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CHAPTER I

It was market day at Aldersbury, the old county town of Aldshire, and the busiest hour of the day. The clock of St. Juliana's was on the point of striking three, and the streets below it were thronged. The gentry, indeed, were beginning to take themselves homeward; a carriage and four, with postillions in yellow jackets, awaited its letters before the Post Office, and near at hand a red-wheeled tandem-cart, the horses tossing their small, keen heads, hung on the movements of its master, who was gossipping on the steps of Ovington's Bank, on Bride Hill. But only the vans bound to the more distant valleys had yet started on their lagging journey; the farmers' gigs, the hucksters' carts, the pack-asses still lingered, filling the streets with a chattering, moving multitude. White-coated yeomen and their wives jostled their betters-but with humble apologies-in the low-browed shops, or hardily pushed smocked-frocks from the narrow pavements, or clung together in obstinate groups in the roadway. Loud was the babel about the yards of the inns, loudest where the taprooms poured forth those who, having dined well, had also drunk deep, after the fashion of our great-grandsires.

Through all this medley and hubbub a young man threaded his way. He wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, a waistcoat to match, and drab trousers, and as he hurried along, his hat tilted back, he greeted gentle and simple with the same laughing nod. He had the carriage of one who had a fixed position in the world and knew his worth; and so attractive was his smile, so gallant his confidence, that liking ran before him, and two out of three of the faces that he encountered mirrored his good humor. As he passed along the High Street, and skirted the Market Place, where the quaint stone figure of an ancient Prince, great in his day, looked down on the turmoil from the front of the Market House, he glanced up at the clock, noted the imminence of the hour, and quickened his pace.

A man touched him on the sleeve. "Mr. Bourdillon, sir," he said, trying to stop him, "by your leave! I want to-"

"Not now. Not now, Broadway," the young man answered quickly. "I'm meeting the mail." And before the other had fairly taken in his words he was a dozen paces away, now slipping deftly between two lurching farmers, now coasting about the more obstinate groups.

A moment later St. Juliana's clock, hard put to it to raise its wheezy voice above the noise, struck the hour. The young man slackened his pace. He was in time, but only barely in time, for as he paused, the distant notes of the guard's bugle sprang like fairy music above the turbid current of sound and gave notice that the coach was at hand. Hurriedly gigs and carts drew aside, the crowd sought the pavements, the more sober drew the heedless out of danger, half a dozen voices cried "Look out! Have a care!" and with a last shrill Tantivy! Tantivy! Tantivy! the four sweating bays, the leaders cantering, the wheelers trotting, the bars all taut, emerged from the crest of the steep Cop, and the Holyhead Mail, within a minute of its time, drew up before the door of the Lion, the Royal Arms shining bravely from its red panels.

Shop-keepers ran to their doors, the crowd closed up about it, the yokels gaped-for who in those days felt no interest in its advent! By that coach had come, eleven years before, the news of the abdication of the Corsican and the close of the Great War. Laurelled and flagged, it had thrilled the town a year afterwards with the tidings of Waterloo. Later it had signalled the death of the old blind king, and later still, the acquittal-as all the world regarded it-of Queen Caroline. Ah, how the crowd had cheered then! And how lustily old Squire Griffin of Garth, the great-uncle of this young man, now come to meet the mail, had longed to lay his cane about their disloyal shoulders!

The coachman, who had driven the eleven-mile stage from Haygate in fifty-eight minutes, unbuckled and flung down the reins. The guard thrust his bugle into its case, tossed a bundle of journals to the waiting boys, and stepped nimbly to the ground. The passengers followed more slowly, stamping their chilled feet, and stretching their cramped limbs. Some, who were strangers, looked about them with a travelled air, or hastened to the blazing fires that shone from the Lion windows, while two or three who were at their journey's end bustled about, rescuing shawls and portmanteaux, or dived into inner pockets for the coachman's fee.

The last to appear, a man, rather below the middle height, in a handsome caped travelling-coat, was in no hurry. He stepped out at his ease and found the young man who has been described at his side. "That you, Arthur?" he said, his face lighting up. "All well?"

"All well, sir. Let me take that!"

"Isn't Rodd here? Ah!" to a second young man, plainer, darker, and more soberly garbed, who had silently appeared at his forerunner's elbow. "Take this, Rodd, will you?" handing him a small leather case. "Don't let it go, until it is on my table. All well?"

"All well, sir, thank you."

"Then go on at once, will you? I will follow with Mr. Bourdillon. Give me your arm, Arthur." He looked about him as he spoke. One or two hats were lifted, he acknowledged the courtesy with a smile. "Betty well?"

"You'll find her at the window looking out. All gone swimmingly, I hope, sir?"

"Swimmingly?" The traveller paused on the word, perhaps questioning its propriety; and he did not continue until they had disengaged themselves from the group round the coach. He and the young man came, though there was nothing to show this, from different grades of society, and the one was thirty years older than the other and some inches shorter. Yet there was a likeness. The lower part of the face in each was strong, and a certain brightness in the eyes, that was alertness in the younger man and keenness in the elder, told of a sanguine temperament; and they were both good-looking. "Swimmingly?" the traveller repeated when they had freed themselves from their immediate neighbors. "Well, if you choose to put it that way, yes. But, it's wonderful, wonderful," in a lower tone, as he paused an instant to acknowledge an acquaintance, "the state of things up there, my boy."

"Still rising?"

"Rising as if things would never fall. And upon my word I don't know why, with the marvellous progress everything is making-but I'll tell you all that later. It's a full market. Is Acherley at the bank?"

"Yes, and Sir Charles. They came a little before time."

"Clement is with them, I suppose?"

"Well, no, sir."

"Don't say he's away to-day!" in a tone of vexation.

"I'm afraid he is," Arthur admitted. "But they are all right. I offered Sir Charles the paper, but they preferred to wait outside."

"D-n!" muttered the other, nodding right and left. "Too bad of the boy! Too bad! No," to the person who had lain in wait for Bourdillon and now put himself in their way, "I can't stop now, Mr. Broadway."

"But, Mr. Ovington! Just a-"

"Not now!" Ovington answered curtly. "Call to-morrow." And when they had left the man behind, "What does he want?"

"What they all want," Arthur answered, smiling. "A good thing, sir."

"But he isn't a customer."

"No, but he will be to-morrow," the young man rejoined. "They are all agog. They've got it that you can make a man's fortune by a word, and of course they want their fortunes made."

"Ah!" the other ejaculated drily. "But seriously, look about you, Arthur. Did you ever see a greater change in men's faces-from what they were this time two years? Even the farmers!"

"Well, they are doing well."

"Better, at any rate. Better, even they. Yes, Mr. Wolley," to a stout man, much wrapped up, who put himself in the way, "follow us, please. Sir Charles is waiting. Better," Ovington continued to his companion, as the man fell behind, "and prices rising, and demand-demand spreading in everything."

"Including Stocks?"

"Including Stocks. I've some news for Sir Charles, that, if he has any doubts about joining us, will fix him. Well, here we are, and I'm glad to be at home. We'll go in by the house door, Arthur, or Betty will be disappointed."

The bank stood on Bride Hill, looking along the High Street. The position was excellent and the house good. Still, it was no more than a house, for in 1825 banks were not the institutions that they have since become; they had still for rivals the old stocking and the cracked teapot, and among banks, Ovington's at Aldersbury was neither of long standing nor of more than local repute.

Mr. Ovington led the way into the house, and had barely removed his hat when a girl flew down the wide oak staircase and flung herself upon him. "Oh, father!" she cried. "Here at last! Aren't you cold? Aren't you starving?"

"Pretty well for that," he replied, stroking her hair in a way that proved that, whatever he was to others, he had a soft spot for his daughter. "Pretty well for that, Betty."

"Well, there's a good fire! Come and warm yourself!"

"That's what I can't do, my dear," he said, taking off his great coat. "Business first."

"But I thought you had done all that in London?" pouting.

"Not all, but some. I shall be an hour, perhaps more."

She shot a mutinous glance at Arthur. "Why can't he do it? And Mr. Rodd?"

"You think we are old enough, Betty?"

"Apprentices should be seen, and not heard!" she snapped.

Arthur's position at the bank had been hardly understood at first, and in some fit of mischief, Betty, determined not to bow down to his pretensions, had christened him the "Apprentice."

"I thought that that proverb applied to children," he retorted.

The girl was a beauty, dark and vivid, but small, and young enough to feel the gibe. Before she could retaliate, however, her father intervened. "Where's Clement?" he asked. "I know that he is not here."

"Tell-tale!" she flung at Arthur. "If you must know, father," mildly, "I think that he's-"

"Mooning somewhere, I suppose, instead of being in the bank, as he should be. And market day of all days! There, come, Bourdillon, I mustn't keep Sir Charles and Acherley waiting." He led the way to the rear of the hall, where a door on the left led into the bank parlor. Betty made a face after them.

In the parlor which lay behind the public office were two men. One, seated in an arm-chair by the fire, was reading the Morning Post. The other stood at the window, his very shoulders expressing his impatience. But it was to the former, a tall, middle-aged man, stiff and pompous, with thin sandy hair but kindly eyes, that Ovington made the first advance. "I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Sir Charles," he said. "Very sorry. But I assure you I have not wasted a minute. Mr. Acherley," to the other, "pardon me, will you? Just a word with Sir Charles before we begin."

And leaving Bourdillon to make himself agreeable to the impatient Acherley, Ovington drew Sir Charles Woosenham aside. "I have gone a little beyond my instructions," he said in a low tone, "and sold your Monte Reales."

The Baronet's face fell. "Sold!" he ejaculated. "Parted with them? But I never-my dear sir, I never-"

"Authorized a sale?" the banker agreed suavely. "No, perfectly right, Sir Charles. But I was on the spot and I felt myself responsible. There was a favorable turn and-" forestalling the other as he would have interrupted-"my rule is little and sure-little and sure, and sell on a fair rise. I don't think you will be dissatisfied with the transaction."

But Sir Charles's displeasure showed itself in his face. He was a man of family and influence, honorable and straightforward, but his abilities were hardly on a par with his position, and though he had at times an inkling of the fact it only made him the more jealous of interference. "But I never contemplated," he said, the blood rising to his face, "never for a moment, that you would part with the stocks without reference to me, Mr. Ovington."

"Precisely, precisely-without your authority, Sir Charles-except at a really good profit. I think that four or five hundred was mentioned? Just so. Well, if you will look at this draft, which of course includes the price of the stocks-they cost, if I remember, fourteen hundred or thereabouts-you will, I hope-I really hope-approve of what I did."

Sir Charles adjusted his glasses, and frowned at the paper. He was prepared to be displeased and to show it. "Two thousand six hundred," he muttered, "two thousand six hundred and twenty-seven!" his jaw dropping in his surprise. "Two thousand six-really! Ah, well, I certainly think-" with a quick change to cordiality that would have amused an onlooker-"that you acted for the best. I am obliged to you, much obliged, Mr. Ovington. A handsome profit."

"I felt sure that you would approve," the banker assented gravely. "Shall Bourdillon put the draft-Arthur, be good enough to place this draft to Sir Charles Woosenham's account. And tell Mr. Wolley and Mr. Grounds-I think they are waiting-to come in. I ask your pardon, Mr. Acherley," approaching him in turn.

"No plum for me, I suppose?" growled that gentleman, whom the gist of the interview with Sir Charles had not escaped. He was a tall, hatchet-faced, dissipated-looking man, of an old family, Acherley of Acherley. He had been a dandy with Brummell, had shaken his elbow at Watier's when Crockford managed it, had dined at the Pavilion; now he vegetated in the country on a mortgaged estate, and on Sundays attended cock-fights behind the village public-house.

"Well, not to-day," Ovington answered pleasantly. "But when we have shaken the tree a little-"

"One may fall, you think?"

"I hope so. You will be unlucky if one does not."

The two men who had been summoned came in, each after his fashion. Wolley entered first, endeavoring to mask under a swaggering manner his consciousness that he stood in the presence of his betters. A clothier from the Valleys and one of Ovington's earliest customers, he had raised himself, as the banker had, and from the same stratum; but by enlarging instead of selling his mill. During the war he had made much money and had come to attribute his success a little more to his abilities and a little less to circumstances than was the fact. Of late there were whispers that in the financial storm of '16, which had followed the close of the war, he had come near the rocks; but if so he had put a bold face on the crisis, and by steadily putting himself forward he had impressed most men with a belief in his wealth. "Afternoon, Sir Charles," he grunted with as much ease as he could compass. "Afternoon," to Acherley. He took a seat at the table and slapped down his hat. He was here on business and he meant to show that he knew what business was.

Grounds, who followed, was a man of a different type. He was a maltster and had been a dairyman; a leading tradesman in the town, cautious, penurious, timid, putting pound to pound without saying much about it, and owning that respect for his superiors which became one in his position. Until lately he had hoarded his savings, or put them into the five per cents.; he had distrusted even the oldest bank. But progress was in the air, new enterprises, new discoveries were the talk of the town, the interest on the five per cents. had been reduced to four, and in a rare moment of rashness, he had taken a hint dropped by Ovington, had ventured, and won. He still trembled at his temerity, he still vowed in wakeful moments that he would return to the old safe road, but in the meantime easy gains tempted him and he was now fairly embarked on modern courses. He was a byword in Aldersbury for caution and shrewdness, and his adhesion to any scheme would, as Ovington well knew, commend it to the town.

He hung back, but, "Come, Mr. Grounds, take a seat," said the banker. "You know Sir Charles and Mr. Acherley? Sir Charles, will you sit on my right, and Mr. Acherley here, if you please? Bourdillon, will you take a note? We are met, as you know, gentlemen, to consider the formation of a Joint Stock Company, to be called" – he consulted a paper-"the Valleys Steam Railroad Company, for the purpose of connecting the woollen business of the Valleys with the town, and of providing the public with a superior mode of transport. The Bill for the Manchester and Liverpool Railroad is on the point of passing, and that great enterprise is as good as carried through. The Bill for the London and Birmingham Railroad is before the House; a Bill for a line from Birmingham to Aldersbury is preparing. Those projects are, gentlemen, in stronger hands than ours, and it might seem to some to be too early to anticipate their success and to provide the continuation we propose. But nothing is more certain than that the spoils are to those who are first in the field. The Stockton and Darlington Railway is proving what can be done by steam in the transport of the heaviest goods. There a single engine draws a load of fifty tons at the rate of six miles an hour, and has been known to convey a load of passengers at fifteen miles. Higher speeds are thought to be possible-"

"I'll never believe it!" Wolley growled, anxious to assert himself.

"But not desirable," Ovington continued blandly. "At any rate, if we wait too long-"

"There's no talk of waiting!" Acherley exclaimed. Neither he nor Sir Charles was in the habit of meeting on an equal footing the men with whom they were sitting to-day; he found the position galling, and what was to be done he was anxious should be done quickly. He had heard the banker's exordium before.

"No, we are here to act," Ovington assented, with an eye on Grounds, for whose benefit he had been talking. "But on sober and well-considered lines. We are all agreed, I think, that such a railroad will be a benefit to the trade and district?"

Now, to this proposition not one of those present would have assented a year before. "Steam railroads?" they would have cried, "fantastic and impossible!" But the years 1823 and 1824 had been years not only of great prosperity but of abnormal progress. The seven lean years, the years of depression and repression, which had followed Waterloo had come to an end. The losses of war had been made good, and simultaneously a more liberal spirit had been infused into the Government. Men had breathed freely, had looked about them, had begun to hope and to venture, to talk of a new world. Demand had overtaken and outrun supply, large profits had been made, money had become cheap, and, fostered by credit, the growth of enterprise throughout the country had been marvellous. It was as if, after the frosts of winter, the south wind had blown and sleeping life had everywhere awakened. Men doubled their operations and still had money to spare. They put the money in the funds-the funds rose until they paid no more than three per cent. Dissatisfied, men sought other channels for their savings, nor sought in vain. Joint Stock Companies arose on every side. Projects, good and bad, sprang up like mushrooms in a night. Old lodes and new harbors, old canals and new fisheries, were taken in hand, and for all these there seemed to be capital. Shares rose to a premium before the companies were floated, and soon the bounds of our shores were found to be too narrow for British enterprise. At that moment the separation of the South American countries from Spain fell out, and these were at once seen to offer new outlets. The romantic were dazzled with legends of mines of gold and pockets of diamonds, while the gravest saw gain in pampas waving with wheat and prairies grazed by countless herds. It was felt, even by the most cautious, that a new era had set in. Trade, soaring on a continual rise in prices, was to know no bounds. If the golden age of commerce had not begun, something very like it had come to bless the British merchant.

Under such circumstances the Valleys Railroad seemed a practical thing even to Grounds, and Ovington's question was answered by a general assent.

"Very good, gentlemen," he resumed. "Then I may take that as agreed." He proceeded to enter upon the details of the scheme. The length of the line would be fourteen miles. The capital was to be £45,000, divided into 4500 shares of £10 each, £1 a share to be paid at once, the sum so raised to be used for the preliminary expenses; £1 10s. per share to be paid three months later, and the rest to be called up as required. The directors' qualification would be fifty shares. The number of directors would be seven-the five gentlemen now present and two to be named, as to whom he would have a word to say by-and-by. Mr. Bourdillon, of whose abilities he thought highly-here several at the table looked kindly at the young man-and who for other reasons was eminently fitted for the position, would be secretary.

"But will the forty-five thousand be enough, sir?" Grounds ventured timidly. He alone was not directly interested in the venture. Wolley was the tenant of a large mill. Sir Charles was the owner of two mills and the hamlets about them, Acherley of a third. Ovington had various interests.

"To complete the line, Mr. Grounds? We believe so. To provide the engine and coaches another fifteen thousand will be needed, but this may be more cheaply raised by a mortgage."

Sir Charles shied at the word. "I don't like a mortgage, Mr. Ovington," he said.

"No, d-n a mortgage!" Acherley chimed in. He had had much experience of them.

"The point is this," the banker explained. "The road once completed, we shall be able to raise the fifteen thousand at five per cent. If we issue shares they must partake, equally with ourselves, in the profits, which may be fifteen, twenty, perhaps twenty-five per cent."

A twinkle of greed passed from eye to eye. Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five per cent.! Ho, ho!

"The next question," Ovington continued, "is important. We cannot use the highway, the gradients and angles render that impossible. We must acquire a right of way; but, fortunately, the estates we run over are few, no more than thirteen in all, and for a full third of the distance they are represented at this table." He bowed gracefully to the two landowners. "Sir Charles will, of course, be President of the Road and Chairman of the Directors. We are fortunate in having at our head a country gentleman who has" – he bowed again-"the enlightenment to see that the landed interest is best served by making commerce contributory to its well-being."

"But what about the game?" Sir Charles asked anxiously. "You don't think-"

"On that point the greatest care will be taken. We shall see that no covert is closely approached."

"And the-you won't bring the line within sight of-"

"Of the Park? God forbid! The amenities of every estate must be carefully guarded. And, of course, a fair price for the right of way will be agreed. Seven of the smaller landowners I have sounded, and we shall have no trouble with them. The largest estate outstanding-"

"Is my landlord's, I'll bet!" Wolley exclaimed.

"Yes-is Garth. Mr. Griffin's."

Wolley laughed rudely. "Garth? Ay, you'll have your work cut out there!"

"Oh. I don't know!"

"I do. And you'll find I'm right."

"Well, I hope-"

"You may hope what you like!" Sir Charles shuddered at the man's brusqueness. "The Squire's a hard nut to crack, and so you'll find, banker. If you can get him to do a thing he don't wish to do, you'll be the first that ever has. He hates the name of trade as he hates the devil!"

The baronet sat up. "Trade?" he exclaimed. "Oh! but I am not aware, sir, that this is- Surely a railroad is on another footing?" Alarm was written on his face.

"Quite!" Ovington struck in. "Entirely different! Another thing altogether, Sir Charles. There can be only one opinion on that."

"Of course, if I thought I was entering on anything like-"

"A railroad is on an entirely different footing," the banker repeated, with an angry glance at Wolley, who, unrepentant, continued to stare before him, a sneer on his face. "On an entirely different footing. Even Mr. Griffin, prejudiced as I venture with all respect to think he is-even he would agree to that. But I have considered the difficulty, gentlemen, and I have no doubt we can surmount it. I propose to see him on Monday, accompanied by Mr. Bourdillon, his great-nephew, and between us I have no doubt that we shall be able to persuade him."

Acherley looked over his shoulder at the secretary, who sat at a small table at Ovington's elbow. "Like the job, Arthur?" he asked.

"I think Sir Charles's example will go a long way with him," Bourdillon answered. He was a tactful young man.

The banker put the interruption aside. "I shall see Mr. Griffin on Monday, and with your consent, gentlemen, I propose to offer him the sixth seat at the Board."

"Quite right, quite right," Sir Charles murmured, much relieved.

"He'll not take it!" Wolley persisted.

"My dear sir!"

"You will see I am right."

"Well, there are more ways than one. At any rate I will see him and report to the next meeting, when, with the chairman's approbation, we shall draw up the prospectus. In that connection" – he consulted his paper-"I have already received overtures from customers of the bank for four hundred shares." There was a murmur of applause and Grounds's face betrayed relief. "Then Sir Charles has put himself down for three hundred." He bowed deferentially to Woosenham. "Mr. Acherley for one hundred and fifty, Mr. Wolley has taken up one hundred and twenty-five, and Mr. Grounds-I have not heard from Mr. Grounds, and there is no hurry. No hurry at all!"

But Grounds, feeling that all eyes were on him, and feeling also uncomfortable in his company, took the fence up to which he had been brought. He murmured that he would take one hundred and twenty-five.

"Excellent!" said Ovington. "And I, on behalf of the bank, propose to take four hundred." Again there was a murmur of applause. "So that before we go to the public we have already one-third of the shares taken up. That being so, I feel no doubt that we shall start at a premium before we cut the first sod."

There followed a movement of feet, an outburst of hilarity. For this was what they all wished to hear; this was the point. Chairs were pushed back, and Sir Charles, who was as fearful for his prestige as Grounds for his money, recovered his cheerfulness. Even Acherley became good-humored. "Well, here's to the Valleys Railroad!" he cried. "Damme, we ought to have something to drink it in!"

The banker ignored this, and Sir Charles spoke. "But as to the seventh seat at the Board? We have not arranged that, I think?" He liked to show that nothing escaped him, and that if he was above business he could still, when he condescended, be a business man.

"No," Ovington agreed. "But I suggest that, with your permission, we hold that over. There may be a big subscriber taking three or four hundred shares?"

"Quite so, quite so."

"Somebody may come forward, and the larger the applications the higher the premium, gentlemen."

Again eyes glistened, and there was a new movement. Woosenham took his leave, bowing to Wolley and Grounds, and shaking hands with the others. Acherley went with him and Ovington accompanied them, bare-headed, to Sir Charles's carriage, which was waiting before the bank. As he returned Wolley waylaid him and drew him into a corner. A conference took place, the banker turning the money in his fob as he listened, his face grave. Presently the clothier entered on a second explanation. In the end Ovington nodded. He called Rodd from the counter and gave an order. He left his customer in the bank.

When he re-entered the parlor Grounds had disappeared, and Arthur, who was bending over his, papers, looked up. "Wolley wanted his notes renewed, I suppose?" he said. The bank had few secrets for this shrewd young man, who had learnt as much of business in eighteen months as Rodd the cashier had learned in ten years, or as Clement Ovington would learn in twenty.

The banker nodded. "And three hundred more on his standing loan."

Arthur whistled. "I wonder you go on carrying him, sir."

"If I cut him loose now-"

"There would be a loss, of course."

"Yes, but that is not all, lad. Where would the Railroad scheme be? Gone. And that's not all, either. His fall would deal a blow to credit. The money that we are drawing out of the old stockings and the cracked tea-pots would go back to them. Half the clothiers in the Valley would shiver, and neither I nor you would be able to say where the trouble would stop, or who would be in the Gazette next week. No, we must carry him for the present, and pay for his railway shares too. But we shall hold them, and the profits will eventually come to us. And if the railway is made, it will raise the value of mills and increase our security; so that whether he goes on or we have to take the mills over-which Heaven forbid! – the ground will be firmer. It went well?"

"Splendidly! The way you managed them!" The lad laughed.

"What is it?"

"Grounds asked me if I did not think that you were like the pictures of old Boney. I said I did. The Napoleon of Finance, I told him. Only, I added, you knew a deal better where to stop."

Ovington shook his head at the flatterer, but was pleased with the flattery. More than once, people had stopped him in the street and told him that he was like Napoleon. It was not only that he was stout and of middle height, with his head sunk between his shoulders; but he had the classic profile, the waxen complexion, the dominating brow and keen bright eyes, nay, something of the air of power of the great Exile who had died three years before. And he had something, too, of his ambition. Sprung from nothing, a self-made man, he seemed in his neighbors' eyes to have already reached a wonderful eminence. But in his own eyes he was still low on the hill of fortune. He was still a country banker, and new at that. But if the wave of prosperity which was sweeping over the country and which had already wrought so many changes, if this could be taken at the flood, nothing, he believed, was beyond him. He dreamed of a union with Dean's, the old conservative steady-going bank of the town; of branches here and branches there; finally of an amalgamation with a London bank, of Threadneedle Street, and a directorship-but Arthur was speaking.

"You managed Grounds splendidly," he said. "I'll wager he's sweating over what he's done! But do you think-" he looked keenly at the banker as he put the question, for he was eager to know what was in his mind-"the thing will succeed, sir?"

"The railroad?"

"Yes."

"I think that the shares will go to a premium. And I see no reason why the railroad should not do. If I did not think so, I should not be fostering it. It may take time and, of course, more money than we think. But if nothing occurs to dash the public-no, I don't see why it should not succeed. And if it does it will give such an impetus to the trade of the Valleys, three-fourths of which passes through our hands, as will repay us many times over."

"I am glad you think so. I was not sure."

"Because I led Grounds a little? Oh, that was fair enough. It does not follow from that, that honesty is not the banker's only policy. Make no mistake about that. But I am going into the house now. Just bring me the note-issue book, will you? I must see how we stand. I shall be in the dining-room."

But when Arthur went into the house a few minutes later he met Betty, who was crossing the hall. "Your father wanted this book," he said. "Will you take it to him?"

But Betty put her hands behind her back. "Why? Where are you going?"

"You have forgotten that it is Saturday. I am going home."

"Horrid Saturday! I thought that to-night, with father just back-"

"I wouldn't go? If I don't my mother will think that the skies have fallen. Besides, I am riding Clement's mare, and if I don't go, how is he to come back?"

"As you go at other times. On his feet."

"Ah, well, very soon I shall have a horse of my own. You'll see, Betty. We are all going to make our fortunes now."

"Fortunes?" – with disdain. "Whose?"

"Your father's for one."

"Silly! He's made his."

"Then yours-and mine, Betty. Yours and mine-and Clement's."

"I don't think he'll thank you."

"Then Rodd's. But, no, we'll not make Rodd's. We'll not make Rodd's, Betty."

"And why not Mr. Rodd's?"

"Never mind. We'll not make it," mischievously. "I wonder why you've got such a color, Betty?" And as she snatched the book from him and threatened him with it, "Good-bye till Monday. I'm late now, and it will be dark before I am out of the town."

With a gay nod he vanished through the door that led into the bank. She looked after him, the book in her hand. Her lip curled. "Rodd indeed!" she murmured. "Rodd? As if I should ever-oh, isn't he provoking!"

CHAPTER II

The village of Garthmyle, where Arthur had his home, lay in the lap of the border hills more than seven miles from Aldersbury, and night had veiled the landscape when he rode over the bridge and up the village street. The squat church-tower, firm and enduring as the hopes it embodied, rose four-square above the thatched dwellings, and some half-mile away the rider could discern or imagine the blur of trees that masked Garth, on its sister eminence. But the bounds of the valley, in the mouth of which the village nestled, were obscured by darkness; the steep limestone wall which fenced it on one side and the more distant wooded hills that sloped gently to it on the other were alike hidden. It was only when Arthur had passed through the hamlet, where all doors were closed against the chill of a January night, and he had ridden a few paces down the hillock, that the lights of the Cottage broke upon his view. Many a time had they, friendly beacons of home and rest, greeted him at that point.

Not that Arthur saw them as beacons, for at no time was he much given to sentiment. His outlook on life was too direct and vivid for that, and to-day in particular his mind was teeming with more practical thoughts, with hopes and plans and calculations. But the lights meant that a dull ride over a rough road was at an end, and so far they gave him pleasure. He opened the gate and rode round to the stable, gave up the horse to Pugh, the man-of-all-work, and made his way into the house.

He entered upon a scene as cheerful as any lights shining on weary traveller could promise. In a fair-sized room a clear grate held a coal fire, the flames of which danced on the red-papered walls. A kettle bubbled on the hob, a tea-tray gleamed on the table, and between the two a lady and gentleman sat, eating crumpets; the lady with much elegance and a napkin spread over her lavender silk dress, the gentleman in a green cutaway coat with basket buttons-a coat that ill concealed the splashed gaiters for which he had more than once asked pardon.

But fair as things looked on the surface, all was not perfect even in this pleasant interior. The lady held herself stiffly, and her eyes rested rather more often than was courteous on the spatter-dashes. Secretly she thought her company not good enough for her, while the gentleman was frankly bored. Neither was finding the other as congenial as a first glance suggested, and it would have been hard to say which found Arthur's entrance the more welcome interruption.

"Hallo, mother!" he said, stooping carelessly to kiss her. "Hallo, Clement."

"My dear Arthur!" the lady cried, the lappets of her cap shaking as she embraced him. "How late you are! That horrid bank! I am sure that some day you will be robbed and murdered on your way home!"

"I! No, mother. I don't bring the money, more's the pity! I am late, am I? The worse for Clement, who has to ride home. But I have been doing your work, my lad, so you mustn't grumble. What did you get?"

"A brace and a wood-pigeon. Has my father come?"

"Yes, he has come, and I am afraid has a wigging in store for you. But-a brace and a wood-pigeon? Lord, man," with a little contempt in his tone, "what do you do with your gun all day? Why, Acherley told me that in that rough between the two fallows above the brook-"

"Oh, Arthur," Mrs. Bourdillon interposed, "never mind that!" She had condescended sufficiently, she thought, and wished to hear no more of Clement Ovington's doings. "I've something more important to tell you, much more important. I've had a shock, a dreadful shock to-day."

She was a faded lady, rather foolish than wise, and very elegant: one who made the most of such troubles as she had, and the opening her son now heard was one which he had heard often before.

"What's the matter now, mother?" he asked, stooping to warm his hands.

"Your uncle has been here."

"Well, that's no new thing."

"But he has behaved dreadfully, perfectly dreadfully to me."

"I don't know that that is new, either."

"He began again about your refusal to take Orders, and your going into that dreadful bank instead."

Arthur shrugged his shoulders. "That's one for you, Clement."

"Oh, that wasn't the half," the lady continued, unbending. "He said, there was the living, three hundred and fifty a year, and old Mr. Trubshaw seventy-eight. And he'd have to sell it and put in a stranger and have quarrels about tithes. He stood there with his great stick in his hand and his eyes glaring at me like an angry cat's, and scolded me till I didn't know whether I stood on my head or my heels. He wanted to know where you got your low tastes from."

"There you are again, Clement!"

"And your wish to go into trade, and I answered him quite sharp that you didn't get them from me; as for Mr. Bourdillon's grandfather, who had the plantations in Jamaica, it wasn't the same at all, as everybody knows and agrees that nothing is genteeler than the West Indies with black men to do the work!"

"You confounded him there, mother, I'm sure. But as we have heard something like this before, and Clement is not much interested, if that is all-"

"Oh, but it is not all! Very far from it!" Mrs. Bourdillon's head shook till the lappets swung again. "The worst is to come. He said that we had had the Cottage rent-free for four years-and I'm sure I don't know who has a better right to it-but that that was while he still hoped that you were going to live like a gentleman, like the Griffins before you-and I am sure the Bourdillons were gentry, or I should have been the last to marry your father! But as you seemed to be set on going your own way and into the bank for good-and I must say I told him it wasn't any wish of mine and I'd said all I could against it, as you know, and Mr. Clement knows the same-why, it was but right that we should pay rent like other people! And it would be thirty pounds a year from Lady Day!"

"The d-d old hunks!" Arthur cried. He had listened unmoved to his mother's tirade, but this touched him. "Well, he is a curmudgeon! Thirty pounds a year? Well, I'm d-d! And all because I won't starve as a parson!"

But his mother rose in arms at that. "Starve as a parson!" she cried. "Why, I think you are as bad, one as the other. I'm sure your father never starved!"

"No, I know, mother. He was passing rich on four hundred pounds a year. But that is not going to do for me."

"Well, I don't know what you want!"

"My dear mother, I've told you before what I want." Arthur was fast regaining the good temper that he seldom lost. "If I were a bishop's son and could look to be a bishop, or if I were an archdeacon's son with the prospect of a fat prebend and a rectory or two with it, I'd take Orders. But with no prospect except the Garthmyle living, and with tithes falling-"

"But haven't I told you over and over again that you have only to make-up to-but there, I haven't told you that Jos was with him, and I will say this for her, that she looked as ashamed for him as I am sure I was! I declare I was sorry for the girl and she not daring to put in a word-such an old bear as he is to her!"

"Poor Jos!" Arthur said. "She has not a very bright life of it. But this does not interest Clement, and we're keeping him."

The young man had indeed made more than one attempt to take leave, but every time he had moved Mrs. Bourdillon had either ignored him, or by a stately gesture had claimed his silence. He rose now.

"I dare say you know my cousin?" Arthur said.

"I've seen her," Clement answered; and his mind went back to the only occasion on which he had remarked Miss Griffin. It had been at the last Race Ball at Aldersbury that he had noticed her-a gentle, sweet-faced girl, plainly and even dowdily dressed, and so closely guarded by her proud old dragon of a father that, warned by the fate of others and aware that his name was not likely to find favor with the Squire, he had shrunk from seeking an introduction. But he had noticed that she sat out more than she danced; sat, indeed, in a kind of isolation, fenced in by the old man, and regarded with glances of half-scornful pity by girls more smartly dressed. He had had time to watch her, for he also, though for different reasons, had been a little without the pale, and he had found her face attractive. He had imagined how differently she would look were she suitably dressed. "Yes," he continued, recalling it, "she was at the last Race Ball, I think."

"And a mighty poor time she had of it," Arthur answered, half carelessly, half contemptuously. "Poor Jos! She hasn't at any time much of a life with my beauty of an uncle. Twopence to get and a penny to spend!"

Mrs. Bourdillon protested. "I do wish you would not talk of your cousin like that," she said. "You know that she's your uncle's heiress, and if you only-"

Arthur cut her short. "There! There! You don't remember, mother, that Clement has seven miles to ride before his supper. Let him go now! He'll be late enough."

That was the end, and the two young men went out together. When Arthur returned, the tea had been removed and his mother was seated at her tambour work. He took his stand before the fire. "Confounded old screw!" he fumed. "Thirty pounds a year? And he's three thousand, if he's a penny! And more likely four!"

"Well, it may be yours some day," with a sniff. "I'm sure Jos is ready enough."

"She'll have to do as he tells her."

"But Garth must be hers."

"And still she'll have to do as he tells her. Don't you know yet, mother, that Jos has no more will than a mouse? But never mind, we can afford his thirty pounds. Ovington is giving me a hundred and fifty, and I'm to have another hundred as secretary to this new Company-that's news for you. With your two hundred and fifty we shall be able to pay his rent and still be better off than before. I shall buy a nag-Packham has one to sell-and move to better rooms in town."

"But you'll still be in that dreadful bank," Mrs. Bourdillon sighed. "Really, Arthur, with so much money it seems a pity you should lower yourself to it."

He had some admirable qualities besides the gaiety, the alertness, the good looks that charmed all comers; ay, and besides the rather uncommon head for figures and for business which came, perhaps, of his Huguenot ancestry, and had commended him to the banker. Of these qualities patience with his mother was one. So, instead of snubbing her, "Why dreadful?" he asked good-humoredly. "Because all our county fogies look down on it? Because having nothing but land, and drawing all their importance from land, they're jealous of the money that is shouldering them out and threatening their pride of place? Listen to me, mother. There is a change coming! Whether they see it or not, and I think they do see it, there is a change coming, and stiff as they hold themselves, they will have to give way to it. Three thousand a year? Four thousand? Why, if Ovington lives another ten years what do you think that he will be worth? Not three thousand a year, but ten, fifteen, twenty thousand!"

"Arthur!"

"It is true, mother. Ay, twenty, it is possible! And do you think that when he can buy up half a dozen of these thickheaded Squires who can just add two to two and make four-that he'll not count? Do you think that they'll be able to put him on one side? No! And they know it. They see that the big manufacturers and the big ironmasters and the big bankers who are putting together hundreds of thousands are going to push in among them and can't be kept out! And therefore trade, as they call it, stinks in their nostrils!"

"Oh, Arthur, how horrid!" Mrs. Bourdillon protested, "you are growing as coarse as your uncle. And I'm sure we don't want a lot of vulgar purse-proud-"

"Purse-proud? And what is the Squire? Land-proud! But," growing more calm, "never mind that. You will take a different view when I tell you something that I heard to-day. Ovington let drop a word about a partnership."

"La, Arthur, but-"

"A partnership! Nothing definite, nothing to bind, and not yet, but in the future. It was but a hint. But think of it, mother! It is what I have been aiming at all along, but I didn't expect to hear of it yet. Not one or two hundred a year, but say, five hundred to begin with, and three, four, five thousand by and by! Five thousand!" His eyes sparkled and he threw back the hair from his forehead with a characteristic gesture. "Five thousand a year! Think of that and don't talk to me of Orders. Take Orders! Be a beggarly parson while I have that in my power, and in my power while I am still young! For trust me, with Ovington at the helm and the tide at flood we shall move. We shall move, mother! The money is there, lying there, lying everywhere to be picked up. And we shall pick it up."

"You take my breath away!" his mother protested, her faded, delicate face unusually flushed. "Five thousand a year! Gracious me! Why, it is more than your uncle has!" She raised her mittened hands in protest. "Oh, it is impossible!" The vision overcame her.

But "It is perfectly possible," he repeated. "Clement is of no use. He is for ever wanting to be out of doors-a farmer spoiled. Rodd's a mere mechanic. Ovington cannot do it all, and he sees it. He must have someone he can trust. And then it is not only that I suit him. I am what he is not-a gentleman."

"If you could have it without going to the bank!" Mrs. Bourdillon said. And she sighed, golden as was the vision. But before they parted his eloquence had almost persuaded her. She had heard such things, had listened to such hopes, had been dazzled by such sums that she was well-nigh reconciled even to that which the old Squire dubbed "the trade of usury."

CHAPTER III

Meanwhile Clement Ovington jogged homeward through the darkness, his thoughts divided between the discussion at which he had made an unwilling third, and the objects about him which were never without interest for this young man. He had an ear, and a very sharp one, for the piping of the pee-wits in the low land by the river, and the owl's cadenced cry in the trees about Garth. He marked the stars shining in a depth of heaven opened amid the flying wrack of clouds; he picked out Jupiter sailing with supreme dominion, and the Dog-star travelling across the southern tract. His eye caught the gleam of water on a meadow, and he reflected that old Gregory would never do any good with that ground until he made some stone drains in it. Not a sound in the sleeping woods, not the barking of a dog at a lonely homestead-and he knew every farm by name and sight and quality-escaped him; nor the shape of a covert, blurred though it was and leafless. But amid all these interests, and more than once, his thoughts as he rode turned inwards, and he pictured the face of the girl at the ball. Long forgotten, it recurred to him with strange persistence.

He was an out-of-door man, and that, in his position, was the pity of it. Aldersbury School-and Aldersbury was a very famous school in those days-and Cambridge had done little to alter the tendency: possibly the latter, seated in the midst of wide open spaces, under a wide sky, the fens its neighbors, had done something to strengthen his bent. Bourdillon thought of him with contempt, as a clodhopper, a rustic, hinting that he was a throwback to an ancestor, not too remote, who had followed the plough and whistled for want of thought. But he did Clement an injustice. It was possible that in his love of the soil he was a throwback; he would have made, and indeed he was, a good ploughman. He had learnt the trick with avidity, giving good money, solid silver shillings, that Hodge might rest while he worked. But, a ploughman, he would not have turned a clod without noticing its quality, nor sown a seed without considering its fitness, nor observed a rare plant without wondering why it grew in that position, nor looked up without drawing from the sky some sign of the weather or the hour. Much less would he have gazed down a woodland glade, flecked with sunlight, without perceiving its beauty.

He was, indeed, both in practice and theory a lover of Nature; breathing freely its open air, understanding its moods, asking nothing better than to be allowed to turn them to his purpose. Though he was no great reader, he read Wordsworth, and many a line was fixed in his memory and, on occasions when he was alone, rose to his lips.

But he hated the desk and he hated figures. His thoughts as he stood behind the bank counter, or drummed his restless heels against the legs of his high stool, were far away in fallow and stubble, or where the trout, that he could tickle as to the manner born, lay under the caving bank. And to his father and to those who judged him by the bank standard, and felt for him half scornful liking, he seemed to be an inefficient, a trifler. They said in Aldersbury that it was lucky for him that he had a father.

Perhaps of all about him it was from that father that he could expect the least sympathy. Ovington was not only a banker, he was a banker to whom his business was everything. He had created it. It had made him. It was not in his eyes a mere adjunct, as in the eyes of one born in the purple and to the leisure which invites to the higher uses of wealth. Able he was, and according to his lights honorable; but a narrow education had confined his views, and he saw in his money merely the means to rise in the world and eventually to become one of the landed class which at that time monopolized all power and all influence, political as well as social. Such a man could only see in Clement a failure, a reversion to the yeoman type, and own with sorrow the irony of fortune that so often delights to hand on the sceptre of an Oliver to a "Tumble-down-Dick."

Only from Betty, young and romantic, yet possessed of a woman's intuitive power of understanding others, could Clement look for any sympathy. And even Betty doubted while she loved-for she had also that other attribute of woman, a basis of sound common-sense. She admired her father. She saw more clearly than Clement what he had done for them and to what he was raising them. And she could not but grieve that Clement was not, more like him, that Clement could not fall in with his wishes and devote himself to the attainment of the end for which the elder man had worked. She could enter into the father's disappointment as well as into the son's distaste.

Meanwhile Clement, dreaming now of a girl's face, now of a new drill which he had seen that morning, now of the passing sights and sounds which would have escaped nine men out of ten but had a meaning for him, drew near to the town. He topped the last eminence, he rode under the ancient oak, whence, tradition had it, a famous Welshman had watched the wreck of his fortunes on a pitched field. Finally he saw, rising from the river before him, the amphitheatre of dim lights that was the town. Descending he crossed the bridge.

He sighed as he did so. For to him to pass from the silent lands and to enter the brawling streets where apprentices were putting up the shutters and beggars were raking among heaps of market garbage was to fall half way from the clouds. To right and left the inns were roaring drunken choruses, drabs stood in the mouths of the alleys-dubbed in Aldersbury "shuts" – tradesmen were hastening to wet their profits at the Crown or the Gullet. When at last he heard the house door clang behind him, and breathed the confined air of the bank, redolent for him of ledgers and day-books, the fall was complete. He reached the earth.

If he had not done so, his sister's face when he entered the dining-room would have brought him to his level.

"My eye and Betty Martin!" she said. "But you've done it now, my lad!"

"What's the matter?"

"Father will tell you that. He's in his room and as black as thunder. He came home by the mail at three-Sir Charles waiting, Mr. Acherley waiting, the bank full, no Clement! You are in for it. You are to go to him the moment you come in."

He looked longingly at the table where supper awaited him. "What did he say?" he asked.

"He said all I have said and d-n besides. It's no good looking at the table, my lad. You must see him first and then I'll give you your supper."

"All right!" he replied, and he turned to the door with something of a swagger.

But Betty, whose moods were as changeable as the winds, and whose thoughts were much graver than her words, was at the door before him. She took him by the lapel of his coat and looked up in his face. "You won't forget that you're in fault, Clem, will you?" she said in a small voice. "Remember that if he had not worked there would be no walking about with a gun or a rod for you. And no looking at new drills, whatever they are, for I know that that is what you had in your mind this morning. He's a good dad, Clem-better than most. You won't forget that, will you?"

"But after all a man must-"

"Suppose you forget that 'after all,'" she said sagely. "The truth is you have played truant, haven't you? And you must take your medicine. Go and take it like a good boy. There are but three of us, Clem."

She knew how to appeal to him, and how to move him; she knew that at bottom he was fond of his father. He nodded and went, knocked at his father's door and, tamed by his sister's words, took his scolding-and it was a sharp scolding-with patience. Things were going well with the banker, he had had his usual four glasses of port, and he might not have spoken so sharply if the contrast between the idle and the industrious apprentice had not been thrust upon him that day with a force which had startled him. That little hint of a partnership had not been dropped without a pang. He was jealous for his son, and he spoke out.

"If you think," he said, tapping the ledger before him, to give point to his words, "that because you've been to Cambridge this job is below you, you're mistaken, Clement. And if you think that you can do it in your spare time, you're still more mistaken. It's no easy task, I can tell you, to make a bank and keep a bank, and manage your neighbor's money as well as your own, and if you think it is, you're wrong. To make a hundred thousand pounds is a deal harder than to make Latin verses-or to go tramping the country on a market day with your gun! That's not business! That's not business, and once for all, if you are not going to help me, I warn you that I must find someone who will! And I shall not have far to look!"

"I'm afraid, sir, that I have not got a turn for it," Clement pleaded.

"But what have you a turn for? You shoot, but I'm hanged if you bring home much game. And you fish, but I suppose you give the fish away. And you're out of town, idling and doing God knows what, three days in the week! No turn for it? No will to do it, you mean. Do you ever think," the banker continued, joining the fingers of his two hands as he sat back in his chair, and looking over them at the culprit, "where you would be and what you would be doing if I had not toiled for you? If I had not made the business at which you do not condescend to work? I had to make my own way. My grandfather was little better than a laborer, and but for what I've done you might be a clerk at a pound a week, and a bad clerk, too! Or behind a shop-counter, if you liked it better. And if things go wrong with me-for I'd have you remember that nothing in this world is quite safe-that is where you may still be! Still, my lad!"

