THE MILL OF SILENCE

A PRIZE STORY

In The Chicago Record’s series of “Stories of Mystery.”

THE MILL OF SILENCE

BY
B. E. J. CAPES, Author of “The Uttermost Farthing,” “The Haunted Tower,” etc.

(This story—out of 816 competing—was awarded the second prize in The Chicago Record’s “$30,000 to Authors” competition.)

Copyright, 1896, by B. E. J. Capes.

I. THE INMATES OF THE MILL.

II. A NIXIE.

III. THE MILL AND THE CHANGELING.

IV. ZYP BEWITCHES.

V. A TERRIBLE INTERVIEW.

VI. THE NIGHT BEFORE.

VII. THE POOL OF DEATH.

VIII. THE WAKING.

IX. THE FACE ON THE PILLOW.

X. JASON SPEAKS.

XI. CONVICT, BUT NOT SENTENCED.

XII. THE DENUNCIATION.

XIII. MY FRIEND THE CRIPPLE.

XIV. I OBTAIN EMPLOYMENT.

XV. SWEET, POOR DOLLY.

XVI. A FATEFUL ACCIDENT.

XVII. A TOUCHING REVELATION.

XVIII. A VOICE FROM THE CROWD.

XIX. A MENACE.

XX. DUKE SPEAKS.

XXI. THE CALM BEFORE.

XXII. THE SHADOW OF THE STORM.

XXIII. A LETTER AND AN ANSWER.

XXIV. LOST.

XXV. A LAST MESSAGE.

XXVI. FROM THE DEPTHS.

XXVII. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.

XXVIII. THE TABLES TURNED.

XXIX. A SUDDEN DETERMINATION.

XXX. I GO HOME.

XXXI. ONE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.

XXXII. OLD PEGGY.

XXXIII. FACE TO FACE.

XXXIV. I VISIT A GRAVE.

XXXV. ONE SAD VISITOR.

XXXVI. I GO TO LONDON.

XXXVII. A FACE.

XXXVIII. A NIGHT PURSUIT.

XXXIX. A STRANGE VIGIL.

XL. A STORY AND ITS SEQUEL.

XLI. ACROSS THE WATER.

XLII. JASON’S SECOND VISIT.

XLIII. ANOTHER RESPITE.

XLIV. THE SECRET OF THE WHEEL.

XLV. I MAKE A DESCENT.

XLVI. CAUGHT.

XLVII. SOME ONE COMES AND GOES.

XLVIII. A FRUITLESS SEARCH.

XLIX. A QUIET WARNING.

L. STRICKEN DOWN.

LI. A MEETING ON THE BRIDGE.

LII. A WRITTEN WORD.

LIII. AN ATTEMPT AND A FAILURE.

LIV. A LAST CONFESSION.

LV. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST.

LVI. ALONE.

LVII. A PROMISE.

LVIII. THE “SPECTER HOUND.”

LIX. INTO THE DEPTHS.

LX. WHO KILLED MODRED?

Yesterday came a knock at the door—a faint, tentative knock as from childish knuckles—and I went to see who it was. A queer little figure stood outside in the twilight—a dainty compendium of skirt and cape and frothy white frills—and a small elfish face looked up into mine through shimmering of hair, like love in a mist.

“If you please,” she said, “Zyp’s dead and will you take care of poor Zyp’s child?”

Then at that moment the hard agony of my life broke its walls in a blessed convulsion of weeping, and I caught the little wanderer to my heart and carried her within doors.

“And so poor Zyp is dead?” said I.

“Yes,” answered the elfin; “and, please, will you give me back to her some day?”

“Before God’s throne,” I whispered, “I will deliver up my trust; and that in such wise that from His mercy some little of the light of love may, perhaps, shine upon me also.”

That night I put my signature to the last page of the narrative here unfolded.

My story begins like a fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a miller who had three sons. Here, however, the resemblance ceases. At this late date I, the last stricken inmate of the Mill of Silence, set it down for a warning and a menace; not entirely in despair, perhaps, but with a fitful flickering of hope that at the last moment my soul may be rent from me into a light it has never yet foreseen.

We were three brothers, sons of a gray, old man, whose father, and his father before him, had owned and run a flour mill in the ancient city of Winton in Hampshire. This mill stood a little back from the north side of the east and more deserted end of the High street, and faced a little bridge—wooden in those days, but stone now—through which raced the first of the mill fall that came thundering out from under the old timber building, as though it had burst at a push some ancient dam and were hurrying off to make up for lost ages of restraint. The house, a broad single red-tiled gable, as seen from the bridge, stood crushed in between other buildings, and in all my memory of it was a crazy affair in appearance and ever in two minds about slipping into the boisterous water below and so flushing all that quarter of the town with an overflow, as it were, of its own ancient dropsy. It was built right across the stream, with the mill wheel buried in its heart; and I can recall a certain childish speculation as to the results which would follow a possible relaxing of the house pressure on either side; in which case I hopefully assumed the wheel would slip out of its socket, and, carrying the frail bridge before it, roll cheerfully down stream on its own axle to the huge delight of all adventurous spirits.

Our reputation in Winton was not, I am sorry to say, good. There was a whispered legend of uncanniness about the mill itself, which might mean little or nothing, and a notoriety with regard to its inmates which did mean a good deal. The truth is, not to mince matters, that my father was a terrible drunkard, and that his three sons—not the eldest of whom retained more than a shadowy remembrance of a long-departed mother’s influence—were from early years fostered in an atmosphere that reeked with that one form of moral depravity. A quite youthful recollection of mine is the sight of my father, thin, bent, gray bearded, and with a fierce, not uncomely face, jerking himself to sudden stoppages at points in the High street to apostrophize with menacing fury the devils born of his disease.

To the world about us my father was nothing but a worthless inebriate, who had early abandoned himself to profligate courses, content to live upon the little fortune left him by his predecessors and to leave his children to run to seed as they listed in the stagnant atmosphere of vice. What the world did not know was the secret side of my father’s character—the wild, fierce imagination of the man; the creative spirit of his healthier moods and the passionate reverence of beauty which was as habitual to him as the craze for strong waters.

He exercised a despotic influence over us, and we subscribed admiringly to his rule with the snarling submissiveness of young tiger cubs. I think the fragmentary divinity that nests in odd, neglected corners of each and every frame of life, took some recognition of a higher type from which it had inherited. Mentally, at his best, my father was as much above us as, by some cantrip of fate, he was superior to the sullen, plodding stock of which he was born.

Three days out of the week he was drunk; vision-haunted, almost unapproachable; and this had been so from time that was immemorial to us. The period of compulsory education had not yet agitated the community at large, and our intellects he permitted to run to grass with our bodies. On our pursuits, pastoral, urban, and always mischievous if occasion offered, he put no restraint whatever, yet encouraged a sort of half-savage clannishness among us that held the mill for fortress and the world for besiegers.

Perhaps it was not until I was rising 18 that any speculation as to the raison d’être of our manner of life began to stir in my brain. My eldest brother, Jason, was then a tall, handsome fellow of 19, with a crisp devil in his corn-colored hair and a silent one in his eyes, that were shot with changing blue. Modred, the youngest, some eighteen months my junior, was a contrast to Jason in every way. He was a heavy, pasty boy, with an aggravating droop in his lids and a large unspeculative face. He was entirely self-contained, armored against satire and unmoved of the spirit of tears. A sounding smack on the cheek, delivered in the one-sided heat of argument, brought his face, like a stolid phantasm, projected toward the striker’s in a wooden impassivity that was infinitely more maddening than abuse. It showed no more resentment than a battered Aunt Sally’s, but rather assumed a mockery of curiosity as to the bullying methods of the strong against the weak. Speaking of him, I have no object but to present a portrait, unprejudiced alike of regard or disfavor. This, I entreat, may be borne in mind.

One afternoon, in late April weather, Jason and I were loitering and idling about some meadows within rifle shot of the old city outskirts. We lay upon our faces in the long grass beside a clear, shallow burn, intent upon sport less lawful than exciting. The country about Winton is laced with innumerable streams and freshets and therein without exception are trout in great quantity, though mostly shy to come at from the little depth and extreme transparency of the water. That the fishing is everywhere “preserved” goes without saying, and it follows in order that poaching is pretty general.

We were poaching, in truth, and extremely enjoying it as usual. Jason held in his hand a willow wand, fitted with a line, which was baited with a brandling fat from the manure heap. This it was essential to swing gently, ourselves crouching hidden as far as possible, into the liveliest streaks of the current where it ran cleanly over pebbles, and to let it swim naturally downstream the length of the rod’s tether. Occasionally, if not so often as one could wish, the plump bait would lure some youngling, imperfect in guile, from security of the stones and a sudden jerking of the tough willow would communicate a galvanic thrill of excitement to our every fiber. The experience did not stale by a too-frequent repetition, and was scarcely marred in our eyes by the ever-present necessity of keeping a vigilant lookout for baleful intruders on our privacy. Our worst foe, in this respect, was a great bosom of chalk and turf, known as St. Catherine’s hill, which rose directly in front of us some short distance on the further side of the stream, and from which it was easy for any casual enemy to detect our every movement. However, as fortune would have it, the hill was but comparatively little favored of the townsfolk.

“Ware!” said I, suddenly.

Jason drew his line swiftly and horizontally from the water and dropped it and the rod deftly under the fringe of the bank.

We turned on our backs, lazily blinking at the sky.

A figure was sauntering along by the side of the little river toward us. It was that of an ill-dressed man of 45 or so, ball-jointed and cadaverous, with a wet, wandering blue eye and light brick-colored hair brushed back into rat-tails. His mouth was one pencil mark twitched up at the corners, and his ears, large and shapeless, stood up prominently like a bat’s. He carried his hands behind his back and rolled his head from side to side as he walked. He espied us a long way off and stopped presently, looking down upon us.

“Sinews of whipcord,” he said, in a voice thin as his lips, “and hearts of cats! What tomfoolery now?”

My brother raised his head, yawning lazily.

“Tom Fool hisself,” said he.

“I am not,” said the newcomer, “near such a fool as I look. I can tell the likeliest place for tickling trouts, now, anywhere.”

Jason grunted.

“And that’s the Itchen,” went on the other with an enjoying chuckle.

We vouchsafed him a patronizing laughter.

“Too good,” he said; “too good for lob worms and sand-hoppers. Where’s the best place to find trouts, now—the little speckled trouts?”

“Where?” said I.

“Caught!” he cried, and pounced upon Jason.

There was a short, bitter struggle between them, and the man, leaving the boy sitting panting on the grass, leaped apart with a speckled trophy held aloft in his hand.

“Give it back!” cried my brother, rising, white and furious, “or I’ll brain you!” He seized up a great lump of chalk as he spoke and balanced it in his hand.

“Softly,” said the other, very coolly slipping the trout into the wide pocket of his coat. Jason watched him with glittering eyes.

“Give it back to him, Dr. Crackenthorpe,” I cried, “or he’ll do you a hurt!”

In one moment the doctor dropped on his knees at the instant that the missile spun over him and splashed among the marigolds far in the meadow beyond; in the next Jason was down on his back again, with the tall man’s knuckles at his throat and his bony knee planted on his chest.

“Puppy of Satan!” he hissed in grim fury. “D’ye dare to pursue me with murderous hate!”

Tooth and nail I fell upon the victor like a wild cat and tore at him. His strength was marvelous. Holding my brother down with his left hand, he swung his right behind his back, clutched me over, and rolled us both together in a struggling heap.

“Now,” said he, jumping to his feet and daring us, “move a muscle to rise and I’ll hold your mouths under water for the frogs to dive in.”

It was the only sort of argument that appealed to us—the argument of resourceful strength that could strike and baffle at once.

When he had recovered his breath sufficiently to laugh, Jason tittered. From the first the fateful charm of my brother was the pleasant music of his voice and the pliant adaptability of his moods.

“Keep the fish, doctor,” he said; “we give in.” He always answered for both of us.

“Well,” said Dr. Crackenthorpe, “that’s wise.” He stepped back as he spoke to signify that we might get on our feet, which we did.

“I keep the trout,” he said, grandly, “in evidence, and shall cast over in my mind the pros and cons of my duty to the authorities in the matter.”

At this, despite our discomfiture, we laughed like young hyenas. The trout, we knew, was destined for the doctor’s own table. He was a notorious skinflint, to whom sixpence saved from the cooking pot was a coin redoubled of its face value.

He made as if to continue his way, but paused again, and shot a question at Jason.

“Dad had any more finds?”

“No,” said Jason, “and if he had you wouldn’t get ’em.”

Dr. Crackenthorpe looked at the boy a minute, shrugged his shoulders and moved off.

And here, at this point, his question calls for some explanation.

One day, some twelve months or so earlier than the incident just described, we of the mill being all collected together for dinner and my father just coming out of one of his drunken fits, a coin tinkled on the floor and rolled into the empty fireplace, where it lay shining yellow. My father, who had somehow jerked it out of his pocket from the trembling of his hand, walked unsteadily across the room and stood looking down upon it vacantly. There he remained for a minute or two, we watching him, and from time to time shot a stealthy glance round at one or other of us. Twice or thrice he made as if to pick it up, but his heart apparently failed him, for he desisted. Suddenly, however, he had it in his hand and stood fingering it, still watchful of us.

“Well,” he said at last, “there it is for all the world to see,” and placed it on the mantelpiece. Then he turned round to us expectant.

“That coin,” he said, slowly, “was given me by a man who dug it up in his garden hereabouts when he was forking potatoes. It’s ancient and a curiosity. There it remains for ornament.”

Now whether this was only some caprice of the moment or that he dreaded that had he then and there pouched it some boyish spirit of curiosity might tempt one or other of us to turn out his pockets in search of the treasure when he was in one of his liquorish trances, and so make further discoveries, we could never know. Anyhow, on the mantelpiece the coin lay for some weeks; a contemptible little disk to view, with an odd figure of an ill-formed mannikin stamped on one side of it, and no one of us offered to touch it, until one day Dr. Crackenthorpe paid us a visit.

This worthy had only recently come to Winton, tempted hither, I think, more by lure of antiquities than by any set determination to establish a practice in the town. Indeed, in the result, as I have heard, his fees for any given year would never have quarter filled a wineglass unless paid in pence. He had a small private income and two weaknesses—one a craze for coin collecting, the other a feverish palate, which brought him acquainted with my father, in this wise—that he encountered the old man one night when the latter was complacently swerving into the Itchen at a point known as “The Weirs,” where the water is deep, and conducted him graciously home. The next day he called, and, it becoming apparent that fees were not his object, a rough, queer acquaintance was struck up between the two men, which brought the doctor occasionally to our mill at night for a pipe and a glass. He was the only outsider ever admitted to our slightest intimacy, with the single exception of a baneful old woman, known as Peg Rottengoose, who came in every day to do the cooking and housework and to steal what scraps she could.

Now, on one of these visits, the doctor’s eye was casually caught by the glint of the coin on the mantelpiece. He clawed it at once, and as he examined it the man’s long, gaunt face lighted from inward with enthusiasm.

“Where did you get this?” he cried, his hands shaking with excitement.

“A neighbor dug it up in his garden and gave it me. Let it be, can’t you?” said my father, roughly.

“Pooh, man! Such things are not given without reason. What was the reason? Stay—tell me the name of the man.”

I thought my father paled a little and shifted uneasily in his chair.

“I tell you,” he said, hoarsely, “he gave it me.”

“And I don’t believe it,” cried the other. “You found it yourself, and where this came from more may be.”

My father sprung to his feet.

“Get out of my house!” he shouted, “and take your ‘may be’s’ to the foul fiend!”

Dr. Crackenthorpe placed his pipe and the coin very gently on the table and walked stiffly to the door. He had almost reached it when my father’s voice, quite changed and soft, stopped him.

“Don’t take offense, man. Come and talk it over.”

Dr. Crackenthorpe retraced his steps, resumed his chair, and sat staring stonily at my father.

“It’s true,” said the latter, dropping his eyes, “every word. It’s true, sir, I tell you.”

The doctor never spoke, and my father stole an anxious glance up at him.

“Well,” he said, with an effort; “anyhow, it’s a small matter to separate cronies. I don’t know the value of these gimcracks, but as you take pleasure in collecting ’em, I’ll—I’ll—come now, I’ll make you a present of it.”

The doctor became human once more, and for a second time clutched the coin radiantly. My father heaved a profound sigh, but he never moved.

“Well,” he said, “now you’ve got it, perhaps you’ll state the particular value of that old piece of metal.”

“It’s a gold Doric!” cried the doctor; “as rare a——” he checked himself suddenly and went on with a ludicrous affectation of indifference—“rare enough just to make it interesting. No intrinsic value—none whatever.”

A little wicked smile twitched up my father’s bearded cheeks. Each man sat forward for some minutes pulling at his pipe; but it was evident the effort of social commonplace was too much for Dr. Crackenthorpe. Presently he rose and said he must be going. He was obviously on thorns until he could secure his treasure in a safe place. For a quarter of an hour after the door had closed behind him, my father sat on gloomily smoking and muttering to himself. Then suddenly he woke to consciousness of our presence and ordered us, savagely, almost madly, off to bed.

This explains the doctor’s question of Jason and is a necessary digression. Now to the meadows once more and a little experience that befell there after the intruder’s departure.

My brother tired of his fishing for the nonce, and for an hour we lay on our backs in the grass chatting desultorily.

“Jason,” said I, suddenly, “what do we live on?”

“What we can get,” said my brother, sleepily.

“But I mean—where does it come from; who provides it?”

“Oh, don’t bother, Renny. We have enough to eat and drink and do as we like. What more do you want?”

“I don’t know. I want to know, that’s all. I can’t tell why. Where does the money come from?”

“Tom Tiddler. He was our grandfather.”

“Don’t be a fool. Dad never worked the mill that we remember.”

“But Tom Tiddler did before him.”

“Not to the tune that would keep four loafers in idleness for sixteen years.”

“Well, I don’t care. Perhaps dad’s a highwayman.”

I kicked at the grass impatiently.

“It must end some day, you know.”

Jason tilted his cap from his eyes and blinked at me.

“What d’ye mean, piggy?”

“Suppose dad died or went mad?”

“We’d sell the mill and have a rare time of it.”

“Oh, you great clown! Sell it for what? Driftwood? And how long would the rare time last?”

“You’re mighty particular to-day. I hate answering questions. Let me alone.”

“I won’t,” I said, viciously. “I want your opinion.”

“Well, it’s that you’re a precious fool!”

“What for?”

“To bother your head with what you can’t answer, when the sun’s shining.”

“I can’t help bothering my head,” I said. “I’ve been bothering it, I think, ever since dad gave old Crackenthorpe that medal last year.”

Jason sat up.

“So you noticed it, too,” he said. “Renny, there’s depths in the old man that we sha’n’t plumb.”

“Well, I’ve taken to thinking of things a bit,” said I.

Jason—so named, at any period (I never saw a register of the christening of any one of us) because of his golden fleece, shook it and set to whistling softly.

His name—Modred’s, too—mine was Renalt, and more local—were evidence of my father’s superior culture as compared with most of his class. They were odd, if you like, but having a little knowledge and fancifulness to back them, gave proof of a certain sum of desultory reading on his part; the spirit of which was transmitted to his children.

I was throwing myself back with a dissatisfied grunt, when of a sudden a shrill screech came toward us from a point apparently on the river path fifty yards lower down. We jumped to our feet and raced headlong in the direction of the sound. Nothing was to be seen. It was not until the cry was repeated, almost from under our very feet, that we realized the reason of it.

All about Winton the banks of the main streams are pierced at intervals to admit runlets of clear water into the meadows below. Such a boring there was of a goodish caliber at the point where we stopped; and here the water, breaking through in a little fall, tumbled into a stone basin, some three feet square and five deep, that was sunk to its rim in a rough trench of the meadow soil. Into this brimming trough a young girl had slipped and would drown in time, for, though she clung on to the edge with frantic hands, her efforts to escape had evidently exhausted her to such an extent that she could now do no more than look up to us, as we stood on the bank above, with wild, beseeching eyes.

I was going to jump to her help, when Jason stayed me with his hand.

“Hist, Renny!” he whispered. “I’ve never seen a body drown.”

“Nor shall,” said I, hoping he jested.

“Let me shove her hands off,” he said, in the same wondering tone. One moment, with a shock, I saw the horrible meaning in his face; the next, with a quick movement I had flung him down and jumped. He rose at once with a slight cut on his lips, but before he could recover himself I had the girl out by the hands and had stretched her limp and prostrate on the grass. Then I paused, embarrassed, and he stood above looking down upon us.

“You’ll have to pay for that, Renny,” he said, “sooner or later”—and, of course, I knew I should.

“Turn the creature on her face, you dolt!” he continued, “and let the water run out of her pipes.”

I endeavored to comply, but the girl, always keeping her eyes shut, resisted feebly. I dropped upon my knees and smoothed away the sodden tresses from her face. Thus revealed it seemed an oddly pretty one; the skin half transparent, like rice paper; the forehead rounding from the nose like a kitten’s. But she never opened her eyes, so that I could not see what was their color, though the lashes were black.

Presently a horror seized me that she was dead, and I shook her pretty roughly by the shoulder.

“Oh,” she cried, with a whimper, “don’t!”

I was so rejoiced at this evidence of life that I gave a whoop. Then I bent over her.

“It’s all right, girl,” I said; “you’re safe; I saved you.”

Her lips were moving again and I stopped to listen. “What did he want to drown me for?” she whispered.

She was thinking of my brother, not of me. For a flash her eyes opened, violet, like lightning, and glanced up at him standing above; then they closed again.

“Come,” I said, roughly; “if you can talk, you can get up.”

The girl struggled into a sitting posture and then rose to her feet. She was tall, almost as tall as I was, and about my age, I should think. Her dress, so far as one could judge, it being sopped with water, was a poor patched affair, and rough country shoes were on her feet.

“Take me somewhere, where I can dry,” she said, imperiously. “Don’t let him come—he needn’t follow.”

“He’s my brother,” I said.

“I don’t care. He wanted to drown me; he didn’t know I can’t die by water.”

“Can’t you?” I said.

“Of course not. I’m a changeling!”

She said it with a childish seriousness that confounded me.

“What made you one?” I asked.

“The fairies,” she said, “and that’s why I’m here.”

I was too bewildered to pursue the subject further.

“How did you fall in there?” I asked.

“I saw some little fish, like klinkents of rainbow, and wanted to catch them; then I slipped and soused.”

“Well,” I said, “where are you going now?”

“With you,” she answered.

I offered no resistance. I gave no thought to results, or to what my father would say when this grotesque young figure should break into his presence. Mechanically I started for home and she walked by my side, chatting. Jason strode in our rear, whistling.

“What a brute he must be!” she said once, jerking her head backward.

“Leave him alone,” I said, “or we shall quarrel. What’s a girl like you to him?”

I think she hardly heard me, for the whistle had dropped to a very mellow note. To my surprise I noticed that she was crying.

“I thought changelings couldn’t cry?” I said.

“I tell you water does not affect me,” she answered, sharply. “What a mean spy you are—for a boy.”

I was very angry at that and strode on with black looks, whereupon she edged up to me and said, softly: “Don’t be sore with me, don’t.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Let’s kiss and be friends,” she whispered.

For the first time in my life I blushed furiously.

“You beast,” I said, “to think that men would kiss!”

She gave me a sounding smack on the shoulder and I turned on her furiously.

“Oh, yes!” she cried, “hit out at me, do! It’s like you.”

“I won’t touch you!” I said. “But I won’t have anything more to do with you,” and I strode on, fuming. She followed after me and presently I heard her crying again. At this my anger evaporated and I turned round once more.

“Come on,” I said, “if you want to, and keep a civil tongue in your head.”

Presently we were walking together again.

“What’s your home, Renny?” she asked, by and by.

“A mill,” I answered, “but nothing is ground there now.”

She stopped and so did I, and she looked at me curiously, with her red lips parted, so that her teeth twinkled.

“What’s the matter?” said I.

“Nothing,” she said, “only I remember an old, old saying that the woman told me.”

“What woman?” I asked, in wonder, but she took no notice of my question, only repeated some queer doggerel that ran somewhat as follows:

The outer appearance of the old mill in which we lived and grew up I have touched upon; and now I take up my pen to paint in black and white the old, moldering interior of the shell.

The building stood upon a triple arch of red brick that spanned the stream, and extended from shore to shore, where, on each side, a house of later date stood cheek to jowl with it. It looked but an indifferent affair as viewed from the little bridge aforesaid, which was dedicated to St. Swithun of watery memory, but in reality extended further backward than one might have suspected. Moreover, to the east side a longish wing, with a ridged roof of tiles, ran off at right angles and added considerably to the general dimensions. To the west stood a covered yard, where once the mill wagons were packed or unloaded; but this, in all my memory of it, yawned only a dusty spave, given over to the echoes and a couple of ancient cart wheels whose rusty tires and worm-pierced hubs were mute evidence of an inglorious decay.

These were for all to see—but behind the walls!

Was the old mill uncanny from the first, or is it only the ghosts with which our generation of passions has peopled it that have made it so? This I can say: That I never remember a time when Jason or I, or even Zyp, dared to be in the room of silence alone—and in company never for more than a few minutes. Modred had not the same awe of it, but Modred’s imagination was a swaddled infant. For my father I will not speak. Maybe he was too accustomed to specters to dread them.

