Vincent Brooks. Day & Son, Lith. London.

AT GAZE.

Frontispiece

KATERFELTO

A Story of Exmoor.

BY

G.J. WHYTE-MELVILLE,

LONDON:
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & Son, CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

[LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.]

KATERFELTO

A STORY OF EXMOOR.

[CHAPTER I.]

DEADMAN'S ALLEY.

On the last day of April, 1763, John Wilkes, refusing to enter into his recognisances to appear before the Court of Queen's Bench, was committed to the Tower by warrant of my Lords Egremont and Halifax, His Majesty's two principal Secretaries of State.

Defiance of constituted authority has never wanted sympathy from that British public which entertains, nevertheless, a profound respect for law. Mr. Wilkes became a hero in consequence; and while many a jug of beer was thereafter emptied, and many a bottle of wine cracked to his health, diverse street songs, more or less execrable, were composed in honour of the so-called patriot, whose personal popularity was incontestable, notwithstanding the unprepossessing exterior, that has passed into a proverb.

Of these, none were perhaps so absurd as the following ditty, chanted by a chairman more than half drunk, under the windows of a tavern in Covent Garden, notwithstanding the protestations of some half-dozen gentlemen, who, seated at supper in an upper chamber, held that their tastes and opinions were equally outraged by the persistency of the singer below.

"King Nabuchodonosor," whined the chairman.

"Hold that cursed noise!" exclaimed one of the gentlemen from the window.

"King Nabuchodonosor," repeated the chairman in all the aggravating monotony of a minor key.

"You knave!" roared a second voice—"I'll come down and beat you to a jelly, if you speak another syllable!"

A volley of oaths succeeded this threat, but their object stood fire manfully under the discharge, and fixing his eyes on vacancy, proceeded with his song—

"'King Nabuchodonosor
Lived in a golden palace;
He fed from a golden dish, and drank
His swipes from a golden chalice.
But John Wilkes he was for Middlesex,
And they chose him for knight of the shire;
For he made a fool of Alderman Bull,
And called Parson Tooke a liar!'

"Hurrah!" continued the vocalist, who had lost his hat, waving a scratch wig round his bare scalp with an abortive attempt to cheer. "King Nabu—Nabu—cho—donosor was a mighty man"—shaking his head with unimpaired solemnity—"a mighty man, no doubt,

'But John Wilkes he was for Middlesex,
And they chose him for knight of the shire.'

Hip, hip—Hurrah!"

A burst of laughter rang from the party in the tavern, and a gentleman in a laced waistcoat shut down the window after throwing out a crown-piece to the singer in the street.

Night was falling, the air felt chilly, though it was summer, and the party, who had drank several bottles of port, gathered round the fire over a steaming bowl of punch.

They were of all ages between twenty and fifty. One of them wore a wig, another powder, a third had brushed his luxuriant hair to the poll of his neck and tied it in a plain black bow. Their long-waisted coats were cut to an ample width at skirt and sleeves; their waistcoats heavily bound with lace. Knots of ribbon adorned the knees of their breeches, their shoes were fastened with buckles, and each man carried sword and snuff-box. To drink, to fence, to "lug out" as it was called, on slight provocation, to sing a good song, tell a broad story, and spill a deal of snuff in its recital, were, at this period, the necessary accomplishments of a gentleman.

The room in which these worthies had assembled seemed more comfortable than luxurious. Its bare floor was sanded, and the chairs, long-legged, high-backed and narrow-seated, were little suggestive of repose, but the mahogany table had been rubbed till it shone like glass, the wood-fire blazed and crackled, lighting up the crimson hangings that festooned the windows, and though the candles were but tallow, there flared enough of them to bring into relief a few pictures with which the unpapered walls were hung. These works of art, being without exception of a sporting tendency, were treated in a realistic style, and seemed indeed to have been painted by the same master:—A fighting-cock, spurred, trimmed, and prepared for battle, standing on the very tip-toe of defiance. A horse with a preternaturally small head, and the shortest possible tail, galloping over Newmarket Heath, to win, as set forth in large print below, "a match or plate of the value of fifty guineas." The portrait of a celebrated prize-fighter, armed with a broadsword, of a noted boxer in position, stripped to the waist. Lastly, an ambitious composition, consisting of scarlet frocks, jack-boots, cocked hats, tired horses and baying hounds, grouped round a central figure brandishing a dead fox, and labelled "The Victory of obtaining the Brush."

One of the party had taken on himself to ladle out the punch. Its effects soon became apparent in the heightened colour and increased volubility of the company. Voices rose, two or three at once. A song was demanded, a glass broken. In the natural course of events, somebody called a toast.

"Blue-Eyes!" shouted a handsome young fellow flushed with drink, waving his glass above his head.

"A fine!" objected the punch-ladler, judicially. "By the laws of our society, no member has leave to pledge a female toast. It leads to mischief. Gentlemen, we have decided to draw the line, and we draw it at beauty. Call something else!"

"Then here's John Wilkes!" laughed the first speaker. "He's ugly enough in all conscience. John Wilkes! His good health and deliverance—with three!"

"Hold!" exclaimed a beetle-browed, square-shouldered man of forty or more, turning down his glass; "I protest against the toast. John Wilkes ought still to be fast by the heels in the Tower of London. If he had his deserts John Wilkes would never have come out again, alive or dead, and nobody but a d—d Jacobite, and traitor to His Majesty King George, would venture to call such a toast in this worshipful company. I stand to what I say, John Garnet. It's you to play next!"

Each man looked at his neighbour. The punch-ladler half rose to interfere, but shortly plumped into his seat again, finding himself, it may be, not quite steady on his legs, while the young gentleman, thus offensively addressed, clenched his glass, as if to hurl it in the last speaker's face. Controlling himself, however, with obvious effort, he broke into a forced laugh, glanced at his rapier, standing in a corner of the room, and observed quietly, "If you desire to fasten a quarrel on me, Mr. Gale, this is neither a fitting time nor place."

"Quarrel!" exclaimed the man behind the punch-bowl; "no gentleman, drunk or sober, would be fain to quarrel on John Wilkes' behalf. Sure, he can take his own part with the best or worst of us, and Mr. Gale was only playing the ball back to your service, John Garnet. You began the jest, bad or good. Be reasonable, gentlemen. Fill your glasses, and let us wash away all unkindness. Here's to you both!"

Mr. Gale, though something of a bully, was not, in the main, an ill-natured man. He squared his shoulders, filled his glass, and pledged the person he had insulted with an indifference that almost amounted to additional provocation. Confident in his personal strength and skill with his weapon, Mr. Gale, to use his own phraseology, was accustomed to consider himself Cock of the Walk in every society he frequented. Nine men out of ten are willing to accept bluster for courage, and give the wall readily enough to him who assumes it as a right. The tenth is made of sterner stuff, resists the pretension, and exposes too often a white feather lurking under the fowl's wing, that crowed so lustily and strutted with so defiant a gait.

All this passed through the mind of John Garnet, completely sobered by his wrangle, while he sipped punch in silence, meditating reprisals before the night was past.

This young gentleman, whom nature and fortune seemed to have intended for better things, was at present wasting health and energy in a life of pleasure that failed egregiously to please, but that succeeded in draining the resources of a slender purse to their lowest ebb. He came of an old family, and indeed, but for the attainder that deprived his father of lands and title, would have been the owner of large estates in the North, and addressed by tenantry or neighbours as Sir John—that father, devoted body and soul to the Stuarts, died at Rome, beggared and broken-hearted, leaving his son little besides his blessing, and an injunction never to abandon the good cause, but bequeathing to him the personal beauty and well-knit frame that Acts of Parliament were powerless to alienate. The young man's laughing eyes, rich colour, dark hair, and handsome features were in keeping with a light muscular figure, a stature slightly above the average, and an easy jaunty bearing, set off by a rich dress, particularly pleasing to feminine taste. Hence, while he repudiated the title of which he had been deprived, it became a jest among his intimates to call him "plain John Garnet," a jest of which the point was perhaps more appreciated by the other sex, than by his own.

Plain John Garnet looked somewhat preoccupied now, sitting moodily over his punch, and the influence of his demeanour seemed to steal upon the company in general. Mr. Gale, indeed, held forth loudly on horse-racing, cock-fighting, and such congenial topics, but spent his breath for an inattentive audience, not to be interested even by a dissertation on West-country wrestling in all its branches—the Cornish hug, the Devonshire shoulder-grip, and the West Somerset "rough-and-tumble catch where you can."

At an earlier hour than usual the reckoning was called, and the guests, not very steady, assumed their swords and hats to pass downstairs into the street. Mr. Gale by accident, John Garnet by design, were the last to leave the room.

The latter placed himself before the door, observing in a quiet tone, that the other's reckoning was not yet wholly paid up. "How so?" asked Gale, in his loud, authoritative voice. "The oldest member has taken my half-guinea, and entered it in due course. Will you satisfy yourself, my young friend, by calling the landlord to produce his club-books? Pooh, pooh! young sir: the punch is strong, and you have drunk too much! Stand aside, I say, and let me pass!"

He did not like the set look of John Garnet's mouth; he liked less the low firm tones in which that gentleman repeated his assertion.

"You may or may not be in debt to the club—it is their affair. You owe an apology to one of the members—that is mine."

"Apology!" stormed the other. "Apology! what do you mean, sir? This is insolence. Don't attempt to bully me, sir! Again I say, at your peril, let me pass!"

"Do you refuse it?" asked John Garnet, in a low voice, setting his lips tighter while he spoke.

"I do!" was the angry reply. "And what then?"

"Nothing unusual," said the other, while he moved out of the way.

"Drawer! Please to show us an empty room."

A frightened waiter, with a face as white as his napkin, opened the door of an adjoining chamber, set a candle on the chimney-piece, and motioned the gentlemen in.

Garnet bowed profoundly, making way for his senior to pass. The other looked about him in uncertainty, and felt his heart sink, while he heard the voices of their departing companions, already in the street.

