Chapter XXVI…

Chapter XXVI

HOW GWEN AND MRS. LAMPREY RODE TO STRIDES COTTAGE, AND FOUND DR. NASH THERE. OF A LETTER FROM MAISIE'S SON, AND HOW IT HAD THROWN HER BACK. AN ANXIOUS NIGHT WATCH. IMAGINATIONS OF SAPPS COURT. PETER JACKSON'S NAMESAKE. HOW GWEN DREAMED OF DOLLY ON GENERAL RAWNSLEY'S KNEE, AND WAS WAKED BY A SCREAM. READ ME ALOUD WHAT MY SON SAYS! WHAT IS CALLED SNEERING. A MAG. A FLIMSY. HOW GWEN WAS GOT TO BED, HALF ASLEEP. OLD MAISIE'S WILL. NOT UPSTAIRS OUT OF A CARRIAGE, DOWNSTAIRS INTO A CARRIAGE. TWO STEPS BACK AND ONE FORWARD. BEFORE THAT CLOCK STRIKES. THEIR DAUGHTER

Whoever detected a thaw outside the house, by instinct at work within, was an accurate weather-gauge. A wet, despairing moon was watching a soaking world from a misty heaven; and chilly avalanches of undisguised slush, that had been snow when the sun went down, were slipping on acclivities and roofs, and clinging in vain to overhanging boughs, to vanish utterly in pools and gutters and increasing rivulets. The carriage-lamps of Gwen's conveyance, a closed brougham her father had made a sine qua non of her departure, shone on a highway that had seen little traffic since the thaw set in, and that still had on it a memory of fallen snow, and on either side of it the yielding shroud that had made the land so white and would soon leave it so black. Never mind!--the road was a better road, for all that it was heavier. No risk now of a stumble on the ice, with the contingencies of a broken knee for the horse, and an hour's tramp for its quorum!

The yew-tree in the little churchyard at Chorlton had still some coagulum of thaw-frost on it when the brougham plashed past the closed lichgate, and left its ingrained melancholy to make the most of its loneliness. Strides Cottage was just on ahead--five minutes at the most, even on such a road. "They will be sure to be up, I suppose--one of them at least," said Gwen to the woman in the carriage with her. It was Mrs. Lamprey, whom Tom Kettering was to have driven back in any case, but not in the brougham. Gwen had overruled her attempt to ride on the box, and was sorry when she had done so. For she could not say afterwards:--"I'm sure you would rather be up there, with Tom."

"I doubt they'll have gone to bed, my lady, either of them. Nor yet I won't be quite sure we shan't find the doctor there." Thus Mrs. Lamprey, making Gwen's heart sink. For what but very critical circumstances could have kept Dr. Nash at the Cottage till past one in the morning? But then, these circumstances must be recent. Else he could never have wished the letter kept back till to-morrow. She said something to this effect to her companion, who replied:--"No doubt your ladyship knows!"

There was a light in the front-room, and someone was moving about. The arrival of the carriage caused the dog to bark, once but not more, as though for recognition or warning; not as a dog who resented it--merely as a janitor, officially. The doorbell, in response to a temperate pull, grated on the silence of the night, overdoing its duty and suggesting that the puller's want of restraint was to blame. Then came a footstep, but no noise of bolt or bar withdrawn. Then Ruth Thrale's voice, wondering who this could be. And then her surprise when she saw her visitor, whose words to her were:--"I thought it best to come at once!"

"Oh, but she is better! Indeed we think she is better. Dr. Nash was to write and tell you, so you should know--not to hurry to come too soon." Thus Ruth, much distressed at this result of the doctor's despatch.

"Never mind me! You are sure she is better? Is that Dr. Nash's voice?" Yes--it was. He had been there since eleven, and was just going.

Ruth went in to tell Granny Marrable it was her ladyship, as Dr. Nash came out. "I'm to blame, Lady Gwendolen," said he. "I'm to blame for being in too great a hurry. It was a blunder. But I can't pretend to be sorry I made it--that's the truth!"

"You mean that she isn't out of the wood?"

"That kind of thing. She isn't."

"Oh dear!" Gwen sank into a chair, looking white. Hope had flared up, to be damped down. How often the stokers--nurses or doctors--have to pile wet ashes on a too eager blaze! How seldom they dare to add fresh fuel!

"I will tell you," said the doctor. "She was very much better all Friday, taking some nourishment. And there is no doubt the champagne did her good--just a spoonful at a time, you know, not more. She isn't halfway through the bottle yet. I thought she was on her way to pull through, triumphantly. Then something upset her."

"Well, but--what?" For the doctor had paused at some obstacle, unexplained.

"That I can't tell you. You must ask Granny Marrable about that. Not her daughter--niece--whatever she is. Don't say anything to her. She is not to know."

Granny Marrable was audible in the passage without. "Can't you tell me what sort of thing?" said Gwen, under her voice.

"It was in a letter that came to her from Snaps--Sapps Court. The Granny wouldn't tell me what was in it, and begged I would say nothing of it to Widow Thrale. But the old soul was badly upset by it, shaking all over and asking for you...."

"Was she asking for me? Then I'm so glad you sent for me. I would not have been away on any account."

"It had nothing to do with my writing. I should have written for you to come to-morrow anyhow.... Here comes Granny Marrable." They had been talking alone, as Mrs. Lamprey had gone outside to speak to Tom.

"Still asleep, Granny?" said the doctor. Yes--she was, said the old lady; nicely asleep. "Then I'll be off, as it's late." Gwen suggested that Tom might drive him home, with Mrs. Lamprey, and call back for instructions.

Said Granny Marrable then, not as one under any new stress:--"My lady, God bless you for coming, though I would have been glad it had been daylight. To think of your ladyship out in the cold and damp, for our sakes!"

"Never mind me, Granny! I'll go to bed to-morrow night. Now tell me about this letter.... Is Ruth safe in there?" Yes, she was; and would stay there by her dear mother. Gwen continued: --"Dr. Nash has just told me there was some letter. But he did not know what was in it."

"He was not to know. But you were, my lady. This is it. Can you see with the candle?"

Gwen took the letter, and turned to the signature before reading it. It was from "Ralph Thornton Daverill, alias Rix," which she read quite easily, for the handwriting was educated enough, and clear. "I see no date," said she. "Why did Dr. Nash say it had come from Sapps Court?"

"Because, my lady, he saw the envelope. Perhaps your ladyship knows of 'Aunt Maria.' She is little Dave's aunt, in London."

"Oh yes--I know 'Aunt M'riar.' I know her, herself. Why does she write her name on a letter from this man?"

"I do not know. There is all we know, in the letter, as you have it."

"Whom do you suppose Ralph Thornton Daverill to be, Granny?"

"I know, unhappily. He is her son."

"The son.... Oh yes--I knew of him. She has told me of him. Besides, I knew her name was Daverill, from the letters." Granny Marrable was going on to say something, but Gwen stopped her, saying:--"First let me read this." Then the Granny was silent, while the young lady read, half aloud and half to herself, this following letter:--

"MOTHER--You will be surprised to get this letter from me. Are you sorry I am not dead? Can't say I'm glad. I have been His Majesty's guest for one long spell, and Her Majesty's for another, since you saw the last of me. I'm none so sure I wasn't better off then, but I couldn't trust H.M.'s hospitality again. It might run to a rope's end. Dodging blood-hounds is my lay now, and I lead the life of a cat in hell. But I'm proud--proud I am. You read the newspaper scrap I send along with this, and you'll be proud of your son. I'm a chip of the old block, and when my Newgate-frisk comes, I'll die game. Do you long to see your loving son? If you don't, send him a quid or two--or put it at a fiver. Just for to enable him to lead an honest life, which is my ambition. You can come to a fiver. Or would you rather have your loving son come and ask for it? How would you like it, if you were an honest man without a mag in his pocket, and screwpulls of conscience? You send on a flimsy to M'riar. She'll see I get it. I'll come for more when I want it--you be easy. So no more at present from your dutiful son:--

RALPH THORNTON DAVERILL, alias RIX."

"P.S.--You can do it--or ask a kind friend to help."

"What a perfectly intolerable letter!" said Gwen. "What does he mean by a newspaper scrap?... Oh, is that it?" She took from the old lady a printed cutting, and read it aloud. "Fancy his being that man," said she. "It made quite a talk last winter--was in all the papers." It was the paragraph Uncle Mo had come upon in the Star.

"I have seen that man," said Granny Marrable. And so sharp was Gwen in linking up clues, that she exclaimed at once:--"What--the madman? Dr. Nash told me of him. Didn't he come to hunt her up?"

"That was it, my lady. And he was all but caught. But I have never spoken of my meeting him, and she has barely spoken of him, till this letter came yesterday. And then we could speak of him together. But not Ruth. She was to know nothing. She was not here, by good luck, just the moment that it came."

"And my dear old Mrs. Picture? Oh, Granny--what a letter for her to get!"

"Indeed, my lady, she was very badly shaken by it. I would have been glad if I might have read it myself first, to tell her of it gently." Granny Marrable was entirely mistaken. "Break it gently," sounds so well! What is it worth in practice?

"Could she understand the letter. I couldn't, at first."

"She understood it better than I did. But it set her in a trembling, and then she got lost-like, and we thought it best to go for Dr. Nash.... No--Ruth never knew anything of the letter, not a word. And her mother said never a word to her. For he was her brother."

"I cannot understand some things in the letter now, but I see he is thoroughly vile. One thing is good, though! What he wants is money."

"Will that...?"

"Keep him quiet and out of the way? Yes--of course it will. Let me take the letter to show to my father. He will know what to do." She knew that her father's first thought might be to use the clue to catch the man, but she also knew he would not act upon it if his doing so was likely to shorten the span of life still left to old Maisie. "What was he like?" said she to Granny Marrable.

"Some might call him good-looking," was the cautious answer.

"You think I shouldn't, evidently?" Evidently.

"It is not the face itself. It is in the shape of it. A twist. I took him for mad, but he is not."

"How came you to know him for your sister's son?"

"Ah, my lady, how could I? For Maisie was still dead then, for me. I could know he was Mrs. Prichard's son, for he said so."

"I see. It was before. But you talk about him to her now?"

"She cannot talk of much else, when Ruth is away. She will talk of him to you, when she wakes.... Hush--I think Ruth is coming!" Gwen slipped the letter in her pocket, to be out of the way.

No change in her mother--that was Ruth's report. She had not stirred in her sleep. You could hardly hear her breathe. This was to show that you could hear her breathe, by listening. It covered any possible alarm about the nature of so moveless a sleep, without granting discussion of the point.

Gwen had told Tom Kettering to return shortly, but only for orders. Her own mind was quite made up--not to leave the old lady until alarms had died down. If the clouds cleared, she would think about it. Tom must drive back at once to the Towers; and if anyone was still out of bed whose concern it was to know, he might explain that she was not coming back at present. Or stop a minute!--she would write a short line to her father. Ruth and Granny Marrable lodged a formal protest. But how glad they were to have her there, on any terms!

She had really come prepared to stay the night; but until she could hear how the land lay had not disclosed her valise. Tom, returning for orders, deposited it in the front-room, and departed, leaving it to be carefully examined by the dog, who could not disguise his interest in leather.

The only obstacle to an arrangement for one of the three to be always close at hand when the sleeper waked was the usual one. In such cases everyone wants to be the sentinel on the first watch, and not on any account to sleep. A dictator is needed, and Gwen assumed the office. Her will was not to be disputed. She told Granny Marrable and Ruth to go to bed or at least to go and lie down, and she would call one of them if it was necessary. They looked at each other and obeyed. She herself could lie down and sleep, if she chose, on the big bed beside the old lady, and she might choose. The end would be gained. There would then be no fear of old Maisie awakening alone in the dark, a prey to horrible memories and apprehensions, this last one worst of all--this nightmare son with his hideous gaol-bird past and his veiled threats for the future. That was more important than the meat-jelly, beef-tea, stimulants, what not? They would probably be refused. Still they were to be reckoned with, and Ruth was within call to supply them.

In the darkness and the silence of the night, a solitary, discouraged candle in a shade protesting feebly against the one, and every chance sound that day would have ignored emphasizing the other, the stillness of the figure on the bed became a mystery and an oppression. How Gwen would have welcomed a recurrence of the faintest breath, to keep alive her confidence that this was only sleep--sleep to be welcomed as the surest herald of life and strength! How she longed to touch the blue-veined wrist upon the coverlid, but once, just for a certainty of a beating pulse, however faint! She dared not, even when a heavy avalanche of melted snow from the eaves without, that made her start, left the sleeper undisturbed; even when a sudden faggot in the fireplace, responsive to the snowfall, broke and fell into the smouldering red below, and crackled into flame without awakening her. For Gwen knew the shrewd powers of a finger-touch to rouse the deepest sleeper. But she was grateful for that illumination, for it showed her a silver thread of hair near enough to the nostril to be stirred to and fro by the breath that went and came. And by its light the delicate transparency of the wrist showed the regular pulsation of the heart. All was well.