This room was one on the floor above the water, and the fact that it harbored the mill wheel, whose booming, when in motion, shook the stagnant air with discordant sounds, may have served as some explanation of its eeriness. It stood against the east wing and away from the yard, and was a dismal, dull place, like a loft, with black beams above going off into darkness. Its only light came from a square little window in front that was bleared with dust and stopped outside with a lacework of wire. Against its western wall was reared a huge box or cage of wood, which was made to contain the upper half of the wheel, with its ratchet and shaft that went up to the great stones on the floor above; for the mill race thundered below, and when the great paddles were revolving the water slapped and rent at the woodwork.

Now it behooves me to mention a strange fancy of my father’s—which was this, that though no grain or husk in our day ever crumbled between the stones, the wheel was forever kept in motion, as if our fortunes lay in grinding against impalpable time. The custom was in itself ghostly, and its regularity was interrupted only at odd moments, and those generally in the night, when, lying abed upstairs, we boys would become conscious of a temporary cessation of the humming, vibrating noise that was so habitual to the place. To this fancy was added a strange solicitude on the part of my father for the well-being of the wheel itself. He would disappear into the room of silence twice or thrice a day to oil and examine it, and if rarely any tinkering was called for we knew it by the sound of the closing of the sluice and of the water rush swerving round by another channel.

Now, for the time I have said enough, and with a sigh return to that May afternoon and little Zyp, the changeling.

She followed me into the mill so quietly that I hardly heard her step behind me. When I looked back her eyes were full of a strange speculation and her hands crossed on her breast, as if she prayed. She motioned me forward and I obeyed, marveling at my own submission. I had no slightest idea what I was to say to my father or what propose. We found him seated by the table in the living room upstairs, a bottle and glass before him. The weekly demon was beginning to work, but had not yet obtained the mastery. He stared at us as we entered, but said nothing.

Then, to my wonder, Zyp walked straight up to the old man, pulled his arms down, sat upon his knee and kissed his rutted cheek. I gave a gasp that was echoed by Jason, who had followed and was leaning against the lintel of the open door. Still my father said nothing and I trembled at the ominous silence. At last in desperation I stammered, and all the time Zyp was caressing the passive face.

“Dad, the girl fell into the water and I pulled her out, and here she is.”

Then at length my father said in a harsh, deep voice:

“You pulled her out? What was Jason there doing?”

“Waiting for her to drown,” my brother answered for himself, defiantly forestalling conviction.

My father put the girl from him, strode furiously across the room, seized Jason by one arm and gave him several cruel, heavy blows across his shoulders and the back of his head. The boy was half stunned, but uttered no cry, and at every stroke Zyp laughed and clapped her hands. Then, flinging his victim to the floor, from which he immediately rose again and resumed his former posture by the door, pale but unsubdued, my father returned to his seat and held the girl at arm’s length before him.

“Who are you?” he said.

She answered, “A changeling,” in a voice soft as flowers.

“What’s your name?”

“Zyp.”

“Your other name?”

“Never mind; Zyp’s enough.”

“Is it? Where do you come from? What brings you here?”

“Renny brought me here because I love him.”

“Love him? Have you ever met before?”

“No; but he pulled me out of the water.”

“Come—this won’t do. I must know more about you.”

She laughed and put out her hand coaxingly.

“Shall I tell you? A little, perhaps. I am from a big forest out west there, where wheels drone like hornets among the trees and black men rise out of the ground. I have no father or mother, for I come of the fairies. Those who stood for them married late and had a baby and they delayed to christen it. One day the baby was gone and I was there. They knew me for a changeling from the first and didn’t love me. But I lived with them for all that and they got to hate me more and more. Not a cow died or a gammer was wryed wi’ the rheumatics but I had done it. Bit by bit the old man lost all his trade and loved me none the more, I can tell you. He was a Beast Leech, and where was the use of the forest folk sending for him to mend their sick kine when he kept a changeling to undo it all? At last they could stand no more of it and the woman brought me away and lost me.”

“Lost you?” echoed my father.

“Oh,” said Zyp, with a little cluck, “I knew all along how the tramp was to end. There was an old one, a woman, lived in the forest, and she told me a deal of things. She knew me better than them all, and I loved her because she was evil, so they said. She told me some rhymes and plenty of other things.”

“Well?” said my father.

“We walked east by the sun for days and days. Then we came to the top of a big, soft hill, where little beetles were hopping among the grass, and below us was a great town like stones in a green old quarry, and the woman said: ‘Run down and ask the name of it while I rest here.’ And I ran with the wind in my face and was joyful, for I knew that she would escape when I was gone, and I should never see her again.”

“And then you tumbled into the water?” said my father.

Zyp nodded.

“And now,” she said, “I belong to nobody, and will you have me?”

My father shook his head, and in a moment sobs most piteous were shaking the girl’s throat. So forlorn and pretty a sight I have never seen before or since.

“Well,” he said, “if nobody comes to claim you, you may stop.”

And stop Zyp did. Surely was never an odder coming, yet from that day she was one of us.

What was truthful and what imaginative in her story I have never known, for from first to last this was the most we heard of it.

One thing was certain. Zyp was by nature a child of the open air and the sun. Flowers that were wild she loved—not those that were cultivated, however beautiful, of which she was indifferent—and she had an unspeakable imagination in reading their fanciful histories and a strange faculty for fondling them, as it were, into sentient beings. I can hardly claim belief when I say that I have seen a rough nettle fade when she scolded it for stinging her finger, or a little yellow rock rose turn from the sun to her when she talked to it.

Zyp never plucked a flower, or allowed us to do so if she could prevent it. I well remember the first walk I took with her after her establishment in the mill, when I was attracted by a rare little blossom, the water chickweed, which sprouted from a grassy trench, and pulled it for her behoof. She beat me savagely with her soft hands, then fell to kissing and weeping over the torn little weed, which actually appeared to revive a moment under her caresses. I had to promise with humility never to gather another wild flower so long as I lived, and I have been faithful to my trust.

The afternoon of her coming old Peg rigged her up some description of sleeping accommodation in a little room in the attic, and this became her sanctuary whenever she wished to escape us and be alone. To my father she was uniformly sweet and coaxing, and he for his part took a strange fancy to her, and abated somewhat of his demoniacal moodiness from the date of her arrival.

Yet it must not be imagined, from this description of her softer side, that Zyp was all tender pliability. On the contrary, in her general relations with us and others as impure human beings, she was the veritable soul of impishness, and played a thousand pranks to prove her title to her parentage.

At first she made a feint of distributing her smiles willfully, by turn, between Modred and me, so that neither of us might claim precedence. But Jason was admitted to no pretense of rivalry; though, to do him justice, he at once took the upper hand by meeting scorn with indifference. In my heart, however, I claimed her as my especial property; a demand justified, I felt no doubt, by her manner toward me, which was marked by a peculiar rebellious tenderness she showed to no other.

The day after her arrival she asked me to take her over the mill and show her everything. I complied when the place was empty of all save us. We explored room by room, with a single exception, the ancient building.

Of course Zyp said: “There’s a room you haven’t shown me, Renny.”

“Yes,” said I; “the room of silence.”

“Why didn’t we go there?”

“Never mind. There’s something wicked in it.”

“What? Do tell me! Oh, I should love to see!”

“There’s nothing to see. Let it alone, can’t you?”

“You’re a coward. I’ll get the sleepy boy to show me.”

“Come along then,” I said, and, seizing her hand, dragged her roughly indoors.

We crossed a dark passage, and, pushing back a heavy door of ancient timber, stood on the threshold of the room of silence. It was not in nature’s meaning that the name was bestowed, for, entering, the full voice of the wheel broke upon one with a grinding fury that shook the moldering boards of the floor.

“Well,” I whispered, “have you seen enough?”

“I see nothing,” she cried, with a shrill, defiant laugh; “I am going in”—and before I could stop her, she had run into the middle of the room and was standing still in the bar of sunlight, with her arms outspread like wings, and her face, the lips apart, lifted with an expression on it of eager inquiry.

What happened? I can find an image only in the poison bottle of the entomologist. As some shining, flower-stained butterfly, slipped into this glass coffin, quivers, droops its wings and fades, as it were, in a moment before its capturer’s eyes, so Zyp faded before mine. Her arms dropped to her sides, her figure seemed as if its whole buoyancy were gone at a touch, her face fell to a waxen color and “Oh, take me away!” she wailed in a thin, strangled voice.

I conquered my terror, rushed to her, and, dragging her stumbling and tripping from the room, banged to the door behind us and made for the little platform once more and the open air.

She revived in a wonderfully short space of time, and, lifting up her head, looked into my eyes with her own wide with dismay.

“It was hideous,” she whispered; “why didn’t you stop me?”

Zyp, it will be seen, was not all elf. She had something in common with her sex.

“I warned you,” I said, “and I know what you felt.”

“It was as if a question was being asked of me,” she said, in a low voice. “And yet no one spoke and there was no question. I don’t know what it wanted or what were the words, for there were none; but I feel as if I shall have to go on thinking of the answer and struggling to find it forever and ever.”

“Yes,” I whispered, in the same tone; “that is what everybody says.”

She begged me not to follow her, and crept away quite humbled and subdued, and we none of us saw more of her that day. But just as she left me she turned and whispered in awe-stricken tone, “Answer what speaks to thee,” and I could not remember when and where I had heard these words before.

In the evening Dr. Crackenthorpe paid us a visit. He found my father out, but elected to sit with us and smoke his pipe expectant of the other’s return.

He always treated us boys as if we were so much dirt, and we respected his strength just sufficiently to try no pranks on him in the absence of the ruling power. But nevertheless we resented his presumption of authority, and whenever he sat with us alone made an exaggerated affectation of being thick in whispered confidences among ourselves.

Zyp was still upstairs and the doctor had not as yet seen her, but he was conscious, I think, in some telepathic way, of an alien presence in the house, for he kept shifting his position uneasily and looking toward the door. A screech from his lips suddenly startled us, and we turned round to see the long man standing bolt upright, with his face gone the color of a meal sack, and his bold eyes staring prominent.

“What’s the matter?” said Jason.

Gradually the doctor’s face assumed a dark look of rage.

“Which of you was it?” he cried in a broken voice; “tell me, or I’ll crack all your fingers up like fire sticks!”

“What’s the matter?” said Jason, again; “you see for yourself we’ve been sitting by the table all the time you’ve been there.”

“Something spoke—somebody, I tell you, as I sat here in the chimney corner!” He was beside himself with fury and had great ado to crush his emotion under. But he succeeded, and sat down again trembling all over.

“A curse is on the house!” he muttered; then aloud: “I’ve had enough of your games, you black vermin! I won’t stand it, d’ye hear? Let there be an end!”

We stared, dropped into our seats and were beginning our confidences once more, when the doctor started up a second time with a loud oath, and leaped into the middle of the room.

“Great thunder!” he shouted; “d’ye dare!”

This time we had all heard it—a wailing whisper that seemed to come from the neighborhood of the chimney and to utter the words: “Beware the demon that sits in the bottle,” and of the whole company only I was not confounded.

As to the doctor, he suddenly turned very white again, and muttered shakingly: “Can it be? I don’t exceed as others do. I swear I have taken less this month than ever before.”

With the terror in his soul he stumbled toward the door and was moving out his hand to reach it, when it opened from the other side and Zyp, as meek and pure looking as a young saint, met him on the threshold.

Now, I had that morning, in the course of conversation with the changeling, touched upon Dr. Crackenthorpe and his weaknesses, and that ghostly mention of the bottle convinced me on the moment that only she could be responsible for the mystery—a revelation of impishness which, I need not say, delighted me. The method of her prank I may as well describe here. The embrasure for a fireplace in her room had never been fitted with a grate, and the hearthstone itself was cracked and dislocated in a dozen places. By removing some of these fragments she had actually discovered a broken way into the chimney of the sitting room below, down which it was easy to slip a hollow rail of iron which with other lumber lay in the attic. This she had done, listened for her opportunity, and thereupon spoken the ominous words.

I think her appearance was the consummation of the doctor’s terror, for a shuddering “Oh!” shook from his lips, and he seemed about to drop. And indeed she was somewhat like a spirit, with her wild white face looking from a tangle of pheasant-brown hair and her solemn eyes like water glints in little wells of shadow.

She walked past the stricken man all stately, and then Modred and I jumped up and greeted her. At this the doctor’s jaw dropped, but his trembling ceased and he watched us with injected eyes. Holding my two hands, Zyp looked coyly round, leaning backward.

“I love a tall man,” she whispered; “he has more in him than a short one.”

The doctor pulled himself together and came straggling across to the table.

“Who the pestilence is this?” he said, in a voice not yet quite under his command.

Zyp let go my hands and curtsied like a wild flower.

“Zyp, the orphan, good gentleman,” she said; “shall I fill your pipe for you?”

It had fallen on the floor by the chimney, and she picked it up and went to him with a winning expression.

“Where is your tobacco, please?”

Mechanically he brought a round tin box from his pocket and handed it to her. Then it was a study in elfin coquetry to see the way in which she daintily coaxed the weed into the bowl and afterward sucking at the pipe stem with her determined little red lips to see if it drew properly. This done, she presented the mouthpiece to the doctor’s consideration, as if it were a baby’s “comforter.”

“Now,” she said, “sit down and I’ll bring you your glass.”

But at this the four of us, including Dr. Crackenthorpe, drew back. My father was no man to allow his pleasures to be encroached upon unbidden, and we three, at least, knew it as much as our skins were worth to offer practical hospitality in his absence.

Zyp looked at our faces and stamped her foot lively, with a toss of disdain.

“Where is the strong drink?” she said.

Modred tittered. “In that cupboard over the mantel shelf, if you must know,” he said.

Zyp had the bottle out in a twinkling and a glass with it. She poured out a stiff rummer, added water from a stone bottle on a corner shelf, and presented the grateful offering to the visitor, who had reseated himself by the table.

His scruples of conscience and discretion grew faint in the near neighborhood of the happy cordial. He seized the glass and impulsively took half the grog at a breath. Zyp clapped her hands joyfully, whereupon he clumped down the glass on the table with a dismayed look.

“Well,” he said, “you’re an odd little witch, upon my word. What Robin Goodfellow fathered you, I should like to know?”

“He’s no father,” said Zyp. “He’s too full of tricks for a family man. I could tell you things of him.”

“Tell us some then,” said the doctor.

What Zyp would have answered I don’t know, for at that moment my father walked into the room. If he had had what is vulgarly called a skinful, he was not drunk, for he moved steadily up to the little group at the table with a scowl contracting his forehead. The half-emptied tumbler had caught his eye immediately and he pointed to it. I was conscious that the doctor quaked a little.

“Pray make yourself at home,” said my father, and caught up the glass and flung its contents in the other’s face. In a moment the two men were locked in a savage, furious embrace, till, crashing over a chair, they were flung sprawling on the floor and apart. Before they could come together again Zyp alone of us had placed herself between them, fearless and beautiful, and had broken into a quaint little song:

She sung, and whether it was the music or the strangeness of the interruption, I shall never know; only the wonderful fact remains that, with the sound of her voice, the great passion seemed to die out of the two foes and to give place to a pleasant conceit, comical in its way, that they had only been rollicking together.

“Well,” said my father, without closer allusion to his brutality, “the liquor was choice Schiedam, and it’s gone.”

He sat down, called for another glass, helped himself to a noggin and pushed the bottle roughly across to Dr. Crackenthorpe, who had already reseated himself opposite.

“Sing again, girl,” said my father, but Zyp shook her head.

“I never do anything to order,” she said, “but the fairies move me to dance.”

She blew out the lamp as she spoke and glided to a patch of light that fell from the high May moon through the window on to the rough boards of the room. Into this light she dipped her hands and then passed them over her hair and face as though she were washing herself in the mystic fountain of the night; and all the time her murmuring voice accompanied the action in little trills of laughter and words not understandable. Presently she fell to dancing, slowly at first and dividing her presence between glow and gloom; but gradually the supple motion of her body increased, step by step, until she was footing it as wildly as a young hamadryad to her own leaping shadow on the floor.

Suddenly she sprung from the moonlit square, danced over to Dr. Crackenthorpe and, whispering awfully in his ear, “Beware the demon that sits in the bottle,” ran from the room.

My father burst into a fit of laughter, but I think from that day the doctor fully hated her.

Zyp had been with us a month, and surely never did changeling happen into a more congenial household.

Jason she still held at arm’s length, which, despite my admiration of my brother, I secretly congratulated my heart on, for—let me get over it at the outset—from first to last, I have never wavered in my passion of love for this wild, beautiful creature. The unexpectedness of her coming alone was a romance, the delight of which has never palled upon me with the deadening years. Therefore it was that I early made acquaintance with the demon of jealousy, than whom none, in truth, is more irresistible in his unclean strength and hideousness.

Zyp and I were one day wandering under the shadow of the mighty old cathedral of Winton.

“I don’t like it, Renny,” she said, pressing up close to me. “It’s awful and it’s grand, but there are always faces at the windows when I look up at them.”

“Whose?” I said, with a laugh.

“I don’t know,” she said; “but think of the thousands of old monks and things whose home it was once and whose ghosts are shut up among the stones. There!” she cried, pointing.

I looked at the old leaded window she indicated, but could see nothing.

“His face is like stone and he’s beckoning,” she whispered. “Oh, come along, Renny”—and she dragged me out of the grassy yard and never stopped hurrying me on till we reached the meadows. Here her gayety returned to her, and she felt at home among the flowers at once.

Presently we wandered into a grassy covert against a hedge on the further side of which a road ran, and threw ourselves among the “sauce alone” and wild parsley that grew there. Zyp was in one of her softest moods and my young heart fluttered within me. She leaned over me as I sat and talked to me in a low voice, with her fair young brow gone into wrinkles of thoughtfulness.

“Renny, what’s love that they talk about?”

I laughed and no doubt blushed.

“I mean,” she said, “is it blue eyes and golden hair or brown eyes and brown hair? Don’t be silly, little boy, till you know what I mean.”

“Well, what do you mean, Zyp?”

“I want to know, that’s all. Renny, do you remember my asking to kiss and be friends that day we first met, and your refusing?”

“Yes, Zyp,” I stammered.

“You may kiss me now, if you like,” and she let herself drop into my arms, as I sat there, and turned up her pretty cheek to my mouth.

My blood surged in my ears. I was half-frightened, but all with a delicious guilt upon me. I bent hastily and touched the soft pink curve with my trembling lips.

She lay quite still a moment, then sat up and gently drew away from me.

“No,” she said, “that isn’t it. Shall I ever know, I wonder?”

“Know what, Zyp?”

“Never mind, for I shan’t tell you. There, I didn’t mean to be rude,” and she stroked the sleeve of my jacket caressingly.

By and by she said: “I wonder if you will suffer, Renny, poor boy? I would save you all if I could, for you’re the best of them, I believe.”

Her very words were so inexplicable to me that I could only sit and stare at her. I have construed them since, with a knife through my heart for every letter.

As we were sitting silent a little space, steps sounded down the road and voices with them. They were of two men, who stopped suddenly, as they came over against us, hidden behind the hedge, as if to clinch some argument, but we had already recognized the contrary tones of my father and Dr. Crackenthorpe.

“Now, harkee!” the doctor was saying; “that’s well and good, but I’m not to be baffled forever and a day, Mr. Ralph Trender. What does it all amount to? You’ve got something hidden up your sleeve and I want to know what it is.”

“Is that all?” My father spoke in a set, deep manner.

“That’s all, and enough.”

“Then, look up my sleeve, Dr. Crackenthorpe—if you can.”

“I don’t propose to look. I suggest that you just shake it, when no doubt the you-know-whats will come tumbling out.”

“And if I refuse?”

“There are laws, my friend, laws—iniquitous, if you like; but, for what they are, they don’t recognize the purse on the highway as the property of him that picks it up.”

“And how are you going to set these laws in motion?”

“We’ll insert the end of the wedge first—say in some public print, now. How would this look? We have it on good authority that Mr. Trender, our esteemed fellow-townsman, is the lucky discoverer of——”

“Be silent, you!” My father spoke fiercely; then added in a low tone: “D’ye wish all the world to know?”

“Not by any means,” said the other, quietly, “and they shan’t if you fall in with my mood.”

“If I only once had your head in the mill wheel,” groaned my father, with a curse. “Now, harken! I don’t put much value on your threat; but this I’ll allow that I court no interference with my manner of life. Take the concession for what it is worth. Come to me by and by and you shall have another.”

“A couple,” said the doctor.

“Very well—no more, though I rot for it—and take my blessing with them.”

“When shall I come?” said the doctor, ignoring the very equivocal benediction.

“Come to-night—no, to-morrow,” said my father, and turning on his heel strode heavily off toward the town.

I heard the doctor chuckling softly with a malignant triumph in his note.

I clenched my teeth and fists and would have risen had not Zyp noiselessly prevented me. It was wormwood to me; the revelation that, for some secret cause, my father, the strong, irresistible and independent, was under the thumb of an alien. But the doctor walked off and I fell silent.

On our homeward way we came across Jason lying on his back under a tree, but he took no notice of us nor answered my call, and Zyp stamped her foot when I offered to delay and speak to him. Nevertheless I noticed that more than once she looked back, as long as he was in view, to see if he was moved to any curiosity as to our movements, which he never appeared to be in the least.

Great clouds had been gathering all the afternoon, and now the first swollen drops of an advancing thunderstorm spattered in the dust outside the yard. Inside it was as dark as pitch, and I had almost to grope my way along the familiar passages. Zyp ran away to her own den.

Suddenly, with a leap of the blood, I saw that some faintly pallid object stood against the door of the room of silence as I neared it. It was only with an effort I could proceed, and then the thing detached itself and was resolved into the white face of my brother Modred.

“Is that you, Renny?” he said, in a loud, tremulous voice.

“Yes,” I answered, very shakily myself. “What in the name of mystery are you doing there?”

“I feel queer,” he said. “Let’s get to the light somewhere.”

We made our way to the back, opened the door leading on to the little platform and stood looking at the stringed rain. Modred’s face was ghastly and his eyes were awakened to an expression that I had never thought them capable of.

“You’ve been in there?” I said.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“More fool you. If you like to tempt the devil you should have the brass to outface him. Why, you’ve got it!” I cried, for he suddenly let fall from his trembling hand a little round glittering object, whose nature I could not determine in the stormy twilight.

He had it in his clutch again in a moment, though I pounced for it, and then he backed through the open doorway.

“It’s naught that concerns you,” he said; “keep off, you beast!”

“What is it?” I cried.

“Water-parings,” said he, and clapped to the door in my face as I rushed at him, and I heard him scuttle upstairs. The latch caught me in the chest and knocked my breath out for a bit, so that I was unable to follow, and probably he ran and bolted himself into his bedroom. In any case, I had no mind for pursuit, my heart being busy with other affairs; and there I remained and thought them out. Presently, being well braced to the ordeal, I went indoors and upstairs to the living room, where I was persuaded I should find my father. And there he sat, pretty hot with drink and with a comfortless, glowering devil in his eyes.

“Well!” he thundered, “what do you want?”

I managed to get out, with some firmness, “A word with you, dad,” though his eyes disquieted me.

“Make it one, then, and a quick one!”

“Zyp and I were sitting behind a hedge this afternoon when you and Dr. Crackenthorpe were at words on the other side.”

His eyes shriveled me, but the motion of his lips seemed to signify to me that I was to go on.

“Dad, if he has any hold over you, let me share the bother and help if I can.”

He had sat with his right hand on the neck of the bottle from which he had been drinking, and he now flung the latter at me, with a snarl like that of a mad dog. Fortunately for me, in the very act some flash of impulse unnerved him, so that the bottle spun up to the ceiling and crashed down again to the floor, from which the scattered liquor sent up a pungent, sickening odor. Then he leaped to his feet and yelled at me. I could make nothing of his words, save that they clashed into one another in a torrent of furious invective. But in the midst his voice stopped, with a vibrating snap; he put his hand to his forehead, which, I saw with horror, was suddenly streaked with purple, and down he sunk to the floor in a heap.

I was terribly frightened, and, running to him, endeavored in a frantic manner to pull him into a sitting posture. I had half succeeded, when, lying propped up against the leg of the table, he gave a groan and bade me in a weak voice to let him be; and presently to my joy I saw the natural color come back to his face by slow degrees. By and by he was able to slide into the chair he had left, where he lay panting and exhausted, but recovering.

“Renalt, my lad,” he said, in a dragging voice, “what was that you said just now? Let’s have it again.”

I hesitated, but he smiled at me and bade me not to fear. Thus encouraged, I repeated my statement.

“Ah,” he said; “and the girl—did she hear?”

“She couldn’t help it, dad. But she can’t have noticed much, for she never even referred to it afterward.”

“Which looks bad, and so much for your profound knowledge of the sex.”

He looked at me keenly for some moments from under his matted eyebrows; then muttered as if to himself:

“Here’s a growing lad, and loyal, I believe. What if I took him a yard into my confidence?”

“Oh, yes, dad,” I said, eagerly. “You can trust me, indeed you can. I only want to be of some use.”

He slightly shook his head, then seemed to wake up all of a sudden.

“There,” he said; “be off, like a good boy, and don’t worry me a second time. You meant well, and I’m not offended.”

“Yes, dad,” I said a little sadly, and was turning to go, when he spoke to me again:

“And if the girl should mention this matter—you know what—to you, say what I tell you now—that Dr. Crackenthorpe thinks your father can tell him where more coins are to be found like the one I gave him that night; but that your father can’t and is under no obligation to Dr. Crackenthorpe—none whatever.”

So I left him, puzzled, a little depressed, but proud to be the recipient of even this crumb of confidence on the part of so reserved and terrible a man.