For the first time Clement looked his father fairly in the face-and pleased him. "Well, sir," he said, "if things go wrong I hope you won't find me wanting. Nor ungrateful for what you have done for us. I know how much it is. But I'm not Bourdillon, and I've not got his head for figures."

"You've not got his application. That's the mischief! Your heart's not in it."

"Well, I don't know that it is," Clement admitted. "I suppose you couldn't-" he hesitated, a new hope kindled within him. He looked at his father doubtfully.

"Couldn't what?"

"Release me from the bank, sir? And give me a-a very small capital to-"

"To go and idle upon?" the banker exclaimed, and thumped the ledger in his indignation at an idea so preposterous. "No, by G-d, I couldn't! Pay you to go idling about the country, more like a dying duck in a thunder-storm, as I am told you do, than a man! Find you capital and see you loiter your life away with your hands in your pockets? No, I couldn't, my boy, and I would not if I could! Capital, indeed? Give you capital? For what?"

"I could take a farm," sullenly, "and I shouldn't idle. I can work hard enough when I like my work. And I know something about farming, and I believe I could make it pay."

The other gasped. To the banker, with his mind on thousands, with his plans and hopes for the future, with his golden visions of Lombard Street and financial sway, to talk of a farm and of making it pay! It seemed-it seemed worse than lunacy. His son must be out of his mind. He stared at him, honestly wondering. "A farm!" he ejaculated at last. "And make it pay? Go back to the clodhopping life your grandfather lived before you and from which I lifted you? Peddle with pennies and sell ducks and chickens in the market? Why-why, I don't know what to say to you?"

"I like an outdoor life," Clement pleaded, his face scarlet.

"Like a-like a-" Ovington could find no word to express his feelings and with an effort he swallowed them down. "Look here, Clement," he said more mildly; "what's come to you? What is it that is amiss with you? Whatever it is you must straighten it out, boy; there must be an end of this folly, for folly it is. Understand me, the day that you go out of the bank you go to stand on your own legs, without help from me. If you are prepared to do that?"

"I don't say that I could-at first."

"Then while I keep you I shall certainly do it on my own terms. So, if you please, I will hear no more of this. Go back to your desk, go back to your desk, sir, and do your duty. I sent you to Cambridge at Butler's suggestion, but I begin to fear that it was the biggest mistake of my life. I declare I never heard such nonsense except from a man in love. I suppose you are not in love, eh?"

"No!" Clement cried angrily, and he went out.

For he could not own to his father that he was in love; in love with the brown earth, the woods, and the wide straggling hedge-rows, with the whispering wind and the music of the river on the shallows, with the silence and immensity of night. Had he done so, he would have spoken a language which his father did not and could not understand. And if he had gone a step farther and told him that he felt drawn to those who plodded up and down the wide stubbles, who cut and bound the thick hedge-rows, who wrought hand in hand with Nature day in and day out, whose lives were spent in an unending struggle with the soil until at last they sank and mingled with it-if he had told him that he felt his kinship with those humble folk who had gone before him, he would only have mystified him, only have angered him the more.

Yet so it was. And he could not change himself.

He went slowly to his supper and to Betty, owning defeat; acknowledging his father's strength of purpose, acknowledging his father's right, yet vexed at his own impotence. Life pulsed strongly within him. He longed to do something. He longed to battle, the wind in his teeth and the rain in his face, with some toil, some labor that would try his strength and task his muscles, and send him home at sunset weary and satisfied. Instead he saw before him an endless succession of days spent with his head in a ledger and his heels on the bar of his stool, while the sun shone in at the windows of the bank and the flies buzzed sleepily about him; days arid and tedious, shared with no companion more interesting than Rodd, who, excellent fellow, was not amusing, or more congenial than Bourdillon, who patronized him when he was not using him. And in future he would have to be more punctual, more regular, more assiduous! It was a dreary prospect.

He ate his supper in morose silence until Betty, who had been quick to read the upshot of the interview in his face, came behind him and ruffled his hair. "Good boy!" she whispered, leaning over him. "His days shall be long in the land!"

"I wish to heaven," he answered, "they were in the land! I am sure they will be long enough in the bank!" But after that he recovered his temper.

CHAPTER IV

In remote hamlets a few churches still recall the fashion of Garthmyle. It was a wide church of two aisles having clear windows, through which a flood of cold light fell on the whitewashed walls, and on the maze of square pews, some colored drab, some a pale blue, through which narrow alleys, ending in culs-de-sac, wound at random. The Griffin memorials, though the earliest were of Tudor date, were small and mean, and the one warm scrap of color in the church was furnished by the faded red curtain which ran on iron rods round the Squire's pew and protected his head from draughts. That curtain was watched with alarm by many, for at a certain point in the service it was the Squire's wont to draw it aside, and to stand for a time with his back to the east while his hard eyes roved over the congregation. Woe to the absentees! His scrutiny completed, with a grunt which carried terror to the hearts of their families, he would draw the curtain, turn about again, and compose himself to sleep.

In its severity and bleakness the church fairly matched the man, who, old and gaunt and grey, was its central figure; who, like it, embodied, meagrely and plainly as he dressed, the greatness of old associations, and like it, if in a hard and forbidding way, owned and exacted an unchanging standard of duty.

For he was the Squire. Whatever might be done elsewhere, nothing was done in that parish without him. The parson, aged and apathetic, knew better than to cross his will-had he not to get in his tithes? The farmers were his tenants, the overseers rested in the hollow of his hand. Hardly a man was hired and no man was relieved, no old wife sent back to her distant settlement, no lad apprenticed, but as he pleased. He was the Squire.

On Sundays the tenants waited in the churchyard until he arrived, and it was this which deceived Arthur when, Mrs. Bourdillon feeling unequal to the service, he reached the church next morning. He found the porch empty, and concluding that his uncle had entered, he made his way to the Cottage pew, which was abreast of the great man's. But in the act of sitting down he saw, glancing round the red curtain, that Josina was alone. It struck him then that it would be pleasant to sit beside her and entertain himself with her conscious face, and he crossed over and let himself into the Squire's pew. He had the satisfaction of seeing the blood mount swiftly to her cheeks, but the next moment he found the old man-who had that morning sent word that he would be late-at his elbow, in the act of entering behind him.

It was too late to retreat, and with a face as hot as Josina's he stumbled over the straw-covered footstool and sat down on her other hand. He knew that the Squire would resent his presence after what had happened, and when he stood up his ears were tingling. But he soon recovered himself. He saw the comic side of the situation, and long before the sermon was over, he found himself sufficiently at ease to enjoy some of the agréments which he had foreseen.

Carved roughly with a penknife on the front of the pew was a heart surmounting two clasped hands. Below each hand were initials-his own and Josina's; and he never let the girl forget the August afternoon, three years before, when he had induced her to do her share. She had refused many times; then, like Eve in the garden, she had succumbed on a drowsy afternoon when they had had the pew to themselves and the drone of the preacher's voice had barely risen above the hum of the bees. She had been little more than a child at the time, and ever since that day the apple had been to her both sweet and bitter. For she was not a child now, and, a woman, she rebelled against Arthur's power to bring the blood to her cheeks and to play-with looks rather than words, for of these he was chary-upon feelings which she could not mask.

Of late resentment had been more and more gaining the upper hand with her. But to-day she forgave. She feared that which might pass between him and his uncle at the close of the service, and she had not the heart to be angry. However, when the dreaded moment came she was pleasantly disappointed. When they reached the porch, "Take my seat, take my meat," the Squire said grimly. "Are you coming up?"

"If I may, sir?

"I want a word with you."

This was not promising, but it might have been worse, and little more was said as the three passed, the congregation standing uncovered, down the Churchyard Walk and along the road to Garth.

The Squire, always taciturn, strode on in silence, his eyes on his fields. The other two said little, feeling trouble in the air. Fortunately at the early dinner there was a fourth to mend matters in the shape of Miss Peacock, the Squire's housekeeper. She was a distant relation who had spent most of her life at Garth; who considered the Squire the first of men, his will as law, and who from Josina's earliest days had set her an example of servile obedience. To ask what Mr. Griffin did not offer, to doubt where he had laid down the law, was to Miss Peacock flat treason; and where a stronger mind might have moulded the girl to a firmer shape, the old maid's influence had wrought in the other direction. A tall meagre spinster, a weak replica of the Squire, she came of generations of women who had been ruled by their men and trained to take the second place. The Squire's two wives, his first, whose only child had fallen, a boy-ensign, at Alexandria, his second, Josina's mother, had held the same tradition, and Josina promised to abide by it.

When the Peacock rose Jos hesitated. The Squire saw it. "Do you go, girl," he said. "Be off!"

For once she wavered-she feared what might happen between the two. But "Do you hear?" the Squire growled. "Go when you are told."

She went then, but Arthur could not restrain his indignation. "Poor Jos!" he muttered.

Unluckily the Squire heard the words, and "Poor Jos!" he repeated, scowling at the offender. "What the devil do you mean, sir? Poor Jos, indeed? Confound your impudence! What do you mean?"

Arthur quailed, but he was not lacking in wit. "Only that women like a secret, sir," he said. "And a woman, shut out, fancies that there is a secret."

"Umph! A devilish lot you know about women!" the old man snarled. "But never mind that. I saw your mother yesterday."

"So she told me, sir."

"Ay! And I dare say you didn't like what she told you! But I want you to understand, young man, once for all, that you've got to choose between Aldersbury and Garth. Do you hear? I've done my duty. I kept the living for you, as I promised your father, and whether you take it or not, I expect you to do yours, and to live as the Griffins have lived before you. Who the devil is this man Ovington? Why do you want to mix yourself up with him? Eh? A man whose father touched his hat to me and would no more have thought of sitting at my table than my butler would! There, pass the bottle."

"Would you have no man rise, sir?" Arthur ventured.

"Rise?" The Squire glared at him from under his great bushy eyebrows. "It's not to his rise, it's to your fall I object, sir. A d-d silly scheme this, and one I won't have. D'you hear, I won't have it."

Arthur kept his temper, oppressed by the other's violence. "Still, you must own, sir, that times are changed," he said.

"Changed? Damnably changed when a Griffin wants to go into trade in Aldersbury."

"But banking is hardly a trade."

"Not a trade? Of course it's a trade-if usury is a trade! If pawn-broking is a trade! If loan-jobbing is a trade! Of course it's a trade."

The gibe stung Arthur and he plucked up spirit. "At any rate, it is a lucrative one," he rejoined. "And I've never heard, sir, that you were indifferent to money."

"Oh! Because I'm going to charge your mother rent? Well, isn't the Cottage mine? Or because fifty years ago I came into a cumbered estate and have pinched and saved and starved to clear it? Saved? I have saved. But I've saved out of the land like a gentleman, and like my fathers before me, and not by usury. Not by money-jobbing. And if you expect to benefit-but there, fill your glass, and let's hear your tongue. What do you say to it?"

"As to the living," Arthur said mildly, "I don't think you consider, sir, that what was a decent livelihood no longer keeps a gentleman as a gentleman. Times are changed, incomes are changed, men are richer. I see men everywhere making fortunes by what you call trade, sir; making fortunes and buying estates and founding houses."

"And shouldering out the old gentry? Ay, damme, and I see it too," the Squire retorted, taking the word out of his mouth. "I see plenty of it. And you think to be one of them, do you? To join them and be another Peel, or one of Pitt's money-bag peers? That's in your mind, is it? A Mr. Coutts? And to buy out my lord and drive your coach and four into Aldersbury, and splash dirt over better men than yourself?"

"I should be not the less a Griffin."

"A Griffin with dirty hands!" with contempt. "That's what you'd be. And vote Radical and prate of Reform and scorn the land that bred you. And talk of the Rights of Men and money-bags, eh? That's your notion, is it, by G-d?"

"Of course, sir, if you look at it in that way-"

"That's the way I do look at it!" The Squire brought down his hand on the table with a force that shook the glasses and spilled some of his wine. "And it's the way you've got to look at it, or there won't be much between you and me-or you and mine. Or mine, do you hear! I'll have no tradesman at Garth and none of that way of thinking. So you'd best give heed before it's too late. You'd best look at it all ways."

"Very well, sir."

"Any more wine?"

"No, thank you." Arthur's head was high. He did not lack spirit.

"Then hear my last word. I won't have it! That's plain. That's plain, and now you know. And, hark ye, as you go out, send Peacock to me."

But before Arthur had made his way out, the Squire's voice was heard, roaring for Josina. When Miss Peacock presented herself, "Not you! Who the devil wants you?" he stormed. "Send the girl! D'you hear? Send the girl!"

And when Josina, scared and trembling, came in her turn, "Shut the door!" he commanded. "And listen! I've had a talk with that puppy, who thinks that he knows more than his betters. D-n his impertinence, coming into my pew when he thought I was elsewhere! But I know very well why he came, young woman, sneaking in to sit beside you and make sheep's eyes when my back was turned. Now, do you listen to me. You'll keep him at arm's length. Do you hear, Miss? You'll have nothing to say to him unless I give you leave. He's got to do with me now, and it depends on me whether there's any more of it. I know what he wants, but by G-d, I'm your father, and if he does not mend his manners, he goes to the right-about. So let me hear of no more billing and cooing and meeting in pews, unless I give the word! D'you understand, girl?"

"But I think you're mistaken, sir," poor Jos ventured. "I don't think that he means-"

"I know what he means. And so do you. But never you mind! Till I say the word there's an end of it. The puppy, with his Peels and his peers! Men my father wouldn't have-but there, you understand now, and you'll obey, or I'll know the reason why!"

"Then he's not to come to Garth, sir?"

But the Squire checked at that. Family feeling and the pride of hospitality were strong in him, and to forbid his only nephew the family house went beyond his mind at present.

"To Garth?" angrily. "Who said anything about Garth? No, Miss, but when he comes, you'll stand him off. You know very well how to do it, though you look as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth! You'll see that he keeps his distance. And let me have no tears, or-d-n the fellow, he's spoiled my nap. There, go! Go! I might as well have a swarm of wasps about me as such folks! Pack o' fools and idiots! Go into a bank, indeed!"

Jos did go, and shutting herself up in her room would not open to Miss Peacock, who came fluttering to the door to learn what was amiss. And she cried a little, but it was as much in humiliation as grief. Her father was holding her on offer, to be given or withheld, as he pleased, while all the time she doubted, and more than doubted, if he to whom she was on offer, he from whom she was withheld, wanted her. There was the rub.

For Arthur, ever since he had begun to attend at the bank, had been strangely silent. He had looked and smiled and teased her, had pressed her hand or touched her hair, but in sport rather than in earnest, meaning little. And she had been quick to see this, and with the womanly pride, of which, gentle and timid as she was, she had her share, she had schooled herself to accept the new situation. Now, her father had taken Arthur's suit for granted and humbled her. So Jos cried a little. But they were not very bitter tears.

CHAPTER V

Arthur was taken aback by his uncle's harshness, and he made haste to be at the bank early enough on the Monday to anticipate the banker's departure for Garth. He was certain that to approach the Squire at this moment in the matter of the railroad was to invite disaster, and he gave Ovington such an account of the quarrel as he thought would deter him from going over at present.

But the banker had a belief in himself which success and experience in the management of men had increased. He was convinced that self-interest was the spring which moved nine men out of ten, and though he admitted that the family quarrel was untimely, he did not agree that as between the Squire and a good bargain it would have weight.

"But I assure you, sir, he's like a bear with a sore head," Arthur urged.

"A bear will come to the honey if its head be sore," the banker answered, smiling.

"And perhaps upset the hive?"

Ovington laughed. "Not in this case, I think. And we must risk something. Time presses and he blocks the way. However, I'll let it stand over for a week and then I'll go alone. We must have your uncle."

Accordingly a week later, discarding the tilbury and smart man-servant that he had lately set up, he rode over to Garth, considering as he journeyed the man whom he was going to meet and of whom, in spite of his self-assurance, he stood in some awe.

Round Aldersbury were larger landowners and richer men than the Squire. But his family and his name were old, and by virtue of long possession he stood high among the gentry of the county. He had succeeded at twenty-two to a property neglected and loaded with debt, and his father's friends-this was far back in the old King's reign-had advised him to sell; let him keep the house and the home-farm and pay his debts with the rest. But pride of race was strong in him, he had seen that to sell was to lose the position which his forbears had held, and he had refused. Instead he had set himself to free the estate, and he had pared, he had pinched, he had almost starved himself and others. He had become a byword for parsimony. In the end, having benefited much by enclosures in the 'nineties, he had succeeded. But no sooner had he deposited in the bank the money to pay off the last charge than the loss of his only son had darkened his success. He had married again-he was by this time past middle age-but only a daughter had come of the marriage, and by that time to put shilling to shilling and acre to acre had become a habit of which he could not break himself, though he knew that only a woman would follow him at Garth.

Withal he was a great aristocrat, a Tory of the Tories, stern and unbending. Fear of France and of French doctrines and pride in his caste were in his blood. The Quarterly Review ranked with him after his Bible, and very little after it. Reform under the most moderate aspect was to him a shorter name for Revolution. He believed implicitly in his class, and did not believe in any other class. Manufacturers and traders he hated and distrusted, and of late jealousy had been added to hatred and distrust. The inclusion of such men in the magistracy, the elevation of Peel to the Ministry had made him fancy that there was something in the Queen's case after all; when Canning and Huskisson had also risen to power he had said that Lord Liverpool was aging and the Duke was no longer the man he had been.

He was narrow, choleric, proud, miserly; he had been known to carry an old log a hundred yards to add it to his wood-pile, and to travel a league to look for a lost sixpence. He dressed shabbily, which was not so much remarked now that dandies aped coachmen, as it had been in his younger days; and he rode about his fields on an old white mare which he was believed to hold in affection next after his estate and much before his daughter. He ruled his parish with a high hand. He had no mercy for poachers. But he was honest and he was just. The farmers must pay the wage he laid down-it was a shilling above the allowed rate. But the men must work it out, and woe betide the idle; they had best seek work abroad, and heaven help them if a foreign parish sent them home. In one thing he was before his time; he was resolved that no able-bodied man should share in the rates. The farmers growled, the laborers grumbled, there were hard cases. But he was obdurate-work your worth, or starve! And presently it began to be noticed that the parish was better off than its neighbors. He was a tyrant, but a just tyrant.

Such was the man whom Ovington was going to meet, and from whose avarice he hoped much. He had made his market of it once, for it was by playing on it that he had lured the Squire from Dean's, and so had gained one of his dearest triumphs over the old Aldersbury Bank.

His hopes would not have been lessened had he heard a dialogue which was at that moment proceeding in the stable-yard at Garth to an accompaniment of clattering pails and swishing besoms. "He've no bowels!" Thomas the groom declared with bitterness. "He be that hard and grasping he've no bowels for nobody!"

Old Fewtrell, the Squire's ancient bailiff, sniggered. "He'd none for you, Thomas," he said, "when you come back gallus drunk from Baschurch Fair. None of your Manchester tricks with me, says Squire, and, lord, how he did leather 'ee."

Thomas did not like the reminiscence. "What other be I saying!" he snarled. "He've no bowels even for his own flesh and blood! Did'ee ever watch him in church? Well, where be he a-looking? At his son's moniment as is at his elbow? Never see him, never see him, not once!"

"Well, I dunno as I 'ave, either," Fewtrell admitted.

"No, his eyes is allus on t'other side, a-counting up the Griffins before him, and filling himself up wi' pride."

"Dunno as I couldn't see it another way," said the bailiff thoughtfully.

"What other way? Never to look at his own son's moniment?"

"Well, mebbe-"

"Mebbe?" Thomas cried with scorn. "Look at his darter! He ain't but one, and he be swilling o' money! Do he make much of her, James Fewtrell? And titivate her, and pull her ears bytimes same as you with your grand-darters? And get her a horse as you might call a horse? You know he don't. If she's not quick, it's a nod and be damned, same as to you and me!"

Old Fewtrell considered. "Not right out the same," he decided.

"Right out, I say. You've been with him all your life. You've never knowed no other and you're getting old, and Calamity, he be old too, and may put up with it. But I don't starve for no Squire, and I'm for more wage. I was in Aldersbury Saturday and wages is up and more work than men! While here I'm a-toiling for what you got twenty year ago. But not me! I bin to Manchester. And so I'm going to tell Squire."

The bailiff grinned. "Mebbe he'll take a stick same as before."

"He'd best not!" Thomas said, with an ugly look. "He'd best take care, or-"

"Whist! Whist! lad. You be playing for trouble. Here be Squire."

The Squire glared at them, but he did not stop. He stalked into the house and, passing through it, went out by the front door. He intended to turn right-handed, and enter the high-terraced garden facing south, in which he was wont to take, even in winter, a few turns of a morning. But something caught his eye, and he paused. "Who's this?" he muttered, and shading his eyes made out a moment later that the stranger was Ovington. A visit from him was rare enough to be a portent, and the figure of his bank balance passed through the Squire's mind. Had he been rash? Ovington's was a new concern; was anything wrong? Then another idea, hardly more welcome, occurred to him: had the banker come on his nephew's account?

If so-however, he would soon know, for the visitor was by this time half-way up the winding drive, sunk between high banks, which, leaving the road a third of a mile from the house, presently forked, the left branch swerving through a grove of beech trees to the front entrance, the right making straight for the stables.

The Squire met his visitor at the gate and, raising his voice, shouted for Thomas. "I am sorry to trespass on you so early," Ovington said as he dismounted. "A little matter of business, Mr. Griffin, if I may trouble you."

The old man did not say that it was no trespass, but he stood aside punctiliously for the other to precede him through the gate. Then, "You'll stay to eat something after your ride?" he said.

"No, I thank you. I must be in town by noon."

"A glass of Madeira?"

"Nothing, Squire, I thank you. My business will not take long."

By this time they stood in the room in which the Squire lived and did his business. He pointed courteously to a chair. He was shabby, in well-worn homespun and gaiters, and the room was shabby, walled with bound Quarterlies and old farm books, and littered with spurs and dog leashes-its main window looked into the stable yard. But there was about the man a dignity implied rather than expressed, which the spruce banker in his shining Hessians owned and envied. The Squire could look at men so that they grew uneasy under his eye, and for a moment, owning his domination, the visitor doubted of success. But then again the room was so shabby. He took heart of grace.

"I shouldn't trouble you, Mr. Griffin," he said, sitting back with an assumption of ease, while the Squire from his old leather chair observed him warily, "except on a matter of importance. You will have heard that there is a scheme on foot to increase the value of the woollen industry by introducing a steam railroad. This is a new invention which, I admit, has not yet been proved, but I have examined it as a business man, and I think that much is to be expected from it. A limited company is being formed to carry out the plan, if it prove to be feasible. Sir Charles Woosenham has agreed to be Chairman, Mr. Acherley and other gentlemen of the county are taking part, and I am commissioned by them to approach you. I have the plans here-"

"What do you want?" The Squire's tone was uncompromising. He made no movement towards taking the plans.

"If you will allow me to explain?"

The old man sat back in his chair.

"The railroad will be a continuation of the Birmingham and Aldersbury railroad, which is in strong hands at Birmingham. Such a scheme would be too large for us. That, again, is a continuation of the London and Birmingham railroad."

"Built?"

"Oh no. Not yet, of course."

"Begun, then?"

"No, but-"

"Projected?"

"Precisely, projected, the plans approved, the Bill in preparation."

"But nothing done?"

"Nothing actually done as yet," the banker admitted, somewhat dashed. "But if we wait until these works are finished we shall find ourselves anticipated.

"Ah!"

"We wish, therefore, to be early in the field. Much has appeared in the papers about this mode of transport, and you are doubtless familiar with it. I have myself inquired into it, and the opinion of financial men in London is that these railroads will be very lucrative, paying dividends of from ten to twenty-five per cent."

The Squire raised his eyebrows.

"I have the plans here," the banker continued, once more producing them. "Our road runs over the land of six small owners, who have all agreed to the terms offered. It then enters on the Woosenham outlying property, and thence, before reaching Mr. Acherley's, proceeds over the Garth estate, serving your mills, the tenant of one of which joins our board. If you will look at the plans?" Again Ovington held them out.

But the old man put them aside. "I don't want to see them," he said.

"But, Squire, if you would kindly glance-"

"I don't want to see them. What do you want?"

Ovington paused to consider the most favorable light in which he could place the matter. "First, Mr. Griffin, your presence on the Board. We attach the highest importance to that. Secondly, a way-leave over your land for which the Company will pay-pay most handsomely, although the value added to your mills will far exceed the immediate profit."

"You want to carry your railroad over Garth?"

"Yes."

"Not a yard!" The old man tapped the table before him. "Not a foot!"

"But our terms-if you would allow me to explain them?"

"I don't want to hear them. I am not going to sell my birthright, whatever they are. You don't understand me? Well, you can understand this." And abruptly the Squire sat up. "I'll have none of your d-d smoking, stinking steam-wagons on my land in my time! Oh, I've read about them in more places than the papers, sir, and I'll not sell my birthright and my people's birthright-of clean air and clean water and clean soil for any mess of pottage you can offer! That's my answer, Mr. Ovington."

"But the railroad will not come within a mile of Garth."

"It will not come on to my land! I am not blind, sir. Suppose you succeed. Suppose you drive the mails and coaches and the stage-wagons off the road. Where shall I sell my coach-horses and hackneys and my tenants their heavy nags? And their corn and their beans? No, by G-d," stopping Ovington, who wished to interrupt him. "You may delude some of my neighbors, sir, and you may know more about money-making, where it is no question how the money is made, than I do! But I'll see that you don't delude me! A pack of navigators upsetting the country, killing game and robbing hen-roosts, raising wages and teaching honest folks tricks? Not here! If Woosenham knew his own business, and Acherley were not up to his neck in debt, they'd not let themselves be led by the nose by-"

"By whom, sir?" Ovington was on his feet by this time, his eyes smoldering, his face paler than usual. They confronted each other. It was the meeting, the collision of two powers, of two worlds, the old and the new.

"By whom, sir?" the Squire replied sternly-he too had risen. "By one whose interests and breeding are wholly different from theirs and who looks at things from another standpoint! That's by whom, sir. And one word more, Mr. Ovington. You have the name of being a clever man and I never doubted it until to-day; but have a care that you are not over clever, sir. Have a care that you do not lead your friends and yourself into more trouble than you think for! I read the papers and I see that everybody is to grow rich between Saturday and Monday. Well, I don't know as much about money business as you do, but I am an old man, and I have never seen a time when everybody grew rich and nobody was the loser."

Ovington had controlled himself well; and he still controlled himself, but there was a dangerous light in his eyes. "I am sorry," he said, "that you can give me no better answer, Mr. Griffin. We hoped to have, and we set some value on your support. But there are, of course-other ways."

"You may take your railroad any way you like, so long as you don't bring it over Garth."

"I don't mean that. If the railroad is made at all it must pass over Garth-the property stretches across the valley. But the Bill, when presented, will contain the same powers which are given in the later Canal Acts-a single proprietor cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the public interests, Mr. Griffin."

"You mean-by G-d, sir," the Squire broke out, "you mean that you will take my land whether I will or no?"

"I am not using any threat."

"But you do use a threat!" roared the Squire, towering tall and gaunt above his opponent. "You do use a threat! You come here-"

"I came here-" the other answered-he was quietly drawing on his gloves-"to put an excellent business investment before you, Mr. Griffin. As you do not think it worth while to entertain it, I can only regret that I have wasted your time and my own."

"Pish!" said the Squire.

"Very good. Then with your permission I will seek my horse."

The old man turned to the window and opened it. "Thomas," he shouted violently. "Mr. Ovington's horse."

When he turned again. "Perhaps you may still think better of it," Ovington said. He had regained command of himself. "I ought to have mentioned that your nephew has consented to act as Secretary to the Company."

"The more fool he!" the Squire snarled. "My nephew! What the devil is he doing in your Company? Or for the matter of that in your bank either?"

"I think he sees more clearly than you that times are changed."

"Ay," the old man retorted, full of wrath, and well aware that the other had found a joint in his armor. "And he had best have a care that these fine times don't lead him into trouble!"

"I hope not, I hope not. Good-day, Mr. Griffin. I can find my way out. Don't let me trouble you."

"I will see you out, if you please. After you, sir." Then, with an effort which cost him much, but which he thought was due to his position, "You are sure that you will take nothing?"

"Nothing, I thank you."

The Squire saw his visitor to the door; but he did not stay to see him ride away. He went back to his room and to a side window at which it was his custom to spend much time. It looked over the narrow vale, little more than a glen, which the eminence, on which the house stood, cut off from the main valley. It looked on its green slopes, on the fern-fringed brook that babbled and tossed in its bottom, on the black and white mill that spanned the stream, and on the Thirty Acre covert that clothed the farther side and climbed to the foot of the great limestone wall that towered alike above house and glen and rose itself to the knees of the boundary hills. And looking on all this, the Squire in fancy saw the railroad scoring and smirching and spoiling his beloved acres. It was nothing to him, that in fact the railroad would pass up the middle of the broad vale behind him-he ignored that. He saw the hated thing sweep by below him, a long black ugly snake, spewing smoke and steam over the green meadows, fouling the waters, darkening the air.

"Not in my time, by G-d!" he muttered, his knees quivering a little under him-for he was an aging man and the scene had tried him. "Not in my time!" And at the thought that he, the owner of all, hill and vale, within his sight, and the descendant of generations of owners-that he had been threatened by this upstart, this loan-monger, this town-bred creature of a day, he swore with fresh vigor.

He had at any rate the fires of indignation to warm him, and the satisfaction of knowing that he had spoken his mind and had not had the worst of the bout. But the banker's feelings as he jogged homewards on his hackney were not so happy. In spite of Bourdillon's warning he had been confident that he would gain his end. He had fancied that he knew his man and could manage him. He had believed that the golden lure would not fail. But it had failed, and the old man's gibes accompanied him, and like barbed arrows clung to his memory and poisoned his content.

It was not the worst that he must return and own that Arthur had been wiser than he; that he must inform his colleagues that his embassy had failed. Worse than either was the hurt to his pride. Certain things that the Squire had said about money-making, his sneer about the difference in breeding, his warning that the banker might yet find that he had been too clever-these had pricked him to the quick, and the last had even caused him a pang of uneasiness. And then the Squire had shown so clearly the gulf that in his eyes lay between them!

Ay, it was that which rankled: the knowledge, sharply brought home to him, that no matter what his success, no matter what his wealth, nor how the common herd bowed down to him, this man and his like would ever hold themselves above him, would always look down on him. The fence about them he could not cross. Add thousands to thousands as he might, and though he conquered Lombard Street, these men would not admit him of their number. They would ever hold him at arm's length, would deal out to him a cold politeness. He could never be of them.

As a rule Ovington was too big a man to harbor spite, but as he rode and fumed, a plan which he had already considered put on a new aspect, and by and by his brow relaxed and he smote his thigh. Something tickled him and he laughed. He thought that he saw a way to avenge himself and to annoy his enemy, and by the time he reached the bank he was himself again. Indeed, he had not been human if he had not by that time owned that whatever Garth thought of him he was something in Aldersbury.

Three times men stopped him, one crossing the street to intercept him, one running bare-headed from a shop, a third seizing his rein. And all three sought favors, or craved advice, all, as they retreated, did so, eyed askance by those who lacked their courage or their impudence.

For the tide of speculation was still rising in the country, and even in Aldersbury had reached many a back-parlor where the old stocking or the money-box was scarcely out of date. Thousands sold their Three per cents., and the proceeds had to go somewhere, and other proceeds, for behind all there was real prosperity. Men's money poured first into a higher and then into a lower grade of security and raised each in turn, so that fortunes were made with astonishing speed. The banks gave extended credit; everything rose. Many who had bought in fear found that they had cleared a profit before they had had time to tremble. They sold, and still there were others to take their place. It seemed as if all had only to buy and to sell and to grow rich. Only the very cautious stood aside, and one by one even these slid tempted into the stream.

The more venturesome hazarded their money afar, buying shares in steamship companies in the West Indies, in diamond mines in Brazil, or in cattle companies in Mexico. The more prudent preferred undertakings which they could see and which their limited horizon could compass, and to these such a local scheme as the Valleys Railroad held out a tempting bait. They knew nothing about a railroad, but they knew that steam had been applied to ocean travel, and they knew Aldersbury and the woollen district. Here was something the growth and progress of which they could watch, and which once begun could not vanish in a night.

Then the silence of those within and the rumors spread without added to its attractions. Each man felt that his neighbor was stealing a march upon him, and that if he were not quick he would not get in on equal terms.

One of Ovington's waylayers wished to know if the limit at which he had been advised to sell his stock was likely to be reached. "I sold on Saturday," the banker answered, "two pounds above your limit, Davies. The money will be in the bank in a week." He spoke with Napoleonic curtness, and rode on, leaving the man, amazed and jubilant, to calculate his gains.

The next wanted advice. He had a hundred in hand if Mr. Ovington would not think it too small. "Call to-morrow-no, Thursday," Ovington said, hardly looking at him. "I'll see you then."

The third ran bare-headed out of a shop. He was a man of more weight, Purslow the big draper on Bride Hill, who had been twice Mayor of Aldersbury; a tradesman, bald and sleek, whom fortune had raised so rapidly that old subservience was continually at odds with new importance. "Just a word, Mr. Ovington," he stuttered, "a word, sir, by your leave? I'm a good customer." He had not laid aside his black apron but merely twisted it round his waist, a sure sign, in these days of his greatness, that he was flustered.

The banker nodded. "None better, Purslow," he answered. "What is it?"

"What I says, then-excuse me-is, if Grounds, why not me? Why not me, sir?"

"I don't quite-"

"If he's to be on the Board, he and his mash-tubs-"

"Oh!" The banker looked grave. "You are thinking of the Railroad, Purslow?"

"To be sure! What else? – excuse me, sir! And what I say is, if Grounds, why not me? I've been mayor twice and him not even on the Council? And I'm not a pauper, as none knows better than you, Mr. Ovington. If it's only that I'm a tradesman, why, there ought to be a tradesman on it, and I'll be bound as many will follow my lead as Grounds'."

The banker seemed to consider. "Look here, Purslow," he said, "you are doing very well, not a man in Aldersbury better. Take my advice and stick to the shop."

"And slave for every penny I make!"

"Slow and sure is a good rule."

"Oh, damn slow and sure!" cried the draper, forgetting his manners. "No offence, sir, I'm sure. Excuse me. But slow and sure, while Grounds is paid for every time he crosses the street, and doubles his money while he wears out his breeches!"

"Well," said Ovington, with apparent reluctance, "I'll think it over. But to sit on the Board means putting in money, Purslow. You know that, of course."

"And haven't I the money?" the man cried, inflamed by opposition. "Can't I put down penny for penny with Grounds? Ay, though I've served the town twice, and him not even on the Council!"

"Well, I'll bear it in mind. I can say no more than that," Ovington rejoined. "I must consult Sir Charles. It's a responsible position, Purslow. And, of course, where there are large profits, as we hope there may be, there must be risk. There must be some risk. Don't forget that. Still," touching up his horse with his heel, "I'll see what I can do."

He gained the bank without further stay, and there the stir and bustle which his practised eye was quick to mark sustained the note already struck. There were customers coming and going: some paying in, others seeking to have bills renewed, or a loan on securities that they might pay calls, or accommodation of one kind or another. But with easy money these demands could be granted, and many a parcel of Ovington's notes passed out amid smiling and general content. The January sun was shining as if March winds would never blow, and credit seemed to be a thing to be had for the asking.

It was only within the last seven years that Ovington's had ventured on an issue of notes. Then, a little before the resumption of cash payments, they had put them forth with a tentative, "If you had rather have bank paper it's here." Some had had the bad taste to prefer the Abraham Newlands, a few had even asked for Dean's notes. But borrowers cannot be choosers, the notes had gradually got abroad, and though at first they had returned with the rapidity of a homing pigeon, the readiness with which they were cashed wrought its effect, and by this time the public were accustomed to them.

Dean's notes bore a big D, and Ovington's, for the benefit of those who could not read, were stamped with a large CO., for Charles Ovington.

Alone with his daughter that evening the banker referred to this. "Betty," he said, after a long silence, "I am going to make a change. I am going to turn CO. into Company."

She understood him at once, and "Oh, father!" she cried, laying down her work. "Who is it? Is it Arthur?"

"Would you like that?"

She replied by another question. "Is he really so clever?"

"He's a gentleman-that's much. And a Griffin, and that's more, in a place like this. And he's-yes, he's certainly clever."

"Cleverer than Mr. Rodd?"

"Rodd! Pooh! Arthur's worth two of him."

"Quite the industrious apprentice!" she murmured, her hands in her lap.

"Well, you know," lightly, "what happened to the industrious apprentice, Betty?"

She colored. "He married his master's daughter, didn't he? But there are two words to that, father. Quite two words."

"Well, I am going to offer him a small share. Anything more will depend upon himself-and Clement."

She sighed. "Poor Clement!"

"Poor Clement!" The banker repeated her words pettishly. "Not poor Clement, but idle Clement! Can you do nothing with that boy? Put no sense into him? He's good for nothing in the world except to moon about with a gun. Last night he began to talk to me about Cobbett and some new wheat. New wheat, indeed! Rubbish!"

"But I think," timidly, "that he does understand about those things, father."

"And what good will they do him? I wish he understood a little more about banking! Why, even Rodd is worth two of him. He's not in the bank four days in the week. Where is he to-day?"

"I am afraid that he took his gun-but it was the last day of the season. He said that he would not be out again. He has been really better lately."

"Though I was away!" the banker exclaimed. And he said some strong things upon the subject, to which Betty had to listen.

However, he had recovered his temper when he sent for Arthur next day. He bade him close the door. "I want to speak to you," he said; then he paused a moment while Arthur waited, his color rising. "It's about yourself. When you came to me I did not expect much from the experiment. I thought that you would soon tire of it, being what you are. But you have stood to it, and you have shown a considerable aptitude for the business. And I have made up my mind to take you in-on conditions, of course."

Arthur's eyes sparkled. He had not hoped that the offer would be made so soon, and, much moved, he tried to express his thanks. "You may be sure that I shall do my best, sir," he said.

"I believe you will, lad. I believe you will. Indeed, I am thinking of myself as well as of you. I had not intended to make the offer so soon-you are young and could wait. But you will have to bring in a certain sum, and capital can be used at present to great advantage."

Arthur looked grave. "I am afraid, sir-"

"Oh, I'll make it easy," Ovington said. "This is my offer. You will put in five thousand pounds, and will receive for three years twelve per cent upon this in lieu of your present salary of one hundred and fifty-the hundred you are to be paid as Secretary to the Company is beside the matter. At the end of three years, if we are both satisfied, you will take an eighth share-otherwise you will draw out your money. On my death, if you remain in the bank, your share will be increased to a third on your bringing in another five thousand. You know enough about the accounts to know-"

"That it's a most generous offer," Arthur exclaimed, his face aglow. And with the frankness and enthusiasm, the sparkling eye and ready word that won him so many friends, he expressed his thanks.

"Well, lad," the other answered pleasantly, "I like you. Still, you had better take a short time to consider the matter."

"I want no time," Arthur declared. "My only difficulty is about the money. My mother's six thousand is charged on Garth, you see."

This was a fact well known to Ovington, and one which he had taken into his reckoning. Perhaps, but for it, he had not been making the offer at this moment. But he concealed his satisfaction and a smile, and "Isn't there a provision for calling it up?" he said.

"Yes, there is-at three months. But I am afraid that my mother-"

"Surely she would not object under the circumstances. The increased income might be divided between you so that it would be to her profit as well as to your advantage to make the change. Three months, eh? Well, suppose we say the money to be paid and the articles of partnership to be signed four months from now?"

Difficulties never loomed very large in this young man's eyes. "Very good, sir," he said. "Upon my honor, I don't know how to thank you."

"It won't be all on your side," the banker answered good-humoredly. "Your name's worth something, and you are keen. I wish to heaven you could infect Clement with a tithe of your keenness."

"I'll try, sir," Arthur replied. At that moment he felt that he could move mountains.

"Well, that's settled, then. Send Rodd to me, will you, and do you see if I have left my pocket-book in the house. Betty may know where it is."

Arthur went through the bank, stepping on air. He gave Rodd his message, and in a twinkling he was in the house. As he crossed the hall his heart beat high. Lord, how he would work! What feats of banking he would perform! How great would he make Ovington's, so that not only Aldshire but Lombard Street should ring with its fame! What wealth would he not pile up, what power would he not build upon it, and how he would crow, in the days to come, over the dull-witted clod-hopping Squires from whom he sprang, and who had not the brains to see that the world was changing about them and their reign approaching its end!

For at this moment he felt that he had it in him to work miracles. The greatest things seemed easy. The fortunes of Ovington's lay in the future, the cycle half turned-to what a point might they not carry them! During the last twelve months he had seen money earned with an ease which made all things appear possible; and alert, eager, sanguine, with an inborn talent for business, he felt that he had but to rise with the flowing tide to reach any position which wealth could offer in the coming age-that age which enterprise and industry, the loan, the mill, the furnace were to make their own. The age of gold!

He burst into song. He stopped. "Betty!" he cried.

"Who is that rude boy?" the girl retorted, appearing on the stairs above him.

He bowed with ceremony, his hand on his heart, his eyes dancing. "You see before you the Industrious Apprentice!" he said. "He has received the commendation of his master. It remains only that he should lay his success at the feet of-his master's daughter!"

She blushed, despite herself. "How silly you are!" she cried. But when he set his foot on the lowest stair as if to join her, she fled nimbly up and escaped. On the landing above she stood. "Congratulations, sir," she said, looking over the balusters. "But a little less forwardness and a little more modesty, if you please! It was not in your articles that you should call me Betty."

"They are cancelled! They are gone!" he retorted. "Come down, Betty! Come down and I will tell you such things!"

But she only made a mocking face at him and vanished. A moment later her voice broke forth somewhere in the upper part of the house. She, too, was singing.

CHAPTER VI

Between the village and Garth the fields sank gently, to rise again to the clump of beeches which masked the house. On the farther side the ground fell more sharply into the narrow valley over which the Squire's window looked, and which separated the knoll whereon Garth stood from the cliffs. Beyond the brook that babbled down this valley and turned the mill rose, first, a meadow or two, and then the Thirty Acre covert, a tangle of birches and mountain-ashes which climbed to the foot of the rock-wall. Over this green trough, which up-stream and down merged in the broad vale, an air of peace, of remoteness and seclusion brooded, making it the delight of those who, morning and evening, looked down on it from the house.

Viewed from the other side, from the cliffs, the scene made a different impression. Not the intervening valley but the house held the eye. It was not large, but the knoll on which it stood was scarped on that side, and the walls of weathered brick rose straight from the rock, fortress-like and imposing, displaying all their mass. The gables and the stacks of fluted chimneys dated only from Dutch William, but tradition had it that a strong place, Castell Coch, had once stood on the same site; and fragments of pointed windows and Gothic work, built into the walls, bore out the story.

The road leaving the village made a right-angled turn round Garth and then, ascending, ran through the upper part of the Thirty Acres, skirting the foot of the rocks. Along the lower edge of the covert, between wood and water, there ran also a field-path, a right-of-way much execrated by the Squire. It led by a sinuous course to the Acherley property, and, alas, for good resolutions, along it on the afternoon of the very day which saw the elder Ovington at Garth came Clement Ovington, sauntering as usual.

He carried a gun, but he carried it as he might have carried a stick, for he had long passed the bounds within which he had a right to shoot; and at all times, his shooting was as much an excuse for a walk among the objects he loved as anything else. He had left his horse at the Griffin Arms in the village, and he might have made his way thither more quickly by the road. But at the cost of an extra mile he had preferred to walk back by the brook, observing as he went things new and old; the dipper curtseying on its stone, the water-vole perched to perform its toilet on the leaf of a brook-plant, the first green shoots of the wheat piercing through the soil, an old laborer who was not sorry to unbend his back, and whose memory held the facts and figures of fifty-year-old harvests. The day was mild, the sun shone, Clement was happy. Why, oh, why were there such things as banks in the world?

At a stile which crossed the path he came to a stand. Something had caught his eye. It was a trifle, to which nine men out of ten would not have given a thought, for it was no more than a clump of snowdrops in the wood on his right. But a shaft of wintry sunshine, striking athwart the tiny globes, lifted them, star-like, above the brown leaves about them, and he paused, admiring them-thinking no evil, and far from foreseeing what was to happen. He wondered if they were wild, or-and he looked about for any trace of human hands-a keeper's cottage might have stood here. He saw no trace, but still he stood, entranced by the white blossoms that, virgin-like, bowed meek heads to the sunlight that visited them.

He might have paused longer, if a sound had not brought him abruptly to earth. He turned. To his dismay he saw a girl, three or four paces from him, waiting to cross the stile. How long she had waited, how long watched him, he did not know, and in confusion-for he had not dreamed that there was a human being within a mile of him-and with a hurried snatch at his hat, he moved out of the way.

The girl stepped forward, coloring a little, for she foresaw that she must climb the stile under the young man's eye. Instinctively, he held out a hand to assist her, and in the act-he never knew how, nor did she-the gun slipped from his grasp, or the trigger caught in a bramble. A sheet of flame tore between them, the blast of the powder rent the air.

"O my God!" Clement cried, and he reeled back, shielding his eyes with his hands.

The smoke hid the girl, and for a long moment, a moment of such agony as he had never known, Clement's heart stood still. What had he done? oh, what had he done at last, with his cursed carelessness! Had he killed her?

Slowly, the smoke cleared away, and he saw the girl. She was on her feet-thank God, she was on her feet! She was clinging with both hands to the stile. But was she-"Are you-are you-" he tried to frame words, his voice a mere whistle.

She clung in silence to the rail, her face whiter than the quilted bonnet she wore. But he saw-thank God, he saw no wound, no blood, no hurt, and his own blood moved again, his lungs filled again with a mighty inspiration. "For pity's sake, say you are not hurt!" he prayed. "For God's sake, speak!"

But the shock had robbed her of speech, and he feared that she was going to swoon. He looked helplessly at the brook. If she did, what ought he to do? "Oh, a curse on my carelessness!" he cried. "I shall never, never forgive myself."

