibly.
+
+"This is the man," said the chief warder, with a deferential bow.
+
+Hugh Ritson tried to raise his eyes, but they fell suddenly. He opened
+his lips to speak, but the words would not come. And meantime the wet,
+soiled, naked, close-cropped, blood-stained convict, flanked by armed
+warders, stood before him with head erect and eyes that searched his
+soul. The convict rested one hand on his hip and pointed with the other
+at Hugh Ritson's abject figure.
+
+"What does this man want with me?" he said, and his voice was deep.
+
+At that Hugh Ritson broke in impetuously:
+
+"Paul, I will not outrage your sufferings by offering you my pity."
+
+The officers looked into each other's faces.
+
+"I want none of your pity!" said the convict, bitterly.
+
+"No; it is I who need yours," said Hugh Ritson, in a low tone.
+
+The convict laughed a hard laugh, and turned to the warders.
+
+"Here, take me away--I've had enough of this."
+
+"Listen. I have something to say to you--something to do for you, too."
+
+The convict broke afresh into a laugh.
+
+"Take me away, will you?"
+
+"What if I say I am sorry for the past?" said Hugh.
+
+"Then you are a hypocrite!" the convict answered.
+
+Hugh Ritson drew himself up, and took his breath audibly. In one swift
+instant his face became discolored and his features pinched and rigid.
+There was silence, and then in a low, broken tone, he said:
+
+"Paul, you know well what sort of a man I am; don't drive me too hard. I
+have come here to do you a service. Remember your sufferings--"
+
+Once again the convict broke into a cold laugh.
+
+"Remember that others--one other--may be suffering with you."
+
+The convict's haughty look fled like a flash of light.
+
+"Here, take me out of this," he muttered in a low, hoarse voice. He took
+a step back, but the guard closed around him. "I won't stand to listen
+to this man. Do you hear? I won't listen," he said hotly; "he has come
+to torture me--that's all!"
+
+"I have come to undo what I have done," said Hugh. "Paul, let me undo
+it. Don't rouse the bad part of me at this crisis of your life and
+mine."
+
+The convict paused, and said more quietly:
+
+"Then it's your policy to undo it."
+
+Hugh Ritson flinched. The words had gone to his heart like a spear. If
+he had dared to mask his motive, that thrust would have left it naked.
+
+"I will not wrong the truth by saying I am a changed man," he answered
+meekly. "My motive is my own; but my act shall be all in all to you."
+
+The convict's face lightened.
+
+"You have used me for your vengeance," he said; "you shall not use me
+for your contrition also. Guards, let me out--let me out, I tell you!"
+
+The governor interposed:
+
+"When you leave this room you go direct to the cells."
+
+"Ay, take me to your cells, and let me lie there and die and rot," said
+the convict.
+
+"Take him away," said the governor.
+
+"Paul, I beseech you to hear me!" cried Hugh, amid the clanking of the
+arms of the guard.
+
+"Take him away!" the governor shouted again.
+
+An hour after, B 2001 was recalled to the receiving-office. He was quiet
+enough now.
+
+"We have an order respecting you from the Secretary of State," said the
+governor. "You are required to give evidence at a trial. At two o'clock
+you leave Portland for Cumberland, and your guard goes with you."
+
+The convict bent his head and went out in silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Paul Ritson--let him be known by his official number no more--was not
+taken to the punishment cells. He was set to work with the
+stone-dressing gang stationed near the gate of the prison. The news of
+his attempt to escape had not spread more rapidly than rumors of his
+approaching departure.
+
+"I say," shouted a hoary convict, "take a crooked message out?"
+
+"What's your message?"
+
+"On'y a word to the old girl telling her where she'll find a bunch of
+keys as she wants partic'lar."
+
+"Write her yourself, my man."
+
+"What, and the governor read it, and me get a bashing, and the crushers
+pinch the old moll? Well, I am surprised at ye; but I forgot, you're a
+straight man, you are."
+
+A mocking laugh followed this explanatory speech.
+
+A young fellow with a pale, meek face and the startled eyes of a hare
+crept close up to where Paul Ritson worked, and took a letter out of one
+of his boots.
+
+"This is the last I had from home," he said, quietly, and put the letter
+into Paul's hands.
+
+It was a soiled and crumpled paper, so greasy from frequent handlings
+and so much worn by many foldings that the writing could scarcely be
+deciphered. Home? It was dated from the Union of Liverpool, and had come
+from his invalid wife and his children, all living there.
+
+The poor fellow could not read, but he had somehow learned the letter
+by heart, and was able to point out each bit of family history in the
+exact place where it was recorded.
+
+He had lost his class privileges, and was not allowed to reply; and now
+he wanted to know if Paul Ritson could get down to Liverpool and see his
+wife and little ones, and tell them how well he was, and how lusty he
+looked, and what fine times he had of it--"just to keep up their
+spirits, you know."
+
+"I say, you sir," bawled a sinister gray-head--the same whose
+conversation was overheard in church--"I hear as you're a employer of
+labor when yer not lagged. Any chance? I wants to leave my sitivation.
+Long hours, and grub reg'lar onsatisfactory. Besides, my present
+employer insists on me wearing a collar with a number--same as a wild
+beast or a bobby. It's gettin' ridic'lus. So I've give notice, and I
+flit in September. Maybe ye see as I'm growing my wings to fly." The
+hoary sinner pointed upward to his grizzly hair, which was longer than
+the hair of his comrades. "On'y it's coming out another tint o' awrburn
+nor what it was ten years ago, and the old woman won't have the same
+pride in my pussonal appearance."
+
+At two o'clock the assistant warder known as Jim-the-ladder marched Paul
+Ritson to the chief warder's office. There the convict was handcuffed
+and the warder armed. Then they set out.
+
+On the steamboat that plied between the Portland Ferry and Weymouth the
+convict dress attracted much attention. The day was some sort of chapel
+festival, and great numbers of chapel people in holiday costume crowded
+the decks and climbed the paddle-boxes; the weather was brilliant; the
+sun danced on the waters like countless fairies on a floor of glass; a
+brass band played on the bridge.
+
+Again at the Weymouth railway station the people gathered in little
+groups, and looked askance at the convict. During the few minutes which
+elapsed before the train left the platform, a knot of spectators stood
+before the carriage and peered in at the window.
+
+Paul Ritson paid little heed to these attentions, but they were often
+unwelcome enough. "Keep clear of him--see the blue cap?" "What an
+ill-looking fellow--to be sure, his looks are enough to hang him."
+
+Paul laughed bitterly. His heart felt cold within him at that moment. If
+he had worn broadcloth and a smile, how different the popular verdict
+might have been. Who then would have said that he was a villain?
+Certainly not yonder sleek minister of Christ who was humming a psalm
+tune a moment ago, and paused to whisper, "Be sure your sin will find
+you out." The black-coated Pharisee was handing a lady into a
+first-class carriage.
+
+The train started. Paul threw himself back in his seat, and thought of
+all that had occurred since he made this journey before. He was
+traveling in the other direction then, and what an agony was that first
+experience of convict life! He had never thought of it from that day to
+this.
+
+Other and more poignant memories had day after day obliterated the
+recollection of that experience. But it came back now as freshly as if
+it had all occurred yesterday. He was one of a gang of twenty who were
+traveling from Millbank to Dartmoor. The journey to Waterloo in the
+prison van had been a terrible ordeal. He had thought in the cells that
+it would be nothing to him if people in the streets recognized him. The
+shameful punishment of an innocent man was not his, but the law's
+disgrace.
+
+Yet, when he was marched out into the prison grounds abreast of a
+cadaverous wretch with shrunken brows and the eyes of a hawk, an old
+thief in front of him, and a murderer convicted of manslaughter treading
+on his heels, the cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead.
+
+He had meant to hold up his head, and if people looked into his face to
+look frankly back into their faces. But when his turn came he leaped
+into the van, and his chin buried itself in his breast.
+
+Then the crowds drawn up on the pavement outside as the gates rolled
+back and the van passed through; the crush in a busy thoroughfare when
+the van stopped to let a line of crowded omnibuses go by; the horrible
+scene at the station when the convicts were marched down the platform,
+and every ear was arrested by the tramp, tramp of twenty fettered men!