She had plenty to occupy her thoughts. She could sit and think of the strangeness of her own life, and its extraordinary inequalities. What could clash more discordantly than this moment and a memory of a month ago that rushed into her mind for no apparent reason but to make a parade of its own incongruity. Do you remember that brilliant dress of Madame Pontet that she tried on at Park Lane, with "the usual tight armhole"? That dress had figured as a notable achievement of the modiste's art, worthy of its wearer's surpassing beauty, in a dazzling crowd of Stars and Garters and flashing diamonds, and loveliness that was old enough for Society, and valour that was too old for the field of battle; and much of the wit of the time and a little of the learning, trappings of well-mounted dramatis personae on the World's stage. That dress and its contents had made many a woman jealous, and been tenacious of many a man's memory, young and old, for weeks after. Here was the wearer, watching in the night beside a convict's relict, a worse convict's mother, a waif and stray picked up in a London Court off Tottenham Court Road! And the heart of the watcher was praying for only one little act of grace in Destiny, to grant a short span yet of life, were it no more than a year, to this frail survivor of a long and cruel separation from one whose youth had been another self to her own.

And as for that other affair, what did she really recollect of it? Well--she could remember that tight armhole, certainly, and was far from sure she should ever forget it.

The chance that had brought the sisters back to each other was so strange that the story of their deception and the loss of every clue to its remedy seemed credible by comparison--a negligible improbability. Would they necessarily have recognised one another at all if that letter had not come into the hands of her father? She herself would never have dared to open it; or, if she had, would she have understood its contents? Without that letter, what would the course of events have been? Go back and think of it! Imagine old Mrs. Picture in charge of Widow Thrale, groundedly suspected of lunacy, miserable under the fear that the suspicion might be true--for who can gauge his own sanity? Imagine Granny Marrable, kept away at Denby by her daughter, that her old age should not be afflicted by a lunatic. Imagine the longing of Sapps Court to have Mrs. Picture back, and the chair with cushions, in the top garret, that yawned for her. Imagine these, and remember that probably old Maisie, to seem sane at any cost, would have gone on indefinitely keeping silence about her own past life, whatever temptation she may have been under to speak again of the mill-model, invisible in its carpet-roll above the fireplace. Remember that what Dr. Nash elicited from her, as an interesting case of dementia, was not necessarily repeated to Mrs. Thrale, and would have been a dead letter in the columns of the Lancet later on. Certainly the chances of an eclaircissement were at a minimum when Gwen returned from London, her own newly acquired knowledge of its materials apart. But then, how about the poor crazy old soul's daughter's new-born love for her unrecognised mother, and her mysteriously heart-whole return for it?

That might have brought the end about. But to Gwen it seemed speculative and uncertain, and to point to no more than a possible return to London of the mother, accompanied by her unknown and unknowing daughter. A curious vision flashed across her mind of Ruth Thrale, entertained at Sapps by old Mrs. Picture; and there, by the window, the table with the new leg; and, in the drawer of it ... what? A letter written five-and-forty years ago, that had changed the lives of both! Gwen's imagination restored the unread letter to its place, with rigid honesty. But--how strange!

Then her imagination came downstairs, and glanced in on the way at the room where the mysterious fireman, who came from the sky, had deposited the half-insensible old lady, after the cataclysm. It was Uncle Mo's room, on the safe side of the house; and the walls were enriched with prints of heroes of the Ring in old time; Figg and Broughton, Belcher and Bendigo, sparring for ever in close-fitting pants by themselves on a very fine day. She recalled how the unmoved fireman, departing, had shown a human interest in one of these, remarking that it was a namesake of his. Suppose that fireman had not been at hand, how would old Maisie have been got downstairs? Suppose that she herself had been flattened under the ruins, would all things now have been quite otherwise? See how much had turned on that visit to Cavendish Square! No--a hundred things had happened, the absence of any one of which might have changed the current of events, and left old Maisie to end her days undeceived; and perhaps the whole tale of her lonely life and poverty to come to light afterwards, and cast a gloom without a chance of solace over the last hours of her surviving twin....

Was that the movement of a long-drawn breath, the precursor of an unspoken farewell to the land of dreams? Scarcely! Nothing but a fancy, this time, bred of watching too closely in the silence! Wait for the clear signs of awakening, sure to come, in time!

It was so still, Gwen could hear the swift tick-tick-tick in the watch-pocket at the bed's head; and, when she listened to it, her consciousness that the big clock in the kitchen was at odds with the hearth-cricket, rebuking his speed solemnly, grew less and less. For the sound we look to hear comes out of the silence, when no other sound has in it the force to speak on its own behalf. Two closed doors made the kitchen-chorus dim. The new faggot had said its say, and given in to mere red heat, with a stray flicker at the end. Drip and trickle were without, and now and then a plash that said:--"Keep in doors, because of me!" Gwen closed her eyes, as, since she was so wakeful, she could do so with perfect safety; and listened to that industrious little watch.

It had become Dolly reciting the days of the week, before she knew her vigilance was in danger. Gwen was certainly not asleep long, because Dolly had only got to the second Tundy, when a scream awoke her, close at hand to where Dolly was seated on General Rawnsley's knee. But it was quick work, to think out where she was, and to throw her arms round the frail, trembling form that was starting up from some terror of dreamland unexplained, on the bed beside her.

"What is it, dear, what is it? Don't be frightened. See, I'm Gwen! I brought you here, you know. There--there! Now it's all right." She spoke as one speaks to a frightened child.

Old Maisie was trembling all over, and did not know where she was, at first. "Don't let him come--don't let him come!" was what she kept saying, over and over again. This passed off, and she knew Gwen, but was far from clear about time and place. Questioned as to who it was that was not to come, she had forgotten, but was aware she had been asleep and dreaming. "Did I make a great noise and shout out?" said she.

Ruth Thrale appeared, waked by the cry. It had not added to her uneasiness. "She was like this, all yesterday," said she. "All on the jar. Dr. Nash hopes it will pass off." Ruth, of course, knew nothing of the coming of the son's letter, and regarded her mother's state as only a fluctuation. She had a quiet self-command that refused to be panic-struck. In fact, she had held back from coming, long enough to make sure that Granny Marrable had slept through the scream. That was all right. Gwen urged her to go back to bed, and prevailed over her by adopting a positive tone. She agreed to go when she had made "her mother" swallow something to sustain life. Gwen asked if the champagne had continued in favour. "She doesn't fancy it alone," said Ruth. "But I put it in milk, and she takes it down without knowing it." Probably nurses are the most fraudulent people in the world.

Old Maisie kept silence resolutely about the letter until Ruth had gone back; which she only did unwillingly, as concession to a force majeure. Then the old lady said:--"Is she gone? I would not have her see her brother's letter. But I would be glad you should see it, my dear." She was exploring feebly under her pillow and bolster, to find it. Gwen understood. "It's not there," said she. "I have it here. Granny Marrable got at it to show to me." She hoped the old lady was not going to insist on having that letter re-read. It made the foulness of the criminal world, unknown to her except as material for the legitimate drama, a horrible reality, and bred misgivings that the things in the newspapers were really true.

Old Maisie disappointed her. "Read me aloud what my son says," said she. Then Gwen understood what Granny Marrable had meant when she said that, of the two, her sister had understood it the better. For as she uttered the letter's repulsive expressions, reluctantly enough, a side-glance showed her old Maisie's listening face and closed eyes, nowise disturbed at her son's rather telling description of his hunted life. At the reference to the "newspaper scrap" she said:--"Yes, Phoebe read me that with her glasses. He got away." Gwen felt that that strange past life, in a land where almost every settler had the prison taint on him, had left old Maisie abler to endure the flavour of the gaol-bird's speech about himself. It was as though an Angel who had been in Hell might know all its ways, and yet remain unsullied by the knowledge.

But at the words:--"Do you long to see your loving son?" she moved and spoke uneasily. "What does he mean? Oh, what does he mean? Was it all his devil?" She seemed ill able to find words for her meaning, but Gwen took it that she was trying to express some hint of a better self in this son, perhaps latent behind the evil spirit that possessed him.

Her comment was:--"Oh dear no! What he means is that he will come and frighten you to death if you don't send him money. It is only a threat to get money. Dear Mrs. Picture, don't you fret about him. Leave him to me and my father.... What does he mean by a quid? A hundred pounds, I suppose? And a fiver, five hundred?... is that it?"

"Oh no--he would never ask me for all that money! A quid is a guinea--only there are no guineas now. He means a five-pound-note by a fiver." Her voice died from weakness. The "Please go on!" that followed, was barely audible.

Gwen read on:--"'Just for to enable him to lead an honest life.' Dear Mrs. Picture, I must tell you I think this is what is called sneering. You know what that means? He is not in earnest."

"Oh yes--I know. I am afraid you are right. But is it himself?" That idea of the devil again!

Gwen evaded the devil. "We must hope not," said she. She went on, learning by the way what a "mag" was, and a "flimsy." She paused on Aunt M'riar. Why was "M'riar" to act as this man's agent? She wished Thothmes was there, with his legal acumen. But old Maisie might be able to tell something. She questioned her gently. How did she suppose Aunt Maria came to know anything of her son? She had to wait for the answer.

It came in time. "Not Aunt M'riar. Someone else."

"No--Aunt Maria. She wrote her name on the envelope; to show where it came from, I suppose." The perplexity suggested silenced old Maisie. Gwen compared the handwritings of the letter and direction. They were the same--a man's hand, clearly. "From Aunt Maria" was in a woman's hand. Gwen did not attempt to clear up the mystery. She was too anxious about the old lady, and, indeed, was feeling the strain of this irregular night. For, strong as she was, she was human.

Her anxiety kept the irresistible powers of Sleep at bay for a while; and then, when it was clear that old Maisie was slumbering again, with evil dreams in abeyance, she surrendered at discretion. All the world became dim, and when the clock struck four, ten seconds later, she did not hear the last stroke.

* * * * *

When Gwen awoke six hours after, she had the haziest recollections of the night. How it had come about that she found herself in another room, warmly covered up, and pillowed on luxury itself, with a smell of lavender in it that alone was bliss, she could infer from Ruth Thrale's report. This went to show that when Ruth and Granny Marrable came into the room at about six, they found her ladyship undisguisedly asleep beside old Maisie; and when she half woke, persuaded her away to more comfortable quarters. She had no distinct memory of details, but found them easy of belief, told by eyewitnesses.

How was the dear old soul herself? Had she slept sound, or been roused again by nightmares? Well--she had certainly done better than on the previous afternoon and evening, after the receipt of that letter. Thus Granny Marrable, in conference with her ladyship at the isolated breakfast of the latter. Ruth, to whom the contents of the letter were still unknown, was keeping guard by her mother.

"We put it all down to your ladyship," said the Granny, with grave truthfulness--not a trace of flattery. "She can never tire of telling the good it does her to see you." This was the nearest she could go, without personality, to a hint at the effect the sheer beauty of her hearer had on the common object of their anxiety.

Gwen knew perfectly well what she meant. She was used to this sort of thing. "She likes my hair," said she, to lubricate the talk; and gave the mass of unparalleled gold an illustrative shake. Then, to steer the ship into less perilous, more impersonal waters:--"I must have another of those delightful little hot rolls, if I die for it. Mr. Torrens's mother--him I brought here, you know; he's got a mother--says new bread at breakfast is sudden death. I don't care!"

The Granny was fain to soften any implied doubt of a County Magnate's infallibility, even when uttered by one still greater. "A many," said she, "do not find them unwholesome." This left the question pleasantly open. But she was at a loss to express something she wanted to say. It is difficult to tell your guest, however surpassingly beautiful, that she has been mistaken for an Angel, even when the mistake has been made by failing powers or delirium, or both together. Yet that was what Granny Marrable's perfect truthfulness and literal thought were hanging fire over. Old Maisie had said to her, in speech as passionate as her weakness allowed:--"Phoebe, dearest Phoebe, my lady is God's Angel, come from Heaven to drive the fiend out of the heart of my poor son." And Phoebe, to whom everything like concealment was hateful, wanted sorely to repeat to her ladyship the conversation which ended in this climax. Otherwise, how could the young lady come to know what was passing in Maisie's mind?

She approached the subject with caution. "My dear sister's mind," said she, "has been greatly tried. So we must think the less of exciting fancies. But I would not say her nay in anything she would have me think."

Gwen's attention was caught. "What sort of things?" said she. "Yes--some more coffee, please, and a great deal of sugar!"