It had in truth been a narrow, a most narrow escape, and at last she found words to say so. "I heard the shot-pass," she whispered, and shuddering closed her eyes again, overcome by the remembrance.

"But you are not hurt? They did pass!" The horror of that which might have been, of that which had so nearly been, overcame him anew, gave a fresh poignancy to his tone. "You are sure-sure that you are not hurt?"

"No, I am not hurt," she whispered. "But I am very-very frightened. Don't speak to me. I shall be right-in a minute."

"Can I do anything? Get you some water?"

She shook her head and he stood, looking solicitously at her, still fearing that she might swoon, and wondering afresh what he ought to do if she did. But after a minute or so she sighed, and a little color came back to her face. "It was near, oh, so near!" she whispered, and she covered her face with her hands. Presently, and more certainly, "Why did you have it-at full cock?" she asked.

"God knows!" he owned. "It was unpardonable. But that is what I am! I am a fool, and forget things. I was thinking of something else, I did not hear you come up, and when I found you there I was startled."

"I saw." She smiled faintly. "But it was-careless."

"Horribly! Horribly careless! It was wicked!" He could not humble himself enough.

She was herself now, and she looked at him, took him in, and was sorry for him. She removed her hands from the rail, and though her fingers trembled she straightened her bonnet. "You are Mr. Ovington?"

"Yes. And you are Miss Griffin, are you not?"

"Yes," smiling tremulously.

"May I help you over the stile? Oh, your basket!"

She saw that it lay some yards away, blackened by powder, one corner shot away; so narrow had been the escape! He had a feeling of sickness as he took it up. "You must not go on alone," he said. "You might faint."

"Not now. But I shall not go on. What-" Her eyes strayed to the wood, and curiosity stirred in her. "What were you looking at so intently, Mr. Ovington, that you did not hear me?"

He colored. "Oh, nothing!"

"But it must have been something!" Her curiosity was strengthened.

"Well, if you wish to know," he confessed, shamefacedly, "I was looking at those snowdrops."

"Those snowdrops?"

"Don't you see how the sunlight touches them? What a little island of light they make among the brown leaves?"

"How odd!" She stared at the snowdrops and then at him. "I thought that only painters and poets, Mr. Wordsworth and people like that, noticed those things. But perhaps you are a poet?"

"Goodness, no!" he cried. "A poet? But I am fond of looking at things-out of doors, you know. A little way back" – he pointed up-stream, the way he had come-"I saw a rat sitting on a lily leaf, cleaning its whiskers in the sun-the prettiest thing you ever saw. And an old man working at Bache's told me that he-but Lord, I beg your pardon! How can I talk of such things when I remember-?"

He stopped, overcome by the recollection of that through which they had passed. She, for her part, was inclined to ask him to go on, but remembered that this, all this was very irregular. What would her father say? And Miss Peacock? Yet, if this was irregular, so was the adventure itself. She would never forget his face of horror, the appeal in his eyes, his poignant anxiety. No, it was impossible to act as if nothing had happened between them, impossible to be stiff and to talk at arm's length about prunes and prisms with a person who had all but taken her life-and who was so very penitent. And then it was all so interesting, so out of the common, so like the things that happened in books, like that dreadful fall from the Cobb at Lyme in "Persuasion." And he was not ordinary, not like other people. He looked at snowdrops!

But she must not linger now. Later, when she was alone in her room, she could piece it together and make a whole of it, and think of it, and compass the full wonder of the adventure. But she must go now. She told him so, the primness in her tone reflecting her thoughts. "Will you kindly give me the basket?"

"I am going to carry it," he said. "You must not go alone. Indeed you must not, Miss Griffin. You may feel it more by and by. You may-go off suddenly."

"Oh," she replied, smiling, "I shall not go off, as you call it, now."

"I will only come as far as the mill," humbly. "Please let me do that."

She could not say no, it could hardly be expected of her; and she turned with him. "I shall never forgive myself," he repeated. "Never! Never! I shall dream of the moment when I lost sight of you in the smoke and thought that I had killed you. It was horrible! Horrible! It will come back to me often."

He thought so much of it that he was moving away without his gun, leaving it lying on the ground. It was she who reminded him. "Are you not going to take your gun?" she asked.

He went back for it, covered afresh with confusion. What a stupid fellow she must think him! She waited while he fetched it, and as she waited she had a new and not unpleasant sensation. Never before had she been on these terms with a man. The men whom she had known had always taken the upper hand with her. Her father, Arthur even, had either played with her or condescended to her. In her experience it was the woman's part to be ordered and directed, to give way and to be silent. But here the parts were reversed. This man-she had seen how he looked at her, how he humbled himself before her! And he was-interesting. As he came back to her carrying the gun, she eyed him with attention. She took note of him.

He was not handsome, as Arthur was. He had not Arthur's sparkle, his brilliance, his gay appeal, the carriage of the head that challenged men and won women. But he was not ugly, he was brown and clean and straight, and he looked strong. He bent to her as if he had been a knight and she his lady, and his eyes, grey and thoughtful-she had seen how they looked at her.

Now, she had never given much thought to any man's eyes before, and that she did so now, and criticised and formed an opinion of them, implied a change of attitude, a change in her relations and the man's; and instinctively she acknowledged this by the lead she took. "It seems so strange," she said half-playfully-when had she ever rallied a man before? – "that you should think of such things as you do. Snowdrops, I mean. I thought you were a banker, Mr. Ovington."

"A very bad banker," he replied ruefully. "To tell the truth, Miss Griffin, I hate banking. Pounds, shillings, and pence-and this!" He pointed to the country about them, the stream, the sylvan path they were treading, the wood beside them, with its depths gilded here and there by a ray of the sun. "A desk and a ledger-and this! Oh, I hate them! I would like to live out of doors. I want" – in a burst of candor-"to live my own life! To be able to follow my own bent and make the most of myself."

"Perhaps," she said with naïveté, "you would like to be a country gentleman?" And indeed the lot of a country gentleman in that day was an enviable one.

"Oh no," he said, his tone deprecating the idea. He did not aspire to that.

"But what, then?" She did not understand. "Have you no ambition?"

"I'd like to be-a farmer, if I had my way."

That surprised as well as dashed her. She thought of her father's tenants and her face fell. "Oh, but," she said, "a farmer? Why?" He was not like any farmer she had ever seen.

But he would not be dashed. "To make two blades of grass grow where one grew before," he answered stoutly, though he knew that he had sunk in her eyes. "Just that; but after all isn't that worth doing? Isn't that better than burying your head in a ledger and counting other folk's money while the sun shines out of doors, and the rain falls sweetly, and the earth smells fresh and pure? Besides, it is all I am good for, Miss Griffin. I do think I understand a bit about that. I've read books about it and I've kept my eyes open, and-and what one likes one does well, you know."

"But farmers-"

"Oh, I know," sorrowfully, "it must seem a very low thing to you."

"Farmers don't look at snowdrops, Mr. Ovington," with a gleam of fun in her eyes.

"Don't they? Then they ought to, and they'd learn a lot that they don't know now. I've met men, laboring men who can't read or write, and it's wonderful the things they know about the land and the way plants grow on it, and the live things that are only seen at night, or stealing to their homes at daybreak. And there's a new wheat, a wheat I was reading about yesterday, Cobbett's corn, it is called, that I am sure would do about here if anyone would try it. But there," remembering himself and to whom he was talking, "this can have no interest for you. Only wouldn't you rather plod home weary at night, feeling that you had done something, and with all this" – he waved his hand-"sinking to rest about you, and the horses going down to water, and the cattle lowing to be let into the byres, and-and all that," growing confused, as he felt her eyes upon him, "than get up from a set of ledgers with your head aching and your eyes muddled with figures?"

"I'm afraid I have not tried either," she said. But she smiled. She found him new, his notions unlike those of the people about her, and certainly unlike those of a common farmer. She did not comprehend all his half-expressed thoughts, but not for that was she the less resolved to remember them, and to think of them at her leisure. For the present here was the mill, and they must part. At the mill the field-path which they were following fell into a lane, which on the right rose steeply to the road, on the left crossed a cart-bridge, shaken perpetually by the roar and wet with the spray of the great mill-wheel. Thence it wound upwards, rough and stony, to the back premises of Garth.

He, too, knew that this division of the ways meant parting, and humility clothed him. "Heavens, what a fool I've been," he said, blushing, as he met her eyes. "What must you think of me, prating about myself when I ought to have been thinking only of you and asking your pardon."

"For nearly shooting me?"

"Yes-and thank God, thank God," with emotion, "that it was not worse."

"I do."

"I ought never to carry a gun again!"

"I won't exact that penalty." She looked at him very kindly.

"And you will forgive me? You will do your best to forgive me?"

"I will do my best, if you will not carry off my basket," she replied, for he was turning away with the basket on his arm. "Thank you," as he restored it, and in his embarrassment nearly dropped his gun. "Good-bye."

"You are sure that you will be safe now?"

"If you have no fresh accident with your firearms," she laughed. "Please be careful."

She nodded, and turned and tripped away. But she had hardly left him, she had not passed ten paces beyond the bridge, before her mood changed. The cloak of playfulness fell from her, reaction did its work. The color left her cheeks, her knees shook as she remembered. She felt again the hot blast on her cheek, lived through the flash, the shock, the onset of faintness. Again she clung to the stile, giddy, breathless, the landscape dancing about her. And through the haze she saw his face, white, drawn, terror-stricken-saw it and strove vainly to reassure him.

And now-now he was soothing her. He was pouring out his penitence, he was upbraiding himself. Presently she was herself again; her spirits rising, she was playing with him, chiding him, exercising a new sense of power, becoming the recipient of a man's thoughts, a man's hopes and ambitions. The color was back in her cheeks now, her knees were steady, she could walk. She went on, but slowly and more slowly, full of thought, reviewing what had happened.

Until, near the garden door, she was roughly brought to earth. Miss Peacock, visiting the yard on some domestic errand, had discerned her. "Josina!" she cried. "My certy, girl, but you have been quick! I wish the maids were half as quick when they go! A whole afternoon is not enough for them to walk a mile. But you've not brought the eggs?"

"I didn't go," said Josina. "I was frightened by a gun."

"A gun?"

"And I felt a little faint."

"Faint? Why, you've got the color of a rose, girl. Faint? Well, when I want galeny eggs again I shan't send you. Where was it?"

"Under the Thirty Acres-by the stile. A gun went off, and-"

"Sho!" Miss Peacock cried contemptuously. "A gun went off, indeed! At your age, Josina! I don't know what girls are coming to! If you don't take care you'll be all nerves and vapors like your aunt at the Cottage! Go and take a dose of gilly-flower-water this minute, and the less said to your father the better. Why, you'd never hear the end of it! Afraid because a gun went off!"

Josina agreed that it was very silly, and went quickly up to her room. Yes, the less said about it the better!

CHAPTER VII

The terraced garden at Garth rested to the south and east on a sustaining wall so high that to build it to-day would tax the resources of three Squires. Unfortunately, either for defence or protection from the weather, the wall rose high on the inner side also, so that he who walked in the garden might enjoy the mellow tints of the old brickwork, but had no view of the country except through certain loop-holes, gable-shaped, which pierced the wall at intervals, like the port-holes of a battleship. If the lover of landscape wanted more, he must climb half a dozen steps to a raised walk which ran along the south side. Thence he could look, as from an eyrie, on the green meadows below him, or away to the line of hills to westward, or turning about he could overlook the operations of the gardener at his feet.

More, if it rained or blew there was at the south-west corner, and entered from the raised walk, an ancient Dutch summer-house of brick, with a pyramidal roof. It had large windows and, with much at Garth that served for ornament rather than utility, it was decayed, time and damp having almost effaced its dim frescoes. But tradition hallowed it, for it was said that William of Orange, after dining in the hall at the oaken table which still bore the date 1691, had smoked his pipe and drunk his Schnapps in this summer-house; and thence had watched the roll of the bowls and the play of the bias on the turf below. For in those days the garden had been a bowling green.

There on summer evenings the Squire would still drink his port, but in winter the place was little used, tools desecrated it, and tubers took refuge in it. So when Josina began about this time to frequent it, and, as winter yielded to the first breath of spring, began to carry her work thither of an afternoon, Miss Peacock should have had her suspicions. But the good lady saw nothing, being a busy woman. Thomas the groom did remark the fact, for idle hands make watchful eyes, but for a time he was none the wiser.

"What's young Miss doing up there?" he asked himself. "Must be tarnation cold! And her look's fine, too! Ay, 'tis well to be them as has nought to do but traipse up and down and sniff the air!"

Naturally it did not at once occur to him that the summer-house commanded a view of the path which ran along the brook side; nor did he suppose that Miss had any purpose, when, as might happen perhaps once a week, she would leave her station at the window and in an aimless fashion wander down to the mill-and beyond it. She might be following a duck inclined to sit, or later-for turkeys will stray-be searching for a turkey's nest. She might be doing fifty things, indeed-she was sometimes so long away. But the time did come when, being by chance at the mill, Thomas saw a second figure on the path beside the water, and he laid by the knowledge for future use. He was a sly fellow, not much in favor with the other servants.

Presently there came a cold Saturday in March, a wet, windy day, when to saunter by the brook would have too odd an air. But would it have an odd look, Josina wondered, standing before the glass in her room, if she ran across to the Cottage for ten minutes about sunset? The bank closed early on Saturdays, and men were not subject to the weather as women were. Twice she put on her bonnet, and twice she took it off and put it back in its box-she could not make up her mind. He might think that she followed him. He might think her bold. Or suppose that when they met before others, she blushed; or that they thought the meeting strange? And, after all, he might not be there-he was no favorite with Mrs. Bourdillon, and his heart might fail him. In the end the bonnet was put away, but it is to be feared that that evening Jos was a little snappish with Miss Peacock when arraigned for some act of forgetfulness.

Had she gone she might have come off no better than Clement, who, braving all things, did go. Mrs. Bourdillon did not, indeed, say when he entered, "What, here again?" but her manner spoke for her, and Arthur, who had arrived before his time, received the visitor with less than his usual good humor. Clement's explanation, that he had left his gun, fell flat, and so chilly were the two that he stayed but twenty minutes, then faltered an excuse, and went off with his tail between his legs.

He did not guess that he had intruded on a family difference, a trouble of some standing, which the passage of weeks had but aggravated. It turned on Ovington's offer, which Arthur, pluming himself on his success and proud of his prospects, had lost no time in conveying to his mother. He had supposed that she would see the thing with his eyes, and be as highly delighted. To become a partner so early, to share at his age in the rising fortunes of the house! Surely she would believe in him now, if she had never believed in him before.

But Mrs. Bourdillon had been imbued by her husband with one fixed idea-that whatever happened she must never touch her capital; that under no circumstances must she spend it, or transfer it or alienate it. That way lay ruin. No sooner, therefore, had Arthur come to that part of his story than she had taken fright; and nothing that he had been able to say, no assurance that he had been able to give, no gilded future that he had been able to paint, had sufficed to move the good woman from her position.

"Of course," she said, looking at him piteously, for she hated to oppose him, "I'm not saying that it does not sound nice, dear."

"It is nice! Very nice!"

"But I'm older than you, and oh, dear, dear, I've known what disappointment is! I remember when your father thought that he had the promise of the Benthall living and we bought the drawing-room carpet, though it was blue and buff and your father did not like the color-something to do with a fox, I remember, though to be sure a fox is red! Well, my dear," drumming with her fingers on her lap in a placid way that maddened her listener, "he was just as confident as you are, and after all the Bishop gave the living to his own cousin, and the money thrown clean away, and the carpet too large for any room we had, and woven of one piece so that we couldn't cut it! I'm sure that was a lesson to me that there's many a slip between the cup and the lip. Believe me, a bird in the hand-"

"But this is in the hand!" Arthur cried, restraining himself with difficulty. "This is in the hand!"

"Well, I don't know how that may be. I never was a business woman, whatever your uncle may say when he is in his tantrums. But I do know that your father told me, nine or ten times-"

"And you've told me a hundred times!"

"Well, and I'm sure your uncle would say the same! But, indeed, I don't know what he wouldn't say if he knew what we were thinking of!"

"The truth is, mother, you are afraid of the Squire."

"And if I am," plaintively, "it is all very well for you, Arthur, who are away six days out of seven. But I'm here and he's here. And I have to listen to him. And if this money is lost-"

"But it cannot be lost, I tell you!"

"Well, if it is lost, we shall both be beggars! Oh, dear, dear, I'm sure if your father told me once he told me a hundred times-"

"Damn!" Arthur cried, fairly losing his temper at last. "The truth is, mother, that my father knew nothing about money."

At that, however, Mrs. Bourdillon began to cry and Arthur found himself obliged to drop the matter for the time. He saw, too, that he was on the wrong tack, and a few days later, under pressure of necessity, he tried another. He humbled himself, he wheedled, he cajoled; and when he had by this means got on the right side of his mother he spoke of Ovington's success.

"In a few years he will be worth a quarter of a million," he said.

The figure flustered her. "Why, that's-"

"A quarter of a million," he repeated impressively. "And that's why I consider this the chance of my life, mother. It is such an opportunity as I shall never have again. It is within my reach now, and surely, surely," his voice shook with the fervor of his pleading, "you will not be the one to dash it from my lips?" He laid his hand upon her wrist. "And ruin your son's life, mother?"

She was shaken. "You know, if I thought it was for your good!"

"It is! It is, mother!"

"I'd do anything to make you happy, Arthur! But I don't believe," with a sigh, "that whatever I did your uncle would pay the money."

"Is it his money or yours?"

"Why, of course, Arthur, I thought that you knew that it was your father's." She was very simple, and her pride was touched.

"And now it is yours. And I suppose that some day-I hope it will be a long day, mother-it will be mine. Believe me, you've only to write to my uncle and tell him that you have decided to call it up, and he will pay it as a matter of course. Shall I write the letter for you to sign?"

Mrs. Bourdillon looked piteously at him. She was very, very unwilling to comply, but what was she to do? Between love of him and fear of the Squire, what was she to do? Poor woman, she did not know. But he was with her, the Squire was absent, and she was about to acquiesce when a last argument occurred to her. "But you are forgetting," she said, "if your uncle takes offence, and I'm sure he will, he'll come between you and Josina."

"Well, that is his look-out."

"Arthur! You don't mean that you've changed your mind, and you so fond of her? And the girl heir to Garth and all her father's money!"

"I say nothing about it," Arthur declared. "If he chooses to come between us that will be his doing, not mine."

"But Garth!" Mrs. Bourdillon was altogether at sea. "My dear boy, you are not thinking! Why, Lord ha' mercy on us, where would you find such another, young and pretty and all, and Garth in her pocket? Why, if it were only on Jos's account you'd be mad to quarrel with him."

"I'm not going to quarrel with him," Arthur replied sullenly. "If he chooses to quarrel with me, well, she's not the only heiress in the world."

His mother held up her hands. "Oh dear me," she said wearily. "I give it up, I don't understand you. But I'm only a woman and I suppose I don't understand anything."

He was accustomed to command and she to be guided. He saw that she was wavering, and he plied her afresh, and in the end, though not without another outburst of tears, he succeeded. He fetched the pen, he smoothed the paper, and before he handed his mother her bed-candle he had got the fateful letter written, and had even by lavishing on her unusual signs of affection brought a smile to her face. "It will be all right, mother, you'll see," he urged as he watched her mount the stairs. "It will be all right! You'll see me a millionaire yet."

And then he made a mistake which was to cost him dearly. He left the letter on the mantel-shelf. An hour later, when he had been some time in bed, he heard a door open and he sat up and listened. Even then, had he acted on the instant, it might have availed. But he hesitated, arguing down his misgivings, and it was only when he caught the sound of footsteps stealthily re-ascending that he jumped out of bed and lit a candle. He slipped downstairs, but he was too late. The letter was gone.

He went up to bed again, and though he wondered at the queer ways of women he did not as yet doubt the issue. He would recover the letter in the morning and send it. The end would be the same.

There, however, he was wrong. Mrs. Bourdillon was a weak woman, but weakness has its own obstinacy, and by the morning she had reflected. The sum charged on Garth was her whole fortune, her sole support, and were it lost she would be penniless, with no one to look to except the Squire, whom she would have offended beyond forgiveness. True, Arthur laughed at the idea of loss, and he was clever. But he was young and sanguine, and before now she had heard of mothers beggared through the ill-fortune or the errors of their children. What if that should be her lot!

Nor was this the only thought which pressed upon her mind. That Arthur should marry Josina and succeed to Garth had been for years her darling scheme, and she could not, in spite of the hopes with which he had for the moment dazzled her, imagine any future for him comparable to that. But if he would marry Josina and succeed to Garth he must not offend his uncle.

So, when Arthur came down in the morning, and with assumed carelessness asked for the letter she put him off. It was Sunday. She would not discuss business on Sunday, it would not be lucky. On Monday, when, determined to stand no more nonsense, he returned to the subject, she took refuge in tears. It was cruel of him to press her so, when-when she was not well! She had not made up her mind. She did not know what she should do. To tears there is no answer, and, angry as he was, he had to start for Aldersbury, leaving the matter unsettled, much to his disgust and alarm, for the time was running on.

And that was the beginning of a tragedy in the little house under Garthmyle. It was a struggle between strength and weakness, and weakness, as usual, sought shelter in subterfuge. When Arthur came home at the end of the week his mother took care to have company, and he could not get a word with her. She had no time for business-it must wait. On the next Saturday she was not well, and kept her bed, and on the Sunday met him with the same fretful plea-she would do no business on Sunday! Then, convinced at last that she had made up her mind to thwart him, he hardened his heart. He loved his mother, and to go beyond a certain point did not consort with his easy nature, but he had no option; the thing must be done if his prospects were not to be wrecked. He became hard, cruel, almost brutal; threatening to leave her, threatening to take himself off altogether, harassing her week after week, in what should have been her happiest hours, with pictures of the poverty, the obscurity, the hopelessness to which she was condemning him! And, worst of all, torturing her with doubts that after all he might be right.

And still she resisted, and weak, foolish woman as she was, resisted with an obstinacy that was infinitely provoking. Meanwhile only two things supported her: her love for him, and the belief that she was defending his best interests and that some day he would thank her. She was saving him from himself. The odds were great, she was unaccustomed to oppose him, and still she withstood him. She would not sign the letter. But she suffered, and suffered terribly.

She took to bringing in guests as buffers between them, and once or twice she brought in Josina. The girl, who knew them both so well, could not fail to see that there was something wrong, that something marred the relations between mother and son. Arthur's moody brow, his silence, or his snappish answers, no less than Mrs. Bourdillon's scared manner, left her in no doubt of that. But she fancied that this was only another instance of the law of man's temper and woman's endurance-that law to which she knew but one exception. And if the girl hugged that exception, trembling and hoping, to her breast, if Arthur's coldness was a relief to her, if she cared little for any secret but her own, she was no more of a mystery to them than they were to her. When the door closed behind her, and, accompanied by a maid, she crossed the dark fields, she thought no more about them. The two ceased-such is the selfishness of love-to exist for her. Her thoughts were engrossed by another, by one who until lately had been a stranger, but whose figure now excluded the world from her view. Her secret monopolized her, closed her heart, blinded her eyes. Such is the law of love-at a certain stage in its growth.

Meanwhile life at the Cottage went on in this miserable fashion until April had come in and the daffodils were in full bloom in the meadows beside the river. And still Arthur could not succeed in his object, and wondering what the banker thought of the delay and his silence, was almost beside himself with chagrin. Then there came a welcome breathing space. Ovington despatched him to London on an important and confidential mission. He was to be away rather more than a fortnight, and the relief was much even to him. To his mother it had been more, if he had not, with politic cruelty, kept from her the cause of his absence. She feared that he was about to carry out his threat and to make a home elsewhere-that this was the end, that he was going to leave her. And perhaps, she thought, she had been wrong. Perhaps, after all, she had sacrificed his love and lost his dear presence for nothing! It was a sad Easter that she passed, lonely and anxious, in the little house.

CHAPTER VIII

It was in the third week of April that Arthur returned to Aldersbury. Ovington had not failed to let his correspondents know that the lad was no common mercantile person, but came of a county family and had connections; and Arthur had been fêted by the bank's agents and made much of by their friends. The negotiation which Ovington had entrusted to him had gone well, as all things went well at this time. His abilities had been recognized in more than one counting-house, and in the general elation and success, civilities and hospitality had been showered upon him. Mothers and daughters had exerted themselves to please the nephew-it was whispered the heir-of the Aldshire magnate; and what Arthur's letters of credit had not gained for him, his handsome face and good breeding had won. He came back, therefore, on the best of terms with himself and more in love than ever with the career which he had laid out. And, but for the money difficulty, and his mother's obstinacy, he would have seen all things in rose color.

He returned at the moment when speculation in Aldersbury-and Aldersbury was in this but a gauge of the whole country-was approaching its fever point. The four per cent, consols, which not long before had stood at 72, were 106. The three per cents., which had been 52, had risen to 93. India stock was booming at 280, and these prices, which would have seemed incredible to a former generation, were justified by the large profits accruing from trade and seeking investment. They were, indeed, nothing beside the heights to which more speculative stocks were being hurried. Shares in one mine, bought at ten pounds, changed hands at a hundred and fifty. Shares in another, on which seventy pounds had been paid, were sold at thirteen hundred. An instalment of £5 was paid on one purchase, and ten days later the stock was sold for one hundred and forty!

Under such circumstances new ventures were daily issued to meet the demand. Proposals for thirty companies came out in a week, and still there appeared to be money for all, for the banks, tempted by the prevailing prosperity, increased their issues of notes. It seemed an easy thing to borrow at seven per cent., and lay out the money at ten or fifteen, with certainty of a gain in capital. Men who had never speculated saw their neighbors grow rich, and themselves risked a hundred and doubled it, ventured two and saw themselves the possessers of six. It was like, said one, picking up money in a hat. It was like, said another, baling it up in a bucket. There seemed to be money everywhere-money for all. Peers and clergymen, shop-keepers and maiden ladies, servants even, speculated; while those who knew something of the market, or who could allot shares in new ventures, were courted and flattered, drawn into corners and consulted by troops of friends.

All this came to its height at the end of April, and Arthur, sanguine and eager, laden with the latest news from Lombard Street, returned to Aldersbury to revel in it. He trod the Cop and the High Street as if he walked on air. He moved amid the excitement like a young god. His nod was confidence, his smile a promise. A few months before he had doubted. He had viewed the rising current of speculation from without, and had had his misgivings. Now the stream had caught him, and if he ever reflected that there might be rocks ahead, he flattered himself that he would be among the first to take the alarm.

The confidence which he owed to youth, the banker drew from a past of unvarying success. But the elder man did have his moments of mistrust. There were hours when he saw hazards in front, and the days on which he did not call for the Note Issues were few. But even he found it easier to go with the current, and once or twice, so high was his opinion of Arthur's abilities, he let himself be persuaded by him. Then the mere bustle was exhilarating. The door of the bank that never rested, the crowded counter, the incense of the streets, the whispers where he passed, all had their intoxicating effect. The power to put a hundred pounds into a man's pocket-who can abstain from, who is not flattered by, the use of this, who can at all times close his mouth? And often one thing leads to another, and advice is the prelude to a loan.

It was above all when the railroad scheme was to the fore that the banker realized his importance. It was his, he had made it, and it was on its behalf that he was disposed to put his hand out farthest. The Board, upon Sir Charles's proposal-the fruit of a hint dropped by Ovington-had fixed the fourth market-day in April for the opening of the subscription list. Though the season was late, the farmers would be more or less at liberty; and as it happened the day turned out to be one of the few fine days of that spring. The sun, rarely seen of late, shone, the public curiosity was tickled, the town was full, men in the streets quoted the tea-kettle and explained the powers of steam; and Arthur, as he forged his way through the good-tempered, white-coated throng, felt to the full his importance.

Near the door of the bank he met Purslow, and the draper seized his arm. "One moment, sir, excuse me," he whispered. "I've a little more I can spare at a pinch. What do you advise, Mr. Bourdillon?"

Arthur knew that it was not in his province to advise, and he shook his head. "You must ask Mr. Ovington," he said.

"And he that busy that he'll snap my nose off! And you're just from London. Come, Mr. Bourdillon, just for two or three hundred pounds. A good 'un! A real good 'un! I know you know one!"

Arthur gave way. The man's wheedling tone, the sense of power, the ability to confer a favor were too much for him. He named the Antwerp Navigation Company. "But don't stop in too long," he added. And he snatched himself away, and hurried on, and many were those who found his frank eager face irresistible.

As he ploughed his way through the crowd, his head on a level with the tallest, he seemed to be success itself. His careless greeting met everywhere a cheery answer, and more than one threw after him, "There goes the old Squire's nevvy! See him? He's a clever 'un if ever there was one!" They gave him credit for knowing mysteries dark to them, yet withal they owned a link with him. He too belonged to the land. A link with him and some pride in him.

In the parlor where the Board met he had something of the same effect. Sir Charles and Acherley had taken their seats and were talking of county matters, their backs turned on their fellows. Wolley stood before the fire, glowering at them and resenting his exclusion. Grounds sat meekly on a chair within the door. But Arthur's appearance changed all. He had a word or a smile for each. He set Grounds at his ease, he had a joke for Sir Charles and Acherley, he joined Wolley before the fire. Ovington, who had left the room for a moment, noted the change, and his heart warmed to the Secretary. "He will do," he told himself, as he turned to the business of the meeting.

"Come, Mr. Wolley, come, Mr. Grounds," he said, "pull up your chairs, if you please. It has struck twelve and the bank should be open to receive applications at half-past. I conveyed your invitation, gentlemen, to Mr. Purslow two days ago, and I am happy to tell you that he takes two hundred shares, so that over one-third of the capital will be subscribed before we go to the public. I suppose, gentlemen, you would wish him to take his seat at once?"

Sir Charles and Acherley nodded, Wolley looked sullen but said nothing, Grounds submitted. Neither he nor Wolley was over-pleased at sharing with another the honor of sitting with the gentry. But it had to be done. "Bring him in, Bourdillon," Ovington said.

Purslow, who was in waiting, slid into the room and took his seat, between pride and humility. "I have reason to believe, gentlemen," Ovington continued, "that the capital will be subscribed within twenty-four hours. It is for you to say how long the list shall remain open."

"Not too long," said Sir Charles, sapiently.

"Shall I say forty-eight hours? Agreed, gentlemen? Very good. Then a notice to that effect shall be posted outside the bank at once. Will you see to that, Bourdillon?"

"And what of Mr. Griffin?" Wolley blurted out the question before Ovington could restrain him. The clothier was anxious to show Purslow that he was at home in his company.

"To be sure," Ovington answered smoothly. "That is the only point, gentlemen, in which my expectations have not been borne out. The interview between Mr. Griffin and myself was disappointing, but I hoped to be able to tell you to-day that we were a little more forward. Mr. Wolley, however, has handed me a letter which he has received from Garth, and it is certainly-"

"A d-d unpleasant letter," Wolley struck in. "The old Squire don't mince matters." He had predicted that his landlord would not come in, and he was pleased to see his opinion confirmed. "He says I'd better be careful, for if I and my fine railroad come to grief I need not look to him for time. By the Lord," with unction, "I know that, railroad or no railroad! He'd put me out as soon as look at me!"

Sir Charles shuffled his papers uncomfortably. To hear a man like Wolley discuss his landlord shocked him-he felt it a kind of treason to listen to such talk. He feared-he feared more than ever-that the caustic old Squire was thinking him a fool for mixing himself up with this business. Good Heavens, if, after all, it ended in disaster!

Acherley took it differently. He cared nothing for Griffin's opinion; he was in money difficulties and had passed far beyond that. He laughed. "Put you out? I'll swear he would! There's no fool like an old fool! But he won't have the chance."

"No, I think not," Ovington said blandly. "But his attitude presents difficulties, and I am sure that our Chairman will agree with me that if we can meet his views, it will be worth some sacrifice."

"Can't Arthur get round him?" Acherley suggested.

"No," Arthur replied, smiling. "Perhaps if you-"

"Will you see him, Mr. Acherley?"

"Oh, I'll see him!" carelessly. "I don't say I shall persuade him."

"Still, we shall have done what we can to meet his views," the banker replied. "If we fail we must fall back-on my part most reluctantly-on the compulsory clauses. But that is looking ahead, and we need not consider it at present. I don't think that there is anything else? It is close on the half-hour. Will you see, Bourdillon, if all is ready in the bank?"

Arthur went out, leaving the door ajar. There came through the opening a murmur of voices and the noise of shuffling feet. Ovington turned over the papers before him. "In the event of the subscriptions exceeding the sum required, what day will suit you to allot? Thursday, Sir Charles?"

"Friday would suit me better."

"Friday be it then, if Mr. Acherley-good. On Friday at noon, gentlemen. Yes, Bourdillon?"

Arthur did not sit down. He was smiling. "It's something of a sight," he said. "By Jove it is! I think you ought to see it."

Ovington nodded, and they rose, some merely curious, others eager to show themselves in their new role of dignity. Arthur opened the door and stood aside. Beyond the door the cashier's desk with its green curtains formed a screen which masked their presence. Ovington separated the curtains, and Sir Charles and Acherley peeped between them. The others looked round the desk.

The space devoted to the public was full. It hummed with low voices, but above the hum sharp sentences from time to time rang out. "Here, don't push! It's struck, Mr. Rodd! Hand 'em out!" Then, louder than these, a lusty voice bawled, "Here, get out o' my road! I want money for a cheque, man!"

The two clerks were at the counter, with piles of application forms before them and their eyes on the clock. Clement and Rodd stood in the background. The impassive attitude of the four contrasted strikingly with the scene beyond the counter, where eighteen or twenty persons elbowed and pushed one another, their flushed faces eloquent of the spirit of greed. For it had got about that there was easy money and much money to be made out of the Railroad shares-to be made in particular by those who were first in the field. Some looked to make the money by a sale at a premium, others foresaw a profit but hardly knew how it was to come, more had heard of men who had suddenly grown rich, and fancied that this was their chance. They had but to sign a form and pay an instalment, and profit would flow in, they did not care whence. They were certain, indeed, but of one thing, that there was gain in it; and with every moment their number grew, for with every moment a newcomer forced his way, smiling, into the bank. Meantime the crowd gave good-humored vent to their impatience. "Let's have 'em! Hand 'em out!" they murmured. What if there were not enough to go round?

The man with the cheque, hopelessly wedged in, protested. "There, someone hand it on," he cried at last. "And pass me out the money, d-n you! And let me get out of this."

The slip was passed from hand to hand, and "How'll you have it, Mr. Boumphry?" Rodd asked.

"In shares!" cried a wit.

"Notes and a pound in silver," gasped Boumphry, who thought the world had gone mad. "And dunno get on my back, man!" to one behind him. "I'm not a bullock! Here, how'm I to count it when I canna get-"

"A form!" cried a second wit. "Neither can we, farmer! Come, out with 'em, gentlemen. Hullo, Mr. Purslow! That you? Ha' you turned banker?"

The draper, who had showed himself over-confidently, fell back purple with blushes. "Certainly an odd sight," said the banker quietly. "It promises well, I think, Sir Charles."

"Hanged well!" said Acherley.

Sir Charles acquiesced. "Er, I think so," he said. "I certainly think so." But he felt himself a little out of place.

The minute hand touched the half-hour, and the clerks began to distribute the papers. After watching the scene for a moment the Board separated, its members passing out modestly through the house door. They parted on the pavement, even Sir Charles unbending a little and the saturnine Acherley chuckling to himself as visions of fools and fat premiums floated before him. It was a vision which they all shared in their different ways.

Arthur was about to join the workers in the bank when Ovington beckoned him into the dining-room. "You can be spared for a moment," he said. "Come in here. I want to speak to you." He closed the door. "I've been considering the matter I discussed with you some time ago, lad, and I think that the time has come when it should be settled. But you've said nothing about it and I've been wondering if anything was wrong. If so, you had better tell me."

"Well, sir-"

The banker was shrewd. "Is it the money that is the trouble?"

The moment that Arthur had been dreading was come, and he braced himself to meet it. "I'm afraid that there has been some difficulty," he said, "but I think now-"

"Have you given your uncle notice?"

Arthur hesitated. If he avowed that they had not given his uncle notice, how weak, how inept he would appear in the other's eyes! A wave of exasperation shook him, as he saw the strait into which his mother's obstinacy was forcing him. The opportunity which he valued so highly, the opening on which he had staked so much-was he to forfeit them through her folly? No, a hundred times, no! He would not let her ruin him, and, "Yes, we have given it," he said, "but very late, I'm afraid. My mother had her doubts and I had to overcome them. I'm sorry, sir, that there has been this delay."

"But the notice has been given now?"

"Yes."

"Then in three months, as I understand-"

"The money will be ready, sir." He spoke stoutly; the die was cast now, and he must go through with it. After all it was not his fault, but his mother's; and for the rest, if the notice was not already given it should be this very day. "It will be ready in three months, but not earlier, I am afraid."

Ovington reflected. "Well," he said, "that must do. And we won't wait. We will sign the agreement now and it shall take effect from next Monday, the payment to be made within three months. Go through the articles" – he opened his desk and took a paper from it and gave it to Arthur-"and come in with one of the clerks at five o'clock and we will complete it."

Arthur hardly knew what to Bay. "It's uncommonly kind of you, sir!" he stammered. "You may be sure I shall do my best to repay your kindness."

"Well, I like you," the banker rejoined. "And, of course, I see my own advantage in it. So that is settled."

Arthur went out taking the paper with him, but in the passage he paused, his face gloomy. After all it was not too late. He could go back and tell Ovington that his mother-but no, he could not risk the banker's good opinion. His mother must do it. She must do it. He was not going to see the chance of a lifetime wasted-for a silly scruple.

He moved at last, and as he went into the bank he jostled two persons who, sheltered by the cashier's desk, were watching, as the Board had watched a few minutes before, the scene of excitement which the bank presented. The one was Betty, the other was Rodd, the cashier. It had occurred to Rodd that the girl would like to view a thing so unusual, and he had slipped out and fetched her. They faced about, startled by the contact. "Oh, it's you!" said Betty.

"Yes," drily. "What are you doing here, Betty?"

"I came to see the Lottery drawn," she retorted, making a face at him. "Mr. Rodd fetched me. No one else remembered me."

"Well, I should have thought that he-ain't you wanted, Rodd?" There was a new tone in Arthur's voice. "Mr. Clement seems to have his hands full."

Rodd's face reddened under the rebuke. For a moment he seemed about to answer, then he thought better of it. He left them and went to the counter.

"And what would you have thought?" Betty asked pertly, reverting to the sentence that he had not finished.

"Only that Rodd might be better employed-at his work. This is just the job he is fit for, giving out forms."

"And Clement, too, I suppose? It is his job, too?"

"When he's here to do it," with a faint sneer. "That is not too often, Betty."

"Well, more often of late, anyway. Do you know what Mr. Rodd says?"

"No."

"He says that he has seen just such a crowd as this in a bank before. At Manchester seventeen years ago, when he was a boy. There was a run on the bank in which his father worked, and people fought for places as they are fighting to-day. He does not seem to think it-lucky."

"What else does he think?" Arthur retorted with contempt. "What other rubbish? He'd better mind his own business and do his work. He ought to know more than to say such things to you or to anyone."

Betty stared. "Dear me," she replied, "we are high and mighty to-day! Hoity toity!" And turning her shoulder on him, she became absorbed in the scene before her.

But that evening she was more than usually grave, and when her father, pouring out his fourth and last glass of port-for he was an abstemious man-told her that the partnership articles had been signed that afternoon, she nodded. "Yes, I knew," she said sagely.

"How, Betty? I didn't tell you. I have told no one. Did Arthur?"

"No, father, not in so many words. But I guessed it." And during the rest of the evening she was unusually pensive.

CHAPTER IX

Spring was late that year. It was the third week in April before the last streak of snow faded from the hills, or the showers of sleet ceased to starve the land. Morning after morning the Squire tapped his glass and looked abroad for fine weather. The barley-sowing might wait, but the oats would not wait, and at a time when there should have been abundant grass he was still carrying hay to the racks. The lambs were doing ill.

Morning after morning, with an old caped driving-coat cast about his shoulders and a shabby hunting-cap on his grey head, he would walk down to the little bridge that carried the drive over the stream. There, a gaunt high-shouldered figure, he would stand, looking morosely out over the wet fields. The distant hills were clothed in mist, the nearer heights wore light caps, down the vale the clear rain-soaked air showed sombre woods and red soil, with here and there a lop-sided elm, bursting into bud, and reddening to match the furrows. "We shall lose one in ten of the lambs," he thought, "and not a sound foot in the flock!"

One morning as he stood there he saw a man turn off the road and come shambling towards him. It was Pugh, the man-of-all-work at the Cottage, and in his disgust at things in general, the Squire cursed him for a lazy rascal. "I suppose they've nothing to do," he growled, "that they send the rogue traipsing the roads at this hour!" Aloud, "What do you want, my man?" he asked.

Pugh quaked under the Squire's hard eyes. "A letter from the mistress, your honor."

"Any answer?"

Reluctantly Pugh gave up the hope of beer with Calamy the butler. "I'd no orders to wait, sir."

"Then off you go! I've all the idlers here I want, my lad."

The Squire had not his glasses with him, and he turned the letter over to no purpose. Returning to his room he could not find them, and the delay aggravated a temper already oppressed by the weather. He shouted for his spectacles, and when Miss Peacock, hurrying nervously to his aid, suggested that they might be in the Prayer Book from which he had read the psalm that morning, he called her a fool. Eventually, it was there that they were found, on which he dismissed her with a flea in her ear. "If you knew they were there, why did you leave them there!" he stormed. "Silly fools women be!"

But when he had read the letter, he neither stormed nor swore. His anger was too deep. Here was folly, indeed, and worse than folly, ingratitude! After all these years, after forty years, during which he had paid them their five per cent. to the day, five per cent. secured as money could not be secured in these harum-scarum days-to demand their pound of flesh and to demand it in this fashion! Without warning, without consulting him, the head of the family! It was enough to make any man swear, and presently he did swear after the manner of the day.

"It's that young fool," he thought. "He's written it and she's signed it. And if they have their way in five years the money will be gone, every farthing, and the woman will come begging to me! But no, madam," with rising passion, "I'll see you farther before I'll pay down a penny to be frittered away by that young jackanapes! I'll go this moment and tell her what I think of her, and see if she's the impudence to face it out!"

He clapped on his hat and seized his cane. But when he had flung the door wide, pride spoke and he paused. No, he would not lower himself, he would not debate it with her. He would take no notice-that, by G-d, was what he would do. The letter should be as if it had not been written, and as to paying the money, why if they dared to go to law he would go all lengths to thwart them! He was like many in that day, violent, obstinate men who had lived all their lives among dependents and could not believe that the law, which they administered to others, applied to them. Occasionally they had a rude awakening.

But the old Squire did not lack a sense of justice, which, obscured in trifles, became apparent in greater matters. This quality came to his rescue now, and as he grew cooler his attitude changed. If the woman, silly and scatterbrained as she was, and led by the nose by that impudent son of hers-if she persisted, she should have the money, and take the consequences. The six thousand was a charge; it must be met if she held to it. Little by little he accustomed himself to the thought. The money must be paid, and to pay it he must sell his cherished securities. He had no more than four hundred, odd-he knew the exact figure-in the bank. The rest must be raised by selling his India Stock, but he hated to think of it. And the demand, made without warning, hurt his pride.

He took his lunch, a hunch of bread and a glass of ale, standing at the sideboard in the dining-room. It was an airy room, panelled, like most of the rooms at Garth, and the pale blue paint, which many a year earlier had been laid on the oak, was dingy and wearing off in places. His den lay behind it. On the farther side of the hall was the drawing-room, white-panelled and spacious, furnished sparsely and stiffly, with spindle-legged tables, and long-backed Stuart chairs set against the wall. It opened into a dull library never used, and containing hardly a book later than Junius' letters or Burke's speeches. Above, under the sloping roofs of the attics, were chests of discarded clothes, wig-boxes and queerly-shaped carriage-trunks, which nowadays would furnish forth a fancy-ball, an old-time collection almost as curious as that which Miss Berry once viewed under the attics of the Villa Pamphili, but dusty, moth-eaten, unregarded, unvalued. Cold and bare, the house owned everywhere the pinch of the Squire's parsimony; there was nothing in it new, and little that was beautiful. But it was large and shadowy, the bedrooms smelled of lavender, the drawing-room of potpourri, and in summer the wind blew through it from the hay-field, and garden scents filled the lower rooms.

An hour later, having determined how he would act, the old man walked across to the Cottage. As he approached the plank-bridge which crossed the river at the foot of the garden he caught a glimpse of a petticoat on the rough lawn. He had no sooner seen it than it vanished, and he was not surprised. His face was grim as he crossed the bridge, and walking up to the side door struck on it with his cane.

She was all of a tremble when she came to him, and for that he was prepared. That did not surprise him. It was due to him. But he expected that she would excuse herself and fib and protest and shift her ground, and pour forth a torrent of silly explanations, as in his experience women always did. But Mrs. Bourdillon took him aback by doing none of these things. She was white-faced and frightened, but, strange thing in a woman, she was dumb, or nearly dumb. Almost all she had to say or would say, almost all that he could draw from her was that it was her letter-yes, it was her letter. She repeated that several times. And she meant it? She meant what she had written? Yes, oh yes, she did. Certainly, she did. It was her letter.

But beyond that she had nothing to say, and at length, harshly, but not as harshly as he had intended, "What do you mean, then," he asked, "to do with the money, ma'am, eh? I suppose you know that much?"

"I am putting it into the bank," she replied, her eyes averted. "Arthur is going-to be taken in."

"Into the bank?" The Squire glared at her. "Into Ovington's?"

"Yes, into Ovington's," she answered, with the courage of despair. "Where he will get twelve per cent. for it." She spoke in the tone of one who repeated a lesson.

He struck the floor with his cane. "And you think that it will be safe there? Safe, ma'am, safe?"

"I hope so," she faltered.