+
+Above all, the jests and the laughter of the older hands who had served
+their time before, and were superior to all small considerations of
+public shame! "I say, you with the gig-lamps, toss a poor devil a bit o'
+'bacco." "Seen us afore? In coorse you have. You in the white choker,
+look hard while yer at it, and you'll know us again." "Oh, Mother
+Shipton, and is that yourself? and how pleased we is to see ye, and just
+tip us yer welwet purse, and we'll give it yer back when we're this way
+again." And not all the rigor of the attendant warders was enough to
+suppress such jesting.
+
+Paul Ritson could not forbear to laugh aloud when he remembered with
+what an agony of sweat he had that day crept back into his seat.
+
+Times had changed since then. He had spent a year and a half in a
+government school, and had been educated out of all torturing delicacy.
+
+The warder attempted to draw him into conversation. Jim-the-ladder
+repeatedly protested that he bore no malice. "I'm a good fellow at
+bottom," he said more than once, and Paul Ritson showed no malice. But
+he laughed bitterly at a grim and an obvious thought that the warder's
+dubious words suggested. Failing in his efforts at conciliation, the
+warder charged his pipe and relapsed into a long silence.
+
+They had a compartment to themselves. At a station where the train
+stopped a man opened the door and had already put one foot into the
+carriage when he recognized the caste of his traveling companions. He
+disappeared in a twinkling. Paul Ritson did his best to restrain the
+anger that well-nigh choked him. He merely sent a ringing laugh after
+the retreating figure. At another station a police inspector, dressed in
+a little brief authority, caught sight of the blue cap and gray jacket,
+and bustled up to examine the warder's papers. Then, with a lofty look,
+he strode through the group of spectators whom his presence had
+attracted.
+
+Arrived at Waterloo, the warder hailed a cab, and they drove to Scotland
+Yard to report themselves. There they supped on cocoa and brown bread,
+with the addition of a rasher of bacon and a pipe for the warder. Thence
+they were driven to Euston to catch the nine-o'clock train to Penrith.
+
+The journey north was uneventful. At Rugby, Stafford, and elsewhere, the
+train stopped, and little groups of people looked in at the convict, and
+made apposite comments on his appearance, crime, and condition. Paul
+Ritson often shut his eyes and said nothing. Sometimes a sneer curled
+his lip, sometimes he burst into a bitter laugh. He was thinking that
+this was a fitting close to the degradation of his prison life. If one
+feeling of delicacy, one tender sentiment, one impulse of humanity
+remained to him when the gates of Portland closed behind him; it only
+required this cruel torture to crush it forever.
+
+In spite of the risk of dismissal and the more immediate danger at the
+hands of Paul Ritson, the warder coiled himself up and fell asleep. It
+was after midnight when they reached Crewe, and from that point of the
+journey the worst of the torment ceased. Their merciful fellow-men were
+mostly in bed, dreaming of heroic deeds that they were doing. But the
+silence of night had its own torture. As the train rumbled on through
+the darkness, now rattling in a long tunnel, now sliding into open air
+like a boat into still water, Paul Ritson's mind went back to the day
+which seemed now to be so far away that it might have belonged to
+another existence, when he traveled this road with the dear soul who had
+trusted her young and cloudless life to his keeping. Where was she now?
+Peace be with her, wheresoever she was! He recalled her tenderest
+glance, he seemed to hear her softest tone; the light pressure of her
+delicate fingers was now on his hands--the hard hands that wore the
+irons. And even at that moment, when all his soul went out to the pure
+young wife who had shared his sufferings, and he felt as if time and
+space were nothing, as if he had drawn her to him by the power of his
+yearning love, it seemed to him that all at once there rang in his ears
+the shrill, sharp voices of the convicts rapping out their foul and
+frightful oaths.
+
+He leaped to his feet, with a muttered oath on his own lips, and when
+the imagined agony with which he surprised himself had given way to a
+new sense of his actual sufferings, his heart grew yet more cold and
+bitter. He thought of what he had been and of what he was. There could
+be no disguising the truth--he was a worse man. Yes; whatsoever had once
+been pure in him, whatsoever had once been generous, whatsoever had once
+been of noble aspiration, was now impure, and ungenerous, and ignoble.
+Above all else, he had lost that tenderness which is the top and crown
+of a strong man. He felt as if the world had lifted its hand against
+him, and as if he were ready and eager to strike back.
+
+They reached Penrith toward four in the morning, and then the carriage
+in which they traveled was shunted on to the branch line to await the
+first train toward Cockermouth. The day was breaking. From the window
+Paul Ritson could see vaguely the few ruins of the castle. That familiar
+object touched him strangely. He hardly knew why, but he felt that a
+hard lump at his heart melted away. By and by the brakeman shouted to
+the signalman in the gray silence of the morning. The words were
+indifferent--only some casual message--but they were spoken in the broad
+Cumbrian that for a year and a half had never once fallen on Paul
+Ritson's ear. Then the lump that had melted as his heart seemed to rise
+to his throat.
+
+The gray light become intermingled with red, and soon the sky to the
+east was aflame. Paul let down the carriage window, and long waves of
+sweet mountain air, laden with the smell of peat, flowed in upon him.
+His lips parted and his breast expanded. At five o'clock the engine was
+attached. A few carriages were added at the platform, and these
+contained a number of pitmen, in their red-stained fustian, going down
+for the morning shift. When the train moved westward, the sun had
+risen, and all the air was musical with the songs of the birds. Very
+soon the train ran in among the mountains, and then at last the
+bitterness of Paul Ritson's heart seemed to fall away from him like a
+garment. That quick thrill of soul which comes when the mountains are
+first seen after a long absence is a rapture known to the mountaineer
+alone. Paul saw his native hills towering up to the sky, the white mists
+flying off their bald crown, the torrents leaping down their brant
+sides, and the tears filled his eyes and blotted it all out. The
+sedge-warbler was singing with the wheatear, and, though he could not
+see them now, he knew where they were: the sedge-warbler was flitting
+among the rushes of the low-land mere; the wheatear was perched on the
+crevice of gray rock in which it had laid its pale-blue eggs; the sheep
+were bleating on the fells, and he knew their haunts by the lea of the
+bowlders and along the rocky ledges where grew the freshest grasses.
+Down the corries of Blencathra, long drifts of sheep were coming before
+the dogs, and he knew that the shepherds had been out on the fells
+during the short summer night, numbering the sheep for the washing in
+the beck below.
+
+Everything came back upon him like a memory of yesterday. He stood up
+and thrust out his head, and did not think of his gray jacket and blue
+cap until a carter who watered his horses at a pool near the railway
+lines started and stared as if he had seen a "boggle" at noonday.
+
+Then Paul Ritson remembered that he was still a convict, that his hands
+wore irons, that the man who lay sleeping on the seat of the carriage
+was his warder, and that the steely thing that peeped from the belt of
+the sleeping man was a revolver, to be promptly used if he attempted to
+escape.
+
+But not even these reflections sufficed to dissipate the emotion that
+had taken hold of him. He began at length to think of Hugh Ritson, and
+to wonder why he had been brought back home. Home!--home? It was a
+melancholy home-coming, but it was coming home, nevertheless.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Two days later the gray old town-hall that stands in the market-place of
+Keswick was surrounded by a busy throng. The Civil Court of the County
+Assize was sitting in this little place for the nonce to try a curious
+case of local interest. It was an action for ejectment brought by Greta,
+Mrs. Paul Ritson, against a defendant whose name was entered on the
+sheet as Paul Drayton, alias Paul Ritson, now of the Ghyll, in the
+Parish of Newlands.
+
+The court-room was crowded. It was a large, bare room, with a long table
+and two rows of chairs crossing the end, the one row occupied by the
+judge and a special jury, the other by the lawyers for the prosecution
+and defense. The rest of the chamber was not provided with seats, and
+there the dalespeople huddled together.