"Strange, odd things. Stories, about Van Diemen's Land."

Gwen had a clue, from her tone. "Has she been telling you about the witch-doctor, and the devil, and the scorpion, and the little beast?"

"They were in her story. It made my flesh creep to hear so outlandish a tale. And she told your ladyship?"

"Oh dear yes! She has told me all about it! And not only me, but Mr. Torrens. The old darling! Did she tell you of the little polecat beast the doctor ate, who was called a devil, and how he possessed the doctor--no getting rid of him?"

"She told me something like that."

"And what did you say to her?"

"I said that Our Lord cast out devils that possessed the swine, and had He cast them again out of the swine, they might have possessed Christians. For I thought, to please Maisie, I might be forgiven such speech."

"Why not? That was all right." Gwen could not understand why Scripture should be inadmissible, or prohibited.

Granny Marrable seemed to think it might be the latter. "I would not be thought," she said, "to compare what we are taught in the Bible with ... with things. Our Lord was in Galilee, and we are taught what came to pass. This was in The Colonies, where any one of us might be, to-day or to-morrow."

Gwen appreciated the distinction. It would clearly be irreverent to mention a nowadays-devil, close at hand, in the same breath as the remoter Gadarenes. She said nothing about Galilee being there still, with perhaps the identical breed of swine, and even madmen. The Granny's inner vision of Scripture history was unsullied by realisms--a true history, of course, but clear of vulgar actualities. Still, something was on her mind that she was bound to speak about to her ladyship, and she was forced to use the Gospel account of an incident "we were taught" to believe no longer possible, as a means of communicating to Gwen what she herself held to be no more than a feverish dream of her sister's weakness. Gwen detected in her tone its protest against the confusion of vulgar occurrences, in all their coarse authenticity, with the events of Holy Writ, and forthwith launched out in an attempt to find the underlying cause of it. "Did the old darling," said she, "tell you how Rookaroo, or whatever his name was, passed his devil on to her husband and son?"

"I think, my lady, she has that idea."

"It seems to me a very reasonable idea," said Gwen. "Once you have a devil at all, why not? And it was to be like the madman in the tombs in the land of the Gadarenes! Poor old darling Mrs. Picture!"

Old Phoebe felt very uncomfortable, for Gwen was not taking the devil seriously. Although scarcely prepared to have Scripture used to substantiate a vulgar Colonial sample, the old lady was even less ready to have such a one doubted, if the doubt was to recoil on his prototype. "Maisie is of the mind to fancy this evil spirit might even now be driven from her son's heart, and bring him to repentance. But I told her a many things might be, in the days of our blessed Lord, in the Holy Land, that were forbidden now. It was just his own wickedness, I told her, and no devil to be cast out. But she was so bent on the idea, that I could not find it in me to say this man might not repent and turn to Godliness yet, by your ladyship's influence, or Parson Dunage's." This introduction of the incumbent of Chorlton was an afterthought. The fact is, Granny Marrable was endeavouring to suggest a rationalistic interpretation of her sister's undisguised mysticism; fever-bred, no doubt, but scarcely to be condemned as delusion outright without impugning devils, who are standard institutions. Good influences, brought to bear on perverted human hearts, are quite correct and modern.

Granny Marrable's words left Gwen unsuspicious that powers of exorcism had been imputed to her. The ascription of them might be--certainly was--nothing but an outcome of the overstrain and tension of the last few days, but the repetition of it in cold blood to its subject might have been taken to mean that it was a symptom of insanity. Gwen did not press her to tell more, as Dr. Nash made his appearance. The frequency of his visits was a source of uneasiness to her. She would have liked to hear him say there was now no need for him to come again till he was sent for.

"Any fresh developments?" said he, as Granny Marrable left the room to herald his arrival. He heard Gwen's account of her own experience in the night, and seemed disquieted. "I wish," said he abruptly, "that people would keep their letters to themselves. I am not to be told what was in the letter, I understand?" For Gwen had skipped the contents of it, merely saying that Mrs. Picture had asked to hear her letter read through again.

Then Widow Thrale came in, saying her mother was ready to see the doctor. Mother was with her mother, she said. The doctor departed into the bedroom.

"How long has your mother been awake?" asked Gwen under no drawback about the designation.

"Quite half an hour. I told her your ladyship was having a little breakfast. She always asks for you."

"I heard that she was talking, through the door. What has she been talking about?"

Ruth's memory went back conscientiously, for a starting-point. "About her annuity," she said, "first. Then about the young children--little Dave and Dolly. That's mother's little Dave, only it's all so strange to think of. And then she talked about the accident."

"What about her annuity? I'm curious about that. I wonder who sends it to her?"

"She says it comes from the Office, because they know her address. She says Susan Burr took them the new address, when they left Skillick's. She says she writes her name on the back...."

"It's a cheque, I suppose?"

"Your ladyship would know. Susan Burr takes it to the Bank and brings back the money." Ruth hesitated over saying:--"I would be happier my mother should not fret so about herself ... she was for making her will, and I told her there would be time for that."

"Oh yes--plenty!" Gwen thought to herself that old Mrs. Picture's testamentary arrangements were of less importance than tranquillity, as matters stood at present. "What did she say of Dave and Dolly?"

"She was put about to think how they would be told, if she died."

"How would they be told?... I can't think." Gwen asked herself the question, and parried it.

Ruth Thrale escaped in a commonplace. The dear children would have to be told, but they would not grieve for long. Children didn't.

Gwen hoped she was right--always a good thing to do. But what had her mother said about the accident? Oh--the accident! Well--she remembered very little of it. She did not know why she should have become half unconscious. The last thing she could be clear about was that Dave was shouting for joy, and Dolly frightened and crying. Then a gentleman carried her upstairs out of a carriage.

"No!" said Gwen. "Carried her downstairs into a carriage.... Oh no!--I know what she meant. It was my cousin Percy, not the fireman."

At this point Dr. Nash returned from the bedroom. Gwen began hoping that he had found his patient really better, but something stopped her speech, and she said:--"Oh!" Ruth Thrale was outside the room by then, far enough to miss the disappointment in her voice.

Dr. Nash glanced round to make sure she was out of hearing, and closed the door. "I don't like to say much, either way," said he.

Gwen turned pale. "You need not be afraid to tell me," she said.

"I see you know what I mean," said he, reading into her thoughts. "Miracle apart, one knows what to expect. I don't believe in any miracle, though certainly she has everything in her favour for it, in one sense."

"Meaning?" said Gwen interrogatively.

"Meaning that she has absolutely nothing the matter with her. If she has any active disorder, all I can say is it has baffled me to find it out."

"But, then, why?..."

"Why be frightened? Listen, and I'll tell you.... We gain nothing, you know, by not looking the facts in the face."

"I know. Go on." Gwen sat down, and waited. Some faces lose under stress of emotion. It was a peculiarity of this young lady's that every fresh tension added to the surpassing beauty of hers.

"I want you," said the doctor, speaking in a dry, businesslike way--"I want you to go back to when you brought her down here from London. Think of her then."

"I am thinking of her. I can remember her then, perfectly." And Gwen, thinking of that journey, saw her old companion plainly enough. A very old delicate woman, in need of consideration and care. No bedridden invalid! "When did the change show itself?" The doctor took the image in her mind for granted, successfully.

Then Gwen cast about to find an answer. "I think it must have been ..." said she, and stopped.

"When did you see it?"

"When I came back, first. After I told her, still more."

"After that?"

"I thought she was improving, every day."

"I thought you thought so."

"And you mean that it was a mistake. Oh dear!"

The doctor shook his head, slowly and sadly. "Yesterday, at this time," said he, "she could sit up in bed. With an exertion, you know! To-day she can't do it at all." Both remained silent, and seemed to accept a conclusion that did not need words. Then the doctor resumed, speaking very quietly:--"It is always like this. Two steps back and one forward--two steps back and one forward. We see the one step on because we want to. We don't want to see what's unwelcome. So we don't discount the losses."

Then Gwen, with that quiet resolution which he had known to be part of her character, or he would scarcely have been so explicit, said:--"What will she die of?"

"Old age, accelerated by mental perturbation."

"Can you at all guess when?"

"If she had any definite malady, I could guess better. She may linger on for weeks. It won't go to months, in any case. Or she may pop off before that clock strikes."

"Shall we tell them?"

"I say no. No. They will probably have her the longer for not knowing. And, mind you, she is keeping her faculties. She's wonderfully bright, and is suffering absolutely nothing."

"You are sure of that?"

"Absolutely sure. Go in and talk to her now. You'll find her quite herself, but for a little fancifulness at times. It really is no more than that.... By-the-by!..."

"What?"

"Do you know what was in the letter that upset her so? The old Granny did not say what was in it, and charged me to say nothing to her daughter." The doctor had all but said:--"To their daughter!"

"I know what was in the letter." Gwen paused a moment to consider how much she should tell, and then took the doctor into her confidence; not exhaustively, but sufficiently. "You are supposed to know nothing about it," said she. "But I don't think it much matters, so long as Ruth--Widow Thrale--does not know. That is her mother's wish. I don't suppose she really minds, about you."

"All I can say is, I wish to God this infernal scoundrel's devil would fly away with him. Good-morning. I shall be round again about six o'clock."

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Chapter XXVII

HOW SPARROWS GORMANDISE. DAVE'S CISTERN. DOLLY AND JONES'S BULL. THE LETTER HAD DONE IT. HOW TOM KETTERING DROVE WIDOW THRALE TO DENBY'S FARM, AND MAISIE WOKE UP. HOW DAVE ATE TOO MANY MULBERRIES. OLD JASPER. OLD GOSSET AND CULLODEN. HIS TOES. HOW MAISIE ASKED TO SEE THE OLD MODEL AGAIN, AND HAD IT OUT BESIDE THE BED. DID IT GO ROUND, OR WAS DAVE MISTAKEN? THE GLASS WATER, AND HOW MAISIE HAD BROKEN A PIECE OFF, SEVENTY YEARS AGO. HOW A RATCHET-SPRING STRUCK WORK. WAS IT TOBY OR TOFT? BARNABY. BRAINTREE. ST. PAUL'S. BARNABY'S CO-RESPONDENCE. OLD CHIPSTONE. HOW PHOEBE NEARLY LOST HER EYE. OLD MARTHA PRICHARD. A REVERIE OF GWEN'S, ENDING IN LAZARUS. MAISIE'S PURSE

Has it ever been your lot--you who read this--to be told that Life is ebbing, slowly, slowly, every clock-tick telling on the hours that are left before the end--the end of all that has made your fellow in the flesh more than an image and a name? In so many hours, so many minutes, that image as it was will be vanishing, that name will be a memory. All that made either of them ours to love or hate, to be thought of as friend or foe, will have ceased for all time--for all the time we anticipate; more, or less as may be, than Oblivion's period, named in her pact with Destiny. In so many hours, so many minutes, that unseen mystery, the thing we call our friend's, our foe's, own self will make no sign to show that this is he. And we shall determine that he is no more, or agree that he has departed, much as we have been taught to think, but little as we have learned to know.

If you yourself have outlived other lives, and yet borne the foreknowledge of Death unmoved, you will not understand why Gwen's heart within her, when she heard Dr. Nash's words and took their meaning, should be likened to a great stifled sob, nor why she had to summon all her powers afield to bear arms against her tears. They came at her call, and fought so well that the enemy had fled before she had to show dry eyes, and speak with normal voice, to Ruth Thrale, who came in to say that her mother was asking for her ladyship. Come what might, she must keep her gloomy knowledge from Ruth.

"What a fuss about old me!" says the voice from the pillow, speaking low, but with happy contentment. "Would not anyone think I was dying?"

Now, if only Dr. Nash would have kept those prophecies to himself, Gwen would have thought her better. She could have discounted the weakness, or laid it down to imperfect nourishment. She could not trust herself to much speech, saying only:--"We shall have you walking about soon, and what will the doctor say then?"

She looked across at the old sister, grave and silent, whom she had supposed unoppressed, so far, by medical verdicts. But the invitation of a smile she achieved, mechanically, to help towards incredulity of Death, only met a half-response. "Indeed, my lady," said Granny Marrable, "we shall have some time to wait for that, if she will still eat nothing. A sparrow could not live upon the little food she takes."

What was old Maisie saying? She could live on less than a sparrow's food--that was the upshot. The sparrow was a greedy little bird, and she had seen him gormandise in Sapps Court. "My darling Dave and Dolly," she said, "would feed them, on the leads at the back, out of my bedroom window, where the cistern is." Gwen perceived the source of a misapprehension of Dave's.

"He's to come here," said she. "Him and Dolly. And then they can feed the cocks and hens."

"When I'm up," said old Maisie. She had no misgivings.

"When you're up."

"And Dave may go and see Farmer Jones's Bull?"