Still I could not but feel that there was something inconsistent in his words to me and those I had heard him address to the doctor. Without a doubt his utterances on the road had pointed to a certain recognition of the necessity of bribing the other to silence.

Full of dissatisfaction I wandered into the shed and loitered aimlessly about. As I stood there Jason came clattering homeward, his coat collar turned up and his curly head bowed to the deluge.

“So you got home before me?” he said, shaking himself and squeezing his cap out as he spoke.

“Yes; we came straight.”

“It was lovely in the meads, wasn’t it?” said he, with an odd glance at me.

“It’s been lovely all this May,” said I.

“And that means a fat churchyard. Old Rottengoose says: ‘A cold May and windy makes a full barn and findy.’ A queer one, old Peg is. She’d die if she cast a woolen before the first of June. I wonder what she’d think of sitting under a hedge in a northeaster?”

I started a little and shot a look askance at my brother. Could he have seen us? But his next words reassured me.

“Or of falling asleep in the shade, as I did, till the rain on my face woke me up.”

“Then you didn’t see us pass——” I began and stopped.

“See what? I saw nothing but my eyelids and the sky through ’em.”

I gave a sigh of relief. My feelings toward Zyp were boyish and bashful and innocent enough, heaven knows; but in the shadow of my rough past they were beginning to glimmer out so strange and sweet that the merest suspicion of their incurring publicity filled me with a shame-faced terror of ridicule that was agony.

Freed from this dread, I fell into an extreme of garrulity that landed me in a quagmire of discomfiture.

After I had thus talked for a while, rather disconnectedly, he interrupted me.

“Renny,” he said, “you’re pretty fond of the girl, aren’t you?”

I heard him with a little shock of surprise.

“Not that I care,” he went on, airily, “except for your sake, old boy.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“We’re up to a thing or two, aren’t we?” said he, “but she’s fifty tricks to our one.”

“She has her good points, Jason.”

“Oh, yes; lots of them. So many that it hardly seems worth while noticing her setting you up against me.”

“She’s never done anything of the sort!” I cried, hotly.

“Hasn’t she? Well, that’s all right, and we can be chums again. I only wanted to warn you against putting faith in a chit that can wear a new face easier than her dress, to you, or Modred, or—or any one.”

“Modred!” I cried, in astonishment.

“Oh, don’t suppose,” he said, “that you’re sole lord of her heart.”

“I never did suppose it,” I answered, thickly. “Why should I? She’s free to fancy whom she likes”—but my heart sunk within me.

“Yes; that’s the way to look at it,” he said. “You wouldn’t think she could find much to admire in that fatty, now, would you?”

“How do you know she does?”

“I do know—that’s enough.”

“Well, isn’t he a sort of brother to her?” I said—with a courageous effort—“as we all are.”

“Of course. That’s it.”

“And I don’t know what you mean by ‘any one’ else.”

“Don’t you?” He laughed and flung away a stone he had been idly playing with. “Well, I meant Modred, or—or any one else.”

“Who else?”

“Dad, say—or Dr. Crackenthorpe.”

“Oh, you’re an idiot!” I cried; “I won’t talk to you”—and I left him and ran indoors.

But he had driven the sting home and the poison already worked furiously in me. How can I explain why? It was true, what he had said, every word of it. She had set me against him, Jason—not in words, but by a tacit conviction of him as one who had of his own act bared his soul momentarily, and revealed a sinister brand across it hitherto unguessed at.

Well, this was the first waking from the boyish dream, and should I ever dream it again? I had said we were all in a manner her brothers, and that she was free to smile on whom she chose. What a pitiful handful of dust for all eyes but my own! I felt the passion of longing for her single love surge in me as I spoke. I had never till that moment dreamed of combating another for possession of it. She had seemed mine by right of fortune’s gift from the first, nor had she by her behavior appeared to question the right. We had confidences, discussions, little secrets together, which none but we might share in. We walked and talked and leaned toward one another, with a sense of mutual understanding that was pathetic, I am sure—at least as to my share in it—in God’s eyes.

And now to find that all the time she was on like secret terms with Modred—with Jason, too, perhaps, judging by his sidelong innuendoes, though it made my heart sick to think that she could play so double faced a game between me and one whom she professed to hate and despise.

What a drama of dolls it was! And how soon the drama was to turn into a tragedy!

I went indoors and upstairs to the room which Jason and I shared and flung myself on the bed. Then I was properly shocked and horrified to find that my cheeks were suddenly wet with tears—a humiliating discovery for a tough-sinewed young barbarian to make. What an admirable sight, indeed! Renalt Trender, sniffing and snuffling for a girl’s favor!

Pride, however, is everywhere indigenous, and this came to my assistance. If the minx played sham with me I would meet her with her own tactics and affect indifference. What a triumphant picture this:

Zyp—“Why have you been different to me of late, Renny? Aren’t you fond of me now?”

Renny—“My good little Zyp, the fact is I have tired a bit of the novelty. It has been my first experience of the society of a girl, you know, and very pleasant while it lasted; but I confess to a little longing for a resumption of the old independence and freedom. Perhaps some day again we will walk and converse together as of old.”

Atop of this imaginary question and answer rose a smugly anguishing picture of Zyp flushed and in tears (my imagination insisted on these in bucketsful, to out-flood my own temporary weakness); of Zyp hurt and sorrowing, but always striving by every means in her power to win back my lost favor.

Alas, poor little clown! I fear it is just those who have the fancy to conjure up such pictures who suffer most cruelly from the non-realization of the hopes of youth. Braced to the test, however, and not knowing myself in weak armor, I came down to supper that evening prickling all through with resolve.

Jason was in the room alone, as I entered, and was walking feverishly up and down.

“Hist!” he said, softly, seizing me by the arm; “come here and look for yourself.”

He dragged me to the little square window, which was open. It looked out at the back, and beneath was the railed platform before mentioned.

I knew that I was urged to act the spy, and yet—so demoralizing is jealousy—like a dog I went. Softly we craned our necks through the opening and looked down. Trees all about here bordered the river banks, so as to make the rear of our mill quite secret and secluded.

She, Zyp, was standing on the platform with her arm round Modred’s neck. She seemed trying to coax something from him which he was reluctant to part with. As he evaded her efforts I saw what it was—the little round yellow object I had noticed in his hand earlier in the afternoon.

“Darling,” she said, in a subdued voice, “do let me have it.”

He laughed and looked at her loutishly.

“You know the condition, Zyp.”

“I have let you kiss me over and over again.”

“But you haven’t kissed me yet.”

She stamped her foot. “Nor ever shall!” she cried.

“Then here goes,” he said, and slipped it into his pocket.

At that she rushed at him and wound her arms about him like a young panther.

“Shall I tear you with my teeth?” she said, but instead she smoothed his face with one hand disengaged and murmured to him:

“Modred, dear, you got it for me, you know; you said so.”

“And precious frightened I was, Zyp.”

“Well, it is mine, isn’t it?”

“If you give me the kiss.”

My father’s step on the stairs brought our heads in with a clatter. We heard them scuttle into the house, and a moment later they appeared in the room. Modred’s face was flushed and bore a heavy, embarrassed expression, but Zyp looked quite cool and self-possessed.

I took no notice of her during the meal, but talked, daring in my misery, to my father, who condescended to answer me now and again, and I could see that she wondered at me.

Supper over, I hurried to my room, and shutting myself in, went and sat by the window and gave my tormented soul to the night. Had I never met Zyp, I doubt if I should ever in my manhood have realized what the grown-up, I think, seldom do, the amount of torture and wrong the young heart may endure without bursting—with no hope of sympathy, moreover, except that half-amused tolerant form of it which the old think it sufficient to extend to youth’s elastic grievances.

By and by Jason stole in. For some little time he sat upon his bed, silent; then he said in a soft voice:

“Let’s cry quits, Renny. I think I’ve paid you out for that little accident of the meads.”

“I hate you!” I said, quietly, and indeed it seemed to me that his cruelty deserved no better a reward.

He laughed, and was silent again, and presently began to undress for bed, whistling softly all the time.

I took no notice of him; but long after when he was breathing peacefully asleep, I laid my own aching head, tired with misery, on the pillow, and tried to follow his example. I was not to succeed until faint daylight came through the casement and the birds were twittering outside—was never, indeed, to know sleep in its innocence again.

Morning brought a pitcher of comfort with it on its gossamer wings. Who, at 17, can wake from restoring sleep to find the June sun on his face and elect to breakfast on bitter wormwood, with the appetizing fry of good country bacon caressing his nostrils through every chink of the boards? Indeed, I was not born to hate, or to any decided vice or virtue, but was of those who, taking a middle course, are kicked to the wall or into the gutter as the Fates have a fancy.

I was friendly with myself, with Jason—almost with Zyp, who had so bedeviled me. After all, I thought, the measure of her regard for me might be more in a winning friendliness than in embraces such as she had bestowed upon Modred.

Therefore I dressed in good heart, chatting amiably with Jason, who, I could not help noticing, was at some pains to study me curiously.

Such reactionary spirits are the heritage of youth. They decline with the day. My particular relapse happened, maybe, ungenerously early, for it was at breakfast I noticed the first tremulous vibrations of Zyp’s war trumpet. Clearly she had guessed the reason of the change in my manner toward her yesterday evening and was bent upon disabusing my mind of the presumptuous supposition that I held any monopoly whatsoever of her better regard. To this end she showered exaggerated attentions upon Modred and my father—even Jason coming in for his share. She had little digs at my silence and boorishness that hugely delighted the others. She slipped a corner of fat bacon into my tea and spilled salt over my bread and jam, and all the time I had to bear my suffering with a stoic heart and echo the merriment, which I did in such sardonic fashion as to call down fresh banter for my confusion. At our worst, it must be confessed, we were not a circle with a refined sense of humor. But when we rose, and Zyp brushed rudely by me with a pert toss of her head, I felt indeed as if life no longer held anything worth the striving after.

I walked out into the yard to be alone, but Jason followed me. Some tenderness for old comradeship sake stirred in him momentarily, I think, for his blue eyes were good as they met mine.

“What an ass you are, Renny,” he said; “to make such a to-do about the rubbish!”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, in miserable resentment. “I’m making no to-do about anything.”

My chest felt like a stone, and I could have struck him or any one.

“Oh, I can see,” said he.

“See what you like,” I replied, furiously, “but don’t bother me with it. I’ve nothing to do with your fancies.”

“Oh, very well,” he said, coolly; “I don’t want to interfere, I’m sure.”

I bounced past him and strode out of the yard. My blood was humming in my veins; the sunny street looked all glazed with a shining gray. I walked on and on, scarcely knowing whither I went. Presently I climbed St. Catherine’s hill and flung myself down on the summit. Below me, a quarter of a mile away, the old city lay in the hollow cup of its down. Who, of all its 17,000 souls, could ever stir my pulses as the little stranger from the distant shadowy forest could? We had no forests round Winton. Perhaps if we had the spirit of the trees would have colored my life, too, so that I might have scorned “the blind bow-god’s butt shaft.”

No doubt I was young to make such capital out of a little boyish disappointment. Do you think so? Then to you I must not appeal. Oh, my friend! We are not all jack-o’-lanterns at 17, and the fire of unrequited affection may burn fiercer in the pure air of youth than in the vitiated atmosphere of manhood. Anyhow believe me that to me my misery was very real and dreadful. Think only, you who have plucked the fruit and found it bitter—you whose disenchantment of life did not begin till life itself was waning—what it must be to feel hopeless at that tender age.

All day long I lay on the hill or wandered about the neighboring downs, and it was not till the shadows of the trees were stretching that I made up my mind to return and face out the inevitable.

I was parched and feverish, and the prospect of a plunge in the river on my way home came to me with a little lonely thrill as of solace to my unhappiness.

There was a deep pool at a bend of the stream, not far from where Zyp and I had sat yesterday afternoon (was it only yesterday?) which we three were much in the habit of frequenting on warm evenings; and thither I bent my steps. This part of the water lay very private and solitary, and was only to be reached by trespassing from the road through a pretty thick-set blackthorn hedge—a necessity to its enjoyment which, I need not say, was an attraction to us.

As I wriggled through our individual “run” in the hedge and, emerging on the other side, raised my face, I saw that a naked figure was already seated by the side of the running pool, which I was not long in identifying as Modred’s.

I hesitated. What reason had I for hobnobbing with mine enemy, as, in the bitterness of my heart, I called him? I could not as yet speak to him naturally, I felt, or meet him without resentment. Where was the object in complicating matters? I turned, on the thought, to go, and again hesitated. Should he see me before I had made my escape, would he not attribute it to embarrassment on my part and crow triumphant over my discomfiture? Ah, why did I not act on my first impulse? Why, why? The deeps of perdition must resound with that forlorn little word.

When a second time the good resolve came to me, it was too late. He rose and saw me and, under his shading hand, even at that distance, I could mark the silent grin of mockery on his face. I walked deliberately toward him, my hands in my pockets, my cap shading my eyes.

“Aren’t you coming to bathe?” he said, when I drew near. “It’ll cool your temper.”

I could have struck him, but I answered nothing and only began to undress.

“Where have you been all day? We were wondering, Zyp and I, as we lay in the meadow out there.”

Still I answered nothing, but I knew that my hands trembled as I pulled off my coat and waistcoat.

He stood watching me a little while in silence, then said: “You seem to have lost your tongue, old Renny. Has it followed your heart because Zyp talks for two?”

I sprung up, but he eluded me and, with a hateful laugh, leaped on the moment into the deep center of the pool. A horrible tightness came round my throat. Half-undressed as I was I plunged after him all mad with passion. He rose near me, and seeing the fury of my face, dived again, and I followed. It took but an instant, and my life was wrecked. We met among the weeds at the bottom, and he jumped from me. As he rose I clutched him by one foot, and swiftly passed a great sinew of weed three or four times around his ankle. It held like a grapnel and would hold; for, though he was a fair swimmer, he was always frighted and nervous in the face of little difficulties. Then swerving away, I rose again, with laboring lungs, to the surface.

Barely had my drenched eyes found the daylight again, when the hideous enormity of my crime broke into my brain like the toll of a death bell. The water near me was heaving slightly and some welling bubbles swayed to the surface. They were the drowning gasps of my brother—my own brother, whom I was murdering.

I gave a thin, wretched scream and sunk again into the deep hole beneath me. He was jerking convulsively, and his hands clutched vainly at his feet and slipped away in a dying manner. I tore at the weed to unwind it—only to twist it into new fetters. I pulled frantically at its roots. I felt that I should go mad if it did not yield. In a moment it came away in my hands and I shot upward, struggling. But the other poor body followed me sluggishly, and I seized it by the hair, with all my heart gone crazy, and towed it ashore.

His face, I thought, looked fallen away already and was no longer loutish or malicious. It seemed just a white, pathetic thing freed from suffering—and I would have given my life—ay, and my love—ten times over to see the same expression come back to it it had worn as it turned to me before he dived.

I fell on my knees beside him and broke into a passion of tears. I kissed, with no shame but a murderer’s, the wet forehead, and beat and pressed, in a futile agony too terrible for words, the limp unresisting hand against my breast. It seemed that he must wake if I implored him so frantically. But he lay quiet, with closed eyes, and the water ran from his white skin in trickling jerks and pauses.

In the midst of my useless anguish some words of Jason’s recurred to me, and, seizing my coat for a pillow to his forehead, I turned him, with a shuddering horror of his limpness, upon his face. A great gush of water came with a rumble from his mouth, but he did not stir; and there I stood looking down upon him, my hand to my forehead, my mad eyes staring as Cain’s must have stared when he wrought the deed of terror.

And I was Cain—I who yesterday was a boy of loving impulses, I think; whose blackest crime might be some petty rebellion against the lesser proprieties; who had even hugged himself upon living on a loftier plane than this poor silenced victim of his brutality.

As the deadly earnest of my deed came home to my stunned mind, I had no thought of escape. I would face it out, confess and die. My father’s agony—for he loved us in his way, I believe; Jason’s condemnation; Zyp’s hatred; my own shame and torture—I put them all on one side to get full view of that black crossbeam and rope that I felt to be the only medicine for my sick and haunted soul.

As I stood, the sound of wheels on the road beyond woke me to some necessity of action. Stumbling, as in a nightmare; not feeling my feet, but only the mechanical spring of motion, I hurried to the hedge side and looked over.

A carter with a tilt wagon was urging his tired team homeward.

“Help!” I cried. “Oh, come and help me!” And my voice seemed to me to issue from under the tilt of the wagon.

He “woa’d” up his horses, raised his hat from his forehead, wrinkled with hot weariness, and came toward me, his whip over his shoulder.

“What’s toward?” said he.

“My brother!” I gasped. “We were bathing together and he’s drowned.”

The man’s boorish face lighted up like a farthing rushlight. Here was something horribly sordid enough for all the excitement he was worth. It would sweeten many a pot of swipes for the week to come.

“Wheer be the body?” said he, eagerly.

“Over yonder, on the grass. Oh, won’t you help me to carry it home?”

He looked at the hedge critically.

“Go, you,” he said, “and drag ’en hither. We’ll gat ’en over hedge together.”

I ran back to where it lay. It had collapsed a little to one side, and for an instant my breath caught in a wild thrill of hope that he had moved of himself. But the waxen hue of the face in the gathering dusk killed my emotion on its very issuing.

A strange loathing of the thing, lying so unresponsive, had in my race backward and forward sprung upon me, but before it could gain the mastery I had seized it under the arm-pits and was half-dragging, half-carrying it toward the road.

I was at the hedge before I knew it, and the red face of the carter was peering curiously down at the white heap beneath.

“Harned ’en up,” he said. “My, but it’s cold. Easy, now. Take the toes of ’en. Thart’s it—woa!” and he had it in his strong arms and shuffling heavily to the rear of his wagon, jerked back the flap of the tilt with his elbow and slid the body like a package into the interior.

“Get your coat, man,” he cried, “and coom away.”

I had forgotten in the terror of it all my own half-dressed state, for I had stripped only to my underclothes, and my boots were still on my feet. Mechanically I returned to the riverside, and hastily donning my coat and trousers, snatched up the other’s tumbled garments and ran back to the road.

The carter was holding the curtain back and critically apostrophizing the thing within.

“Ay, he be sound enough. Reckon nought but the last trump’ll waken yon. Now, youngster, where may you live?”

I told him.

“Sure,” he said, “the old crazed mill?” Then I thought he muttered: “Well, ’tis one vermin the less,” but I was not sure and nothing mattered—nothing.

He asked me if I would like to ride with it inside. The mere suggestion was terror to me, and I stammered out that I would rather walk, for I had tried my best already and had given up hope.

So we set off slowly through the dumb, haunted twilight. Thoughts would not come to me in any definite form. I imagined the cathedral bells were ringing, till I found it was only a jangling in my brain, discordant and unearthly. People came toward us who on nearing were resolved into distorted rags of mist; voices croaked with laughter, and they were only the swung branches of trees.

Suddenly I heard an exclamation—real enough this time—and saw the carter run to the head of his team and stop them.

“Woa, then!” he cried, in a frightened voice; and then with terrified impatience: “Coom hither, marn; I tell ’ee. Don’t ’ee stand theer gawking at the air. Dang it, the ghost walks!” He stamped his heavy foot, seeing me motionless; then cried again: “Take thee foul burden out o’ the wain and dang me for a fool ever to have meddled wi’t!”

A gush of wondrous hope flooded my breast. I tore to the rear of the wagon, dashed back the curtain—and there was Modred sitting up and swaying feebly from side to side.

I leaped; I caught him in my arms; my breath came in laughter and sobs. “Oh, Modred, Modred!” I cried. “I didn’t mean it—it wasn’t me—I’m not like that!” and then I broke down and wept long and convulsively, though I would never let him out of my clutch.

“Where am I?” he said, faintly; “oh, it hurts so. Every vein in my body is bursting with pain.”

At this I beat under my hysterical outburst and set to rubbing him all over in frantic eagerness. It seemed to ease him a little and I blessed him that he lay passively against me and did not offer to push me away. Poor fellow, he was far too weak as yet for any resistance.

Presently I heard the carter bawl in tremulous tones: “Art gone, the two of ’ee?”

“Come here,” I called back, with a tearful laugh. “He’s better; he’s recovered!”

The fellow came round gingerly and stood a little distance off.

“Eh?” he said, dubiously.

“See for yourself!” I cried. “He wasn’t drowned after all. He’s come round!”

The man spat viciously in the road and came sullenly forward. He was defrauded of an excitement and he felt the injury grievously.

“You young varmint!” he growled. “Them’s your tricks for to get a free lift.”

“Nonsense!” I said, buoyantly; “you yourself thought him dead. Carry us on to the mill and I’ll promise you a proper skinful of liquor.”

He was crabbed and undecided, but presently he went forward and whipped up his horses with a surly oath. As the wagon pitched, Modred opened his eyes, which he had shut, and looked up at me.

“Are you feeling better, old boy?” I said, tenderly.

“The pain isn’t so bad, but I’m tired to death,” said he.

“Rest, and don’t talk. You’ll be stronger in a bit.”

He closed his eyes again and I tried to shield him as much as I could from the jolting. I had already wrapped him up warm in some old sacks that were heaped in a corner of the wagon. So all the way home I held him, counting his every breath, loving him as I had never done before.

It was dark when we reached the mill and I laid him gently back and leaped down.

“Dad! Dad!” I shouted, running down the yard and into the house; but he was already standing at the head of the stairs, with a candle in his hand.

“Modred’s had an accident!” I cried, in a subdued voice—I could not keep the lie back. It seemed so dreadful at the outset to confess and stand aside condemned—while others helped. Jason and Zyp came out on the landing and my father ran down the stairs hurriedly.

“What’s that?” he said—“Modred!”

“He got caught in the weeds and was nearly drowned, but he’s getting better.”

“Where is he?” He seized me by the arm as he spoke, and dragged me to the mill door. I could feel the pulses in his finger tips through my coat.

“He’s in a wain outside, and I promised the man a long drink for bringing us home.”

“There’s a full bottle in the cupboard—bring it down,” shouted my father to Jason. Then he hurried to the wagon and lifted out the breathing figure and looked into its face. After all, it was his youngest.

“Not much harm, perhaps,” said he. “Run and tell them to heat some water and the blankets.”

While I was finding old Peg and explaining and giving the order, they carried him upstairs. I did not dare follow them, but, the reaction over, leaned, feeling sick and faint, in the passage outside the little kitchen. Perhaps even now he was telling them, and I dreaded more than I can describe the sentence which a first look at any one of their faces might confirm.

Presently old Peg came out to me with a can of boiling water and flung an armful of warm blankets over my shoulder.

“There’s for you, Renalt,” she cried in her thin, rusty voice; then muttered, clawing her hips like a monkey: “’Tis flying in the Lord’s face o’ Providence, to me a old woman; like as restoring a froze snake on the hearth.”

I had no heart for retort, but sped from the sinister old witch with my burden. I saw Zyp and Jason in the living-room as I passed, but, though they called to me, I ran on and upstairs to the door of Modred’s room, which was next ours.

My father came out to my knock and took the things from me.

“Now,” said he, “I want nobody here but myself and Dr. Crackenthorpe. Go you and fetch him, if he’s to be found.”

Happy to be employed in any useful service, I hurried away on my errand. The door of the sitting-room was shut, at which I was glad. Very little respite gave me fresh lease of hope.

The doctor’s home was close by, in a straggling street of old buildings that ran off our end of the High street, and the doctor himself was, I was told, within.

I found him seated in a musty little parlor, with some ugly casts of murderers’ heads facing him from the top of a varnished bookcase.

“Ah, my friend!” he screeched, cracking his knuckles; “those interest you, eh? Well, perhaps I shall have the pleasure of adding your picture to them some day.”

An irrepressible shudder took me and he laughed, not knowing the reason of it.

“Now, what’s your business?” said he.

I told him.

“Eh,” he said, and bent forward and looked at me narrowly. “Near drowned, eh? Why, what were you doing, you young limb?”

“I went after him,” I answered, faintly, “but I couldn’t get the weeds loose.”

“Dressed, too?” he said, for the sop of my underclothes had come through the upper, and nothing escaped his hawk’s eye; “why, you’re a hero, upon my word.”

He bade me begone after that and he would follow immediately. And I returned to the mill, and, softly climbing the stairs, shut myself into my room and sat upon the edge of the bed listening—listening for every breath and sound in the old eerie house. I heard the doctor come up the stairs and enter the room next door. I heard the low murmur of voices and strained my ears to gather what was said, but could not make out a word. And the darkness grew into my soul and shut out all the old light of happy reason. Should I ever feel innocent again? And would Modred, satisfied with his knowledge of the dreadful heritage of remorse I had laid up for myself, forego his right to denounce me and to forever make me an outcast and alone? I hardly dared to hope it, yet clung with a strenuous longing to thought of his mercy.

It may have been hours I sat there. I do not know. I had heard footsteps go up and down the stairs many times. And then a silence fell. What was the meaning of it? Was it possible that life had only rallied in him momentarily, like the flame of a dying candle and had suddenly sunk for good and all into endless darkness? Had he told? Why did no one come near me? I could stand it no longer.

As I sprung to my feet I heard a footstep again on the stairs and Jason walked into the room and shut the door. He took no notice of me, but began to undress.

“Jason!” I cried, and the agony in my voice I could not repress. “How is he? Has he spoken? Oh, don’t keep me in this torture.”

“What torture?” said my brother, looking at me with a cold, unresponsive eye. “Why should you be upset more than the rest of us? He’s asleep all right, and not to be bothered with any questions.”

Thank God! Oh, thank God! I took no notice of his looks or tone, for I was absorbed in great gratitude to heaven that my worst fears were idle ones.