+
+A seat had been found for Greta at one end of the table. Her cheek
+rested on her hand. She dropped her eyes as the spectators craned their
+necks to catch a glimpse of her. Behind her, and with one hand on her
+chair-back, stood the old parson, his Jovian white head more white than
+of old, the tenderer lines in his mellow face drawn down to a look of
+pain. Immediately facing Greta, at the opposite end of the table, Hugh
+Ritson sat. One leg was thrown over the other knee, and the long,
+nervous fingers of the right hand played with the shoelace. His head was
+inclined forward, and the thin, pallid, clean-cut face with the great
+calm eyes and the full, dilated nostrils was more than ever the face of
+a high-bred horse. None would have guessed the purpose with which Hugh
+Ritson sat there. One would have said that indifference was in those
+eyes and on that brow--indifference or despair.
+
+Near where the rustle was loudest and most frequent among the
+spectators, Drayton sat by the side of Mr. Bonnithorne. He was dressed
+in his favorite suit of broad plaid, and had a gigantic orange-lily
+stuck jauntily in his buttonhole. His face was flushed and his eyes
+sparkled. Now and again he leaned back to whisper something to the
+blacksmith, the miller, and the landlord of the Flying Horse, who were
+grouped behind him. His remarks must have been wondrously facetious, for
+they were promptly followed by a low gurgle, which was as promptly
+suppressed.
+
+The counsel for the plaintiff opened his case. The plaintiff sued as the
+owner in succession to her husband, who was at present dead to the law.
+She contended that the man who now stood seized of the Ghyll was not her
+husband, Paul Ritson, but Paul Drayton, an innkeeper of Hendon, who bore
+him a strange personal resemblance, and personated him. The evidence of
+identity which should presently be adduced was full and complete in the
+essential particular of proving that the defendant was not Paul Ritson,
+by whose title alone the defense would maintain the right of present
+possession. Unhappily, the complementary evidence as to the actual
+identity of the defendant with Paul Drayton, the publican, had been
+seriously curtailed by the blindness, followed by the death, of an
+important witness. Still, if he, the counsel for the plaintiff, could
+prove to the satisfaction of the jury that the defendant was not the man
+he represented himself to be, they would have no course but to grant the
+ejectment for which the plaintiff asked. To this end he would call two
+witnesses whose evidence must outweigh that of all others--the wife of
+Paul Ritson, and the clergyman who solemnized the marriage.
+
+Greta's name was called, and she rose at the end of the table. Her bosom
+heaved under the small lace shawl that covered her shoulders, and was
+knotted like a sailor's scarf, on her breast. She stood erect, her eyes
+raised slightly and her drooping hands clasped in front. After the
+customary formalities, she was examined.
+
+"You are the only child of the late Robert Lowther?"
+
+"I am the daughter of Robert Lowther."
+
+Drayton threw back his head, and laughed a little.
+
+"You were married to Paul Ritson in 1875 at the parish church of
+Newlands, the minister being the Reverend Mr. Christian?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"On the day of your marriage you accompanied your husband to London, and
+the same night he left you at the Convent of St. Margaret, Westminster?"
+
+"That is quite true."
+
+There was a buzz of conversation in the court, accompanied by a
+whispered conference on the bench. Counsel paused to say that it was not
+a part of his purpose to trouble the court with an explanation of facts
+which were so extraordinary that they could only be credited on the oath
+of a person who, though present, would not be called. At this reference
+Hugh Ritson raised his languid eyes, and the examination proceeded.
+
+"Three days afterward you received a message from your husband,
+requesting you to meet him at St. Pancras Station, and return with him
+to Cumberland by the midnight train?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Who took you the message?"
+
+"Mrs. Drayton, the old person at the inn at Hendon."
+
+"You went to the station?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Tell the court what occurred there."
+
+"Just on the stroke of twelve, when the train was about to leave, a man
+whom at first sight I mistook for my husband came hurrying up the
+platform, and I stepped into the carriage with him."
+
+"Do you see that man in court?"
+
+"Yes; he sits two seats to your right."
+
+Drayton rose, smiled broadly, bowed to the witness, and resumed his
+seat.
+
+"Were you alone in the compartment?"
+
+"At first we were; but just as the train was moving away who should join
+us but Parson Christian."
+
+There was another buzz of conversation, and counsel paused again to say
+that he should not trouble the court with an explanation of the
+extraordinary circumstances by which Parson Christian came to be in
+London at that critical moment. These facts formed in themselves a
+chain of evidence which must yet come before a criminal court, involving
+as it did the story of a conspiracy more painful and unnatural perhaps
+than could be found in the annals of jurisprudence.
+
+"Tell the court what passed in the train."
+
+"I perceived at once that the man was not my husband, though strangely
+like him in face and figure, and when he addressed me as his wife I
+repulsed him."
+
+"Did Parson Christian also realize the mistake?"
+
+"Oh, yes, but not quite so quickly."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"We left the train at the first station at which it stopped."
+
+"Did the defendant offer any resistance?"
+
+"No; he looked abashed, and merely observed that perhaps a recent
+illness had altered him."
+
+Counsel for the defense, at whose left Mr. Bonnithorne sat as attorney
+for the defendant, cross-examined the witness.
+
+"You say that on the night following the morning of your marriage your
+husband left you at a convent?"
+
+"I do."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne dropped his twinkling eyes, and muttered something that
+was inaudible to the witness. There was a titter among the people who
+stood behind him.
+
+"And you say that Mrs. Drayton took you the message of which you have
+spoken. Did she tell you that your husband had been ill?"
+
+"She did."
+
+"We are to infer that you visited the house of the Draytons at Hendon?"
+
+"A railway accident drove us there."
+
+"Did any one accompany the defendant to St. Pancras that night?"
+
+"My husband's brother, Mr. Hugh Ritson, was with him."
+
+"Tell the jury where your husband now is, if he is not at this moment in
+court."
+
+No answer. Amid a profound silence the plaintiff's lawyer was understood
+to object to the question.
+
+"Well, we can afford to waive it," said counsel, with a superior smile.
+"One further question, Mrs. Ritson. Had you any misunderstanding with
+your husband?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"Will you swear that your voices were not raised in angry dispute while
+you were at the inn at Hendon?"
+
+Greta lifted her head and her eyes flashed. "Yes, I will swear it," she
+said in a soft voice but with impressive emphasis.
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne reached up to the ear of counsel and was understood to
+say that perhaps the point was too delicate to be pressed.
+
+Parson Christian was next examined. The defendant in the present action
+was not the man whom he married to the plaintiff. He had since seen Paul
+Ritson. Where? In the convict prison of Dartmoor. In cross-examination
+he was asked by what name the convict was known to the directors of
+Dartmoor. Paul Drayton.
+
+"Then tell the court how you came to identify the defendant as Drayton."
+
+"There were many facts pointing that way."
+
+"Give us one."
+
+"On the morning of the marriage I found a letter lying open before the
+fire in my vestry. It was from Mr. Hugh Ritson to Mr. Bonnithorne, and
+it mentioned the name of Drayton in a connection which, by the light of
+later revelations, provoked many inferences."
+
+Mr. Bonnithorne was unprepared for this answer. Counsel looked at him
+inquiringly, but the attorney glanced down and colored deeply.
+
+"Can you show us the letter?"
+
+"No; I left it where I found it."
+
+"Then it can hardly be received as evidence."
+
+The attorney smiled, and the tension of Drayton's face relaxed. There
+was a slight shuffle among the people; the witness had stepped back.
+
+Counsel for the defense opened his case. They were asked to believe that
+the defendant in the present action was Paul Drayton, in the teeth of
+the fact that Paul Drayton was at that moment a convict in a convict
+prison. The incredible statement was made that a newly married husband
+had placed his young wife in a convent on the night of their marriage,
+and that when they should have rejoined each other an interchange had
+been made, the husband going to prison in another man's name, the other
+man coming to Cumberland to claim the place of the woman's husband.
+Moreover, they were asked to believe that the husband's brother, Mr.
+Hugh Ritson, had either been fooled by the impostor or made a party to
+the imposture. Happily it was easy to establish identity by two
+unquestionable chains of evidence--resemblance and memory. It would be
+shown that the defendant could be none other than Paul Ritson, first,
+because he resembled him exactly in person; second, because he knew all
+that Paul Ritson ought to know; third, because he knew nothing that Paul
+Ritson might not know. No two men's lives had ever been the same from
+the beginning of the world, and as it would be seen that the defendant's
+life had been the same as Paul Ritson's, it followed that Paul Ritson
+and the defendant were one and the same man.