"And Dave may go and see Farmer Jones's Bull."

"But not Dolly, because she would be frightened."

"Not Dolly, then. Dolly is small, to see Bulls." Old Maisie closed her eyes upon this, and enjoyed the thought of Dave's rapture at that appalling Bull.

Granny Marrable indicated by two glances, one at Gwen, the other at the white face on the pillow, that her sister might sleep, given silence. Gwen watched for the slackening of the hand that held hers, to get gently free. Old Phoebe did the same, and drew the bed-curtain noiselessly, to hide the window-light. Both stole away, leaving what might have been an alabaster image, scarcely breathing, on the bed.

"It is the letter that has done it. Oh, how unfortunate!" So Gwen spoke, to the Granny, in the kitchen: for Ruth, though attending to the Sunday dinner, was for the moment absent. So the letter could be referred to.

"I fear what your ladyship says is true."

"But at least we know what it is that has done it. That is something." Granny Marrable seemed slow to understand. "I mean, if it had not been for the letter, she certainly need not have been any worse than she was last Sunday. She was getting on so well, Ruth said, on Friday, after the champagne. Oh dear!"

"It will be as God wills, my lady. If my dear sister is again to be taken from me...."

"Oh, Granny, do not let us talk like that!" But Gwen could put little heart into her protest. The doctor had taken all the wind out of her sails.

Old Phoebe let the interruption pass. "If Maisie dies ..." said she, and stopped.

"If Maisie dies...?" said Gwen, and waited.

The answer came, but not at once. "It is the second time."

"I don't think I quite understand, Granny," said Gwen gently. Which was meant, that this made it easier to bear, or harder?

"I am slow to speak what I think, my lady. I would like to find words to say it.... I lost Maisie forty-five--yes!--forty-six years ago, and the grief of her loss is with me still. Had she died here, near at hand, so I might have known where they laid her, I would have kept fresh flowers on her grave till now. But she was dead, far away across the sea. I am too old now for what has come of it. But I can see what-like it all is. Maisie is with me again, from the tomb--for a little while, and then to go. She will go first, and I shall soon follow; it cannot be long. No--it cannot be long! The light will come. And God be praised for His goodness! We shall lie in one grave, Maisie and I. We shall not be parted in Death." These last words Gwen accepted as conventional. She listened, somewhat as in a dream, to Granny Marrable's voice, going quietly on, with no very audible undertone of pain in it:--"It is not of myself I am thinking, but my child. She has found her mother, and loved her, before she knew it was herself, risen from the grave.... Oh no--no--no, my lady, I know it all well. My head is right. Maisie has been at hand these long years past, all unknown to me--oh, how cruelly unknown!" Here her words broke a little, with audible pain. "Her coming to us has been a resurrection from the tomb. It is little to me now, I am so near the end. But my heart goes out to my child, who will lose her mother.... Hush, she is coming back!"

The thought in Gwen's heart was:--"Pity me too, Granny, for I too--I, with all the wealth of the world at my feet!--shall feel a heartstring snap when this frail old waif and stray, so strangely found by me in a London slum, so strangely brought back by me into your life again, has passed away into the unknown." For she had scarcely been alive till now to the whole of her mysterious affection for dear old Mrs. Picture.

Ruth Thrale came back, and the day went on. Old Maisie remained asleep, sleeping as the effigy sleeps upon a tomb, but always with regular breath, barely sensible, and the same slow pulse. Now and again it might have seemed that breath had ceased. But it was not so. If the powers of life were on the wane, it was very slowly.

* * * * *

Tom Kettering returned at the appointed time, to a minute, and took no notice of his own arrival beyond socketing his whip in its stall, in token of its abdication. He had been told to come and wait, and he proceeded to wait, sine die. Gwen interrupted him in this employment, by coming out to tell him that she was stopping on, and that he was to go back to the Towers and say so. He looked so depressed at this that she bethought her of a compensation. She knew that Ruth Thrale had cause for anxiety about her own daughter; and, so far as could be seen, her immediate presence was not necessary, for no change appeared imminent. So she persuaded, or half-commanded, Ruth to be driven over to Denby's Farm by Tom Kettering, to remain there two or three hours, and be brought back by him or otherwise, as might be convenient. Her son-in-law might drive her back, and Tom might return to the Towers. It would make her mind easier to see Maisie junior, and get a forecast of probabilities at the farm. Ruth was not hard to prevail upon to do this, and was driven away by Tom over slushy roads, through the irresolute Winter's unseasonable Christmas Eve, after delegating some of her functions to Elizabeth-next-door.

Old Maisie still remained asleep, and almost motionless. With some help from Elizabeth-next-door the perfunctory midday meal had been served, very little more than looked at, and cleared away; then the motionless figure on the bed stirred visibly, breathed almost audibly. At this time of the day vitality is at its best, with most of us. Gwen, standing by the bedside, saw the lips move, and, bending forward, heard speech.

When she said, a moment after:--"I think I must have been asleep. I'm awake now,"--she uttered the words much as Gwen had always heard her speak. Yet another moment, and she said:--"I was dreaming, Phoebe dear, dreaming of our mill. And I was asking for you in my dream. Because Dave was up in our mulberry-tree, and wouldn't come down." She showed how perfectly clear her head was, by saying to Gwen:--"My dear, if I could have kept asleep, I would have seen Phoebe young again. You would never think how young she was then."

Gwen felt that she was nowise bound to dwell on the futility of dreams, and said, as she caressed the old hand's weak hold on her own:--"Was Dave eating too many mulberries in that tree?"

Old Maisie smiled happily at the thought of Dave. "His hands were quite purple with the juice," she said. "But he wouldn't come down, and went on eating the mulberries. It was the tree by itself behind the house, near the big hole where the sunflowers grew."

Granny Marrable's memory spanned the chasm--seventy years or so! "The biggest mulberry," she said, "was Old Jasper, in the front garden, near the wall.... It was always called Old Jasper." This replied to a look of Gwen's. Why should a mulberry-tree be called Old Jasper? Well--why should anything be called anything?

"I can smell the honeysuckle," said old Mrs. Picture. And her face looked quite serene and happy. "But the pigeons used to get all the mulberries on that tree, because they were close by."

"It stood by itself," said Granny Marrable. "And all the fruit-trees were in the orchard. So old Gosset with the wooden leg was always on that side with his clapper, never out in front."

"Old Gosset--who lost his leg at the battle of Culloden! I remember him so well. He said he could feel his toes all the same as if they was ten. He said it broke his heart to see the many cherries the birds got, for all the noise he made. He said they got bold, when they found he had a wooden leg...." She paused, hesitating, and then asked for Ruth.

Gwen told her how Ruth had gone to her own daughter, who was married, and how a second grandchild was overdue. In telling this, she feared she might not be understood. So she was pleased to hear old Mrs. Picture say quite clearly:--"Oh, but I know. A long while ago--my child--my Ruth--when she was Widow Thrale ... told me all that...."

"Yes, yes!" Gwen struck in. "I know. When you were here at the cottage, before ..." she hesitated.

"Yes, before," said old Mrs. Picture. "When she showed me our old model, and did not know. That was the time she thought me mad. Phoebe--I want you ... I want you...." Her voice was getting weaker; as it would do, after much talking.

"What?--I wonder!" said Granny Marrable, and waited.

Gwen guessed. "You want to see the old model again? Is that it?" Yes, she did. That was a good guess.

"Maisie dearest, I will fetch you the model to the bedside, and light candles, so you shall see it. Only you will eat something first--to please me--to please my lady--will you not? Then you may be able to sit up, you know, and look at it." Granny Marrable jumped at the opportunity to get some food--ever so little--down her sister's throat. She had not given up hope of her reviving, if only for a while. Bear in mind that she was still in the dark about the doctor's real opinion.

The attempt at refection had a poor show of success, its only triumph worth mentioning being the exhibition of a driblet of champagne in milk. Almost before the patient had swallowed it, she had fallen back on her pillow in a drowsy half-sleep, with what seemed an increased colour, to eyes that were on the watch for it. She remained so until after the doctor's visit at six o'clock.

The doctor admitted that she had picked up a very little, and when she awoke would probably have another spell of brightness. But.... Speaking with Gwen alone on his way out, he ended on this monosyllable.

"What does that 'but' mean, doctor?"

"Means that you mustn't expect too much. I suppose you know that the mildest stimulant means reaction."

"I don't know that I ever thought about it, but I'll take your word for it."

"Well--you may. And you may take my word for this. When the vital powers are near their end--without disease, you know, without disease...."

"I know. She has nothing the matter with her."

"You can intensify vitality for a moment. But the reaction will come, and must hasten the end. You might halve the outstanding time of Life by doubling the vitality. If you employ any artificial stimulant, you only use up the heart-beats that are left. The upshot of it is--don't go beyond a tablespoonful twice a day with that liquor."

"I don't suppose she has had so much."

"Well--don't go beyond it. There is always the possibility--the bare possibility, even at eighty--of a definite revival. But...."

"But, again, doctor!"

"But again! Let it stop at that. I shall do no better by saying more. If I foresaw ... anything--within the next twelve hours, I would stay on to see your ladyship through. But there is nothing to go by. Quite impossible to predict!"

"Why do you say 'to see me through'? Why not her sister and daughter?"

"Because they are her sister and daughter. It's all in their day's work. Good-night, Lady Gwendolen." Gwen watched the doctor's gig down the road into the darkness, and saw that a man riding stopped him, as though to give a message. After which she thought he whipped up his pony, which also felt the influence of the rider's cob alongside, and threw off its usual apathy.

* * * * *

Old Maisie must have waked up just as the doctor departed, for there were voices in the bedroom, and Granny Marrable was coming out. The old lady had an end in view. She was bent on getting down the mill-model from over the fireplace. "My dear sister has a great fancy to see it once more," she said. "And I would be loth to say nay to her." Gwen said:--"Anything to keep her mind off that brute of a son!" And then between them they got the model down, and unwrapped the cloth from it. Elizabeth-next-door, coming in at this moment, left Gwen free to go back to old Maisie in the bedroom, who seemed roused to expectation. The doctor was clearly wrong, and all was going to be well. Mrs. Picture was not quite herself again, perhaps; but was mending.

"My dear, I am giving a world of trouble," she said. "But Phoebe is so kind, to take every little word I say."

"She likes doing it, Mrs. Picture dear. We've got down the mill to show you, and she will get it in here by the bed, so that you shall see without getting up. Elizabeth from next door is there to help her." So the mill-model, that had so much to answer for, was got out from behind its glass, and placed on the little table beside the bed.

Old Maisie's voice had rallied so much that surely her power of movement should have done so too. But no!--she could not raise herself in bed. It was an easy task to place her to the best advantage, but the sense of her helplessness was painful to Gwen, who raised her like a child with scarcely an effort, while Granny Marrable multiplied pillows to support her. The slightest attempt on her part towards movement would have been reassuring, but none came.

"I wonder now," she said vaguely. "Was it only Dave?"

"What about Dave, dear? What did Dave say?"

"Was it Dave who said it went round? I had the thought it went round. Which was it?"

"I showed it to Dave," said Granny Marrable, "and then it went, the same as new. I could try it again, only then I must take out the glass water, and put in real. And wind it up."

Old Mrs. Picture almost laughed, and the pleasure in her voice was good to hear. "Why, now I have it all back!" she said. "And there is father! Oh, Phoebe, do you remember how angry father was with me for breaking a piece off the glass water?"

Granny Marrable was looking for something, in the penetralia of the model. "Oh, I know," said she. "It's in behind the glass water.... I was looking for the piece.... I'll take the glass water out." She did so, and its missing fraction was found, stowed away behind the main cataract, a portion of which appeared to have stopped dead in mid-air.

"Oh, Phoebe darling," said old Maisie, "we can have it mended."

"Of course we can," said Gwen. "Do let us make it go round. I want to make it go round, too." Her heart was rejoicing at what seemed so like revival.

Granny Marrable poured water into what stood for "the sleepy pool above the dam," and found the key to wind up the clockwork. "I remember," said old Maisie, "the water first, and then the key!" Her face was as happy as Dave's had been, watching it.

But alas for the uncertainty of all things human!--machinery particularly. The key ran back as fast as it was wound up, and the water slept on above the dam. What a disappointment! "Oh dear," said Gwen, "it's gone wrong. Couldn't we find a man in the village who could set it right, though it is Sunday?" No--certainly not at eight o'clock in the evening.

"I fear, my lady," said Granny Marrable, "that it was injured when the little boy Toby aimed a chestnut at it. And had I known of the damage done, I should have allowed him no sugar in his tea. But it may have been Toft, when he repaired the glass, for indeed he is little better than a heathen." She examined it and tried the key again. It was hopeless.