He had little inclination to his task. For one moment the burly, square-shouldered man wished himself safe at home; the next, that intermittent courage which comes to most of us, in proportion as it is wanted, braced his nerves for the inevitable encounter and its result. He grasped his rapier, ready to draw at a moment's notice, while the other coolly locked the door.

The waiter, fresh on the town, and unused to such brawls, ran down to summon his master, who was busy over the house accounts in a small parlour below. Till the landlord had added up one column and carried its balance to the next, he paid no attention, though his astonished servant stood pale and trembling before him, with a corkscrew in his mouth and a bottle under his arm. Then both rushed upstairs in a prodigious hurry, just too late to prevent mischief.

While yet in the passage they could hear a scuffle of feet, a clink of steel, a smothered oath, and a groan; but as they reached the door it was opened from inside, and John Garnet stood before them, panting, excited, his waistcoat torn, his dress awry, with the candle in his hand.

"There is a gentleman badly hurt in that room," said he. "Better send for a surgeon at once, and get a coach to take him home." Then he blew out the candle, slipped downstairs in the dark, and so into the street.

The gentleman was indeed so badly hurt that all the energies of the household were concentrated on the sufferer. Nobody had a thought to spare for the assailant till long after pursuit would have been too late. Mr. Gale was wounded in the fore-arm, and had received a sword-thrust through the lungs. With the landlord's assistance he made shift to walk into a bedchamber, where they undressed and laid him carefully down; but before a surgeon could arrive there was obviously no hope, and he only lived long enough to assure the doctor, in the presence of two witnesses, that the quarrel had been of his own making, and was fought out according to the usual rules of fair-play.

"I was a fool not to close with him," murmured the dying man, reflecting ruefully on the personal strength he had misapplied. "But the rogue is a pretty swordsman; quick, well-taught, supple as an eel, and—I forgive him!"

Then he turned on his side, as the landlord subsequently stated, and thereafter spoke never a word more, good or bad.

Vincent Brooks, Day & Son, Lith. London

UNDER THE GUARD.

John Garnet, meanwhile, made the best of his way into the street, with the intention of proceeding straight to his lodgings, and riding out of London next morning at break of day. Duels, though of no rare occurrence, were serious matters even in a time when every man carried a small-sword by his breeches-pocket; and to be taken red-handed, as it were, from the slaughter of an adversary, would have entailed unpleasant consequences to liberty, if not to life. While it had been established that a gentleman was bound to defend his honour with cold steel, it seemed also understood that in such encounters even victory might be purchased at too dear a price. Nevertheless, so riotous were the habits of the day, encouraging to the utmost card-playing and the free use of wine, so lax was the administration of the law, and so stringent the code of public opinion, that scarcely a week passed without an encounter, more or less bloody, between men of education and intellect, who would have considered themselves dishonoured had they not been ready at any moment to support a jest, an argument, or an insult, with naked steel. John Garnet, therefore, observing an ancient watchman pacing his sluggish rounds, turned aside into a bye-street rather than confront this guardian of the peace; and hastening on as he became less certain of the locality, was aware that his strength began to fail, and felt his shirt clinging to his body, wet and clammy with something that must be blood.

For an instant he thought of turning back into the more frequented thoroughfare; but the hum of voices, and increasing tread of feet, seemed too suggestive of discovery, and he stumbled onwards, in faint hope of reaching the dwelling of some obscure barber-surgeon who might staunch his wounds, and send for a coach to take him home.

Twice he reeled against the wall of a certain dark passage, called Deadman's Alley, down which he staggered with uneven steps, and had almost decided that he must sink into the gutter, and lie where he fell till a passer-by should pick him up, when he descried a red lamp in a window ahead, and summoned all his strength to make for it as his last hope. Half blind, half stupefied, he groped and blundered on, with a dull, strange fancy that he was on the deck of a ship, labouring in a heavy sea while she made for a harbour-light, that seemed continually to dip and disappear behind the waves. The illusion, though not so vivid, was similar to a dream, and the languor that accompanied it something akin to sleep; till in a moment, while through his brain there came a whirr as in the works of a watch when it runs down, the light widened, broke into a hundred shafts of fire, went out and all was dark.

[CHAPTER II.]

PORLOCK BAY.

High-water in Porlock Bay. The tide upon the turn—sand-pipers, great and small, dipping, nodding, stalking to and fro, or flitting along its margin waiting for the ebb; a gull riding smoothly outside on an untroubled surface, calm as the soft sky overhead, that smiled lovingly down on the Severn Sea. Landward, a strip of green and level meadows, fringed by luxuriant woodlands, fair with the gorgeous hues of summer; stalwart oak, towering elm, spreading walnut, stately Spanish chestnut, hardy mountain ash, and scattered high on the steep, above dotted thorns and spreading hazels, outposts, as it were, of delicate feathering birches, to guard the borders of the forest and the waste; fairyland brought here to upper earth, with all its changing phases, and variety of splendour. The wild-bird from her nest in Horner Woods needed but a dozen strokes of her wing to reach the open moorland that stretched and widened ridge by ridge, and shoulder by shoulder, till its rich carpet of heather was lost in the warm haze that came down on Dunkerry Beacon, like a veil from the sky.

Far away towards Devon lay a land of freedom and solitude, haunt of the bittern and the red deer, intersected by many a silent coombe and brawling river, to expand at last on the purple slopes of Brendon, or the wet grassy plains of Exmoor. Travelling over that interminable distance, the sense of sight could not but weary for very gladness, and turned well pleased to rest itself on the white cliffs of the Welsh coast opposite, and the faint blue of the intervening waters, calm and still, like the eyes of a girl, whose being has never yet been stirred into passion by the storm.

Above, below, around, Porlock Bay was decked in her fairest garb. Earth, air, and water seemed holding jubilee; but the loveliest object in earth, air, or water was a maiden seated on a point of rock, washed by the drowsy lap and murmur of the tide, who seemed pondering deeply yet in simple happy thought—a maiden of comely features and gracious presence, the sweetest lass from Bossington Point to Bideford Bay, nimble with needle, tongue and finger, courteous, quick-witted, brave, tender-hearted, the light of a household, the darling of a hamlet, the toast of three counties,—and her name was Nelly Carew.

She had sat the best part of an hour without moving from her place, therefore she could not be waiting for an expected arrival. She swung her straw hat backwards and forwards by its broad blue ribbon, with the regularity of a pendulum; therefore her meditations could have been of no agitating kind, and she looked straight into the horizon, neither upward like those who live in the future, nor downwards like those who ponder on the past. Nevertheless, her reflections must have been of an engrossing nature, for she started at a man's footstep on the shingle, and the healthy colour mantled in her cheek, while she rose and put out her hand to be grasped in that of a square-shouldered, rough-looking personage, whose greeting, though perfectly respectful, seemed more cordial than polite.

"Good even, Mistress Nelly," said the new comer, in a deep sonorous voice; "and a penny for your thoughts, if I may be so bold; for thinking you were, my pretty lass, I'll wager a bodkin, of something very nigh your heart."

She turned her blue eyes—and Nelly Carew's blue eyes made fools of the opposite sex at short notice—full in the speaker's face.

"Indeed, Parson," she answered, "you never spoke a truer word in the pulpit, nor out of it. I've turned it over in my mind till I'm dazed with thinking, and I can't get her to sit, do what I will."

"Sit!" exclaimed the other. "Where and how?"

"Why, the speckled hen to be sure!" answered Nelly, rather impatiently. "If she addles all these as she addled the last hatch, I'll forswear keeping fowls, that I will—it puts me past my patience. How do you contrive with yours, Mr. Gale? though to be sure, if I was a parson, like you, I wouldn't keep game-cocks. I couldn't have the heart to see the poor things fight!"

Parson Gale made no attempt to justify this secular amusement. He was one of those ecclesiastics, too common a hundred years ago, who looked upon his preferment and his parish as a layman of the present day looks on a sporting manor and a hunting-box. Burly, middle-aged, and athletic, there were few men between Bodmin and Barnstaple who could vie with the parson in tying a fly, setting a trimmer, tailing an otter, handling a game-cock, using fists and cudgel, wrestling a fall, and on occasion emptying a gallon of cider or a jack of double ale. Nay, he knew how to harbour a stag, and ride the moor after him when the pack were laid on, with the keenest sportsman of the West, and if to these accomplishments are added no little skill in cattle doctoring, and some practical knowledge of natural history, it is not to be supposed that the Reverend Abner Gale found much leisure for those classical and theological studies, to which he had never shown the slightest inclination.

"It is but their nature," said the Parson, reverting to the game-cocks, of which he owned a choice and undefeated breed. "It comes as natural for them to fight, as for me to drink when I'm dry, or for your old grandfather to sit and nod over the fire. Or for yourself, Mistress Nelly,"—here the parson hesitated and tapped his heavy riding boots with his heavier whip,—"to bloom here in the fresh air of the Channel, like a rose in a bow-pot. There's a many would fain gather the rose, only they dursn't ask for fear of being denied."

The latter part of the sentence was spoken low enough for Nelly, even if she heard it, to ignore.

"And what brought you here this afternoon?" she inquired in her frankest tones. "It's a long ride across the moor, Parson, even for you, and not much of a place when you get to it. If it had been Bridgewater now, or Barnstaple, sure you would have seen a score of neighbours, men and women, to tell you the news, and wind up the night with a junket or may be a dance. But here," and Nelly burst into a merry laugh, "our only news is that the speckled hen seems as obstinate as a mule, and Farmer Veal brought a roan nag horse home this morning from Exeter. I daresay you've seen it already. As to dancing, if you must needs dance, Parson Gale, it will have to be with grandfather or me!"

"And I'd dance all night with both," he answered, "to be sure of a kind word from one of them in the morning. Do you really care to know what brought me here to-day, Mistress Nelly, and will you promise not to be hard on me if I tell you the truth?"