+
+Dick o' the Syke was the first witness examined for the defense. He
+swore that Paul Ritson was active in extinguishing a fire that broke out
+in the mill two years ago; that he had climbed to the cross-trees with a
+hatchet; and that within the past month the defendant had described to
+him the precise locality and shape of the gap made in the roof by the
+fire. No one could have known so much except himself and the man who
+stood on the cross-trees. That man was Paul Ritson, and he was there and
+then recognized by many spectators, among whom was Parson Christian.
+
+The next witness was Mistress Calvert, of the Pack Horse. Paul Ritson
+had slept at their house one night two years ago, and a few days since
+the present defendant had pointed out the bedroom he occupied, and
+recalled the few words of conversation which passed between them.
+
+Natt, the stableman, was called. His sleepy eyes blinked knowingly as he
+explained that one winter's night, when the snow fell heavily, Mrs.
+Ritson, then Miss Greta, was startled by what she mistook for the ghost
+of Paul Ritson. The witness had not been so easily deceived, and the
+defendant had since described to him the exact scene and circumstances
+of what the lady had thought to be the ghostly appearance.
+
+Then followed John Proudfoot, the blacksmith; Tom o' Dint, the postman;
+Giles Raisley, the pitman; Job Sheepshanks, the mason; and Tommy
+Lowthwaite, the landlord of the Flying Horse--all swearing to points of
+identity.
+
+One recalled the fact that Paul Ritson had a scar on his head that was
+caused by the kick of a horse when he was a boy. The defendant had just
+such a scar.
+
+Another remembered that Paul Ritson had a mark on the sole of his right
+foot which had been made by treading on a sharp piece of rock on
+Hindscarth. The defendant had exactly such a mark.
+
+A third had wrestled with Paul Ritson, and knew that he had a mole
+beneath the left shoulder-blade on the back. The defendant had a mole in
+that unusual place.
+
+Counsel for the defense smiled blandly at the special jury, the special
+jury smiled blandly at counsel for the defense. Was it really necessary
+that the defendant should be called? Surely it was a pity to occupy the
+time of the court. The whole case was in a nutshell--the lady had
+quarreled with her husband. State of affairs would be promptly gauged
+when it was explained that this action had been raised to anticipate a
+forthcoming suit in the divorce court for restitution of connubial
+rights.
+
+The counsel for the plaintiff smiled also, and his was a weak smile of
+conscious defeat. He stammered a desire to withdraw--said he had been
+promised more conclusive evidence when he undertook the case, and sat
+down with an apologetic air.
+
+There was a shuffle of feet in the court. Drayton had risen to receive
+the congratulations of his friends behind him and the cordial nods of
+some of the superior people who had been favored with seats at the right
+hand and left of the judge. He was answering in a loud tone, when there
+was a sudden lull of the buzz of gossip, and all eyes were directed
+toward one end of the table.
+
+Hugh Ritson had risen from his seat, and with a face that was very pale,
+but as firm as a rock, he was engaged in a whispered conference with the
+plaintiff's counsel. That gentleman's eager face betrayed the keenest
+possible interest in what he heard. Presently he lifted his arm with an
+impatient gesture, and said:
+
+"My lord, I have unexpectedly come into possession of new and most
+important evidence."
+
+"Of what nature?" asked the judge.
+
+"If it is conceivable," said counsel, "that in any question of personal
+identity the court will accept the evidence of all the tinkers and
+tailors, the riff-raff, the raggabash of the country-side, and reject
+that of the wife of the man whose estate is in question, perhaps it will
+be allowed that there are three persons who are essential to this
+examination--the brother of Paul Ritson, the defendant who claims to be
+Paul Ritson, and the convict who is suffering penal servitude in the
+name of Paul Drayton. I might name one other whose evidence might be yet
+more conclusive than that of any of these alone--the mother of Paul
+Ritson; but she is unhappily dead to the world."
+
+Drayton was still on his feet, riveted to the spot where he stood.
+Obtuse as he was, he saw at a glance what had occurred. In all his
+calculations this chance had never suggested itself--that Hugh Ritson
+would risk the personal danger to bring him down.
+
+"Can you put these persons into the witness-box?"
+
+"My lord, it is, I presume, within the liberties of the defendant to
+keep carefully out of that box, but the court will not refuse to hear
+the evidence of the two persons of whom I speak--the brother of Paul
+Ritson and the convict known as Paul Drayton."
+
+At this there was high commotion. Greta had leaned back in her chair,
+her bosom heaving, her face shadowed by lines of pain. Parson Christian
+stood behind her with a blank expression of bewilderment. Drayton's
+brows were tightened and his lips were drawn hard.
+
+"None of their criss-crossin' for me," he muttered.
+
+"You can ask for a new trial," said the judge.
+
+"My lord, another case is pending, and on the issue in this case the
+other case must largely depend."
+
+"How far has the present one proceeded?"
+
+"The defendant's case is not yet completed."
+
+During this scene Hugh Ritson had stood quietly by the table. He
+remained there with complete self-possession while counsel proceeded to
+explain that four days ago, in anticipation of this action and of
+another that had been threatened, a statutory declaration had been made
+in the presence of the Home Secretary and the law officers of the Crown.
+The first result of that statement was that the convict Drayton was now
+present in the court-house ready to appear at this trial.
+
+The judge signified his desire that the convict might be brought in and
+heard.
+
+Hugh Ritson motioned to a tall man who stood near, and immediately
+afterward a door was thrown open and another man stepped into the
+court-room.
+
+Every eye was fixed upon him. He wore a convict's gray jacket, with the
+round badge marked "3. B 2001. P S," and the broad arrow beneath. His
+face was pale and rigid; his large eyes glittered; he was in his full
+manhood, but his close-cropped hair was slightly tinged with gray. He
+pushed his way through the people, who fell back to let him pass. When
+he reached the table he tapped it impatiently with one of his hands,
+which were fettered, and threw up his head with a glance of defiance.
+His whole bearing was that of a strong man who believed that every man's
+hand was against him, and who intended to let it be seen that his own
+hand was against every man's.
+
+Counsel rose again, and asked that the defendant's witnesses might be
+recalled. This was done.
+
+"John Proudfoot, Job Sheepshanks, Thomas Lowthwaite, Giles Raisley,
+look this way. Who is this man?"
+
+There was a dead hush. Then, one by one, the men who had been named
+shook their heads. They did not know the convict. Indeed, he was
+terribly altered. The ordeal of the past two years had plowed strange
+lines in his face. At that moment he was less like himself than was the
+impostor who came there to personate him.
+
+Hugh Ritson's manner did not change. Only a slight curl of the lip
+betrayed his feelings.
+
+Counsel continued, "Is there any one in court who recognizes him?"
+
+Not a voice responded. All was silence.
+
+"Will the defendant stand side by side with him?"
+
+Drayton leaped up with a boisterous laugh, and swaggered his way to the
+opposite side of the table. As he approached, the convict looked at him
+keenly.
+
+"Will Mrs. Ritson come forward again?"
+
+Greta had already risen, and was holding Parson Christian's hand with a
+nervous grip. She stepped apart, and going behind the two men, she came
+to a stand between them. On the one side stood Drayton, with a smirking
+face half turned toward the spectators; on the other stood the convict,
+his hands bound before him, his defiant glance softened to a look of
+tenderness, and his lips parted with the unuttered cry that was ready to
+burst from them.
+
+"Greta," said Hugh Ritson, in a low tone of indescribable pathos, "which
+of these men is your husband?"
+
+Counsel repeated the question in form.
+
+Greta had slowly raised her eyes from the ground until they reached the
+convict's face. Then in an instant, in a flash of light, with the quick
+cry of a startled bird, she flung herself on his neck. Her fair head
+dropped on the frieze of the convict's jacket, and her sobs were all
+that broke the silence.
+
+Hugh Ritson's emotion surged in his throat, but he stood quietly at the
+table. Only his slight figure swayed a little and his face quivered. His
+work was not yet done.
+
+"This is the answer of nature," he said quietly.
+
+Hugh Ritson was put into the witness-box, and in a voice that was full
+and strong, and that penetrated every corner of the court, he identified
+the convict as his brother, Paul Ritson.