"Hope so, by G-d? Hope so!" he rapped out, honestly amazed. "And that's all. Hope so! Well, all I can say is that I hope you mayn't live to regret your folly. Twelve per cent. indeed! Twelve-"

He was going to say more, but the silly woman burst into tears and wept with such self-abandonment that she fairly silenced him. After watching her a moment, "Well, there, there, ma'am, it's no good crying like that," he said irritably. "But damme, it beats me! It beats me. If that is the way you look at it, why do you do it? Why do you do it? Of course you'll have the money. But when it's gone, don't come to me for more. And don't say I didn't warn you! There, there, ma'am!" moved by her grief, "for heaven's sake don't go on like that! Don't-God bless me, if I live to be a hundred, if I shall ever understand women!"

He went away, routed by her tears and almost as much perplexed as he was enraged. "If the woman feels like that about it, why does she call up the money?" he asked himself. "Hope that it won't be lost! Hope, indeed! No, I'll never understand the silly fools. Never! Hope, indeed! But I suppose that it's that son of hers has befooled her."

He saw, of course, that it was Arthur who had pushed her to it, and his anger against him and against Ovington grew. He would take his balance from Ovington's on the very next market day. He would go back to Dean's, though it meant eating humble pie. He thought of other schemes of vengeance, yet knew that when the time came he would not act upon them.

He was in a savage mood as he crossed the stable-yard at Garth, and unluckily his eye fell upon Thomas, who was seated on a shaft in a corner of the cart-shed. The man espied him at the same moment and hurried away a paper-it looked like a newspaper-over which he had been poring. Now, the Squire hated idleness, but he hated still more to see a newspaper in one of his men's hands. A laborer who could read was, in his opinion, a laborer spoiled, and his wrath blazed up.

"You d-d idle rascal!" he roared, shaking his cane at the man. "That's what you do in my time, is it! Read some blackguard twopenny trash when you should be cleaning harness! Confound you, if I catch you again with a paper, you go that minute! D'you hear? D'you think that that's what I pay you for?"

The worm will turn, and Thomas, who had been spelling out an inspiring speech by one Henry Hunt, did turn. "Pay me? You pay me little enough!" he answered sullenly.

The Squire could hardly believe his ears. That one of his men should answer him!

"Ay, little enough!" the man repeated impudently. "Beggarly pay, and 'tis time you knew it, Master."

The Squire gasped. Thomas was a Garthmyle man, who ten years before had migrated to Lancashire. Later he had returned-some said that he had got into trouble up north. However that may be, the Squire had wanted a groom, and Thomas had offered himself at low wages and been taken. The village thought that the Squire had been wrong, for Thomas had learned more tricks in Manchester than just to read the newspaper, and, always an ill-conditioned fellow, was fond of airing his learning in the ale-house.

Perhaps the Squire now saw that he had made a mistake; or perhaps he was too angry to consider the matter. "Time I knew it?" he cried, as soon as he could recover himself. "Why, you idle, worthless vagabond, do you think that I do not know what you're worth? Ain't you getting what I've always given?"

"That's where it be!"

"Eh!"

"That's where it be! I'm getting what you gave thirty years agone! And you soaking in money, Master, and getting bigger rents and bigger profits. Ain't I to have my share of it?"

"Share of it!" the old man ejaculated, thunderstruck by an argument as new as the man's insolence. "Share of it!"

"Why not?" Thomas knew his case desperate, and was bent on having something to repeat to the awe-struck circle at the Griffin Arms. "Why not?"

"Why, begad?" the Squire exclaimed, staring at him. "You're the most impudent fellow I ever set eyes on!"

"You'll see more like me before you die!" Thomas answered darkly. "In hard times didn't we share 'em and fair clem? And now profits are up, the world's full of money, as I hear in Aldersbury, and be you to take all and us none?"

It was a revelation to the Squire. Share? Share with his men? Could there be a fool so foolish as to look at the matter thus? Laborers were laborers, and he'd always seen that they had enough in the worst times to keep soul and body together. The duty of seeing that they had as much as would do that was his; and he had always owned it and discharged it. If man, woman or child had starved in Garthmyle he would have blamed himself severely. But the notion that they should have more because times were good, the notion that aught besides the county rate of wages, softened by feudal charity, entered into the question, was a heresy as new to him as it was preposterous. "You don't know what you are talking about," he said, surprise diminishing his anger.

"Don't I?" the man answered, his little eyes sparkling with spite. "Well there's some things I know as you don't. You'd ought to go to the summer-house a bit more, Master, and you'd learn. You'd ought to walk in the garden. There's goings-on and meetings and partings as you don't know, I'll go bail! But t'aint my business and I say nought. I do my work."

"I'll find another to do it this day month," said the Squire. "And you'll take that for notice, my man. You'll do your duty while you're here, and if I find one of the horses sick or sorry, you'll sleep in jail. That's enough. I want no more of your talk!"

He went into the house. Things had come to a pretty pass, when one of his men could face him out like that. The sooner he made a change and saw the rogue out of Garthmyle the better! He flung his stick into a corner and his hat on the table and damned the times. He would put the matter out of his mind.

But it would not go. The taunt the man had flung at him at the last haunted him. What did the rogue mean? And at whom was he hinting? Was Arthur working against him in his own house as well as opposing him out of doors? If so, by heaven, he would soon put an end to it! And by and by, unable to resist the temptation-but not until he had sent Thomas away on an errand-he went heavily out and into the terraced garden. He climbed to the raised walk and looked abroad, his brow gloomy.

The day had mended and the sun was trying to break through the clouds. The sheep were feeding along the brook-side, the lambs were running races under the hedgerows, or curling themselves up on sheltered banks. But the scene, which usually gratified him, failed to please to-day, for presently he espied a figure moving near the mill and made out that the figure was Josina's. From time to time the girl stooped. She appeared to be picking primroses.

It was the idle hour of the day, and there was no reason why she should not be taking her pleasure. But the Squire's brow grew darker as he marked her lingering steps and uncertain movements. More than once he fancied that she looked behind her, and by and by with an oath he turned, clumped down the steps, and left the garden.

He had not quite reached the mill when she saw him descending to meet her. He fancied that he read guilt in her face, and his old heart sank at the sight.

"What are you doing?" he asked, confronting her and striking the ground with his cane. "Eh? What are you doing here, girl? Out with it! You've a tongue, I suppose?"

She looked as if she could sink into the ground, but she found her voice. "I've been gathering-these, sir," she faltered, holding out her basket.

"Ay, at the rate of one a minute! I watched you. Now, listen to me. You listen to me, young woman. And take warning. If you're hanging about to meet that young fool, I'll not have it. Do you hear? I'll not have it!"

She looked at him piteously, the color gone from her face. "I-I don't think-I understand, sir," she quavered.

"Oh, you understand well enough!" he retorted, his suspicions turned to certainty. "And none of your woman's tricks with me! I've done with Master Arthur, and you've done with him too. If he comes about the place he's to be sent to the right-about. That's my order, and that's all about it. Do you hear?"

She affected to be surprised, and a little color trickled into her cheeks. But he took this for one of her woman's wiles-they were deceivers, all of them.

"Do you mean, sir," she stammered, "that I am not to see Arthur?"

"You're neither to see him nor speak to him nor listen to him! There's to be an end of it. Now, are you going to obey me, girl?"

She looked as if butter would not melt in her mouth. "Yes, sir," she answered meekly. "I shall obey you if those are your orders."

He was surprised by the readiness of her assent, and he looked at her suspiciously. "Umph!" he grunted. "That sounds well, and it will be well for you, girl, if you keep to it. For I mean it. Let there be no mistake about that."

"I shall do as you wish, of course, sir."

"He's behaved badly, d-d badly! But if you are sensible I'll say no more. Only understand me, you've got to give him up."

"Yes, sir."

"From this day? Now, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

After that he had no more to say. He required obedience, and he should have been glad to receive it. But, to tell the truth, he was a little at a loss. Girls were silly-such was his creed-and it behoved them to be guided by their elders. If they did not suffer themselves to be guided, they must be brought into line sharply. But somewhere, far down in the old man's heart, and unacknowledged even by himself, lay an odd feeling-a feeling of something like disappointment. In his young days girls had not been so ready, so very ready, to surrender their lovers. He had even known them to fight for them. He was perplexed.

CHAPTER X

They were standing on the narrow strip of sward between the wood and the stream, which the gun accident had for ever made memorable to them. The stile rose between them, but seeing that his hands rested on hers, and his eyes dwelt unrebuked on her conscious face, the barrier was but as the equator, which divides but does not separate; the sacrifice to propriety was less than it seemed. Spring had come with a rush, the hedges were everywhere bursting into leaf. In the Thirty Acres which climbed the hill above them, the thrushes were singing their May-day song, and beside them the brook rippled and sparkled in the sunshine. All Nature rejoiced, and the pulse of youth leapt to the universal rhythm. The maiden's eyes repeated what the man's lips uttered, and for the time to love and to be loved was all in all.

"To think," he murmured, "that if I had not been so awkward we should not have known one another!" And, silly man, he thought this the height of wisdom.

"And the snowdrops!" She, alas, was on the same plane of sapience. "But when-when did you first, Clem?"

"From the first moment we met! From the very first, Jos!"

"When I saw you standing here? And looking-"

"Oh, from long before that!" he declared. And his eyes challenged denial. "From the hour when I saw you at the Race Ball in the Assembly Room-ages, ages ago!"

She savored the thought and found it delicious, and she longed to hear it repeated. "But you did not know me then. How could you-love me?"

"How could I not? How could I see you and not love you?" he babbled. "How was it possible I should not? Were we not made for one another? You don't doubt that? And you," jealously, "when, sweet, did you first-think of me?"

Alas, she could only go back to the moment when she had tripped heart-whole round the corner of the wood, and seen him standing, solitary, wrapped in thought, a romantic figure. But though, to her shame, she could only go back to that, it thrilled her, it made her immensely happy, to think that he had loved her first, that his heart had gone out to her before she knew him, that he had chosen her even before he had spoken to her. Ay, chosen her, little regarded as she was, and shabby, and insignificant amid the gay throng of the ballroom! She had been Cinderella then, but she had found her glass slipper now-and her Fairy Prince. And so on, and so on, with sweet and foolish repetitions.

For this was the latest of a dozen meetings, and Love had long ago challenged Love. Many an afternoon had Clement waited under the wood, and with wonder and reverence seen the maid come tripping along the green towards him. Many a time had he thought a seven-mile ride a small price to pay for the chance, the mere chance, of a meeting, for the distant glimpse of a bonnet, even for the privilege of touching the pebble set for a token on the stile. So that it is to be feared that, if market days had found him more often at his desk, there had been other days, golden days and not a few, when the bank had not held him, when he had stolen away to play truant in this enchanted country. But then, how great had been the temptation, how compelling the lure, how fair the maid!

No, he had not played quite fairly with his father. But the thought of that weighed lightly on him. For this that had come to him, this love that glorified all things, even as Spring the face of Nature, that filled his mind with a thousand images, each more enchanting than the last, and inspired his imagination with a magic not its own, – this visited a man but once; whereas he would have long years in which he might redeem the time, long years in which he might warm his father's heart by an attendance at the desk that should shame Rodd himself! Ay, and he would! He would! Even the sacrifice of his own tastes, his own wishes seemed in his present mood a small surrender, and one he owed and fain would pay.

For he was in love with goodness, he longed to put himself right with all. He longed to do his duty to all, he who walked with a firmer step, who trod the soil with a conquering foot, who found new beauties in star and flower, he, so happy, so proud, so blessed!

But this being his mood, there was a burden which weighed on him, and weighing on him more heavily every day, and that was the part which he was playing towards the Squire. It had long galled him, when absent from her; of late it had begun to mar his delight in her presence. The role of secret lover had charmed for a time-what more shy, more elusive, more retiring than young love? And what more secret? Fain would it shun all eyes. But he had now reached a farther stage, and being honest, and almost quixotic by nature, he could not without pain fall day by day below the ideals which his fancy set up. To-day he had come to meet Josina with a fixed resolve, and a mind wound to the pitch of action; and presently into the fair pool of her content-yet quaking as he did so lest he should seem to hint a fault-he cast the stone.

"And now, Jos," he said, his eyes looking bravely into hers, "I must see your father."

"My father!" Fear sprang into her eyes. She stiffened.

"Yes, dear," he repeated. "I must see your father-and speak to him. There is no other course possible."

Color, love, joy, all fled from her face. She shivered. "My father!" she stammered, pale to the lips. "Oh, it is impossible! It is impossible! You would not do it!" She would have withdrawn her hands if he had not held them. "You cannot, cannot mean it! Have you thought what you are saying?"

"I have, indeed," he said, sobered by her fear, and full of pity for her. "I lay awake for hours last night thinking of it. But there is no other course, Jos, no other course-if we would be happy."

"But, oh, you don't know him!" she cried, panic-stricken. And her terror wrung his heart. "You don't know him! Or what he will think of me!"

"Nothing very bad," he rejoined. But more than ever, more than before, his conscience accused him. He felt that the shame which burned her face and in a moment gave way to the pallor of fear was the measure of his guilt; and in proportion as he winced under that knowledge, and under the knowledge that it was she who must pay the heavier penalty, he took blame to himself and was strengthened in his resolve. "Listen, Jos," he said bravely. "Listen! And let me tell you what I mean. And, dearest, do not tremble as you are trembling. I am not going to tell him to-day. But tell him I must some day-and soon, if we do not wish him to learn it from others."

She shuddered. All had been so bright, so new, so joyous; and now she was to pay the price. And the price had a very terrible aspect for her. Fate, a cruel, pitiless fate, was closing upon her. She could not speak, but her eyes, her quivering lips, pleaded with him for mercy.

He had expected that, and he steeled himself, showing thereby the good metal that was in him. "Yes," he said firmly, "we must, Jos. And for a better reason than that. Because if we do not, if we continue to deceive your father, he will not only have reason to be angry with you, but to despise me; to look upon me as a poor unmanly thing, Jos, a coward who dared not face him, a craven who dared not ask him for what he valued above all the world! Who stole it from him in the dark and behind his back! As it is he will be angry enough. He will look down upon me, and with justice. And at first he will say 'No,' and I fear he will separate us, and there will be no more meetings, and we may have to wait. But if we are brave, if we trust one another and are true to one another-and, alas, you will have to bear the worst-if we can bear and be strong, in the end, believe me, Jos, it will come right."

"Never," she cried, despairing, "never! He will never allow it!"

"Then-"

"Oh," she prayed, "can we not go on as we are?"

"No, we cannot." He was firm. "We cannot. By and by you would discover that for yourself, and you, as well as he, would have cause to despise me. For consider, Jos, think, dear. If I do not seek you for my wife, what is before us? To what can we look forward? To what future? What end? Only to perpetual alarms, and some day, when we least expect it, to discovery-to discovery that will cover me with disgrace."

She did not answer. She had taken her hands from him, she had taken herself from him. She leant on the stile, her face hidden. But he dared not give way, nor would he let himself be repulsed; and very tenderly he laid his hand on her shoulder. "It is natural that you should be frightened," he said. "But if I, too, am frightened; if, seeing the proper course, I do not take it, how can you ever trust me or depend on me? What am I then but a coward? What is the worth of my love, Jos, if I have not the courage to ask for you?"

"But he will want to know-" her shoulders heaved in her agitation, "he will want to know-"

"How we met? I know. And how we loved? Yes, I am afraid so. And he will be angry with you, and you will suffer, and I shall be God knows how wretched! But if I do not go to him, how much more angry will he be! And how much more ground for anger will he have! If we continue to meet it cannot be long kept from him, and then how much worse will it be! And I, with not a word to say for myself, with no defence, no plea! I, who shall not then seem to him to be even a man."

"But he is so-so hard!" she whispered, her face still hidden.

"I know, dear. And so firmly set in his prejudice and his pride. I know. He will think me so far below you; he hates the bank and all connected with it. He holds me a mere clerk, not one of his class, and low, dear, I know it. But" – his voice rose a tone-"I am not low, Jos, and you have discovered it. And now I must prove it to him. I must prove it. And to make a beginning, I must be no coward. I must not be afraid of him. For you, the times are past when he could ill-treat you. And he loves you."

"He is very hard," she murmured. It was his punishment throughout, that though his heart was wrung for her he could not bear her share of the suffering. But he dared not and he would not give way. "He will make me give you up."

He had thought of that and was ready for it. "That must depend upon you," he said very soberly. "For my part, dear-but my part is easy-I shall never give you up. Never! But if the trial be too sore for you who must bear the heavier burden, if you feel that our love is not worth the price you must pay, then I will never reproach you, Jos, never. If you decide on that I will not say one word against it; no, nor think one harsh thought of you. And then we need not tell him. But we must not meet again."

She trembled; and it was natural, it was very natural, that she should tremble. It was an age when discipline was strict and even harsh, and she had been bred up in awe of her father, and in that absolute subjection to him of which the women about her set the example. Children were then to be seen and not heard. Girls were expected to have neither wills nor views of their own. And in her case this was not all. The Squire was a hard man. He was a man of whom those about him stood in awe, and who if he had any of the softer affections hid them under a mask of unpleasing reserve. Proud as he was of his caste, he kept his daughter short of money and short of clothes. He saw her go shabby without a qualm, and penniless, and rejoiced that she could not get into mischief. If she lost a shilling on an errand or overpaid a bill, he stormed and raved at her. Had she run up a debt he would have driven her from the room with oaths. So that if, under the dry husk, there was any kernel, any softer feeling-either for her or for the young boy who had died in his first uniform at Alexandria-she had no clue to the fact, and certainly no suspicion of it.

Nor was even this the whole. One thing was known to Josina which was not known to Clement. Garth was entailed upon her. Even the Squire could not deprive her of the estate, and in the character of his heir she wore for the old man a preciousness with which affection had nothing to do. What he might have permitted to his daughter was matter for grim conjecture. But that he would ever let his heiress, her whose hand was weighted with the rents of Garth, and with the wide lands he loved-that he would ever let her wed at her pleasure or out of her class-this appeared to Josina of all things the most unlikely.

It was no wonder then that the girl hesitated before she answered, or that Clement's face grew grave, his heart heavy, as he waited. But he had that insight into the feelings of others which imagination alone can give, and while she wavered or seemed to waver, he felt none of the resentment which comes of wounded love. Rather he was filled with a great pity for her, a deep tenderness. For it was he who was in fault, he told himself. It was he who had made the overtures, he who had wooed and won her fancy, he who had done this. It was his selfishness, his thoughtlessness, his imprudence which had brought them to this pass, a pass whence they could neither advance without suffering nor draw back with honor. So that if she who must encounter a father's anger proved unequal to the test, if the love, which he did not doubt, was still too weak to face the ordeal, it did not lie with him to blame her-even on this day when bird and flower and leaf sang love's pæan. No, perish the thought! He would never blame her. With infinite tenderness, forgiving her beforehand, he touched her bowed head.

At that, at that touch, she looked up at last, and with a leap of the heart he read her answer in her eyes. He read there a love and a courage equal to his own; for, after all, she was her father's daughter, she too came of an old proud race. "You shall tell him," she said, smiling through her tears. "And I will bear what comes of it. But they shall never separate us, Clem, never, never, if you will be true to me."

"True to you!" he cried, worshipping her, adoring her. "Oh, Jos!"

"And love me a little always?"

"Love you? Oh, my darling!" The words choked him.

"It shall be as you say! It shall be always as you say!" She was clinging to him now. "I will do as you tell me! I will always-oh, but you mustn't, you mustn't," between tears and smiles, for his arms were about her now, and the poor ineffectual stile had ceased to be even an equator. "But I must tell you. I love you more now, Clement, more, more because I can trust you. You are strong and will do what is right."

"At your cost!" he cried, shaken to the depths-and he thought her the most wonderful, the bravest, the noblest woman in the world. "Ah, Jos, if I could bear it for you!"

"I will bear it," she answered. "And it will not last. And see, I am not afraid now-or only a little! I shall think of you, and it will be nothing."

Oh, but the birds were singing now and the brook was sparkling as it rippled over the shallows towards the deep pool.

Presently, "When will you tell him?" she asked; and she asked it, with scarce a quaver in her voice.

"As soon as I can. The sooner the better. This is Saturday. I will see him on Monday morning."

"But isn't that-market-day?" faintly. "Can you get away?"

"Does anything matter beside this?" he replied. "The sooner, dear, the tooth is pulled, the better. There is only, one thing I fear."

"I think you fear nothing," she rejoined, gazing at him with admiring eyes. "But what is it?"

"That someone should be before us. That someone should tell him before I do. And he should think us what we are not, Jos-cowards."

"I see," she answered thoughtfully. "Yes," with a sigh. "Then, on Monday. I shall sleep the better when it is over, even if I sleep in disgrace."

"I know," he said; and he saw with a pang that her color ebbed. But her eyes still met his and were brave, and she smiled to reassure him.

"I will not mind what comes," she whispered, "if only we are not parted."

"We shall not be parted for ever," he assured her. "If we are true to one another, not even your father can part us-in the end."

CHAPTER XI

Josina had put a brave face on the matter, but when she came down to breakfast on the Monday, the girl was almost sick with apprehension. Her hands were cold, and as she sat at table she could not raise her eyes from her plate. The habit of years is not to be overcome in an hour, and that which the girl had to face was beyond doubt formidable. She had passed out of childhood, but in that house she was still a child. She was expected to be silent, to efface herself before her elders, to have no views but their views, and no wishes that went beyond theirs. Her daily life was laid out for her, and she must conform or she would be called to heel. On love and marriage she must have no mind of her own, but must think as her father permitted. If he chose she would be her cousin's wife, if he did not choose the two would be parted. She could guess how he would treat her is she resisted his will, or even his whim, in that matter.

And now she must resist his will in a far worse case. Arthur was her cousin. But Clement? She was not supposed even to know him. Yet she must own him, she must avow her love for him, she must confess to secret meetings with him and stolen interviews. She must be prepared for looks of horror, for uplifted hands and scandalized faces, and to hear shameful things said of him; to hear him spoken of as an upstart, belonging to a class beneath her, a person with whom she ought never to have come in contact, one whom her father would not think of admitting to his table!

And through all, she who was so weak, so timid, so subject, must be firm. She must not flinch.

As she sat at table she was conscious of her pale cheeks, and trembled lest the others should notice them. She fancied that her father's face already wore an ominous gloom. "If you've orders for town," he flung at Miss Peacock as he rose, "you'll need be quick with them. I'm going in at ten."

Miss Peacock was all of a flutter. "But I thought, sir, that the Bench did not sit-"

"You'd best not think," he retorted. "Ten, I said."

That seemed to promise a blessed respite, and the color returned to Josina's cheeks. Clement could hardly arrive before eleven, and for this day she might be safe. But on the heels of relief followed reflection. The respite meant another sleepless night, another day of apprehension, more hours of fear; the girl was glad and she was sorry. The spirit warred with the flesh. She did not know what she wished.

And, after all, Clement might appear before ten. She watched the clock and watched her father and in returning suspense hung upon his movements. How he lingered, now hunting for a lost paper, now grumbling over a seed-bill, now drawing on his boots with the old horn-handled hooks which had been his father's! And the clock-how slowly it moved! It wanted eight, it wanted five, it wanted two minutes of ten. The hour struck. And still the Squire loitered outside, talking to old Fewtrell-when at any moment Clement might ride up!

The fact was that Thomas was late, and the Squire was saying what he thought of him. "Confound him, he thinks, because he's going, he can do as he likes!" he fumed. "But I'll learn him! Let me catch him in the village a week after he leaves, and I'll jail him for a vagrant! Such impudence as he gave me the other day I never heard in my life! He'll go wide of here for a character!"

"I dunno as I'd say too much to him," the old bailiff advised. "He's a queer customer, Squire, as you'd ought to have seen before now!"

"He'll find me a queer customer if he starts spouting again! Why, damme," irritably, "one might almost think you agreed with him!"

Old Fewtrell screwed up his face. "No," he said slowly, "I'm not saying as I agree with him. But there's summat in what he says, begging your pardon, Squire."

"Summat? Why, man," in astonishment, "are you tarred with the same brush?"

"You know me, master, better'n that," the old man replied. "An' I bin with you fifty years and more. But, certain sure, times is changed and we're no better for the change."

"But you get as much?"

"Mebbe in malt, but not in meal. In money, mebbe-I'm not saying a little more, master. But here's where 'tis. We'd the common before the war, and run for a cow and geese, and wood for the picking, and if a lad fancied to put up a hut on the waste 'twas five shillings a year; and a rood o' potato ground-it wasn't missed. 'Twas neither here nor there. But 'tisn't so now. Where be the common? Well, you know, Squire, laid down in wheat these twenty years, and if a lad squatted now, he'd not be long of hearing of it. We've the money, but we're not so well off. That's where 'tis."

The Squire scowled. "Well, I'm d-d!" he said. "You've been with me fifty years, and-" and then fortunately or unfortunately the curricle came round and the Squire, despising Fewtrell's hint, turned his wrath upon the groom, called him a lazy scoundrel, and cursed him up hill and down dale.

The man took it in silence, to the bailiff's surprise, but his sullen face did not augur well for the day, and when he had climbed to the back-seat-with a scramble and a grazed knee, for the Squire started the horses with no thought for him-he shook his fist at the old man's back. Fewtrell saw the gesture, and felt a vague uneasiness, for he had heard Thomas say ugly things. But then the man had been in liquor, and probably he didn't mean them.

The Squire rattled the horses down the steep drive with the confidence of one who had done the same thing a thousand times. Turning to the left a furlong beyond the gate, he made for Garthmyle where, at the bridge, he fell into the highway. He had driven a mile along this when he saw a horseman coming along the road to meet him, and he fell to wondering who it was. His sight was good at a distance, and he fancied that he had seen the young spark before, though he could not put a name to him. But he saw that he rode a good nag, and he was not surprised when the other reined up and, raising his hat, showed that he wished to speak.

It was Clement, of course, and with a little more wisdom or a little less courage he would not have stopped the old man. He would have seen that the moment was not propitious, and that his business could hardly be done on the highway. But in his intense eagerness to set himself right, and his anxiety lest chance should forestall him, he dared not let the opportunity pass, and his hand was raised before he had well considered what he would say.

The Squire pulled up his horses. "D'you want me?" he asked, civilly enough.

"If I may trouble you, sir," Clement answered as bravely as he could. "It's on important business, or-or I wouldn't detain you." Already, his heart in his mouth, he saw the difficulty in which he had placed himself. How could he speak before the man? Or on the road?

The Squire considered him. "Business, eh?" he said. "With me? Well, I know your face, young gentleman, but I can't put a name to you."

"I am Mr. Ovington's son, Clement Ovington, sir."

All the Squire's civility left him. "The devil you are!" he exclaimed. "Well, I'm going to the bank. I like to do my business across the counter, young sir, to be plain, and not in the road."

"But this is business-of a different sort, sir," Clement stammered, painfully aware of the change in the other's tone, as well as of the servant, who was all a-grin behind his master's shoulder. "If I could have a word with you-apart, sir? Or perhaps-if I called at Garth tomorrow?"

"Why?"

"It is upon private business, Mr. Griffin," Clement replied, his face burning.

"Did your father send you?"

"No."

"Then I don't see," the Squire replied, scowling at him from under his bushy eyebrows, "what business you can have with me. There can be none, young man, that can't be done across the counter. It is only upon business that I know your father, and I don't know you at all. I don't know why you stopped me."

Clement was scarlet with mortification. "If I could see you a few minutes-alone, sir, I think I could explain what it is."

"You will see me at the bank in an hour," the old man retorted. "Anything you have to say you can say there. As it is, I am going to close my account with your father, and after that the less I hear your name the better I shall be pleased. At present you're wasting my time. I don't know why you stopped me. Good morning." And in a lower tone, but one that was perfectly audible to Clement, "D-d young counterskipper," he muttered, as he started the horses. "Business with me, indeed! Confound his impudence!"

He drove off at speed, leaving Clement seated on his horse in the middle of the road, a prey to feelings that may be imagined. He had made a bad beginning, and his humiliation was complete.

"Young counterskipper!" That rankled-yet in time he might smile at that. But the tone, and the manner, the conviction that under no circumstances could there be anything between them, any relations, any equality-this bit deeper and wounded more permanently. The Squire's view, that he addressed one of another class and another grade, one with whom he could have no more in common than with the servant behind him, could not have been made more plain if he had known the object of the lad's application.

If he had known it! Good heavens, if he said so much now, what would he have said in that case? Certainly, the task which love had set this young man was not an easy one. No wonder Josina had been frightened.

He had-he had certainly made a mess of it. His ears burned, as he sat on his horse and recalled the other's words.

Meanwhile the Squire drove on, and with the air and movement he recovered his temper. As he drew near to the town the market-traffic increased, and sitting high on his seat he swept by many a humble gig and plodding farm-cart, and acknowledged with a flicker of his whip-hand many a bared head and hasty obeisance. He was not loved; men who are bent on getting a pennyworth for their penny are not loved. But he was regardful of his own people, and in all companies he was fearless and could hold his own. Men did not love him, but they trusted him, knowing exactly what they might expect from him. And he was Griffin of Garth, one of the few in whose hands were all county power and all county influence. As he drove down the hill toward the West Bridge, seeing with the eye of memory the airy towers and lofty gateways of the older bridge that had once stood there and for centuries had bridled the wild Welsh, his bodily eyes noted the team of the out-going coach which he had a share in horsing. And the coachman, proudly and with respect, named him to the box-seat.

From the bridge the town, girdled by the shining river, climbs pyramid-wise up the sides of a cleft hill, an ancient castle guarding the one narrow pass by which a man may enter it on foot. The smiling plain, in the midst of which it rises, is itself embraced at a distance by a ring of hills, broken at one point only, which happens to correspond with the guarded isthmus; on which side, and some four miles away, was fought many centuries ago a famous battle. It is a proud town, looking out over a proud county, a county still based on ancient tradition, on old names and great estates, standing solid and four-square against the invasion that even in the Squire's day threatened it-invasion of new men and new money, of Birmingham and Liverpool and Manchester. The airy streets and crowded shuts run down on all sides from the Market Place to the green meadows and leafy gardens that the river laps: green meadows on which the chapels and quiet cloisters of religious houses once nestled under the shelter of the walls.

The Squire could remember the place when his father and his like had had their town houses in it, and in winter had removed their families to it; when the weekly Assemblies at the Lion had been gay with cards and dancing, and in the cockpit behind the inn mains of cocks had been fought with the Gentlemen of Cheshire or Staffordshire; when fine ladies with long canes and red-heeled shoes had promenaded under the lime trees beside the river, and the town in its season had been a little Bath. Those days, and the lumbering coaches-and-six which had brought in the families, were gone, and the staple of the town, its trade in woollens and Welsh flannels, was also on the decline. But it was still a thriving place, and if the county people no longer filled it in winter, their stately houses survived, and older houses than theirs, of brick and timber, quaint and gabled, that made the streets a joy to antiquaries.

The Squire passed by many a one, with beetling roof and two-storied porch, as he drove up Maerdol. His first and most pressing business was at the bank, and he would not be himself until he had got it off his mind. He would show that d-d Ovington what he thought of him! He would teach him a lesson-luring away that young man and pouching his money. Ay, begad he would!

CHAPTER XII

But as the Squire turned to the left by the Stalls he saw his lawyer, Frederick Welsh-rather above most lawyers were the Welsh brothers, by-blows it was said of a great house-and Welsh stopped him. "You're wanted at the Bench, Squire, if you please," he said. "His lordship is there, and they are waiting for you."

"But it's not time-by an hour, man!"

"No, but it's a special case, and will take all day, I'm afraid. His lordship says that he won't begin until you come. It's that case of-" the lawyer whispered a few words. "And the Chief Constable does not quite trust-you understand? He's anxious that you should be there."

The Squire resigned himself, "Very well, I'll come," he said.

He could go to the bank afterwards, but he might not have complied so readily if his vanity had not been tickled. The Justices of that day bore a heavier burden than their successors-hodie nominis umbrae. With no police force they had to take the initiative in the detection as well as in the punishment of crime. Marked men, belonging to a privileged class, they had to do invidious things and to enforce obnoxious laws. They represented the executive, and they shared alike its odium and its fearlessness. For hardly anything is more remarkable in the history of that time than the courage of the men who held the reins. Unpopular, assailed by sedition, undermined by conspiracy, and pressed upon by an ever-growing public feeling, the few held on unblenching, firm in the belief that repression was the only policy, and doubting nothing less than their right to rule. They dined and drank, and presented a smiling face to the world, but great and small they ran their risks, and that they did not go unscathed, the fate of Perceval and of Castlereagh, the collapse of Liverpool, and the shortened lives of many a lesser man gave proof.

But even among the firm there are degrees, and in all bodies it is on the shoulders of one or two that the onus falls. Of the one or two in Aldshire, the Squire was one. My lord might fill the chair, Sir Charles might assent, but it was to Griffin that their eyes wandered when an unpleasant decision had to be taken or the public showed its teeth. And the old man knew that this was so, and was proud of it.

To-day, however, as he watched the long hand move round the clock, he had less patience than usual. Because he must be at the bank before it closed, everything seemed to work against him. The witnesses were sullen, the evidence dragged, Acherley went off on a false scent, and being whipped back, turned crusty. The Squire fidgeted and scowled, and then, twenty minutes before the bank closed, and when with his eyes on the clock he was growing desperate, the chairman suggested that they should break off for a quarter of an hour. "Confound me, if I can sit any longer," he said. "I must have a mouthful of something, Griffin."

The Squire seldom took more than a hunch of bread at mid-day and could do without that, but he was glad to agree, and a minute later he was crossing the Market Place towards the bank. It happened that business was brisk at the moment. Rodd, at a side desk, was showing a customer how to draw a cheque. At the main counter a knot of farmers were producing, with protruding tongues and hunched shoulders, something which might pass for a signature. Two clerks were aiding them, and for a moment the Squire stood unseen and unregarded. Impatiently he tapped the counter with his stick, on which Rodd saw him, and, deserting his task, came hurriedly to him.

The Squire thrust his cheque across the counter. "In gold," he said.

The cashier scanned the cheque, his hand in the till. "Four, seven, six-ten," he murmured. Then his face grew serious, and without glancing at the Squire he consulted a book which lay beside him. "Four, seven, six-ten," he repeated. "I am afraid-one moment, if you please, sir!" Breaking off he made two steps to a door behind him and disappeared through it.

He returned a moment later, followed by Ovington himself. The banker's face was grave, but his tone retained its usual blandness. "Good day, Mr. Griffin," he said. "You are drawing the whole of your balance, I see. I trust that that does not mean that you are-making any change?"

"That is what it does mean, sir," the Squire answered.

"Of course, it is entirely your affair-"

"Entirely."

"But we are most anxious to accommodate you. If there is anything that we can put right, any cause of dissatisfaction-"

"No," said the Squire grimly. "There is nothing that you can put right. It is only that I do not choose to do business with my family."

The banker bowed with dignity. The incident was not altogether unexpected. "With most people, a connection of the kind would be in our favor," he said.

"Not with me. And as my time is short-"

The banker bowed. "In gold, I think? May we not send it for you? It will be no trouble."

"No, I thank you," the Squire grunted, hating the other for his courtesy. "I will take it, if you please."

"Put it in a strong bag, Mr. Rodd," Ovington said. "I shall still hope, Mr. Griffin, that you will think better of it." And, bowing, he wished the Squire "Good day," and retired.

Rodd was a first-class cashier, but he felt the Squire eyes boring into him, and he was twice as long in counting out the gold as he should have been. The consequence was that when the Squire left the bank, the hour had struck, Dean's was closed, and the Bench was waiting for him. He paused on the steps considering what he should do. He could not leave so large a sum unguarded in the Justices' room, nor could he conveniently take it with him into the Court.

At that moment his eyes fell on Purslow, the draper, who was standing at the door of his shop, and he crossed over to him. "Here, man, put this in your safe and turn the key on it," he said. "I shall call for it in an hour or two."

"Honored, I am sure," said the gratified tradesman, as he took the bag. But when he felt its weight and guessed what was in it, "Excuse me, sir. Hadn't you better seal it, sir?" he said. "It seems to be a large sum."

"No need. I shall call for it in an hour. Lock it up yourself, Purslow. That's all."

Purslow, as pleased as if the Squire had given him a large order, assured him that he would do so, and the old man stalked across to the court, where business kept him, fidgeting and impatient, until hard on seven. Nor did he get away then without unpleasantness.

For unluckily Acherley, who had been charged to approach him about the Railroad, had been snubbed in the course of the day. Always an ill-humored man, he saw his way to pay the Squire out, and chose this moment to broach the delicate subject. He did it with as little tact as temper.

"'Pon my honor, Griffin, you know-about this Railroad," he said, tackling the old man abruptly, as they were putting on their coats. "You really must open your eyes, man, and move with the times. The devil's in it if we can stand still always. You might as well go back to your old tie-wig, you know. You are blocking the way, and if you won't think of your own interests, you ought to think of the town. I can tell you," bluntly, "you are making yourself d-d unpopular there."

Very seldom of late had anyone spoken to the Squire in that tone, and his temper was up in a minute. "Unpopular? I don't understand you," he snapped.

"Well, you ought to!"

"Unpopular? What's that? Unpopular, sir! What the devil have we in this room to do with popularity? I make my horse go my way, I don't go his, nor ask if he likes it. Damn your popularity!"

Acherley had his answer on his tongue, but Woosenham interposed. "But, after all, Griffin," he said mildly, "we must move with the times-even if we don't give way to the crowd. There's no man whose opinion I value more than yours, as you know, but I think you do us an injustice."

"An injustice?" the Squire sneered. "Not I! The fact is, Woosenham, you are letting others use you for a stalking horse. Some are fools, and some-I leave you to put a name to them! If you'd give two thoughts to this Railroad yourself, you'd see that you have nothing to gain by it, except money that you can do without! While you stand to lose more than money, and that's your good name!"

Sir Charles changed color. "My good name?" he said, bristling feebly. "I don't understand you, Griffin."

One of the others, seeing a quarrel in prospect, intervened. "There, there," he said, hoping to pour oil on the troubled waters. "Griffin doesn't mean it, Woosenham. He doesn't mean-"

"But I do mean it," the old man insisted. "I mean every word of it." He felt that the general sense was against him, but that was nothing to him. Wasn't he the oldest present, and wasn't it his duty to stop this folly if he could? "I tell you plainly, Woosenham," he continued, "it isn't only your affair, if you lend your name to this business. You take it up, and a lot of fools who know nothing about it, who know less, by G-d, than you do, will take it up too! And will put their money in it and go daundering up and down quoting you as if you were Solomon! And that tickles you! But what will they say of you if the affair turns out to be a swindle-another South Sea Bubble, by G-d! And half the town and half the country are ruined by it! What'll they say of you then-and of us?"

Acherley could be silent no longer. "Nobody's going to be ruined by it!" he retorted-he saw that Sir Charles looked much disturbed. "Nobody! If you ask me, I think what you're saying is d-d nonsense."

"It may be," the Squire said sternly. "But just another word, please. I want you to understand, Woosenham, that this is not your affair only. It touches every one of us. What are we in this room? If we are those to whom the administration of this county is entrusted, let us act as such-and keep our hands clean. But if we are a set of money-changers and bill-mongers," with contempt, "stalking horses for such men as Ovington the banker, dirtying our hands with all the tricks of the money market-that's another matter. But I warn you-you can't be both. And for my part-we don't any longer wear swords to show we are gentlemen, but I'm hanged if I'll wear an apron or have anything to do with this business. A railroad? Faugh! As if horses' legs and Telford's roads aren't good enough for us, or as if tea-kettles will ever beat the Wonder coach-fifteen hours to London."

Acherley had been restrained with difficulty, and he now broke loose. "Griffin," he cried, "you're damned offensive! If you wore a sword as you used to-"

"Pooh! Pooh!" said the Squire and shrugged his shoulders, while Sir Charles, terribly put out both by the violence of the scene and by the picture which the Squire had drawn, put in a feeble protest. "I must say," he said, "I think this uncalled for, Griffin. I think you might have spared us this. You may not agree with us-"

"But damme if he shall insult us!" Acherley cried, trembling with passion.

"Pooh, pooh!" said the Squire again. "I'm an old man, and it is useless to talk to me in that strain. I've spoken my mind, and-"

"Ay, and you horse two of the coaches!" Acherley retorted. "And make a profit by that, dirty or no! But where'd your profit be, if your father who rode post to London had stood pat where he was? And set himself against coaches as you set yourself against the railroad?"

That was a shrewd hit and the Squire did not meet it. Instead, "Well, right or wrong," he said, "that's my opinion. And right or wrong, no railroad crosses my land, and that's my last word!"

"We'll see about that," Acherley answered, bubbling with rage. "There are more ways than one of cooking a goose."

"Just so. But-," with a steady look at him, "which is the cook and which is the goose, Acherley? Perhaps you'll find that out some day." And the Squire clapped on his hat-he had already put on his shabby old driving coat. But he had still a word to say. "I'm the oldest man here," he said, looking round upon them, "and I may take a liberty and ask no man's pleasure. You, Woosenham, and you gentlemen, let this railroad alone. If you are going to move at twenty-five miles an hour, then, depend upon it, more things will move than you wot of, and more than you'll like. Ay, you'll have movement-movement enough and changes enough if you go on! So I say, leave it alone, gentlemen. That's my advice."

He went out with that and stamped down the stairs. He had not sought the encounter, and, now that he was alone, his knees shook a little under him. But he had held his own and spoken his mind, and on the whole he was content with himself.

The same could not be said of those whom he had warned. Acherley, indeed, abused him freely, but the majority were impressed, and Sir Charles, who respected his opinion, was sorely shaken. He put no trust in Acherley, whose debts and difficulties were known, and Ovington was not there to reassure him. He valued the good opinion of his world, and what, he reflected, if the Squire were right? What if in going into this scheme he had made a mistake? The picture that Griffin had drawn of town and country pointing the finger at him rose like a nightmare before him, and would, he knew, accompany him home and darken his dinner-table. And Ovington? Ovington was doubtless a clever man and, as a banker, well versed in these enterprises. But Fauntleroy-Fauntleroy, with whose name the world had rung these twelve months past, he, too, had been clever and enterprising and plausible. Yet what a fate had been his, and what losses had befallen all who had trusted him, all who had been involved with him!

Sir Charles went home an unhappy man. He wished that Griffin had not warned him, or that he had warned him earlier. Of what use was a warning when his lot was cast and he was the head and front of the matter, President of the Company, Chairman of the Board?

Meanwhile the Squire stood on the steps of the Court House, cursing his man. The curricle was not there, Thomas was not there, it was growing dark, and a huge pile of clouds, looming above the roofs to westward, threatened tempest. The shopkeepers were putting up their shutters, the packmen binding up their bundles, stall-keepers hurrying away their trestles, and the Market Place, strewn with the rubbish and debris of the day, showed dreary by the failing light. In the High Street there was still some traffic, and in the lanes and alleys around candles began to shine out. A one-legged sailor, caterwauling on a crazy fiddle, had gathered a small crowd before one of the taverns.

"Hang the man! Where is he?" the Squire muttered, looking about him with a disgusted eye, and wishing himself at home. "Where is the rogue?"

Then Thomas, driving slowly and orating to a couple of men who walked beside the carriage, came into view. The Squire roared at him, and Thomas, taken by surprise, whipped up his horses so sharply that he knocked over a hawker's basket. Still storming at him the old man climbed to his seat and took the reins. He drove round the corner into Bride Hill, and stopped at Purslow's door.

The draper was at the carriage wheel before it stopped. He had the bag in his hand, but he did not at once hand it up. "Excuse me, excuse the liberty, sir," he said, lowering his voice and glancing at Thomas, "but it's a large sum, sir, and it's late. Hadn't I better keep it till morning?"

The Squire snapped at him. "Morning? Rubbish, man! Put it in." He made room for the bag at his feet.

But the draper still hesitated. "It will be dark in ten minutes, sir, and the road-it's true, no one has been stopped of late, but-"

"I've never been stopped in my life," the Squire rejoined. "Put it in, man, and don't be a fool. Who's to stop me between here and Garth?"

Purslow muttered something about the safe side, but he complied. He handed in the bag, which gave out a clinking sound as it settled itself beside the Squire's feet. The old man nodded his thanks and started his horses.

He drove down Bride Hill, and by the Stalls, where the taps were humming, and the inns were doing a great business. Passing one or two belated carts, he turned to the right and descended to the bridge, the old houses with their galleries and gables looming above him as for three centuries they had loomed above the traveller by the Welsh road. He rumbled over the bridge, the wide river flowing dark below him. Then he trotted sharply up Westwell, passing by the inns that in old days had served those who arrived after the gates were closed.

Now he faced the open country and the wet west wind, and he settled himself down in his seat and shook up his horses. As he did so his foot touched the bag, and again the gold gave out a clinking sound.

CHAPTER XIII

The Squire in his inmost heart had not derived much satisfaction from his visit to the bank. He had left it with an uneasy feeling that the step he had taken had not produced the intended effect. Ovington had accepted the loss of his custom, not indeed with indifference, but with dignity, and in a manner which left the old man little upon which to plume himself. The withdrawal of his custom wore in the retrospect too much of the look of spite, and he came near to regretting it, as he drove along.

Had he been present at an interview which took place after he had retired, he might have been better pleased. The banker had not been many minutes in the parlor, chewing the cud of the affair, before he was interrupted by his cashier. In this there was nothing unusual; routine required Rodd's presence in the parlor several times in the day. But his manner on the present occasion, and the way in which he closed the door, prepared Ovington for something new, and "What is it, Rodd?" he asked, leaning back in his chair, and disposing himself to listen.

"Can I have a word with you, sir?"

"Certainly." The banker's face told nothing. Rodd's was that of a man who had made up his mind to a plunge. "What is it?"

"I have been wishing to speak for some time, sir," Rodd faltered. "This-" Ovington understood at once that he referred to the Squire's matter-"I don't like it, sir, and I have been with you ten years, and I feel-I ought to speak."

Ovington shrugged his shoulders. "I don't like it either," he said. "But it is of less importance than you think, Rodd. I know why Mr. Griffin did it. And we are not now where we were. The withdrawal of a few hundreds or the loss of a customer-" again he shrugged his shoulders.

"No," Rodd said gravely. "If nothing more follows, sir."

"Why should anything follow? I know his reasons."