There was something ludicrous in the contrast of his rough exterior and timid manner while he spoke. He was a thick, square-made man, built for strength rather than activity, with a coarse though comely face, bearing the traces of a hard out-of-door life, not without occasional excesses in feasting and conviviality. His short grizzled hair made him look more than his age, but in spite of his clumsy figure, there was a lightness in his step, an activity in his gestures, such as seldom outlasts the turning point of forty. He was dressed in a full-skirted riding coat, an ample waistcoat that had once been black, soiled leather breeches, and rusty boots, garnished with a pair of well-cleaned spurs. Even on foot and up to his ankles in shingle, the man looked like a good rider, and a daring resolute fellow in all matters of bodily effort or peril, not without a certain reckless good humour that often accompanies laxity of principle and habits of self-indulgence. Many women would have seen something attractive even now in his burly strength and manly bearing; would have thought it worth while, perhaps, to wean him from his game-cocks and his boon companions, to tempt him back into the paths of sobriety, good government, and moderation. Among such reformers he would fain have counted Nelly Carew.

"You must tell it me in the house then," said she, rising hastily, and looking up at the sky, as if in dread of a coming shower. "It's time I was back with grandfather to give him his posset—I left it simmering on the hob more than an hour ago. Poor grandfather! He never complains, but I fear he frets if I keep away from him long. It must be dull for him sure, after the life he led once, dukes and princes and counts of the empire and what not—why, his very snuff-box belonged to Prince Eugene; and now he has nobody to speak to but me! Come in, Mr. Gale, and welcome; it will freshen him up a bit to see a new face, for I think he seems poorly this morning; you may walk straight into the parlour; you know your way well enough—while I go and look after supper. You'll eat a morsel with us, won't you, before your ride across the moor?"

Thus staving off any further explanation of the parson's hints, Nelly Carew led the way to the pretty and commodious cottage she called her home, stopping at the door to prune a broken twig from the myrtle that flourished by the porch as luxuriously as though North Devon were the South of France. Parson Gale, noting the trim garden, the well-ordered flower-beds, the newly-thatched roof, and general air of cleanliness and decency that pervaded the establishment, could not repress a strong desire to own the treasure thus comfortably bestowed. There was the casket. Would he ever succeed in carrying off its jewel to make the light of his own hearth the ornament on his own breast?

It seemed but yesterday she came here a smiling little lass of nine or ten, the darling of that worn-out soldier, whose life had commenced so eventfully, to dribble out its remaining sands in so quiet and obscure a retreat. Of old Carew's history he only knew thus much, that the veteran had passed a wild unbridled youth, a stormy and reckless manhood; that he had been tried for rebellion in '15, and risked his head, already grey, once more in '45, escaping imprisonment and even death on both occasions by the interposition of powerful friends and in consideration of his services on the Continent during the war. Even John, Duke of Marlborough, spoke out for the man he had seen at Malplaquet, holding his own with a pike against three of the Black Musketeers, and who carried his weapon in a cool salute to his commander the instant he had beaten them off. But Carew never prospered, despite his dauntless courage and undoubted military skill. Now some fatal duel, now some wild outrage on discipline and propriety brought him into disgrace with the authorities, and men who were unborn when he first smelt powder, commanded regiments and brigades, while he remained a simple lieutenant, with a slender income, a handsome person, and a reputation for daring alone.

Such characters marry hastily and improvidently. Carew's wife died when her first child was born, a handsome little rogue, who grew to man's estate the very counterpart in person and disposition of his graceless sire. He, too, married early and in defiance of prudential considerations, gambled, drank, quarrelled with his father, and lost his life in a duel before they had made friends. Old Carew's hair turned grey, and his proud form began to stoop soon after his son's death, for he loved the boy dearly, none the less perhaps because of those very qualities he thought it right to reprove. Then he took the widow and her little girl to live with him at a small freehold he inherited near Porlock; but young Mistress Carew did not long survive her husband, and the old man found himself at threescore years and ten the sole companion of a demure little damsel not yet in her teens, whose every look, word, and gesture reminded him cruelly of the son he had loved and lost.

These two became inseparable. The child's mother had imparted to her a few simple accomplishments—needlework, house-keeping, a little singing, a little music, the French language—as she had herself acquired it in a convent abroad; above all, those womanly ways that not one woman in ten really possesses, and that make the charm of what is called society no less than the happiness of home.

Little Nelly was still in her black frock when, taking a Sunday walk hand-in-hand with her grandfather, she looked up in his face, and thus accosted him:—

"When I'm big," said she, "I'll have a little girl of my own. I shall take her out-a-walking, and be kind to her, as you are to me. You won't like her better than me, grandfather, will you?"

"You may be sure of that, Nelly," was his answer, while he marvelled how this blue-eyed mite had come to be dearer to him than all his loves and memories of the past; wishing he could have shaped his whole life differently for her sake.

"I shall always be your little girl, grandfather," continued Nelly; "I couldn't do without you, and you couldn't do without me, so you need not be afraid of my ever going away to leave you—I promise—there!"

"But, if you marry, Nelly?" said he, laughing, for to his little maid this affirmation was the most solemn form of oath.

"I shall never marry," answered Nelly, with exceeding decision, "no more shall my little girl."

And now it seemed the old warrior's turn to be dependent on the grown woman he had loved and cherished in her childhood. It was true enough that he fretted and pined for her if she stayed many hours out of his sight. It was pitiable to mark how, day by day, the intellect failed in proportion as the goodly form dwindled to decay. The old oak that had reared its branches so sturdily was bowed and sapless now. The soldier of Oudenarde and Malplaquet, who had sat at table with Marlborough and Prince Eugene, was fit for little more than to doze in an easy-chair, longing for his grandchild's home-coming, and nodding, as Parson Gale said, feebly over the fire.

Even that worthy felt struck with something of awe and apprehension while he looked on the wasted limbs that he had heard quoted by old neighbours for their strength, and reflected that the time was coming when he too would no longer be able to sit a horse or wrestle a fall. What had he to look forward to? What resources against that day of debility and stagnation, unless, indeed, he could prevail in his suit with Nelly Carew? Therefore did Parson Gale exert all his powers of conversation, hoping to render himself agreeable to the girl as she passed in and out, furthering the preparations for their simple meal. He drew on his memory, his mother-wit, and his invention for subjects that might be interesting to both his companions. For old Carew he detailed at great length the particulars of a wrestling-match, and subsequent drinking bout, at both of which he had lately assisted in his own parish; while to Nelly he expatiated on the convenience of his kitchen, the coolness of his larder, the luxuries of his best parlour in the parsonage at home; but, in spite of all his efforts, he experienced a dim sense of failure and depression. Notwithstanding his calling, the man was superstitious rather than religious; and when he rose to take leave, could not forbear expressing a conviction that some great misfortune must be impending on him or his.

"I've heard tell of men feeling just like me," said he, holding Nelly's hand rather longer than good breeding required, "and being found next morning stark dead on the moor. There was a woman up at my place only last Martinmas, and she says, 'Parson,' says she, 'there's something coming to me that's past praying for; I know as well as if I saw it. I'm that down-hearted I don't seem to fill my bodice, and there's a din in both my ears like the waves of a flood-tide, so as I can't scarce hear myself speak.' It wasn't a month before her only brother got drowned off the Lizard, and will you tell me now, Mistress Nelly, as you did once before, that such warnings are but idle fancies and old women's fables? I'm down-hearted too; I'm not ashamed to say so. And when it's fallen on me, whatever it is, I should like to know who will care a pinch of snuff what's gone with wild Abner Gale?"

"I wouldn't speak so, if I were you," answered the girl, who, having disengaged her hand, was now standing at the cottage door to see him mount for his homeward ride across the moor. "There are plenty of all sorts to welcome you when you come, and wish you 'good-speed' when you go away—you that have so many friends."

"Friends!" repeated the Parson, turning his mare's head homewards, with a bitter smile. "The church wouldn't hold my acquaintance, but the pulpit is large enough for my friends!"

[CHAPTER III.]

WAIF.

Deadman's Alley was at all times a secluded thoroughfare; after dark, indeed, its echoes rarely woke to the sound of a footstep; and the watch reflecting, perhaps, that such loneliness saved them a deal of trouble, abstained from disturbing its repose. An empty cask, a bale of goods, or a human body thrown aside in Deadman's Alley, might have remained there many hours without attracting the notice or obstructing the transit of a passenger.

John Garnet, however, was unusually fortunate, for he had wallowed in the gutter but a few minutes, when a girl's step came dancing along the alley, and the lightest foot in London tripped over him as he lay at length upon the stones, not quite unconscious, yet altogether powerless to move. The girl, who had nearly fallen, recovered her footing with the activity of a cat; and smothering an exclamation in some outlandish tongue, peered down through the darkness to discover the nature of her stumbling-block. Then she felt that her naked ankles, for she wore no stockings, were wet with blood. In an instant she flew to the little red lamp, for which John Garnet had been making when he fell, tapped hard at the latticed window whence it shone; and after a hurried whisper with some one inside, returned in equal haste, accompanied by an old man wearing a skull-cap and black velvet gown. Together they lifted their burden in a deliberate business-like manner, as though they traded habitually in such goods, and carried it into their dwelling, carefully securing the shutters of the lattice, and closing the door.

When John Garnet recovered his senses he thought he must be dreaming, so like a trick of Fancy was the scene to which he awoke. Above him hung heavy bed-curtains of a rich brocade, under his head was a laced pillow, and he lay on a scarlet coverlet bound with a border of blue. His eyes, travelling lazily round the room, rested on a silver lamp, fed by some aromatic oil; and when he closed them again, wearied by the exertion, gentle hands pressed a cordial to his lips, and a consoling voice whispered in his ear:

"Courage, my young friend. Do not attempt to raise your head. Another sip, Waif. Good. In five minutes he will come-to."

In five minutes he did come to, and found strength to ask what had happened and where he was?