+
+Counsel for the defense had seemed to be stunned. Recovering himself, he
+tried to smile, and said:
+
+"After this melodramatic interlude, perhaps I may be allowed to ask our
+new witness a few questions. Did you, at the Central Criminal Court,
+held at the Old Bailey in 1875, swear that the person who stands here in
+the dress of a convict was not Paul Ritson?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Now for my second question. Did you also swear that the defendant was
+your brother, and therefore not Paul Drayton."
+
+"I did."
+
+"Then you were guilty of perjury at that time, or you are guilty of
+perjury now?"
+
+"I was guilty of perjury then."
+
+The judge interposed and asked if the witness was awakened to the
+enormity of the crime to which he confessed. Hugh Ritson bent his head.
+
+"Are you conscious that you are rendering yourself liable to penal
+servitude?"
+
+"I have signed a declaration of my guilt."
+
+The answers were given in perfect calmness, but a vein of pathos ran
+through every word.
+
+"Do you know that a few years back many a poor wretch whose crime was
+trifling compared with yours has gone from the dock to the gallows?"
+
+"My guilt is unmitigated guilt. I make a voluntary statement. I am not
+here to appeal for mercy."
+
+There was the hush of awe in the court.
+
+The face of the convict wore an expression of amazement.
+
+Counsel smiled again.
+
+"I presume you know that the effect of the law officers of the Crown,
+believing the story that you tell us now is that, if they do so, the man
+whom you call your brother will be put into possession of the estate of
+which your late father died seized?"
+
+"He is entitled to it."
+
+Counsel turned to the jury with a smile.
+
+"It is always necessary to find some standard by which to judge of human
+actions. The witness quarreled with the defendant four days ago, and
+this is his revenge. But I appeal to the court. Is this story credible?
+Is it not a palpable imposture?"
+
+The judge again interposed.
+
+"Men do not risk so much for a lie. The witness knows that when the
+court rises the sheriff may take him into custody."
+
+At this counsel rose again and asked the bench not to play into the
+hands of the witness by apprehending him.
+
+"Let the convict be examined," said the judge.
+
+Paul Ritson raised his head; Greta sunk into a chair beneath him. He was
+not sworn.
+
+The warder in charge put in an entry from the books of the prison. It
+ran: "Paul Drayton, five feet eleven inches, brown hair and eyes, aged
+thirty, licensed victualer, born in London, convicted of robbery at the
+scene of a railway accident."
+
+"Does that entry properly describe you?" asked the judge.
+
+The convict's eyes wandered.
+
+"What's going on?" he said, in a tone of bewilderment.
+
+"Attend, my man. Are you Paul Ritson, the eldest son of the late Allan
+Ritson?"
+
+"Why do you want to know?" said the convict.
+
+"It befits a witness who is permitted to come from the scene of a
+degrading punishment to give a prompt and decisive answer. What is your
+name, sir?"
+
+"Find it out."
+
+"My man," said the judge, more suavely, "we sit here in the name of the
+law, and the law could wish to stand your friend." (The convict laughed
+bitterly.) "Pray help us to a decision in the present perplexing case
+by a few frank answers. If you are Paul Drayton, you go back to Portland
+to complete the term of your imprisonment. If it can be proved that you
+are Paul Ritson, your case will be laid before the home officials, with
+the result that you will be liberated and re-established in your estate.
+First of all, which is your name--Paul Drayton or Paul Ritson?"
+
+The convict did not answer at first. Then he said in a low tone:
+
+"No law can re-establish me."
+
+The judge added:
+
+"Bethink you, if you are Paul Ritson, and an innocent man, the law can
+restore you to your young wife."
+
+Visibly moved by this reference, the convict's eyes wandered to where
+Greta sat beside him, and the tension of his gaze relaxed.
+
+The judge began again:
+
+"You have been recognized by two witnesses--one claiming to be your
+brother, the other to be your wife--as Paul Ritson. Are you that
+person?"
+
+The convict's face showed the agony he suffered. In a vague, uncertain,
+puzzled way he was thinking of the consequences of his answer. If he
+said he was Paul Ritson, it seemed to him that it must leak out that he
+was not the eldest legitimate son of his father. Then all the fabric of
+his mother's honor would there and then tumble to the ground. He
+recalled his oath; could he pronounce six words and not violate it? No,
+not six syllables. How those mouthing gossips would glory to see a good
+name trailed in the dust!
+
+"Are you Paul Ritson, the eldest son and heir of Allan Ritson?"
+
+The convict looked again at Greta. She rose to her feet beside him. All
+her soul was in her face, and cried:
+
+"Answer, answer!"
+
+"I can not answer," said the convict, in a loud, piercing voice.
+
+At that terrible moment his strength seemed to leave him. He sunk
+backward into the chair from which Greta had risen.
+
+She stood over him and put her hand tenderly on his head.
+
+"Tell them it is true," she pleaded, "tell them you are my husband; tell
+them so; oh, tell them, tell them!" she cried in a tone of piteous
+supplication.
+
+He raised to hers his weary eyes with a dumb cry for mercy from the
+appeal of love.
+
+Only Hugh Ritson, of all who were there present, understood what was in
+the convict's heart.
+
+"Paul Ritson is the rightful heir of his father and his mother's
+legitimate son," he muttered audibly.
+
+The convict turned to where his brother sat, and looked at him with a
+face that seemed to grapple for the missing links of a chain of facts.
+
+Counsel for the defense arose.
+
+"It will be seen that the unhappy convict witness will not be used as an
+instrument of deception," he said. "He is Paul Drayton, and can not be
+made to pretend that he is Paul Ritson."
+
+The hush of awe in the court was broken by the opening of a door behind
+the bench. Two women stood on the threshold. One of them was small,
+wrinkled, and old. She was Mrs. Drayton. The other was a nun in hood and
+cape. She was Sister Grace.
+
+Hugh Ritson leaned toward counsel for the plaintiff, who promptly rose
+and said:
+
+"The witness I spoke of as dead to the world is now present in the
+court."
+
+Amid a buzz of conversation the nun was handed to the table. She raised
+her long veil and showed a calm, pale face. After the usual formalities,
+counsel addressed her.
+
+"Mrs. Ritson," he said, "tell us which of the two men who sit opposite
+is your son."
+
+Sister Grace answered in a clear, soft voice:
+
+"Both are my sons. The convict is Paul Ritson, my son by Allan Ritson;
+the other is Paul Lowther, my son by an unhappy alliance with Robert
+Lowther."
+
+Drayton jumped to his feet.
+
+"There, that's enough of this!" he shouted, excitedly. "Damme, if I can
+stand any more of it!"
+
+Bonnithorne reached over and whispered:
+
+"Mad man, what are you doing? Hold your tongue!"
+
+"It's all up. There's the old woman, too, come to give me away. Here, I
+say, I'm Paul Drayton; that's what I am, if you want to know."
+
+"Let the sheriff take that man before a justice of the peace," said the
+judge.
+
+"It was you that led me into this mess!" shouted Drayton at Bonnithorne.
+"Only for you I would have been in Australia by this time."
+
+"Let the sheriff apprehend Mr. Bonnithorne also," said the judge. "As
+for you, sir," he continued, turning to Hugh Ritson, "I will report your
+evidence to the Public Prosecutor--who must be in possession of your
+statutory declaration--and leave the law officers to take their own
+course with regard to you."
+
+The action for ejectment was adjourned.
+
+Drayton and Bonnithorne did not trouble the world much longer. Within a
+month they were tried and condemned together--the one for personation;
+both for conspiracy.
+
+Paul Ritson was removed in charge of his warder, to be confined in the
+town jail pending the arrival of instructions from the Secretary of
+State. Hugh Ritson walked out of the court-room a free man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+Hugh Ritson returned to his room on the pit-brow. On his way there he
+passed a group of people congregated on the bridge at the town end. They
+fell apart as he walked through, but not an eye was raised to his, and
+not one glance of recognition came from his stony face. Toward the
+middle of the afternoon a solicitor came from Carlisle and executed a
+bill of sale on the machinery and general plant. The same evening, as
+the men on the day shift came up the shaft, and those on the night shift
+were about to go below, the wages were paid down to the last weights
+taken at the pit-mouth. Then Hugh Ritson closed his doors and began
+afresh his melancholy perambulation of the room.