"But the town doesn't. And if it gets about, sir?"

"It won't do us much damage. We've lost customers before, yet always gained more than we lost. But there, Rodd, that is not what you came in to say. What is it?" He spoke lightly, but he felt more surprise than he showed. Rodd was a model cashier, performing his duties in a precise, plodding fashion that had often excited Arthur's ridicule; but hitherto he had never ventured an opinion on the policy of the bank, nor betrayed the least curiosity respecting its secrets. "What is it?" Ovington repeated. "What has frightened you, man?"

"We've a lot of notes out, sir!"

The banker looked thoughtfully at the glasses he held in his hand. "True," he said. "Quite true. But trade is brisk, and the demand for credit is large. We must meet the demand, Rodd, as far as we can-with safety. That's our business."

"And we've a lot of money out-that could not be got in in a hurry, sir."

"Yes," the banker admitted, "but that is our business, too. If we did not put our money out we might close the bank to-morrow. That much of the money cannot be got in at a minute's notice is a thing we cannot avoid."

The perspiration stood on Rodd's forehead, but he persisted. "If it were all on bills, sir, I would not say a word. But there is a lot on overdraft."

"Well secured."

"While things are up. But if things went down, sir? There's Wolley's account. I suspect that the last bills we discounted for him were accommodation. Indeed, I am sure of it. And his overdraft is heavy."

"We hold the lease of his mill."

"But you don't want to run the mill!" Rodd replied, putting his finger on the weak point.

The banker reflected. "That's the worst account we have. The worst, isn't it?"

"Mr. Acherley's, sir."

"Well, yes. There might be a sounder account than that. But what is it?" He looked directly at the other. "I want to know what has opened your mouth? Have you heard anything? What makes you think that things are going down?"

"Mr. Griffin-"

"No." The banker shook his head. "That won't do, Rodd. You had this in your mind before he came in. You are pat with Wolley and Mr. Acherley; bad accounts both, as all banks have bad accounts here and there. But it's true-we've been giving our customers rope, and they have bought things that may fall. Still, they've made money, a good deal of money, and we've kept a fair margin and obliged them at the same time. All legitimate business. There must be something in your mind besides this, I'm sure. What is it, lad?"

The cashier turned a dull red, but before he could answer the door behind him opened. Arthur came in. He looked at the banker, and from him to Rodd, and his suspicions were aroused. "It's four o'clock, sir," he said, and looked again at Rodd as if to ask what he was doing there.

But Rodd held his ground, and the banker explained.

"Rodd is a little alarmed for us," he said, and it was difficult to be sure whether he spoke in jest or in earnest. "He thinks we're going too fast. Putting our hand out too far. He mentions Wolley's account, and Acherley's.

"I was speaking generally," Rodd muttered. He looked sullen.

Arthur shrugged his shoulders. "I stand corrected," he said. "I didn't know that Rodd ever went beyond his ledgers."

"Oh, he's quite right to speak his mind. We are all in the same boat-though we do not all steer."

"Well, I'm glad of that, sir."

"Still," mildly, "it is a good thing to have an opinion."

"If it be worth anything."

"If opinions are going-" Betty had opened the door behind the banker's chair, and was standing on the threshold-"wouldn't you like to have mine, father?"

"To be sure," Arthur said. "Why not, indeed? Let us have it. Why not have everybody's? And send for the cook, sir, and the two clerks-to advise us?"

Betty dropped a curtsy. "Thank you, I am flattered."

"Betty, you've no business here," her father said. "You mustn't stop unless you can keep your opinions to yourself."

"But what has happened?" she asked, looking around in wonder.

"Mr. Griffin has withdrawn his account."

"And Rodd," Arthur added, with more heat than the occasion seemed to demand, "thinks that we had better put up the shutters!"

"No, no," the banker said. "We must do him justice. He thinks that we are going a little too far, that's all. And that the loss of Mr. Griffin's account is a danger signal. That's what you mean, man, isn't it?"

Rodd nodded, his face stubborn. He stood alone, divided from the other three by the table, for Arthur had passed round it and placed himself at Ovington's elbow.

"His view," the banker continued, polishing his glasses with his handkerchief and looking thoughtfully at them, "is that if there came a check in trade and a fall in values, the bank might find its resources strained-I'll put it that way."

Arthur sneered. "Singular wisdom! But a fall-a general fall at any rate-what sign is there of it?" He was provoked by the banker's way of taking it. Ovington seemed to be attaching absurd weight to Rodd's suggestion. "None!" contemptuously. "Not a jot."

"There's been a universal rise," Rodd muttered.

"In a moment? Without warning?"

"No, but-"

"But fiddlesticks!" Arthur retorted. Of late it seemed as if his good humor had deserted him, and this was not the first sign he had given of an uncertain temper. Still, the phase was so new that two of those present looked curiously at him, and his consciousness of this added to his irritation. "Rodd's no better than an old woman," he continued. "Five per cent. and a mortgage in a strong box is about his measure. If you are going to listen to every croaker who is frightened by a shadow, you may as well close the bank, sir, and put the money out on Rodd's terms!"

"Still Rodd means us well," the banker said thoughtfully, "and a little caution is never out of place in a bank. What I want to get from him is-has he anything definite to tell us? Wolley? Have you heard anything about Wolley, Rodd?"

"No, sir."

"Then what is it? What is it, man?"

But Rodd, brought to bay, only looked more stubborn. "It's no more than I've told you, sir," he muttered, "it's just a feeling. Things must come down some day."

"Oh, damn!" Arthur exclaimed, out of patience, and thinking that the banker was making altogether too much of it-and of Rodd. "If he were a weather-glass-"

"Or a woman!" interjected Betty, who was observing all with bright inscrutable eyes.

"But as he isn't either," Arthur continued impatiently, "I fail to see why you make so much of it! Of course, things will come down some day, but if he thinks that with your experience you are blind to anything he is likely to see, he's no better than a fool! Because my uncle, for reasons which you understand, sir, has drawn out four hundred pounds, he thinks every customer is going to leave us, and Ovington's must put up the shutters! The truth is, he knows nothing about it, and if he wishes to damage the bank he is going the right way to do it!"

"Would you like my opinion, father?" Betty asked.

"No," sharply, "certainly not, child. Where's Clement?"

"Well, I'm afraid he's away."

"Again? Then he is behaving very badly!"

"That was the opinion I was going to give," the girl answered. "That some were behaving better than others."

"If," Arthur cried, "you mean me-"

"There, enough," said her father. "Be silent, Betty. You've no business to be here."

"Still, people should behave themselves," she replied, her eyes sparkling.

Arthur had his answer ready, but Ovington forestalled him. "Very good, Rodd," he said. "A word on the side of caution is never out of place in a bank. But I am not blind, and all that you have told me is in my mind. Thank you. You can go now."

It was a dismissal, and Rodd took it as such, and felt, as he had never felt before, his subordinate position. Why he did so, and why, as he withdrew under Arthur's eye, he resented the situation, he best knew. But it is possible that two of the others had some inkling of the cause.

When he had gone, "There's an old woman for you!" Arthur exclaimed. "I wonder that you had the patience to listen to him, sir."

But Ovington shook his head. "I listened because there are times when a straw shows which way the wind blows."

"But you don't think that there is anything in what he said?"

"I shall remember what he said. The time may be coming to take in sail-to keep a good look-out, lad, and be careful. You have been with us-how long? Two years. Ay, but years of expansion, of rising prices, of growing trade. But I have seen other times-other times." He shook his head.

"Still, there is no sign of a change, sir?"

"You've seen one to-day. What is in Rodd's head may be in others, and what is in men's heads soon reflects itself in their conduct."

It was the first word, the first hint, the first presage of evil; of a fall, of bad weather, of a storm, distant as yet, and seen even by the clearest eyes only as a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. But the word had been spoken. The hint had been given. And to Arthur, who had paid a high price for prosperity-how high only he could say-the presage seemed an outrage. The idea that the prosperity he had bought was not a certainty, that the craft on which he had embarked his fortune was, like other ships, at the mercy of storm and tempest, that like other ships it might founder with all its freight, was entirely new to him. So new that for a moment his face betrayed the impression it made. Then he told himself that the thing was incredible, that he started at shadows, and his natural confidence rebounded. "Oh, damn Rodd!" he cried-and he said it with all his heart. "He's a croaker by nature!"

"Still, we won't damn him," the banker answered mildly. "On the contrary, we will profit by his warning. But go now. I have a letter to write. And do you go, too, Betty, and make tea for us."

He turned to his papers, and Arthur, after a moment's hesitation, followed Betty into the house. Overtaking her in the hall, "Betty, what is the matter?" he asked. And when the girl took no notice, but went on with her chin in the air as if he had not spoken, he seized her arm. "Come," he said, "I am not going to have this. What is it?"

"What should it be! I don't know what you mean," she retorted.

"Oh yes, you do. What took you-to back up that ass in the bank just now?"

Then Betty astonished him. "I didn't think he wanted any backing," she said, her eyes bright. "He seemed to me to talk sense, and someone else nonsense."

"But you're not-"

"A partner in Ovington's? No, Mr. Bourdillon, I am not-thank heaven! And so my head is not turned, and I can keep my temper and mind my manners."

"Oh, it's Mr. Bourdillon now, is it?"

"Yes-if you are going to behave to my friends as you did this afternoon."

"Your friends!" scornfully. "You include Rodd, do you? Rodd, Betty?"

"Yes, I do, and I am not too proud to do so. Nor too proud to be angry when I see a man ten years younger than he is slap him in the face! I am not so spoiled that I think everyone beneath me!"

"So it's Rodd now?"

"It's as much Rodd now," her cheeks hot, her eyes sparkling, "as it was anyone else before! Just as much and just as little. You flatter yourself, sir!"

"But, Betty," in a coaxing tone, "little spitfire that you are, can't you guess why I was short with Rodd? Can't you guess why I don't particularly love him? But you do guess. Rodd is what he is-nothing! But when he lifts his eyes above him-when he dares to make eyes at you-I am not going to be silent."

"Now you are impertinent!" she replied. "As impertinent as you were mean before. Yes, mean, mean! When you knew he could not answer you! Mean!"

And without waiting for a reply she ran up the stairs.

He went to one of the windows of the dining-room and looked across Bride Hill and along the High Street, full at that hour of market people. But he did not see them, his thoughts were busy with what had happened. He could not believe that Betty had any feeling for Rodd. The man was dull, commonplace, a plodder, and not young; he was well over thirty. No, the idea was preposterous. And it was still more absurd to suppose that if he, Arthur, threw the handkerchief-or even fluttered it in her direction, for dear little thing as she was, he had not quite made up his mind-she would hesitate to accept him, or would let any thought of Rodd weigh with her.

Still, he would let her temper cool, he would not stay to tea. Instead, he would by and by ride his new horse out to the Cottage. He had not been home for the weekend. He had left Mrs. Bourdillon to come to herself and recover her good humor in solitude. Now he would make it up with her, and while he was there he might as well get a peep at Josina-it was a long time since he had seen her. If Betty chose to adopt this unpleasant line, why, she could not blame him if he amused himself.

CHAPTER XIV

For a time after the Squire had driven away, Clement had sat his horse and stared after him, and in his rage had wished him dead. He had prepared himself for opposition, he had looked to be repulsed-he had expected nothing else. But in the scene which his fancy had pictured, his part had been one of dignity; he had owned his aspirations like a man, he had admitted his insufficiency with modesty, he had pleaded the power of love with eloquence, he had won even from the Squire a meed of unwilling approbation.

But the scene, as played, had run on other lines. The old man had crushed him. He had sworn at him, refused to listen to him, had insulted him, had treated him as no better than a shop-boy. And all this had cut to the quick. For Clement, born after Ovington had risen from the ranks, had his pride and his self-respect, and humiliated, he cursed with all his soul the prejudice and hide-bound narrowness of the Squire and all his caste. For the time he was more than a radical, he was a republican. If by a gesture he could have swept away King and Commons, lords and justices, he would not have held his hand.

It took him some time to recover, and it was only when he found himself, he hardly knew how, upon the bridge at Garthmyle that he grew more cool. Even then he was not quite himself. He had vowed that he would not see Josina again until he had claimed her from her father; but the Squire's treatment, he now felt, had absolved him from this, and the temptation to see her was great. He longed to pour out his mind to her, and to tell her how he had been insulted, how he had been treated. Perhaps, even, he must say farewell to her-he must give her up.

For he was not all hero, and the task before him seemed for the time too prodigious, the labor too little hopeful. The Hydra had so many heads, and roared so fearfully that for a moment his courage sank before it-and his love. He felt that he must yield, that he must see Josina and tell her so. In any event she ought to know what had happened, and presently he put up his horse at the inn and made by a roundabout road for their meeting-place by the brook.

There was but a chance that she would visit it, and in the meantime he had to exercise what patience he might. His castles in the air had fallen and he had not the spirit to rebuild them. He sat gazing moodily on the rippling face of the water, or watched the ousel curtsying on its stone; and he almost despaired. He had known the Squire to be formidable, he now knew him to be impossible. He looked down the stream to where Garth, lofty and fortress-like, raised its twisted chimneys above the trees, and he shook his fist at it. Remote and islanded on its knoll, rising amid ancestral trees, it stood for all that the Squire stood for-governance, privilege, tradition, the past-all the things he had not, all the things that mocked him.

He lingered there, savoring his melancholy, until the sun went down behind the hills, and then, attacked by the pangs of hunger, he made his way back to the village inn. Here he satisfied his appetite on such home-baked bread and yellow butter and nut-brown ale as are not in these degenerate times; and for wellnigh an hour he sat brooding in the sanded parlor surrounded by china cats and dogs-they too, would be of value nowadays. At length with a heavy heart-for what was he to do next? – he rode out of the yard, and crossing the bridge under the shadowy bulk of the squat church tower, he set his horse's head for home. It was nearly dark.

What was he to do next? He did not know, but as he rode through the gloom, the solemn hills falling back on either side and the dark plain widening before him, he took courage; he began to consider, with some return of hope, what lay before him, and how he must proceed-if he were not to give up. Clearly he must face the Squire, but it must be in the Squire's own house, where the Squire must hear him. The old man might insult him, rave at him, order him out, but before he was put out he would speak and ask for Josina, though the roof fell. There should be no further mistake. And he would let the Squire know, if it came to that, that he was a man, as good as other men. By heaven he would!

He was not all hero. But there were some heroic parts about him, and he determined that the very next morning he would ride out and would beard the Hydra in its den, be its heads ever so many. He would win his lady-love or perish!

By this time he was half-way home. The market traffic on the road had ceased, the moon had not yet risen, the night lay calm and still about him. Presently as he crossed a wet, rushy flat, one of the loneliest parts of the way, he saw the lights of a vehicle coming towards him. The road at that point had not been long enclosed, and a broad strip of common still survived on either hand, so that moving on this the horse's hoofs made no sound save a soft plop-plop where the ground was wettest. He could hear, therefore, while still afar off, the tramp of a pair of horses driven at a trot, and it occurred to him that this might be the Squire returning late. If he could have avoided the meeting he would have done so, though it was unlikely that the Squire would recognize him in the dark. But to turn aside would be foolish. "Hang me if I am going to be afraid of him!" he thought. And he touched up his horse with his heel.

Then an odd thing happened. While the carriage was still fifty yards from him, one of the lights went out. His eyes missed it, but his brain had barely taken in the fact when the second vanished also, as if the vehicle had sunk into the ground. At the same moment a cry reached his ears, followed by a clatter of hoofs on the road as if the horses were being sharply pulled up.

Clement took his horse by the head and bent forward, striving to make out what was passing. A dull sound, as of a heavy body striking the road reached him, followed by a silence that seemed ominous. Even the wind appeared to have hushed its whisper through the rushes.

"Hallo!" he shouted. "What is it? Is anything the matter?" He urged his horse forward.

His cry was lost in the crack of a whip, he heard the horses break away, and without farther warning they came down upon him at a gallop, the carriage bounding wildly behind them. He had just time to thrust his nag to the side, and they were on him and past him, and whirling down the road-a mere shadow, but as perilous and almost as noisy as a thunderbolt. There was no doubt now that an accident had happened, but before he could give help he had to master his horse, which had wheeled about; and so a few seconds elapsed before he reached the scene-reached it with his heart in his mouth-for who could say with what emergency he might not have to deal?

Certainly with a tragedy, for the first thing he made out was the form of a man stooping over another who lay in the road. Clement drew a breath of relief as he slipped from his saddle-he would not have to meet the crisis alone. But as his foot touched the ground, he saw the stooping man raise his hand with something in it, and he knew instinctively that it was raised not to help but to strike.

He shouted, and the blow hung in the air. The man, taken by surprise, straightened himself, turned, and saw Clement at his elbow. He hesitated; then, with an oath, he aimed his blow at the new-comer.

Clement parried it, rather by instinct than with intention, and so weakly, that the other's weapon beat down his guard and cut his cheek-bone. He staggered back and the villain raised his cudgel again. Had the second blow fallen where it was aimed, it would have finished the business. But Clement, aware now that he fought for his life, sprang within the other's guard, and before the cudgel alighted, gripped him by the neckcloth. The man gave ground, tripped backwards over the body that lay behind him, and in a twinkling the two were rolling together on the road, Clement striving to beat in the ruffian's face with the butt-end of his whip, while the man tried vainly to shorten his weapon and use it to purpose.

It was a desperate struggle, in the mire, in the darkness-a struggle for life carried on in a silence that was broken only by the combatants' breathing and a rare oath. Twice each rolled the other, and once Clement, having the upper hand became aware that the fight had its spectator. He had a glimpse of a ghastly face, one side of which had been mangled by a murderous blow-a face that glared at them with its remaining eye. He guessed rather than saw that the man lying in the road had raised himself on an elbow, and he heard a gasping "At him, lad! Well done, lad!" then in a turn of the struggle he lost the vision. His opponent had him by the throat, he was undermost again-and desperate. His one thought now was to kill-to kill the brute-beast whose teeth threatened his cheek, whose hot breath burned his face, whose hands gripped his throat. He struck again and again, and eventually, supple and young, and perhaps the stronger, he freed himself and staggered to his feet, raising his whip to strike.

But the same thing happened to him which had happened to his assailant. As he stepped back to give power to the blow, he fell over the third man. He came down heavily, and for a moment he was at the other's mercy. Fortunately the rascal's courage was at an end. He got to his feet, but instead of pursuing his advantage, he snatched up something that lay on the ground, and sped away down the road, as quickly as his legs could carry him.

Clement recovered his feet, but more slowly, for the fall had shaken him. Still, his desire for vengeance was hot, and he set off in pursuit. The man had a good start, however, and presently, leaving the road and leaping the ditch, made off across the open common. To follow farther promised little, for in a few seconds his figure, already shadowy, melted into the darkness of the fields. Clement gave up the chase, and turned back, panting and out of breath.

He did not feel his wound, much less did he feel the misgivings which had beset him when he came upon the scene. Instead, he experienced a new and thrilling elation. He had measured his strength against an enemy, he had faced death in fight, he felt himself equal to any and every event. Even when stooping over the prostrate figure he saw the mangled and bleeding face turned up to the sky it did not daunt him, nor the darkness, nor the loneliness. The injured man seemed to be aware of his presence for he made an attempt to rise; but he failed, and would have fallen back on the road if Clement, dropping on one knee, had not sustained his head on the other. It was the Squire. So much he saw; but it was a Squire past not only scolding but speech, whom he held in his arms and whose head he supported. To all Clement's questions he made no answer. It was much if he still breathed.

Clement glanced about him, and his confidence began to leave him. What was he to do? He could not go for help, leaving the old man lying in the road; yet it was impossible to do much in the dark, either to ascertain the extent of the Squire's hurt, or to use means to stanch it. The moon had not yet risen, the plain stretched dark about them, no sound except the melancholy whisper of the wind in the rushes reached him. There was no house near and it was growing late. No one might pass for hours.

Fortunately when he had reached this stage he remembered that he had his tinder box and matches in his pocket, and he fumbled for them with his disengaged hand. With an effort, he got them out. But to strike a light and catch it in the huddled posture in which he knelt was not easy, and it was only after a score of attempts that the match caught the flame. Even so, the light it gave was faint, but it revealed the Squire's face, and Clement saw, with a shudder, that the left eye and temple were terribly battered. But he saw, too, that the old man was conscious, for he uttered a groan, and peered with the uninjured eye at the face that bent over him. "Good lad!" he muttered, "good lad!" and he added broken words which conveyed to Clement's mind that it was his man who had attacked him. Then-his face was so turned that it was within a few inches of Clement's shoulder-"You're bloody, lad," he muttered. "He's spoiled your coat, the d-d rascal!"

With that he seemed to slip back into unconsciousness, and the light went out. It left Clement in a strait to know what he ought to do, or rather what he could do. Help he must get, and speedily, if he would save the Squire's life, but his horse was gone, and to walk away for help, leaving the old man lying in the mud of the way seemed inhuman. He must at least carry him to the side of the road.

The task was no light one, for the Squire was tall, though not stout; and before Clement stooped to it he cast a last look round. But silence still wrapped all, and he was gathering his strength to lift the dead weight, when a sound caught his ear, and he raised himself. A moment, and joy! – he caught the far-off beat of hoofs on the turf. Someone was coming, approaching him from the direction of Aldersbury. He shouted, shouted his loudest and waited. Yes, he was not mistaken. The soft plop-plop of hoofs grew louder, two forms loomed out of the darkness, a horse shied, a man swore.

"Here!" Clement cried. "Here! Take care! There's a man in the road."

"Where?" Then, "Confound you, you nearly had me down! Are you hurt?"

"No, but"

"I've got your horse. I met him a couple of miles this side of the town. What has-"

Clement broke in. "There's bad work here!" he cried, his voice shaky. Now that help was at hand and the peril was over, he began to feel what he had gone through. "For God's sake get down and help me. Your uncle's man has robbed him and, I fear, murdered him."

"The Squire?"

"Yes, yes. He's lying here, half dead. We must get him to the side of the road at once."

Arthur slipped from his saddle, and holding the reins of the two horses, approached the group as nearly as the frightened beasts would let him. "Quiet, fools!" he cried angrily. And then, "Good heavens!" in a whisper, as he peered awe-stricken at the injured man. "Is he dead?"

"No, but he's terribly mauled. And we must get help. Help, man, and quickly, if it is to be of any use. Shall I go?"

"No, no, I'll go," Arthur answered, recoiling. What he had seen had given him no desire to take Clement's place. "Garthmyle is the nearer, and I shall not be long. I'll tie up your horse-that'll be best."

There was an old thorn-tree standing solitary in the waste not many yards away: a tree destined to be pointed out for years to come as marking the spot where the old Squire was robbed. Arthur tied Clement's horse to this, then together they lifted the old man and carried him to the side of the road. The moment that this was done, Arthur sprang on his horse and started off. "Back soon," he shouted.

Clement had not seen his way to object, but it was with a heavy heart that he resigned himself to another period of painful waiting. He was cold, his face smarted, and at any moment the old man might die on his hands. Meantime he could do nothing but wait. Or yes, he could do something; chilled as he was, he took off his coat, and rolling it up, he slipped it under the insensible head.

Little had he thought that morning that he would ever pity the Squire. But he did. The man who had driven away from him, hard, aggressive, indomitable, asking no man's help and meeting all men's eyes with the gaze of a master, now lay at his feet, crushed and broken; lay with his head on the coat of the man he had despised, dependent on him for the poor service that still might avail him. Clement felt the pathos of it, and the pity. And his heart was sore for Josina. How would she meet, how bear the shock that a short hour must inflict on her?

He was thinking of her, when, long before he had dared to expect relief, he heard a sound that resolved itself into the rattle of wheels. Yes, there was a carriage coming along the road.

Arthur had been fortunate. He had come upon the Squire's horses, which had been brought to a stand with the near wheels of the curricle wedged in the ditch. He had found them greedily feeding, and he had let his own nag go, and had captured the runaways. He had drawn the carriage out of the ditch, and here he was.

"Thank God!" Clement cried. "I think that he is still alive."

"And we've got to lift him in," said Arthur, more practical. "He's a big weight."

It was not an easy task. But they tied up the horses to the thorn-tree, and lifting the old man between them, they carried him with what care they might to the carriage, raised him, heavy and helpless as he was, to the step, and then, while one maintained him there, the other climbed in and lifted him to the front seat. Clement got up behind and supported his shoulders and head, while Arthur, first tying the saddle-horse behind the carriage, released the pair, and with the reins in his hands scrambled to his place.

The thing was done and cleverly done, and they set off. But they dared not travel at more than a walk, and never had the three miles to Garthmyle seemed so long or so tedious.

They were both anxious and both excited. But while in Clement's mind pity, a sense of the tragedy before him, and thought for Josina contended with an honest pride in what he had done, the other, as they drove along, was already calculating chances and busy with contingencies. The Squire's death-if the Squire died-would work a great change, an immense change. Things which had yesterday been too doubtful and too distant to deserve much thought would be within reach, would be his for the asking. And he was the more inclined to consider this because Betty-dear little creature as she was-had shown a spirit that day that was not to his liking. Whereas Josina, mild and docile-it might be that after all she would suit him better. And Garth-Garth with its wide acres and its rich rent-roll would be hers; Garth that would give any man a position to be envied. Its charms, while uncertain and dependent on the whim and caprice of an arbitrary old man, had not fixed him, for to attain to them he must give up other things, equally to his mind. But now the case was or might be altered. He must wait and watch events, and keep an open mind. If the Squire died-

A word or two passed between the couple, but for the most part they were silent. Once and again the Squire moaned, and so proved that he still lived. At last, where the road to Garth branched off, at the entrance to the village, they saw a light in front, and old Fewtrell carrying a lanthorn met them. The Squire's absence had alarmed the house, and he had come thus far in quest of news.

"Oh, Lord, ha' mercy! Lord, ha' mercy!" the old fellow quavered as he lifted his lanthorn and the light disclosed the group in the carriage, and his master's huddled form and ghastly visage. "Miss Jos said 'twas so! Said as summat had happened him! Beside herself, she be! She've been down at the gate this half-hour waiting on him!"

"Don't let her see him," Clement cried. "Go, man, and send her back."

But, "That's no good," Arthur objected with more sense but less feeling. "She must see him. This is women's work, we can do nothing. Let Fewtrell take your place and do you go for the doctor. You know where he lives, and you'll go twice as quick as he will, and there's no more that you can do. Take your horse."

Clement was unwilling to go, unwilling to have no farther part in the matter. But he could not refuse. Things were as they were; in spite of all that he had done and suffered, he had no place there, no standing in the house, no right beside his mistress or call to think for her. He was a stranger, an outsider, and when he had fetched the doctor, there would, as Arthur had said, be nothing more that he could do.

Nothing more, though as he rode over the bridge and trotted through the village his heart was bursting with pity for her whom he could not comfort, could not see; from whose side in her troubles and her self-arraignment-for he knew that she would reproach herself-he must be banished. It was hard.

CHAPTER XV

The Squire was late.

A hundred years ago night fell more seriously. It closed in on a countryside less peopled, on houses and hamlets more distant, and divided by greater risks of flood and field. The dark hours were longer and haunted by graver apprehensions. Every journey had to be made on horses or behind them, roads were rough and miry, fords were plenty, bridges scarce. Sturdy rogues abounded, and to double every peril it was still the habit of most men to drink deep. Few returned sober from market, fewer from fair or merry-making.

For many, therefore, the coming of night meant the coming of fear. Children, watching the great moths fluttering against the low ceiling, or round the rush-light that cast such gloomy shadows, thought that their elders would never come upstairs to bed. Lone women, quaking in remote dwellings, remembered the gibbet where the treacherous inn-keeper still moulded, and fancied every creak the coming of a man in a crape mask. Thousands suffered nightly because the goodman lingered abroad, or the son was absent, and in many a window the light was set at dusk to guide the master by the pool. On market evenings women stole trembling down the lane that the sound of wheels might the sooner dispel their fears.

At Garth it was youth not age that first caught the alarm. For Josina's conscience troubled her, and before even Miss Peacock, most fidgety of old maids, had seen cause to fear, the girl was standing in the darkness before the door, listening and uneasy. The Squire was seldom late; it could not be that Clement had met him and there had been a-but no, Clement was not the man to raise his hand against his elder-the thought was dismissed as soon as formed. Yet why did not the Squire come? Lights began to shine through the casements, she saw the candles brought into the dining-room, the darkness thickened about her, only the trunks of the nearer beeches gave back a gleam. And she felt that if anything had happened to him she could never forgive herself. Shivering, less with cold than with apprehension, she peered down the drive. He had been later than this before, but then her conscience had been quiet, she had not deceived him, she had had nothing with which to reproach herself on his account.

Presently, "Josina, what are you doing there?" Miss Peacock cried. She had come to the open door and discovered the girl. She began to scold. "Come in this minute, child! What are you starving the house for, standing there?"

But Josina did not budge. "He is very late," she said.

"Late? What nonsense! And what if he is late? What good can you do, standing out there? I declare one might suppose your father was one of those skimble-skambles that can't pass a tavern door, to hear you talk! And Thomas with him! Come in at once when I tell you! As if I should not be the first to cry out if anything were wrong. Late indeed-why, goodness gracious, I declare it's nearly eight. What can have become of him, child? And Calamy and those good-for-nothing girls warming their knees at the fire, and no more caring if their master is in the river than-Josina, do you hear? Do you know that your father is still out? Calamy!" ringing a hand-bell that stood on the table in the hall, "Calamy! Are you all asleep? Don't you know that your master is not in, and it is nearly eight?"

Calamy was the butler. A tall, lanthorn-jawed man, he would have looked lugubrious in the King's scarlet which he had once worn; in his professional black, or in his shirt sleeves, cleaning plate, he was melancholy itself. And his modes and manners were at least as mournful as his aspect-no man so sure as "Old Calamity" to see the dark side of things or to put it before others. It was whispered that he had been a Dissenter, and why the Squire, who hated a ranter as he hated the devil, had ever engaged him, much less kept him, was a puzzle to Garthmyle. That he had been his son's servant and had been with the boy when he died, might have seemed a sufficient reason, had the Squire been other than he was. But no one supposed that such a thing weighed with the old man-he was of too hard a grain. Yet at Garth, Calamy had lived for a score of years, and been suffered with a patience which might have stood to the credit of more reasonable men.

"Nearly eight!" Miss Peacock flung at him, and repeated her statement.

"We've put the dinner back, ma'am."

"Put the dinner back! And that's all you think of, when at any minute your master-oh, dear, dear, what can have happened to him?"

"Well, it's a dark night, ma'am, to be sure."

"Gracious goodness, can't I see that? If Thomas weren't with him-"

The butler shook his head. "Under notice, ma'am," he said. "I think the worst of Thomas. On a dark night, with Thomas-"

Miss Peacock gasped.

"I should say my prayers, ma'am," the butler murmured softly.

Miss Peacock stared, aghast. "Under notice?" she cried. "Well, of all the-'deed, and I wish you were all under notice, if that is the best you've got to say."

"Hadn't you better," said Josina from the darkness outside, "send Fewtrell to meet him with a lanthorn?"

"And get my nose bitten off when your father comes home! La, bless me, I don't know what to do! And no one else to do a thing!"

"Send him, Calamy," said Josina.

Calamy retired. Miss Peacock looked out, a shawl about her head. "Jos! Where are you?" she cried. "Come in at once, girl. Do you think I am going to be left alone, and the door open? Jos! Jos!"

But Josina was gone, groping her way down the drive. When Fewtrell followed with his lanthorn he came on her sitting on the bridge, and he got a rare start, thinking it was a ghost. "Lord A'mighty!" he cried as the light fell on her pale face. "Aren't you afraid to sit there by yourself, miss?"

But Josina was not afraid, and after a word or two he shambled away, the lanthorn swinging in his hand. The girl watched the light go bobbing along as far the highway fifty yards on, saw it travel to the left along the road, lost it for some moments, then marked it again, a faint blur of light, moving towards the village.

Presently it vanished and she was left alone with her fears. She strained her ears to catch the first sound of wheels. The stream murmured beneath her, a sick sheep coughed, the breeze whispered in the hedges, the cry of an owl, thrice repeated, sank into silence. But that was all, and in the presence of the silent world about her, of the all-enveloping night, of the solemn stars shining as they had shone from eternity, the girl knew herself infinitely helpless, without remedy against the stroke of impending fate. She recognized that lighted rooms and glowing fires and the indoor life did but deceive; that they did but blind the mind to the immensity of things, to the real issues, to life and death and eternity. Anguished, she owned that a good conscience was the only refuge, and that she had it not. She had deceived her father, and it would be her fate to endure a lasting remorse. At last, her eyes opened, she fancied that she detected behind the mask a father's face. But too late, for the bridge which he had crossed innumerable times, the drive, rough and rutted, yet the harbinger of home, which he had climbed from boyhood to age, the threshold which he had trodden so often as master-they would know him no more! At the thought she broke down and wept, feeling all its poignancy, all its pitifulness, and finding for the moment no support in Clement, no recompense in a love which deceit and secrecy had tainted.

Doubtless she would not have taken things so hardly had she not been overwrought; and, as it was, the first sound that reached her from the Garthmyle road brought her to her feet. A light showed, moving from that direction, travelling slowly through the darkness. It vanished, and she held her breath. It came into view again, and she groped her way forward until she stood in the road. The light was close at hand now, though viewed from the front it moved so little that her worst forebodings were confirmed. But now, now that she saw her fears justified, the woman's fortitude, that in enduring is so much greater than man's, came to her aid, and it was with a calmness that surprised herself that she awaited the slow procession, discerned by the lanthorn-light her father's huddled form, and in a trembling voice asked if he still lived.

"Yes, yes!" Arthur cried, and hastened to reassure her. "He will do yet, but he is hurt. Go back, Jos, and get his bed ready, and hot water, and some linen. The doctor will be here in a minute."

His voice, firm and collected, struck the right note, and the girl answered to it bravely. She made no lamentation, shed no tears-there would be time for tears later-but gathering up her skirts she sped up the drive, and before the carriage had passed the bridge she had given the alarm in the house. There, in a moment, all was confusion. Miss Peacock, whatever fears she had expressed, was ill prepared for the fact, and it was Josina, who, steadied by that half-hour of self-examination, stilled the outcry of the maids, gave the needful orders, and seconded Calamy in carrying them out, had candles placed on the stairs, and with her own hand brought out a stout chair. When the carriage, the lanthorn gleaming sombrely on the shining trunks, drew slowly out of the darkness, she was there with lights and brandy. For her the worst was over. The scared faces of the women, their stifled cries and confused hovering, were but a background to her steady courage.

Still, even she yielded the first place to Arthur. Whatever pity or horror he had felt, he had had time to overcome, and to think both of the present and the future. And he rose to the occasion. He directed, arranged, and was himself the foremost worker. By the time Mr. Farmer, the village doctor, arrived, he had done much which had to be done. The Squire had been carried upstairs, and lay, breathing stertorously, on his great four-post bed with the dingy drab curtains and the two watch-pockets at the head; and everything which could be of use had been brought to hand.

The doctor shut out the frightened maids and shut out Miss Peacock. But Arthur was only at the beginning of his resources. His nerve was good and he aided Farmer in his examination, while Jos, standing out of sight behind the curtain, calm but quivering in every nerve, handed to him or to Calamy what they needed. Even then, however, and while he was thus employed, Arthur found occasion to whisper a cheering word to the girl, to reassure her and give her hope. He forced her to take a glass of wine, and when Calamy, shaking his head, muttered that he had known a man to recover who had been worse hurt-but he was a strong young fellow-he damned the butler for an old fool, regardless of the fact that coming from Calamy this was a cheerful prognostic.

Presently he made her go downstairs. "Nothing more can be done now," said he. "The doctor thinks well of him so far. He and I will stay with him to-night. You must save yourself, Jos. You will be needed to-morrow."

He left the room with her, and as she would not go to bed he made her lie down on a couch, and covered her with a cloak. He had dropped the tone of patronage, almost of persiflage, which he had used to her of late, and he was kindness itself, behaving to her as a brother; so that she did not know how to be thankful enough for his presence, or for the relief from responsibility which it afforded. Afterwards, looking back on that long, strange night, during which lights burned in the rooms till dawn, and odd meals were served at odd times, and stealthy feet trod the stairs, and scared faces peeped in only to be withdrawn-looking back on that strange night, and its happenings, it seemed to her that without him she could not have lived through the hours.

In truth there was not much sleep for anyone. The village doctor, who lived in top-boots, and went his rounds on horse-back, and by old-fashioned people was called the apothecary, could say nothing for certain; in the morning he might be able to do so. But in the morning-well, perhaps by night, when the patient came to himself, he might be able to form an opinion. To Arthur he was more candid. The eye was beyond hope-it could not be saved, and he feared that the other eye was injured; and there was serious concussion. He played with his fob seals and looked sagely over his gold-rimmed spectacles as he mouthed his phrases. Whether there was a fracture he could not say at present.

He had seen in a long life and a country practice many such cases, and was skilful in treating them. But-no active measures. "Dr. Quiet," he said, "Dr. Quiet, the best of the faculty, my dear. If he does not always effect a cure, he makes no mistakes. We must leave it to him."

So morning came, and passed, and noon; and still nothing more could be done. With the afternoon reaction set in; the house resigned itself to rest. Two or three stole away to sleep. Arthur dozed in an arm-chair. The clock struck with abnormal clearness, the cluck of a hen in the yard was heard in the attics. So the hours passed until sunset surprised a yawning house, and in the parlor they pressed one another to eat, and in the kitchen unusual luxuries were consumed with a ghoulish enjoyment, and no fear of the housekeeper. And still Farmer could add nothing. They must wait and hope. Dr. Quiet! He praised him afresh in the same words.

Some hours earlier, and before Josina, after much scolding by Miss Peacock, had retired to her room to lie down, Arthur had told his story.

He did not go into details. "It would only shock you, Jos," he said. "It was Thomas, of course, and I hope to heaven he'll swing for it. I suppose he knew that your father was carrying a large sum, and he must have struck him, possibly as he turned to say something, and then thrown him out. We must set the hue and cry after him, but Clement will see to that. It was lucky that he turned up when he did."

She drew a sharp breath; this was the first she had heard of Clement. And in her surprise "Clement?" she exclaimed. Then, covering her confusion as well as she could, "Mr. Ovington? Do you mean-he was there, Arthur?"

"By good luck he was, just when he was wanted. Poor chap. I can tell you it knocked him fairly down. All the same, I don't know what might not have happened if he had not come up. I sent him for Farmer, and it saved time."

"I did not know that he had been there," she murmured, too self-conscious to ask further questions.

"Well, you wouldn't, of course. He'd been fishing, I fancy, and came along just when it made all the difference. I don't know what I should have done without him."

"And Thomas? You are sure that it was Thomas? What became of him?"

"He made off across the fields. It was dark and useless to follow him-we had other things to think of, as you may imagine. Ten to one he has made for Manchester, but Clement will see to that. Oh, we'll have him! But there, I'll not tell you any more, Jos. You look ill as it is, and it will only spoil your sleep. Do you go upstairs and lie down, or you will never be able to go on." And, Miss Peacock fussily seconding his advice, Jos consented and went.

Arthur's manner had been kind, and Jos thought him kind. A brother could not have been more anxious to spare her unpleasant details. But, told as he had told it, the story left her under the impression that Clement's part had been secondary only, and slight, and that if there were a person to whom she owed the preservation of her father's life, it was Arthur, and Arthur only. Which she was the more ready to believe, in view of the masterly way in which he had managed all at the house, had taken the upper hand in all, and saved her, and spared her.

Yet Arthur had been careful to state no facts which could be contradicted by evidence, should the whole come out-at an inquest, for instance. He had foreseen the possibility of that, and had been careful. Indeed, it was with that in his mind that he had-well, that he had not gone into details.

CHAPTER XVI

Clement had walked with the doctor to the door and had secured a last word with Arthur outside, but he had not ventured to enter the house, much less to ask for Josina. He knew how heavily the shock would fall on her, and his heart was wrung for her. But he knew also, or he guessed, that the poignancy of her grief would be sharpened by remorse, and he felt that in the first outburst of self-reproach his presence would be the last she would welcome.

It was not a pleasant thought for a lover; but then how much worse, he reflected, would it have been for her, had she never made up her mind to confession. And in his own person how much better he now stood. He had saved the Squire's life, and had saved it in circumstances that must do him credit. He had run his risks, and been put to the test, and he had come manfully out of it; and he still felt that elation of spirit, that readiness to do and dare, to meet fresh ventures, which attends on a crisis successfully encountered.

He was not in a mood to be dashed by trifles therefore, or Arthur, when he came out to speak to him, would have dashed him, for Arthur was rather short with him. "You can do nothing here," he said. "We are tumbling over one another. Get after that rascal. He has got away with four hundred in gold and we must recover it. Watkins at the Griffin may know where he'll make for."

"He's in livery, isn't he?"

"Begad, so he is! I'd not thought of that! I'll have his place watched in case he steals back to change. But do you see Watkins."

Clement took his dismissal meekly and went to Watkins. He soon learned all that the inn-keeper knew, which amounted to no more than a conviction that Thomas would make for Manchester. Watkins shook his head over the livery. The rascal was no fool; he'd have got rid of that. "Oh, he's a clever chap, sir, and a gallus bad one." he continued. "He'd talk here that daring that he'd lift the hair on my head. But I never thought that he'd devil enough," in a tone of admiration, "to attack the Squire! Well, he'll swing this time, if he's taken! You're not in very good fettle yourself, sir. You know that your cheek's bleeding?"

"It's nothing. And you think he'll make for Manchester?"

"As sure as sure! He's done that this time, sir, as he never can be safe but in a crowd. And where'd he go but where he knows? He'll be in Manchester before tomorrow night, and it'll take you all your time, sir, finding him there! It's a mortal big place, I understand, and he'll have got rid of his livery, depend on it!"

"I'll find him," Clement said. And he meant it. His blood was hot, he had tasted of adventure and he found it more to his liking than day-books and ledgers. And already he had made up his mind that it was his business to pursue Thomas. He was angered by the rascal's cowardly attack upon an old man, and were it only for that he would take him. But apart from that he saw that if he recovered the Squire's money it would be another point to his credit-if the Squire recovered. If the old man did not, well, still he would have done something. As he rode home, and passed the scene of the robbery, he laid his plans.

He would leave the search in that district to the Head Constable at Aldersbury. But he expected little from this. In those days if a man was robbed it was the man's own business and that of his friends to follow the thief and seize him if they could. In London the Bow Street Runners saw to it, and in one or two of the big cities there were police officers organized on similar lines. But in the country there were only parish constables, elderly men, often chosen because they were past work.

Clement knew, then, that he must rely on himself, and he tried to imagine what Thomas would do, and what route he would take if he made for Manchester. Not through Aldersbury, for there he would run the risk of recognition. Nor would he venture into either of the direct roads thence-through Congleton or by Tarporley; for it was along these roads that he would be likely to be followed. How, then? Through Chester, Clement fancied. The man was already on the Chester side of Aldersbury, and he could make at once for that place, while in the full stream of traffic between Chester and Manchester his traces would be lost. Travelling on foot and by night, he might reach Chester about ten in the morning, and probably, having money and being footsore, he would take the first Manchester coach that left after ten.

At this point Clement found himself crossing the West Bridge, the faint scattered lights of the town rising to a point before him. His first business was to knock up the constable and tell his tale. This done, he made for the bank, where he found the household awaiting his coming in some alarm, for it was close on midnight. Here he had to tell his story afresh, amid expressions of wonder and pity, while Betty fetched sponge and water and bathed his cheek; nor, modestly as he related his doings, could he quite conceal the part that he had played. The banker listened, approved, and for once experienced a new sensation. He was proud of his son. Moreover, as a dramatic sequel to the Squire's withdrawal of the money, the story touched him home.

Then Clement, as he ate his supper, came to his point. "I'm going after him," he said.

The banker objected. "It's not your business, my lad," he said. "You've done enough, I'm sure."

"But the point is-it's bank money, sir." Clement had grown cunning.

"It was-this morning."

"And he was a client this morning-and may be tomorrow."

The banker considered. There was something in that; and this sudden interest in the bank was gratifying. Yet-yet he did not quite understand it. "You seem to be confoundedly taken up with this," he said, "but I don't see why you need mix yourself up with it farther. The scoundrel's neck is in a halter and he won't be taken without a struggle. Have you thought of that?"

"I'd take him if he were ten," Clement said-and blushed at his own enthusiasm. He muttered something about the man being a villain, and the sooner he was laid by the heels the better.

"Yes, by someone. But I don't see why you need be the one."

"Anyway, I'm going to do it, sir," Clement replied with unexpected independence. "I shall go by the Nantwich coach at half-past five, drop off at Altringham, and catch him as he goes through. True, if he goes by Frodsham I may miss him, but I fancy that the morning coach by Frodsham leaves Chester too early for him. And, after all, I can't stop every bolt-hole."

Ovington wondered anew, seeing his son in a new light. This was not the idler with his eyes on the ledger and his thoughts abroad, whom he had known in the bank, but a young man with purpose in his glance and a cut on his cheek-bone, who looked as if he could be ugly if it came to a pinch. A quite new Clement-or new at any rate to him.

He reflected. The affair would be talked of, and certainly it would be a feather in the bank's cap if the money, which the Squire had withdrawn, were recovered through the bank's exertions. Viewed in that light there was method in the lad's madness, whatever had bitten him, "Well, I think it is a dangerous business," he said at last, "and it is not your business. But go, if you will, only you must take Payne with you."

Payne was the bank man-of-all-work, but Clement would not hear of Payne. If he could be called at five, he asked no more. Even if all the seats on the Victory were booked, they would find room for him somewhere.

"But your face?" Betty said. "Isn't it painful? It's turning black."

"I'll bet that villain's is as black!" he retorted. "I know I got home on him once. Only let me be called."

But his father saw that, as he passed through the hall, he took one of the bank pistols out of the case in which they were kept, and slipped it into his pocket. The banker wondered anew, and felt perhaps more anxiety than he showed. At any rate, it was he who called the lad at five and saw that he drank the coffee that Betty had prepared, and that he ate something. At the last, indeed, Clement feared that his father might offer to accompany him, but he did not. Possibly he had decided that if his son was bent on proving his mettle in this odd business, it was wisest not to balk him.