"The first question you must answer for yourself," said the grave old man who sat by his bedside, with a finger on his pulse. "To the second I reply, make your mind easy, you are in the house and under the care of the celebrated Doctor Katerfelto, who has won more games of skill against death than any practitioner now alive. Waif, bring me the roll of lint that stands on the top shelf in the surgery. Look in the middle drawer for some red salve, and put that flask out of my patient's reach."

The girl had left the room, and was back again quicker than John Garnet's languid senses could follow her movements. When she returned with these simple remedies, he did not fail to mark the softness of her dark eyes, the subdued grace of her bearing, the sweet and loving pity that seemed to pervade her whole being while she hovered about his couch, and administered skilfully to the wants of a wounded man. Nor was this tenderness, this sympathy, this almost maternal solicitude, in accordance with her general habits, in keeping with her type of form and feature. She looked more like a panther of the wilderness than the nurse in a sick room. The lithe and supple frame, the light and noiseless gait, the quick stealthy turn of ear and eye and limb, ready on the instant for attack, defence, or flight, all this partook of the fierce, feline nature, and all this she inherited from that mysterious race to which she belonged, whose origin history has failed to discover, whose destiny conjecture is at a loss to guess. From her gipsy ancestors she derived her tameless glances, her nimble strength, her shapely limbs with their delicate extremities, her swarthy savage beauty and light untiring step. From them, too, came the wild blood that boiled under restraint or contradiction, the unbridled passions that knew no curb of custom nor of conscience, the cunning that could conceal them till occasion offered, the recklessness that would then indulge them freely without pity or remorse.

John Garnet had never yet seen anything so beautiful as this tawny girl bending over his couch, with gold coins studding her jetty hair, with collar and bracelets of gold round her neck and wrists, with a shawled robe of scarlet and orange reaching to her naked ankles, and broad buckles of gold in her red-heeled shoes.

He thought of Cleopatra, young whole-hearted, and untainted by the kiss of an emperor; of the Queen of Sheba, before she fathomed the wisdom of Solomon. Then he thought the dark eyes looked at him more than kindly, and fell to wondering how she came here, and what relation she bore to this old man in the velvet gown who sat by his pillow with a grave attentive face. But the cordial was doing its work. Ere his wounds had been dressed, the salve spread, and the lint bandages deftly swathed round his body, John Garnet's senses lost themselves once more in oblivion; the last words he heard were in the doctor's voice. Listening for the girl's answer he fell sound asleep.

"There is no fear now," said Katerfelto reflectively. "Shall I say there is no hope? He would have made a beautiful subject, and I wanted just such an one, to bring my new discovery to perfection. Look at his chest, Waif. Did you ever see a finer specimen? Some men in my place would be incapable of this self-denial."

Waif, as he called her, turned pale under her tawny skin, but there was a fierce glitter in her eyes while she answered, "I thought he was dead you may be sure, that was why I brought you out to him. He'll get well now. So much the better! Patron! you dare not do it."

The old man smiled, stroking his velvet gown with a white well-cared-for hand.

"Dare not, or will not, or shall not," he replied. "It little matters which. No. It is an interesting case as it stands, and to cure him will be almost as instructive as to cut him up. Science, Waif, exacts from us great sacrifices, but she has also her rewards. The man will live, I think. Live probably to be ungrateful. Meanwhile, let us see who and what he is."

Thus speaking, and with a marvellous dexterity the result of long practice, he turned every one of the sleeper's pockets inside out, felt in his cravat, his bosom, his waistband, leaving no part of his dress unsearched, yet without in the slightest degree disturbing his repose. The girl, holding the lamp to assist, looked down on the prostrate figure, with a new sensation growing up in her heart, a vague wild longing that seemed to covet no less than to pity and admire.

"The outcome is unequal to the pains bestowed," said Katerfelto, holding up a light purse, a tavern bill, and a valueless snuff-box, as the fruit of his exertions. "Yet the man is well-born, Waif, and well-to-do, or I am mistaken. In due time we shall know more about him; there is no hurry. He cannot leave that bed for a week, nor this house, I should say, for a month. It's a beautiful case. Beautiful! the other gentleman's sword must have gone through to the very hilt!"

"Patron! will he die?" asked Waif with a tremble of the lip she tried hard to conceal.

"Most assuredly!" was the answer. "So will you, and so shall I. But not of such a scratch as this, while under my care! No! No! We will set him on his legs, Waif, in less than a fortnight. Then he will pay his doctor's bill, walk off with a huge appetite, and we shall see him no more."

Her face, over which every shade of hope and fear had passed while she listened, looked very grave and earnest now.

"Am I to nurse him, Patron?" said she; "we can keep him safe and quiet in here, and I can see after his wants while you attend to the people that come to consult you, patients and——"

"Fools—" added the old man. "Fools, who are yet so wise in their folly as to purchase ease of mind at a price they would grudge for health of body. It's a worse trade, Waif, to set a broken leg than to heal a broken heart. We want skill, learning, splints, bandages, and anatomy for the one, but a little cunning and a bold guess will answer all purposes for the other. There are many men and more women who would laugh in my face if I told them their head was a workshop and their heart a pump; yet they can believe the whole of their future life is contained in a pack of cards. You and I, Waif, have thriven well in a world of fools—and the fools thrive too—why, I know not. The wisest people on earth are your people, but they have never prospered. Is it best to be true, simple, honest? I cannot answer—I have never tried."

"I will do everything you tell me," persisted Waif, taking for granted the permission she was so eager to obtain. "I can creep about the chamber like a mouse; I never want to sleep, nor eat, nor drink, nor go out into the filthy muddy streets. I know every phial in the surgery as well as yourself. Hand him over to me, Patron, and I will promise to bring him through."

He eyed her narrowly, and she seemed conscious of his scrutiny, for she turned her head away and busied herself in adjustment of the bed-clothes. Then he laughed a little mocking laugh, and proceeded to give directions for the treatment of their patient.

"You must watch him," he insisted, and though she muttered, "you needn't tell me that!" finished his say without noticing the interruption. "You must watch him narrowly; if he wakes, give him one more spoonful of the cordial; if he is restless after that, come to me. If he wanders in his sleep mark every word he utters, and remember it. Such drivellings are not of the slightest importance, but interesting, very interesting, in a medical point of view. Good-night, Waif. Do exactly as I bid you, and if all goes well, do not wake me till sunrise."

Then he trimmed the lamp, listened at the lattice, and retired, leaving the girl alone with her patient.

How quiet she sat! moving not so much as a finger, with her large dark eyes fixed on the floor, and her thoughts like restless sea-birds flying here, there, everywhere; now skimming the Past, now soaring into the Future, finally gathering out of all quarters to settle themselves on the Present. From the moment when Katerfelto, or the Patron, as she called him, left the room, she seemed to have entered on a new life, to have risen in her own esteem, to have accepted responsibilities of which she was proud, to have become a gentler, fairer, softer being, more susceptible to pleasure and to pain. She only knew there was a great change; she did not know that she was passing into Fairy Land by the gate through which there is no return.

Behind her lay rugged mountain and dreary moor, paths that soil and blister weary feet, barren uplands yielding scanty harvest in return for daily toil, a scorching sun, a drenching rain, mocking winds that whirl, and buffet, and moan. Before her opened the dazzling vistas of a magic region: gleaming rivers, golden skies, velvet lawns fretted with gems, bending flowers laden with perfume; glade and thicket, field and forest bathed in glows of unearthly beauty, rich in tints of unearthly splendour, teeming with fruits of unearthly hues. Would she not enter in and rest? Would she not reach forth her hand to gather, and smell, and taste? Had she not wild longings, vague curiosity, unreasonable daring? Was she not a woman to the core? How could she tell that the Fairy Land was a glamour, the lustre a delusion, the beauty a snare? that serpents were coiling in the grass, that poison lurked in the flowers, that the fruits turned to dust and ashes on the lip? How could she foresee the time when she would yearn and strive and pray to get back to the outer world? In vain! Those who have once passed its gate and tasted the fruits in that fairy garden have to do with middle earth no more. Their phantoms may indeed remain among us, but themselves are far away in the enchanted country, pacing their weary round without a respite, fulfilling their endless penance in the listless apathy of despair.

Once the sleeping man turned with a low, deep sigh of comfort, as in relief from pain. Waifs dark eyes gleamed on him with glances of unspeakable tenderness and admiration. How noble he looked lying there in his wounds, like a dead prince. How graceful was the recumbent form; how luxuriant the dark brown hair escaped from its black riband to wander over the pillow; how white and shapely the strong hand opened loosely on the coverlet. This, then, was what they called a gentleman. She had seen gentlemen in the streets, or when they came to consult the Patron, but never under such favourable conditions for examination as now. What was she in comparison? She, the drudge of a charlatan, half-quack, half-conjuror? How could there be anything in common between them? She stirred uneasily in her chair, rose, crept to the bedside, and laid her slim, dusky hand by the side of his.

Waif's hands, in spite of hard work and hard weather, were beautiful with the beauty of her race; long, lithe, and delicate; the slender fingers and filbert-shaped nails concealed a vigour of grasp and tenacity denied to the broad coarse fist of many a powerful man. She smiled as she compared them with those of the sleeping patient; and her smile grew brighter while she reflected that she was herself the superior in those advantages of birth she so esteemed in him. Yes, the oldest blood in England seemed a mere puddle compared with hers. Where was the English gentleman who could trace his pedigree back for a hundred generations without break or blemish, to ancestors who had served the Pharaohs and set taskwork for the Jews, who even in that remote time boasted themselves lineal descendants of an illustrious line that was only lost with every other record of history in the dim obscurity of the Past.

All this Waif had learned beneath the stars, on Bagshot Heath or Barnes Common, sitting over the camp-fires in the steam of the camp-kettles, filled with spoils from neighbouring hen-roosts, stolen by the high-born patriarchs and princes of her tribe.