+
+That night--it was Wednesday night--as darkness fell on the mountain and
+moorland, there was a great outcry in the Vale. It started at the
+pit-mouth, and was taken up on every side. In less than a quarter of an
+hour a hundred people--men, women, and children--were gathered about the
+head of the shaft. There had been a run of sand in the pit, and some of
+the hands were imprisoned in the blocked-up workings. Cries, moans, and
+many sounds of weeping arose on the air in one dismal chorus. "I knew it
+would come;" "I telt the master lang ago;" "Where's my man?" "And mine?"
+"And my poor barn--no'but fifteen." "Anybody seen my Willie?" "Is that
+thee, Robbie, ma lad?--No." As every cageful of men and boys came to the
+surface, there was a rush of mothers, wives, and fathers to recognize
+their own.
+
+Hugh Ritson went out and pushed his way through the people.
+
+"Where is the sand running?" he asked of a pitman just landed.
+
+"In the sandy vein, 2, 3, 1," answered the man.
+
+"Then the shaft is clear?"
+
+"Ay, but the water's blocked in the main working, and it's not safe to
+go down."
+
+Hugh Ritson had taken the man's candle out of his hand, and was fixing
+it with the putty in the front of his own hat.
+
+"Are you ready?" he shouted to the engine-man, above the babel of
+voices.
+
+In another moment he had stepped into the cage and looped down the iron
+rail in front of it. There was a moment's silence among the
+panic-stricken people as the cage began to move downward.
+
+At the bottom of the shaft a group of men waited to ascend. Their faces
+were lurid in the dim light. Before the cage grounded Hugh Ritson could
+hear their breathing. "How many of you are left?" he asked.
+
+"No'but two now--Giles Raisley and auld Reuben," answered one of the
+men. The others, without heeding the master's question, had scrambled
+into the cage, and were already knocking the signal for the ascent.
+
+Hugh Ritson turned toward the working known among the men as the sandy
+vein. The cage was now rising, and the pitman who had spoken found
+himself left on the pit bottom; the single moment that he had given to
+the master had lost him his chance of a place. He cast one stern glance
+upward, and a muttered oath was on his lips. At the next instant he had
+taken the direction followed by Hugh Ritson, and was walking one pace
+behind him.
+
+In the silence the dull thud of their footsteps on the rock beneath
+mingled with the drip, drip of the water overhead. When they had gone a
+hundred yards down the narrow working there came another and far more
+terrible sound. It was such a sound as the sea might have made if it had
+rushed through a thousand crevices in the rock. It was the sound of the
+thousands of tons of sand as they forced their way from the dense mass
+above. And over the hiss as of the sea was the harsh crack of great
+timbers splitting like matchwood.
+
+Toward the awful scene of this tumult Hugh Ritson quickened his steps.
+The man followed close at his heels. Presently their passage was blocked
+with sand like a wall. Then over their heads the cross-trees cracked,
+and the upright forks split and bent at the right and left of them. In
+another moment the ground beneath them shook under the new weight that
+lay on it. They stepped quickly back, and in an instant, with a groan
+such as the sea makes when it is sucked by the ebbing tide from a cave
+in a rock, the floor, with all its freight, went down a score of feet.
+It had fallen to an old working that lay below.
+
+Then the bent forks hung from the roof in empty air. Silence followed
+this shock, and through the silence there came a feeble cry for help.
+Hugh Ritson stepped out, plucked his candle from his hat, and held it
+before his feet.
+
+"Where are you?" he called, and his voice came back through the echoing
+depths beyond. Presently a man could be dimly seen clinging to a
+cross-piece in an alcove made for an air-shaft from the main working. To
+get to him the treacherous ground must be crossed, with its cracking
+roof, through which the sand slid even yet, and under the split timbers
+that still creaked.
+
+Hugh Ritson did not hesitate; he turned to leap down, saying, "Follow
+me." But the man clung to him from behind.
+
+"For God's sake, dunnot!" he cried. "I can not go there. It's mair nor
+my life is worth!"
+
+Hugh Ritson twisted about, and looked him steadily in the face.
+
+"What is your name, my man?"
+
+"Davey Braithwaite."
+
+"Then you are the young fellow whose wife died last week?"
+
+"Ey," with a drooping head.
+
+"Your child died before her, did it not?"
+
+"Ey, he did, poor laal thing!"
+
+"Your father and mother are gone, too?"
+
+"They're gone, for sure!"
+
+"And you have neither kith nor kin left in all the world?"
+
+"Nay, no'but mysel' left."
+
+Hugh Ritson said no more; a hard smile played on his white face, and at
+the next instant he had leaped down on to the bed of sand below.
+
+The man recoiled a pace or two and wrung his hands. Before he was aware
+of what had happened, Giles Raisley and the master were standing beside
+him.
+
+"Where were old Reuben and his gang stationed?" said Hugh Ritson.
+
+"In the main working; but the water is dammed up; we can never pass."
+
+They returned to the shaft bottom, and walked thence down the cutting
+that ran from it at right angles. A light burned far away in the dim
+vista of that long dark burrowing.
+
+It was a candle stuck to the rock. The men who worked by it had left it
+there when they rushed off for their lives. Through the bottom of this
+working there ran a deep trough, but it was now dry.
+
+This was the channel by which the whole pit was drained. Beyond the
+light the three men encountered another wall of sand, and from behind it
+and through it there came to them the dull thud and the plash of heavy
+water.
+
+"If auld Reuben's theer, he's a dead man," said Giles Raisley, and he
+turned to go.
+
+Hugh Ritson had struggled to the top of the heap, and was plowing the
+sand away from the roof with his hands. In a little while he had forced
+an opening, and could see into the dark space beyond. The water had
+risen to a reservoir of several feet deep. But it was still four or five
+feet from the roof, and over the black, surging, bubbling waves the
+imprisoned miner could be seen clinging to a ledge of rock. Half his
+body was already immersed. When the candle shot its streak of light
+through the aperture of sand, the poor creature uttered a feeble cry.
+
+In another moment the master had wormed his body through the hole and
+dropped slowly into the water. Wading breast deep, he reached the
+pitman, gave him his hand, and brought him safely through the closing
+seam.
+
+When the cage rose to the surface again, bringing back to life and the
+world the last of the imprisoned miners, a great cheer broke from many a
+lusty throat. Women who had never thought to bless the master, blessed
+him now with fervent tongues. Men who had thought little of the courage
+that could rest in that slight figure, fell aside at the sense of their
+own cowardice. Under the red glow that came from the engine fire many a
+hard face melted.
+
+Hugh Ritson saw little of this, and heeded it not at all. He plucked the
+candle, still burning, from his hat, and threw it aside. Then he walked
+through the people toward his room, and when he got there he shut the
+door, almost slamming it in the faces of those who followed. He pulled
+down the window-blinds, and began afresh his perambulation to and fro.
+
+He had grown paler and thinner. There was a somber light in his eyes,
+and his lips were whitening. His step, once quick and sure, despite his
+infirmity, was now less certain. He had not slept since the night of
+Mercy's death. Determined never to encounter again the pains and terrors
+of sleep, he had walked through the long hours of the four succeeding
+nights. He knew what the result must be, and did not shrink from it.
+Once only he had thought of a quicker way to the sure goal that was
+before him. Then he had opened a cupboard, and looked long and intently
+at a bottle that he took from its shelf. But he had put the bottle back.
+Why should he play the fool, and leap the life to come? Thus, night
+after night, he had walked and walked, never resting, never pausing,
+though the enfeebled limbs shook beneath him, and the four walls of the
+room reeled in his dazed eyes.
+
+Before returning to their homes, the people gathered in the darkness
+about the office on the pit-brow and gave one last cheer.
+
+The master heard them, and his lip curled.
+
+"Simpletons!--they don't understand," he muttered, beneath his breath,
+and continued his melancholy walk.
+
+Next morning, a banksman, who acted as personal attendant on Hugh
+Ritson, brought him his breakfast. It was not early.
+
+The sun had risen, but the blinds of the office were still drawn, and a
+candle burned on the table. The man would have put out the candle and
+let in the sunlight, but the master forbid him. He was a Methodist, and
+hummed psalm tunes as he went about his work. This morning he was more
+than usually fresh and happy when he entered with his tray; but at the
+sight of Hugh Ritson's pallid face his own face saddened.