The sun was rising as Clement's coach rattled down the Foregate between the old Norman towers that crown the Castle Hill, and the long austere front of the school, with its wide low casements twinkling in the first beams. Early milk-carts drew aside to give the coach passage, white-eyed sweeps gazed enviously after it, mob-caps at windows dreamt of holidays and sighed to be on it and away. Soon it burst merrily from the crowded houses and met the morning freshness and the open country and the rolling fields. The mists were rising from the valley behind, as the horses breasted the ascent above the old battle-field, swept down the farther slope, and at eight miles an hour climbed up Armour Hill between meadows sparkling with dew and coverts flickering with conies. Down the hill at a canter, which presently carried it rejoicing into Wem. There the first relay was waiting, and away again they went, bowling over the barren gorse-clad heath that brought them presently through narrow twisting streets to the White Lion at Whitchurch. Again, "Horses on!" and merrily they travelled down the gentle slope to the Cheshire plain, where miles of green country spread themselves in the sunshine, a land of fatness and plenty, of cheese and milk and slow-running brooks. The clock on Nantwich church was showing a half after eight, as with a long flourish from the bugle they passed below it, and halted for breakfast at the Crown, in the stubborn old Round-head town.

Half an hour to refresh, topping up with a glass of famous Nantwich ale, and away again. But now the sun was high, the world abroad, the roads were alive with traffic. Onwards from Nantwich, where they began to run alongside the Ellesmere Canal, with its painted barges and gay market boats, the road took on a new importance, and many a smiling wayside house, Lion or Swan, cheered the travellers on their way. Spanking four-in-hands, handled by lusty coachmen, the autocrats of the road, chaises-and-four with postboys in green or yellow, white-coated farmers and parsons on hackneys, commercials in gigs, and publicans in tax-carts, pedlars, packmen, the one-legged sailor, and Punch and Judy-all these met or passed them; and huge wains laden with Manchester goods and driven by teamsters in smocks with long whips on their shoulders. And the inns! The inns, with their swaying signs and open windows, their benches crowded with loungers and their yards echoing with the cry of "Next team!" – the inns, with their groaning tables and huge joints and gleaming silver, these came so often, swaggered so loudly, imposed themselves so royally, that half the life of the road seemed to be in and about them.

And Clement saw it all and rejoiced in it all, though his eyes never ceased to search for a dour-looking man with a bruised face. He rejoiced in the cantering horses and the abounding life about him, in the freedom of it and the joyousness of it, his pulses leaping in tune with it; and not the less in tune, so splendid a thing is it to be young and in love, because he had fought a fight and slept only three hours. He watched it all pass before him, and if he had ever believed in his father's scheme of an iron way and iron horses he lost faith in it now. For it was impossible to believe that any iron road running across fields and waste places could vie with this splendid highway, this orderly procession of coaches, travelling and stopping and meeting with the regularity of a weaver's shuttle, these long lines of laden wagons, these swift chaises horsed at every stage! He saw stables that sheltered a hundred roadsters and were not full; ostlers to whom a handful of oats in every peck gave a gentleman's income; teams that were clothed and curried as tenderly as children; mighty caravanserais full to the attics. A whole machinery of transport passed under his wondering eyes, and the railway, the Valleys Railway-he smiled at it as at the dream of a visionary.

They swept through Northwich before noon, and an hour later Clement dropped off the coach in front of the Bowling Green Inn at Altringham, and knew that his task lay before him. The little town had no church, but it boasted for its size more bustle than he had expected, and as he eyed its busy streets and its flow of traffic his spirits sank; it did not call itself one of the gates of Manchester for nothing. However, he had not come to stand idle, and the first step, to seek out a constable, was easy. But to secure that worthy's aid-he was but a deputy, a pot-bellied, spectacled shoemaker-was another matter. The man rolled up his leather apron and pushed his horn-rimmed glasses on to his forehead, but he shook his head. "A very desperate villain," he said, "a very desperate villain! But lor', master, a dark sullen chap with a black eye and legs a little bandy? Why, I be dark and I be bandy, and for black eyes-I'm afeared there's more than one o' that cut on the road."

"But not to-day," Clement urged. "He'll come through to-day or to-night."

"Ay, and more likely night than day. But how be I to see if he's a blackened peeper in the dark! I can't haul a gentleman off a coach to ask the color of his eyes."

"Well, anyway, do your best."

"We might bill him and cry him?"

"That's it! Do that!" Clement saw that that was about the extent of the help he would get in this quarter. "Send the crier to me at the Bowling Green, and I'll write a bill-Five pounds reward for information!"

The constable's eyes twinkled. "Now you're on a line, master," he said. "Now we'll do summat, maybe!"

Clement took the hint and bettered the line with a crownpiece, and hastening back to his inn he took seisin of a seat in the coffee room which commanded the main street. Here he wrote out a bill, and bribed a waiter to keep the place for him: and in it he sat patiently, scanning every person who passed. But so many passed that an hour had not elapsed before he held his task hopeless, though he continued to perform it. The constable had undertaken to go round the inns and to set a watch on a side street; and the bill might do something. But his fancy pictured half a dozen by-ways through the town, or the man might avoid the town, or he might go by another route. Altogether it began to seem a hopeless task, his fancied sagacity a silly conceit. But he had undertaken the task, and as he had told his father he could not close all holes. He could only set his snare across the largest and hope for the best.

Presently he heard the crier ring his bell and cry his man. "Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh yes!" and the rest of it, ending with "God save the King!" And that cheered him for a while. That was something. But as hour after hour went by and coaches, carriages, and postchaises stopped and started before the door, and pedestrians passed, and still no Thomas appeared-though half a dozen times he ran out to take a nearer view of some traveller, or to inspect a slumberer in a hay-cart-he began to despair. There were so many chances against him. So many straws floated by, half seen in the current.

But Clement was dogged. He persisted, though hope had almost abandoned him, and it was long after midnight before, sinking with fatigue, he left his post. Even so he was out again by six, but if there was anything of which he was now certain, it was that the villain had gone by in the night. Still he remained, his eyes roving ceaselessly over the passers-by, who were now few, now many, as the current ran fast or slow, as some coach high-laden drew up before the door with a noisy fanfaronade, or some heavy wagon toiled slowly by.

It was in one of these slack intervals, when the street was tolerably empty, that his eyes fell on a man who was loitering on the other side of the way. The man had his hands in his pockets and a straw in his mouth, and he seemed to be a mere idler; but as his eyes met Clement's he winked. Then, with an almost imperceptible gesture of the head, he lounged away in the direction of the inn yard.

Clement doubted if anything was meant, but grasping at every chance he hurried out and found the man standing in the yard, his hands in his pockets, the straw in his mouth. He was staring at an object, which, to judge from his aspect, could have no possible interest for him-a pump. "Do you want me?" Clement asked.

"Mebbe, mister. Do you see that stable?"

"Well?"

"D'you go in there and I'll-mebbe I'll join you."

But Clement was suspicious. "I am not going out of sight of the street," he said.

"Lord!" contemptuously. "Your man's gone these six hours. He's many a mile on by now! You come into the stable."

The fellow's looks did not commend him. He was blear-eyed and under-sized, wearing a mangy rabbit-skin waistcoat, and no coat. He had the air of a postboy run to seed. Still, Clement thought it better to go with him, and in the stable, "Be you the gent that offered five pounds?" the man asked, turning upon him.

"I am."

"Then fork out, squire. Open your purse, and I'll open my mouth."

"If you come with me to the constable-"

"Not I. I ben't sharing with no constable. That is flat."

"Well, what do you know?"

"What you want to know. Howsumdever, if you'll give me your word you'll act the gentleman?"

"Who are you, my lad?"

"Ostler at the Barley Sheaf in Malthouse Lane. You're on? Right. I see, you're a gentleman. Well, your chap come in 'bout eleven last night on an empty dray from Chester. He had four sacks of corn with him."

"Oh, but that can't be the man!" Clement exclaimed, his face falling.

"You listen, mister. He had four sacks of corn with him, and wagoner, he'd bargained to carry him to Manchester. But they had quarrelled, and t'other chucked off his sacks in our yard, and there was pretty nigh a fight. Wagoner he went off and left him cursing, and he offered me a shilling to find him a lift to Manchester first thing i' the morning. 'Bout daylight there come in a hay-cart, but driver'd only take the man and not the forage. Howsumdever, he said at last he'd take one sack, and your chap up and asked me would I take care of t'other three till he sent for 'em. I see he was mighty keen to get on, and I sez, 'No,' sez I, 'but I'll buy 'em cheap.' 'Right,' sez he, and surprising little bones about it, and lets me have 'em cheap! So thinks I, who's this as chucks away money, and as he climbed up I managed to knock off his tile and see his eye was painted, and he the very spot of your bill! I'd half a mind to stop him, but he was over-weight for me-I'm a little chap-and I let him go.' He added some details which satisfied Clement that the traveller was really Thomas.

"Did you hear where he was going to in Manchester?"

"Five pound, mister!" The man held out his grimy paw.

Clement did not like the cunning in the bleary eyes, but he had gone so far that he could hardly draw back. He counted out four one-pound notes. "Now then?" he said, showing the fifth, but keeping a firm hold on it.

"The lad that took him is Jerry Stott-of the Apple-Tree Inn in Fennel Street. You go to him, mister. One of these will do it."

Clement gave him the other note. "He didn't tell you where he was going?"

"He very particlar did not. But I'm thinking you'll net him at Jerry's. Do you take one of Nadin's boys. He's a desperate-looking chap. He gave you that punch in the face, I guess?" with interest.

"He did."

"Ah, well, you marked him. But you get one of Nadin's boys. You'll not take him easy."

CHAPTER XVII

Clement did not let the grass grow under his feet. An hour later he was rattling over the stony pavements and through the crowded streets of the busy town, which had grown in a short hundred years from something little more than a village, to be the second centre of wealth and population, of poverty and crime, within the seas; a centre on which the eye of Government rested with unwinking vigilance, for without a voice in Parliament and with half of its citizens deprived of civic rights-since half were Nonconformists-it was the focus of all the discontent in the country. In Manchester, if anywhere, flourished the agitation against the Test Acts and the movement for Reform. Thence had started the famous Blanketeers, there six years before had taken place the Peterloo massacre. Thence as by the million filaments of some great web was roused or calmed the vast industrial world of Lancashire. The thunder of the power-loom that had created it, the roar of the laden drays that shook it, deafened the wondering stranger, but more formidable and momentous than either, had he known it, was the half-heard murmur of an underworld striving to be free.

Clement had never visited the cotton-town before, and on a more commonplace errand he might have allowed himself to be daunted by a turmoil and bustle as new to him as it was uncongenial. But with his mind set on one thing, he heeded his surroundings only as they threatened to balk his aim, and he had himself driven directly to the Police Office, over which the notorious Nadin had so lately presided that for most people it still went by his name. Fearless, resolute, and not too scrupulous, the man had through twenty troublous years combated the forces alike of disorder and of liberty; and before London had yet acquired an efficient police, he had gathered round him a body of men equal at least to the Bow Street Runners. He had passed, but his methods survived; and half an hour after Clement had entered the office he issued from it accompanied by a hard-bitten, sharp-eyed man in a tall beaver hat and a long wide-skirted coat.

"The Apple Tree? Oh, the Apple Tree's on the square," he informed Clement. "And Jerry Stott? No harm in him, sir, either. He'll speak when he sees me."

"You don't think we need another man?"

"There's one following. No use to go in a bunch. He'll watch the front, and we'll go in by the yard. Got a barker, sir?"

"Yes."

"'Fraid so. Well, don't use it-show it if you like. Law's law, and a live dog's worth more than its hide. Ay, that's Chetham's. Queer old place, and-sharp's the word, here we are," as they turned off Long Mill Gate, and entered the yard of an old-fashioned house, over the door of which hung the sign of an apple-tree. The place was quiet, in comparison with the street they had left, and "Here's Jerry," the officer added, as they espied a young fellow, who in a corner of the enclosure was striving to raise to his shoulder a truss of hay. He ceased his efforts when he saw them.

"We want a word with you," said the officer.

The man eyed them with dismay. "I never thout 'at he'd come to thee," he said.

"The chap you brought in this morning?"

"Ay, sure."

"Happen yes and happen no," the policeman replied. "What's it all about?"

"If he says I took his eauts he be a leear. I wurna wi' the sack, not to say alone 'at is, not five minutes, and yo' may look at t' sack and see all's theer as ever was! Never a handfu' missing, tho' the chap he cursed and swore an' took on, the mout ha' been eauts o' gowd! He's a leear iv he says I tetched 'em, but I never thout he'd t' brass to come to thee."

"Why not, lad?"

"'Cause i' the end he let up and steared at t' sack leek a steck pig, and then he fell a shriking 'i worse shap than ever, and away he goes as iv a dog had bit him and down t' Long Gate hell for leather!"

"Which way? I see. Did he take the oats?"

"Not he, nor t' bag. An after mekking setch a din about his eauts! I war no wi' 'em five minutes."

The officer declined to commit himself. "Let us see them," he said.

Jerry led them to a tumble-down, black and white building at the rear of the yard, with lattice work in its crazy windows and an old date over the door. They followed him up a ladder and into a loft, where were a frowsy bed or two, some old pack-saddles, and two or three stools made out of casks sawn in two. On the floor in one place lay a heap of oats trampled this way and that, and beside the heap an empty sack. The officer picked up the sack, shook it and examined it.

"What do you make of it?" Clement asked.

"I don't know what to make of it. Here, you, Jerry, fetch me a corn measure!" And when he had thus rid them of the lad, "He may be carrying out orders and telling a flash tale to put us off. Or he may be telling the truth, and in that case it looks as if someone had been a mite brighter than your man and cleared his stuff."

"But where is it?"

"Ah! Just so, I'd like to know," shaking his head. "Yes, Jerry, measure it back into the sack. How much is there?"

The lad began to gather up the oats and replace them in the bag, while the two men looked on, perplexed and undecided. Suddenly Clement stooped-a scrap of cord, doubtless the cord which had tied the neck of the sack, had caught his eye. He picked it up, looked at it, then, with a word, he handed it to the officer. "I think that settles it," he said, his eyes shining. There was a tiny twist of straw-plait, like a rosette, knotted about the cord and still adhering to it.

Nadin's man looked at the plait and for a moment did not understand. Then his face cleared. "By Joseph! You're right, sir!" he exclaimed, and slapped his thigh. "And sharp, sharp too. You'd ought to be one of us! That settles it, it's the backtrack we've to look to, but I'll take no chances." And turning to the lad and addressing him in his harshest voice, "See here, in an hour we shall know if you've told us the truth. If you've not it will be the New Bailey and a pair of iron garters for you. So if you've aught to add, out with it! It's your last chance, Jerry Stott."

But the lad protested that he'd told all the truth. It had happened just as he had told them.

The officer turned to Clement. "I think he's on the square," he said, "but I'll have him watched." And he led the way down the ladder. When they reached the street, he stepped out smartly, making nothing of the crowd and bustle, the lumbering drays and over-hanging cranes through which they had to thread their way. "We'll catch the Altringham stage at the Cross if we're sharp," he said. "It'll be quicker than getting out a po'chay and a lot cheaper."

They caught the stage, and alighted in Altringham before five. A walk of as many minutes brought them to the Barley Sheaf, a wagoner's house at the corner of a lane in the poorest part of the town. The ostler, from whom Clement had so lately parted, stood leaning against a post at the entrance to the yard, his hands still in his pockets and the straw still in his mouth. When he saw them a grin broke up his ugly face. "He've been here," he cried, "but," triumphantly, "I've routed him, mister! I sent him all ways!"

The officer did not respond. "Why, the devil, didn't you seize him?" he growled.

"What, me? And him double my size? And a desperate villain? 'Deed, I'd to save my skin, mister, and only yon lad and a couple of childer in the yard when he come. I see him first, sneaking a look round this yere post, and thinks I, it'll be a knife in the back or a punch in the face for me if he's heard I've rapped. So, first's better than last, thinks I, and seeing as he hung back I up to him bold as brass, but with one eye on the lad too, and sez I, 'Can you read?' sez I. He looked at me's if he'd have my blood, but there was the lad and the childer a-staring, so 'Ay, I can,' says he, 'and can read you, you thieving villain!' 'Well, if you can read, read that,' sez I, and pointed to a bill as was posted on the gate. 'I can't,' sez he, 'and, happen you can tell me what 'tis all about.' He looks, and he sees 'tis the bill about he, and painting him to the life. Anyways, he turns the color o' whey and he gives me a look as if he'd cut out my inwards, but he sees it's no good, for there was the lad and the childer, and he slinks off. Ay, I routed him, I did, little as I be, mister!"

"Right!" said Nadin's man. "And now do you show us the sack as you changed for his."

The man's face fell amazingly, but Clement noted that he looked surprised rather than frightened. "Eh?" he exclaimed. "Lord, now, who told you, mister? He didn't know."

"Never mind who told us. We know, and that's enough. There was a twist o' plait round the cord?"

"There were."

"You said nothing about it before. But out with it now, and do you take care, my lad."

"Well, who axed me? Exchange is no robbery and I ain't afeard. 'Twas just this way. He sold me three sacks, 's I told you, squire, and I was hauling 'em off to stable when 'Not that one!' says he sharp. So then I look at t' one he was so set on keeping, and when his back was turned I hefted it sly-like, and it seemed to me a good bit heavier than t' others. Then I spied the bit o' plait about the cord, and thinks I, being no fule, 'tis a mark. And when he went in for a squib o' cordial wi' Jerry Stott I shifted t' mark to another sack and loaded up, and off he goes and he none the wiser, and no harm done. Exchange is no robbery and you can't do nowt to me for that."

"I don't know," said the officer darkly. "Let us see the sack."

"You're not agoing-"

"Do you hear? Jump, unless you want to get into trouble. You show us that sack, and be quick about it, my lad."

Grumbling, but not daring to refuse, the old man led the way into the stables, and there in an empty stall the three sacks stood upright. "Which is the one you filched?" asked the man from Manchester.

Reluctantly the ostler pointed it out. "Then you get me a horse-cloth."

"You're not going-well, a wilful man must have his way. Will that serve you? But if my oats is spilled and spiled-"

Nadin's man paid no heed to his remonstrance, but in a trice cut the cord that tied the sack's mouth, tipped it on its side, and let the grain pour out in a golden stream. A golden stream it proved to be, for in a twinkling something sparkled amid the corn, and here and there a sovereign glittered. To Clement and the officer who had read the riddle, this was no great surprise, though they viewed it with smiling satisfaction. But the old man, stuck dumb by the sight of the treasure that had been for a time in his power, turned a dirty white. He stood gazing at the vision of wealth, greed in his eyes, his hands working convulsively; and presently in a choked voice, "O, Lord! O, Lord!" he muttered. "You'll not take t' all! You'll not take t' all!. It were mine. I bought it."

"You came nigh to buying a pair o' bracelets," the officer replied grimly. "You with stolen property in your possession to talk o'-thank your stars your neck's not to answer for it! No, we don't need your help. You sheer off. We can count it without you. You've done pretty well as it is. Sheer off, unless you want the handcuffs on you!"

The old ostler went, measuring the five pounds which he had made by the treasure he had lost, and finding no comfort in the possession of that which only an hour before had been a fortune to gloat over. But there was no help for it. He had to swallow his rage. The officer called after him to bring a sieve. He brought it sullenly, and his part was done. All that was left to him was a vision of gold that grew more dazzling with each telling of the tale. And very, very often he told it.

When he was gone they gathered up the oats and riddled them through the sieve and recovered four hundred and thirty pounds. Thomas had taken a mere handful for his spending. As Clement counted it, sovereign by sovereign, into a knotted handkerchief which the other held, he, too, gloated over it, for it spelled success. But the money reckoned and the handkerchief knotted up, "And now for the man," he said.

But Nadin's man shook his head. "We'd be weeks and not get him," he said. "You'd best leave him to us, sir. We'll bill him in Manchester and make the flash kens too hot for him. But there's no knowing which way he'll turn. May be to Liverpool, or as like as not to Aldersbury. Chaps like him are pigeons for homing. Back they go, though they know they'll be taken."

In the end Clement decided to stand content, and having given his assistant a liberal fee, he took his seat next morning on the Victory coach, travelling by Chester to Aldersbury. He was not vain, but it was with some exultation that he began his journey, that he faced again the free-blowing winds and the open pastures, heard the cheery notes of the bugle, and viewed the old-fashioned marketplaces and roistering inns, some of which he had passed three days before. He had not failed. He had done something; and he thought of Jos, and he thought of the Squire, and he thanked Providence that had put it in his power to turn the tables on the old man. Surely after what he had done the Squire must consider him. Surely after services so notable-and Lord, what luck he had had-the Squire would be willing to listen to him? He recalled the desperate struggle in the road, and the old man's "At him, good lad! At him!" and he thought of the sum-no small sum, and the old man was avaricious-which his promptness had recovered. His hopes ran high.

To be sure, there was another side to it. The Squire might not recover, and then-but he refused to dwell on that contingency. No, the Squire must recover, must receive and reward him, must own that after all he was something better than a clerk or a shopboy. And all things would be well, all roads be made smooth, all difficulties be cleared away. And in time he and Jos-his eyes shone.

Of course in the elation of the hour and flushed by success, he ignored facts which he would have been wiser to remember, and over-leapt obstacles which were not small. A little thought would have taught him that the Squire was not the man to change his views in an hour, or to swallow the prejudices of a life-time because a young chap had done him a service. To be beholden to a man, and to give him your daughter, are things far apart.

And this Clement in cooler moments would have seen. But he was young and in love, and he had done something; and the sun shone and the air was sweet, and if, as the coach swung gaily up the Foregate between School and Castle, his heart beat high and he already foresaw a triumphant issue, who shall blame him? At any rate his case was altered, and in comparison with his position a few days before, he stood well.

He alighted at the door of the Lion, and by a coincidence which was to have its consequences the first person he met in the High Street was Arthur Bourdillon. "Hallo!" Arthur cried, his face lighting up. "Back already, man? Have you done anything?"

"I've got the money," Clement replied. And he waved the bag.

"And Thomas?"

"No, he gave us the slip for the time. But I've got the money, except a dozen pounds or so."

"The deuce you have!" the other answered-and it was not quite clear whether he were pleased or not. "How did you do it? Tell us all about it." He drew Clement aside on to some steps at the foot of St. Juliana's church.

Clement ran briefly over his adventures. When he had done, "Deuced sharp of you," Arthur said. "Devilish sharp, I must say! Now, if you'll hand over I'll take it out to Garth. I am on my way there, I'm just starting, and I haven't a moment to spare. If you'll hand over-"

But Clement made no move to hand over. Instead, "How is he?" he asked.

"Oh, pretty bad."

"Will he get over it?"

"Farmer thinks so. But there's no hope for the eye, and he doubts about the other eye. He's not to use it for six weeks at least."

"He's in bed?"

"Lord, yes, and will be in bed for heaven knows how long-if he ever gets up from it. Why, man, he's had the deuce of a shake. The wonder is that he's alive, and it's long odds that he'll never be the same man again."

"That's bad," Clement said. "And how is-" He was going to inquire after Miss Griffin, but Arthur broke in on him.

"Ask the rest another time," he said. "I can't stay now. I'm taking out things that are wanted in a hurry and the curricle is waiting. This is the first day I've been in town, for there's no one there to do anything except my cousin and the old Peahen. So hand over, old chap, and I'll take the stuff out. It will do the old man more good than all the doctor's medicine."

Clement hesitated. If he had not been carrying the money, he might have made an excuse. He might at any rate have delayed the act. But the money was the Squire's, he could give no reason for taking it to the bank, and he had not that hardness of fibre, that indifference to the feelings of others which was needed if he was to say boldly that it was he who had recovered the money and he who was going to hand it over. Still he did hesitate, something telling him that the demand was unreasonable. Then Arthur's coolness, his assumption that what he proposed was the natural course did its work. Clement handed over the bag.

"Right," Arthur said, weighing it in his hand. "You counted it, I suppose? Four hundred and thirty, or thereabouts?"

"That's it."

"Good! See you soon. Good-bye!" And well pleased with himself, chuckling a little-for Clement's discomfiture had not escaped him-Arthur hurried away.

And Clement went his way. But reality had touched his golden dreams, and they had melted. The sun still shone, but it did not shine for him, and he no longer walked with his head in the air. It was not only that, by resigning the money and entrusting its return to another, he had lost the advantage on which he had counted, but he had been worsted. He had failed, in the contest of wits and wills, and, abuse his ill-luck as he might, he owed the failure to himself-to his own weakness. He saw it.

It was possible that Arthur had acted in innocence. But Clement doubted this, and he doubted it the more the longer he thought of it. He fancied that he recognized a thing which had happened before: that this was not the first time that Arthur had taken the upper hand with him and jockeyed him into the worse position. As he crossed the threshold of the bank, his self-confidence fell from him, he felt himself slip into the old atmosphere, he became once more the inefficient.

Nor was it any comfort to him that his father saw the matter in the same light, and after listening with an appreciative face and some surprise to his earlier adventures, made no effort to hide the chagrin that he felt at the dénouement. "But why-why in the world did you do that?" he exclaimed. "Give up the money after you had done the work? And to Bourdillon, who had no more right to it than you had? Good heavens, lad, it was the act of a fool! I'd not be surprised if old Griffin never heard your name in connection with it!"

"Oh, I don't think Arthur-"

"Well, I do." The banker was vexed. "It's clear that Arthur is a deal sharper than you. As for the Squire, I hear that he is only half-conscious, and what he hears, if he ever hears the tale at all, will make little impression on him. Now if he had seen you, and you'd handed over the money-if he had seen you, then the bank and you would have got the credit."

"Still, Clem did recover it," Betty said.

"Ay, but who will ever know that he did?"

"Still he did, and I believe that he'll get a message from Garth to-morrow. Now, see if you don't, Clem. Or the next day."

But no message came on the morrow, or on the next day. No message came at all; and though it was possible to attribute this to the Squire's condition-for he was reported to be very ill-and Clement did his best to attribute it to that and to keep up his spirits, the tide of time wears away even hope, and presently he began to see that he had built on the sand.

At any rate no message and no acknowledgment came, unless a perfunctory word of thanks dropped by Arthur counted as such. And Clement had soon to recognize that what he had done, he might as well, for any good it was likely to do him, have left undone. His father, who had no thought of anything but his son's credit, was merely chagrined. But with Clement, who had built high hopes upon the event, hopes of which his father and Betty little dreamed, the wound went far deeper.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Squire raised himself painfully on his elbow and hid the bag between pillow and tester, where he could assure himself of its presence by a touch. Then he sank back with a grunt of relief and his hand went to the keys, which also had their home under his pillow. He clung to them-they were his badge of authority, of power. While he had them, sightless as he was, he was still master; about his room, the oak-panelled chamber, spacious but shabby, with the uneven floor and the low wide casement, the life of the house still circled.

"Good lad!" he muttered. "Good lad! Jos?"

"Yes, father." She rose and came towards him.

"Where's Arthur?"

"He went out with your message."

"To be sure! To be sure! I'm forgetting."

But, once started on the road to recovery, he did not forget much. From his high, four-post bed with the drab hangings in which his father and grandfather had died, he gripped house and lands in a firm grip. Morning by morning he would have his report of the lambs, of the wheat, of the hay-corps, of the ploughing on the eight acres where the Swedish turnips were to go. He would know what corn went to the mill, what mutton to the house. The bounds-fence that Farmer Bache had neglected was not forgotten, nor the young colt that he had decided to take against Farmer Price's arrears, nor the lease for lives that involved a knotty point of which he proved himself to be in complete possession.

Indeed, he showed himself indomitable, the old heart in him still strong; so that neither the shock that he had borne, nor the pain that he had suffered, nor the possibility of permanent blindness which they could not wholly hide from him, sufficed to subdue or unman him.

Only in one or two things was a change apparent. He reverted more often to an older and ruder form of speech familiar to him when George the Third was young, but which of late he had only used when talking with his tenants. He said "Dunno you do this!" and "I wunt ha' that!" used "ship" for sheep, and "goold" for gold, called Thomas a "gallus bad rascal," and the like.

And in another and more important point he was changed. For eyes he must now depend on someone, and though he showed that he liked to have Jos about him and bore with her when the Pea-hen's fussiness drove him to bad words, it was soon clear that the person he chose was Arthur. Arthur was restored, and more than restored to favor. It was "Where's Arthur?" a score of times a day. Arthur must come, must go, must be ever at his elbow. He must check such and such an account, see the overseers about such an one, speak to the constable about another, go into Aldersbury about the lease. Even when Arthur was absent the Squire's thoughts ran on him, and often he would mutter "Good lad! Good lad!" when he thought himself alone.

It was a real bouleversement, but Josina, supposing that Arthur had saved her father's life at the risk of his own, and had then added to his merit by recovering the lost money, found it natural enough. For the full details of the robbery had never been told to her. "Better leave it alone, Jos," Arthur had said when she had again shown a desire to know more. "It was a horrid business and you won't want to dream of it. Another minute and that d-d villain would have-but there, I'd advise you to leave it alone."

Jos, suspecting nothing, had not demurred, but on the contrary had thought Arthur as modest as he was brave. And the doctor, with an eye to his patient's well-being, had taken the same view. "Put no questions to him," he said, "and don't talk to him about it. Time enough to go into it by and by, when the shock's worn off. The odds are that he will remember nothing that happened just before the scoundrel struck his-that's the common thing-and so much the better, my dear. Let sleeping dogs lie, or, as we doctors say, don't think about your stomach till your victuals trouble you."

So Josina knew no particulars except that Arthur had saved his uncle's life, and Clement-she shuddered as she thought of it-had come up in time to be of service. And no one at Garth knew more. But, knowing so much, it was not surprising to her that Arthur should be restored to favor, and, lately forbidden the house, should now rule it as a master. And clearly Arthur, also, found the position natural, so easily did he fall into it. He was up and down the old shallow stairs-which the Squire, true to the fashions of his youth, had never carpeted-a dozen times a day. He was as often in and out of his uncle's bedroom, or sitting on the deep window-seat on which generations of mothers had sunned their babes; and all this with a laugh and a cheery word that wondrously brightened the sick room. Alert, quick, serviceable, and willing to take any responsibility, he made himself a favorite with all. Even Calamy, who shook his head over every improvement in the Squire, and murmured much of the "old lamp flickering before it went out," grew hopeful in his presence. Miss Peacock adored him. He put Josina's nose out of joint.

Of the young fellow, whose moodiness had of late perplexed his companions in the bank, not a trace remained. Had they seen him as he was now they might have been tempted to think that a weight had been lifted from him. But he seemed, for the time, to have forgotten the bank. He rarely mentioned the Ovingtons.

There was one at Garth, however, who had not forgotten either the bank or the Ovingtons; and proved it presently to Arthur's surprise. "Jos," said the Squire one afternoon. And when she had replied that she was there, "Where is Arthur?"

"I think he has just come in, sir."

"Prop me up. And send him to me. Do you leave us."

She went, wondering a little for she had not been dismissed before. She sent Arthur, who, after his usual fashion, scaled the stairs at three bounds. He found the old man sitting up in the shadow of the curtains, a grotesque figure with his bandaged head. The air of the room was not so much musty as ancient, savoring of worm-eaten wood and long decayed lavender, and linen laid by in presses. On each side of the drab tester hung a dim flat portrait, faded and melancholy, in a carved wooden frame, unglazed; below each hung a sampler. "You sent for me, sir?"

"Ay. When's that money due?"

The question was so unexpected that for a moment Arthur did not take it in. Then the blood rushed to his face. "My mother's money, sir?"

"What else? What other money is there, that's due? I forget things but I dunno forget that."

"You don't forget much, sir," Arthur replied cheerfully. "But there's no hurry about that."

"When?"

"Well, in two months from the twenty-first, sir. But there is not the least hurry."

"This is the seventeenth?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I'll pay and ha' done with it. But I'll ha' to sell stock. East India Stock it is. What are they at, lad?"

"Somewhere about two hundred and seventy odd, I think, sir."

"And how do you sell 'em?" The Squire knew a good deal about buying stock but little about selling it, and he winced as he put the question. But he bore the pang gallantly, for had not the boy earned his right to the money and to his own way? Ay, and earned it by a service as great as one man could perform for another? For the Squire had no more reason than those about him to doubt that he owed his life to his nephew. He had found him beside his bed when he had recovered his senses, and putting together this and certain words which had fallen from others, and adding his own hazy impressions of the happenings of the night, and of the young man on whose shoulder he had leant, he had never questioned the fact. "How do you go about to sell 'em?" he repeated. "I suppose you know?"

"Oh, yes, sir, it's my business," Arthur replied. "You have to get a transfer-they are issued at the India House. You've only to sign it before two witnesses. It is quite simple, sir."

"Well, I can do that. Do you see to it, lad."

"You wouldn't wish to do it through Ovington's?"

"No!" the Squire rapped out. "Do it yourself. And lose no time. Write at once."

"Very well, sir. I suppose you have the certificates?"

"'Course I have," annoyed. "Isn't the stock mine?"

"Very good, sir. I'll see to it."

"Well, see to it. And, mark ye, when you're in Aldersbury see Welshes, and tell them I'm waiting for that lease of lives. I signed the agreement for the new lease six weeks ago and I should ha' had the lease by now. Stir 'em up, and say I must have it. The longer I'm waiting the longer the bill will be! I know 'em, damn 'em, though Welshes are not the worst."

When he had settled this he wanted a letter written, and Arthur sat down at the oaken bureau that stood between the windows, its faded green lining stained with the ink of a century and its pigeon-holes crammed with receipts and sample-bags. While he wrote his thoughts were busy with the matter that they had just discussed, but it was not until he found himself standing at a window outside the room, staring with unseeing eyes over the green vale, that he brought his thoughts to a head, and knew that even at the eleventh hour he hesitated.

Yes, he hesitated. The thing that he had so much desired, that had presented itself to him in such golden hues, that had dazzled his ambition and absorbed his mind, was within his grasp now, ready to be garnered-and yet he hesitated. Ovington was a just man and beyond doubt would release him and cancel the partnership agreement, if he desired to have it cancelled. And he was very near to desiring it at this moment.

For he saw now that there were other things to be garnered-Garth, its broad acres, its fine rent-roll, the old man's savings, Josina. Secure of the Squire's favor he had but to stretch out his hand, and all these things might be his; might certainly be his if he gave up the bank and his prospects there. That step, if he took it, would remove his uncle's last objection; it would bind him to him by a triple bond. And it would do more. It would ease his own mind, by erasing from the past-for he would no longer need the five thousand-a thing which troubled his conscience and harassed him when he lay awake at night. It would erase that blot, it would make all clean behind him, and it would at the same time remove the impalpable barrier that had risen between him and his mother.

It was still in his power to do all this. A word would do it. He had only to go back to the Squire and tell him that he had changed his mind, that he no longer wanted the money, and was not going into the bank.

He hesitated, standing at the window, looking on the green vale and the hillside beyond it. Yes, he might do it. But what if he repented later? And what security had he for those other things? His uncle might live for years, long years, might live to quarrel with him and discard him. Did not the proverb say that it was ill-work waiting for dead men's shoes? And Josina? Doubtless he might win Josina, for the wooing; he had no doubt about that. But he was not sure that he wanted Josina.

He decided at last that the question might wait. Until he had written the letter to the brokers, until then, at any rate, either course was open to him. He went downstairs. In the wainscoted hall, small and square, with a high narrow window on each side of the door, his mother and Josina were sitting on one of the window seats. The door stood open, the spring air and the sunshine poured in. "I'm telling her that she's not looking well," his mother said, as he joined them.

"She spends too much time in that room," he answered. Then, after a moment's thought, rattling the money in his fob, "Is Farmer coming to-day?"

"No." The girl spoke listlessly. "I don't think he is."

"He's made a wonderful recovery," his mother observed.

"Yes-if it's a real recovery."

"At any rate, the doctor hopes that he may come downstairs in ten days. And then, I'm afraid, we shall have Josina to nurse."

The girl protested that she was well, quite well. But her heavy eyes and the shadows under them belied her words.

"Well, I'm off to town," he said, "I have to see Welshes for him."

He left them, and ten minutes later he was on the road to Aldersbury, still undecided, still uncertain what course he would pursue, and at one moment accusing himself of a weakness that deserved the contempt of every strong man, at another praising moderation and a country life. Had he had eyes and ears for the things about him as he rode, he might have found much to support the latter view. The cawing of rooks, the murmur of wood-doves, the scents of late spring filled the balmy air. The sky was pure blue, and beneath it the pastures shone yellow with buttercups. Tree and field, bank and hedge-row rioted in freshest green, save where the oak wood, slow to change and careless of fashion, clung to its orange garb, or the hawthorn stood out, a globe of snow. The cuckoo and the early corncrake told of coming summer, and behind him the Welsh hills simmered in the first heat of the year. Clement, had he passed that way, would have noted it all, and in the delight of the eye and the spring-tide of all growing things would have found ground to rejoice, whatever his trouble.

But Arthur, wrapt in his own thoughts, barely noticed these things. He rode with his eyes fixed on his horse's ears, and only roused himself when he saw the very man whom he wished to see coming to meet him. It was Dr. Farmer, in the mahogany-topped boots, the frilled shirt, and the old black coat-shaped as are our dress coats but buttoned tightly round the waist-which the dust of a dozen summers and every road in the district had whitened.

"Hallo, doctor!" Arthur cried as they met. "Are you going up to the house to-day?"

"No, Mr. Bourdillon. But I can if necessary. How is he?"

"That is what I want you to tell me. One can't talk freely at the house and I have a reason for wishing to know. How is he, doctor?"

"Do you mean-"

"Has this really shaken him? Will he be the same man again?"

"I see." Farmer rubbed his chin with the horn-handle of his riding-crop. "Well-I see no reason at present why he should not be. He's one in a hundred, you know. Sound heart, good digestion, a little gouty-but tough. Tough! You never know, of course. There may be some harm we haven't detected, but I should say that he had a good few years of life in him yet."

"Ah!"

"Of course, an unusual recovery-from such injuries. And I say nothing about the sight. I'm not hopeful of that."

"Well," said Arthur. "I'll tell you why I asked. There's a question arisen about a lease for lives-his is one. But you won't talk, of course."

Farmer nodded. He found it quite natural. Leases for lives were still common, and doctors were often consulted as to the value of lives which survived or which it was proposed to insert. With another word or two they parted and Arthur rode on.

But he no longer doubted. To wait for eight or ten years, dependent on the whims of an arbitrary and crotchety old man? No! Only in a moment of imbecility could he have dreamed of resigning for this, the golden opportunities that the new world, opening before him, offered to all who had the courage to seize them. He had been mad to think of it, and now he was sane. Garth was worth a mass. He might have served a year or two for it. But seven, or it might be ten? No. Besides, why should he not take the Squire at his word and make the best of both worlds, and availing himself of the favor he had gained, employ the one to exploit the other? He had his foot in at Garth and he was no fool, he could make himself useful. Already, he was well aware, he had made himself liked.

It was noon when he rode into Aldersbury, the town basking in the first warmth of the year, the dogs lying stretched in the sunshine. And he was in luck, for, having met Farmer, he now met Frederick Welsh coming down Maerdol. The lawyer, honestly concerned for his old friend, was urgent in inquiry, and when he had heard the news, "Thank God!" he said. "I'm as pleased to hear that as if I'd made a ten-pound note! Aldshire without the Squire-things would be changing, indeed!"

Arthur told him what the Squire had said about the lease. But that was another matter. The Squire was too impatient. "He's got his agreement. We'll draw the lease as soon as we can," the lawyer said. "The office is full, and more haste less speed. We'll let him know when it's ready." Like all old firms he was dilatory. There was no hurry. All in good time.

They parted, and Arthur rode up the street, alert and smiling, and many eyes followed him-followed him with envy. He worked at the bank, he had his rooms on the Town Walls, he chatted freely with this townsman and that. He was not proud. But they never forgot who he was. They did not talk to him as they talked even to Ovington. Ovington had risen and was rich, but he came as they came, of common clay. But this young man, riding up the street in the sunshine, smiling and nodding this way and that, his hand on his thigh, belonged to another order. He was a Griffin-a Griffin of Garth. He might lose his all, his money might fly from him, but he would still be a Griffin, one of the caste that ruled as well as reigned, that held in its grasp power and patronage. They looked after him with envy.

CHAPTER XIX

The week in early June which witnessed Arthur's return to his seat at the bank-that and the following week which saw his mother's five thousand pounds paid over for his share in the concern-saw the tide of prosperity which during two years had been constantly swelling, reach its extreme point. The commerce and wealth of the country, as they rose higher and higher in this flood-time of fortune, astonished even the casual observer. Their increase seemed to be without limit; they answered to every call. They not only filled the old channels, but over-ran them, irrigating, in appearance at least, a thousand fields hitherto untilled. Abroad, the flag of commerce was said to fly where it had never flown before; its clippers brought merchandise not only from the Indies, East and West, and tea from China, and wool from Sydney, and rich stuffs from the Levant, but Argosies laden with freight still more precious were-or were reported to be-on their way from that new Southern continent on the opening of which to British trade so many hopes depended. The gold and silver of Peru, the diamonds of Brazil, the untapped wealth of the Plate were believed to be afloat and ready to be exchanged for the produce of our looms and spindles, our ovens and forges.

Nor was that produce likely to fail, for at home the glow of foundries, working night-shifts, lit up the northern sky, and in many a Lancashire or Yorkshire dale, old factories, brought again into service, shook, almost to falling, under the thunder of the power-loom. Mills and mines, potteries and iron-works changed hands from day to day, at ever-rising prices. Men who had never invested before, save in the field at their gate, or the house under their eyes, rushed eagerly to take shares in these ventures, and in thousands of offices and parlors conned their securities, summed up the swelling total of their gains, and rushed to buy and buy again, with a command of credit which seemed to have no bottom.

To provide that credit, the banks widened their operations, increased, on the security of stocks ever rising in value, their over-drafts, issued batch after batch of fresh notes. The most cautious admitted that accommodation must keep step with trade; and the huge strides which this was making, the changed conditions, the wider outlook, the calling in of the new world to augment the wealth of the old-all seemed to demand an advance which promised to be as profitable as it was warranted. To the ordinary eye the sun of prosperity shone in an unclouded sky. Even the experienced, though they scanned the heavens with care, saw nothing to dismay them. Only here and there an old fogey whose memory went back to the crisis of '93, or to the famous Black Monday of twenty years earlier, uttered a note of warning; or some mechanical clerk, of the stamp of Rodd, sunk in a rut of routine, muttered of Accommodation Bills where his employer saw only legitimate trade. But their croakings, feeble at best, were lost in the joyous babble of an Exchange, enriched by commissions, and drunk with success.

It was a new era. It was the age of gold. It was the fruit of conditions long maturing. Men's labor, aided by machinery, was henceforth to be so productive that no man need be poor, all might be rich. Experts, reviewing the progress which had been made and the changes which had been wrought during the last fifty years, said these things; and the vulgar took them up and repeated them. The Bank of England acted as if they were true. The rate of discount was low.

And while all men thus stretched out their hands to catch the golden manna Aldersbury was not idle. The appetite for gain grows by what it feeds upon and Aldersbury appetites had been whetted by early successes in their own field. The woollen mills, sharing in the general prosperity of the last two years, had done well, and more than one mill had changed hands at unheard-of prices. The Valleys were said to be full of money which, or part of it, trickled into the town, improving a trade already brisk. Many had made large gains by outside speculations and had boasted of them. Report had multiplied their profits, others had joined in and they too had gained, and their gains had fired the greed of their neighbors. Some had followed up their first successes. Others prepared to extend their businesses, built new premises, put in new-fangled glass windows, and by their action gave an impetus to subordinate trades, and spread still farther the sense of well-being.

On the top of all this had come the Valleys Railroad Scheme, backed by Ovington's Bank, and offering to everyone a chance of speculating on his door-step: a scheme which while it appealed to local pride, had a specious look of safety, since the railway was to be built under the shareholders' own eyes, across the fields they knew, and by men whom they saw going in and out every day.

There was a great run on it. Some of the gentry, following the old Squire's example, held aloof, but others put their hundreds into it, not much believing in it but finding it an amusing gamble. The townsfolk took it more seriously, with the result that a week after allotment the shares were changing hands at a premium of thirty shillings and there was still a busy market in them. Some who, tempted by the premium, sold at a profit suspected as soon as they had sold that they had thrown away their one chance of wealth, and went into the market and bought again, and so the rise was maintained and even extended. More than once Ovington put in a word of caution, reminding his customers that the first sod was not yet cut, that all the work was to do, that even the Bill was not yet passed. But his warnings were disregarded.

To the majority it seemed a short and easy way to fortune, and they wondered that they had been so simple in the past as to know nothing of it. It was by this way, they now saw, that Ovington had risen to wealth, while they, poor fools, not yet admitted to the secret, had gaped and wondered. And what a secret it was! To rise in the morning richer by fifty pounds than they had gone to bed! To retire at night with another fifty as good as in the bank, or in the old and now despised stocking! The slow increment of trade seemed mean and despicable beside their hourly growing profits, made while men slept or dined, made, as a leading tradesman pithily said, while they wore out their breeches on their chairs! Few troubled themselves about the Bill, or the cutting of the first sod, or considered how long it would be before the railroad was at work! Fewer still asked themselves whether this untried scheme would ever pay. It was enough for them that the shares were ever rising, that men were always to be found to buy them at the current price, and that they themselves were growing richer week by week.

For the directors these were great days! They walked Bride Hill and the Market Place with their heads high and their toes turned out. They talked in loud voices in the streets. They got together in corners and whispered, their brows heavy with the weight of affairs. They were great men. The banker, it is true, did not like the pitch to which the thing was being carried, but it was his business to wear a cheerful face, and he had no misgivings to speak of, though he knew that success was a long way off. And even on him the prosperity of the venture had some effect. Sir Charles and Acherley, too, were not of those who openly exulted; it is possible that the latter sold a few shares, or even a good many shares.