"Never mind, Phoebe dearest! I would have loved to see the millwheel turn again, as it did in the old days. Now we must wait for it to be put to rights. I shall see it one day." If she felt that she was sinking, she did not show it. She went on speaking at intervals. "Let me lie here and look at it.... Yes, put the candle near.... That was the deep hole, below the wheel, where the fish leapt.... Father would not allow us near it, for the danger.... There were steps up, and so many nettles.... Then above we got to the big pool where the alders were ... where the herons came...." A pause; then:--"Phoebe dearest!..."

"What, darling?"

"I was not mad.... You were not here, or you would have known me.... Would you not?"

"I would have known you, Maisie dearest--I would have known you, in time. Not at the first. But when I came to think of it, would I have dared to say the word?"

Gwen remembered this answer of old Phoebe's later, and saw its reasonableness. She only saw the practical side at the moment. "Why, Granny," she said--"if it hadn't been the mill, it would have been something else."

"But I was not mad," Maisie continued. "Only I must have frightened my Ruth.... I went up there once, Phoebe. Barnaby took me up one day...."

"Up where, Mrs. Picture dear?" Gwen left the old right hand free to show her meaning, but it fell back after a languid effort. The strength was near zero, though no one would have guessed it from the voice.

"Up there--in the roof--where the trap comes out.... Phoebe would not come, because of the dust.... It was so hot too.... Barnaby pulled up a flour-sack, to show me, and would have let me out on the trap, only I was frightened, it was so high! I could see all the way over to Braintree.... And Barnaby said on a clear day you could see St. Paul's.... I liked Barnaby--I disliked old Muggeridge.... Do you know, Phoebe dear, I used to think Barnaby's wife was old Muggeridge's sister, because her name had been Muggeridge?"

Old Phoebe threw light on the affair. Barnaby's wife was young Mrs. Muggeridge, who had exchanged into another regiment--was not really Barnaby's wife! that is to say, not his legal wife.

"But there now!" said old Phoebe, when she had ended this, "if that was not the very first of it all with me, when Dr. Nash he set me a-thinking, by telling of Muggeridge! For how would I ever have said a word of that old sinner to our little Dave?"

Old Maisie's attention was still on the mill-model. "You would not come up into the corn-loft, Phoebe," said she, "because of all the white dust. It was on everything, up there. When I went up with Barnaby the mill was not going, because the stones were out for old Chipstone to dress their faces. His real name was not Chipstone, but Chepstow. He could do two stones in one day, he worked so quick. So both were got out when he came, and the mill was stopped. Oh, Phoebe, do you remember when a chip flew in your eye, you were so bad?"

"Now, to think of that!" said Granny Marrable. "And me clean forgot it all these years! Old Chipstone, with glasses to shelter his eyesight; like blinkers on a horse. 'Tis all come back to me now, like last week. And I might have been a one-eyed girl all my days, the doctor said, only the chip just came a little out of true. To think that all these years I have forgotten it, and never thanked God once!"

"'Tis the sight of the mill brings it all back," said old Maisie. "I mind it so well, and the guy you looked, dear Phoebe, with a bandage to keep out the light. It was wolfsbane did it good, beat up in water quite fine."

"Be sure. Only 'twas none of Dr. Adlam's remedies, I lay.... Wasn't it Martha's--our old Martha?... There, now!--I've let go her name.... 'Twas on the tip of my tongue to say it...."

Old Maisie's voice was getting faint as she said:--"Old Martha Prichard ... the name I go by now, Phoebe darling.... I took it to ... to keep a memory...."

She was speaking in such a dying voice that Gwen struck in to put an end to her exerting it. "I see what you mean," she said. "You mean you took the name to bring back old times. Now be quiet and rest, dear! You are talking more than is good for you. Indeed you are!"

Thereon Granny Marrable, though she had never felt clear about the reason of this change of name, and now thought she saw enlightenment ahead, followed in compliance with what she conceived to be Lady Gwendolen's wishes. "Now you rest quiet, Maisie dearest, as her ladyship says. What would Dr. Nash think of such a talking?"

Ruth might not be back till very late, and as she had not reappeared it might be taken for granted she had stayed to sup with her daughter. Gwen suggested rather timidly--for it was going outside her beat--that the grandchild might have chosen its birthday. The Granny said, with a curious certainty, that there was no likelihood of that for a day or two yet, and went to summon Elizabeth from next door, to help with their own supper. She herself was rather old and slow, she said, in matters of house-service.

* * * * *

Gwen was not sorry to be left for a while to her own reflections before the smouldering red log on the kitchen fire.

The great bulldog from the lobby without, as though his courtesy could not tolerate such a distinguished guest being left alone, paid her a visit in her hostess's absence. He showed his consciousness of her identity by licking her hand at once. He would have smelt a stranger carefully all round before bestowing such an honour. Gwen addressed a few words to him of appreciation, and expressed her confidence in his integrity. He seemed pleased, and discovered a suitable attitude at her feet, after consideration of several. He looked up from his forepaws, on which his chin rested, with an expression that might have meant anything respectful, from civility to adoration. The cat, with her usual hypocrisy, came outside her fender to profess that she had been on Gwen's side all along, whatever the issue. Her method of explaining this was the sort that trips you up--that curls round your ankles and purrs. The cricket was too preoccupied to enter into the affairs of fussy, uncontinuous mortals, and the kettle was cool and detached, but ready to act when called on. The steady purpose of the clock, from which nothing but its own key could turn it, was to strike nine next, and the cloth was laid for supper. Supper was ready for incarnation, somewhere, and smelt of something that would have appealed to Dave, but had no charm for Gwen.

For she was sick at heart, and the moment that a pause left her free to admit it, heavy-eyed from an outcrop of head-oppression on the lids. It might have come away in tears, but her tissues grudged an outlet. She saw no balm in Gilead, but she could sit on a little in the silence, for rest. She could hear the voices of the two old sisters through the doors, and knew that Mrs. Picture was again awake, and talking. That was well!--leave them to each other, for all the time that might still be theirs, this side the grave.

What a whirl of strange unprecedented excitements had been hers since ... since when? Thought stopped to ask the question. Could she name the beginning of it all? Yes, plainly enough. It all began, for her, at the end of that long rainy day in July, when the sunset flamed upon the Towers, and she saw a trespasser in the Park, with a dog. She could feel again the unscrupulous paws of Achilles on her bosom, could hear his master's indignant voice calling him off, and then could see those beautiful dark eyes fixed on what their owner could not dream was his for ever, but which those eyes might never see again. She could watch the retiring figure, striding away through the bracken, and wonder that she should have stood there without a thought of the future. Why could she not have seized him and held him in her arms, and baffled all the cruelty of Fate? For was he not, even then, hers--hers--hers beyond a doubt? Could she not see now that her heart had said "I love you" even as he looked up from that peccant dog-collar, the source of all the mischief?

That was what began it. It was that which led her to stay with her cousin in Cavendish Square, and to a certain impatience with conventional "social duties," making her welcome as a change in excitements an excursion or two into unexplored regions, of which Sapps Court was to be the introductory sample. It was that which had brought into her life this sweet old woman with the glorious hair. No wonder she loved her! She never thought of her engrossing affection as strange or to be wondered at. That it should have been bestowed on the twin sister of an old villager in her father's little kingdom in Rocestershire was where the miracle came in.

And such a strange story as the one she had disinterred and brought to a climax! And then, when all might have gone so well--when a very few years of peace might have done so much to heal the lifelong wounds of the two souls so cruelly wrenched apart half a century ago, that the frail earthly tenement of the one should be too dilapidated to give its tenant shelter! So small an extension of the lease of life would have made such a difference.

But if it was hard for her to bear, what would it be to the survivor, the old sister who had borne so bravely and well what seemed to Gwen almost harder to endure than a loss; a resurrection from the tomb, or its equivalent? She had often shuddered to think what the family of Lazarus must have felt; and found no ease from the reflection that they were in the Bible and it was quite a different thing. They did not know they were in the Bible.

She helped the parallel a little farther, while the cricket chirped unmoved. Suppose that Lazarus had died again in earnest from the shock--and suppose, too, please, that he was deeply beloved, which may not have been the case! How would the wife, mother, sisters, who had said one farewell to him, have borne to see him die a second time? Of course, Gwen was alive to the fact that it would be bad religious form to suggest that this contingency was not covered by some special arrangement. But put it as an hypothesis, like the lady she had ascribed Adrian's ring to!

She could hear Granny Marrable's voice and Elizabeth's afar, in conference. That was satisfactory. It made her certain that the slightest sound from old Maisie, so much nearer, would reach her. Her door stood wide, and the other door was just ajar.

But she did not hear the slightest sound. The dog did, for he flashed into sudden vitality and attention, and was out of the room in an instant. He was unable to say to Granny Marrable:--"I heard your invalid move in the bedroom, and I think you had better go and see if she wants you," but he must have gone very near it. For Gwen heard the old lady's step come quicker than her wont along the passage, and she reached the kitchen-door just in time to see her pass into the room opposite. "Is she all right?" she said.

"I hope she is still asleep, my lady," said old Phoebe.

But she was not asleep, and said so. Her voice was clear, and the hand Gwen took--so she thought--closed on hers with a greater strength than before. If only she had stirred in bed, it would have seemed a return of living power. But this slight vitality in the hands alone seemed to count for so little. She wanted something, evidently, and both her nurses tried to get a clue to it. It was not food; though, to please them, she promised to take some. Gwen's thought that possibly she had something for her ear alone--which she had hesitated to communicate to old Phoebe--was confirmed when the latter left the room to get the beef-tea, and so forth, which was always within reach if needed. For old Maisie said plainly:--"Now I can tell you--my dear!"

"What about, dear Mrs. Picture?" said Gwen, caressing the hand she held, and smoothing back the silver locks from the grave grey eyes so earnestly fixed on hers. "Tell me what."

"My son," said old Maisie. "I have a son, have I not?"--this in a frightened way, as though again in doubt of her own sanity--"and he is bad, is he not, and has written me a letter?"

"That's all right. I've got the letter, to show to my father."

"Oh yes--do show it--to the old gentleman I saw. He is your father...."

"You would like to say something about your son, dear Mrs. Picture--something we can do for you. Now try and tell me just what you would like."

"I want you, my dear, to find me my purse out of the other watch-pocket. I asked my Ruth to put it there.... She is Widow Thrale ... is she not?" Every effort at thought of her surroundings was a strain to her mind, plainly enough.

"There it is!" said Gwen. "Soon found!... Now, am I to see how much money you've got in it?"

"Yes, please!" It was an old knitted silk purse with a slip-ring. In the early fifties the leather purses with snaps, that leak at the seam and let half-sovereigns through before you find it out, were rare in the pockets of old people.

"Six new pounds, and one, two, three, four shillings in silver, and two sixpences, and one fourpence, and a halfpenny! Shall I keep it for you, to be safe?"

"No, dear! I want--I want ..."

"I hope," thought Gwen to herself, "she's not going to have it sent to her execrable son. Yes, dear, what is it you want done with it?"

"I want three of the pounds to go to Susan Burr, for her to pay eight weeks of the rent. It's seven-and-sixpence a week."

"And the rest--shall I keep it?"

"Tell me--my son Ralph's letter ... Did it not say that he wanted money?"

"Yes, it did. But I'm going to see about that--I and my father."

Old Maisie's voice became beseeching, gaining strength from earnestness. "Oh my dear--do let me! And, after all, is it not his money? For I had nothing of my own when I came back. I might have gone to the workhouse, but for him." What followed, disjointedly, was an attempt to tell the portion of her story that related to the miscarriage of her husband's will.

"Very well, dear! It shall all be done as you wish it. I'll see to that. The money shall be sent to Aunt M'riar, at Sapps Court, to give to him."

"Why is it Aunt M'riar, at Sapps Court? I know Aunt M'riar." Do what she would, she could not grapple with these relativities. And, indeed, this one was a mystery she could not have solved in any case.

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Chapter XXVIII

HOW A BOOMER GOT AWAY. GRANNY MARRABLE'S THEISM. COLD FEET. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE LOST HER HEAD. ADRIAN ON RESIGNATION. THE SHOP OPPOSITE. HOW MAISIE HEARD HER SON'S LETTER, AND WISHED HIM TO KNOW HE WAS POSSESSED. LADY ANCESTER'S REMONSTRANCE. HOW EMILY AND FANNY WOULDED THAT THEIR LOVE. HOW MAISIE WANTED PETER, AND DOLLY MIGHT NOT BE FRIGHTENED OF LAMBS. HOW SUSAN BURR WAS TO HAVE THE FURNITURE. LAST MESSAGE TO DAVE AND DOLLY. MAISIE'S DEATH. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE WENT AWAY TO SEE TO A NEWCOMER. HOW GWEN SLEPT, AND WAKED, AND HOW THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE EMPTY ROOM WHERE MRS. PICTURE HAD BEEN, ON THE BED. HOW THE CONVICT CALLED TO INTRODUCE HIMSELF. A DOG WHO HAD KILLED A MAN, WORTH FORTY POUNDS. HOW THE CONVICT SAW WHAT WAS ON THE BED. THE CUT FINGER. INSPECTOR THOMPSON. HOW RUTH HAD PASSED A TRAMP, ON THE ROAD

"Has she not talked at all about Australia, Granny?... No, thanks! I'm sure it's a beautiful ham--but I shall do very nicely with this. One very big lump of sugar, please, and plenty of milk, or I shall lie awake." Thus Gwen, and the influence of Strides Cottage is visible in her speech.