But she was a good nurse, notwithstanding her royal descent and barbarian bringing-up. Twenty times during the night she smoothed her patient's pillows and straightened his bed-clothes, watching with experienced eye and ear for symptoms of weakness or relapse. Never once did she relax her vigilance, nor so much as relieve her slender, supple form by leaning back in her chair. Unlike most watchers, for her the minutes seemed to fly on golden wings, and when the grey light of dawn began to steal through the shutter, dulling the lamp still burning in that sick chamber, she could have reproached the summer morning for coming so soon.

Yet it had been a long night to Waif in fact, if not in appearance. Those watchful hours had brought for her the great change that comes once in a lifetime. An ancient philosopher compared our terrestrial career to the letter Y. He has been quoted till we are tired of him, but none the less must we acknowledge the force of his illustration. As we travel along the road we must needs arrive, some in the morning, some in the middle of the day, some (and these last are much to be pitied) not till the afternoon, at a point where two paths branch out in different directions. There is a guide-post indeed, but it stands so high above our heads that we seldom look at it, choosing rather to trust our passions and inclinations for directions on the way. So we turn to right or left as nature, habit, or convenience prompts us, and on the turn thus taken depends our future journey, and the hope of ever reaching home.

It was broad day when John Garnet woke and tried to sit up in bed. "Where am I?" was his first exclamation, rubbing his eyes with the hand his bandages left free. "And why am I trussed up like a fowl that's been skewered? Ah! I remember now. I have been skewered, and you've been nursing me, my pretty maid. I fear I have given you a vast deal of trouble and shall give you more before I can stand up."

She bent over him like a mother over her child. It was such happiness to protect and soothe him, to feel that he might even owe his life to her.

"Do not try to move yet," said she; "you are safe and in good hands. The longer you stay with us the better we shall be pleased."

"Will you nurse me?" he asked gaily, unconscious of the tremble that ran through her frame, while she bowed her head in answer.

"Then I don't care how long it is!" he laughed. "With such a pretty nurse I should like never to get well!"

The blood flew to her face, reddening brow and temples, with a blush of pride and exquisite pleasure, rather than of resentment or shame.

[CHAPTER IV.]

THE OLD STORY.

Katerfelto's business seemed to bring him in contact with persons of every class and character. Men and women were coming to the surgery at all hours of the day and night; the former generally armed, the latter sometimes masked, all muffled in cloaks or riding-hoods, as if their purpose necessitated secrecy and disguise. It did not escape John Garnet's observation, lying idle on his sick bed, that the conversations he overheard were carried on in a subdued voice, and that everything connected with the doctor's house in Deadman's Alley seemed tainted with a breath of mystery, suspicion, and intrigue.

To this effect he unburthened his mind while watching Waifs stealthy movements as she arranged the room some few mornings after his arrival, and insisted by word and gesture on the necessity of his lying perfectly still if he wanted to get well.

"Waif," said he, in that pleasant, careless voice, which had already taught the girl's eye to brighten and her heart to leap, "is the Patron a wizard, a Jacobite agent, a second Guy Fawkes, or only a great prince in disguise? Why is everything in this house, even to laying the plates for dinner, done with secrecy and caution? Why does nobody speak but in whispers, and why is each succeeding visitor kept waiting in the passage till his predecessor has been dismissed? Why do the ladies come here on foot, my pretty lass, and what does it all mean?"

"Don't call me that!" she exclaimed impatiently. "I'm not a pretty lass! It's the way you would speak to a milkmaid. Call me Waif."

"Waif," he repeated. "There's another mystery. Who ever heard of a girl like you being called Waif? Who gave you that name? Not that you ever had godfathers or godmothers, I suppose. But where did you get it and how?"

"The Patron has called me Waif ever since I was a little child," said she simply. "I was known as Thyra with our own people, but of course, when he bought me, he was bound to change my name."

"Bought you!" John Garnet gasped for breath and gave such a bounce among the bed-clothes as to loosen his bandages. Her clever fingers readjusted them without delay.

"Bought me," she repeated, "and took me away with him the same day. I cried to leave Fin and old Broomstick, but to be sure I was very little and it was very cold."

"Oh! you cried to leave Fin and old Broomstick," said he in undisguised astonishment. "May I ask who they were?"

"Fin was one of our own lads," she answered; "they said I was to be his wife when we grew up. I don't think I minded leaving Fin so much, but Broomstick had carried me ever since I was born, and my heart was sore to wish the poor old donkey good-bye."

"But how could all this be done against your will?" continued John Garnet.

"I had no will one way nor the other," she answered. "Of course when I was paid for he might do as he chose. I felt the change at first, but I liked it well enough after a time. I am very glad of it now."

This last with her face turned away, and in a whisper that escaped his notice.

"Was he good to you?" asked the other, feeling his free British instincts sadly outraged by the girl's disclosures. "If he wasn't, he ought to have his neck wrung!"

"Oh, yes!" she replied, eagerly, but with a shrinking look in her bright black eyes. "I have nothing to complain of from the Patron. Nothing! I hated my shoes at first, and eating with a knife and fork; but the Patron gave me beautiful clothes, and ornaments of gold, real gold. I soon learned to like being well-dressed, and after a time I didn't so much mind sleeping under a roof. But oh! how I missed the lights in the sky! I used to wake up in the night crying, because I thought they had gone out for ever, and I should see them shining no more."

"But what on earth did he want you for?" was the natural inquiry. "What did he do with you after he bought and carried you away?"

"We didn't always live here," she answered. "We do not always live here now. At first, the Patron took me about all over the country. I daresay I know a good many more places than you do. We went to every fair and merry-making, down in the West, as far as the Land's End. It must be a very dark night for me to lose my way on Dartmoor, or anywhere in the Valley of the Exe, or among the coombes between Badgeworthy water and Taunton town. That was the first place I danced at to please the people in the fair. The Patron gave me this gold collar next morning, and I've worn it ever since. Would you like me to dance for you now, or sing? Or shall I tell you your fortune? I'll do anything to please you. Only say what it shall be."

The shy and pleading glance that accompanied this accommodating avowal would have melted a harder heart than John Garnet's.

"Tell me of yourself," was his answer; "that pleases me more than anything else you can talk about."

Her bright smile revealed a dazzling row of teeth. "There is not much to tell," said she. "We made money, and we spent money. Sometimes we went to the races, and the Patron used to come in to supper with his pockets full of gold. Sometimes the people laughed at us, and then we never stayed till nightfall. Once—it was at Devizes—they hooted us out of the town; a man threw a stone at me which struck me in the shoulder. It bled a good deal. Look, there's the mark!"

She pulled her dress down and revealed a cicatrice on a shape that would have made a model for a sculptor. "I flew at him!" she continued, with a fierce glitter in her eyes, "and drew my knife. I would have stabbed him, but the Patron pulled me away. I should like to see that man again. I should know his face among ten thousand, and I would kill him wherever we met. Then we came here and the Patron left off travelling so much. He says he began at the wrong end, and went to seek the fools, instead of letting the fools come and seek him. I used to think I liked moving about better than always sticking in the same place, but I don't think so now."

"And the fools that come so readily to seek the Patron," asked John Garnet—"what sort of fools are these?"

"The wisest sort," answered the girl. "Many a time I have heard him say that those who come for information, begin by telling him all they want to know. The Patron never seems to listen, but his ears are very sharp. Besides, he can always find out things in a hundred ways, watching the fire and the stars, or reading the cards. The last is the easiest, only they sometimes come up wrong, but the stars never deceive."

She spoke with implicit faith. For this girl, there was an inscrutable power that ruled supreme over all earthly fortunes, and dominated all mortal efforts. She called it Fate, and believed that its decrees were revealed in the cracklings of a wood fire, the combinations on a table of numerals, the presence of the knave of spades in a hand of diamonds, no less than in those tablets of fire that her ancestors had studied, when the Pyramids were as yet unfinished, when the Chaldæan was still learning the alphabet of that wondrous language he discovered in the stars of heaven.

"Then the Patron is a fortune-teller," continued John Garnet, looking with undisguised admiration in his companion's face. "I thought he was a doctor—I am sure he has doctored me to some purpose. I feel as if I should be out of bed to-morrow, and in the saddle next day. Perhaps it's your nursing, pretty Waif; but I seem to get stronger every hour."

It was a tell-tale face, and changed colour often under the clear, swarthy skin. John Garnet, however (and perhaps this was why women liked him well), detected but slowly the interest he created in the opposite sex; and Waif might have blushed till she was scarlet before he found out the truth, had she not pressed both hands to her bosom with a gesture of pain, and exclaimed, in a choking voice:

"Then you will go away, and I shall never see you again!"

He glanced sharply in her face. The black eyes were fixed and tearless, but there was a world of patient, hopeless sorrow in their gaze; and through John Garnet's heart ran a thrill of something sweeter and keener than pity—something not far removed from love.

"Waif," said he, in the kind, mellow tones she knew so well, "Waif, my pretty maid, shall you be sorry when I have to go away?"

She looked straight in his eyes while he could have counted ten. Then over her dark, delicate face came, as it were, a ripple, that told how deeply she was moved. One instant her slender figure waved like a willow in the wind, the next she had fallen forward on her knees, clasping his hand to her lips and forehead, while she wept convulsively; but, before he had recovered his astonishment sufficiently to soothe her with word or caress, she leaped to her feet, and glided like a phantom from the room.

"Here's a coil!" said John Garnet to himself, making an abortive effort to rise, that sufficiently convinced him he had over-rated his strength.

"Why the devil couldn't I let her go on, and keep my own foolish tongue between my teeth? It's always the way with me. I speak, and then I'm sorry for it. Am I sorry for it now? I doubt if I am. She's the prettiest lass, for all her tawny skin, I've seen since I came out of the North; and there's no harm done after all. I wonder how long I shall be kept lying here? A week more, at least. Say a week. The time will pass all the quicker with this gipsy beauty to talk to; and if she do care for me a little more than is good for her, why I suppose she can't help it. No more can I. What eyes she has, and what hair! I could find it in my heart to wish she was not quite so handsome; but that's not my fault. Thyra's a pretty name, though outlandish—much better than Waif. I shall call her Thyra when she comes back. It won't be long first, I'll wager a guinea!"