But Purslow and Grounds and Wolley? Who shall describe the importance which sat upon their brows, the dignity of their strut, the gravity of their nod, the mock humility of their reticence? Never did they go in or go out without the consciousness that the eyes of passers-by were upon them! Theirs to make men's fortunes by a hint-and their bearing betrayed that they knew it. Purslow's apron was discarded, no longer did he come out to customers in the street; if he still rubbed one hand over the other it was in self-content. Grounds was dazzled, and wore his Sunday clothes on week-days. Wolley, always a braggart, swaggered and talked, closed his eyes to his commitments and remembered only his gains. He talked of buying another mill, he even entered into a negotiation with that in view. He was convinced that safety lay in daring, and that this was the golden moment, if he would free himself from the net of debt that for years had been weaving itself about him.

He assumed the airs of a rich man, but he was not the worst. The draper, if more honest, had less brains, and success threw him off his balance. "A little country 'ouse," he said, speaking among his familiars. "I'm thinking of buying a little country 'ouse. Two miles from town. A nice distance." He recalled the fact that the founder of Sir Charles's family had been Mayor of Aldersbury in the days of Queen Bess, and had bought the estate with money made in the town. "Who knows," with humility-"my lad's a good lad-what may come of it? After all there is nothing like land."

Grounds shook his head. "I don't know. It doesn't double-"

"Double itself in a month, Grounds? No. But all in good time. All in good time. 'Istory repeats itself. My lad may be a parliament-man, yet. I saw Ovington this morning." Two months before it would have been "Mr. Ovington." "He's sold those Anglo-Mexicans for me and it beats all! A gold-mine! Bought at forty, sold at seventy-two! He wanted me to pay off the bank, but not I, Grounds. When you can borrow at seven and double the money in a month! No, no! Truth is, he's jealous. He gets only seven per cent. and sees me coining! Of course he wants his money. No, no, I said."

Grounds looked doubtful. He was too cautious to operate on borrowed money. "I don't know. After all, enough is as good as a feast, Purslow."

Purslow prodded him playfully. "Ay, but what is enough?" he chuckled. "No. We've been let in and I mean to stay in. There's plenty of fools grubbing along in the old way, but you and me, we are inside now, Grounds, and I mean to stay in. The days of five per cent are gone for you and me. Gone! 'Twarn't by five per cent. that Ovington got where he is."

"My wife wants a silk dress."

"Let 'er 'ave it! And come to me for it! You can afford it!" He strutted off. "Grounds all over!" he muttered. "Close; d-d close! Hasn't the pluck of a mouse-and a year ago he could buy me twice over!" In fancy he saw his Jack a college-man and counsellor, and by and by he passed various parks and halls before his mental vision and saw Jack seated in them, saw him Sir John Purslow, saw him Member for Aldersbury. He held his head high as he marched across the street to his shop, jingling the silver in his fob. Queen Bess, indeed, what were Queen Bess's days to these?

But a man cannot talk big without paying for the luxury. The draper's foreman asked for higher wages; his second hand also. Purslow gave the rise, but, reminded that their pay was in arrear, "No, Jenkins, no," he said. "You must wait. Hang it, man, do you think I've nothing better to do with my money in these days than pay you fellows to the day? 'Ere! 'ere's a pound on account. Let it run! Let it run! All in good time, man. Fancy my credit's good enough?"

And instead of meeting the last acceptance that he'd given to his cloth-merchant, he took it up with another bill at two months-a thing he had never done before. "Credit! Credit's the thing in these days," he said, winking. "Cash? Excuse me! Out of date, man, with them that knows. Credit's the 'orse!"

Arthur Bourdillon wore his honors more modestly, and courted the mean with success. But even he felt the intoxication of this noontide prosperity. At Garth he had doubted, and suffered scruples to weigh with him. But no sooner had he returned to the bank than the atmosphere of money enveloped him, and discerning that it was now in his power to make the best of two worlds, hitherto inconsistent, he plunged with gusto into the business. As secretary of the company he was a person to be courted; as a partner, now recognized, in the bank, he was more. He felt himself capable of all, for had not all succeeded with him? And awake to the fact that the times were abnormal-though he did not deduce from this the lesson he should have drawn-he thanked his stars that he was there to profit by them, and to make the most of them.

He was beyond doubt an asset to the bank. His birth, his manners, his good looks, the infection of his laugh made him a favorite with gentle and simple. And then he worked. He had energy, he was tireless, no task was too hard or too long for him. But he labored under one disadvantage, though he did not know it. He had had experience of the rise, not of the fall. As far back as he had been connected with Ovington's, trade had continued to expand, things had gone well; and by nature he was sanguine and leant towards the bold policy. He threw his weight on that side, and, able and self-confident, he made himself felt. Even Ovington yielded to the thrust of his opinion, was swayed by him, and at times, perhaps, put a little out of his course.

Not that Arthur was without his troubles. Naturally and inevitably a cloud had fallen on the relation, friendly hitherto, between him and Clement. Clement had grown cool to him, and the change was unwelcome, for it was in Arthur's nature to love popularity and to thrive and to bask in the sunshine of it. But it could not be helped. Without breaking eggs one could not make omelettes. Clement blamed him, he knew, feeling, and with reason, that what he had done deserved acknowledgment, and that it lay with Arthur to see that justice was done. And Arthur, for his part, would have gladly acquitted himself of the debt had it consisted with his own interests. But it did not.

Had he suspected the tie between Clement and Josina he might have acted otherwise. He might have foreseen the possibility of Clement's gaining the old man's ear, might have scented danger, and played a more cautious game. But he knew nothing of this. Garth and Clement stood apart in his mind. Clement and Josina were as far as he knew barely acquainted. He was aware, therefore, of no special reason why Clement should desire to stand well at Garth, while he felt sure that his friend was the last person to push a claim, or to thrust himself uninvited on the Squire's gratitude.

Accordingly, and the more as the banker had not himself taken up the quarrel, he put it aside as of no great importance. He shrugged his shoulders and told himself that Clement would come round. The cloud would pass, and its cause be forgotten.

In the meantime he ignored it. He met Clement's hostility with bland unconsciousness, smiled and was pleasant. He was too busy a man to be troubled by trifles. He was not going to be turned from his course by the passing frown of a silly fellow, who could not hold an advantage when he had won it.

Betty was another matter. Betty was behaving ill and showing temper, in league apparently with her brother and sympathizing with him. She was changed from the Betty of old days. He had lost his hold upon her, and though this fell in well enough with the change in his views-or the possible change, for he had not quite made up his mind-it pricked his conceit as much as it surprised him. Moreover, the girl had a sharp tongue and was not above using it, so that more than once he smarted under its lash.

"Fine feathers make fine birds!" she said, as Arthur came bounding into the house one day and all but collided with her. "Only they should be your own, Mr. Daw!"

"Oh, I give your father all the credit," he replied, "only I do some of the work. But you used not to be so critical, Betty."

"No? Well, I'll tell you why if you like."

"Oh, I don't want to know."

"No, I don't think you do!" the girl retorted. "But I'll tell you. I thought your feathers were your own then. Now-I should be uneasy if I were you."

"Why?"

"You might fall among crows and be plucked. I can tell you, you'd be a sorry sight in your own feathers!"

He turned a dusky red. The shaft had gone home, but he tried to hide the wound. "A dull bird, eh?" he said, affecting to misunderstand her. "Well, I thought you liked dull birds. I couldn't be duller than Rodd, and you don't find fault with him."

It was a return shot, aimed only to cover his retreat. But the shot told in a way that surprised him. Betty reddened to her hair, and her eyes snapped.

"At any rate, Mr. Rodd is what he seems!" she cried.

"Oh! oh!"

"He's not hollow!"

"No! Of course not. A most witty, bright, amusing gentleman, the pink of fashion, and-what is it? – the mould of form! Hollow? Oh, no, Betty, very solid, I should say-and stolid!" with a grin. "Not a roaring blade, perhaps-I could hardly call him that, but a sound, substantial, wooden-gentleman! I am sure that your father values him highly as a clerk, and would value him still more highly as-"

"What?"

"I need not put it into words-but it lies with you to qualify him for the post. Rodd? Well, well, times are changed, Betty! But we live and learn."

"You have a good deal to learn," she cried, bristling with anger, "about women!"

He got away then, retiring in good order and pleased that he had not had the worst of it; hoping, too, that he had closed the little spitfire's mouth. But there he found himself mistaken. The young lady was of a high courage, and perhaps had been a little spoiled. Where she once felt contempt she made no bones about showing it, and whenever they met, her frankness, sharpened by a woman's intuition, kept him on tenter-hooks.

"You seem to think very ill of me," he said once. "And yet you trouble yourself a good deal about me."

"You make a mistake!" she replied. "I am not troubling myself about you. I'm thinking of my father."

"Ah! Now you are out of my reach. That's beyond me."

"I wish he were!"

"He knows his own business."

"I hope he does!" she riposted. And though it was the memory of Rodd's warning that supplied the dart, the animosity that sped it had another source. The truth was that her brother had at last taken her into his confidence.

It was not without great unhappiness that he had seen all the hopes which he had built upon the Squire's gratitude come to nothing. He had hoped, and for a time had been even confident; but nothing had happened, no message, no summons had reached him. The events of that night might have been a dream, as far as he was concerned. Yet he could not see his way to blow his own trumpet, or proclaim what he had done. He stood no better than before, and indeed his position was worse.

For as long as the Squire lay bedridden and ill he could not go to him. Even when the report came that he was mending, Clement hesitated. To go to him, basing his claim on what had happened, to go to him and tell the story, as he must, with his own lips-this presented difficulties from which a man with delicate feelings might well shrink!

Meanwhile a veil had fallen between him and Josina. He had sworn that he would not see her again until he could claim her, and he supposed her to be engrossed by her father's illness and tied to his bedside. He even, with a lover's insight, inferred the remorse which she felt and her recoil from a continuance of their relations. Meanwhile he did not know what to do. He did not see any outlet. He was in an impasse with no prospect of delivery. And while he felt that Arthur had behaved ungenerously, while he even suspected that his friend had taken the credit which was his own due, he had no clue to his motives, or his schemes.

It was Betty who first saw into the dark place. For one day, longing as lovers long for a confidante, he had told her all, from the first meeting with Josina to his final parting from the girl by the brook, and his brief and unfortunate interview with her father on the road. The romance charmed Betty, the audacity of it dazzled her; for, a woman, she perceived more clearly than Clement the gulf between the town and the country, the new and the old. She listened to his tale with sighs and tears and little endearments, and led him on from one thing to another. She could not hear too much of a story that hardly a woman alive could have heard with indifference. She praised Josina to the top of his bent, and if she could not give him much hope, she gave sympathy.

And, shrewdly, in her own mind she put things together. "Arthur is off with the old love," she thought, "and on with the new." He had changed sides, and that explained many things. So, with hardly any premises, she jumped to a conclusion so nearly correct that, could Arthur have read her mind, he would have winced even more than he did under the thrusts of her satire.

But she did not tell Clement. Her suspicions were not founded on reason, and they would only alarm him, and he was gloomy enough as it was. Instead, she cheered him and bade him be patient. Something might turn up, and in no case could much be done until the Squire was well enough to leave his room.

At bottom she was not hopeful. She saw arrayed between Clement and his love a host of difficulties, apart from Arthur's machinations. The pride of class, the old man's obstinacy, the young girl's timidity, Josina's wealth-these were obstacles hard to surmount. And Arthur was on the spot ready to raise new barriers, should these be overcome.

CHAPTER XX

The money for Arthur's share in the bank had been paid over in the early part of June, but the transaction had not gone through with the smoothness which he had anticipated. He had found himself up against a thing which he had not taken into his reckoning; the jealousy with which the old and the rich are apt to guard the secret of their wealth, a jealousy in the Squire's case aggravated by his blindness. Arthur had felt the check and was forced to own, with some alarm, that high as he stood in favor, a little thing might upset him.

He had written to the brokers, requesting them to sell sufficient India Stock to bring in a sum of six thousand pounds. They had replied that they could not carry out the order unless they had the particulars of the Stock and of the amount standing in the Squire's name at the India House. But when Arthur took the letter to the Squire's room and read it to him, the outcome surprised him. The old man sat up in bed and confounded him by the vigor of his answer. "Want to know how much I hold?" he cried. "D-n their impudence! Then they'll not know! Want to look at my books and see what I'm worth! What next? What is it to them what I hold? You bid 'em sell-" beating the counterpane with his stick-"you bid 'em sell two thousand two hundred pounds-at two hundred and seventy-five, that's near the mark! That's all they've got to do, the impudent puppies! Do you write, d'you hear, and tell 'em to do it!"

Arthur cursed the old man's unreasonableness, and wondered what he was to do. If there was going to be all this difficulty about the particulars, what about the certificates? How was he to get them? For the Squire as he sat erect, thrusting forward his bandaged head, and clutching the stick that lay beside him, grew almost threatening. He was in arms in defence of his moneybags and his secrets, and his nephew saw that it would take a bolder man than himself to cross him.

He hesitated. "I am afraid, sir," he ventured at last, "there's a difficulty here that I had not foreseen. The certificates-"

"They don't want the certificates-yet! Don't they say so? Plain as a pikestaff!"

"Perhaps, sir," doubtfully. "If Welshes have got them-"

"Welshes have not got them!"

Arthur did not know what to say to that. At last, in a tone as reasonable as he could compass, "I am afraid the difficulty is, sir," he said, "that they cannot make out a transfer until they have the particulars; which I fancy we can only get from the certificates."

"Then they may go to blazes!" the Squire replied, and he lay down with his face to the wall. Not he! There might be officials at the India House who knew this or that and Welshes, who had acted for him in making one purchase or another, might know a part. But to no living man had he ever entrusted the secret of his fortune, or the result of those long years of stinting and sparing and saving that had cleared the mortgaged estate, and had been continued because habit was strong and age is penurious. No, to no man living! That was his secret while the breath was in him. Afterwards-but he was not going to give it up yet.

Presently he bade Arthur go, and Arthur went, troubled in his mind, and much less assured of his position than he had been an hour before. He thanked his stars that he had not given way to the temptation to cut loose from the bank. It would never have done, he saw that now. And how was he going to extract his money, his six thousand, from this unreasonable old dotard-for so he styled him in his wrath?

However, the riddle solved itself before many hours had passed.

That afternoon he was absent, and Jos, about whom Miss Peacock was growing anxious, had gone out to take the air. The butler, left on guard, occupied himself with laying the table in the dining-room, where, if the Squire tapped the floor, he could hear him. He heard no summons, but presently as he went about his work he heard someone moving upstairs and he pricked up his ears. Surely the Squire was not getting out of bed? Weak and blind as he was-but again he heard heavy footsteps, and, thoroughly alarmed, the man lost no time. He hurried up the stairs, and entered his master's room. The Squire was out of bed. He was on his feet, clinging to the post at the foot of the bed, and feeling helplessly about him with the other hand.

"Lord, ha' mercy!" Calamy cried, eying the gaunt figure with dismay. He hastened forward to support it.

The Squire collapsed on the bed as soon as he was touched. "I canna do it," he groaned, "I canna do it. It's going round wi' me. Who is it?"

"Calamy, sir," the butler answered, and added bluntly, "If you want to get into your coffin, master, you're going the right way to do it!"

"Anyway, I canna do it," the Squire repeated, and remained motionless for a moment. "I couldn't manage the stairs if 'twere ever so."

"You'd manage 'em one way. You'd fall down 'em. You get to bed, sir. You get to bed. There, I'll heave you up."

"I'm weaker than I thought," the Squire muttered. He suffered himself to be put into bed.

"You've lost blood, sir, that's what it is," the butler said. "And at your age it's not to be replaced in a week, nor a fortnight. You lie still, sir. Maybe in a month you'll be tramping the stairs. But blindfold-it's the Lord's mercy as you didn't fall and only stop in Kingdom Come! For if fall you did, I don't know where else you'd stop."

"I'm afraid so. Anyway I canna do it!"

"Only feet foremost."

The Squire sighed and turned himself to the wall, perhaps to hide the tear that helplessness forced from old eyes. He couldn't do it, and he must put up with the consequences. He could not any longer be sufficient to himself. It was a sad thought, but apparently he made up his mind to it, for twenty-four hours later, when Jos and Arthur were with him, he sent the girl away. When she had gone he sought under the pillow for his keys, and after handling them for a time, "Is the door shut? And no one here but you?"

"We are quite alone, sir."

"No one within hearing, lad?"

"Not a soul, sir."

"It's not that I mistrust the wench," the Squire muttered. "She's a Griffin and a good girl, a good girl. But she's a tongue like other women." By this time he had found what he wanted, and holding the bunch by one of the keys he offered it to Arthur. "That's the key. Now you listen to me. Go down to the dining-room, and don't you do anything till you've locked the door and seen there's no one at the windows. The panel, right side of the fireplace-are you minding me? Ay? Well, pass your hand down the moulding next the hearth and you'll feel a crack across it, and, an inch below, another. They're so small you as good as can't see them, when you know they're there. Twist that bit, top part to the right, and you'll see a key-hole. Turn the key and pull, and the panel comes open, and you'll see a cupboard door behind it. Same key unlocks it. Are you minding me?"

"I am, sir, I quite understand."

"Well, on the middle shelf-you'll see a box. The key to that box is the next on the bunch. Open it and you will have the India Stock Certificates." The Squire sighed and for a moment was silent. "There's one for two thousand two hundred, which will do it. Bring it here. You needn't," drily, "go routing among the others, once you've found it. Then lock up, and slip the moulding into place. But be sure, lad, before you do aught, that the door is locked."

"I will be careful," Arthur assured him. "I quite understand, sir."

"It's not that I distrust Jos," the Squire repeated-as if he defended himself against an accusation. "But tell a secret to a woman, and you tell it to the parish."

"Shall I do it now, sir?"

"Ay. And bring back the keys. Don't let 'em out of your hands."

Arthur went downstairs, and as he descended the shallow steps he smiled. Men, even the sharpest of men, were easy to manage if you had patience.

The afternoon was drawing in. The corners in the hall were growing dim. The sky seen through the open door was pale green. The air came in from the garden, sweet but chilly, laden with the scent of lilac and gilly flowers. A single rook cawed. The peace of the country was upon all. He could hear his mother and Josina talking somewhere within the house.

He slipped into the dining-room and, locking himself in, looked round him. The paint on the panelled walls was faded, blistered in places by the sun, or soiled where elbows had rubbed it or the butler's tray standing against it through long years, had marked it. The panels were large, dating from Dutch William or Anne, of chestnut and set in heavy mouldings.

Arthur glanced at the windows to make sure that he was unseen, then he stepped to the hearth and felt for and found the bit of moulding, in front of which, though he had forgotten to mention it, the Squire had hung an old almanac. Arthur twisted the upper end to the right, uncovered the key-hole, and within a minute had the inner door open.

It masked a cupboard, contrived in the thickness of the chimney-breast, perhaps at the time when the open shaft had been closed and a smaller fireplace had been inserted. Inside, two shelves formed three receptacles. In the uppermost were parcels of old letters secured with dusty and faded ribands, and piled at random one on another-the relics of the love-letters or law-letters of past generations. In the lowest compartment were bigger bundles secured with straps, which Arthur judged to contain leases and farm agreements, and the like. Some were of late date-he took up one or two bundles and looked at the endorsements-none of them appeared to be very old.

The middle space displayed a row of old ledgers and farm books, and standing alone before them a small iron box. It was with this no doubt that his business lay and he tried his key in it. The key fitted. He opened the box.

It contained three certificates and, though he had been bidden not to rout among them, he felt it his duty to ascertain-for he would probably have to inform the brokers-what was the total of the Squire's holding. They all three represented India Stock, and Arthur's eyes glistened as he noted the amount and figured up the value in his mind. One, as the Squire had said, was for two thousand two hundred, the other two were for two thousand five hundred each. Arthur calculated that at the price of the day they were worth little short of twenty thousand pounds. He withdrew the smallest certificate and locked the box. He had done his errand, but as he went about to close the cupboard-door he paused. He had seen old letters, and modern agreements and the like. But no old deeds. Where did the Squire keep the title deeds of Garth? They were not here.

At Welshes? Perhaps.

Arthur glanced at the other side of the fireplace. There, precisely corresponding with the almanac which he had removed, hung an old-fashioned silver sconce with a flat back serving for a reflector. A pair of snuffers flanked the candle-holder on one side, an extinguisher on the other. It was a piece which Arthur had admired for its age but had never seen in use. He stared at it, and as he closed the cupboard and panel by which he stood, and replaced the bit of moulding, he hesitated. With the keys in his hand he cast a glance at the windows, then he crossed the hearth, took down the sconce, and ran his fingers down the moulding.

Yes, here were the cracks, barely to be discovered by the fingers and not at all by the eye. The bit of moulding, when he twisted it, moved stiffly, but it moved. With another glance over his shoulder he inserted the key, then he listened. All was quiet in the house. Outside, a wood-pigeon coo'd in a neighboring tree while a solitary rook uttered a shrill "Bah-doo! Bah-doo!" not the common caw, but a cry that he had often heard.

Something in the stealthiness of his movements and the stillness of the house, whispered a warning to him, and he paused, his arm raised. Yet-why not? What could come of it? Knowledge was always useful, and if his business had lain with this second cupboard his uncle would have sent him to it as freely as to the other. With an effort he shook off his scruples, and to satisfy himself that he was doing no wrong he laughed. He turned the key and swung back the panel. He unlocked and opened the inner door.

Here there were but two divisions. The lower one was piled high with plate; with a part, of a dinner-service, cups, bowls, candlesticks, wine-jugs, salt-cellers-a collection that, tarnished and dull as the pieces were, made Arthur's mouth water. Among them lay half a dozen leather cases which he fancied held jewellery, and more than a dozen bulky parcels-spoons and forks and the like. They had not been disturbed, it was plain, for years, and he dared not touch them.

On the shelf were two iron boxes, and arrayed before them four parcels of deeds, old and discolored, with ends of green riband hanging from them, and here and there a great seal-one seal was of lead. They gave out a damp, sour smell, the odor of slowly decaying sheepskin. Three of the parcels related to farms which the Squire had bought within Arthur's memory. The fourth and largest bundle, in a coarse wrapper, neatly bound about with straps, had a label attached to it, "The Title Deeds of the Garth Estate," and thrust under one of the straps was a folded slip of parchment. Arthur opened this and saw that it was a memorandum, dated fifty years before, of the deposit of the deeds to secure the repayment of thirty-eight thousand pounds and interest. Below were receipts for instalments repaid at intervals of years, and opposite the last receipt appeared, in the Squire's hand "Cancelled and deeds returned-Thank God for His mercies!"

Arthur felt a thrill of sympathy as he read the words. He returned the slip to its place and softly closed the door. He swung back the panel and secured it. He replaced the silver sconce.

But though two inches of wood now intervened, he retained a vision of the bundle of deeds. It was not large, he could have carried it under his arm. But it meant, that little parcel, power, wealth, position, the Garth Estate! It spoke to Arthur the banker-for whom wealth lay in broad acres themselves, the farms and water-mills, the pieces of paper, not in gold and silver-as eloquently as the coverts and dingles, the wide-flung hill-side that he loved, spoke to the Squire. For the first time Arthur coveted Garth, valuing it not as the Squire did for what it was, hill and dale spread under heaven, but for what it was worth, for what might be made of it, for the uses to which it might be put.

"He has added to it. One could raise fifty thousand on it," he thought. And with fifty thousand what could one not do? With fifty thousand pounds, free money, added to the bank's resources, what might not be done? It was a golden vision that he saw, as he stood in the evening stillness with the scent of roses stealing into the room, and the wood-pigeon cooing softly in the tree outside. Ay, what might he not do!

But the Squire might be growing suspicious. He roused himself, saw that all was as he had found it, and unlocking the door, he went upstairs.

"You've been a long time about it, young man," the Squire grumbled. "What's amiss?"

But Arthur was ready with his answer. "You told me to go about it quietly, sir. So I waited until the coast was clear. It's a capital hiding-place. It's not to be found in a minute even when you know where it is."

"Ay, ay. It would take a clever rogue to find it," complacently.

"I suppose it's old, sir?"

"My grandfather put it in when the Scots were at Derby. And, mark ye, no one knows of it but Frederick Welsh-and now you. D'you be careful and keep your mouth shut, lad. You ha' got the certificate?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, go about the business and get it done. And now do you send Jos to me."

Arthur made a mental note that the old man was changing at last-was losing that hard grip on all about him which he had maintained for half a century; and he was confirmed in this idea by the ease with which the India Stock transaction presently went through. The brokers showed themselves unusually complaisant. They wrote that, as the matter was personal to him, they were anxious that nothing should go wrong; and, as his customer was blind, they were forwarding with the transfer on which the particulars had been inserted a duplicate in blank, in order that if the former were spoiled in the execution delay might be avoided. This was irregular, but if the duplicate were not needed, it could be returned and no harm done.

Arthur thought this polite of them, and was flattered; he felt that he was a client of value. But as it turned out the duplicate was not needed; the Squire made nothing of the formality. His hand once directed to the proper place, he signed his name boldly and plainly-as he did most things; and Arthur and Jos added their signatures as witnesses. Ten days later the money was received, and five-sixths of it was paid over to the bank. The duplicate transfer, overlooked at the moment, lay on the Squire's bureau until it did not seem worth while to return it. Then Arthur, tired of coming upon it every day, thrust it out of sight in a pigeonhole.

He had other things to think of, indeed, for he was in high feather in these days, while the summer sun climbed slowly to the zenith and began again to sink. He had two-fold interests. After a long day spent in the bank he would ride out of town in the cool of the evening, and passing down the winding streets under the gables of the old black and white houses, he would cross the West Bridge. Bucketing his horse up the rise that led from the river, he would leave the town behind and see before him the road running straight and dusty towards the sunset-glow, which still shone above the Welsh hills. From the fields on either side came the sharp sound of the scythe-stone, the laughter of hay-makers, the call of the wagoner to his team, the creaking of the laden wheels over the turf. Partridges dusting themselves in the road scuttled out of his way and presently took wing; rabbits watched him from the covert-edge. The corncrake's persistent note spoke rather of the hot hours that were past than of the evening air that cooled his cheek. An aged simpleton in a smocked frock, the clown of the country-side, danced a jig before an ale-house; a stray bullock gazed patiently at him from a pound. The country-side lay quiet about him, and despite himself he owned the charm of peace, the fall of night, the end of labor.

But his thoughts still dwelt on the day's work. There had been a discussion over Wolley's account. Wolley had been behaving ill. Ignoring the claim of the bank he had assigned a number of his railway shares to meet a bill discounted elsewhere. The natural course would have been to insist on the lien and to retain the shares. But the consequences, as Ovington saw, might be serious. The step might not only involve the bank in a loss, which he still hoped to avoid, but it might imply taking over the mill-and it is not the business of bankers to run mills. Arthur, on the other hand, who did not like the man, would have cut the knot and sent him to the devil.

In the end Ovington had decided against Arthur. "We must be careful," the banker had said. "Credit is like a house of cards. You take one card away, you do not know how many may fall."

"But if we don't teach him a lesson now?"

"Quite true, lad. But-well, I will see him. If, as Rodd thinks, he is drawing bills on men of straw, whose acceptances are worthless-"

"That would be the devil!"

"There will be an end of him-but not of him only. We must go warily, lad. To throw him down now-" the banker shook his head. "No, we will give him one more chance. I will talk to him."

"I should not have the patience."

"That is one of the things you have to learn."

Arthur reviewed the conversation as he rode, and retained his own opinion. He thought Ovington too apprehensive. He would himself have played a bolder game and cut Wolley and his losses, if losses there must be. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he dismissed the matter and allowed his thoughts to go before him to Garth, to the old man, to his favor, and the path it opened to Josina. Yes, Josina. He was not doing much there, but there was no hurry, and despite the charms of Garth he had not quite made up his mind. When he did, he anticipated no difficulty.

Still something was due to her, were it only as a matter of form; and she was pale and sweet and appealing. A little love-making would not be unpleasant these summer evenings, though he had so far held off, haunted by a foolish hankering after Betty: Betty with her sparkle and color, her wit and high spirit, ay, and her very temper, mutinous little rebel as she was-her temper which, manlike, he longed to tame.

Ten minutes later saw him in the Squire's room, entertaining him with scraps of county gossip and the latest news from town. Into the dull room, with its drab hanging and shadowy portraits, where the old man sat by his fireless grate, he came like a gleam of sunshine, his laugh lighting up the dim places, his voice expelling the tedium of the long day. He brought with him the new Quarterly, or the last Morning Post. He had news of what Sir Harry had lost at Goodwood, of Mytton's last scrape, of the poaching affray at my lord's. He had a joke for Josina and a teasing word for Miss Peacock-who idolized him.

And he had tact. He could listen as well as talk. He heard with interest who had called to ask after the Squire, whose landau and outriders had turned on the narrow sweep, and whose curricle; what humbler visitors had left their respects at the stables or the backdoor, and what was Calamy's last scrap of dolefulness.

He was the universal favorite. He had taken the length of the Squire's foot; it had been an easier matter than he had anticipated. But even in his cup there was a sour drop. He had his occasional misgivings and now and then he suffered a shock. One day it was, "What about your coat, lad?"

"My coat?" Arthur stared at the old man. He did not understand.

"Ay. You thought that I'd forgotten it. But I'm not that shaken. What about it?"

Now, between the darkness of the night and the confusion, Arthur had not noticed the damage done to Clement's overcoat. Consequently he could make nothing of the Squire's words and he tried to pass the matter off. "Oh, it's all right, sir," he said. He waited for something to enlighten him.

"Can you wear it?"

"Oh yes."

"The deuce you can!" The Squire was surprised. "Then all I can say is, you've found a d-d good cleaner, lad. If you got that blood off-but as you did, all's well. I was afeared I'd owe you a new coat, my boy. I'd not forgotten it, but I knew that you'd not be wearing it this weather, and I thought in another week or two I'd be getting this bandage off. Then I'd see how it was, and what we could do with it."

Arthur understood then, and a thrill of alarm ran through him. What if the Squire began-but no, the danger was over, and as quickly as possible he rid himself of fear. He was not a fool to start at shadows. Things were going so well with him that he had no mind to spare for trifles, and no time to look aside.

CHAPTER XXI

July had passed into August. Who was it who whispered the first word of doubt? Of misgiving? Where was felt the first shiver of distrust? What lips first let drop the fatal syllables, a fall? Who in the secrecy of some bank-parlor or some discounter's office, sitting at the centre of the spider's web of credit, felt a single filament, stretched it may be across half a world, shiver, and relax? And, refusing to draw the unwelcome inference, sceptical of danger, felt perhaps a second shock, ever so slight and ever so distant; and then, reading the message aright, began to narrow his commitments, to draw in his resources, to call in his money, to turn into gold his paper wealth? And so from that dark office or parlor in Fenchurch Street or Change Alley, set in motion, obscurely, imperceptibly at first, the mighty impetus that was to reach to such tremendous ends?

Who? Probably no one knew then, and certainly no one can say now. But it is certain that in the late summer of that year, while the Squire sat blinded in his drab-hued room at Garth, and Ovington's hummed with business, and Arthur rode gaily to and fro between the two, the thing happened. Some one, some bank, perhaps some great speculator with irons in many fires and many lands, took fright and acted on his fears-but silently, stealthily, as is the manner of such. Or it may have been a manufacturer on a great scale who looked abroad and fancied that he saw, though still a long way off, that bugbear of manufacturers, a glut.

At any rate there came a check, unmarked by the vast majority, but of which a whisper began to pass round the inner recesses of Lombard Street-a fall, such as there had been a few months earlier, but which then had been speedily made good. Aldersbury lay far beyond the warning, or if a hint of it reached Ovington, it did not go beyond him. He did not pass it on, even to Arthur, much less did it reach others. Sir Charles, secluded within his park walls, was not in the way of hearing such things, and Acherley and his like were busy with preparations for autumn sport, getting out their guns and seeing that their pink coats were aired and their mahogany tops were brought to the right color. Wolley had his own troubles, and dealt with them after his own reckless fashion, which was to retire one bill by another; he found it all he could do to provide for to-day, without thinking what to-morrow might bring forth, should his woollen goods become unsaleable, or his bills fail to find discounters. And the multitude, Grounds and Purslow and their followers, were happy, secure in their ignorance, foreseeing no evil.

This was the state of things at Aldersbury, as summer passed into autumn. Men still added up their investments, and reckoned the amount of their fortunes and chuckled over what they had made, and added to the sum what they were sure of making, when the shares of this mine or that canal company rose another five or ten points. Their wealth on paper was still, to them, solid, abiding wealth, to be garnered and laid by and enjoyed when it pleased them. And trade seemed still to flourish, though not quite so briskly. There was still a demand for goods though not quite so urgent a demand-and the price stuck a little. The railway shares still stood at the high premium to which they had risen, though for the moment they did not seem to be inclined to go higher.

But about the end of September-perhaps some one in London or Birmingham or Liverpool had twitched the filament which connected it with Aldersbury-Ovington called Arthur back as he was leaving the parlor at the close of the day's business. "Wait a moment," he said, "I want you. I have been thinking things over, lad, and I am not quite comfortable about them."

"Is it Wolley?" Wolley's case had been before them that morning and sharp things had been said about his trading methods.

"No, it's not Wolley." Having got so far Ovington paused, and Arthur noticed that his face was grave. "No, though Wolley is a part of it. I am always uneasy about him. But-"

"What is it, sir?"

"It is the general situation, lad. I don't like it. I've an impression that things have gone farther than they should. There is an amount of inflation that, if things go smoothly, will be gradually reduced and no harm done. But we have a large sum of money out" – he touched the pile of papers before him-"and I should like to see it lessened. I hardly know why, but I do not feel that the position is healthy."

"But our money is well covered."

"As things are."

"And we are as solvent, sir, as-"

"As need be, with the ordinary time to meet the calls that may be made upon us. But in the event of a sudden fall, of one big failure leading to another-in the event of a sudden rush to present our notes?"

"Even then, sir, we are well secured. We should have no difficulty in finding accommodation."

"In ordinary circumstances, no-and if we alone needed it. We could go to A. or B. or C, and there would be no difficulty. We have the money's worth and a good margin. But if A. and B. and C. were also short, what then, lad?"

Arthur felt something approaching contempt. The banker was inventing bogies, imagining dangers, dreaming of difficulties where none existed. He saw him in a new light, and discovered him to be timorous. "But that state of things is not likely to occur," he objected.

"Perhaps not, but if it did?"

"Have you had any hint?"

"No. But I see that iron is down-since Saturday. And the Manchester market was flat yesterday."

"Things that have happened before," Arthur said. "I think, sir, it is really Wolley's affair that is troubling you."

"If it ended with Wolley it would be a small matter. No, I am not thinking of that." He looked before him and drummed upon the table with his fingers. "But the positions calls for-caution. We must go no farther. We must be careful how we grant accommodation no matter who applies for it. We must raise our reserve. See, if you please, that we do not discount a single bill without recourse to me-though, of course, you will let nothing be noticed on the other side of the counter."

"Very good," Arthur said. But he thought that the other's caution was running away with him. The sky seemed clear to him-he could discern no sign of a storm, and he did not reflect that, as he had never been present at a storm, the signs might escape him. "Very good," he said, "I'll tell Rodd. I am sure it will please him," and with that tiny sting, he went out.

The conversation had been held behind closed doors, yet it had its effect. A chill seemed to fall upon the bank. The air became less genial. Ovington's face grew both keen and watchful. Arthur, perplexed and puzzled, was more brusque, his speech shorter. Rodd's face reflected his superiors' gravity. Only Clement, going about his branch of the work with his usual stolid indifference, perceived no change in the temperature, and, depressed before, was only a degree nearer to the mean level.

Poor Clement! There are situations in which it is hard to play the hero, and he found himself in one of them. He had vowed that there should be no more meetings and no more love-making until he had faced and conquered his dragon. But meanwhile the dragon lay sick and blind at the bottom of its den, guarded by its very weakness from attack, while every hour and every day that saw nothing done seemed to remove Clement farther from his mistress, seemed to set a greater distance between them, seemed to blacken his face in her eyes.

Yet what could he do? How could he wrest himself from the inaction-it must seem to her the ignoble inaction-which pressed upon him? She watched-he pictured her watching from her tower, or more precisely from the terraced garden at Garth, for the deliverance which did not come, for the knight whose trumpet never sounded! She watched, while he, weak and shiftless, hung back in uncertainty, the inefficient he had ever been!

Ay, that he had ever been! It was that which hurt him. It was the sense of that which wasted his spirits as sorely as the impatience, the fever, of thwarted love. The spell of vigor which had for a few days lifted him out of himself, and given him the force to meet and to impress his fellows, had not only failed to win any real advantage, but failing, it had left him less self-reliant than before. For he saw now where he had failed. He saw that with the winning-card in his hand he had allowed himself to be defeated by Arthur, and to be jockeyed out of all the fruits of his labor, simply because he had lacked the moral courage, the hardness of fibre, the stiffness to stand by his own!

And he feared that it would ever be so. Arthur had got the better of him, and the knowledge depressed him to the ground. He was not a man. He was a weakling, a dreamer, good for neither one thing nor another! As useless outside the bank as at his desk, below and not above the daily tasks that he secretly despised.

Yet what could he do? What was it in his power to do? He asked himself that question a hundred times. He could not force himself on the Squire, ill and confined to his bed as he was-and be sure, Arthur did not make the best of his uncle's condition. He could only wait, though to wait was intolerable. He could only wait, while poor Josina first doubted, then despaired! Wait while first hope, and then faith, and in the end love died in her breast! Wait, till she thought herself abandoned!

Of course in his impatience and his humility Clement exaggerated both the delay and its results. The days seemed weeks to him, the weeks months. He fancied it a year since he had seen Josina. He did not consider that she was no stranger to his difficulties, nor reflect that though his silence might try her, and his absence cause her unhappiness, she might still approve both the one and the other. As a fact, the lesson which he had taught her at their last meeting had been driven home by the remorse that had tortured her on that dreadful night; and lonely hours in the sick room, much watching, and many a thought of what might have been, had strengthened the impression.

But Clement did not know this. He pictured the girl as losing all faith in him, and as the weeks ran on, the time came when he could bear the delay no longer, when he felt that he must either do something, or write himself down a coward. So one day, after hearing in the town that the Squire was able to leave his room, he wrote to Josina. He told her that he should call on the morrow and see her father.

And on the morrow he rode over, blind for once to the changes of nature, of landscape and cloudscape that surrounded him. But he never reached the house, for at the little bridge at the foot of the drive Josina met him, and eager as he had been to see his sweetheart and to hear her voice, he was checked by the change in her. It was a change which went deeper than mere physical alteration, though that, too, was there. The girl was paler, finer, more spiritual. Trouble and anxiety had laid their mark on her. He had left her girl, he found her woman. A new look, a look of purpose, of decision, gave another cast to her features.

She was the first to speak, and her words bore out the change in her. "You must come no farther, Clement," she said. And then as their hands met and their eyes, the color flamed in her cheeks, her head drooped flowerlike, she was for an instant the old Josina, the girl he had wooed by the brook, who had many a time fallen on his breast. But for a moment only. Then, "You cannot see him yet," she announced. "Not yet, for a long time, Clem. I met you here that I might stop you, and that there might be no misunderstanding-and no more secrets."

And this she had certainly secured, for the place which she had chosen for their meeting was overlooked, though at a distance, by the doorway of the house, and by all the walks about it.

But he was not to be so put off. "I must see him," he said, and he told himself that he must not be moved by her pleadings. It was natural that she should fear, but he must not fear-and indeed he had passed beyond fear. "No, dear," as she began to protest, "you must let me judge of this." He held her hands firmly as he looked down at her. "I have suffered enough, I have suffered as much as I can bear. I have had no sight of you and no word of you for months, and I cannot endure this longer. Every hour of every day I have felt myself a coward, a deserter, a do-nothing! I have had to bear this, and I have borne it. But now-now that your father is downstairs-"

"You can still do nothing," she said. "Believe, believe me," earnestly, "you can do nothing. Dear Clement," and the tenderness which she strove to suppress betrayed itself in her tone, "you must be guided by me, you must indeed. I am with my father, and I know, I know that he cannot bear it now. I know that it would be cruel to tell him now. He is blind. Blind, Clement! And he trusts me, he has to trust me. To tell him now would be to destroy his faith in me, to shock him and to frighten him-irreparably. You must go back now-now at once."

"What?" he cried. "And do nothing? And lose you?" The pathos of her appeal had passed him by, and only his love and his jealousy spoke.

"No," she answered soberly, "you will not lose me, if you have patience."

"But have you patience?"

"I must have."

"And I am to do nothing?" He spoke with energy, almost with anger. "To go on doing nothing? I am to stand by and-and play the coward still-go on playing it?"

Her face quivered, for he hurt her. He was selfish, he was cruel; yet she understood, and loved him for his cruelty. But she answered him firmly. "Nothing until I send for you," she said. "You do not think, Clem. He is blind! He is dependent on me for everything. If I tell him in his weakness that I have deceived him, he will lose faith in me, he will distrust me, he will distrust everyone. He will be alone in his darkness."

It began to come home to him. "Blind?" he repeated.

"Yes."

"But for good? Do you mean-quite blind?"

"Ah, I don't know!" she cried, unable to control her voice. "I don't know. Dr. Farmer does not know, the physician who came from Birmingham to see him does not know. They say that they have hopes-and I don't know! But I fear."

He was silent then, touched with pity, feeling at length the pathos of it, feeling it almost as she felt it. But after a pause, during which she stood watching his face, "And if he does not recover his sight?"

"God forbid!"

"I say God forbid too, with all my heart. Still, if he does not-what then? When may I-"

"When the time comes," she answered, "and of that I must be the judge. Yes, Clement," with resolution. "I must be the judge, for I alone know how he is, and I alone can choose the occasion."

The delay was very bitter to him. He had ridden out determined to put. his fate to the test, to let nothing stand between him and his love, to over-ride excuses; and he could not in a moment make up his mind to be thwarted.

"And I must wait? I must go on waiting? Eating my heart out-doing nothing?"

"There is no other way. Indeed, indeed there is not."

"But it is too much. It is too much, Jos, that you ask!"

"Then, Clement-"

"Well?"

"You must give me up." She spoke firmly but her lips quivered, and there were tears in her eyes.

He was silent. At last, "Do you wish me to do that?" he said.

She looked at him for answer, and his doubts, if he had doubted her, his distrust, if it had been possible for him to distrust her, vanished. His heart melted. They were a very simple pair of lovers, moved by simple impulses.

"Forgive me, oh, forgive me, dear!" he cried. "But mine is a hard task, a hard task. You do not know what it is to wait, to wait and to do nothing!"

"Do I not?" Her eyes were swimming. "Is it not that which I am doing every day, Clem? But I have faith in you, and I believe in you. I believe that all will come right in the end. If you trust me, as I trust you, and have to trust you-"

"I will, I will," he cried, repentant, remorseful, recognizing in her a new decision, a new sweetheart, and doing homage to the strength that trial and suffering had given her. "I will trust you, trust you-and wait!"

Her eyes thanked him, and her hands; and after this there was little more to be said. She was anxious that he should go, and they parted. He rode back to Aldersbury, thinking less of himself and more of her, and something too of the old man, who, blind and shorn of his strength, had now to lean on women, and suspicious by habit must now trust others, whether he would or no. Clement had imagination, and by its light he saw the pathos of the Squire's position; of his helplessness in the midst of the great possessions he had gathered, and the acres that he had added, acre to acre. He who had loved to look on hill and covert and know them his own, to whom every copse and hedgerow was a friend, who had watched his marches so jealously and known the rotation of every field, must now fume and fret, thinking them neglected, suspecting waste, doubting everyone, lacking but a little of doubting even his daughter.

"Poor chap!" he muttered, "poor old chap!" He was sorry for the Squire, but he was even more sorry for himself. Any other, he felt, would have surmounted the obstacles that stopped him, or by one road or another would have gone round them. But he was no good, he was useless. Even his sweetheart-this in a little spirit of bitterness-took the upper hand and guided him and imposed her will on him. He was nothing.

In the bank he grew more taciturn, doing his business with less spirit than before, suspecting Arthur and avoiding speech with him, meeting his careless smile with a stolid face. His father, Rodd too, deemed him jealous of the new partner, and his father, growing in these days a little sharp in temper, spoke to him about it.

"You took no interest in the business," he said, "and I had to find some one who would take an interest and be of use to me. Now you are making difficulties and causing unpleasantness. You are behaving ill, Clement."

But Clement only shrugged his shoulders. He had become indifferent. He had his own burden to bear.

CHAPTER XXII

Arthur, on the other hand, felt that things were going well with him. A few months earlier he had decided that a partnership in Ovington's would be cheaply bought at the cost of a rupture with his uncle. Now he had the partnership, he could look forward to the wealth and importance which it would bring-and he had not to pay the price. On the contrary, his views now took in all that he had been prepared to resign, as well as all that he had hoped to gain. They took in Garth, and he saw himself figuring not only as the financier whose operations covered many fields, and whose riches were ever increasing, but as the landed Squire, the man of family, whose birth and acres must give him a position in society which no mere wealth could confer. The unlucky night which had cost the old man so much, had been for Arthur the birth-night of fortune. He could date from it a favor, proof, as he now believed, against chance and change, a favor upon which it seemed unlikely that he could ever overdraw.

For since his easy victory on the question of the India Stock, he had become convinced that the Squire was failing. The old man, once so formidable, was changed; he had grown, if not weak, yet dependent. And it could hardly be otherwise, Arthur reflected. The loss of sight was a paralyzing deprivation, and it had fallen on the owner of Garth at a time of life when any shock must sap the strength and lower the vitality. For a while his will had reacted, he had seemed to bear up against the blow, but age will be served, and of late he had grown more silent and apathetic. Arthur had read the signs and drawn the conclusion, and was now sure that, blind and shaken, the old man would never again be the man he had been, or assert himself against an influence which a subtler brain would know how to weave about him.