“Where’s dad?” I said.

“Drinking downstairs with the doctor. They’ll make high revel of it, I expect.”

He was already in bed; but I sat on and on in the darkness. I had only one thought—one longing to wait till Jason was fast in slumber, and then to creep to Modred’s side and implore his forgiveness.

Presently the deep, regular breathing of my brother announced to me the termination of my vigil. With my heart beating in a suffocating manner, I stole to the door, opened it and stood outside that of Modred’s room. I listened a moment. A humming noise of garrulous voices below was the only sound that broke the silence of the house. Softly I turned the handle and softly crept into the room. There was light in it, for on the wash-hand stand a rush candle burned dimly in an old lanthorn.

He gave a start, for he was lying awake in his bed, then half-rose on his elbow and looked at me with frightened eyes.

“Don’t come near,” he whispered. “What do you want? You aren’t going to try to kill me again?”

I gave a little strangled, agonized cry, and, dropping on my knees where I stood, stretched out my arms to him imploringly.

“Oh, Modred, don’t! Don’t! You can’t think I meant it! It was only a horrible impulse. I was mad, and I nearly drowned myself directly afterward in saving you.”

The fright went from his face and something like its familiar look returned to it.

“Are you sorry?” he said.

“Sorry? Oh, I will do anything you like if you will only believe me.”

“Come here, Renny,” he said, “and stand by me. I want to see you better.”

I obeyed humbly—lovingly.

“You want me to forgive you?”

“If you could, Modred—if you only could.”

“And not to peach?”

I hung my head in shame and the tears were in my eyes again.

“Well, I’ll agree, on one condition.”

“Make any you like, Modred. I’ll swear to keep it; I’ll never forget it.”

“Zyp’s it,” he said, looking away from me.

“Yes,” I said, gently, with a prescience of what was coming.

“You’ll have to give her up for good and all—keep out of her way; let her know somehow you’re sick of her. And keep Jason out of the way. You and he were chums enough before she came.”

“I swear for myself, and to do what I can with Jason,” I said, dully. What did it matter? One way or another the buoyant light of existence was shut to me for good and all.

“It’s the only way,” said Modred, and he gave me a look that I dare not call crafty. “After all, it isn’t much,” he said, “considering what you did to me, and she seems to be getting tired of you—now, doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said in a low voice.

“Then, that’s settled. And now let me be, for I feel as if I can sleep. Hand me my breeches first, though. There’s something in the pocket I want.”

“Shall I get it out for you, old boy?”

“No, no!” he answered, hurriedly. “Give them to me, can’t you?”

I did as he wanted and crept from the room. What did it matter? Zyp had already cast me off, but for the evil deed I was respited. A moment ago the girl had seemed as nothing, set in the scale against my brother’s forgiveness. Could it be the true, loving spirit of forgiveness that could make such a condition? Hush! I must not think that thought. What did it matter?

I did not go back to my room, but sat on a stair at the head of the downward flight, with a strange, stunned feeling. Below the voices went on spasmodically—now a long murmur—now a snatch of song—now an angry phrase. By and by, I think, I must have fallen into a sort of stupor, for I seemed to wake all at once to a thunderous uproar.

I started to my feet. Magnified as all sounds are in the moment of recovered consciousness, there was yet noise enough below to convince me that a violent quarrel between the two men was toward. I heard my father’s voice in bitter denunciation.

“You’ve been hawking over my quarry this long while. I’ll tear the truth out of your long throat! Give me back my cameo—where is it?”

“A fig for your cameo!” cried the other in a shrill voice, “and I tell you this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“You’ve been watching me, you fiend, you! Dogging me—haunting me! I’ll have no more o’t! I’m not to be bribed or threatened or coaxed any more; least of all thieved from. Where is it?”

“You aren’t, aren’t you?” screeched the doctor. “You leave me here and I fall asleep. You’re away and you come storming back that I’ve robbed you. It’s a trap, by thunder, but you won’t catch me in it!”

“I believe you’re lying!” cried my father. His voice seemed strained with passion. But the other answered him now much more coolly.

“Believe what you like, my friend. It’s beneath my dignity to contradict you again; but take this for certain—if you slander me in public, I’ll ruin you!”

Then silence fell and I waited to hear no more. I stole to my room and crept to bed. I had never changed my drenched clothes and the deadly chill of my limbs was beginning to overcome the frost in my heart.

It seemed hours before the horrible coldness relaxed, and then straightway a parching fever scorched me as if I lay against a furnace. I heard sounds and dull footsteps and the ghostly creaking of stairs, but did not know if they were real or only incidents in my half-delirium.

At last as day was breaking I fell into a heavy, exhausted sleep. It merged into a dream of my younger brother. We walked together as we had done as little children, my arm around his neck. “Zenny,” he said, like a baby paraphrasing Zyp’s words, “what’s ’ove dat ’ey talk about?” I could have told him in the gushing of my heart, but in a moment he ran from me and faded.

I gave a cry and woke, and Jason was standing over me, with a white, scared face.

“Get up!” he whispered; “Modred’s dead!”

Often the first shock of some unexpected mental blow shakes from the soul, not its corresponding emotion, but that emotion’s exact antithesis. Thus, when Jason spoke I laughed. I could not on the moment believe that such hideous retribution was demanded of my already writhed and repentant conscience, and it seemed to me that he must be jesting in very ugly fashion.

Perhaps he looked astonished; anyhow he said:

“You needn’t make a joke of it. Are you awake? Modred’s dead, I tell you.”

I sprung from the bed; I clutched him and pulled him to and fro.

“Tell me you lie—you lie—you lie!” I cried.

He did not. I could see it in his face. There and then the drought of Tophet withered and constricted my life. I was branded and doomed forevermore; a thing to shudder at and avoid.

“I will dress and come!” I said, relaxing from my hold on him, and turned away and began to hurry on my clothes. I had not felt so set in quietness since the morning of two days past. I could even think calmly and balance the pros and cons of my future behavior.

Each man must be his own judge, his own plaintiff, his own defendant—an atom of self-contained equity. By his own ruling in matters of right and wrong he must abide, suffer his own punishments, enjoy his own rewards. He is a lonely organism, in whom only himself took an interest, and as such he must be content to endure with calmness the misinterpretations of aliens.

Modred had forgiven me. Whatever was the condition, whatever the deed, it was too late now to convince me that no justification existed for my rebellion against fate.

My elder, my only brother now, watched me in silence as I dressed.

“Where is he?” I said, when I had finished.

“In bed as he was left,” said Jason. “I went in this morning, while you were asleep, and found him—ah, he looks horrible,” he cried, and broke off with a shudder.

I did not shrink; I felt braced up to any ordeal.

They were all in the room when we entered it. My father, Dr. Crackenthorpe, Zyp—even old Peggy, who was busying herself, with the vulture relish of her kind, over the little artificial decencies of dress and posture that seem such an outrage on the solemn unresistance of the dead.

Directly we came in Zyp ran to Jason and clung to him sobbing. I noticed it with a sort of dull resignation, and that was all; for Peggy, who had drawn a sheet over the lifeless face, pulled it down that I might look.

Then, for all my stoicism, I gave a cry.

I had left my brother the night before tired, needing rest, but, save for the extra pallor of his complexion that never boasted a great deal of color, much like his usual self. Now the dead face lying back on the pillows was awful to look upon. Spots and bars of livid purple disfigured its waxen whiteness—on the cheeks, the ears, the throat, where a deep patch was. It was greatly swollen, too, and the mouth so rigidly open that it had defied all effort to bind it close. A couple of pennies, like a hideous pair of glasses, lay, one over each eye, where they could only be kept in position by means of a filament drawn tightly round the head. The hands, stiffly crossed, with the fingers crooked like talons, lay over the breast, fastened into position with a ligature.

I turned away, feeling sick and faint. I think I reeled, for presently I found that Dr. Crackenthorpe was supporting me against his arm.

“Oh, why is he like that?” I whispered.

“’Tis a common afterclap in deaths by drowning,” said he, speaking in a loud, insistent voice, as if not for the first time. “A stoppage—a relapse. During the weak small hours, when the patient’s strength is at its lowest, the overwrought lungs refuse to work—collapse, and he dies of suffocation.”

He looked at my father as he spoke, but elicited no response. It was palpable that the heavy potations of the night had so deadened the latter’s faculties as to make him incapable for the moment of realizing the full enormity of the sight before him.

“Mark me,” said the doctor; “it’s a plain case, I say, nothing out of the way; no complications. The wretched boy to all intents and purposes has been drowned.”

“Who drowned him?” said my father. He spoke thickly, stupidly; but I started, with a dreadful feeling that the locked jaws must relax and denounce me before them all.

Seeing his hopeless state, the doctor took my father’s arm and led him from the room. Zyp still clung to my brother.

“Cover it up,” whispered Jason. “He isn’t a pretty sight!”

“He wasn’t a pretty boy,” muttered Peggy, reluctantly hiding the dreadful face; “To a old woman’s view it speaks of more than his deserts. Nobody’ll come to look at me, I expect.”

“You heard what the doctor said?” asked Jason, looking across at me.

“Yes.”

“Drowned—you understand? Drowned, Renny?”

“Drowned,” I repeated, mechanically.

“Come, Zyp,” he said; “this isn’t the place for you any longer.”

They passed out of the room, she still clinging to him, so that her face was hidden.

I did not measure his words at that time. I had no thought for nice discriminations of tone; what did I care for anything any longer?

Presently I heard old Peg muttering again. She thought the room was emptied of us and she softly removed the face cloth once more.

“Ay, there ye lies, Modred—safe never to spy on poor old Rottengoose again! Ye were a bad lot, ye were; but Peg’s been more’n enough for you, she has, my lad.”

Suddenly she saw me out of the tail of her eye, and turned upon me, livid with fury.

“What are ye listening to, Renalt? A black curse on spies, Renalt, I say!”

Then her manner changed and she came fawning at me fulsomely.

“What a good lad to stay wi’ his brother! But Peg’ll do the tending, Renalt. She be a crass old body and apt to reviling in her speech, but she don’t mean it, bless you; it’s the tic doldrums in her head.”

I repelled the horrible old creature and fled from the room. What she meant I neither knew nor cared, for we had always looked upon her as a feckless body, with a big worm in her brain.

All the long morning I wandered about the house, scarcely knowing what I did or whither I went. Once I found myself in the room of silence, not remembering when I had come there or for what reason. The fact, merely, was impressed upon me by a gradual change in the nature of my sensations. Something seemed to be asking a question of me which I was striving and striving to answer. It didn’t distress me at first, for a nearer misery overwhelmed everything, but by and by its insistence pierced a passage through all dull obstacles, and the something took up its abode in me and reigned and grew. I felt myself yielding, yielding; and strove now to beat off the inevitable horror of the answer that was rising in me. I did not know what it was, or the question to which it was a response—only I saw that if I yielded to it and spoke it, I should die then and there of the black terror of its revelation.

I sprung to my feet with a cry, and saw, or thought I saw, Modred standing by the water wheel and beckoning to me. If I had strength to escape, it was enough for that and no more, for everything seemed to go from me till I found myself sitting at the foot of the stairs, with Jason looking oddly down upon me.

“I needn’t get up,” I said. “Modred isn’t dead, after all.”

I think I heard him shout out. Anyhow, I felt myself lifted up and carried somewhere and put down. If they had thought to restrain me, however, they should have managed things better; for I was up in a moment and out at the window. I had often thought one wanted only the will to forget gravity and float through the air, and here I was doing it. What a glorious sensation it was! I laughed to think how long I had remained like a reptile, bound to the plodding miserable earth, when all the time I had power to escape from myself and float on and on far away from all those heart-breaking troubles. If I only went very swiftly at first I should soon be too distant for them to track me, and then I should be free. I felt a little anxious, for there was a faint noise behind me. I strove to put on pace; if my limbs had responded to my efforts no bird could have outstripped me. But I saw with agony that the harder I fought the less way I made. I struggled and sobbed and clutched myself blindly onward, and all the time the noise behind grew deeper. If I pushed myself off with a foot to the ground I only floated a very little way now. Then I saw a railing and pulled myself along with it toilsomely, but some great pressure was in front of me and my feet slipped into holes at every step. Panting, straining, slipping, as if on blood—why! It was blood! I had to yield at last.

My passion of hope was done with. I lay in a white set horror, not daring to move or look. How deadly quiet the room was, but not for long, for a little stealthy rustle of the sheet beside me prickled through my whole being with its ghastly stirring. Then I knew it had secretly risen on its elbow and was leaning over and looking down upon me. If I could only perspire, I thought, my bonds would loosen and I could escape from it. But it was cunning and knew that, too, and it sealed all the surface of my skin with its acrid exhalations. Suddenly it clutched me in its crooked arms and bore me down, down to the room of silence. There was a sickening odor there and the covering of the wheel was open. Then, with a shudder, as of death, I thought I found the answer; for now it was plain that the great wheel was driven by blood, not water. As I looked aghast, straining over, it gave me a stealthy push and, with a shriek, I splashed among the paddles and was whirled down. For ages I was spun and beaten round and round, mashed, mangled, gasping for breath and choked with the horrible crimson broth that fed the insane and furious grinding of the wheel. At the end, glutted with torture, it flung me forth into a parching desert of sand, and, spinning from me, became far away a revolving disk of red that made the low-down sun of that waste corner of the world.

I was alone, now—always alone. No footsteps had ever trod that trackless level, nor would, I knew, till time was ended. I had no hope; no green memory for oasis; no power of speech even. Then I knew I was dead; had been dead so long that my body had crackled and fallen to decay, leaving my soul only, like the stone of a fruit, quick with wretched impulse to shoot upward but dreadfully imprisoned from doing so.

Sometimes in the world the massive columns of the cathedral had suggested to me a like sensation; a moral impress of weight and stoniness that had driven me to bow my head and creep, sweating away from their inexorable stolidity. Now I was built into such a body—more, was an integral part of it. Yet could my pinioned nerves never assimilate its passionless obduracy, but jerked and struggled in agony to be free. Oh, how divine is the instinct that paints heaven all light and airiness, and innocent forevermore of the sense of weight!

Suddenly I heard Zyp’s voice, singing outside in the world, and in a moment tears, most blessed, blessed tears, sprung from my eyes and I was free. The stone cracked and fell asunder, and I leaped out madly shrieking at my release.

She was sitting under a tree in a beautiful meadow and her young voice rose sweetly as she prinked her hat with daisies and yellow king-cups. She called me to her and gave me tender names and smoothed away the pain from my forehead with kisses and the cunning of her elfish brown hand.

“Come, drink,” she said, “and you will be better.”

I woke to life and looked up. She was standing by my bed, holding a cup toward my lips, and at the foot Jason leaned, looking on.

“Have I been ill?” I said, in a voice so odd to me that I almost laughed.

“Yes, yes—a little; but you have come out of the black pit now into the forest.”

For some three weeks I had lain racked and shriveled in a nervous, delirious fever. It left me at last, the ghost of my old self, to face once more the problems of a ruined life. For many days these gave me no concern, or only in a fitful, indifferent manner. I was content to sip the dew of convalescence, to slumber and to cherish my exhaustion, and the others disturbed me but little. My recovery once assured, they left me generally to myself, scarce visiting me more often than was necessary for the administering of food or medicine. Sometimes one or other of them would come and sit by my bedside awhile and exchange with me a few desultory remarks; but this was seldom, and grew, with my strength more so, for the earth was brilliant with summer outside and naturally fuller of attractions than a sick-room.

Their neglect troubled me little at first; but by and by, when the first idle ecstasy of convalescence was beginning to deepen into a sense of responsibilities that I should soon have to gather up and adjust, it woke day by day an increasing uneasiness in my soul. As yet, it is true, the immediate past I could only call up before my mental vision as a blurred picture of certain events the significance of which was suggestive only. Gradually, however, detail by detail, the whole composition of it concentrated, on the blank sheet of my mind, and stood straight before me terribly uncompromising in its sternness of outline. Had I any reason to suppose, in short, that my share in Modred’s death was known to or guessed at by my father, Jason or Zyp? On that pivot turned the whole prospect of my future; for as to myself, were the secret to remain mine alone, I yet felt that I could make out life with a tolerable degree of resignation in the certain knowledge that Modred had forgiven me before he died, for a momentary mad impulse, the provocation to which had been so bitter—the reaction from which had been so immediate and so equally impulsive.

Of my father, I may say at once, I had little fear. His manner toward me when, as he did occasionally, he came and sat by me for a half-hour or so, was marked by a gentleness and affection I had never known him to exhibit before. Pathetic as it was, I could sometimes almost have wished it replaced by a sterner mood, a more dubious attitude; for my remorse at having so bereaved him became a barbed sting in presence of his new condescension to me that dated from the afternoon of my appeal to him, and was intensified by our common loss.

Of Zyp I hardly dared to think, or dared to do more than tremulously hover round the thought that Modred’s death had absolved me from my promise to him to avoid her. Still the thought was there and perhaps I only played with self-deception when I affected to fly from it out of a morbid loyalty to him that was gone. I could not live with and not long for her with all the passion I was capable of.

Therefore it was that I dreaded any possible disclosure of a suspicion on her part—dreaded it with a fever of the mind so fierce that it must truly have retarded my recovery indefinitely had not a counter-irritant occurred to me, in certain moods, in the form of a thought that perhaps, after all, my deed might not so affright one who, on her own showing, found a charm in the contemplation of evil.

But it was Jason I feared most. Something—I can hardly give it a name—had come to me within the last few weeks that seemed to be the preface to an awakening of the moral right on my part. In the unfolding of this new faculty I was startled and distressed to observe deformities in my brother where I had before seen nothing but manly beauty and a breezy recklessness that I delighted in. Beautiful bodily, I and all must still think him, though it had worried me lately to often observe an expression in his blue eyes that was only new to my new sense. This I can but describe, with despair of the melodramatic sound of it, as poisonous. The pupils were as full and purple as berries of the deadly nightshade.

It was not, however, his eyes only that baffled me. I saw that he coveted any novelty of sensation greedily, and that sooner than forego enjoyment of it he would ruthlessly stamp down whatever obstacle to its attainment crossed his path.

Now I knew in my heart that his hitherto indifference to Zyp was an affectation born only of wounded vanity, and that such as he could never voluntarily yield so piquant a prize to homelier rivals. I recalled, with a brooding apprehension, certain words of his on that fatal morning, that seemed intended to convey, at least, a dark suspicion as to the manner of Modred’s death. Probably they were bolts shot at random with a sinister object—for I could conceive no shadow of direct evidence against me. In that connection they might mean much or little; in one other I had small doubt that they meant a good deal—this in fact, that, if I got in his way with Zyp, down I should go.

Daily probing and analyzing such darkly dismal problems as these, I slowly crawled through convalescence to recovery.

It was a sweltering morning in early July that I first crept out of doors, with Zyp for my companion. It was happiness to me to have her by my side, though as yet my weak and watery veins could prickle to no ghost of passion. I had thought that life could hold nothing for me ever again but present pain and agonized retrospects. It was not so. The very smell of the freshly watered roads woke a shadowy delight in me as we stepped over the threshold. The buoyant thunder of the river, as it leaped under the old street bridge seemed to gush over my heart with a cleansing joyousness that left it white and innocent again.

We crossed the road and wandered by a zig-zag path to the ancient close, where soft stretches and paddocks of green lawn, “immemorial elms” and scattered buildings antique and embowered wrought such an harmonious picture as filled my tired soul with peace.

Here we sat down on an empty bench. I had much to question Zyp about—much to reflect on and put into words—but my neglected speech moved as yet on rusty hinges.

“Zyp,” I said presently, in a low voice; “tell me—where is he buried?”

“In the churchyard—St. John’s, under the hill, Renny.”

Not once until now had I touched upon this subject or mentioned Modred’s name to any one of them, and a great longing was upon me to get it over and done with.

“Who went?”

“Dad and Jason and Dr. Crackenthorpe.”

“Zyp, nobody has asked me anything about it. Don’t you all want to know how—how it happened?”

“He was caught in the weeds—you said so yourself, Renny.”

Vainly I strove to get under her words; intuition was, for the time being, a sluggish quantity in me.

“Yes; but——” I began, when she took me up softly.

“Dad said it was all clear and that we were never to bother you about it at all.”

A sigh of gratitude to heaven escaped me.

“And I for one,” said Zyp, “don’t intend to.”

Something in her words jarred unaccountably on my sick nerves.

“At first,” she said, just glancing at me, “dad thought there ought to be an inquest, but Dr. Crackenthorpe was so set against it that he gave in.”

“Dr. Crackenthorpe? Why was——”

“He said that juries took such an idiotic view of a father’s responsibilities; that dad might be censured for letting the boy run wild; that in any case the family’s habits of life would be raked over and cause a scandal that might make things very uncomfortable; that it was a perfectly plain case of drowning, and that he was quite willing to give a certificate that death was due to a rupture of some blood vessel in the brain following exhaustion from exposure—or something of that sort.”

“And he did?”

“Yes, at last, after a deal of talk, and he was buried quietly and there was an end of it.”

Not quite an end, Zyp—not quite an end!

She was very gentle and patient with me all the morning, and my poor soul brimmed over with gratitude. My pulses began even to flicker a little with hope that things might be as they were before the catastrophe. After all she was a very independent changeling and, if there existed in her heart any bias in my favor, Jason might find himself quite baffled in his efforts to control her inclinations.

Presently I turned to the same overclouding subject.

“What happened the day I was taken bad, Zyp?”

“Jason found you on the stairs, talking rubbish. They carried you to bed and you hardly left off talking rubbish for weeks. Don’t you remember anything of it?”

“Nothing, after—after I saw him lying there so dreadful.”

“Ah, it was ugly, wasn’t it? Well, you must have wandered off somewhere—anywhere; and the rest of us to the parlor. There dad and the doctor fell to words. They had spent all the night over that stupid drink, sleeping and quarreling by fits and couldn’t remember much about it. They had not heard any noise upstairs, either of them; but suddenly the doctor pointed to something hanging out of dad’s pocket. ‘Why, you must have gone to the boy’s room some time,’ he said. ‘Look there!’ Dad took it out and it was Modred’s braces, all twisted up and stuffed into his pocket.”

“Modred’s braces?”

“Yes; they all knew them, for they were blue, you know—the color he liked. Dad afterward thought he must have put them there to be out of the way while he was carrying Modred upstairs, but at the time he was furious. ‘D’ye dare to imply I had a hand in my son’s death?’ he shrieked. ‘I imply nothing; I mean no offense; they are plain for every one to see,’ said the doctor, going back a little. I thought he was frightened and that dad would jump at his throat like a weasel, and I clapped my hands, waiting for the battle. But it never came, for dad turned pale and called for brandy, and there was an end of it.”

This story of the doctor’s horrible suggestion wrought only one comfort in me—it warmed my heart with a great heat of loyalty to one who, I knew, for all his faults, could never be guilty of so inhuman a wickedness.

“I should like to kill that doctor,” I said, fiercely and proudly.

“So should I,” said Zyp. “I believe he would bleed soot like a chimney.”

Zyp was my companion during the greater part of that day and the next. Her manner toward me was uniformly gentle and attentive. Sometimes during meals I would become conscious of Jason’s eyes fixed upon one or other of us in a curious stare that was watchful and introspective at once, as if he were summing up the voiceless arguments of counsels invisible, while never losing sight of the fact that we he sat in judgment on were already convicted in his mind. This, for the time being, did not much disturb me. I was lulled to a sense of false security by the gracious championship I thought I now could rely upon.

It was the evening of the second day and we three were in the living-room together; Jason reading at the window. Zyp had been so kind to me that my heart was very full indeed, and now she sat by me, one hand slipped into mine, the other supporting her little pointed chin, while her sweet, flower-stained eyes communed with other, it seemed, than affairs of earth. A strange wistful tenderness had marked her late treatment of me; a pathetic solicitude that was inexpressibly touching to one so forlorn. Suddenly she rose and I heard Jason’s book rustle in his hand.

“Now, little boy,” she said, “’tis time you were in bed.”

Then she leaned toward me and whispered:

“Is he so unhappy? What has he done for Zyp’s sake?”

In a moment she bent and kissed me, with a soft kiss, on the forehead, and shooting a Parthian glance of defiance at Jason, who never spoke or moved, ran from the room.

All my soul thrilled with a delicious joy. Zyp, who had refused to kiss him, had kissed me. The ecstasy of her lips’ touch blotted out all significance her words might carry.

Half-stunned with triumphant happiness, I climbed the stairs and, getting into bed, fell into a luminous dream of thought in which for the moment was no place for apprehension.

I did not even hear Jason enter or shut the door, and it was only when he shook me roughly by the shoulder that I became conscious of his presence in the room.

He was standing over me, and the windows of his soul were down, and through them wickedness grinned like a skull.

“I’ve had enough of this,” he said in a terrible low voice. “D’you want to drive me to telling that I know it was you who killed Modred?”

So the blow had fallen!

Yet a single despairing effort I made to beat off or at least postpone the inevitable.

I sat up in bed and answered my brother back with, I could feel, ashen and quivering lips.

“What do you mean?” I said. “How dare you say such a thing?”

“I dare anything,” he said, “where I have a particular object in view.” He never took his eyes off me, and the cold devil in them froze my blood that had only now run so hotly.

“For yourself,” he went on, “I don’t care much whether you hang or live. You can come to terms with your own conscience I dare say, and a fat brother more or less may be a pure question of fit survival. That’s as it may be—but the girl here is another matter.”

“I didn’t kill him,” I could only say, dully.