Old Maisie was again asleep, and they had left her and gone into the front-room; as much to speak together without disturbing her as to get their own suppers. They were doing this last, however, in a grudging sort of fashion; for the pleasures of the table are no match for a heartache. Gwen found it a solace to make her own toast with a long toasting-fork, an experience which her career as an Earl's daughter had denied to her.

"Maisie has talked many times of Australia, my lady. She talks on, so I could not repeat much."

"You mean she jumps from one thing to another?"

"Yes, so I cannot always follow her. But she has told me a many things of her life there. How at first she would never see a soul at the farm from week's end to week's end, and her husband got to own all the land about."

"Do you think she is really alive to her husband's villainy? I sometimes think she forgets all about it."

"Please God she does so! 'Tis better for her she should. I would have felt happier if she could have known me, and Ruth, and never had the tale of his wickedness."

"But that was impossible, Granny. She must have known, in the end."

"That is so, I know, my lady. But when I hear her forget it all, it makes my heart glad. When she gets to telling of the old time, on the farm, her mind is off it, and I thank God that it should be so, for her sake! Friday last she was talking so happy, you could not have known her for the same."

"About the farm and the convicts? Do recollect some of the things she told you!"

"There was a creature they hunt with dogs, that leaps on its hind-legs to any height."

"Oh yes--the Kangaroo."

"She called it something else--something like 'Boomer.'" This did not matter. Granny Marrable went on to repeat how a "boomer," chased by the dogs, had made straight for her sister's husband, whose gun, missing fire, had killed his best dog; while the quarry, unterrified by the report, sprang at a bound over his head and got away scathless. This, and other incidents of the convict's after-life in Van Diemen's Land, told without leading to the crime of the forged letter, had shown how completely separate in Maisie's mind were the memories of her not unhappy life with her husband in the past, and that of the recent revelation of his iniquity. She somehow dissociated the two images of him, and her mind could dwell easily on his identity as it had appeared to her during her thirty years of widowhood, without losing the new-found consciousness of Phoebe's.

But Granny Marrable had taken special note of the fact that her sister never referred to the son who had come with her from Australia, and had herself been scrupulously careful not to do so. She did not really know whether Maisie was alive to the possibility of his reappearance at any moment; and, indeed, could not have said positively whether allusion had or had not been made to her own alarming experience of him. Her own shock and confusion had been too great for accurate recollection. Silence about him was to her thought the wisest course, and she had remained silent.

She seemed to Gwen a wonderful old woman, this Granny Marrable. Her untiring patience and strength, at her great age; her simple theism, constantly in evidence; her resolute calmness in facing a second time the harrowing grief of a twin sister's death--for that she saw it at hand, Gwen was convinced--were surely the material of which heroism is made, when heroism is in the making. To Gwen's thought, the miraculous news that had been broken to her so suddenly might easily have prostrated many a younger person, even without that mysterious unknown factor, the twinship, the force of which could only be estimated by the two concerned. As the old lady sat there at the supper-table, breaking her resumptions of her sister's Australian tales by gaps of listening to catch any sound from the bedroom, she seemed to Gwen a duplicate of the old Mrs. Prichard of Sapps Court, spared by time or with some reserve of constitutional energy, grey rather than white, resolute rather than resigned. The different inflexion of voice helped Gwen against that perplexing sense of her likeness to her twin, which would assert itself whenever she became silent.

It was to fend this off, in such a pause, that she said:--"You are both just eighty this year, Granny, are you not?"

"Eighty-one, my lady. When our clock strikes midnight Maisie will have been eighty-one years in the world, and myself with but a few minutes to make up the tale. My mother told me so when I was still too young to understand, but I bore her words in mind. She was dead a year when my brother dressed those little dolly figures in the mill. I mind that he put it off, so we should not be in black for our mother. He died himself, none so long after that."

The foolish lines of keeping up hope mechanically to the last did not recommend themselves to Gwen. But she could trust herself to say, seeing the strength on the old face before her:--"Oh, Granny, do not let us despair too soon!" The phrase acknowledged Death, and did not choke her like the sham.

"My lady, have you felt her feet?"

"No--are they so cold?"

Instead of replying. Granny Marrable rose and, passed into the bedroom. Gwen, whose own speech had stopped her from hearing old Maisie's half-utterance on waking, followed, and stood beside the bed. Granny Marrable said:--"She is not awake yet, but I heard her." As she said this, Gwen slipped her warm hand between the sheets, and touched the motionless extremities; cold marble now, rather than flesh. A stone bottle of hot water, just in contact with the feet, had heated a spot on each, making its cold surrounding colder to the touch, and laying stress upon its iciness. "Oh, Granny," said Gwen, trying in vain to make the living warmth of her own hand of service, "can nothing be done? Surely--her feet in hot water?"

But old Phoebe only shook her head. She knew. It would only be to no purpose! Better let her rest! Moreover, Gwen could not fail to notice that the feet remained passive to her touch, never shrinking. That is not the way of feet. Was ever foot that did not shrink from mysterious unexpected fingers, coming from the beyond in the purlieus of a private couch?

And yet old Maisie was alive there still, and her speech was clear, however low. If anything, its sound savoured of revival. But she was not clear about her whereabouts and whom she was speaking to. She seemed to think it was Susan Burr, who "would find her thimble if she looked underneath." Thus much and no more had come articulate from the land of dreams. The moment after she was quite collected. Was that Phoebe, and her Lady? This was not the conventional phrase "My lady." She was evidently in possession of a Lady she had been guided to find by some Guardian Angel, if, indeed, the Lady were not a Guardian Angel herself. She went on to ask:--Where was her Ruth? When would she come?

She was coming, Ruth was, very soon. Both vouched for it. Gwen added:--"She's gone to see her daughter, who has a little boy."

Then Granny Marrable lost her head for the first time. "She's gone to my granddaughter," said she. "And I'm looking to have another great-grandchild there soon, before a many days are over."

For a moment Gwen was afraid the confusion of Ruth's daughtership might make old Maisie's head whirl, and set her fretting. She began to explain, but explanation was not necessary. The old hand she held was withdrawn from hers, that it might make common cause with its fellow that old Phoebe already held. "My darling," said she, "did I not give her to you when I ran away to the great ship? Fifty years ago, Phoebe--fifty years ago!" There was no trace of any tear in the eye that Gwen could still see, though it looked no longer into her own. The voice was not failing, and the words still came, clear as ever. "I kissed her in her crib, and I would have kissed her yet once more, but I dared not. So I said to myself:--'She will wake and never see me! But Phoebe will be there, to kiss her when she wakes. She will kiss her for me, just on the place we used to say was good to kiss.' Tell me, Phoebe, did my child cry much?..."

Granny Marrable's words:--"I cannot--I cannot--my darling!" caught in her voice, as she bent over the face that, but for its frail attenuation, was her own face over again, touching it tenderly with her own old lips--the same, thought Gwen, that had inherited that place it was so good to kiss, on that baby face of half a century ago, now a grandmother's. She rose noiselessly from where she half sat, half leaned, beside the figure on the bed, and stole a little way apart; not so far as to be unable to hear what that musical voice kept on saying, though she could not catch the replies.

"I said to myself:--'Phoebe will be her mother when I am miles away across the sea, and she will be as good a mother as I....' Was it not best, dearest, I should go alone, rather than carry my child away and leave all the loneliness for you?... Yes--but my heart ached for my little one on the great ship.... I would watch the stars--the very stars you saw too, Phoebe--and they were like friends for many a long week, till they sank down in the sea behind us, and it was thirty years before I saw them again.... Yes--then I knew it would be England soon and I would know if Phoebe had any other grave than the cold sea.... Yes, my darling, that was my first thought--to go to the little church by Darenth Mill, and look in the south corner.... I did, and there was mother's grave, and father's name cut on the stone, but none other. So I thought:--They are all gone--all gone!... Oh, if I had known that you were here!..."

The sound of lamentation barely grew in her voice, but it was there. To turn her mind from the recollection that provoked it, Granny Marrable thought it well to say that Nicholas Cropredy, her first husband, whom the forged letter had drowned at sea, had not been buried at Darenth Mill, but at Ingatestone, with his kindred and ancestors. "Did they find his body?" said old Maisie. She knew that he was dead long years back, but had not received any new impression of the cause of his death.

She did not even now seem to find its proper place in her mind for this correction of its mistaken record. It could not deal with all the facts, but held fast to the identities of her sister and child. Probably the established memory of the false news of her brother-in-law's death continued in possession. She only looked puzzled; then drifted on the current of her thought. "If I had known that you were here!... Oh, Phoebe!--such a many times my boy made me think of his sister he would never see now.... That was before the coming of the news.... Oh yes, I always had a thought till then the time might come before they would be grown up, so they should be children together.... That was my elder boy Isaac, after father--in those days little Ralph was in his cradle.... But the time never came--only the time to think it might have been.... And all those years I thought you dead, you were here!... Oh, Phoebe--you were here!... Oh, why--why--why could I not be told that you were here?"

"It was the Lord's will, darling. His ways are not for us to understand." Gwen could not for the life of her help recalling some irreverence of Adrian's about Resignation and Fatalism. But though she almost smiled over his reprehensible impiety--"No connection with the shop opposite"--she could and did pay a mental tribute to the Granny's quiet earnestness. She would have done the same by "Kismet" to an old Sheikh in the shadow of the Pyramids.

"Why--oh, why?--when my dear husband was gone could I not have found you then, even if I had died of joy in the finding? Had I not known enough pain? Oh, Phoebe--when I came back--when I came back ... it would have been so much then!... I had some great new trouble after that.... Oh, tell me--what was it?"

What could old Phoebe do but answer, seeing that she knew? "It was the wickedness of your son, Maisie darling. We have talked of him, have we not?" She feared to say much, as she shrank from reference to her own knowledge of the convict. She tried to get away from him. "And it was then you took old Martha's name, not to be known by your own, and went to Sapps Court?" This succeeded.

"Not Sapps Court, not yet for a long time. But I did go, and I was happy there.... I had my little Dave and Dolly, and when the window stood open in the summer, I heard the piano outside, across the way ... and Aunt M'riar came, and sometimes Mr. Wardle--he was so big he filled the room.... But tell me--was it a horrible dream, or was it true, that a letter came to me?..." Her powers of speech flagged.

Gwen took upon herself to answer, to spare Granny Marrable. "Yes, Mrs. Picture dear, it came from your son, and I've got it here. You're not to fret about him. I'm to show his letter to my father, don't you know?--you've seen him--and you know what he does will be all right."

"What he does will be all right." Old Maisie repeated it mechanically, and lay quiet, holding a hand on either side, as before; then after a short time rallied, and turned to Gwen, saying--"My Lady--my dear--I want you to promise me one thing.... I want you to promise me...."

"To promise you? Is it something I can do?"

The answer came with an extraordinary clearness. "That you will not let them get him. Read his letter, that I may hear.... Yes--like that!" She fixed her eyes eagerly on it, as Gwen drew it from her pocket. Granny Marrable snuffed the candles, and moved them to give a better light.

Gwen read aloud as best she might, for the handwriting was none too visible. When she came to the writer's picturesque suggestion of his life of constant dodging and evasion of his pursuers, she softened nothing of his brutal phraseology. Maisie only said:--"That is it. That is what I want." Phoebe was restless under its utterance, and murmured some protest. That such words should pass her ladyship's lips--such lips! Gwen merely commented:--"Like a fox before the pack! That's what he means. He's got to say it somehow, you know! Yes, tell me, what is it about that?"

"I want you ... to save him from them. I want you to tell him ... to tell him...."

"Something from you?--yes!"

"To tell him his mother forgave him. For I know now--I know it, my dear--that his wicked work was none of his own doing, but the evil spirit that had possession of him. Was it not?"

Why should Gwen stand between Mrs. Picture, dying, and something that gave her happiness, just for the sake of a little pitiful veracity? She was all the readier to endorse a draft on her credulity, from the knowledge that Granny Marrable would, if applied to, be ready with a covering security. She said quietly:--"I think it very far from impossible."