+
+"You are a young man yet, Luke," said the master. "Let me see, how old
+are you?"
+
+"Seventy-nine, sir. I was born in ninety-eight. That was when auld
+Bonnypart was agate of us and Nelson bashed him up."
+
+"I dare say you have grandchildren by this time?"
+
+"Bless you, ey, and great-grandchilder, and ten of them, too; and all
+well and hearty, thank the Lord!"
+
+The sound of a bell, slowly tolling, came from across the dale. Hugh
+Ritson's face contracted, and his eyes fell.
+
+"What bell is that?" he asked, in an altered tone.
+
+"It's like to be the church bell. They're burying poor auld Matha's lass
+and her wee barn this morning."
+
+Hugh Ritson did not touch his breakfast.
+
+"Luke, close the shutters," he said, "and bring more candles."
+
+He did not go out that day, but continued to walk to and fro in the
+darkened room. Toward nightfall he grew feverish, and rang frequently
+the bell that summoned the banksman. He had only some casual order, some
+message, some unimportant explanation.
+
+At length the old man understood his purpose, and settled himself there
+for the night. They talked much during the early hours, and often the
+master laughed and jested. But the atmosphere that is breathed by a
+sleepless man is always heavy with sleep, and in spite of his efforts to
+keep awake, Luke dozed away in his chair. Then for hours there was a
+gloomy silence, broken only by the monotonous footfall within and the
+throb of the engine without.
+
+The next day, Friday, the sun shone brilliantly, but the shutters of the
+little house on the pit-brow remained closed, and the candle still
+burned on the table. Hugh Ritson had grown perceptibly feebler, yet he
+continued his dreary walk. The old banksman was forbidden to send for a
+doctor, but he contrived to dispatch a messenger for Parson Christian.
+That night he watched with the master again. When the conversation
+failed, he sung. First, a psalm of David, "The fool hath said in his
+heart, There is no God;" then a revival hymn of Charles Wesley about
+ransom by Christ's blood.
+
+It would have been a strange spectacle to strange eyes. The old
+man--young still, though seventy-nine, dear to troops of dear ones,
+encircled in his age by love and honor, living in poverty that was
+abundance, with faith that was itself the substance of things hoped for,
+his simple face ruddier and mellower than before--rocking his head and
+singing in the singleness of his heart. The other man--barely thirty,
+yet already old, having missed his youth, his thin cheeks pallid as
+linen, his eyes burning with a somber light--alone in the world,
+desolate, apart--walking with an uncertain step and a tremor of the
+whole frame, which seemed to lurch for poise and balance, yet swinging
+his arms with the sweep of the melody, and smiling a forced smile
+through his hard and whitened lips.
+
+When the singing ceased, Hugh Ritson paused suddenly and turned to the
+old banksman.
+
+"Luke," he said, abruptly, "I suppose there will be many to follow you
+when your time comes?"
+
+"Ey, please God," answered the banksman, dashing away a furtive drop
+that had rolled on to his cheek; "there'll be my childer, and my
+childer's childer, and their childer, forby. Maybe the barns will lay me
+behind the mother; poor auld body!"
+
+Hugh Ritson's face darkened, and he resumed his walk.
+
+"Tut! what matter?" he asked himself; "the night winds are enough to
+moan over a man's grave." And he laughed a little.
+
+Next morning--Saturday morning--he wrote a letter, and sent Luke to the
+village to post it. Then he attended to some business relating to the
+pit. After that, he shut the door and bolted it. When the old man
+brought the midday meal he knocked in vain, and had to go away.
+
+Night closed in, and still there came no answer to the old man's knock.
+When the sun had set the wind had risen. It threatened to be a
+tempestuous night.
+
+Toward ten o'clock Parson Christian arrived. He had wrestled long with
+his own heart as to what course it was his duty to take. He had come at
+last in answer to the banksman's summons, and now he knocked at the
+door. There was no answer. The wind was loud in the trees overhead, but
+he could hear the restless footfall within. He knocked again, and yet
+again.
+
+Then the bolt was drawn, and a voice at once strange and familiar cried,
+"Come in, Parson Christian."
+
+He had not called or spoken.
+
+The parson entered. When his eyes fell on Hugh Ritson's face he
+shuddered as he had never shuddered before. Many a time he had seen
+death in a living face, but never anything like this. The livid cheeks
+were stony, the white lips were drawn hard, the somber eyes burned like
+a deep, slow fire, the yellow hands were gaunt and restless. There was
+despair on the contracted brow, but no repentance. And the enfeebled
+limbs trembled, but still shuffled on--on, on, on, through their longer
+journey than from Gabbatha to Golgotha. The very atmosphere of the room
+breathed of death.
+
+"Let me pray with you," said the parson, softly, and without any other
+words, he went down on his knees.
+
+"Ay, pray for me--pray for me; but you lose your labor; nothing can save
+me."
+
+"Let us call on God," said the parson.
+
+A bitter laugh broke from Hugh Ritson's lips.
+
+"What! and take to him the dregs and rinsings of my life? No!"
+
+"The blood of Christ has ransomed the world. It can save the worst
+sinner of us all, and turn away the heavy wrath of God."
+
+Hugh Ritson broke again into a bitter laugh.
+
+"The end has come of sin, as of trouble. No matter." Then, with an awful
+solemnity, he added: "My soul is barren. It is already given over to the
+undying worm. I shall die to-morrow at sunrise."
+
+"No man knows the day nor the hour--"
+
+Hugh Ritson repeated, with a fearful emphasis, "I shall die as the sun
+rises on Sunday morning."
+
+Parson Christian remained with him the weary night through. The wind
+moaned and howled outside. It licked the walls as with the tongues of
+serpents. The parson prayed fervently, but Hugh Ritson's voice never
+once rose with his. To and fro, to and fro, the dying man continued his
+direful walk. At one moment he paused and said with a ghastly smile,
+"This dying is an old story. It has been going on every day for six
+thousand years, and yet we find it as terrible as ever."
+
+Toward three in the morning he threw open the shutters. The windows were
+still dark; it seemed as if the dawn were far away. "It is coming," he
+said calmly. "I knew it must come soon. Let us go out to meet it."
+
+With infinite effort he pulled his ulster over his shoulders, put on his
+hat, and opened the door.
+
+"Where are you going?" said the parson, and his voice broke.
+
+"To the top of the fell."
+
+"Why there?"
+
+Hugh Ritson turned his heavy eyes upon him. "To see the new day dawn,"
+he said, with an awful pathos.
+
+He had already stepped out into the gloom. Parson Christian followed
+him. They took the path that led through the moor end to the foot of Cat
+Bells. The old man offered his arm, but Hugh Ritson shook his head and
+walked one pace ahead. It was a terrible journey. The wind had dropped.
+In the air the night and day commingled. The dying man struggled along
+with the firm soul of a stricken lion. Step by step and with painful
+labor they ascended the bare side of the fell in the gray light of
+morning. They reached the top at last.
+
+Below them the moorland lay dark and mute. The mist was around them.
+They seemed to stand on an islet of the clouds. In front the day-break
+was bursting the confines of the bleak racks of cloud. Then the day came
+in its wondrous radiance, and flooded the world in a vast ocean of
+light.
+
+On the mountain brow Hugh Ritson resumed his melancholy walk. The old
+parson muttered, as if to himself, "Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and
+fro? Wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?" Hugh Ritson overheard the words,
+and all his manner changed. The stubborn lips softened, the somber eye
+melted, the contracted brow relaxed, and for the first time in all this
+length of years, he cried like a little child.
+
+At the same instant the sun swept up, and he fell. Parson Christian bent
+over him. The crimson of the east twas reflected on his white face. The
+new day had dawned.
+
+On the Tuesday following two mourners stood by an open grave in the
+church-yard of Newlands. One of them was white-headed; the other wore
+the jacket and cap, the badge and broad arrow of a convict. The sexton
+and his man had lowered the coffin to its last home, and then stepped
+aside. A tall man leaned on the lych-gate, and a group of men and women
+stood in silence by the porch of the church. The afternoon sun was low,
+and the shadows of the tombstones stretched far on the grass.