But he would have lost his guinea. Noon passed, and afternoon, and day drew to an end, but brought no Waif with its lengthening shadows. When his usual supper-time arrived, he began to grow fretful and impatient, as much perhaps from cravings of the stomach as the heart. A step in the passage, the bump of a tray against his door, restored him to good humour; but it was with a feeling of disappointment, keen enough to dull the vigorous appetite of convalescence, that he saw the skull-cap and velvet gown of his host, instead of Waif with her scarlet draperies and jetty gold-studded hair. When a girl has told a man she likes him, he always wants to hear the avowal again.

"My young friend," said Katerfelto, in the low grave voice to which he owed so much of his influence, "I have brought you to eat and drink: food plain and nourishing, drink that shall restore, and not inflame. The tongue is clean, the eye clear, the pulse full, if a little irregular. My coming into the room suddenly flurried you, no doubt. If you go on well through the night, to-morrow I shall pronounce you convalescent. I never speak without being sure. When Constantine Katerfelto uses the word 'convalescent,' a patient may order his boots to be blacked and his spurs cleaned."

"You've brought me through right well, Doctor," replied John Garnet, glancing at the door, "you and Waif together. You must give the nurse some of the credit! She's been very careful and attentive. I think she has hardly left me for an hour at a time, till—till to-day."

How differently thirty and sixty look upon the absence of eighteen!

"Waif's a good girl," answered the Doctor, coolly; "and for a mere child, shows a fair amount of intelligence. I am glad you are satisfied with her."

"She—she's not ill to-day, I hope," hazarded the patient, eating, however, heartily enough, notwithstanding the anxiety to be inferred from his inquiry.

"Ah!" was the answer; "you know very little of Waif, or you would scarcely ask such a question. None of her race are ever ill, any more than the beasts of prey. They die, indeed, but it is like the wolf and the jackal, in some forest-den. Skill, science, experience, are of no avail. It's in the blood—nothing can cure them when they have once lain down. I've tried it a score of times, and failed."

"Is she a thorough-bred gipsy?" he asked, for it was pleasant to talk of her, even to this unsympathising old man.

"As the Queen of Sheba," assented the other. "Some day, perhaps, when we are better acquainted, I may tell you more of her history; but I give not my friendship lightly," he added, with a scrutinising glance from his shining grey eyes; "it is offered only to those who owe me, or to whom I owe, a heavy debt of gratitude."

"I am sure I ought to be grateful to you," said John Garnet, "and so I am; but I can do nothing to prove it till you get me off this bed, and out of this room. Then, Doctor, speak up boldly. Say what you want, and I am your man!"

The other laughed a noiseless laugh, peculiar to himself. "You owe me but little as yet," said he; "perhaps you may live to be deeper in my debt than for the healing of a scratch. Not that I mean to say the scratch was a trifling one. I tell you honestly, many a surgeon would have given your case up as hopeless; and you ought to be thankful, if you young men ever are thankful, that you fell into my hands. No; for a bold, enterprising fellow, in the prime of life and strength, whose fingers, as I guess, close round his hilt pretty readily, I might do something better than stop a hole in the side. There are paths to fortune, plenty of them, for men who look upward and onward, steep it may be, and leading through miry places, not seldom slippery with blood. To a bold spirit this is half the charm! You are lying here, unable to leave your bed to-day; but do you not long for the time when you shall be riding wild horses, pledging lawless healths, drinking, dicing, and brawling once more? When the frost is bitter, and the earth white with snow, and the robin hops to your window for crumbs, do you not look forward to the opening spring, the soft south wind, the coming of the blackbird at last?"

A look of intelligence passed between them, and the sick man's eye brightened. It was the pass-word of a losing, nay, of a ruined cause. The handful of Jacobites remaining in England had not yet relinquished all hope of his return, who had proved indeed a bird of ill-omen, blacker than night, to those whose loyalty waged life and lands on his behalf.

"Nay, Doctor," said the other, with a flush of pride on his face, "the blackbird's whistle has cost us simply all we had, but not one of us ever complained; we bought defeat too dear."

"I know you, John Garnet," answered Katerfelto. "You come of a trusty race."

"Know me!" repeated the other, "How did you find me out? I would have told you without hesitation, but you never asked my name—no more did Waif."

"I know a great many things," replied the charlatan. "In many ways you could not understand, unless you had studied, as I have, the hidden mysteries of Heaven and Earth, and of places under the Earth. I know that the Garnets lost titles and lands for the—for the Black-bird—we will say. I know that the last of them would leap from that bed, bandages and all, to burn powder and draw steel if the yellow beak did but so much as whistle from its garden in the South."

"You learned all that in the 'Annual Register' or the 'North Britain,'" said John Garnet, proudly, "but how did you guess I belonged to the family who have been so loyal, so constant, and proved themselves such—fools?"

Katerfelto smiled. "Fools," he replied, "are my special study. As the worm feeds the blackbird, so the fool feeds the philosopher. You are no fool notwithstanding, and yet I know all about you. There was a supper-party t'other night—a jest—an altercation—a duel—without witnesses—without witnesses, mark you. When a man is killed under those circumstances, the law sometimes brings it in—murder!"

John Garnet turned pale. The truth of his host's surmises affected him no less than the consideration of the danger he had incurred. It did not strike him that Katerfelto's guesses, however shrewd, were the mere offspring of analogy and observation. A wounded man at midnight inferred an after-supper brawl, while the fact of his staggering into Deadman's Alley faint from loss of blood, alone and unassisted, argued the absence of seconds, one of whom would doubtless have conveyed his principal to a place of safety, while the identity of that principal must long since have become the talk of this town.

"You know everything," he murmured. "Everything—I wish you could tell me whether the poor fellow I ran through the brisket is alive."

For reasons of his own the charlatan was anxious to impress his patient with a conviction of his powerful character and superior intelligence.

"Not so," said he, with an air of extreme frankness. "I have no knowledge, for I have taken no trouble to learn. If I can spare the time to-night, when the moon goes down, I will set those to work who shall bring me all the information I require in less than forty-eight hours."

John Garnet, though scarcely a model Christian, was a good Catholic. He crossed himself and faltered a feeble protest against the employment of evil spirits or unorthodox powers of the air.

"I had rather not get well at all," said he, "than be cured by magic or witchcraft! I would leave the house this minute if I believed you were more than a doctor! I'll wager a fair stake and risk my life any day, but I won't sit down to play for my soul!"

"Your soul!" echoed Katerfelto, with his characteristic laugh. "My young friend, what should I do with your soul if I won it? My concern is with men's bodies, their energies, their courage, and their intellect. I shall set you on your legs in a week, and you can carry your soul about with you, if you have one, wherever you like. In the meantime keep quiet, take your medicine, drugs of the veriest earth—earthy; eat your food and drink your posset, prepared by no fairy hands, but those of a woman, real flesh and blood, with a human temper, worse, I daresay, than that of many average fiends, and so get well. In a few days I will talk to you again on matters of business to our mutual advantage. Meantime I relegate you once more to the care of Waif."

His spirits rose at once, and he bade the charlatan good-night with an excess of cordiality not lost on that shrewd observer, who was as good as his word, for his voice could be heard in the passage bidding Waif hasten her house-work and watch by the patient till he slept, a mandate the gipsy-girl obeyed to the letter, returning without delay to her former post, but taking up a station in the obscurity where John Garnet could not see her face. Neither did she vouchsafe a syllable of greeting or explanation, so that the patient felt uncomfortably hurt and perplexed.

"Have I offended you?" he asked at length, in an humble tone, contrasting piteously with the coldness of that in which she replied.

"Who am I, to be offended? My only business is to obey. The Patron bids me watch here till you sleep."

So he shut his eyes, yet not too tight, and scanned her the while covertly beneath their lids, thus detecting on her face, when she turned it towards him, a look of tender wistful longing, that told only too plainly the secret of her love.

Then he drew a deep breath of relief and contentment, satisfied he would rise a winner from the unequal game and so fell sound asleep.

[CHAPTER V.]

A CHARLATAN.

In the surgery Katerfelto began to prepare for the reception of his visitors. Standing at a bright little mirror, he was soon immersed in the task. A spot of carmine on the cheek-bones, a line or two of paint round the mouth, about the eyes, and across the forehead added a score of years to his appearance and made him look a man of eighty. A flowing white beard, in which his own grey tresses mingled freely, and a black cloak bordered with crimson, drawn over the velvet gown, completed his equipment. Surveying the whole in his glass, he drew himself up, with something of the confidence a knight must have felt when armed from head to heel. "Come one, come all," he seemed to say, "I am a match for the best of you, and profitable as is the victory, I am not sure but the real pleasure consists in the strife!—"

The plot thickened with nightfall. He was hardly ready before a cautious tap made itself heard at the street door. Waif, watching her patient's slumbers, flew to admit the visitor, and was at her post again ere he had time to pay a single compliment on her good looks.

In his own opinion, this gentleman was a consummate judge of such matters. On the points of a horse, or a woman, he held no man so well qualified to give an opinion, and indeed had spent the greater part of his fortune in researches after speed and beauty. His accomplishments were those of his time and class. A better and bolder card-player than Lord Bellinger never held a trump. He cracked his bottle like an honest fellow without flinching, played tennis, danced a minuet to admiration, bowed and took snuff with inimitable grace, fenced beautifully, swore fearfully, and corrupted his mother tongue into a jargon only intelligible at Ranelagh or the Cocoa Tree.

When the cloak was thrown open in which this paragon was enveloped, Katerfelto did not fail to recognise in that worn, handsome face and attenuated form the most frequent and productive of his customers.