Still keeping his eyes on me he sought for and drew from his jacket pocket a twist of dry and shrunken water weed. A horrible shudder seized me as I looked upon it.

“You didn’t think to see that again?” he said. “Do you recognize it? Of course you do. It was the rope you twisted round his foot, and that I found round his foot still, after dad had carried him upstairs, bundled round with those sacks, and I was left alone in the room with him a minute.”

My heart died within me. I dropped my sick, strained eyes and could only listen in agonized silence. And he went on quite pitilessly.

“You shouldn’t have left such evidence, you know—least of all for me to see. I had not forgotten the murder in your eyes when I spoke to you that morning and the evening before.”

He struck the weed lightly with his right hand.

“This stuff,” he said, “I know it, of course—grows up straight enough of itself. It wanted something human—or inhuman—to twist it round a leg in that fashion.”

I broke out with a choking cry.

“I did it,” I said; “but it wasn’t murder—oh, Jason, it wasn’t murder, as you mean it.”

He gave a little cold laugh.

“No doubt we have different standards of morality,” he said. “We won’t split hairs. Say it was murder as a judge and jury would view it.”

“It wasn’t! Will you believe me if I tell you the truth?”

“That depends upon the form it takes.”

“I’ll tell you. It is the truth—before God, it is the truth! I won’t favor myself. I had been mad with him, I own, but had nearly got over it. I was out all day on the hills and thought I should like a bathe on my way home. I went through the ‘run’ and saw he was there. At first I thought I would leave him to himself, but just as I was going he saw me and a grin came over his face and—Jason, you know that if I had gone away then, he would have thought me afraid to meet him.”

“You can leave me, Renalt, out of the question, if you please.”

“I meant no harm—indeed I didn’t—but when I got there he taunted and mocked at me. I didn’t know what I was doing; and when he jumped for the water I followed him and twisted that round. Then in a single moment I saw what I had done—and was mad to unfasten it. It would not come away at first, and when at last I got him free and to the shore he was insensible. If you could only know what I suffered then, you would pity me, Jason—you would; you could not help it.”

I stole a despairing look at his face and there was no atom of softness in it.

“He came to on the way home and I was wild with joy, and at night, Jason, when you were in bed and asleep, I crept into his room and begged for his forgiveness and he forgave me.”

“Without any condition? That wasn’t like Modred. What did he ask for in return?”

I was silent.

“Come,” he persisted, “what did he want? You may as well tell me all. You don’t fancy that I believe he forgave you without getting something substantial in exchange?”

“I was to give up all claim to Zyp,” I said in a low, suffering voice.

Jason laughed aloud.

“Oh, Modred,” he cried, “you were a pretty bantling, upon my word! Who would have thought the dear fatty had such cunning in him?”

His callous merriment struck me with a dumb horror as of sacrilege. But he subdued it directly and returned to me and my misery in the same repressed tone as before.

“Well,” he said, “I have heard it all, I suppose. It makes little difference. You know, of course, you are morally responsible for his death, just the same as if you had stuck a knife into his heart.”

I could only hide my face in the bedclothes, writhed all through with agony. There was a little spell of silence; then my brother bespoke my attention with a gentle push.

“Renny, do you want all this known to the others?”

I raised my head in a sudden gust of passion.

“Do what you like!” I cried. “I know you now, and you can’t make it much worse!”

“Oh, yes,” he said, coolly; “I can make it a good deal worse. Nobody but I knows at present, don’t you see?”

I looked at him with a sudden gleam of hope.

“Don’t you intend to tell, Jason?”

He laughed again, lightly.

“That depends. I must borrow my cue from Modred and make conditions.”

I had no need to ask what they were. In whatever direction I looked now, I saw nothing but a blank and deadly waste.

“I want the girl—you understand? I need not go into particulars. She interests me and that’s enough.”

“Yes,” I said, quietly.

“There must be no more of that sentimental foolery between you and her. I bore it as long as you were ill; but, now you’re strong again, it must stop. If it doesn’t, you know what’ll happen.”

With that he turned abruptly on his heel and began to undress. I listened for the deep breathing that announced him to be asleep with a strained fever of impatience. I felt that I could not think cleanly or collectedly with that monstrous consciousness of his awake in the room.

Perhaps, in all my wretchedness, the full discovery of his baseness of soul was as bitter a wound as any I had received. I had so looked up to him as a superior being, so sunned myself in the pride of relationship to him; so lovingly submitted to his boyish patronage and condescension. The grief of my discovery was very real and terrible and would in itself, I think, have gone far to blight my existence had no fearfuller blast descended to wither it.

Well, it was all one now. Whatever immunity from disaster I was to enjoy henceforth must be on sufferance only.

Had I been older and sinfuller I might have grasped in my despair at the coward’s resource of self-destruction; as it was, I thought of flight. By and by, perhaps, when vigor should return to me, and with it resolution, I should be able to face firmly the problem of my future and take my own destinies in hand.

Little sleep came to me that night, and that only of a haunted kind. I felt haggard and old as I struggled into my clothes the next morning, and all unfit to cope with the gigantic possibilities of the day. Jason had gone early to the fatal pool for a bathe.

At breakfast, in the beginning, Zyp’s manner to me was prettily sympathetic and a little shy. It was the first of my great misery that I must repel her on the threshold of our better understanding, and see her fall away from me for lack of the least expression of that passionate devotion and gratitude that filled my heart to bursting. I could see at once that she was startled—hurt, perhaps, and that she shrunk from me immediately. Jason talked airily to my father all through the meal, but I knew his senses to be as keenly on the alert as if he had sat in silence, with his eyes fixed upon my face.

I choked over my bread and bacon; I could not swallow more than a mouthful of the coffee in my cup, and Zyp sat back in her chair, never addressing me after that first rebuff, but pondering on me angrily with her eyes full of a sort of wonder.

She stopped me peremptorily as, breakfast over, I was hastening out with all the speed I could muster, and asked me if I didn’t want her company that morning.

“No,” I answered; “I am well enough to get about by myself now.”

“Very well,” she said. “Then you must do without me altogether for the future.”

She turned on her heel and I could only look after her in dumb agony. Then I crept down into the yard and confided my grief to the old cart wheels.

Presently, raising my head, I saw her standing before me, her hands under her apron, her face grave with an expression, half of concern, half of defiance.

“Now, if you please,” she said, “I want to know the meaning of this?”

“Of what?” I asked, with wretched evasiveness.

“You know—your manner toward me this morning.”

“I have done nothing,” I muttered.

“You have insulted me, sir. Is it because I kissed you last night?”

“Oh, Zyp!” I cried aloud in great pain. “You know it isn’t—you know it isn’t!”

I couldn’t help this one cry. It was forced from me.

“Then what’s the reason?”

“I can’t give it—I have none. I want to be alone, that’s all.”

She stood looking at me a moment in silence, and the line of her mouth hardened.

“Very well,” she said, at last. “Then, understand, I’ve done with you. I thought at first it was a mistake or that you were ill again. I’ve been kind to you; you can’t say I haven’t given you a chance. And I pitied you because you were alone and unhappy. Jason, I will tell you, hinted an evil thing of you to me, but even if it was true, which I didn’t believe, I forgave you, thinking, perhaps, it was done for my sake. Well, if it was, I tell you now it was useless, for you will be nothing to me ever again.”

And, with these cruel words, she left me. The proud child of the woods could brook no insult to her condescension, and from my comrade she had become my enemy.

I suppose I should have been relieved that the inevitable rupture had occurred so swiftly and effectually. Judge you, you poor outcasts who, sanctifying a love in your tumultuous breasts, have had to step aside and yield to another the fruit you so coveted.

Once pledged to antagonism, Zyp, it will be no matter for wonder, adopted anything but half-measures. Had it only been her vanity that was hurt she would have made me pay dearly for the blow. As it was, her ingenuity in devising plans for my torture and discomfiture verged upon the very bounds of reason.

At first she contented herself with mere verbal pleasantries and disdainful snubbings. As, however, the days went on and my old strength and health obstinately returned to me, despite the irony of the shattered soul within, her animosity grew to be an active agent so persistent in its methods that I verily thought my brain would give way under the load.

I cannot, indeed, recall a tithe of the Pucklike devices she resorted to for my moral undoing, and which, after all, I might have endured to the end had it not been for one threading torment that accompanied all her whimsies like a strain of diabolical music. This was an ostentatious show of affection for Jason, which, I truly believe, from being more or less put on in exaggerated style for my edification, became at length such a habit with her as may be considered, in certain dispositions, one form of love.

The two now were seldom apart. Once, conscious of my presence, she kissed Jason on the lips, because he had brought her a little flowering root of some plant she desired. I saw his face fire up darkly and he looked across at me with a triumph that made me almost hate him.

And the worst of it was that I knew that my punishment was not more than commensurate with the offense; that my sin had been grievous and its retribution not out of proportion. How could full atonement and Zyp have been mine together?

Still, capable of acknowledging the fitness of things in my sadder hours of loneliness, my nature, once restored to strength, could not but strive occasionally to throw off the incubus that it felt it could not bear much longer without breaking down for good and all. I had done wrong on the spur of a single wicked impulse, but I was no fiend to have earned such bitter reprisal. By slow degrees rebellion woke in my heart against the persistent cruelty of my two torturers. Had I fled at this juncture, the wild scene that took place might have been averted, and the exile, which became mine nevertheless, have borne, perhaps, less evil fruit than in the result it did.

One November morning—my suffering had endured all these months—my father and Dr. Crackenthorpe stood before the sitting-room fire, talking, while I sat with a book at the table, vainly trying to concentrate my attention on the printed lines.

Since my recovery I had seen the doctor frequently, but he had taken little apparent notice of me. Now, I had racked my puzzled mind many a time for recollection of the conversation I had been witness of on the night preceding my seizure, but still the details of it had eluded me, though its gist remained in a certain impression of uneasiness that troubled me when I thought of it. Suddenly, on this morning, a few words of the doctor’s brought the whole matter vividly before me again.

“By the bye, Trender,” he said, drawlingly, and sat down and began to poke the fire—“by the bye, have you ever found that thing you accused me of losing for you on a certain night—you know when?”

“No,” said my father, curtly.

“Was it of any value, now?”

“Maybe—maybe not,” said my father.

“That don’t seem much of answer. Perhaps, now, it came from the same place those others did.”

“That’s nothing to you, Dr. Crackenthorpe.”

“Well, you say it’s lost, anyhow. Supposing I found it, would you agree to my keeping it? Treasure-trove, you know”—and he looked up with a grin, balancing the poker perpendicularly in his hand. “Treasure-trove, my friend,” he repeated, with emphasis, and gave the other a keen look.

Something in the tone of his speech woke light in my brain, and I remembered at a flash. I stole an anxious glance at my father. His face was pale and set with anger, but there was an expression in his eyes that looked like fear.

“You don’t mean to tell me you have found it?” he said in a forced voice.

“Oh, by no means,” answered the doctor. “We haven’t all your good luck. Only you are so full of the unexpected in producing valuables from secret places, like a conjurer, that I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind my keeping this particular one if I should chance to pick it up.”

“Keep it, certainly, if you can find it,” said my father, I could have thought almost with a faint groan.

“Thanks for the permission, my friend; I’ll make a point of keeping my eyes open.”

When did he not? They were pretty observant now on Zyp and Jason, who, as he spoke, walked into the room.

“Hullo!” said my brother. “Good-morning to you, doctor, and a sixpence to toss for your next threppenny fee.”

“Hold your tongue,” cried my father, angrily.

“I would give a guinea to get half for attending on your inquest,” said the doctor, sourly. “Keep your wit for your wench, my good lad, and see then that she don’t go begging.”

“I could give you better,” muttered Jason, cowed by my father’s presence, “but it shall keep and mature.” Then he turned boisterously on me.

“Why don’t you go out, Renny, instead of moping at home all day?”

His manner was aggressive, his tone calculated to exasperate.

Moved by discretion I rose from my chair and made for the door; but he barred my way.

“Can’t you answer me?” he said, with an ugly scowl.

“No—I don’t want to. Let me pass.”

My father had turned his back upon us and was staring gloomily down at the fire.

I heard Zyp give a little scornful laugh and she breathed the word “coward” at me.

I stopped as if I had struck against a wall. All my blood surged back on my heart and seemed to leave my veins filled with a tingling ichor in its place.

“Perhaps I have been,” I said, in a low voice, “but here’s an end of it.”

Jason tittered.

“We’re mighty stiltish this morning,” he said, with a sneer. “What a pity it’s November, so that we can’t have a plunge for the sake of coolness—except that they say the pool’s haunted now.”

I looked at him with blazing eyes, then made another effort to get past him, but he repelled me violently.

“You don’t know your place,” he said, and gave an insolent laugh. “Stand back till I choose to let you go.”

I heard the doctor snigger and Zyp gave a second little cluck. My father was still absorbed—lost in his own dark reflections.

The loaded reel of endurance was spinning to its end.

“You might have given all your morning to one of your Susans yonder,” said my brother, mockingly. “Now she’s gone, I expect, with her apron to her eyes. She’ll enjoy her pease pudding none the less, I dare say, and perhaps look out for a more accommodating clown. It won’t be the first time you’ve had to take second place.”

I struck him full between the eyes and he went down like a polled ox. All the pent-up agony of months was in my blow. As I stepped back in the recoil, madly straining even then to beat under the more furious devil that yelled in me for release, I was conscious of a hurried breath at my ear—a swift whisper: “Kill him! Stamp on his mouth! Don’t let him get up again!” and knew that it was Zyp who spoke.

I put her back fiercely. Jason had sprung to his feet—half-blinded, half-stunned. His face was inhuman with passion and was working like a madman’s. But before he could gather himself for a rush, my father had him in his powerful arms. It all happened in a moment.

“What’s all this?” roared my father. “Knock under, you whelp, or I’ll strangle you in your collar!”

“Let me go!” cried my brother. “Look at him—look what he did!”

He was choking and struggling to that degree that he could hardly articulate. I think foam was on his lips, and in his eyes the ravenous thirst for blood.

“He struck me!” he panted—“do you hear? Let me go—let me kill him as he killed Modred!”

There was a moment’s silence. Dr. Crackenthorpe, who had sat passively back in his chair during the fray, with his lips set in an acrid smile, made as if to rise, leaning forward with quick attention. Then my father shook Jason till he reeled and clutched at him.

“Have a mind what you say, you mad cur!” he cried in a terrible voice.

“It’s true! Let me go! He confessed it all to me—to me, I say!”

I stood up among them alone, stricken, and I was not afraid. I was a better man than my accuser; a better brother, despite my sin. And his dagger, plunged in to destroy, had only released the long-accumulating agony of my poor inflamed and swollen heart.

“Father,” I said, “let him alone. It is true, what he says.”

He flung Jason from him with violence.

“Move a step,” he thundered, daring him, “and I’ll send you after Modred!”

He came to me and took me gently by the shoulder.

“Renalt, my lad,” he said, “I am waiting to hear.”

I did not falter, or condone my offense, or make any appeal to them whatsoever. The kind touch on my arm moved me so that I could have broken into tears. But my task was before me and I could afford no atom of self-indulgence, did I wish to get through it bravely.

As I had told my story to Jason, I told it now; and when I had finished I waited, in a dead silence, the verdict. I could hear my brother breathing thickly—expectantly. His fury had passed in the triumph of his own abasement.

Suddenly my father put the hand he had held on my shoulder before his face and a great sob coming from him broke down the stone walls of my pride.

“Dad—dad!” I cried in agony.

He recovered himself in a moment and moved away; then faced round and addressed me, but his eyes looked down and would not meet mine.

“Before God,” he said, “I think you are forgiven for a single impulse we all might suffer and not all of us recoil from the instant after, but I think that this can be no place for you any longer.”

Then he turned upon Dr. Crackenthorpe.

“You!” he cried; “you, man, who have heard it all, thanks to that dirty reptile yonder! Do you intend to peach?”

The doctor pinched his wiry chin between finger and thumb, with his cheeks lifted in a contemplative fashion.

“The boy,” he said, “is safe from any one’s malice. No jury would convict on such evidence. Still, I agree with you, it’s best for him to go.”

“You hear, Renalt?” said my father. “I’ll not drive you in any way, or deny you harbor here if you think you can face it out. You shall judge for yourself.”

“I have judged,” I answered; “I will go.”

I walked past them all, with head erect, and up to my room, where I sat down for a brief space to collect my thoughts and face the future. Hardly had I got hold of the first end of the tangle when there came a knock at the door. I opened it and Zyp was outside.

“You fool!” she whispered; “you should have done as I told you. It’s too late now. Here, take this. Dad told me to give it you”—and she thrust a canvas bag of money into my hand, looking up at me with her unfathomable eyes.

As I took it, suddenly she flung her arms about my neck and kissed me passionately, once, twice, thrice, on the lips, and so pushed me from her and was gone. And as I stood there came to my ears a faint wail from above, and I said to myself doggedly: “It is a gull flying over the house.”

Taking nothing with me but cap, stick and the simple suit of clothes I had on, I descended the stairs with a firm tread and passed the open door of the sitting-room. There was silence there, and in silence I walked by it without a glance in its direction. It held but bitter memories for me now and was scarce less haunted in its way than the other. And so to me would it always be—haunted by the beautiful wild memory of a changeling, whose coming had wrought the great evil of my life, to whom I, going, attributed no blame, but loved her then as I had loved her from the first.

The booming of the wheel shook, like a voice of mockery, at me as I passed the room of silence. Its paddles, I thought, seemed reeling with wicked merriment, and its creaking thunder to spin monotonously the burden of one chant.

“I let you go, but not to escape—I let you go, but not to escape.” The fancy haunted my mind for weeks to come.

In the darkness of the passage a hand seized mine and wrung it fiercely.

“You don’t mean to let the grass grow on your resolve, then, Renalt?” said my father’s voice, rough and subdued.

“No, dad; I can do no good by delaying.”

“I’m sore to let you go, my boy. But it’s for the best—it’s for the best. Don’t think hardly of me; and be a fine lad and strike out a path for yourself.”

“God bless you, dad,” I said, and so left him.

As I stepped into the frosty air the cathedral bells rung out like iron on an anvil. The city roofs and towers sparkled with white; the sun looked through a shining mist, giving earnest of gracious hours to come.

It was a happy omen.

I turned my back on the old decaying past and set my face toward London.

In the year 1860, of which I now write, so much of prejudice against railways still existed among many people of a pious or superstitious turn of mind, that I can quote much immediate precedent in support of my resolve to walk to London rather than further tempt a Providence I had already put to so severe a strain. It must be borne in mind of course that we Trenders were little more than barbarians of an unusual order, who had been nourished on a scorn of progress and redeemed only by a natural leaning toward picturesqueness of a pagan kind. Moreover, the sense of mystery, which was an integral part of our daily experience, had ingrained in us all a general antagonism toward unconstructed agencies. Lastly, not one of us had ever as yet been in a train.

Still, it was with no feeling of inability to carve a road for myself through the barriers to existence that I drew, on the evening of my third day’s tramp, toward the overlapping pall that was the roof of the “City of Dreadful Night.”

I had slept, on my road, respectively at Farnham and Guildford, where, in either case, cheap accommodation was easily procurable, and foresaw a difficulty, only greater in proportion, in finding reasonable lodging in London during the time I was seeking work. Indifferently I pictured this city to myself as only an elongated High street, with ramifications more numerous and extended than those of the old burgh that was my native town. I was startled, overwhelmed, dazed with the black, aimless scurrying of those interwoven strings of human ants, that ran by their thronging brick heaps, eager in search for what they never seemed to find, or shot and vanished into tunnels and alleys of darkness, or were attracted to and scorched up by, apparently, the broad sheets of flame that were the shop windows of their Vanity Fair. Moving amid the swarm from vision to vision—always an inconsiderable atom there without meaning or individuality—always stunned and stupefied by the threatening masses of masonry that hemmed me in, and accompanied me, and broke upon me in new dark forms through every vista and gap that the rank growth of ages had failed to block—the inevitable sense grew upon me, as it grows upon all who pace its interminable streets friendless, of walking in a world to which I was by heavenly birthright an alien.

Near midnight, I turned into a gaunt and lonely square, where comparative quiet reigned.

I had entered London by way of Waterloo bridge, as the wintry dusk was falling over house and river, and all these hours since had I been pacing its crashing thoroughfares, alive only to wonder and the cruel sense of personal insignificance. As to a lodging and bed for my weary limbs—sooner had Childe Roland dared the dark tower than I the burrows, that night, of the unknown pandemonium around me. I had slept in the open of the fields before now. Here, though winter, it hardly seemed that there was an out-of-doors, but that the buildings were only so many sleeping closets in a dark hall.

All round the square inside was a great inclosure encompassed by a frouzy hoarding of wood, and set in the middle of the inclosure was some dim object that looked like a ruined statue. Such by day, indeed, I found it to be, and of no less a person than his late majesty, King George the First. When my waking eyes first lighted on him, I saw him to be half-sunk into his horse, as if seeking to shield himself therein from the shafts of his persecutors, who, nothing discomposed, had daubed what remained of the crippled charger himself with blotches of red and white paint.

I walked once or twice round the square, seeking vainly, at first, to still the tumult of my brain. The oppressive night of locked-up London, laden like a thunder cloud with store of slumbering passions, was lowering now and settling down like a fog. The theaters were closed; the streets echoing to the last foot-falls. Seeing a hole in the hoarding, I squeezed through it and withdrew into the rank grass and weeds that choked the interior of the inclosure. I had bought and brought some food with me, and this I fell to munching as I sat on a hummock of rubbish, and was presently much comforted thereby, so that nothing but sleep seemed desirable to me in all the world. Therefore I lay down where I was and buttoning my coat about me, was, despite the frosty air, soon lost in delicious forgetfulness. At first my slumber was broken by reason of the fitful rumble of wheels, or pierced by voices and dim cries that yet resounded phantomly here and there, as if I lay in some stricken city, where only the dying yet lived and wailed, but gradually these all passed from me.

I awoke with the gray of dawn on my face and sat up. My limbs were cramped and stiff with the cold, and a light rime lay upon my clothes. Otherwise no bitterer result had followed my rather untoward experiment.

Then I looked about me and saw for the first time that I was not alone. Certain haggard and unclean creatures were my bed-fellows in that desolate oasis. They lay huddled here and there, like mere scarecrows blown over by the wind and lying where they fell. There were women among them, and more than one pinched and tattered urchin, with drawn, white face resolved by sleep into nothing but pathos and starvation.

There they lay at intervals, as if on a battlefield where the crows had been busy, and each one seemed to lie flattened into the earth as dead bodies lie.

I could not but be thankful that I had stumbled over no one of them when I had entered—an accident which would very possibly have lost me my little store of money, if it had, indeed, led to nothing worse. As it was, I prepared for a hasty exit, and was about to rise, when I became conscious that my movements were under observation by one who lay not twenty feet from me.

He was so hidden by the rank grass that at first I could make out nothing but a long, large-boned face peering at me above the stems through eyes as black and glinting as boot buttons. A thatch of dark hair fell about his ears and forehead, and his eyebrows, also black, were sleek and pointed like ermine tips.

The face was so full and fine that I was startled when its owner rose, which he did on the instant, to see that he was a thick-set and stunted cripple. He shambled toward me with a winning smile on his lips, and before I could summon resolution to retreat, had come and sat down beside me.

“We seem the cocks of this company,” he said, in a deep musical voice. “Among the blind the one-eyed—eh?”

He was warmly and decently clad, and I could only wonder at his choice of bedroom. He read me in a look.

“I’ve a craving for experiences,” he said. “These aren’t my usual quarters.”

“No,” I said; “I suppose not.”

“Nor yours?” he went on, with a keen glance at me.

To give my confidence to a stranger was an unwise proceeding, but I was guileless as to the craft of great cities, and in this case my innocence was in a manner my good fortune.

I told him that I was only yesterday from the country, after a three days’ tramp, and how I was benighted.

“Ah,” he said. “Up after work, I suppose?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Well,” said he, “let’s understand your capacities. Guess my age first.”

“Forty,” said I, at a venture, for indeed he might have been that or anything else.

“I’m 21,” he said. “Don’t I look it? We mature early in London here. What do you think’s my business?”

“Oh, you’re a gentleman, aren’t you?” I asked, with some stir of shyness.

“I’m a printer’s hand. That means something very different to you, don’t it? Maybe you’ll develop in time. Where are you from?”

I told him.

“Ah,” he said. “You’ve a proverb down your way: ‘Manners makeyth man.’ So they may, as they construe it—a fork for the fingers and a pretty trick of speech; but it’s the manners of the soul make the gentleman. Do you believe in after-life?”

“Of course I do. Where do the ghosts come from otherwise?”

He laughed pleasantly, rubbing his chin in a perplexed manner, and then I noticed that his fingers were stunted like a mechanic’s and stained with printer’s ink.

“Old Ripley would fancy you,” he said.

“Who’s he?”

“My governor—printer, binder and pamphleteer, an opponent of all governments but his own. He’s an anarchist, who’d like to transfer himself and his personal belongings to some desert satellite, after laying a train to blow up the earth with nitro-glycerin and then he’d want to overturn the heavenly system.”

“He doesn’t sound hopeful.”

“No, he isn’t, but he’s fairly original for a fanatic. I wonder if he’d give you work?”

“Oh, thanks!” I exclaimed.

“Nonsense; you needn’t mind him. He’s only gas. Unmixed with his native air he wouldn’t be explosive, you know. I can imagine him a very unprogressive angel. It’s notoriety he wants. Nothing satisfies his sort in the end like a scaffold outside of Newgate with 40,000 eyes looking on and 12 guineas paid for a window in the ‘Magpie and Stump.’”