+
+The convict went down on his knees, and looked long into the grave. When
+he arose, the company that had gathered about the porch had gone, and
+voices singing a hymn came from within the old church. It was the
+village choir practicing. The world's work had begun again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Two days later the fell behind the Ghyll was a scene of unusual
+animation. It was the day of the shearing. The sheep, visibly whiter and
+more fleecy for a washing of some days before, had been gathered into
+stone folds. Clippers were seated on creels ranged about a turf fire,
+over which a pot of tar hung from a triangle of boughs. Boy "catchers"
+brought up the sheep, one by one, and girl "helpers" carried away the
+fleeces, hot and odorous, and hung them over the open barn doors. As the
+sheep were stripped, they were tugged to the fire and branded from the
+bubbling tar with the smet mark of the Ritsons. The metallic click of
+the shears was in the air, and over all was the blue sky and the
+brilliant sunshine.
+
+In a white overall, stained with patches of tar and some streaks of
+blood, smudged with soap and scraps of the clinging wool, Parson
+Christian moved among the shearers, applying plentiful doses of salve
+from a huge can to the snips made in the skin of the sheep by the
+accidents of the shears.
+
+"We might have waited for the maister afore shearing--eh?" said Reuben,
+from one of the creels.
+
+"He'll be here before we finish, please the Lord," answered the parson.
+
+"Is it to-day you're to gang for him?"
+
+"Yes, this afternoon."
+
+"A daub on this leg, parson, where she kicked--deuced take her!... It's
+like you'll bring him home in a car?"
+
+"Ay; Randal Alston has loaned me his mare."
+
+"Why, man, what a upshot we'll have, for sure--bacon pie and veal and
+haggis, and top stannin pie and puddings, I reckon.... Just a hand to
+her leg, parson, while I strip the coat and waistcoat off this
+black-faced herdwick.... Is the mistress to come home, too?"
+
+"Nay, Reuben, Mrs. Ritson has gone back to where she came from."
+
+"Weel, it's no'but naturable, after all that's happent.... Easy now ...
+be quiet, wilta ... dusta want another snip, eh?... And young Mistress
+Greta--it's like she'll be mistress now?"
+
+"It's very likely she'll come to the Ghyll with her husband, Reuben."
+
+"God bless her! And there's been no luck on the land since he left
+it--and everything a fault, too.... There, she's stripped. Away with
+her, Natt, man, and de'il tak' her."
+
+In the afternoon a vast crowd of men, women and children had gathered
+once more about the old town-hall at Keswick. They laughed and bantered
+and sung. Presently the door of the hall was thrown open, and two men
+came out. One was Paul Ritson, no longer clad as a convict; the other
+was Parson Christian. The people hailed them with a mighty shout, lifted
+them into a gig that was drawn up in the market-place, took out the
+horses and crowded into the shafts. Then they set off with a great cheer
+through the town and the country road, the dust rising in clouds behind
+them.
+
+They took the road to the west of the valley, and as they passed under
+the wood, an old man, much bent, was easing a smoking fire in the
+charcoal pit. He paused and raised himself, his iron rod in his hand,
+and lifted his heavy eyes toward the clamorous company. The gig flew
+past with its shouts, its cheers, and its noisy laughter, and the old
+man turned silently back to his work.
+
+When they came near to the vicarage, Paul leaped from the carriage over
+the heads of the men who pulled it, vaulted the gate, and bounded into
+the house. There was one who waited for him there, and in an instant she
+was locked close in his arms. "At last!" he whispered. Her heart
+overflowed; she dropped her fair young head on his heaving breast, and
+wept sweet tears.
+
+Parson Christian came rolling up the path surrounded by a tumultuous
+throng. Foremost and lustiest were the blacksmith and the miller, and
+close behind came the landlord and the postman. All were shouting as if
+their brassy throats might crack.
+
+There was high revel at the Ghyll that evening. First came the feasting
+in the old kitchen: huge rounds of beef, quarters of lamb, pease, and
+sweet puddings and pies. Then came the dancing in the barn, lighted by
+candles in cloven sticks, and lanterns of turnips that were scooped out
+hollow.
+
+But at the vicarage Paul and Greta sat alone in silence and with clasped
+hands. Parson Christian came in and out at intervals, gossiping cheerily
+of the odds and ends of daily life, as if its even tenor had never been
+disturbed. They supped together, and sat on till midnight; and then the
+old Christian took down his green tome and wrote:
+
+   "June 30.--So Paul being to return home after his long absence, I
+   spent the forenoon on the fell shearing, and earned a stone of wool
+   and a windle of rye. In the afternoon I set forward toward Keswick,
+   wherefor Randal Alston had loaned me his mare and gig. At the Flying
+   Horse I lighted not, but stood while I drank a pot of ale with John
+   Proudfoot and Richard Parkinson and a neighbor that comes to-morrow
+   to thatch the low barn for me. Then direct to Keswick, where there
+   was a great concourse, and a hearty welcome, and much rejoicings
+   that warmed me and came nigh to break me withal. Got son Paul at
+   last, and would have driven direct home, but the good folk were not
+   minded that it should be so, and naught would do but that they must
+   loose the mare and run in the shafts. So we reached home about six,
+   and found all well, and my love Greta, after long waiting in her
+   closet, very busy with Paul, who had run in ahead of me. So I went
+   out again and foddered and watered the mare, for Peter is sometimes a
+   sad fatch and will not always give a horse what is worth its trouble
+   in the eating. And being thrang this evening a-mending the heels of
+   my old clock boots with lath nails, whereof I bought a pennyworth at
+   Thomas Seed's shop in the market-place, I saw little of Paul, but
+   left him to Greta. Then supped, and read a psalm and prayed in my
+   family, and sat till full midnight. So I retire to my lodging-room,
+   at peace with all the world, and commend my all to God. The Lord
+   forgive the sins of me and mine that we have committed in these our
+   days of trial. Blessed be God who has wrought our victory, and
+   overcome our enemies and brought us out more than conquerors.
+
+   Amen."
+
+Parson Christian had put down the pen, and was sprinkling the writing
+with sand from a pepper-castor, when Brother Peter came in with candles
+in his hand and a letter under his abridged arm. "Laal Tom o' Dint gave
+me this for thee," he said to Paul, and dropped the letter on to his
+knees. "I was sa thrang with all their bodderments, that I don't know as
+I didna forget it."
+
+Parson Christian returned the green-clad book to its shelf, took up his
+candle, bid good-night, and went to bed.
+
+Brother Peter shambled out, and then Paul and Greta were left alone.
+
+Paul opened the letter. It was inclosed in a sheet of paper that bore
+the stamp of the Convent of St. Margaret, and these words only, "Sent on
+by Sister Grace." Paul began to read the letter aloud, Greta looking
+over his shoulder. But as he proceeded his voice faltered, and then he
+stopped. Then, in silence, the eyes of both traversed the written words.
+They ran:
+
+   "Mother, I have wronged you deeply, and yours is a wrong that may
+   never be repaired. The past does not return, and what is done is done
+   with. It is not allowed to us to raze out the sins and the sufferings
+   of the days that are gone; they stand and will endure. I am not so
+   bad a man as perhaps I seem; but of what avail is it to defend myself
+   now? and who would believe me? My life has been one long error, and
+   the threads of my fate have been tangled. Have I not passed before
+   our little world for a stern and callous man? Yet the blight of my
+   soul has been passion. Yearning for love where love could never be
+   returned, I am the ruins of what I might have been. If I did wrong
+   knowingly, it was not until passion mastered me; if I saw things as
+   they did not exist, it was because passion made me blind. Mother, if
+   there is One above to watch and judge our little lives, surely He
+   sees this, and reckons the circumstances with the deed.
+
+   "Tell her that I wish her peace. If I were a man used to pray,
+   perhaps I would ask Heaven to bless her. But my heart is barren of
+   prayer. And what, after all, boots my praying? I have given her back
+   at last to the love of a noble man. And now my wasted life is done,
+   and this is the end--a sorry end!
+
+   "Mother, I shall not live to suffer the earthly punishment of my
+   crime. Never fear--my hand shall not be lifted against myself. Be
+   sure of that, whatever else may seem doubtful. But very soon this
+   passionate and rebellious soul will stand for judgment before its
+   awaiting God.
+
+   "Farewell, my mother, farewell!"
+
+
+
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