"Then you will tell him for me, and save him--save him from the officers?"

It seemed a large promise to make, but would its fulfilment ever be called for? "I promise," said Gwen, "and I will tell him you forgave him, if ever I see him.... There's Ruth back--I hear her. Now, dear, you must lie quiet, and not talk any more. You know you don't want her to know anything at all about her brother." Whereon Maisie lay silent with closed eyes, her hand in Gwen's just acknowledging its chance pressures, while Granny Marrable rose and went to the door; and then Gwen heard her in an earnest undertone of conversation with Ruth, just alighted from a vehicle whose horse, considered as a sound, she would have sworn to. It was the grey mare.

Ruth's visit to her daughter was the first since the extraordinary discovery of Mrs. Prichard's identity, and she had been very anxious about her. Nevertheless, its object appeared equable, blooming, and prosperous on her arrival; very curious to hear details of her new-found grandmother, and indignant with Dr. Nash for telling her husband that he was not, on peril of becoming a widower, to allow his wife to travel over to Strides Cottage to see her. She mixed with this a sort of resentment against the defection from her post of her real grandmother--to wit, the one she had grown up under. For the young woman's wish for her presence had been one of those strong predispositions very common under her circumstances, and far less unreasonable than many such. "Granny" had been all-wise and all-powerful with her from her cradle!

But, in spite of young Maisie's confidence on the subject, her mother could not resist the misgiving that her expected grandchild was girding up its insignificant loins to make a dash for existence. Consider its feelings if it had inherited its great-grandmother's scrupulous punctuality! Widow Thrale was between two fires--duty to a mother and duty to a daughter. An instinct led her to choose the former. Her son-in-law affected to think her nervous; but, after whistling the halves of several tunes to himself, put his horse in the gig and went off to fetch the doctor. The story has seen how he caught him just coming away from Strides.

Ruth had not yet done quite all she could. She could summon someone to take her place beside her daughter in her absence. Preferably her cousin Keziah from the Towers. But she must see her and know that she was available. Tom Kettering, just departing for the Towers, was caught in time for Ruth to accompany him. On her arrival, finding that Keziah was available, she arranged to walk with her to Denby's Farm, and then on to the Cottage. Under six miles, all told!--that was nothing.

But there was no need for this. Tom Kettering, going up to the house to report her young ladyship's decision to remain on another day, was told he must wait for a letter her ladyship the Countess would write, to take to Strides Cottage, and bring back an answer. He could easily go a few inches out of his way to leave his Aunt Keziah at Denby's, and take Ruth Thrale home to Strides. But he put up the closed brougham, and harnessed the grey mare in the dogcart, as she wanted a run. He knew that Gwen meant what she said, and would not come back.

It was about nine o'clock when they reached the Cottage, and Tom waited for the answer to the Countess's letter. Ruth came in, to be told that her mother had talked too much, and must lie quiet. But she had been talking--that was something! The comment was Ruth's, and the reply to it was hopeful and consolatory. Oh yes--a great deal! And she must be better, to be able to talk so much. However, Ruth saw no change in the appearance of the still, white figure on the bed.

Gwen sat in the front-room and read her mother's remonstrance with her for absenting herself in this way and leaving her ladyship alone to contend with the arduous duty of entertaining her guests. "I think," it ran, "that you might at least remember that you are your father's daughter, even if you forget that Sir Spencer and Lady Derrick have come all the way from Nettisham in Shropshire." What followed was a good deal emphasized. "Understand, my dear, that what I say is not intended to hold good if this old lady is actually dying, but for anything short of that it does appear to me that your behaviour is at least inconsiderate. Do let me entreat you to fix a reasonable hour for your return to-morrow, if you adhere to your resolution not to come to-night. Pray tell Kettering when he is to call for you before twelve to-morrow, so that you may be in time for lunch." This last was a three-lined whip.

In order that Gwen should not suppose that there had been too flattering a hiatus owing to her absence, the letter wound up:--"We have had some very nice music. It turns out that Emily and Fanny sing 'I would that my love' quite charmingly." Gwen's remark to herself:--"Of course!" may be intelligible to old stagers who remember the fifties, and the popularity of this Mendelssohn duet at that time--notably the intrepidity of the singers over the soft word the merry breezes wafted away in sport. Emily and Fanny were two ingenues, come of a remote poor relation, who were destined never to forget the week they were spending at the Towers in Rocestershire. The letter was scribbled across to the effect that General Rawnsley had said he should ride over to Chorlton to-morrow to see if he could be of any use. "The dear old man," said Gwen to herself. "And eighty-four years old! Oh, why--why--could not my old darling Mrs. Picture live only three years more?... Only three years!"

* * * * *

Ten o'clock. The time was again at hand for those last arrangements we all know so well, when one watcher is chosen to remain by the sick man's couch, that others may sleep; each one to be roused from forgetfulness and peace to the sickening foreknowledge of the hour of release for all, when the life he has it at heart to prolong, if only for a day, shall have become a memory to perish in its turn, as one by one its survivors grow few and fewer and follow in its track.

A night comes always when Oblivion becomes a terror, and we dare not sleep, from fear of what our ears may hear on waking. It had come at Strides Cottage for Granny Marrable and Gwen, and even Ruth was conscious of a creeping dread of Death at hand, waiting on the threshold. But she imagined herself alone in her anticipations--fancied that "mother" and her ladyship were cherishing false hopes. She would not allow her own to die lest she should betray fears that might after all be just as false. Why should her mother--her new-found real mother--be sinking, because her limbs were cold, when her speech was still articulate, and her soft grey eyes so full of tenderness and light?

Gwen held a little aloof, not to take more than her fair share of what she feared was an ebbing life, although it kept so strangely its powers of communion with the world it was leaving behind. She could hear all the old voice said, as she had heard it before. What was that she was saying now?

"When the baby comes you will bring it here to show to me? I may not be up by then, to go and see it."

"The minute my daughter is strong enough to bring it, mother dear."

"She must take her time.... Is there not a little boy already?"

"Yes. He's Peter. He's a year old. He's very strong and wilful, and gets very angry when things are not given to him."

"Ruth darling--fetch him to me to-morrow. Is it far to bring him?" There was hunger for the baby in her beseeching voice. She might enjoy him a little before the end, surely! Just a brief extension of a year or so--a month or so even.

"I will bring him to-morrow, mother. He's too heavy to carry, but John will drive us."

Old Maisie seemed quite happy in this prospect of a great-grandson. "They are so nice at that age," said she. Why was the child's name Peter?--she asked, and was told that he was so called after his grandfather, Ruth's husband. "He is dead now, is he not?" was her puzzled inquiry, and Ruth replied:--"I buried his grandfather thirteen years ago." To which her mother said:--"Tell me all his name, that I may know," and was told "Peter Thrale." Whereupon she made an odd comment:--"Oh yes--I was told. But that was when Ruth was Widow Thrale."

She never came to any real clearness about the lost history of her sister and daughter. Having once grasped their identities, her mind flinched from the effort to master the forty-odd blank years of ignorance.

But out of the cloud there was to come a grandchild a year old, and in time its mother with another smaller still, newer still. To overhear this talk made Gwen discredit the doctor's unfavourable auguries. How was it possible that old Mrs. Picture should be dying, when she could look forward to a baby in the flesh with such a zest?

The prospect of this visitor had set the old mind thinking of her own babies in the days gone by, apparently. There was her eldest, dead and buried in England while Ruth was still too young to put by memories of her elder brother. Then her second, who died in his boyhood in Australia. No mother ever loses count of her children, even when her mind fails at the last: and old Maisie's memory was still green over the loss of these two. But the third--how about the one who survived his childhood? When she spoke of him, his image was that of an innocent mischievous youngster, full of mad pranks, his father's favourite, not a trace in him of the vices that had made his manhood a curse to himself and his mother. In some still feebler stage of her failing powers the happier phase of his career might have remained isolated. Now, her mind was still too active to avoid the recollection of its sequel.

"What is it, mother dearest?" So Gwen heard her daughter speaking to her, trying for a clue to the cause of some symptom of a concealed distress. Then Granny Marrable:--"Yes, Maisie darling, what is it. Tell us." Some answer came, which caused Ruth to say:--"Shall I ask her ladyship to come?"

Gwen immediately returned to the bedside. "Is she asking for me?" said she. And Granny Marrable replied:--"I think she has it on her mind to speak to you, my lady."

Not too many at once was the rule. Ruth made a pretence of something to be done in another room, but the Granny kept near at hand.

"My dear--my Lady--I am so afraid...."

"Afraid of what, Mrs. Picture dear? Don't be frightened! We are all here."

"Afraid about my son--afraid Ruth may know...."

"No one has told Ruth of him, dear. No one shall tell Ruth. I promise you."

"It is not that. It is what I may say myself." Gwen had not heard her speak so clearly for a long time. "It was on my lips to speak of him--but just now. Because--is he not the same?"

"The same as what, dear? Try and tell me!"

"The same as the son that came with me in the ship. The same as the baby I suckled the last of four, out there on the farm. It was he that I was telling of before, and I was glad to tell my child--my Ruth--of the brother she never set eyes on. And then it came upon me, the thought of what he was, and what he had come to be.... Oh, my dear--my dear!..."

Gwen could not think of any stereotyped salve for a wounded heart. She could only say:--"Don't think of it, dear. Don't think of it! Lie still and get better now, and then I will make Aunt M'riar fetch Dave and Dolly, and Dave shall see Jones's Bull, and Dolly shall see the new baby."

"Suppose, my dear, I don't get better, will Dave and Dolly come all the same; for Phoebe and my Ruth, the same as if I was here?"

It was a sore tax on the steadiness of Gwen's voice, but she managed her assent. Yes--even in the improbable event of old Maisie's non-recovery, Dave and Dolly should visit Granny Marrable. And so consolatory had the assurance proved more than once before, that she repeated her undertaking about the visit to Farmer Jones's; for Dave, not for Dolly. "But there will be plenty for Dolly to see," Gwen said. "She won't be frightened of lambs--at least, I think not. Because she has never been in the country."

"No--but she has been in the Regent's Park, and is to go to Hampstead Heath some day with Uncle Mo. She is not frightened of the sheep in the Park, only in...."

"Only in where?" said Gwen. "Where is Dolly frightened of sheep?"

"In the street, because they run on the pavement, and the dog runs over their backs.... There are very few sheep here, compared to what we had in the colony.... Our shepherds were very good men, but all had their numbers from the Governor ... they had all been convicted ... but not of doing anything wrong...."

Oh dear!--what a mistake Gwen had made about those sheep! But how could she have known? She knew so little about the colony--had even asked General Rawnsley, when they were talking of Van Diemen's Land, if he knew where "Tasmania" was! She tried to head off the pastoral convicts--the cancelled men, who had become numbers. "When Dolly comes, she will see the mill too. And it will go round and round by then." She clung in a sort of desperation to Dolly and Dave, having tested their power as talismans to drive away the black spectres that hung about.

But the mill was as Scylla to their Charybidis. "Phoebe dearest!" said old Maisie suddenly, "when did father die?"

"When did our father die?" said Granny Marrable. "Nigh upon forty-six years ago. Yes--forty-six."

"How can that be?--forty-six--forty-six!" The words were shadowily spoken, as by a speaker too weary to question them, yet dissatisfied. "How can my father have died then? That was when my sister died, and my little girl I left behind."

"Oh, how I wish she could sleep!" Gwen exclaimed under her breath. Granny Marrable said:--"She will sleep, my lady, before very long." She said it with such a quiet self-command, that Gwen accepted the obvious meaning that the sleeper would sleep again, as before. Perhaps nothing else was meant.

There had been a time, just after she first came to the strange truth of her surroundings, when she could follow and connect the sequence of events. Now the Past and the Present fell away by turns, either looming large and excluding the view of the other alternately. But, that Phoebe and Ruth were there, beside her, was the fact that kept the strongest hold of her mind.

* * * * *

Eleven o'clock. Granny Marrable had been right, and old Maisie had slept again, or seemed to sleep, after some dutiful useless attempts to head off Death by trivialities of nourishment. The clock-hand, intent upon its second, oblivious of its predecessors, incredulous of those to come, was near halfway to midnight when Ruth Thrale, rising from beside her mother, came to her fellow-watchers in the front-room and said:--"I think she moved."

Both came to the bedside. Yes--she had moved a little, and was trying to speak. Gwen, half seated, half leaning on the pillow as before, took a hand that barely closed on hers, and spoke. "What is it, Mrs. Picture dear? Say it again."

"Is it all true?"

What could Gwen have said but what she did say? "Yes, dear Mrs. Picture, quite true. It is your own sister Phoebe beside you here, and your child Ruth, grown up."