“Are you——” I began, when he took me up with:

“His kind? Not a bit of it. I’m an idealist—a dreamer asking the way to Utopia. I look about for the finger-posts in places like this. One must learn and suffer to dream properly.”

“You can do that and yet have ugly enough dreams,” I said, with subdued emphasis.

“That oughtn’t to be so,” he said, looking curiously at me. “Nightmare comes from self-indulgence. Cosset your grievances and they’ll control you. You must be an ascetic in the art of sensation.”

“And starve on a pillar like that old saint Mr. Tennyson wrote of,” I answered.

“Go and hang yourself,” he cried, pushing at me with a laugh. “Hullo! Who’s here?”

A couple of the scarecrows, evil-looking men both, had risen, and stood over us to one side, listening.

“Toff kenners,” I heard one of them mutter, “and good for jink, by the looks.”

“Tap the cady,” the other murmured, and both creatures shuffled round to the front of us.

“Good for a midjick, matey?” asked the more ruffianly looking of the two in a menacing tone.

I started, bewildered by their jargon. My companion looked up at them smiling and drumming out a tune on his knee.

“Stow it,” said the smaller man to the other; “I’ve tried the griffin and it don’t take.” Then he bent his body and whined in a fulsome voice: “Overtaken with a drop, good gentlemen? And won’t you pay a trifle for your lodgings, now?”

I was about to rise, but a gesture on the part of both fellows showed me that they intended to keep us at our disadvantage. A blowzed and noisome woman was advancing to join the group.

“Be alert,” whispered my companion. “We must get out of this.”

The words were for me, but the men gathered their import and assumed a threatening manner. No doubt, seeing but a boy and a cripple, they valued us beneath our muscular worth.

“Come,” said the big man, “we don’t stand on ceremony; we want the price of a drink.”

He advanced upon us, as he spoke, with an ugly look and in a moment my companion had seized him by the ankles and whirled him over against his friend, so that the two crashed down together. The woman set up a screech, as we jumped to our feet, and we saw wild heads start up here and there like snakes from the grass. But before any one could follow us we had gained the rent in the hoarding and slipped through. Glancing back, after I had made my exit, I saw one of the men strike the woman full in the face and fell her to the ground. It was his gentle corrective to her for not having stopped us, and the sight made my blood so boil that I was on the point of tearing back, had not my companion seized and fairly carried me off. As in many cripples, his strength of arm was prodigious.

“Now,” he said, when he had quieted me, “we’ll go home to breakfast.”

“Where?” said I.

“Home, my friend. Oh, I have one, you know, for all my sleeping out there. That was a test for experience; my first one of the kind, but valuable in its way.”

“But——” I began.

“Yes, you will,” he cried. “You’ll be my guest. I’ve taken a bit of a fancy to you. What’s your name?”

When I had told him, “Duke Straw’s mine,” he said; “though I’m not of strawberry-leaf descent. But it’s a good name for a dreamer, isn’t it? Have you ever read ‘Feathertop,’ by Hawthorne?”

“No,” I said.

“Never mind, then. When you do, you’ll recognize my portrait—a poor creature of straw that moves by smoke.”

“What smoke?” I asked, bewildered.

“Perhaps you’ll find out some day—if Ripley takes a fancy to you.”

“You don’t want me to go to him?”

“Certainly I do. I’m going to take you with me when I tramp to work at 9 o’clock.”

He was so cool and masterful that I could only laugh and walk on with him.

It was broad day when we emerged from the inclosure, and sound was awakening along the wintry streets. London stood before me rosy and refreshed, so that she looked no longer formidably unapproachable as she had in her garb of black and many jewels. I might have entered her yesterday with the proverbial half-crown, so easily was my lot to fall in accommodating places.

Duke Straw, whom I was henceforth to call my friend, conducted me by a township of intricate streets to the shop of a law stationer, in a petty way of business, which stood close by Clare market and abutted on Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Here he had a little bedroom, furnished with a cheap, oil-cooking stove, whereon he heated his coffee and grilled his bacon.

Simon Cringle, the proprietor of the shop, was taking his shutters down as we walked up. He was a little, spare man, with a vanity of insignificance. His iron-gray hair fell in short, well-greased ringlets and his thin beard in a couple more, that hung loose like dangled wood shavings; his coiled mustaches reminded one of watch springs; his very eyebrows, like bees’ legs, were humped in the middle and twisted up into fine claws at the tips. Duke, in his search for lodging and experience, had no sooner seen this curiosity than he closed with him.

He gave my companion a grandiloquent “Good-morning.”

“Up with the lark, Mr. Straw,” said he, “and I hope, sir, with success in the matter of getting the first worm?” Here he looked hard at me.

“He found me too much of a mouthful,” said I; “so he brought me home for breakfast.”

Duke laughed.

“Come and be grilled,” said he. “Anyhow they roast malt-worms in a place spoken of by Falstaff.”

We had a good, merry meal. I should not have thought it possible my heart could have lightened so. But there was a fascinating individuality about my companion that, I am afraid, I have but poorly suggested. He gave me glimmerings of life in a higher plane than that which had been habitual to me. No doubt his code of morals was eccentric and here and there faulty. His manner of looking at things was, however, so healthy, his breezy philosophy so infectious, that I could not help but catch some of his complaint—which was, like that of the nightingale, musical.

Perhaps, had I met him by chance six months ago, my undeveloped soul would have resented his easy familiarity with a cubbish snarl or two. Now my receptives were awakened; my armor of self-sufficiency eaten to rags with rust; my heart plaintive for communion with some larger influence that would recognize and not abhor.

At 8:45 he haled me off to the office, which stood a brief distance away, in a thoroughfare called Great Queen street. Here he left me awhile, bidding me walk up and down and observe life until his chief should arrive, which he was due to do at the half-hour.

I thought it a dull street after some I had seen, but there were many old book and curiosity shops in it that aroused my interest. While I was looking into one of them I heard Duke call.

“Here,” he said, when I reached him; “answer out and I think Ripley will give you work. I’m rather a favorite with him—that’s the truth.”

He led me into a low-browed room, with a counter. Great bales of print and paper went up to the ceiling at the back, and the floor rumbled with the clank of subterranean machinery. One or two clerks were about and wedged into a corner of the room was a sort of glazed and wooden crate of comfortable proportions, which was, in fact, the chapel of ease of the minister of the place.

Into this den Duke conducted me with ceremony, and, retreating himself, left me almost tumbling over a bald-headed man, with a matted black beard, on which a protruding red upper lip lay like a splash of blood, who sat at a desk writing.

“Shut the door,” he said, without looking up.

“It is shut, sir.”

He trailed a glance at me, as if in scrutiny, but I soon saw he could only have been balancing some phrase, for he dived again and went on writing.

Presently he said, very politely, indeed, and still intent on his paper: “Are you a cadet of the noble family of Kinsale, sir?”

“No, sir,” I answered, in surprise.

“You haven’t the right to remain covered in the presence of the king?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I’m king here. What the blazes do you mean by standing in a private room with your hat on?”

I plucked it off, tingling.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Mr. Straw brought me in so suddenly, I lost my head and my cap went with it, I suppose. But I see it’s not the only thing one may lose here, including tempers!” And with that I turned on my heel and was about to beat a retreat, fuming.

“Come back!” shouted Mr. Ripley. “If you go now, you go for good!”

I hesitated; the memory of my late comrade restored my equilibrium.

“I didn’t mean to be rude, sir,” I said. “I shall be grateful to you if you will give me work.”

He had condescended to turn now, and was looking full at me with frowning eyes, but with no sign of anger on his face.

“Well, you can speak out,” he said. “How do you come to know Straw?”

“I met him by chance and we got talking together.”

“How long have you been in London?”

“Since yesterday evening.”

“Why did you leave Winton?”

“To get work.”

“Have you brought a character with you?”

Here was a question to ask a Trender! But I answered, “No, I never thought of it,” with perfect truth.

“What can you do?”

“Anything I’m told, sir.”

“That’s a compromising statement, my friend. Can you read and write?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Don’t you know anything now about the habits of birds and beasts and fishes?”

“Oh, yes! I could tell you a heap about that.”

“Could you? Very well; I’ll give you a trial. I take you on Straw’s recommendation. His opinion, I tell you, I value more than a score of written characters in a case like this. You’ve to make yourself useful in fifty different ways.”

I assented, with a light heart, and he took me at my word and the further bargain was completed. My wages were small at first, of course; but, with what I had in hand, they would keep me going no doubt till I could prove myself worth more to my employer.

In this manner I became one of Ripley’s hands and later on myself a pamphleteer in a small way. I wrote to my father that evening and briefly acquainted him of my good fortune.

For some months my work was of a heterogeneous description. Ripley was legitimately a job printer, on rather a large scale, and a bookbinder. To these, however, he added a little venturesomeness in publishing on his own account, as also a considerable itch for scribbling. Becoming at a hint a virulent partisan in any extremist cause whatsoever, it will be no matter for wonder that his private room was much the resort of levelers, progressives and abolitionists of every creed and complexion. There furious malcontents against systems they were the first to profit by met to talk and never to listen. There fanatical propagandists, eager to fly on the rudimentary wing stumps of first principles, fluttered into print and came flapping to the ground at the third line. There, I verily believe, plots were laid that would presently have leveled powers and potentates to the ground at a nod, had any of the conspirators ever possessed the patience to sit on them till hatched. This, however, they never did. All their fiery periphrastics smoked off into the soot of print and in due course lumbered the office with piles of unmarketable drivel.

Mr. Ripley had, however, other strings to his bow, or he would not have prospered. He did a good business in bookselling and was even now and again successful in the more conventional publishing line. In this connection I chanced to be of some service to him, to which circumstance I owed a considerable improvement in my position after I had been with him getting on a year. He had long contemplated, and at length begun to work upon, a series of handbooks on British birds and insects, dealt with county by county. In the compilation of these much research was necessary, wherein I proved myself a useful and painstaking coadjutor. In addition, however, my own knowledge of the subject was fairly extensive as regarded Hampshire, which county, and especially that part of it about Winton, is rich in lepidoptera of a rare order. I may say I fairly earned the praise he bestowed upon me, which was tinged, perhaps, with a trifle of jealousy on his part, due to the fact that the section I touched proved to be undoubtedly the most popular of the series, as judged subsequently by returns.

Not to push on too fast, however, I must hark back to the day of my engagement, which was marked by my introduction to one who eventually exercised a considerable influence over my destinies.

During the course of that first morning Mr. Ripley sent me for some copies of a pamphlet that were in order of sewing down below. By his direction I descended a spiral staircase of iron and found myself in the composing-room. At a heavy iron-sheeted table stood my new-found friend, who was, despite his youth, the valued foreman of this department. He hailed me with glee and asked: “What success?”

“All right, thanks to you,” I said; “and where may the bookbinding place be and Dolly Mellison?”

“Oh, you’re for there, are you?” he said, with I thought a rather curious look at me, and he pointed to a side door.

Passing through this I found myself in a long room, flanked to the left with many machines and to the right with a row of girls who were classifying, folding or sewing the sheets of print recent from the press.

“I’m to ask for Dolly Mellison,” I said, addressing the girl at my end of the row.

“Well, you won’t have far to go,” she said. “I’m her.”

She was a pretty, slim lily of a thing, lithe and pale, with large gray eyes and coiled hair like a rope of sun-burned barleystraw, and her fingers petted her task as if that were so much hat-trimming.

“I’m sent by Mr. Ripley for copies of a pamphlet on ‘The Supineness of Theologicians,’” I said.

“I’m at work on it,” she answered. “Wait a bit till I’ve finished the dozen.”

She glanced at me now and again without pausing in her work.

“You’re from the country, aren’t you?”

“Yes. How do you know?”

“A little bird told me. What gave you those red cheeks?”

“The sight of you,” I said. I was growing up.

“I’m nothing to be ashamed of, am I?” she asked, with a pert laugh.

“You ought to be of yourself,” I said, “for taking my heart by storm in that fashion.”

“Go along!” she cried, with a jerk of her elbow. “None of your gammon! I’m not to be caught by chaff.”

“It wasn’t chaff, Dolly, though I may be a man of straw. Is that what you meant?”

“You’re pretty free, upon my word. Who told you you might call me by my name?”

“Why, you wouldn’t have me call you by any one else’s? It’s pretty enough, even for you.”

“Oh, go away with you!” she cried. “I won’t listen.”

At that moment Duke put his head in at the door.

“The governor’s calling for you,” he said. “Hurry up.”

“Well, they’re ready,” said the girl—“here,” and she thrust the packet into my hands, with a little blushing half-impudent look at me.

I forgot all about her in a few minutes. My heart was too full of one only other girlish figure to find room in itself for a rival. What was Zyp doing now?—the wonderful fairy child, whose phantom presence haunted all my dreams for good and evil.

As I walked from the office with Duke Straw that afternoon—for, as it was Saturday, we left early—a silence fell between us till we neared Cringle’s shop. Then, standing outside, he suddenly stayed me and looked in my face.

“Shall I hate or love you?” he said, with his mouth set grimly.

He made a gesture toward his deformed lower limbs with his hands, and shrugged his shoulders.

“No,” he said; “what must be, must. I’ll love you!”

There was a curious, defiant sadness in his tone, but it was gone directly. I could only stare at him in wonder.

“You’re to be my house-fellow and chum,” he said. “No, don’t protest; I’ve settled it. We’ll arrange the rest with Cringle.”

And so I slept in a bed in London for the first time.

But the noise of a water wheel roared in my ears all night.

“Trender,” said Duke, unexpectedly after a silence the next morning, as we loitered over breakfast, “pay attention to one thing. I don’t ask you for a fragment of your past history and don’t want to hear anything about it. You’ll say, as yet you haven’t offered me your confidence, and quite right, too, on the top of our short acquaintance. But don’t ever offer it to me, you understand? Our friendship starts from sunrise, morning by morning, and lasts the day. I don’t mean it shall be the less true for that; I have a theory, that’s all.”

“What is it, Straw?”

“Sufficient for the day, it’s called. Providence has elected to give us, not one existence, but so many or few, each linked to the next by an insensibility and intercalated as a whole between appropriate limits.”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“Wait a bit. Each of these existences has its birth and death, and should be judged apart from the others; each is pronounced upon in succession by one’s familiar spirit and its minutes pigeon-holed and docketed above there. When the chain of evidence, for or against, is complete, up these links are gathered in a heap and weighed in both sides of the balance.”

“It sounds more plausible than it is, I think,” said I, with frank discourtesy. “The acts of one day may influence those of the next—or interminably.”

“That’s your lookout; but they needn’t necessarily. With each new birth comes a new capacity for looking at things in their right proportions.”

“How far do you push your theory?”

“As far as you like. I’d have, all the world over, a daily revival of systems.”

“Government—law?”

“Certainly. Of everything.”

“Then justice, injustice, vindictiveness, must all revive, too.”

“No. They’re recalled; they don’t revive.”

“But must a criminal, for instance, be allowed to escape because they have failed to catch him the day he did the deed?”

“That’s exactly it. It makes no difference. He couldn’t atone here for an act committed by him during another existence. But that particular minute goes pretty red into its pigeon-hole, you may be sure.”

“Oh, it’s wild nonsense,” I laughed. “You can’t possibly be consistent.”

“Can’t I? Look here, you are my friend yesterday, and to-day, and always, I hope. I judge you daily on your merits, yet, for all I know, you may have committed murder in one of your past existences?”

The blood went back upon my heart. Then a great longing awoke in me to tell all to this self-reliant soul and gain comfort of my sorrow. But where was the good in the broad face of his theory?

“Well,” I said, with a sigh, “I’ve done things at least I bitterly repent of.”

“That’s the conventional way of looking at it. Repentance in this won’t avail a former existence. Past days of mine have had their troubles, no doubt, but this day I have before me unclouded and to do what I like with.”

“Well, what shall we do with it?” said I. “I hand it over to you to make it a happiness for me. I dare say we shall find plenty of sorrows between sunrise and evening to give it a melancholy charm.”

“Rubbish!” cried my friend. “Cant, cant, cant, ever to suppose that sorrow is necessary to happiness! We mortals, I tell you, have an infinite capacity for delight; given health, spiritual and bodily, we could dance in the sunbeams for eternity and never reach a surfeit of pleasure.”

“Duke,” said I—“may I call you Duke?”

“Of course.”

“It puzzles me where you got—I don’t mean offense—only I can’t help wondering——”

“How I came to have original thoughts and a grammatical manner of speech? Look here——” he held up his stained fingers—“aren’t these the hands of a man of letters?”

“And a man of action,” I said, with a laugh. “But——”

“It’s no use, Renny. I can’t look further back than this morning.”

“You can recall, you know. You don’t deny each existence that capacity?”

“Perhaps I could; but to what advantage? To shovel up a whole graveyard of sleeping remembrances to find the seed of one dead nettle that thrusts its head through? No, thank you. Besides, if it comes to that, I might put the same question to you.”

“Oh, I can easily answer it. I get all my way of speaking from my father first, and, secondly, because I love books.”

He looked at me oddly.

“You’re a modest chicken,” he said. “But I should like to meet your father.”

I could not echo his wish.

“Still,” he went on, “I will tell you, there was a little inexperience of mankind in your wonder. I think—I don’t refer to myself, of course—that no man in the world is more interesting to talk with than the skilled mechanic who has an individuality and a power of expressing it in words. He is necessarily a man of cultivation, and an ‘h’ more or less in his vocabulary is purely an accident of his surroundings.”

At this moment Mr. Cringle tapped at the door and walked into the room.

“I hope I see you ro-bust, gentlemen? And how do you like this village of ours, Mr. Trender?”

“It’s dirty after Winton,” said I.

“Ah,” he said, condescendingly; “the centers of such enormous forces must naturally rise some dust. It’s a proud thing, sir, to contribit one’s peck to the total. I feel it in my little corner here.”

“Why,” said I, “you surprise me, Mr. Cringle. I’m only an ignorant country lad, of course; but it seems to me you are quite a remarkable figure.”

He gave an extra twist to his mustache and sniggered comfortably. “Well,” he said, “it is not for me to contradict you—eh, Mr. Straw?”

“Certainly not,” said Duke; “why, you are famous for your deeds.”

“Very good, Mr. Straw, and perhaps, as you kindly mean it in the double sense. You mightn’t think it, but it wants some knowledge of the law’s mazes to turn a rough draft into a hold-fast agreement or indenture.”

“And you can do that?”

“I flatter myself, Mr. Trender, that it’ll want a microscoptic eye to find flaws in my phraseology.”

He thrust back his head and expanded his chest.

“But I’m overlooking my errand,” said he. “The young lady, as has called before, Mr. Straw, rung me down just now for a message to you.”

“Oh, what was it?”

“She wanted to know if you was game for a walk and she’d be waiting under the market till half after nine.”

“Very well,” and Mr. Cringle took himself off.

“It’s Dolly Mellison,” said Duke to me. “We often go for a Sunday tramp together.”

“Well, don’t stop for me, if you want to go.”

“We’ll both go—why not?”

“Oh, not for anything. Fancy my intruding myself on her.”

“I’ll answer she’ll not object,” said my companion, and again I was half conscious of something unusual in his tone.

“But you might,” said I.

“Not a bit of it. Why should I? We’re not betrothed, you know.”

He answered with a laugh, and pointed, or seemed to point at his twisted lower limbs. “You wouldn’t believe me, would you, if I told you she expects you?” he added.

“Oh, very well,” said I, “if you put it in that way.”

We found Dolly standing under the piazza of Covent Garden market. She made no movement toward us until we were close upon her, and then she greeted us with a shy wriggle and a little blush. She was very daintily dressed, with a fur tippet about her throat, and looked as pretty as a young Hebe.

“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t suppose you would come, too, Mr. Trender.”

“There!” I cried to Duke, with perfect good nature. “I told you I should be in the way.”

“Nonsense!” he said. “Miss Mellison didn’t mean it like that, did you, Dolly?”

“Didn’t I? You see how he answers for me, Mr. Trender?” And she turned half from him with a rosy pout.

“Come!” I cried gayly. “I’ll risk it. I do not believe you’ve the heart to be cruel, Miss Mellison.”

“Thank you for the surname, and also for telling me I’m heartless.”

“You can’t be that as long as mine goes a-begging,” I said, impudently.

She peeped up at me roguishly from under her long lashes and shook her head.

“Come,” said Duke, impatiently; “what are we going to do? Don’t let’s stand chattering here all day.”

“I’ll tell you,” I cried in a sudden reckless flush of extravagance. “Aren’t there pretty places on the Thames one can get to from here?”

“Oh, plenty,” said Duke, dryly, “if one goes by train.”

“Then let’s go and make a pleasant water party of it.”

He shook his head with a set of the lips.

“Those are rare treats,” he said. “Our sort can’t afford such jinks except after a deal of saving.”

“I don’t want you to,” said I. “It’s my business and you’re to come as my guests.”

“Oh, nonsense,” he said, sharply; “we can’t do that.”

“Please speak for yourself, Mr. Straw,” said Dolly. I had noticed her eyes shine at the mere prospect. “If Mr. Trender is so kind as to offer, and can afford it, I’m sure, I, for one, don’t intend to disappoint him.”

“Can he afford it?” said Duke, doggedly.

“I shouldn’t propose it if I couldn’t,” said I, very much on the high horse.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Dolly. “I wonder at you, Mr. Straw, for being so insulting.”

“Very well,” said Duke, “I meant it for the best; but let’s be off. I’m for a shallop in Arcady, with Pleasure in a pork-pie hat (it’s very pretty, Dolly) at the helm.”

We went down to Richmond by train, and Duke—good fellow that he was—made a merry company of us. If he felt any soreness over his rebuff he hid it out of sight most effectually.

It was early in November—a beautiful, sparkling morning, and the river bore a fairish sprinkling of pleasure craft on its silvery stretches.

We were neither of us great oarsmen and at first made but poor way, owing to a tendency Duke of the iron sinews showed to pulling me completely round. But presently we got into a more presentable swing and fore-reached even upon a skiff or two whose occupants had treated us to some good-humored chaff upon our starting.

“Woa!” cried Duke. “This pulling is harder than pulling proofs, Renny. Let’s stop by the bank and rest a bit.”

We ran the boat’s nose aground, fastened her painter to a stump and settled down for a talk.

“Enjoying yourself, Dolly?” asked Duke, mopping his forehead.

“Yes, of course—thanks to Mr. Trender.”

“This is a fine variety on our walks, isn’t it?”

“Oh, they’re jolly enough when you’re in a good temper.”

“Am I not always?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes you say things I don’t understand.”

“See there, Renny,” cried Duke. “If I express myself badly she calls me cross.”

“It isn’t that,” said the girl. “I know I’m ignorant and you’re clever, but you seem to read me and then say things out of yourself that have nothing to do with me—just as if I was a book and you a—what do they call it?—cricket or something.”

We both laughed aloud.

“Oh, Dolly,” said Duke, “what pretty imp taught you satire? Are you a book to Mr. Trender?”

“Oh, no! He talks what I can understand.”

“Better and better! But take comfort, Renny; you’re downed in sweet company.”

“Hush,” said Dolly; “it’s Sunday.”

She dabbled her slender hand in the water and drew it out quickly.

“Oh,” she cried, “it’s cold. I hope we shan’t be upset. Can you swim, Mr. Trender?”

“Yes, like a duck.”

“That’s a comfort, if I fall in. Mr. Straw, here, can’t.”

“I’m built top-heavy,” said Duke, “but I’d try to save you, Dolly.”

The girl’s eyes shone with a momentary remorseful pity.

“I know you would,” she said, softly; “you aren’t one to think about yourself, Duke. How I wish I could swim! I don’t believe there can be anything in the world like getting that medal they give you for saving people from drowning. Have you ever saved any one, Mr. Trender?”

Oh, gentle hand to deal so cruel a stroke! For a moment my smoldering sense of guilt flamed up blood-red.

“No, no,” I said, with a forced laugh. “I’m not like Duke. I do think of myself. I’m afraid.”

We lapsed into silence, out of which came Dolly’s voice presently, murmuring a queer little doggerel song that seemed apt to her childish nature:

“Where on earth did you learn that?” said Duke, with a laugh, as Dolly ceased, her eyes dreaming out upon the shining river.

“I don’t know. Mother used to sing it, I think, when I was a little girl.”

“We must question her,” said I.

“Mother’s dead,” said Dolly.

I could have bitten out my tongue.

Duke again exerted himself to put matters on a comfortable footing.

“Dolly and I are both orphans,” said he; “babes in old Ripley’s wood.”

“And I am the remorseless ruffian,” I broke in.

“All right. You didn’t know, of course. Look at that girl on the bank, with the crinoline; she might be riding a hobby-horse.”

“Ain’t she a beauty?” said Dolly, enviously. Her own subscribing to the outrageous fashion then fortunately in its decay was limited to her slender means and the necessities of her work.

“You don’t mean to say you admire her?” said I.

“Don’t I, Mr. Trender? Just as she’d admire me if I was dressed like that.”

“Heaven forbid, Dolly. I won’t call you Dolly if you call me Mr. Trender.”

“Won’t you, now? Upon my word, you’ve got the impudence of twenty.”

“Look here,” said Duke, “I’m for paddling on. I don’t know your views as to dinner, Mr. Renalt, but mine are getting pretty vociferous.”

“My idea is to pull on till we sight a likely place, Mr. Duke Straw.”