"Your lordship is welcome," said the Charlatan, with gracious dignity. "How liable is our poor glimmering of human science to error; the mistake of a decimal caused me to expect you nearly an hour ago."

"What? You knew it!" replied the other, not without an oath. "Why, Katerfelto, you know everything! Yes, here I am. It's not very difficult to guess why. Have you found out anything more? Who is she? And what is she? How much longer am I to go on toasting her without so much as knowing her name, haunted by those clear, cold eyes, that proud, delicate face, that queenly shape and air? Tell me all about her, now at once! Here! I've brought you the stuff in a bag. Look at it, man. Does it make your eyes shine and your mouth water? It cost me six hours' work to get that little purse together last night at the Cocoa Tree. Never were such cards! Never was such luck!"

"Fortune is a woman," answered the other. "Like all women, coy to be wooed, but grateful to be won."

"She hath played me more slippery tricks than I choose to count," laughed his lordship. "It may be that I solicit her too often, and trust her too fondly. Last night she did me a rare jade's turn! Look ye here, man; I had won a cool four thousand at picquet, and St. Leger wanted to leave off. I was always too strong for him at picquet. Well, sir, four thousand was no use to me, but eight would have taken my lady's diamonds out of pawn, and I offered him one more chance, double or quits."

"I know you did," observed Katerfelto with the utmost effrontery, "and left off quits; I wish I had been at your lordship's elbow."

"I wish you had!" replied the other; "for I believe you are the devil himself, or in close league with him. However, I did not come here to prate about my luck, and I have little time to waste; my lady thinks I am at Ranelagh. She's to meet me there later. Now business is business, my good friend; what have you done for me?"

"Little and yet enough," answered the other. "You will meet somebody at Ranelagh to-night; you are to be wary and cautious. Do not seem to recognise her till you find her unattended. You may then speak three words, no more. It is her express stipulation. They will be answered in due time. She goes to Ranelagh early and remains only an hour."

"Then I had better be off!" exclaimed his lordship, pressing a purse into Katerfelto's hand. "What? are you so ceremonious? Must you needs come to the door yourself? Where's the pretty gipsy lass? I saw her not ten minutes ago. I say, Katerfelto, if ever you sell her back into bondage, let me have the refusal. By Jupiter! if I was to put that girl into velvet and brocade I could take the town by storm."

"Your lordship does her too much honour," answered Katerfelto, bowing profoundly while he opened the door, but there was a malicious twinkle in his eye, and a curl of scorn about the corners of his mouth, to belie the outward show of deference with which he dismissed his visitor.

The latter had been gone but a few minutes ere a sedan-chair was set down at the end of Deadman's Alley, and a lady closely veiled, carrying a riding mask, not over her face, but in her hand, alighted with some trepidation, peering up and down the passage, as if fearful of being observed, while she made for the red lamp in Katerfelto's window. This visitor was also admitted after a little cautious tap, but, unlike her predecessor, looked with scorn rather than admiration on Waif's dark locks and flashing glances. "Tell the Doctor, child," said she, "that I am not to be disturbed while I consult him, and beware of eaves-dropping. I do not choose to share my secrets with a waiting-maid, for all her saucy looks and sallow skin!"

Waif scarcely heard and certainly did not heed, for her heart was in the sick-chamber with John Garnet, whither her agile body lost no time in following it.

"Your ladyship is early," said Katerfelto, with an obeisance courtly, but not subservient. "Ranelagh need wait the less impatiently for its fairest ornament."

"La, Doctor!" was the answer, "who could have told you I was going to Ranelagh? I protest you know everything. My lord thinks I am there now."

"My lord will be there as surely as my lady," answered the other. "But it was not to learn his lordship's movements that your ladyship came here!"

"Fie, Doctor!" she replied; "what woman of fashion cares to know the doings of a husband? I have a crow to pluck with you. Do you remember what you promised me the last time I was here?"

"Triumphs by the hundred," said he; "compliments by the thousand; conquests and flatteries innumerable. Better than these, a run of luck with the cards that should last a week."

"And I wore it out in a night," she complained. "Whist, ombre, picquet, and three-card loo, I have never risen a winner but once since I came here last. You dare not deceive me, Doctor; nay, you would not deceive a woman, I am sure. Can you—couldn't you put me in the way of winning a game or two? I protest I shall have to pawn my diamonds else."

No one knew better than the doctor that this expedient had been resorted to long ago, and her ladyship was at present wearing paste; but he did not say so.

"Are you willing to learn?" he asked, with his quiet sarcastic smile. "An hour's practice every day for ten days would make your ladyship independent of chance and all its fluctuations. Chance, forsooth! there's no such thing. Do you think I trust to chance when I direct your actions and forecaste read your future? Fate is the ruling power of the universe; but science and skill, the quick brain and the ready hand—these may control Fate."

On a weak mind so high-sounding a sentence, meaning nothing, took no small effect. She blushed, she simpered, she bit her lips, she hesitated.

"I should like it prodigiously," she said, with a nervous laugh, "if—if it wasn't dishonest, you know; and—and if it couldn't be found out!"

He took a pack of cards from a drawer. "Observe my fingers," he began, but she interrupted him with a faint scream.

"Not now!" she exclaimed; "some other time, Doctor. I'm so frightened! I'm sure I heard somebody at the door. It is cheating, you know. Besides, I must be at Ranelagh in an hour, and I have to dress, all but my head, that was done this morning. I wish I hadn't come. La! I know I could never find courage. Let me out, please. This is between ourselves, of course. Shall I find you to-morrow night at the same time?"

Assuring her that he never left his post, Katerfelto ushered her ladyship with much ceremony to the door, which was opened by Waif, on whom the departing visitor found nothing better to bestow than a look of supreme indifference and scorn.

Not so the next comer. Hardly had the chairmen, who winked at each other as they took up their precious burden, moved a dozen paces, when a heavy step was heard in Deadman's Alley, and a burly figure, that seemed to ignore all considerations of secrecy and disguise, stopped at Katerfelto's door to thump till it shook again.

Undoing the fastening, hastily as she might, Waif found herself confronted by a stout middle-aged person, in a rusty black riding suit, who looked as if he had been taking hasty refreshment, washed down by strong potations, as indeed was the case.

Parson Gale—for it was none other—had ridden post from Exmoor to London on receiving the news of his brother's death in a midnight brawl. Arrived in the metropolis, he lost no time in communicating with the officers of justice; and from the particulars thus furnished, satisfied himself that the affray took place without witnesses, and that the survivor had escaped. The Parson swore a great oath that he would avenge the crime, and if the perpetrator was above ground, hunt him down to death. His difficulty was to find out where John Garnet lay concealed. Every day, and all day long, he pursued his inquiries, without success. Tired and hungry, while sitting at his tavern supper he chanced to hear Katerfelto spoken of as a cunning man, for whom there were no secrets in this world or the next; and having ascertained the locality of Deadman's Alley, finished his bottle, and started without delay on his search.

The apparition of Waif, in answer to his summons, may have surprised him a little; but when a pretty lass was in question, Parson Gale was never at a loss; he recovered his astonishment in time to chuck her under the chin, and bestow on her a most unwelcome caress. The girl's eyes glittered, and her lithe fingers stole to the knife at her girdle. He caught her by the wrist, and kissed her again. She disengaged herself, with one dexterous twirl, and pushed rather than ushered this unwelcome admirer into the presence of Katerfelto; muttering, in her own outlandish tongue, something that sounded less like a blessing than a curse.

When roused to wrath, it was her nature to resent an insult or an injury on the spot; but if immediate retaliation seemed impossible, to wait for an opportunity with untiring patience, not to be diverted from its purpose by any considerations of clemency or forgiveness.

"If I can learn something about you," she thought, "I shall know when and where to strike. Before our reckoning is over, you will wish your lips had been seared with a red-hot iron, rather than laid to mine against my will!" Then, casting one loving look towards the chamber in which John Garnet was sleeping, she took up her post at the door of the surgery, and listened eagerly to the conversation within.

"I'm a plain man, Doctor," began Parson Gale, in his rough, frank tones. "I speak the truth mostly myself, and expect others will speak it to me. Now I am told that you know more, good and bad, than ever another person in this great wicked town. That's what brought me here."

Katerfelto nodded gravely. "Good and bad," said he, "are relative terms. Knowledge cannot of itself be evil, whether it be gleaned from the crowded footway or the solitary moor. Wisdom crieth aloud, could we but hear her, from the dome of St. Paul's, no less than from the purple outline of the Quantock Hills and the brown ridge under Dunkerry Beacon."

The mention of these familiar places startled his listener; and Katerfelto, who had already detected the kindly West-country accent, did not fail to notice his surprise.

"I believe you are a conjuror," said the Parson, "as sure as I am not! Well—if you can tell me where I came from, perhaps you will tell me what I came for."

The charlatan smiled. "You wish to learn something very near your heart," said he, watching the other's countenance.

"Not quite the nearest and dearest of all! yet a matter of great importance. A matter of life and death."

For a bow drawn at a venture, it was a good shot, and the arrow reached its mark.

"That's enough!" exclaimed the Parson. "You're the man to tell me what I want. Name your price. 'Tis blood-money, and I'm not going to stand for a guinea one way or the other!"

"Justice must be done first!" said Katerfelto with exceeding gravity. "Let me hear your own tale in your own words, and rely on my help."

Thus encouraged, the Parson embarked on a narrative of his brother's duel, but little exaggerated, nor indeed very different from the facts set forth above, interspersing his account with dire threats of vengeance and solemn oaths, whereat Waif's blood ran cold, that he would take no rest till he had discovered and hunted down the perpetrator of this murder, as he persisted in calling it, to the death!

Listening at the keyhole, she lost not a syllable of their conversation, and the gipsy-girl vowed in her heart to come between the avenger and his victim, aye, even though she must steep her hands in blood, and swing for it on Tyburn-tree.