"Maisie darling, I am Phoebe--Phoebe herself." It was all Granny Marrable could find voice for, and Ruth was hard put to it to say:--"You are my mother." And as each of these women spoke she bent over the white face of the dying woman, and kissed it through the speechlessness their words had left upon their lips.

It was not quite old Mrs. Picture's last word of all. A few minutes later she seemed to make weak efforts towards speech. If Gwen, listening close, heard rightly, she was saying, or trying to say:--"You are my Lady, that came with the accident, are you not?"

"Is there anything you want me to do for you?" For Gwen thought she was trying to say more. "It is about someone. Who?"

"Susan Burr...."

"Yes--you want me to give her some message?"

"Susan ... to have my furniture ... for her own."

"Yes--I will see to that.... And--and what?"

"Kiss Dave and Dolly for me."

They watched the scarcely breathing, motionless figure on the bed for the best part of an hour, and could mark no change that told of death, nor any sign that told of life. Then Granny Marrable said:--"What was that?" And Gwen answered, as she really thought:--"It was the clock." For she took it for the warning on the stroke of midnight. But old Phoebe said, with a strangely unfaltering voice:--"No--it is the change!" and the sob that broke the silence was not hers, but Ruth's. Old Mrs. Picture had just lived to complete her eighty-first year.

* * * * *

There came a sound of wheels in the road without. Not the doctor, surely, at this time of night! No--for the wheels were not those of his gig. Ruth, going out to the front-door, was met by a broad provincial accent--her son-in-law's. Gwen heard it fall to a whisper before the news of Death; then earnest conversation in an undertone. Gwen was aware that old Phoebe rose from her knees at the bedside, and went to listen through the door. Then she heard her say with a quiet self-restraint that seemed marvellous:--"Tell him--tell John that I will come.... Come back here and speak to me." She thought she caught the words as Ruth returned:--"I must not leave her alone." And she knew they referred to herself.

Then it came home to her that possibly her own youth and her difference of antecedents might somehow encumber arrangements that she knew would have to be carried out. They would be easiest in her absence. At her own suggestion she went away to lie down in the bedroom she had occupied.

Granny Marrable followed her. She had something to say.

"Dear Lady, I have to go. God bless you for all your goodness to my darling sister and to me! You gave her back to me...." That stopped her.

"Oh, Granny, Granny, we have lost her--we have lost her!" She could feel that old Phoebe's tears were running down the hand she had taken to kiss, and she drew it away to fold the old woman fairly in her arms, and kiss the face whose likeness to old Mrs. Picture's she could almost identify by touch. "We have lost her," she repeated, "and you might have had her for so long!"

Said Granny Marrable:--"I shall follow Maisie soon, if the Lord's will is. She might have died, my lady, but for you, unknown to me in London. And who would have told me where they had laid her?"

"Where are you going?"

"I am going to my granddaughter--Ruth's daughter. It is her fancy to have me rather than another. There might be harm to her did I stop away. Why should I delay here, when all is over?"

Why indeed? Still, Gwen could not but reverence and love the old lady for her unflinching fortitude and resolute sense of duty. She saw her driven away through the cold night, and went back to her room, leaving Ruth and Elizabeth the neighbour to make an end in the chamber of Death.

* * * * *

Sleep came, and waking came too soon, in a cold, dark Christmas morning. Oppression and pain for something not known at once came first, like a black cloud; then consciousness of what was in the heart of the cloud.

She wrapped herself in a warm dressing-gown, and went out through the silent house. It was still early, and it might be Ruth was still sleeping. Once asleep, why not remain so, when waking could only bring cold and darkness, and the memory of yesterday? Besides, it was not unlikely Ruth had watched half through the night. Gwen opened the door of the death-chamber with noiseless caution, and felt as soon as she saw that the daylight was still excluded, that it was empty of any living occupant. Dread was in her curiosity to see the thing beneath the white sheet on the bed--but see it she must!

The great bulldog, the only creature moving, came shambling along the passage to greet her, and--so she rendered his subdued dog-sounds that came short of speech--concerned that something was amiss he was excluded from knowing. She said a word to comfort him, but kept him outside the room, to wait for her return.

What had been till so lately old Mrs. Picture, whom she had chanced upon in Sapps Court, and found so strange a truth about, lay under that face-cloth on the bed. She moved the window-curtain for a stronger light, and uncovered the marble stillness of the face. The kerchief tied beneath the chin ran counter to her preconceptions, but no doubt it was all right. Ruth would know.

She did not look long. An odd sense of something that was not sacrilege, but akin to it, associated itself with this gazing on the empty tenement. Even so one shrinks from the emptiness of what was his home once, and will never know another dweller, but be carted off to the nearest dry-rubbish shoot. She laid the sheet back in its place, and went into the front-room.

Suddenly the dog growled and barked, then went smelling along the door into the front-garden. There was someone outside. She was conscious of a man on the gravel, through the window. A stranger, or he would enter without leave, or at least find the bell to ring. She glanced at the clock. It was half-past eight already, though it had seemed so early.

How about the dog, if she opened the door? His repute was great for ferocity towards doubtful characters, but he was credited with discrimination. Was this invariable? She preferred to take down his chain from its hook by the window, and to use it to hold him by.

"What is it? Who are you?" She had opened the door without reserve, feeling sure that the dog would be excited by a gap. As it was he growled intolerantly, and had to be reproved.

"You'll excuse me--I was inquiring.... Is your dog safe? I ain't fond of dogs, and they ain't fond of me." He was a man with a side-lurch, and an ungracious manner.

"The dog is safe--unless I let him go." Gwen was not sorry to have a strong ally in a leash, at will. "You were inquiring--you said?"

"Concerning of an old lady by the name of Prichard. The address given was Strides Cottage, and I see this little domicile here goes by that name. Next we come to the old lady of the name of Prichard. Can you do her, or anything near about?"

"Yes--Mrs. Prichard is here, but you can't see her now. What do you want with Mrs. Prichard? Who are you?"

The man kept looking uneasily up and down the road. "I'm a bad hand at talking, mostly. Standing about don't suit me--not for conversation. If you was to happen to have such a thing as a chair inside, and you was to make the offer, I might see about telling you what I want of old Goody Prichard."

Gwen looked at him and recognised him. She would have done so at once had his clothes been the same as when she saw him before, in the doorway at Sapps Court. He was that man, of course! Only with this difference, that while on that occasion his get-up was nearest that of a horse-keeper, his present one was a carter's. He might have been taken for one, if you had not seen his face. Gwen said to him:--"You can pass the dog. Don't do anything to irritate him." He entered and sat down.

"Where have you got the old woman?" said he.

"First tell me what you want with her."

"To introduce myself to her. I wrote her a letter nigh a fortnight since. What did I say to her in that letter? Told her I was looking forward to re-newing her acquaintance. You tell the old lady that, from me. You might go so far as to say it's Ralph, back again." An idea seemed to intensify his gaze of admiration, or rather avidity, narrowing it to her face. "This ain't my first sight of you, allowance made for toggery."

Gwen merely lifted her eyebrows. But seeing his offensive eyes waiting, she conceded:--"Possibly not," and remained silent.

He chose to interpret this as invitation to continue, although it was barely permission. "I set eyes on you first, as I was coming out of a door. You were coming in at that door. You looked at me to recollect me, for I saw you take notice. Ah!--you've no call to blaze at me on that account. You may just as well come down off of the high ropes."

For Gwen's face had shown what she thought of him, as he sat there, half wincing before her, half defiant. She was not in the habit of concealing her thoughts. "I see you are a reptile," said she explicitly. And then, not noticing his snigger of satisfaction at having, as it were, drawn her:--"What were you doing at Mr. Wardle's?"

"Ah--what was I a-doing at Moses Wardle's? I suppose you know what he was? Or maybe you don't?"

"What was he?"

The convict's ugly grin, going to the twisted side of his face, made it monstrous. "Mayhap you don't know what they call a scrapper?" said he.

"I don't. What did he scrap?" She felt that Uncle Mo did it honourably, whatever it was.

"He was one of the crack heavyweights, in my time."

"I know what that means. I should recommend you not to show yourself at his house, unless...."

The man sniggered again. "Don't you lie awake about me," said he. "Old Mo had seen his fighting-days when I had the honour of meeting him five-and-twenty years ago at The Tun, which is out of your line, I take it. Besides, my best friend's in my pocket, ready at a pinch. Shall I show him to you?" He showed a knife with a black horn handle. "I don't open him, not to alarm a lady. So you've no call for hysterics."

"I am not afraid of you or your knife, if that is what you mean." Indeed, absolute fearlessness was one of Gwen's characteristics. "What did you go to Mr. Wardle's for?"

"On a visit to my wife."

Gwen started. "Who is your wife?" said she. Susan Burr flashed into her mind first. But then, how about "Aunt Maria" on the envelope, and her readiness to act as this man's agent?

"Polly Daverill's my wife--my lawful wife! That's more than my father could say of my mother."

"I know that you are lying, but I do not care why. Do you want to see your mother?"

"If sootable and convenient. No great hurry!"

"She is in bed. I will get her ready for you to see her. Do not go near the dog. They say he has killed a man."

"A man'll kill him if he gives occasion. Make him fast, for his own sake. There's money there--he's a tike o' some value. Maybe forty pound. You tie him up!" Gwen hooked his chain round the table-leg, starting him on a series of growls--low thunder in short lengths. He had been very quiet.

She passed into the bedroom, and opening the shutters, threw light full on the bed. Then she drew back the sheet she had replaced. Oh, the beauty of that white marble face, and the stillness!

"You can come in, quietly."

"Is she having a snooze?"

"You will not wake her."

"This is one of your games." The sort was defined by an adjective, omitted. "What's your game? What the Hell are you at?" He said this as to himself.

"Go in. You will find your mother." Gwen took back the dog's chain from the table-leg, and the low thunder died down.

She hardly analysed her own motives. One may have been to touch the heart of the brute, if he had one; another to convince him, without a long parley, of his mother's death. He might have disputed it, and in any case she could not have refused him the sight of his own mother's body.

She could not have restrained that dog had he acted on his obvious impulse to strangle, rapidly and thoroughly, this vermin intruder. But he was an orderly and law-abiding dog, who would not have strangled a rat without permission.

Gwen did not catch the convict's exclamation at sight of his mother, beyond the "What the...!" that began it. Then he was silent. She saw him go nearer without fear of ill-demeanour on his part, and touch the cold white hand, not roughly or without a sort of respect. As well, perhaps, for him; for Gwen was quite capable of loosing that dog on him, under sufficient provocation. She thought he seemed to examine the fingers of the left hand. Then he came back, and they returned to the front-room. She was the first to speak.

"Are you satisfied?"

"I couldn't have sworn to her myself, not from her face, but I made sure." Probably he had looked for the cut finger, his own handiwork of thirty-odd years ago. He said abruptly, after a moment's pause:--"I don't see nothing to gain by hanging about here."

"Nothing whatever."

He said not a word more, his only sign of emotion or excitement having been his exclamation at first sight of the corpse. He walked away towards the village, and had just reached the point where the road turns out of sight, when Gwen, watching his slow one-sided footsteps, saw him turn and come quickly back. She went back into the Cottage and closed the door, resolved not to admit him a second time.

But he passed by, going away by the road towards Denby's and the Towers, never even glancing at the Cottage. He was scarcely out of sight when a tax-cart with two men in it came quickly from the village and stopped.

"You will excuse me, madam. I am Police-Inspector Thompson, from Grantley Thorpe. A man whom I am looking for has been traced here...." The speaker had alighted.

"A man with a limp? He came here and went away. He has only just gone."

"Which way?"

"He went away in that direction...."

"What I said!" struck in the second man on the driver's seat. "He's for getting back to the Railway. He'll cut across by Moreton Spinney. Jump up, Joe!"

Gwen could easily have added that he had come back, and was going the other way. But her promise to old Mrs. Picture, lying there dead, kept her silent. If the officers chose to jump to a false conclusion, let them! She had misled them by a literal truth. She would much rather have told a lie, honourably. But she could not remedy that now, without risk.

Another trot sounded from the opposite direction. It was Farmer Costrell's cart, and Ruth was in it, driven by her son-in-law. She was bringing some evergreens to place upon the body. Too anxious to remain in ignorance about her daughter, she had walked over to Denby's while it was still almost dark, and had found a new granddaughter and its mother, both doing well.

"And ne'er a soul would I have seen either way," said she, "if it had not been for a tramp a few steps down the road, who set me thinking it was as well I was not alone, by the looks of him. Yes--thank your ladyship--I got some sleep, till after five o'clock. Then I could not be easy till I knew about my child. But all has gone well, God be thanked!"

It was the only time she ever saw that brother, and she never knew it was he.

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