We rowed up past Kingston, a cockney town we all fought shy of, and on by grassy reaches as far as Hampton bridge, where we disembarked. Here was a pleasant water-side inn, with a lawn sloping down to the embankment, and, sitting in its long coffee-room, we made a hearty dinner and a merry company. Dolly was flushed and happy as a young naiad when we returned to our boat, and she rippled with laughter and sweetness.

We loitered on the river till the short day was threatening dusk, and then we were still no further on our homeward way than a half-mile short of Kingston. A little cold wind, moreover, was beginning to whine and scratch over the surface of the water, and Dolly pulled her tippet closer about her bosom, feeling chilled and inclined to silence.

“Come,” said Duke, “we must put our shoulders to it or we shan’t get into the lock before dark.”

“Oh!” cried the girl, with a half-whimper, “I had forgotten that horrible lock with its hideous weedy doors. Must we go through it?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Duke; “but,” he added cheerily, “don’t you be nervous. We’ll run you down and through before you have time to count a hundred—if you count slowly.”

She sunk back in her seat with a frightened look and grasped the rudder lines, as if by them only could she hold on to safety. The dusk dropped about us as we pulled on, strain as we might, and presently we both started upon hearing a strangled sob break from the girl.

“Oh,” said Duke, pausing for a moment, “this will never do, Dolly. Why, you can’t be afraid with two such knights to protect you?”

“I can’t help it,” said the poor child, fairly crying now. “You don’t know anything about the river, either of you; and—and mayn’t I get out and walk?”

“Very well. One of us will go with you, while the other pulls the boat down. Only we must get across first. Steady, now, Renny; and cheer up, Doll, and put her nose to the shore opposite.”

We had drifted some little distance since we first easy’d, and a dull booming, that was in our ears at the time, had increased to a considerable roar.

“Give way!” cried Duke; “turn her, Dolly!”

The girl tugged at the right line, gave a gasp, dropped everything, scrambled to her feet, and screamed in a dreadful voice: “We are going over the weir!”

“Sit down!” shouted Duke. “Pull, Renny, like a madman!”

He shipped his oar, forced the girl into a sitting posture and clutched the inner line all in a moment. His promptitude saved us. I fought at the water with my teeth set; the boat’s nose plunged into the bank with a shock that sent us two sprawling, and the boat’s stern swung round dizzily. But before she could cast adrift again I was on my knees and had seized at a projecting root with a grasp like Quasimodo’s.

“Hold on!” cried Duke, “till I come to you. It’s all right, Dolly; you’re quite safe now.”

He crawled to me and grasped the root in his more powerful hands.

“Now,” he said, “you take the painter and get out and drag us higher, out of the pull of the water. I’ll help you the best I can.”

I complied, and presently the boat was drawn to a point so far above as to leave a wide margin for safety.

We took our seats to pull across, with a look at one another of conscious guilt. Dolly sat quite silent and pale, though she shivered a little.

“We didn’t know the river, and that’s a fact,” whispered Duke to me. “Of course we ought to have remembered the lock’s the other side.”

We pulled straight across; then Duke said:

“Here’s the shore, Dolly. Now, you and Trender get out, and I’ll take the boat on.”

“By yourself? No, I won’t. I feel safe with you.”

“Very well,” he answered, gently. “We’ll all go on together. There’s really no danger now we know what we’re about.”

She cried, “No, Duke,” in a poor little quaking voice.

We pulled into the lock cutting without further mishap, though the girl shrunk and blenched as we slid past, at a safe distance, the oblique comb of the weir.

It was some minutes before the lock-keeper answered to our ringing calls, and then the sluices had to be raised and the lock filled from our side. The clash and thunder of the hidden water as it fell into the pit below sounded dismal enough in the darkness, and must, I knew, be dinning fresh terror into the heart of our already stricken naiad. But the hollow noise died off in due course, the creaking gate lumbered open and we floated with a sigh of relief into the weltering pool beyond.

The sluices rattled down behind us, the keeper walked round to the further gate, and his figure appeared standing out against the sky, toiling with bent back at the levers. Suddenly I, who had been pulling bow, felt myself tilting over in a curious manner.

“Hullo!” I cried. “What’s up with the boat?”

In one moment I heard a loud shout come from the man at the gates, and saw Dolly, despite her warning, stand hurriedly up and Duke make a wild clutch at her; the next, the skiff reeled under me and I was spun, kicking and struggling, into the water.

An accident, common enough and bad enough to those who know little of Thames craft, had befallen us. We had got the boat’s stern jammed upon a side beam of the lock, so that her nose only dropped with the sinking water.

I rose at once in a black swirl. The skiff, jerked free by our unceremonious exit, floated unharmed in the lock, but she floated empty. Risen to the surface, however, almost with me, Duke’s dark head emerged close by her, so that with one frantic leap upward he was able to reach her thwarts, to which he clung.

“Dolly!” he gasped—“Dolly!”

I had seen her before he could cry out again, had seized and was struggling with her.

“Don’t hold me!” I cried; “let me go, Dolly, and I’ll save you.”

She was quite beyond reason, deaf to anything but the despairing call of life. In another instant, I knew, we should both go under and be dragged into the rush of the sluices. Seeing the uselessness of trying to unclasp her hands, I fought to throw myself and her toward the side of the lock nearest. The water was bubbling in my mouth, when I felt a great iron hook whipped into the collar of my coat and we were both hauled to the side.

“Hold on there, mate!” cried the lock-keeper, “while I get your boat under.”

I had caught at a dangling loop of chain; but even so the weight of my almost senseless burden threatened to drag me down.

“Be quick!” I gasped, “I’m pretty near spent.”

With the same grapnel he caught and towed the boat, Duke still hanging to it, to where I clung, and leaped down himself into it.

“Now,” he said, “get a leg over and you’re right.”

It was a struggle even then, for Dolly would not let me out of her agonized clutch—not till we could lay her, white as a storm-beaten lily, on the bottom boards. Then we turned and seized Duke over the thwarts and he tumbled in and lay in a heap, quite exhausted.

His mind relieved, our preserver took off his cap, scratched his forehead and spat into the water.

“I’ve known a many wanting your luck,” he said, gruffly. “What made you do it, now?”

Judging our ignorance to be by no means common property, I said, “Ah, what?” in the tone that suggests acquiescence, or wonder, and asked him if he had a fire handy.

“There’s a bright one burning inside,” he said. “You’re welcome to it.”

He punted the boat to a shallow flight of steps, oozy with slime, that led to the bank above, where his cottage was.

“We’ll carry the gal to it,” said he. “See if she can move herself.”

I bent down over the prostrate figure. It looked curiously youthful and slender in its soaked and clinging garments.

“Dolly,” I whispered, “there’s a fire above. Will you let me carry you to it?”

I thought my voice might not penetrate to her dulled senses, but to my wonder she put her arms round my neck immediately.

“Yes,” she moaned, “I’m so cold. Take me to the warmth or I shall die.”

We lifted her out between us and carried her into the house kitchen. There a goodly blaze went coiling up the chimney, and the sight was reviving in itself.

“Shall we leave you here alone a bit?” said I, “to rest and recover? There’s to be no more of the river for us. We’ll walk the distance that remains.”

She gave me a quick glance, full of a pathetic gratitude, and whispered, “Yes; I’d better be alone.”

“And if you take my advice,” said our host, “you’ll strip off them drownded petticuts and wrap yourself in a blanket I’ll bring you while they’re a-drying; wait, while I fetch it.”

As he went out Dolly beckoned me quickly to her.

“I heard you tell me to leave go,” she said, hurriedly, in a low voice; “but I couldn’t—Renny, I couldn’t; and you saved my life.”

Her lips were trembling and her eyes full of tears. She clasped her hands and held them entreatingly toward me.

A gust of some strange feeling—some yearning sense of protection toward this pretty, lovable child—flooded my heart.

“You poor little thing,” I whispered, in a pitying voice, and taking her two hands in one of mine I passed my other arm around her.

Then she lifted her face eagerly and I bent and softly dropped a kiss on her warm, wet lips.

The moment I had done it I felt the shame of my action.

“There, dear, forgive me,” I said. “Like you, Dolly, I couldn’t let go at once,” and our friend returning just then with the blanket, we left the girl to herself and stepped outside.

A queer exultant feeling was on me—a sense as of the lightening of some overburdening oppression. “A life for a life.” Why should the words ring stilly, triumphantly in my brain? I might earn for my breast a cuirass of medals such as Dolly had desired, and what would their weight be as set in the scale against the one existence I had terminated?

Perhaps it was not that. Perhaps it was that I felt myself for the first time in close touch with a yearning human sympathy; that its tender neighborhood taught me at a breath to respect and stand by what was noble in myself. The shadow that must, of course, remain with me always, I would not have away, but would only that it ceased to dominate my soul’s birthright of independence.

There was in my heart no love for Dolly—no passion of that affinity that draws atom to atom in the destiny that is human. There was only the pitying protective sense that came to man through the angels, and, in its sensual surrender, marked their fall from divinity. For to the end, without one thought of wavering, Zyp must shine the mirage of my barren waste of love.

Suddenly I remembered, with a remorseful pang, that all this time I had forgotten Duke. I hurried down to the steps, calling him. He was sitting in the boat, his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands.

“Duke!” I cried, “come out and let’s see what we can do for a dry. You’ll get the frost in your lungs sitting there.”

He rose at once, staggering a little. I had to run down the steps to help him ashore, where he stood shaken all through with violent shiverings.

“Whisky,” said our host, laconically, watchful of the poor fellow, “and enough of it to make your hair curl.”

Between us we got him into the house, where he was made to swallow at a gulp three finger-breadths in a tumbler of the raw spirit. Then after a time the color came back to his cheeks, the restored nerves to his limbs.

At that our kindly host made us strip, and providing us with what coverings he could produce, set us and our soaked belongings before a second fire in his little parlor, and only left us when summoned outside to his business. As the door closed behind him Duke turned to me. A sort of patient sorrow was on his face—an expression as of renunciation of some favored child of his fancy—I cannot express it better.

“You carried her in?” he said, quietly.

“Dolly? Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“Baking before the kitchen fire. She’ll be ready before we are.”

“Well—I had no right. What a chapter of mishaps.” Then he turned upon me with a sudden clap of fierceness. “Why did you ever propose this trip? I tried to dissuade you, and you might have known I was an idiot on the water.”

“My good Duke,” I answered, with a coolness that covered a fine glow of heat, “that don’t sound very gracious. I meant it for a pleasure party, of course. Accidents aren’t matters under human control, you know.”

He struck his knee savagely.

“No,” he muttered, “or I shouldn’t have these.”

Then in a moment the sweetness came back to his face, and he cried with a smile, half-humorous and all pathetic:

“Here’s the value of my philosophy. I’m no more consistent than a Ripley pamphlet and not a quarter so amusing. But—oh, if I had only learned to swim!”

For nearly four years did I work persistently, striving to redeem my past, at the offices in Great Queen Street. At this period my position was greatly improved, my services estimated at a value that was as honorable to my employer as it was advantageous to me. I had grown to be fairly at peace with myself and more hopeful for the future than I had once deemed it possible that I could ever be.

Not all so, however. The phantom light that had danced before my youthful eyes, danced before them still, no whit subdued in brilliancy. With the change to wider and manlier sentiments that I was conscious of in my own development, I fostered secret hope of a similar growth in Zyp. At 22, I thought, she could hardly remain the irresponsible, bewitching changeling she had been at 17. Womanliness must have blossomed in her, and with it a sense of the right relationship of soul to body. Perhaps even the glamour of mystery that must surround my manner of life had operated as a growing charm with her, and had made me, in her eyes, something of the fascinating figure she always was and would be in mine.

Sometimes now, in thinking of him, I had fear of Jason, but more often not. Zyp’s parting words to me—that were ever in my ears—seemed weighted with the meaning, at least, that had I fought my battle well I should have won.

To think of it—to recall it—always gave me a strange, troubled comfort. In my best moments it returned upon me, crying—crying the assurance that no selfish suit pressed by my brother could ever prevail over the inwarder preference her heart knew for me. In my worst, it did no more than trouble me with a teasing mock at my human passion so persistent in its faith to a will-o’-the-wisp.

I think that all this time I never dared to put bravely to myself the thought—as much part of my being as my eyesight—that not for one true moment had I yielded my hope of Zyp to circumstances. All my diligence, all my labor, all my ambition, were directed to this solitary end—that some day I might lay them at her feet as bribes to her favor. Therefore, till self-convinced of their finished worthiness, I toiled on with dogged perseverance, studying, observing, perfecting, denying myself much rest and pleasure till my heart should assure me that the moment was come.

And what of them at the old haunted mill? News was rare and scanty, yet at intervals it came to link me with their destinies. The first year of my banishment my father wrote to me three times—short, rugged notes, void of information and negatively satisfactory only in the sense that, had anything of importance taken place, he would, I concluded, have acquainted me of it. These little letters were answered by me in epistles of ample length, wherein I touched upon my manner of life and the nature of my successes. The second year, however, the desultory correspondence was taken up by Jason, who wrote, as he talked, in a spirit of boisterous banter, and, under cover of familiar gossip, told me less, if possible, than my father had. Dad, he said in his first, had tired of the effort and had handed the task over to him. Therefore he acquitted himself of it in long leaps over gaps that covered months, and it was now more than four or five since I had received any sort of communication from him.

This did not greatly trouble me. There was that between us, which, it always seemed to me, he sought to give expression to in his letters—a hint secretly conveyed that I must never forget I lived and prospered on sufferance only. Now my own knowledge of the methods of justice, no less than the words Dr. Crackenthorpe had once applied to my case, had long been sufficient to assure me that I had little or nothing to fear from the processes of the law. No less peremptory, however, was the conviction that Jason had it in his power to socially ruin me at a word; and the longer that word was delayed—that is to say, so long as my immunity did not clash with his interests—the better chance I had of testing and retesting my armor of defense. Yet, for all my care, he found out a weak place presently.

In the meantime I lived my life, such as it was, and found a certain manner of pleasure in it. Duke and I, still good friends, changed our lodgings, toward the last quarter of the fourth year, and moved into more commodious ones over an iron-monger’s shop in Holborn. Here we had a sitting-room as well as a bedroom common to both of us, and tasted the joys of independence with a double zest.

Since our river experience it had become a usual thing for me to join my friend and Dolly in their frequent Sunday walks together. This, at first, I deprecated; but Duke would have it so; and finally it lapsed into an institution. Indeed, upon many occasions I was left to escort the girl alone, Duke pleading disinclination or the counter-attraction of some book he professed to be absorbed in.

Was I quite so blind as I appeared to be? I can hardly say myself. That the other entertained a most affectionate regard for the girl was patent. He was always to me, however, such a quaint medley of philosophical resignation and human susceptibility that I truly believe I was more than half inclined to doubt the existence in him of any strong bias toward the attractions of the other sex.

His behavior to Dolly was generally much more that of an elder brother toward a much younger half-sister born into the next generation, than of a lover who seeks no greater favor from a woman than that she shall keep the best secrets of her womanhood for him. He petted, indulged, and playfully analyzed her all in one. Now, thinking of him in the stern knowledge of years, I often marvel over the bitter incapacity of the other sex to choose aright the fathers of its children. How could the frailest, prettiest soul among them turn from such luminous depths as his to the meretricious foppery of emptier Parises?

But then I was greatly to blame. The winning ways of the girl, no less than Duke’s persistent deprecation of any affectation of proprietorship in her, are my one excuse. A poor one, even then, for how may I cry out on simple-hearted Dolly, when I failed to read the little history of sorrow that was daily before my eyes. It was after events only that interpreted to me the pride that would not let the cripple kneel, a suitor to pity.

As to my own feelings toward the pretty soul I had once so basely linked to my own with an impulsive kiss—they were a compound of indulgence and a tenderness that fell altogether short of love. I desired to be on brotherly terms of intimacy with her, indeed, but only in such manner as to preclude thought of any closer tie. When she was shy with me upon our first meeting after that untoward contact in the lock-house, I laughed her into playfulness and would have no sentimental glamour attaching to our bond of sympathy. Alas! I was to learn how reckless a thing it is to seek to extinguish with laughter the fire of a woman’s heart.

One Sunday afternoon in the early autumn of that fourth year, Dolly and I were loitering together about the slopes and byways of Epping forest. There is no season more attuned to the pathetic sympathies of young hearts than that in which the quiet relaxing of green life from its hold on existence speaks only to grayer breasts of premature decay and the vulgar ceremonial of the grave. Youth, however, recognizes none of this morbid aspect. To it the yellowing leaf, if it speaks of desolation, speaks from that “passion of the past” the poets strove to explore. It stands but two-thirds of the way up to the hill of years, and flowering stretches are beneath it to the rear and above, before its eyes, the fathomless sky and the great clouds nozzling the mountain crests like flocks of sheep.

All that afternoon as we wandered we came across lizards sprawling stupefied—as they will in October—on buskets of gorse, too exhausted, apparently, to feel the prick of thorn or fear, and butterflies sitting on blades of grass with folded wings, motionless as those that are wired to bonnets. The air was full of a damp refreshing sweetness, and the long grass about every bush and hedge side began to stir with the movement of secret things, as though preparations for mystic revel were toward and invitations passing. I could almost see the fairy rings forming, noiseless, on the turf, when the lonely moon should hang her lantern out by and by.

Dolly had been unusually silent during the afternoon, and now, as we turned to retrace our steps in the direction of the station from which we were to take train for London, she walked beside me without uttering a word.

Suddenly, however, she put her hand upon my arm and stayed me.

“Renny,” she said, “will you stop a little while? I want to speak to you.”

“All right,” I said; “speak away.”

“Not here—not here. Come off the path; there’s a seat out there.”

Seeing with surprise that her face was pale and drawn with nervousness, and fancying our tramp might have over-tired her, I led her to the place she indicated—a bench set in the deep shadow of a chestnut tree—and we both sat down.

“Now, Doll,” I said, gayly, “what’s the tremendous confidence?”

“Renny,” she said, quietly, “William Reid has asked me to marry him.”

“No! William Reid—the young fellow over at Hansard’s? Well, I can only tell you, Dolly, that I know nothing but what’s good of him for a steady and promising chap, who’s sure to make as fine a husband as he is a workman.”

“Do you advise me to take him, then? Do you want me to?”

“You might do much worse—indeed you might, Dolly. Why, to my knowledge, he’s drawing £3 a week already. Of course I shall be very, very sorry to lose my little chum and companion, but I always foresaw that this would have to be the end of our comradeship some day.”

She sat looking at the ground a little while and adjusting a fallen twig with the point of her parasol. Then she rose and said, in the same quiet tone, “Very well,” and moved a step away.

I rose also and was about to resume the subject, when in a moment, to my horror, she threw herself back on the bench and, flinging her hands up to her face, burst into a passion of tears.

I was so startled and shocked that for the instant I could think of nothing to do or say. Then I bent down and cried:

“Dolly, what is it? What’s the matter? Have I hurt you in any way?”

She struggled with her sobs, but made a brave effort to command herself.

“Oh, don’t look, don’t listen! I shall be all right in a minute.”

I moved away a little space and stood anxiously waiting. When I turned again her face was still buried in her arm, but the keenness of the outburst was subdued.

I approached and leaned over her tenderly, putting a kind hand on her shoulder.

“Now, little woman,” I said, “won’t you tell me what it is? I might comfort and counsel you at least, Dolly, dear.”

She answered so low that I had to stoop further to hear her.

“I only thought, perhaps—perhaps you might care more and not want me to.”

What a simple little sentence, yet how fierce a vision it sprung upon my blindness! I rose and stepped back almost with a cry. Then Dolly sat up and saw my face.

“Renny,” she cried, “I never meant to tell; only—only, I am so miserable.”

I went to her and took her hand and helped her to her feet.

“Dolly,” I said, in a low, hoarse voice, “I have been a selfish brute. I never thought what I was doing, when I should have thought. Now, you must give me time to think.”

“You didn’t know. Renny”—her pretty eyes were struggling with tears again, and her poor face looked up into mine, entreating me not to take base advantage of her surrender—“if I kissed you as you kissed me once do you think it would come?”

“It isn’t right for us to try, dear.”

Thank heaven my manhood stood the test—the inference so pathetic in its childish simplicity.

“Come,” I said, “we will go back now. I want time to think it all over by myself. You mustn’t refer to it again, Dolly, in any way—not till I can see you by and by alone.”

She said, “Yes, Renny,” humbly. Her very manner toward me was marked by a touching obedience.

We caught our train and sped back to London in a crowded compartment, so that the present embarrassment of tete-a-tete was spared us. At the terminus we parted gently and gravely on both sides and went each of us home.

Duke was in bed when I reached our lodgings, and for that I was grateful, for I felt far too upset and confused to relish the idea of a talk with him. Indeed, since the moment Dolly had confessed to me, he had hung strangely in the background of my thoughts. I felt a comfortless dawning of apprehension that all along he had been keen witness of the silent little drama in which unconsciously I was an actor—had sat in the pit and sorrowfully gauged the purport of the part I played.

I went to bed, but never to sleep. All night long I tossed, struggling to unravel the disorder in my brain. I could think out nothing collectively—warp and woof were inextricably confused.

At length, in despair, I rose, redressed and went outside. The church clocks clanged six as I stepped onto the pavement; there was a fresh-blown coolness in the dusky air; the streets stretched emptily to the dawn.

In the very contact with space, the tumult in my head settled down into some manner of order, and I was able to face, after a fashion, the problem before me.

Here, to one side, would I place Zyp; to the other Dolly. Let me plead to each, counseled by heart and conscience. To Zyp: You have and have ever had that of mine to which I can give no name, but which men call “love,” as an expression of what is inexpressible. I know that this gift, this sixth sense, that, like the soul, embraces all the others, once acquired, is indestructible. For joy or evil I am doomed to it, spiritually to profit or be debased by it. You may scorn, but you cannot kill it, and exiled in material form from you here it will make to you in the hereafter as surely as a stone flung from a crater returns to the earth of which it is kin.

Say that the accidents of existence are to keep us here apart; that your heart desires to mate with another more picturesque than mine. It may be so. During these long four years you have never once directly, by word or sign, given proof that my being holds any interest for you. You banished me, I must remember, for all my efforts to torture hope out of them, with words designed to be final. What if I accept the sentence and say: “I yield my material form to one who desires its affections; who will be made most happy by the bestowal of them upon her; who yearns to me, perhaps, as I to you.” I may do so and none the less be sure of you some day.

To Dolly: I have done you a bitter wrong, but one, I think, not irremediable. Perhaps I never thought but that friendship apart from love was possible between man and woman. In any case, I have given far too much consideration to myself and far too little to you. You love me by your own confession, and, in this world of bitter troubles, it is very sweet to be loved, and loved by such as you. I am pledged, it seems, to a hopeless quest. What if I give it up? What if we taste joy in this world—the joy of a partnership that is graced by strong affection and cemented by a respect that shall be mutual? I can atone for my error to you here; my wilder love that is not to be controlled by moral reasoning I consign to futurity.

Thinking these thoughts, a picture rose before me of a restful haven, wherein my storm-beaten life might rock at anchor to the end; of Dolly as my wife, in all the fascination of her pretty, winning personality—her love, her playfulness, her wistful eyes and rosy mouth so responsive to laughter or tears. I felt very tender toward the child, who was glorified into woman by her very succumbing to the passion she had so long concealed. “Why should I struggle any longer?” I cried in my heart, “when an earthly paradise opens its gates to me; when self-sacrifice means peace and content, and to indulge my imagination means misery?”

It was broad daylight by the time I had touched some clew to the problem that so bewildered me, and suddenly I became aware that I was moving in the midst of a great press of people. They were all going in one direction and were generally of the lowest and most degraded classes in London. There was a boisterous and unclean mirth rampant among them. There was a ravenous eagerness of haste, too, that one seemed to associate instinctively with the hideous form of vampire that crouches over fields of slain and often completes what the bullet has but half done. Women were among them in numbers; some carrying infants in their gaunt, ragged arms; some plumed and decked as if for a gala sight.

I was weary with thought; weary with the monotony of introspection. Evidently there was some excitement toward, and to follow it up would take me out of myself.

Toiling up Ludgate hill we went, an army of tramping feet. Then, like a sewer diverted, we wheeled and poured into the noisome alley of the Old Bailey.

In a moment the truth burst upon me with a shock. There was a man to be hanged that morning!

I twisted hurriedly about and strove to force my way out again. I might as easily have stayed the Thames with a finger. I was beaten back with oaths and coarse ribaldry—gathered up and carried ruthlessly in the rush for place—hemmed in, planted like a maggot in one great trunk of bestial and frouzy human flesh. Had I striven again I should have been smashed and pounded underfoot, all semblance of life stamped from me.

I looked about me in agony. Before and around was one huge sea of faces, from the level of which rose a jangling patter of talk and cries, like bubbles bursting on the surface of a seething tank of corruption. And under the grim shadow of Newgate there stood, in full view, a hideous machine. Barriers were about it, and a spruce cordon of officials, who stood out humanly in that garden of squalid refuse. It was black, with a black crossbeam; and from the beam a loop hung motionless, like a collar for death to grin through, and the crowd were already betting on the expression of his face when he should first see it.

I do not know how long or short a time my anguish lasted. It may have been half an hour, when the deep tolling of a bell wrought sudden silence in the fetid air. At its first stroke the roar of voices went off and lessened, rolling like a peal of thunder; at its third the quiet of eternity had fallen and consumed the world.

A mist came before my eyes. When it cleared I was aware of a little group on the platform, and one, with a ghastly white face, the center of it.

“Who is it?” I whispered, in intolerable agony.