Little by little Katerfelto gathered enough from Parson Gale's repetitions, threats, and assertions, to feel sure that his patient in the next room was the individual whom the visitor wished to identify and bring to justice. In his plotting brain such a complication was simply a problem to be solved, a sum to be worked out, a plot to be elaborated for his own advantage. With a gravity not lost on the West-country parson, who, for all his mother wit, felt overawed by the other's assumption of superior intelligence, he promised to furnish the information required, as soon as he should himself have consulted those spiritual intelligences he held at command.

"You shall come again when the moon is full," said he, accepting the broad pieces which his visitor thrust on him clumsily enough. "Ere then I shall discover his hiding-place, though he have taken refuge forty fathoms deep, below the sea. But, mark you—I am not a man of blood, and I make no promise to deliver him into your hand."

Again Waif's fingers stole to her knife, while the Parson's savage laugh grated on her ear.

"Show me where the deer is harboured," said he, passing into the street. "I can do all the rest myself. The Lord have mercy on him, for I will not, when once I set him up to bay!"

[CHAPTER VI.]

MY LORD AND MY LADY.

They occupied separate apartments now. There had been a time indeed when Lord and Lady Bellinger might have competed for the flitch of bacon at Dunmow, so well satisfied was each with the other, for weeks, nay months, after a marriage of vanity, with some little inclination. Was not my lord the best-dressed man at court? Had not my lady the finest hand, the tightest waist, the loftiest head-gear in London? Did not both exist only in the atmosphere of the great world, sacrificing to the airs and graces time, health, money, and reputation? Many tastes had they in common, some vices, not a few follies, prejudices, and frivolities; yet they soon began to differ, and after passing through the customary phases of disappointment, pique, resentment, and disgust, subsided into a sullen, stony indifference that was perhaps the most hopeless condition of all. Rarely meeting, except at meals, or in the presence of others, they had few opportunities for quarrelling; when they did fall out, it is only fair to say that her ladyship usually took the initiative. Let us give her precedence, therefore, now.

She is seldom stirring before noon. The sun is already at mid-heaven when she rings for her chocolate, sighs, yawns, thrusts on her small feet her smaller slippers, wriggles into a much-embroidered morning gown, and totters across the room to look at herself in the glass. The face she sees therein reflected affords, alas! a history and a moral.

Its features are delicate, and the smile that has now become rigid from force of habit was once very flexible and sweet, but late hours and false excitement have scored premature wrinkles round the eyes, and the free use of paint has served to deaden, and, as it were, rough-cast the surface of the skin. Lady Bellinger was never quite a pretty woman, though with the advantages of dress, manner, and candle-light she could hold her own in general society against many a professed beauty, and counted her ball-room conquests in numbers that, if they did not satisfy her rapacity, were quite enough for her reputation. This border-land between good looks and an ordinary exterior is, perhaps, the most dangerous ground of all. Vanity is excited, but not gratified. Wit, vivacity, freedom of gesture and conversation are called in to supplement the charms that nature has left imperfect. The player grows more reckless as the game goes on, and at last no stake is thought too high to risk on a winning card.

The face she is studying wears a mournful expression to-day. Weary, perhaps, rather than dissatisfied, for she won twenty guineas last night at ombre, and overheard Sir Hector Bellairs ask who she was; that refined young gentleman, a rising light at Newmarket and the Cocoa Tree, adding with an oath, "She has a game look about her, like a wild, thoroughbred mare!"

And yet, was it worth while, she pondered lazily, to tremble half an hour over the cards for twenty guineas? Were the pains lavished on dress and toilet to yield no higher triumph than Sir Hector's silly comparison, or the sneer with which it was received by the man he addressed? Harry St. Leger used to admire her once, at least he told her so, and now—he only smiled at Sir Hector's idle talk, and turned away to a little bread-and-butter miss, whose round blue eyes were becoming the rage of the town. What could men see to rave about in such chits as these? Why, the little creature was not even well-dressed, and had hardly so much as learned to ogle and handle a fan! Was it possible that innocence, simplicity, natural red and white, could presume to contend with such a position, such millinery, and such experiences as hers? Lady Bellinger sighed to think how she was thrown away. What depths there were in her loving heart that had never been fathomed; what passions in her mature womanhood that had never been aroused. Alas! those depths could have been baled out with a thimble; those passions, affections, caprices, call them what you will, were three parts simulated, and the fourth only skin-deep. Nevertheless, she esteemed herself a lovable woman, wasted and misunderstood. She had a headache, she had the spleen, the vapours. Ranelagh was very tiresome last night. The lights still danced before her eyes, the hum of conversation still vibrated in her ears. Resting her heavy head on the dressing-table, she seemed to live the whole scene over again.

What a medley and confusion it was! Women with enormous head-dresses, wide hoops and high-heeled shoes, patched, powdered, painted, courtesying, smirking, and grimacing. "Your ladyship is vastly kind. Shall wait on you with pleasure. Not real di'monds, ma'am? I protest. I have it from the best authority. Fie! my lord, I thought you were more gallant. The Earl, as I live. Come back from the grand tour with a wife! Whose wife? La! Sir Marmaduke, I vow you make me blush. The king hath had another interview with the favourite. Angry words, and post-horses ordered on the north road. Too good news to be true. Mrs. Betty, you look charmingly. What conquests you must have made at the Bath. Here's the bishop! Madam, your humble servant;" and so on till the stream of nothings swelled into an unintelligible babble. And out of this concourse of so-called friends, this turmoil of so-called conversation, was there one form amongst the throng that could call the blood to her cheek, the light to her eye? One voice that fell sweetly on her ear, that woke an echo responsive in her heart? Yes, on reflection there was one—nay, there were two or three—half-a-dozen—a score—but it seemed that, of late, her charms had ceased to work, her glances to fascinate. Ten compliments—she counted them on her fingers—made the sum total of her triumphs last night. Harry St. Leger devoted himself to the bread-and-butter hoyden. The handsome colonel had drunk too freely of claret to be available. The marquis was wholly taken up with Mistress Masters (who, and what, she was nobody knew!) Two or three snuff-taking admirers simpered, but did not commit themselves. The duke passed her with a bow, and it was a weary world!

As she came to this conclusion, a tap at the door announced the arrival of her waiting-maid with the daily dish of chocolate. Contrary to custom, that demure person did not depart after she set it down.

"What is it, child?" asked Lady Bellinger, not very good-humouredly, because of her reflections. "Speak up, and don't stand staring there as if you'd seen a ghost!"

"It's my lord," answered the waiting-maid, tossing her head, in imitation of her mistress. "My lord bade me ask your ladyship if you were up, and if you could see him now directly, before he gets into his coach."

"My lord!" repeated his wife, in a tone of surprise, that sufficiently attested the infrequency of such visits, "what can my lord want with me at this early hour? How am I looking, child? Quick! Give me those drops off the chimney-piece—a clean cap, the one trimmed with pink, you fool!—Put a touch of colour in my cheeks; I declare my face is like death! Draw that window-curtain. Now you may tell him he can come in."

Lord Bellinger entered accordingly, dressed in great splendour, with cane, hat, and snuff-box in hand. Thus encumbered, he made shift, nevertheless, to take the tips of his wife's fingers and carry them to his lips, inquiring at the same time how her ladyship did, and whether she had slept well.

Her ladyship had not closed an eye, of course. She was feverish, poorly, and far from strong! Thus establishing a position of defence from the first.

"Zounds! madam," exclaimed he, "so much the better—you will the more readily hear what I have to say."

My lord, to do him justice, was a good-tempered man enough, but this morning found him, for many reasons, in the worst of humours. Last night's gathering to him, no less than to his lady, had been replete with disappointment and vexation. Like many others, he attended Ranelagh with a variety of motives, among which, pleasure, even in his own sense of the term, was perhaps the least engrossing. In the first place, he desired to show himself before the world accompanied by her ladyship, scandal having been busy with both their names of late, and "the town" telling each other significantly that "there must soon be a break-up in that establishment. My lady's goings on, madam, I protest, are inexcusable, and my lord's extravagance, I have it from the best authority, really beyond belief!" Therefore he thought well to appear in this public place prosperous, smiling, debonair, and on the best of terms with his wife.

Their exit, however, like their entrance, had been badly timed. They neither came nor went away together; and his own staunch ally, Harry St. Leger, who was also a professed admirer of Lady Bellinger, thought well to whisper in his ear, "Look ye, Fred, I never turn my back on a friend. If it must come to a smash, or a split, remember I stand fast by your lordship, sink or swim!" This was failure the first.

Then a great man, one of his Majesty's ministers, had informed him pretty roundly that the appointment he held at Court was not wholly a sinecure, and the time had come at which he must prove his loyalty by activity in the service of his king. That he was expected, in short, to proceed without delay to his own western county, of which he held the lieutenancy, there to carry out certain instructions which he would receive next day at the minister's private residence, in time to commence his journey the same afternoon. To a man for whom the pleasures of London were as the air he breathed, such a notification was like a sentence of death. Yet he dared not and could not refuse. This was trouble the second.

Many minor matters helped to swell the list of his annoyances. Bellairs gave him the latest news from Newmarket, to the effect that his own horse had been beaten in the great race by a head. Sir Horace had it from the best authority that his nominee would lose his election. One neighbouring landowner in the West took him by the button-hole, to impart grievous suspicions of his lordship's steward, and another announced threatenings of disease amongst the sheep. Altogether, had it not been for the interview with his unknown charmer, promised by Katerfelto, he would have passed a sadly uncomfortable evening. This anticipation, however, was the drop that sweetened the whole cup, and when amongst the crowd he caught a glimpse of her graceful head and white shoulders, the world's malice, the minister's injunctions, the lost race, the dishonest steward, and the foot-rot in West Somerset, were alike obliterated and forgotten.

He waited for some time, as directed, to accost her when alone. At last, her cavalier crossed the room on some errand of his own, and he found his opportunity. "Madam," he whispered, "this is the moment for which I have languished ever since I had the privilege of beholding your face. Do not deny me now the happiness of hearing your voice."