“Curse you!” growled my next neighbor. “Can’t you hold your tongue and let a cove look?”

A word marred the full relish of his appetite.

I managed to slew my head away from the direct line of vision. A low babble of voices came from the scaffold. He must be reprieved, I thought, with a leap of the heart. I could not conceive voices sounding natural, otherwise, under such fearful circumstances.

Suddenly, as I was on the point of looking once more to ease my horrible tension of mind, there dropped upon my ears a low rumbling flap, and immediately a hoarse murmur went up from the multitude. Then, giving a cry myself, I turned my face. The rope hung down in a straight line, but loop and man were gone.

From the universal murmur, by claps and starts, the old uproar bubbled forth from the faces, till the pent-up street resounded with it. An after-dinner loquacity was on all and the fellow who had cursed me a minute ago addressed me now with over-brimming geniality of information.

“Who’s him, says you? Why, where’s your wits gone, matey? Him was Mul-ler, the greasy furriner as murdered old Briggs.”

The trial had made sensation enough of late, but the date of the poor wretch’s execution I had had no thought of.

When at last I could force a passage through the press—for they lingered like ghouls over the crumbs of the banquet—I broke into Holborn, with my whole soul panting and crying for fresh air and forgetfulness. It was hideous, it was inhuman, it was debasing, I cried to myself, to launch that quivering mass of terror into eternity in a public shambles! To such as came to see, it must be grossly demoralizing; to those who, like me, were enforced spectators, it was a sickening experience that must leave an impression of morbidity almost indelible.

Suddenly I felt a hand grasp my shoulder and a voice exclaim: “Renny, by all the saints!”

I turned—and it was Jason.

He held me at arm’s length and cried again: “Renny? Really?—and a true sportsman as of old!”

Then he leaned to me and whispered with a grin: “I say, old fellow, if it wasn’t for luck you might be any day where he stood just now.”

At first I hardly grasped the import of my brother’s words, or the fact that here was the old fateful destiny upon me again, so lost were the few faculties I could command in wonder at his unexpected appearance in London.

I stared and stared and had not a word to say.

“Where’s your tongue, old chap?” he cried. “This is an affectionate greeting on your part, upon my word, and after near four years, too.”

I pressed my hand across my forehead and strove to smooth the confusion therefrom.

“You must forgive me,” I said at length; “this sudden meeting has driven me all abroad; and then I got stuck down there by mistake, and the sight has half-turned my brain, I think.”

“By mistake, was it?” he said, with a mocking titter. “Oh, Renny, don’t I know you?—though your looks are changed, too, for the matter of that; more than mine are, I expect.”

I could well believe. Soul and manhood must have wrought new expression in me; but, for Jason, he was the Jason of old—fuller, more set and powerful; yet the same beautiful personality with the uninterpretable eyes.

“Well,” he said, “aren’t you surprised to see me?”

“Surprise isn’t the word.”

“Nor pleasure either, I expect.”

“No. I should be a liar to say it was.”

“Well, you used to be that, you know; though I dare say you’ve found out the better policy now.”

“At any rate, as you’re here, you’ll come home with me, won’t you?”

“Of course. That’s what I intend. I’ve been in London three or four days, and went over to your old place yesterday, but found you had left. I got the new address off a queer old chap there. Why didn’t you tell us you had changed?”

“I did. I wrote to dad about it.”

“Well, anyhow, he never told me.”

“That seems funny. How is he?”

“Oh, the same old besotted curmudgeon as ever.”

“Don’t, Jason. Dad’s dad for all his failings.”

“Yes, and Zyp’s Zyp for all hers.”

It gave me a thrill to hear the old name spoken familiarly, though by such reckless lips.

“Is—is she all right?”

“She’s Zyp, I tell you, and that means anything that’s sprightly and unquenchable. Let her alone for a jade; I’m sick of her name.”

Was it evident from this that his suit had not prospered? I looked at his changing eyes and my heart reeled with a sudden sick intoxication of hope. Was my reasoning to be all gone through with again? “Come,” I said, “let’s make for my place. A fellow-hand lives with me there.”

We walked up Holborn together. He had eyes for every incident, a tongue that seldom ceased wagging. Many a smart and powdered working girl, tripping to her business, nudged her companion and looked after him. He accepted it all with a bold indifference—the masterful condescension that sets tight-laced breasts a-twittering under their twice-turned jackets. He was much better dressed than I was and carried himself with some show of fashion.

Duke had left when we reached home, and his absence I hardly regretted.

“Well,” said my brother, as we entered the sitting-room, “you’ve decent quarters, Renny, and no doubt deserve them for being a good boy. You can give me some breakfast, I suppose?”

“If you don’t mind eating alone,” I said. “I’ve got no appetite.”

“All the worse for you. I never lose mine.” The table was already laid as Duke had left it. I fetched a knuckle of ham from our private store and placed it before my unwelcome guest, who fell to with a healthy vigor of hunger.

“It’s as well, perhaps, I didn’t find you last night,” he said, munching and enjoying himself. “We should have sat up late and then I might have overslept myself and missed the fun. I say, didn’t he go down plump? I hoped the rope would break and that we should have it over again.”

“Jason!” I cried, “drop it, won’t you? I tell you I got caught there by mistake, and that the whole thing was horrible to me!”

“Oh, all right,” he said, with a laugh. “I shouldn’t have thought you’d have cared, but I won’t say anything more about it.”

I would not challenge word or tone in him. To what could I possibly appeal in one so void of the first instincts of humanity?

He pushed his plate away presently and fetched out a little pipe and began to smoke. I had sat all the time by the window, looking vaguely upon the crowded street.

“Now,” I said, turning to him, “let’s hear why you are in London?”

He raised his eyebrows with an affectation of perplexity.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he said. “But there’s nothing to explain. I wanted to come and I came.”

“Four days ago?”

“More or less.”

“But what brought you? Where did you get the money?”

“Never mind. That’s my affair. I did get it, and there’s an end.”

“How long do you intend to stop?”

“It all depends upon circumstances. Maybe I shall get something to do here.”

“Well, you might. I had nothing more to recommend me than you have when I first came.”

“Not so much, my good fellow.”

He threw out his chest and a whiff of smoke together.

“I’ve more about me to take the fancy, I believe, and I’m not handicapped with a depressing secret for the unscrupulous to trade upon. Besides, you forget that I’ve a friend at court, which you never had.”

“Meaning me. It’s no good, I can tell you in the very beginning. I’ve not influence enough with my employer to foist a useless fresh hand upon him.”

“We’ll see, my friend—we’ll see, perhaps, by and by. I’m not in any hurry. I haven’t the slightest intention of working till I’m forced to.”

“I suppose not. But what are you going to do in the meantime?”

“Enjoy life, as I always do.”

“Here, in London?”

“Yes, of course.”

“We can’t put you up at this place. It’s impossible.”

“Wait till you’re asked. I’ve got my own quarters.”

“Where?”

“Find out if you can. I keep my private burrow secret.”

“Well, it’s all very queer, but I suppose you know your own business best.”

“Naturally,” he said, and sat frowning at me a little while.

Then presently he rose and came and looked down upon me.

“Renny,” he said, quietly, “I’m going now, but I shall look you up from time to time. I just want to say a thing first, though. You haven’t received me very well, and I shan’t forget it. There’s a new manner about you that’s prettier than it’s quite safe. You seem to have thought matters over and to have come to the conclusion that this lapse of years has tided you over a little difficulty we remember. I only want to suggest that you don’t presume upon that too far. Grant it to be true, as old Crackenthorpe said, that that fellow Muller’s fate isn’t likely to be yours. I can make things pretty hot for you, nevertheless.”

He nodded at me once or twice, with his lips set, and so walked from the room.

For an hour after he had gone, regardless of the calls of business, I sat on by the window pondering the meaning of this down-swoop and its likely influence on my fortunes.

The nervous apprehension of boyhood had left me; I had carved out an independent path for myself and had prospered. Was it likely that, thus restored, as it were, to manliness, I could weakly succumb to a sense of fatality? I was stronger by nature and experience than this blackest of blackmailers. He who takes his moral fiber from humanity must necessarily surpass the egotist who habitually drains upon himself.

As to the mere fact of my brother’s journey hither, and his acquirement of the means which enabled him to do so and to present a becoming appearance, I cared to speculate but little. London was the natural goal of his kind, and when the migratory fit came he was bound by hook or by crook to gather the wherewith for his flight.

It was the immediate presence of his blackrent mood that I had to combat, and I found myself strong to do so. I would not own his mastery; I would anticipate him and force the crisis he wished to postpone for his own gain and my torment. That very evening would I tell Duke all and abide by his judgment.

And Dolly? Here on the instant I compromised with manliness and so admitted a weak place in my armor. Viewed through the dizzy mist of my own past and haunted suffering, this sweet and natural child stood out, such a tender vision of innocence that I dared not arrogate to myself the right of informing it with an evil that must be negative only in the first instance. How can I imperil her soul, I thought, by shattering at a blow the image, my image, that enlightens it? Sophistry—sophistry; for what true woman is the worse for learning that her idol is poor humanity after all—not a thing to worship, but a soul to help and protect—a soul thirsting for the deep wells of sympathy?

Had I been wise to forestall my brother with all whose influence was upon my life a great misery might have been averted. In this instance I temporized, and the fatal cloud of calamity rose above the horizon.

Why was it that, at the first, Dolly was much more in my mind than Zyp? That I cannot answer altogether, but so it was. The balance of my feelings was set no differently; yet, while it seemed quite right and proper that Zyp should estimate me at my dual personality, I shrunk with shuddering from the thought of Dolly knowing me as I knew myself. Perhaps it was that, for all my sense of passionate affinity to the wild creature once so part of my destinies, I recognized in the other the purer soul; that it was the love of the first I desired, the good will of the second. Perhaps, also, the recognition of this drove me on again to abide by my decision of the morning. It is useless to speculate now; for the little unhappy tale ended otherwise than as I had prefigured it. My day had begun with an omen as ghastly as its sequel was to be.

That evening, in the luminous dusk of our sitting-room, I sat up and gave Duke my history. He would have stopped me at the outset, but I would brook no eccentric philosophy in the imperious fever of insistence that was my mood. I told him of all that related personally to me—my deed, my repentance—my brother’s exposure and renewed menaces; but to Zyp I only referred in such manner as to convey the impression that whatever influence she had once exerted over me was dead with boyhood and scarcely to be resurrected.

That here I intentionally told a half-truth only, cowardly in the suspicion that the whole would be resented by my hearer on Dolly’s behalf, I cannot deny. I dared not commit myself to a policy of absolute confidence.

When I had finished there was a silence, which I myself was forced to at length break.

“Duke,” I said, “haven’t you a remark to make—no word of advice or rebuke?”

“Not one, Renny. What concern have we with that past existence of yours?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake drop that nonsense for once in a way. It’s a very real trouble to me, whatever it is to you.”

“Old man, you did and you repented in one day. The account up there must balance.”

“You think it must?”

“We are masters of our acts—not of our impulses. You strike a bell and it clangs. You strike a man and the devil leaps out at his eyes. It’s in the rebound that the thought comes that decides the act. In this case yours was natural to yourself, for you are a good fellow.”

“And so are you, a hundred times over, to take it so. You don’t know the terror it has been to me—that it must be to me still in a measure. The account may balance; but still——”

“Well?”

“The boy—my brother—died.”

“Yes—after you had tried to save him.”

“Duke—Duke, you can’t hold me not to blame.”

“I don’t, indeed. You were very much to blame for not retreating when your better angel gave you the chance. It’s for that you’ll be called to account some day—not the other.”

“Well, I’ll stand up and cry ‘peccavi!’” I said, sadly.

“Renny,” said Duke, from the shadow of his side of the room, “what’s this elder brother of yours like?”

I explained Jason’s appearance to the best of my power.

“Ah,” he said, quietly, “I thought so.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Only I saw him this afternoon taking the bearings of the office from t’other side the street.”

“Very likely. He mentioned something about using my influence with Ripley to give him a berth later on. Probably he was debating his ground.”

“You haven’t given your confidence to any one but me in this matter?”

“No.”

“Do you intend to?”

“If you think it right. Shall I tell Ripley?”

“It’s my opinion you should. Forestall your brother in every direction.”

“Well, yours and his are the only two that concerns me.”

“One other, Renny.”

“Who?”

“Dolly.”

He leaned forward and looked at me with such intensity of earnestness that his black eyes seemed to pierce to my very soul.

“Shall I,” he said—and his gaze never left my face—“shall I acknowledge your confidence with another?”

“It shall be sacred, Duke,” I answered low, “if it refers to past or present.”

He threw himself back with a sudden wail.

“To both!” he cried; “to both!”

He was himself again directly.

“Bah!” he cried; “what a woman I am! Renny, you shall for once find me sick of philosophy and human.”

I resumed my seat, fairly dumfounded at this revelation of unwonted depths in my friend, and stared at him in silence; once more he leaned forward and seemed to read me through.

“Renny, tell me—do you wish to make Dolly your wife?”

“Duke, upon my soul I don’t know.”

“Do you love her?”

“If I thought I did, as you meant it, I could answer your first question.”

“And you can’t?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Renny, make her happy. She loves you with all her heart.”

“Would that be fair to her, Duke? Let me know my own mind first.”

“Ah, I am afraid you don’t care to know it; that you are playing with a pleasurable emotion. Take care—oh, take care, I tell you! The halt and maimed see further in the dark than the vigorous. Renny, there is trouble ahead. I know more of women than you do, perhaps, because, cut off from manly exercises, I can gauge their temptations and their weaknesses. I see a way of striking at you that you don’t dream of. Be great with resolve! Save my little book-sewer, I implore you.”

“Duke,” I said, with extreme emotion, for I fancied I could catch the shine of most unaccustomed tears in his dark eyes, “my good, dear fellow, what is the meaning of this? I would do anything to make you or Dolly happy; but where is the sense of half-measures? If you feel like this, why don’t you—I say it with all love—why don’t——”

He struggled to his feet, and with a wild, pathetic action drew emptiness about him with enfolding arms.

“I tell you,” he cried, in a broken voice, “that I would give my life to stand in your shoes, valuing the evil as nothing to the sweet.”

He dropped his head on his breast and I had no word to say. My willful blindness seemed to me at that moment as vile a thing as any in my life.

Suddenly he stood erect once more.

“Renny,” he said, with a faint smile, “for all your good friendship you don’t know me yet, I see. I’m too stiff-jointed to kneel.”

“Don’t curse me for blighting your life like this. But, Duke—I never guessed. If I had—it didn’t matter to me—I would have walked over a precipice rather than cross your path.”

“How could you know? Wasn’t I sworn to philosophy?”

“And it can’t be now?”

“It can never be.”

“Think, Duke—think.”

“I never do anything else. Love may exist on pity, but not on charity. I put myself on one side. It is her happiness that has to be considered first; and, Renny, you know the way to it.”

“Duke, have you always felt like this toward her?”

“Always? I feel here that I should answer you according to my theory of life. But I have shown you my weak side. Every negro, they say, worships white as the complexion of his unknown God. From my first sight of her I have tried to rub my sooty soul clean—have tried every means like the ‘Black-Gob’ committee in Hood’s poem.”

“I think you have been successful—if any rubbing was necessary. I think at least you have proved your affinity to her, and will claim and be claimed by her in the hereafter.”

“I shall not have the less chance then, for striving to procure her happiness here.”

“Oh, Duke—no!”

I stood abashed in presence of so much lofty abrogation of self.

“What am I to do?” I said, humbly. “I will be guided by you. Shall I study to make our interests one and trust to heaven for the right feeling?”

“First tell her what you have told me. You need have no fear.”

“Very well. I will do so on the first opportunity.”

“That confidence alone will make a bond between you. But, Renny—oh, don’t delay.”

“I won’t, Duke—I won’t. But I wish you would tell me what danger it is you fear.”

“If I did you would think it nothing but a phantom of my brain. I have said I see in the dark. This room is full of fantastic shapes to me. Perhaps they are only the goblin lights born of warp and disease.”

“I will speak to her next Sunday.”

“Not sooner?”

“I can’t very well. We must be alone together without risk of interruption.”

I would have told him of our yesterday’s talk, only that it seemed a cruel thing to take even him into that broken and tender confidence.

“Very well. Let it be then, as you value her happiness.”

All day it had been close and oppressive and now thunder began to moan and complain up the lower slopes of the night.

Suddenly, in the ominous stirring of the gloom, I became conscious that my companion was murmuring to himself—that a low current of speech was issuing from his lips monotonous as the babble of delirium.

“There was a window in the roof, where stars glittered like bubbles in the glass—and the ceiling came almost down to the floor on one side and I cried often with terror, for the window and I were alone. Sometimes the frost gathered there, like white skin over a wound, and sometimes the monstrous clouds looked in and mocked and nodded at me. I was very cold or else my face cracked like earth with the heat, and I could not run away, for he had thrown me down years before and the marrow dried in my bones. There had been a time when the woman came with her white face and loved me, always listening, and crept away looking back. But she went at last and I never saw her again.”

“Duke!” I whispered—“Duke!” but he seemed lost to all sense of my presence.

“He came often, and there was a great dog with him, whose flesh writhed with folds of gray, and the edges of his tongue were curled up like a burning leaf—and the dog made my heart sick, for its eyes were full of hate like his, and when he made it snarl at me I shivered with terror lest a movement of mine should bring it upon me. And sometimes I heard it breathing outside the door and thought if they had forgotten to lock it and it came in I should die. But they never forgot, and I was left alone with the window in the roof and nothing else. But now I feel that if I could meet that dog—now, now I should scream and tear it with my teeth and torture it inch by inch for what it made me suffer.”

I cried to him again, but he took no heed.

“There was water, in the end, and great dark buildings went up from it and the thunder was thick in the sky. Then he said, ‘Drink,’ and held something to my lips; and I obeyed because I was in terror of him. It was fire he gave me, and I could not shriek because it took me by the throat—but I fell against the water and felt it lap toward me and I woke screaming and I was in a boat—I was in a boat, I tell you.”

There came a booming crash overhead and the room for a moment weltered with ghastly light. In its passing I saw Duke leap to his feet, and there was something beside him—a shape—a mist—one of the phantoms of his brain—no, of mine—Modred, pointing and smiling. It was gone in an instant—a mere trick of the nerves. But, as I stood shivering and blinded, I heard Duke cry in a terrible voice:

“Renny—listen! It was on such a night as this that my father poisoned me!”

Long after the storm had broken and rolled away were we still sitting talking in the dim lamplight. In these hours I learned what dark confidences my friend had to give me as to his solitary and haunted past; learned more truly, also, than I had ever done as yet, the value of a moral courage that had enabled him, dogged by the cruelest hate of adversity, to emerge from the furnace noble and thrice refined.

He had been picked up, as a mere child drowning in the river, by the Thames police and had been ultimately consigned to a charity school, from which, in due course, he had been apprenticed to a printer. Thus far had his existence, emerging from profoundest gloom, run a straight and uneventful course—but before?

Into what deadly corner of a great city’s most secret burrows his young life had been first hemmed and then crushed out of shape who may say? When I had got him down again, unnerved but quiet now and wistful with apology over his outburst, he told me all that he knew.

“Thunder always seems to turn my brain a little, Renny, perhaps because it is associated in the depths of my mind with that strange young experience. The muttering sound of it brings a picture, as it were, before my eyes. I seem to see a confusion of wharfs and monstrous piles of blackness standing out against the sky; deadly water runs between, in which smudges of light palpitate and are splintered into arrows and come together again like drops of quicksilver.”

“And you are given something to drink?”

“It is poison; I know it as certainly as that it is my father who wishes to be quit of me. I can’t tell you how I know.”

“And before?”

“There is only the room and the window in the roof, and myself, a sickly cripple lying in bed, always alone and always fearful of something.”

“Duke, was the gentle woman your mother?”

“I feel that it must have been. But she went after a time. Perhaps he killed her as he wished to kill me.”

“Can you remember him at all?”

“Only through a dreadful impression of cruelty. I know that I am what I am by his act; though when made so, or under what provocation, if any, is all a blank. It is the dog that haunts my memory most. That seems queer, doesn’t it? I suppose it was the type or symbol of all the hate I was the victim of, and I often feel as if some day I shall meet it once more—only once more—and measure conclusions with it on that little matter of the suffering it caused me.”

We fell silent for awhile. Then said I, softly: “Duke, with such a past for background, I think I can understand how Dolly must stand out in the front of your picture.”

“Yes,” he said, with a tender inflection in his voice. “But anyhow I have no quarrel with her sex. What should I have been without that other presence in the past? I have known only two women intimately. For their sake my right arm is at the service of all.”

His eyes shone upon me from the sallow, strong face. He looked like a crippled knight of errantry, fearless and dangerous to tamper with where his right of affection was questioned.

The week that followed was barren of active interest. It was a busy one at Great Queen street, and all personal matters must needs be relegated to the background. Occasionally I saw Dolly, but only in the course of official routine, and no opportunity occurred for us to exchange half a dozen words in private.

Nevertheless, there was in the dusty atmosphere of the place a sensation of warmth and romance that is scarcely habitual to the matter-of-fact of the workshop. Compromise with my heart as I might on the subject of Zyp’s ineffaceable image, I could not but be conscious that Ripley’s at present held a very pretty and tender sentiment for me. The sense of a certain proprietorship in it was an experience of happiness that made my days run rosily, for all the perplexity in my soul. Yet love, such as I understood it in its spiritual exclusiveness, was absent; nor did I ever entertain for a moment the possibility of its awakening to existence in my breast.

So the week wore on and it was Saturday again, and to-morrow, for good or evil, the question must be put.

That evening, as Duke and I were sitting talking after supper, Jason’s voice came clamoring up the stairs and a moment after my brother burst into the room. He was in high spirits—flushed and boisterous as a young Antinous—and he flung himself into a chair and nodded royally to Duke.

“Renny’s chum, I suppose?” said he. “And that’s a distinction to be proud of, for all it’s his brother that says so. Glad to know you, Straw.”

Duke didn’t answer, but he returned the nod, striving to gloze over prejudice genially for my sake.

“Renny, old chap!” cried Jason, “I sha’n’t want my friend at court yet—not yet, by a long chalk, I hope. Look here.”

He seized a purse from his pocket and clapped it down on the table with a jingling thud.

“There’s solid cash for you, my boy! Forty-three pounds to a penny, and a new pleasure to the pretty face of each of ’em.”

“Where on earth did you get it, Jason?”

“Won’t you be shocked, Barebones? Come with me some night and see for yourself.”

“You’ve been gambling, I believe.”

“Horrid, isn’t it?—the wailing baby and the deserted wife and the pistol in a garret—that’s what you are thinking of, eh? Oh, you dear thing! But we aren’t built alike, you and I.”

“Be quiet, can’t you?” I cried, angrily.

“Not a bit of it. I’m breezy as a weathercock to-night. I must talk, I tell you, and you always rouse the laughing imp in me. Where’s the harm of gambling, if you win? Eh, Jack Straw?”

“It’s no very good qualification for work, if that’s what you want to get, Mr. Trender.”

“Work? Hang the dirty rubbish! Work’s for the poor in pocket and in spirit. I want to see life; to feel the sun of enjoyment down to my very finger-tips. You two may work, if you like, with your codes of cranky morals. You may go back to your mill every Monday morning with a guilty sense of relief that another weekly dissipation on Hampstead heath is over and done with. That don’t do for me. The shops here aren’t all iron-ware and stationery. There’s color and glitter and music and rich food and laughter everywhere around, and I want my share of it. When I’m poor I’ll work; only—I don’t ever intend to be poor again.”

“Well, we don’t any of us intend to, for the matter of that,” said Duke.

“Oh, but you go the wrong way about it. You’re hampered in the beginning with the notion that you were made to work, and that if you do it in fine manly fashion your wages will be paid you in full some day. Why, what owls you are not to see that those wages that you think you are storing up so patiently are all the time being spent by such as me! Here’s happiness at your elbow, in the person of Jason Trender—not up in the skies there. But it’s your nature and luckily that’s my gain. You wouldn’t know how to enjoy ten thousand a year if you had it.”

“You think not?”

“I know it. You’d never be able to shake off the old humbug of responsibility.”

“Toward others, you mean?”

“Of course I do, and that’s not the way to make out life.”

“Not your way?”

“Mine? Mine’s to be irresponsible and independent—to act upon every impulse and always have a cat by me to claw out the chestnuts.”

“A high ideal, isn’t it?”

“Don’t fire that nonsense at me. Ideal, indeed! A cant term, Jack Straw, for a sort of religious mania. No ideal ever sparkled like a bottle of champagne. I’ve been drinking it for the first time lately and learning to play euchre. I’ve not proved such a bad pupil.”

He slapped the pocket to which he had returned his purse, with a joyous laugh.

“Champagne’s heaven!” he cried. “I never want any better. Come out with me to-morrow and taste it. Let’s have a jaunt!”

Duke shook his head.

“We shouldn’t agree in our notions of pleasure,” said he.

“Then, come you, Renny, and I’ll swear to show you more fun in a day than you’ve known in all your four years of London.”

“I can’t, Jason. I’ve got another engagement.”

“Who with?”

“Never mind. But I can’t come.”

“Oh, rubbish! You’ll have to tell me or else we go together.”

“Neither the one nor the other.”

For a moment he looked threatening. “I’m not fond of these mysteries,” he said. Then his face cleared again.

“Well,” he cried, “it’s a small matter for me, and, after all, you don’t know what you miss. You don’t keep whisky here, I suppose?”

“No, we don’t drink grog, either of us.”