Arthur was thinking of this as he rode into town one morning in November, his back turned to the hills and the romance of them, his face to the plain. It was early in the month. St. Luke's summer, prolonged that year, had come to an end a day or two before, and the air was raw, the outlook sombre. Under a canopy of grey mist, the thinning hedge-rows and dripping woods showed dark against clear blue distances. But in the warmth of his thoughts the rider was proof against weather, and when he came to the sedgy spot, never more dreary to the view than to-day, which Thomas had chosen for his attack on the Squire, he smiled. That little patch of ground had done much for him, but at a price, of course-for there he had lost a friend, a good easy friend in Clement. And Betty-Betty, whose coolness had caused him more than one honest pang-he had no doubt that there had come a change in her, too, from that date.

But one had to pay a price for everything, and these were but small spots on the sun of his success. Soon he had put the thought of them from him, and, abreast of the first houses of the town, began to employ his mind on the work of the day-revolving this and that, matters outside routine which would demand his attention. He knew what was likely to arise.

Rarely in these days did he enter Aldersbury without a feeling of elation. The very air of the town inspired him. The life of the streets, the movement of the markets, the sight of the shopkeepers at their doors, the stir and bustle had their appeal for him. He felt himself on his own ground; it was here and not in the waste places that his work lay, here that he was formed to conquer, here that he was conquering fortune. Garth was very well-a grand, a splendid reserve; but as he rode up the steep streets to the bank, he felt that here was his vocation. He sniffed the battle, his eyes grew brighter, his figure more alert. From some Huguenot ancestor had descended the Huguenot appetite for business, the Huguenot ability to succeed.

This morning, however, he did not reach the bank in his happiest mood. Purslow, the irrepressible Purslow, stopped him, with a long face and a plaint to match. "Those Antwerp shares, Mr. Bourdillon! Excuse me, have you heard? They're down again-down twenty-five since Wednesday! And that's on to five, as they fell the week before! Thirty down, sir! I'm in a regular stew about it! Excuse me, sir, but if they fall much more-"

"You've held too long, Purslow," Arthur replied. "I told you it was a quick shot. A fortnight ago you'd have got out with a good profit. Why didn't you?"

"But they were rising-rising nicely. And I thought, sir-"

"You thought you'd hold them for a bit more? That was the long and short of it, wasn't it? Well, my advice to you now is to get out while you can make a profit."

"Sell?" the draper exclaimed. "Now?" It is hard to say what he had expected, but something more than this. "But I should not clear more than-why, I shouldn't make-"

"Better make what you can," Arthur replied, and rode on a little more cavalierly than he would have ridden a few months before.

He did not reflect how easy it is to sow the seeds of distrust. Purslow, left alone to make the best of cold comfort, felt for the first time that his interests were not the one care of the bank. For the first time he saw the bank as something apart, a machine, cold, impassive, indifferent, proceeding on its course unmoved by his fortunes, good or bad, his losses or his gains. It was a picture that chilled him, and set him thinking.

Arthur, meantime, left his horse at the stables and let himself into the bank by the house-door. As he laid his hat and whip on the table in the hall, he caught the sound of an angry voice. It came from the bank parlor. He hesitated an instant, then he made up his mind, and stepping that way he opened the door.

The voice was Wolley's. The man was on his feet, angry, protesting, gesticulating. Ovington, his lips set, the pallor of his handsome face faintly tinged with color, sat behind his table, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his fingertips meeting.

Arthur took it all in. Then, "You don't want me?" he said, and he made as if he would close the door again. "I thought that you were alone, sir."

"No, stay," Ovington answered. "You may as well hear what Mr. Wolley has to say, though I have told him already-"

"What?" the clothier cried rudely. "Come! Let's have it in plain words!"

"That we can discount no more bills for him until the account against him is reduced. You know as well as I do, Mr. Wolley, that you have been drawing more bills and larger bills than your trade justifies."

"But I have to meet the paper I've accepted for wool, haven't I? And if my customers don't pay cash-as you know it is not the custom to pay-where am I to get the cash to pay the wool men?"

The banker took up one of two bills that lay on the table before him. "Drawn on Samuel Willias, Manchester," he said. "That's a new name. Who is he?"

"A customer. Who should he be?"

"That's the point," Ovington replied coldly. "Is he? And this other bill. A new name, too. Besides, we've already discounted your usual bills. These bills are additional. My own opinion is that they are accommodation bills, and that you, and not the acceptors, will have to meet them. In any case," dropping the slips on the table, "we are not going to take them."

"You won't cash them? Not on no terms?"

"No, we are going no further, Wolley," the banker replied firmly. "If you like I will send for the bill-book and ledger and tell you exactly what you owe, on bills and overdraft. I know it is a large amount, and you have made, as far as I can judge, no effort to reduce it. The time has come when we must stop the advances."

"And you'll not discount these bills?"

"No!"

"Then, by G-d, it's not I will be the only one to be ruined!" the man exclaimed, and he struck the table with his fist. The veins on his forehead swelled, his coarse mottled face became disfigured with rage. He glared at the banker. But even as Ovington met his gaze, there came a change. The perspiration sprang out on his forehead, his face turned pale and flabby, he seemed to shrink and wilt. The ruin, which recklessness and improvidence had hidden from him, rose before him, certain and imminent. He saw his mill, his house, his all gone from him, saw himself a drunken, ruined, shiftless loafer, cadging about public-houses! "For God's sake!" he pleaded, "do it this once, Mr. Ovington. Meet just these two, and I'll swear they'll be the last. Meet these."

"No," the banker said. "We go no farther."

Perhaps the thought that he and Ovington had risen from the ranks together, that for years they had been equals, and that now the one refused his help to the other, rose and mocked the unhappy man. At any rate, his rage flared up anew. He swore violently. "Well, there's more than I will go down, then!" he said. "And more than will suit your book, banker! Wise as you think yourself, there's more bills out than you know of!"

"I am sorry to hear it."

"Ay, and you'll be more sorry by and by!" viciously. "Sorry for yourself and sorry that you did not give me a little more help, d-n you! Are you going to? Best think twice about it before you say no!"

"Not a penny," Ovington rejoined sternly. "After what you have admitted I should be foolish indeed to do so. You've had my last word, Mr. Wolley."

"Then damn your last word and you too!" the clothier retorted, and went out, cursing, into the bank, shouting aloud as he passed through it, that they were a set of bloodsuckers and that he'd have the law of them! Clement from his desk eyed him steadily. Rodd and the clerks looked startled. The customers-there were but two, but they were two too many for such a scene-eyed each other uneasily. A moment, and Clement, after shifting his papers uncertainly, left his desk and went into the parlor.

Ovington and Arthur had not moved. "What's the matter?" Clement asked. The occurrence had roused him from his apathy. He looked from the one to the other, a challenge in his eyes.

"Only what we've been expecting for some time," his father answered. "Wolley has asked for further credit and I've had to say, no. I've given him too much rope as it is, and we shall lose by him. He's an ill-conditioned fellow, and he is taking it ill."

"He wants a drubbing," said Clement.

"That is not in our line," Ovington replied mildly. "But," he continued-for he was not sorry to have the chance of taking his son into his confidence-"we are going to have plenty to think of that is in our line. Wolley will fail, and we shall lose by him; and I have no doubt that he is right in saying that he will bring down others. We must look to ourselves and draw in, as I warned Bourdillon some time ago. That noisy fellow may do us harm, and we must be ready to meet it."

Arthur looked thoughtful. "Antwerps have fallen," he said.

"I wish it were only Antwerps!" the banker answered. "You haven't seen the mail? Or Friday's prices? There's a fall in nearly everything. True," looking from one to the other, "I've expected it-sooner or later; and it has come, or is coming. Yes, Rodd? What is it?"

The cashier had opened the door. "Hamar," he said in a low voice, "wants to know if we will buy him fifty of the railroad shares and advance him the face value on the security of the shares. He'll find the premium himself. He thinks they are cheap after the drop last week."

The banker shook his head. "No," he said. "We can't do it, tell Mr. Hamar."

"It would support the shares," Arthur suggested.

"With our money. Yes! But we've enough locked up in them already. Tell him, Rodd, that I am sorry, but it is not convenient at present."

"They are still at a premium of thirty shillings," Arthur put in.

"Is the door shut, Rodd?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thirty shillings? And that might run off in a week, Mr. Secretary. No, the time is come when we must not shilly-shally. I see your view and the refusal may do harm. But we have enough money locked up in the railway, and with the outlook such as it is, I will not increase the note issues. They are already too large, as we may discover. We must say no, Rodd, but tell him to come and see me this evening, and I will explain."

The cashier nodded and went out.

Ovington gazed thoughtfully at his joined finger-tips. "Is the door closed?" he asked again, and assured that it was, he looked thoughtfully from one to the other of the young men. He seemed to be measuring them, considering how far he could trust them, how far it would be well to take them into his confidence. Then, "We are going to meet a crisis," he said. "I have now no doubt about that. All over the country the banks have increased their issues, and hold a vast quantity of pawned stock. If the fall in values is continued, the banks must throw the stock on the market, and there will be a general fall. At the same time they will be obliged to restrict credit and refuse discounts, which will force traders to throw goods on the market to meet their obligations. Goods as well as stocks will fall. Alarm will follow, and presently there will be a run on a weak bank and it will close its doors. Then there will be a panic, and a run on other banks-a run proportioned in violence to the amount of credit granted in the last two years. We may have to meet a run on deposits at the same time that we may be called upon to cash every note that we have issued."

"Impossible!" Arthur cried. "We could not do it."

"If you mean that the run is impossible," the banker answered quietly, "I much fear that events will confute you. If you mean that we could not meet our obligations, well, we must strain every nerve to do so. We must retain all the cash that comes in, and we must issue no more notes, create no more credit. But even this we must do with discretion, and above all not a whisper must pass beyond this room. I will speak to Rodd. Hamar I will see this evening, and do what I can to sweeten the refusal. We must wear confident faces however grave the crisis. We are solvent, amply solvent, if time be given us to realize our resources; but time may not be given us, and we may have to make great sacrifices. You may be inclined to blame me-" he paused, and looked from one to the other-Arthur stood frowning, his eyes on the carpet-"that I did not take the alarm earlier? Well, I ought to have done so, perhaps. But-"

"Nobody blames you, sir!" It was Clement who spoke, Clement, in whom the last few minutes had made a marked change. His dulness and listlessness had fallen from him, he stood upright and alert. The imagination which had balked at the routine of banking, faced a crisis with alacrity, and conscious that he had hitherto failed his father, he welcomed with zest the opportunity of proving his loyalty, "Nobody blames you, sir!" he repeated firmly. "We are here to stand by you, and I am confident that we shall win through. If any bank can stand, Ovington's will stand. And if we don't win through, if the public insists on cutting its own throat, well" – a little ashamed of his own enthusiasm-"we shall still believe in you, sir, you may be sure of that!"

"But isn't-isn't all this a little premature?" Arthur asked, his tone cold and business-like. "I don't understand why you think that all this is coming upon us at a moment's notice, sir? Without warning?"

"Not quite without warning," the banker rejoined with patience. Clement's declaration of faith had moved him more deeply than he showed, and, having that, he could bear a little disappointment. "I have hinted more than once, Arthur, that I was uneasy. But why, you ask, this sudden alarm-now? Well, look at Richardson's list of last Friday's prices. You have not seen it. Exchequer Bills that a week ago were at par are at a discount. India Stock are down five points on the day-a large fall for such a stock. New Four per Cents, have fallen 3, Bank Stock that stood at 224 ten days ago is 214. These are not panic falls, but they are serious figures. With Bank Stock falling ten points in as many days, what will happen to the immense mass of speculative securities held by the public, and on much of which calls are due? It will be down this week; next week the banks will have to throw it out to save their margins, and customers to pay their calls. It will fall, and fall. The week after, perhaps, panic! A rush to draw deposits, or a rush to cash notes, or, probably, both."

"Then you think-you must think" – Arthur's voice was not quite under his control-"that there is danger?"

"It would be as foolish in me to deny it here," the banker replied gravely, "as it would be reckless in me to affirm it outside. There is danger. We shall run a risk, but I believe that we shall win through, though, it may be, by a narrow margin. And a little thing might upset us."

Arthur was not of an anxious temperament-far from it. But he had committed himself to the bank. He had involved himself in its fortunes in no ordinary way. He had joined it against the wishes of his friends and in the teeth of the prejudices of his caste. He had staked his reputation for judgment upon its success, and assured that it would give him in the future all for which he thirsted, he had deemed himself far-sighted, and others fools. In doing this he had never dreamt of failure, he had never weighed the possibility of loss. Not once had he reflected that he might turn out to be wrong and robbed of the prize-might in the end be a laughing-stock!

Now as the possibility of all this, as the thought of failure, complete and final, flooded his mind and shook his self-confidence, he flinched. Danger! Danger, owned to by Ovington himself! Ah, he ought to have known! He ought to have suspected that fortunes were not so easily made! He ought to have reflected that Ovington's was not Dean's! That it was but a young bank, ill-rooted as yet-and speculative! Ay, speculative! Such a bank might fall, he was almost certain now that it would fall, as easily as it had risen!

It was a nerve-shaking vision that rose before him, and for a moment he could not hide his disorder. At any rate, he could not hide it from two jealous eyes. Clement saw and condemned-not fully understanding all that this meant to the other or the sudden strain which it put upon him. A moment and Arthur was himself again, and his first words recovered for him the elder man's confidence. They were practical.

"How much-I mean, what extra amount of reserve," he asked, "would make us safe?"

"Just so," and in the banker's eyes there shone a gleam of relief. "Well, if we had twelve thousand pounds, in addition to our existing assets, I think-nay, I am confident that that would place us out of danger."

"Twelve thousand pounds."

"Yes. It is not a large sum. But it might make all the difference if it came to a pinch."

"In cash?"

"In gold, or Bank paper. Or in such securities as could be realized even in a crisis. Twelve thousand added to our reserve-I think I may say with confidence that with that we could meet any run that could be made upon us."

"There is no doubt that we are solvent, sir?"

"You should know that as well as I do."

"We could realize the twelve thousand eventually?"

"Of course, or we should not be solvent without it." For once Ovington spoke a little impatiently.

"Then could we not," Arthur asked, "by laying our accounts before our London agents obtain the necessary help, sir?"

"If we were the only bank likely to be in peril, of course we could. And even as it is, you are so far right that I had already determined to do that. It is the obvious course, and my bag is being packed in the house-I shall go to town by the afternoon coach. And now," rising to his feet, "we have been together long enough-we must be careful to cause no suspicion. Do you, Clement, see Massy, the wine-merchant to-day, and tell him that I will take, to lay down, the ten dozen of '20 port that he offered me. And ask the two Welshes to dine with me on Friday-I shall return on Thursday. And get some oysters from Hamar's-two barrels-and have one or two people to dine while I am away. And, cheerful faces, boys-and still tongues. And now go. I must put into shape the accounts that I shall need in town."

He dismissed them with calmness, but he did not at once fall to work upon the papers. His serenity was that of the commander who, on the eve of battle, reviews the issues of the morrow, and habituated to the chances of war, knows that he may be defeated, but makes his dispositions, folds his cloak about him, and lies down to sleep. But under the cloak of the commander, and behind the mask that deceives those about him, is still the man, with the man's hopes and fears, and cares and anxieties, which habit has rendered tolerable, and pride enables him to veil. But they are there. They are there.

As he sat, he thought of his rise, of his success, of step won after step; of the praise of men and the jealousy of rivals which wealth had won for him; and of the new machine that he had built up-Ovington's. And he knew that if fate went against him, there might in a very short time be an end of all. Yesterday he and Wolley had been equals. They had risen from obscurity together. To-day Wolley was a bankrupt. To-morrow-they might be again equal in their fall, and Ovington's a thing to wonder at. Dean's would chuckle, and some would call him a fool and some a rogue, and all an upstart-one who had not been able to keep his head. He would be ruined, and they would find no name too bad for him.

He thought of Betty. How would she bear it? He had made much of her and spoiled her, she had been the apple of his eye. She had known only the days of his prosperity. How would she bear it, how take it? He sighed.

He turned at last to the papers.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was with a firmer tread that Clement went back to his desk in the bank. He had pleased his father and he was pleased with himself. Here at last was something to do. Here at last was something to fight. Here at last was mettle in the banking business that suited him; and not a mere counting of figures and reckoning of pennies, and taking in at four per cent. and putting out at eight. His gaze, passing over the ledger that lay before him, focussed itself on the unconscious customers beyond the counter. He had the air of challenging them, of defying them. They were the enemy. It was their folly, their greed, their selfishness, their insensate desire to save themselves, let who would perish, that menaced the bank, that threatened the security, the well-being, the happiness of better men. It was a battle and they were the enemy. He scowled at them. Supposing them to have sense, patience, unselfishness, there would be no battle and no danger. But he knew that they had it not in them. No, they would rush in at the first alarm, like a flock of silly sheep, and thrusting and pushing and trampling one another down, would run, each bent on his own safety, blindly on ruin.

From this moment the bank became to him a place of interest and color, instead of that which it had been. Where there was danger there was romance. Even Rodd, adding up a customer's pass-book, his face more thoughtful than usual, wore a halo, for he stood in peril. If the shutters went up Rodd would suffer with his betters. He would lose his place, he would be thrown on the world. He would lose, too, the trifle which he had on deposit in the bank. And even Rodd might have his plans and aims and ambitions, might be hoping for a rise, might be looking to marry some day-and some one!

Pheugh! Clement's mouth opened, he stared aghast-stared at the wire blind that obscured the lower half of the nearer window, as if all his faculties were absorbed in reading the familiar legend, KNAB S'NOTGNIVO, that showed darkly upon it. Customers, Rodd, the bank, all vanished. For he had forgotten! He had forgotten Josina! In contemplating what was exciting in the struggle before him he had forgotten that his stake was greater than the stake of others-that it was immeasurably greater. For it was Josina. He stood far enough below her as it was, separated from her by a height of pride and prejudice and convention, which he must scale if he would reach her. But he had one point in his favor-as things were. His father was wealthy, and standing a-tiptoe on his father's money-bags he might possibly aspire to her hand. So uplifted, so advantaged he might hope to grasp that hand, and in the end, by boldness and resolution, to make it his own.

That was the position as long as all went well at the bank: and it was a position difficult enough. But if the money-bags crumbled and sank beneath his feet? If in the crisis that was coming they toppled over, and his father failed, as he might fail? If he lost the footing, the one footing that money now gave him? Then her hand would be altogether out of his reach, she would be far above him. He could not hope to reach her, could not hope to gain her, could not in honor even aspire to her?

He saw that now. His stake was Josina, and the battle lost, he lost Josina. He had been brave enough until he thought of that, reckless even, welcoming the trumpet call. But seeing that, and seeing it suddenly, he groaned.

The sound recalled him to himself, and he winced, remembering his father's injunction to show a cheerful front. That he should have failed so soon! He looked guiltily at Arthur. Had he heard?

But Arthur had not heard. He was standing at a desk attached to the wall, his back towards Clement, his side-face to the window. He had not heard, because his thoughts had been elsewhere, and strange to say, the subject which had engaged them had been also Josina. The banker's warning had been a sharp blow to him. He was practical. He prided himself on the quality, and he foresaw no pleasure in a contest in which the success that was his be-all and end-all would be hazarded.

True, his mercurial spirit had already begun to rise, and with every minute he leant more and more to the opinion that the alarm was groundless. He thought that the banker was scaring himself, and seeing bogies where no bogies were-as if forsooth a little fall meant a great catastrophe, or all the customers would leave the bank because Wolley did! But he none the less for that looked abroad. Prudently he reviewed the resources that would remain to him in the event of defeat, and like a cautious general he determined beforehand his line of retreat.

That line was plain. If the bank failed, if a thing so cruel and incredible could happen, he still had Garth. He still had Garth to fall back upon, its lands, its wealth, its position. The bank might go, and Ovington-confound him for the silly mismanagement that had brought things to this! – might go into limbo with it, and Clement and Rodd and the rest of them-after all, it was their native level! But for him, born in the purple, there would still be Garth.

Only he must be quick. He must not lose a day or an hour. If he waited too long, word of the bank's embarrassments might reach the old man, re-awaken his prejudices, warp his mind, and all might be lost. The influence on which he counted for success might cease to be his, and in a moment he might find himself out in the cold. Weakened as the Squire was, it would not be wise to trust too much to the change in him!

No, he must do it at once. He would ride out that very day, and gain, as he did not doubt that he would gain, the Squire's permission to speak to Josina. He would leave no room for accidents, and, setting these aside, he did not doubt the result.

He carried out his intention in spite of some demur on Clement's part, who in his new-born zeal thought that in his father's absence the other ought to remain on the spot. But Arthur had the habit of the upper hand, and with a contemptuous fling at Clement's own truancies, took it now. He was at Garth before sunset of the short November day, and he had not sat in the Squire's room ten minutes before chance gave him the opening he desired.

The old man had been listening to the town news, and apparently had been engrossed in it. But suddenly, he leant forward, and poked Arthur with the end of his stick. "Here do you tell me!" he said. "What ails the girl? I've no eyes, but I've ears, and there's something. What's amiss with her, eh?"

"Do you mean Josina, sir?"

"Who else, man? I asked you what's the matter with her. D'you think I don't know that there is something? I've all my senses but one, thank God, and I can hear if I can't see! What is it?"

Arthur saw in a moment that here was the opportunity, he needed, and he made haste to seize it. "The truth is, sir-" he said with a candor which was attractive. "I was going to speak to you about Josina, I have been wishing to do so for some time."

"Eh? Well?"

"I have said nothing to her. But it is possible that she may be aware of my feelings."

"Oh, that's it, is it?" the Squire said drily. It was impossible to say whether he was pleased or not.

"If I had your permission to speak to her, sir?" Arthur felt, now that he had come to the point, just the amount of nervousness which was becoming. "We have been brought up together, and I don't think that I can be taking you by surprise."

"And you think it will be no surprise to her?"

"Well, sir," modestly, "I think it will not."

"More ways of killing a cat than drowning it, eh? That's it, is it? Haven't spoken, but let her know? And you want my leave?"

"Yes, sir, to ask her to be my wife," Arthur said frankly. "It has been my wish for some time, but I have hesitated. Of course, I am no great match for her, but I am of her blood, and-"

He paused. He did not know what to add, and the Squire did not help him, and for the first time Arthur felt a pang of uneasiness. This was not lessened when the old man asked, "How long has this been going on, eh?"

"Oh, for a long time, sir-on my side," Arthur answered. There was an ominous silence. The Squire might be taking it well or ill-it was impossible to judge. He had not changed his attitude and still sat, leaning forward, his hands on his stick, impenetrable behind his bandages. It struck Arthur that he might have been premature; that he might have put his favor to too high a test. It might have been wiser to work upon Josina, and wait and see how things turned out.

At last. "She'll not go out of this house," the Squire said. And he sighed in a way unusual with him, even when he had been at his worst. "That's understood. There's room for you here, and any brats you may have. That's understood, eh?" sharply.

"Willingly, sir," Arthur answered. A great weight had been lifted from him.

"And you'll take her name, do you hear?"

"Of course, sir. I shall be proud to do so."

The Squire sighed, and again he was silent.

"Then-then I may speak to her, sir?"

"Wait a bit! Wait a bit!" The Squire had more to say, it appeared. "You'll leave the bank, of course?"

Arthur's mind, trained to calculation, reviewed the position. Most heartily he wished-though he thought that Ovington's views were unnecessarily dark-that he could leave the bank. But he could not. The moment when Ovington might have released him, when the cancellation of the articles had been possible, was past. The banker could no longer afford to cancel them, or to lose the five thousand pounds that Arthur had brought in.

He hesitated, and the old man read his hesitation, and was wroth. "You heard what I said?" he growled, and he struck his stick upon the floor. "Do you think I am going to have my daughter's husband counterskipping in Aldersbury? Cheek by jowl with every grocer and linen-draper in the town? Bad enough as it is, bad enough, but when you're Jos's husband-no, by G-d, that's flat! You'll leave the bank, and you'll leave it at once, or you're no son-in-law for me. I'll not have the name of Griffin dragged in the dirt."

Arthur had not anticipated this, though he might easily have foreseen it; and he cursed his folly. He ought to have known that the old question would be raised, and that it would revive the Squire's antagonism. He was like a fox caught in a trap, nay, like a fox that has put its own foot in the trap; and he had no time to give any but a candid answer. "I am afraid, sir," he said. "I mean-I am quite willing to comply with your wishes. But unfortunately there's a difficulty. I am tied to the bank for three years. At the end of three years-"

"Three years be d-d!" In a passion the Squire struck his stick on the floor. "Three years! I'm to sit here for three years while you go in and out, partner with Ovington! Then my answer is, No! No! Do you hear? I'll not have it."

The perspiration stood on Arthur's brow. Here was a débâcle! An end, crushing and complete, to all his hopes! Desperately he tried to explain himself and mend matters. "If I could act for myself, sir," he said, "I would leave the bank to-morrow. But the agreement-"

"Agreement? Don't talk to me of agreements! You could ha' helped it!" the Squire snarled. "You could ha' helped it! Only you would go on! You went in against my advice! And for the agreement, who but a fool would ha' signed such an agreement? No, you may go, my lad. As you ha' brewed you may bake! You may go! If I'd known this was going on, I'd not ha' seen so much of you, you may be sure of that! As it is, Good-day! Good-day to you!"

It was indeed a débâcle; and Arthur could hardly believe his ears, or that he stood in his own shoes. In a moment, in one moment he had fallen from the height of favor and the pinnacle of influence, and disowned and defeated, he could hardly take in the mischance that had befallen him. Slowly he got to his feet, and as soon as he could master his voice, "I'm grieved, sir," he answered, "more grieved than I, can say, that you should take it like this-when I have no choice. I am sorry for my own sake."

"Ay, ay!" with grim irony. "I can believe that."

"And sorry for Josina's."

He could think of no further plea at the moment-he must wait and hope for the best; and he moved towards the door, cursing his folly, his all but incredible folly, but finding no remedy. His hand was on the latch of the door when "Wait!" the old man said.

Arthur turned and waited; wondering, even hoping. The Squire sat, looking straight before him, if that might be said of a blind man, and presently he sighed. Then, "Here, come back!" he ordered. But again for awhile he said no more, and Arthur waited, completely in the dark as to what was working in the other's mind. At last. "There, maybe I've been hasty," the old man muttered, "and not thought of all. Will you leave the bank when you can, young man?"

"Of course, I will, sir!" Arthur cried.

"Then-then you may speak to her," the Squire said reluctantly, and he marked the reluctance with another sigh.

And so, as suddenly as he had raised the objection, he withdrew it, to Arthur's intense astonishment. Only one conclusion could he draw-that the Squire was indeed failing. And on that, with a hastily murmured word of thanks, he escaped from the room, hardly knowing whether he walked on his head or his feet.

Lord, what a near thing it had been. And yet-no! The Squire-it must be that-was a failing man. He had no longer the strength or the stubbornness to hold to the course that his whims or his crabbed humor suggested. The danger might not have been so real or substantial, after all.

Yet the relief was great, and coming on Miss Peacock, who was crossing the hall with a bowl in her hand, he seized her by the waist and whirled her round, bowl and all. "Hallo, Peacock! Hallo, Peacock!" he cried in the exuberance of his joy. "Where's Jos?"

"Let go!" she cried. "You'll have it over! What's come to you?"

"Where's Jos? Where's Jos?"

"Good gracious, how should I know? There, be quiet," in pretended anger, though she liked it well enough. "What's come to you? If you must know, she's moping in her room. It's where I find her most times when she's not catching cold in the gardenhouse, and her father's noticed it at last. He's in a pretty stew about her, and if you ask me, I don't think that she's ever got over that night."

"I'll cure her!" Arthur cried in a glow, and he gave Miss Peacock another twirl.

But he had no opportunity of trying his cure that evening, for Jos, when she came downstairs, kept close to her father, and it was not until after breakfast on the morrow that he saw her go into the garden through the side-door, a relic of the older house that had once stood there. To frame it a stone arch of Tudor date had been filled in, and on either side of this, outlined in stone on the brick wall, was a pointed window of three lights. But Arthur's thoughts as he followed Jos into the garden were far from such dry-as-dust matters. The reaction after fear, the assurance that all was well, intoxicated him, and in a glow of spirits that defied the November day he strode down the walk under boughs that half-bare, and over leaves that half-shrivelled, owned alike the touch of autumn. He caught sight of a skirt on the raised walk at the farther end of the garden and he made for it, bounding up the four steps with a light foot and a lover's haste. A handsome young fellow, with a conquering air!

Jos was leaning on the wall, a shawl about her shoulders, her eyes bent on the mill and the Thirty Acres; and her presence in that place on that not too cheerful morning, and her pensive stillness, might have set him wondering, had he given himself time to think. But he was full of his purpose, he viewed her only as she affected it, and he saw nothing except what he wished to see. When, hearing his footsteps, she turned, her color did not rise-and that too might have told him something. But had he spared this a thought, it would only have been to think that her color would rise soon enough when he spoke.

"Jos!" he cried, while some paces still separated them. "I've seen your father! And I've spoken to him!" He waved his hand as one proclaiming a victory.

But what victory? Jos was as much in the dark as if he had never paid court to her in those far-off days. "Is anything the matter?" she asked, and she turned as if she would go back to the house.

But he barred the way. "Nothing," he said. "Why should there be? On the contrary, dear. Don't I tell you that I've spoken to the Squire? And he says that I may speak to you."

"To me?" She looked at him candidly, with no inkling in her mind of what he meant.

"Yes! My dear girl, don't you understand? He has given me leave to speak to you-to ask you to be my wife?" And as her lips parted and she gazed at him in astonishment, he took possession of her hand. The position was all in favor of a lover, for the parapet was behind her, and she could not escape if she would; while the ordeal through which he had passed gave this lover an ardor that he might otherwise have lacked. "Jos, dear," he continued, looking into her eyes, "I've waited-waited patiently, knowing that it was useless to speak until he gave me leave. But now" – after all, love-making with that pretty startled face before him, that trembling hand in his, was not unpleasant-"I come to you-for my reward."

"But, Arthur," she protested, almost too much surprised for words, "I had no idea-"

"Come, don't say that! Don't say that, Jos dear! No idea? Why, hasn't it always been this way with us! Since the day that we cut our names on the old pew? Haven't I seen you blush like a rose when you looked at it-many and many a time? And if I haven't dared to make love to you of late, surely you have known what was in my mind? Have we not always been meaning this-you and I?"

She was thunder-struck. Had it been really so? Could he be right? Had she been blind, and had he been feeling all this while she guessed nothing of it? She looked at him in distress, in increasing distress. "But indeed, indeed," she said, "I have not been meaning it, Arthur, I have not, indeed!"

"Not?" incredulously. "You've not known that I-"

"No!" she protested. "And I don't think that it has always been so with us." Then, collecting herself and in a firmer voice, "No, Arthur, not lately, I am sure. I don't think that it has been so on your side-I don't, indeed. And I'm sure that I have not thought of this myself."

"Jos!"

"No, Arthur, I have not, indeed."

"You haven't seen that I loved you?"

"No. And," looking him steadily in the face, "I am not sure that you do."

"Then let me tell you that I do. I do!" And he tried to possess himself of her other hand, and there was a little struggle between them. "Dear, dear girl, I do love you," he swore. "And I want you, I want you for my wife. And your father permits it. Do you understand-I don't think you do? He sanctions it."

He would have put his arm round her, thinking to overcome her bashfulness, thinking that this was but maidenly pride, waiting to be conquered. But she freed herself with unexpected vigor and slipped from him. "No, I don't wish it!" she said. And her attitude and her tone were so resolute, that he could no longer deceive himself. "No! Listen, Arthur." She was pale, but there was a surprising firmness in her face. "Listen! I do not believe that you love me. You have given me no cause to think so these many months. Such a boy and girl affection as was once between us might have grown into love in time, had you wished it. But you did not seem to wish it, and it has not. What you feel is not love."

"You know so much about love!" he scoffed. He was taken aback, but he tried to laugh-tried to pass it off.

But she did not give way. "I know what love is," she answered firmly. And then, without apparent cause, a burning blush rose to her very hair. Yet, in defiance of this, she repeated her words. "I know what love is, and I do not believe that you feel it for me. And I am sure, quite sure, Arthur," in a lower tone, "that I do not feel it for you. I could not be your wife."

"Jos!" he pleaded earnestly. "You are joking! Surely you are joking."

"No, I am not joking. I do not wish to hurt you. I am grieved if I do hurt you. But that is the truth. I do not want to marry you."

He stared at her. At last she had compelled him to believe her, and he reddened with anger; only to turn pale, a moment later, as a picture of himself humiliated and rejected, his plans spoiled by the fancy of this foolish girl, rose before him. He could not understand it; it seemed incredible. And there must be some reason? Desperately he clutched at the thought that she was afraid of her father. She had not grasped the fact that the Squire had sanctioned his suit, and, controlling his voice as well as he could, "Are you really in earnest, Jos?" he said. "Do you understand that your father is willing? That it is indeed his wish that we should marry?"

"I cannot help it."

"But-love?" Though he tried to keep his temper his voice was growing sharp. "What, after all, do you know of-love?" And rapidly his mind ran over the possibilities. No, there could be no one else. She knew few, and among them no one who could have courted her without his knowledge. For, strange to say, no inkling of the meetings between Clement and his cousin had reached him. They had all taken place within a few weeks, they had ceased some months back, and though there were probably some in the house who had seen things and drawn their conclusions, the favorers of young love are many, and no one save Thomas had tried to make mischief. No, there could be no one, he decided; it was just a silly girl's romantic notion. "And how can you say," he continued, "that mine is not real love? What do you know of it? Believe me, Jos, you are playing with your happiness. And with mine."

"I do not think so," she answered gravely. "As to my own, I am sure, Arthur. I do not love you and I cannot marry you."

"And that is your answer?"

"Yes, it must be."

He forced a laugh. "Well, it will be news for your father," he said. "A clever game you have played, Miss Jos! Never tell me that it is not in women's nature to play the coquette after this. Why, if I had treated you as you have treated me-and made a fool of me! Made a fool of me!" he reiterated passionately, unable to control his chagrin-"I should deserve to be whipped!"

And afraid that he would break down before her and disgrace his manhood, he turned about, sprang down the steps and savagely spurning, savagely trampling under foot the shrivelled leaves, he strode across the garden to the house. "The little fool!" he muttered, and he clenched his hands as if he could have crushed her within them. "The little fool!"

He was angry, he was very angry, for hitherto fortune had spoiled him. He had been successful, as men with a single aim usually are successful. He had attained to most of the things which he had desired. Now to fail where he had deemed himself most sure, to be repulsed where he had fancied that he had only to stoop, to be scorned where he had thought that he had but to throw the handkerchief, to be rejected and rejected by Jos-it was enough to make any man angry, to make any man grind his teeth and swear! And how-how in the world was he to explain the matter to his uncle? How account to him for his confidence in the issue? His cheeks burned as he thought of it.

He was angry. But his wrath was no match for the disappointment that warred with it and presently, as passion waned, overcame it. He had to face and to weigh the consequences. The loss of Jos meant much more than the loss of a mild and biddable wife with a certain charm of her own. It meant the loss of Garth, of the influence that belonged to it, the importance that flowed from it, the position it conferred. It meant the loss of a thing which he had come to consider as his own. The caprice of this obstinate girl robbed him of that which he had bought by a long servitude, by much patience, by many a tiresome ride between town and country!

There, in that loss, was the true pinch! But he must think of it. He must take time to review the position and consider how he might deal with it. It might be that all was not yet lost-even at Garth.

In the meantime he avoided seeing his uncle, and muttering a word to Miss Peacock, he had his horse saddled. He mounted in the yard and descended the drive at his usual pace. But as soon as he had gained the road, he lashed his nag into a canter, and set his face for town. At worst the bank remained, and he must see that it did remain. He must not let himself be scared by Ovington's alarms. If a crisis came he must tackle the business as he alone could tackle business, and all would be well. He was sure of it.

Withal he was spared one pang, the pang of disappointed love.

CHAPTER XXIV

Arthur was at the bank by noon, and up to that time nothing had occurred to justify the banker's apprehensions or to alarm the most timid. Business seemed to be a little slack, the bank door had a rest, and there was less coming and going. But in the main things appeared to be moving as usual, and Arthur, standing at his desk in an atmosphere as far removed as possible from that of Garth, had time to review the check that he had received at Josina's hands, and to consider whether, with the Squire's help, it might not still be repaired.

But an hour or two later a thing occurred which might have passed unnoticed at another time, but on that day had a meaning for three out of the five in the bank. The door opened a little more abruptly than usual, a man pushed his way in. He was a publican in a fair way of business in the town, a smug ruddy-gilled man who, in his younger days, had been a pugilist at Birmingham and still ran a cock-pit behind the Spotted Dog, between the Foregate and the river. He stepped to the counter, his small shrewd eyes roving slyly from one to another.

Arthur went forward to attend to him. "What is it, Mr. Brownjohn?" he asked. But already his suspicions were aroused.

"Well, sir," the man answered bluntly, "what we most of us want, sir. The rhino!"

"Then you've come to the right shop for that," Arthur rejoined, falling into his humor. "How much?"

"How's my account, sir?"

Arthur consulted the book which he took from a ledge below the counter. In our time he would have scribbled the sum on a scrap of paper and passed the paper over in silence. But in those days many customers would have been none the wiser for that, for they could not read. So, "One, four, two, and three and six-pence," he said.

"Well, I'll take it," the publican announced, gazing straight before him.

Arthur understood, but not a muscle of his face betrayed his knowledge. "Brewers' day?" he said lightly. "Mr. Rodd, draw a cheque for Mr. Brownjohn. One four two, three and six. Better leave five pounds to keep the account open?"

"Oh, well!" Mr. Brownjohn was a little taken aback. "Yes, sir, very well."

"One three seven, Rodd, three and six." And while the customer, laboriously and with a crimsoning face, scrawled his signature on the cheque, Arthur opened a drawer and counted out the amount in Ovington's notes. "Twenty-seven fives, and two, three, six," he muttered, pushing it over. "You'll find that right, I think."

Brownjohn had had his lesson from Wolley, who put up at his house, but he had not learnt it perfectly. He took the notes, and thumbed them over, wetting his thumb as he turned each, and he found the tale correct. "Much obliged, gentlemen," he muttered, and with a perspiring brow he effected his retreat. Already he doubted-so willingly had his money been paid-if he had been wise. He was glad that he had left the five pounds.

But the door had hardly closed on him before Arthur asked the cashier how much gold he had in the cash drawer.

"The usual, sir. One hundred and fifty and thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four-one hundred and eighty-four."

"Fetch up two hundred more before Mr. Brownjohn comes back," Arthur said. "Don't lose time."

Rodd did not like Arthur, but he did silent homage to his sharpness. He hastened to the safe and was back in two minutes with twenty rouleaux of sovereigns. "Shall I break them, sir?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so. Ah!" as the door swung open and one of the Welsh brothers entered. It was Mr. Frederick. Arthur nodded. "Good day, Welsh, I was thinking of you. I fancy Clement wants to see you."

"Right-in one moment," the lawyer replied. "Just put that-"

But Arthur saw that he had a cheque to pay in-he banked at Dean's but had clients' accounts with them-and he broke in on his business. "Clement," he said, "here's Welsh. Just give him your father's message."

Clement came forward with his father's invitation-oysters and whist at five on Friday-and his opinion on a glass of '20 he was laying down? He kept the lawyer in talk for a minute or two, and then, as Arthur had shrewdly calculated, the door opened and Brownjohn slid in. The man's face was red, and he looked heartily ashamed of himself, but he put down his notes on the counter. He was going to speak when, "In a moment, Brownjohn," Arthur said. "What is it, Mr. Welsh?"

"Just put this to the Hobdays' account," the lawyer answered recalled to his business. "Fifty-four pounds two shillings and five-pence. And, by the way, are you going to Garth on Saturday?"

"On Saturday, or Sunday, yes. Can I do anything for you!"

"Will you tell the Squire that that lease will be ready for signature on Saturday week. If you don't mind I'll send it over by you. It will save me a journey."

"Good. I'll tell him. He has been fretting about it. Good-day! Now, Mr. Brownjohn?"

"I'd like cash for these," the innkeeper mumbled, thrusting forward the notes, but looking thoroughly ill at ease.

"Man alive, why didn't you say so?" Arthur answered, good-humoredly, "and save yourself the trouble of two journeys? Mr. Rodd, cash for these, please. I've forgotten something I must tell Welsh!" And flinging the cash drawer wide open, he raised the counter-flap and hurried after the lawyer.

Rodd knew what was expected of him, and he took out several fistsful of gold and rattled it down before him. Rapidly, as if he handled so many peas, he counted out and thrust aside Mr. Brownjohn's portion, swiftly reckoned it a second time, then swept the balance back into the open drawer. "I think you'll find that right," he said. "Better count it. How's your little girl that was ailing, Mr. Brownjohn?"

Brownjohn muttered something, his face lighting up. Then he counted his gold and sneaked out, impressed, as Arthur had intended he should be, with his own unimportance, and more inclined than before to think that he had made a mistake in following Wolley's advice.

But before the bank closed that day two other customers came in and drew out the greater part of their balances. They were both men connected in one way or another with the clothier, and the thing stopped there. The following day was uneventful, but the drawings had been unusual, and the two young clerks might have exchanged notes upon the subject if their elders had not appeared so entirely unconscious. As it was, it was impossible for them to think that anything out of the common had happened.

Worse, and far more important, than this matter was the fact that stocks and shares continued to fall all that week. Night after night the arrival of the famous "Wonder," the fast coach which did the journey from London in fifteen hours, was awaited by men who thought nothing of the wintry weather if they might have the latest news. Afternoon after afternoon the journals brought by the mail were fought for and opened in the street by men whose faces grew longer as the week ran on. Some strode up jauntily, and joined themselves to the group of loungers before the coach-office, while others sneaked up privily, went no farther than the fringe of the crowd, and there, gravitating together by twos and threes, conferred in low voices over prices and changes. Some, until the coach arrived, lurked in a neighboring churchyard, raised above the street, and glancing suspiciously at one another affected to be immersed in the study of crumbling gravestones; while a few made a pretence of being surprised, as they passed, by the arrival of the mail, or hiding themselves in doorways appeared only at the last moment, and when they believed that they might do so unobserved.

One thing was noticeable of nearly all these; that they avoided one another's eyes, as if, declining to observe others, they became themselves unseen. Once possessed of the paper they behaved in different ways, according as they were of a sanguine or despondent nature. Some tore the sheet open at once, devoured a particular column and stamped or swore, or sometimes flung the paper underfoot. Others sneaked off to the churchyard or to some neighboring nook, and there, unable to wait longer, opened the journal with shaking fingers; while a few-and these perhaps had the most at stake-dared not trust themselves to learn the news where they might by any chance be overlooked, but hurried homewards through "shuts" and by-lanes, and locked themselves in their offices, afraid to let even their wives come near them.

For the news was very serious to very many; the more so as, inexperienced in speculation, they clung for the most part to the hope of a recovery, and could not bring themselves to sell at a lower figure than that which they might have got a week before. Much less could they bring themselves to sell at an actual loss. They had sat down to play a winning game, and they could not now believe that the seats were reversed, and that they were liable to lose all that they had gained, nay, in many cases much more than their stake. Amazed, they saw stocks falling, crumbling, nay, sinking to a nominal value, while large calls on them remained to be paid, and loans on them to be repaid. No wonder that they stared aghast, or that many after a period of stupefaction, at a state of things so new and so paralyzing, began to feel that it was neck or nothing with them, and bought when they should have sold, seeing that in any case the price to which stock was falling meant their ruin.

For a time indeed there was no public outcry and no great excitement on the surface. For a time men kept their troubles to themselves, jealous lest they should get abroad, and few suspected how common was their plight or how many shared it. Men talk of their gains but not of their losses, and the last thing desired by a business man on the brink of ruin is that his position should be made public. But those behind the scenes feared only the more for the morrow; for with this ferment of fear and suspense working beneath the surface it was impossible to say at what moment an eruption might not take place or where the ruin would stop. One thing was certain, that it would not be confined to the speculators, for many a sober trader, who had never bought shares in his life, would fail, beggared by the bankruptcy of his debtors.

Ovington returned on the Friday, and Arthur met him at the Lion, as he had met him eleven months before. They played their parts well-so well that even Arthur did not learn the news until the door of the bank had closed behind them and they were closeted with Clement in the dining-room. Then they learned that the news was bad-as bad as it could be.

The banker retained his composure and told his story with calmness, but he looked very weary. Williams'-Williams and Co. were Ovington's correspondents in London-would do nothing, he told them. "They would not re-discount a single bill nor hear of an acceptance. My own opinion is that they cannot."

Arthur looked much disturbed. "As bad as that," he said, "is it?"

"Yes, and I believe, nay, I am sure, lad, that they fear for themselves. I saw the younger Williams. He gave me good words, but that was all; and he looked ill and harassed to the last degree. There was a frightened look about them all. I told them that if they would re-discount fifteen thousand pounds of sound short bills, we should need no further help, and might by and by be able to help others. But he would do nothing. I said I should go to the Bank. He let out-though he was very close-that others had done so, and that the Bank would do nothing. He hinted that they were short of gold there, and saw nothing for it but a policy of restriction. However, I went there, of course. They were very civil, but they told me frankly that it was impossible to help all who came to them; that they must protect their reserve. They were inclined to find fault, and said it was credit recklessly granted that had produced the trouble, and the only cure was restriction."

"But surely," Arthur protested, "where a bank is able to show that it is solvent?"

"I argued it with them. I told them that I agreed that the cure was to draw in, but that they should have entered on that path earlier; that to enter on it now suddenly and without discrimination after a period of laxity was the way to bring on the worst disaster the country had ever known. That to give help where it could be shown that moderate help would suffice, to support the sound and let the rotten go was the proper policy, and would limit the trouble. But I could not persuade them. They would not take the best bills, would in fact take nothing, discount nothing, would hardly advance even on government securities. When I left them-"

"Yes?" The banker had paused, his face betraying emotion.

"I heard a rumor about Pole's."

"Pole's? Pole's!" Arthur cried, astounded; and he turned a shade paler. "Sir Peter Pole and Co.? You don't mean it, sir? Why, if they go scores of country banks will go! Scores! They are agents for sixty or seventy, aren't they?"

The banker nodded. His weariness was more and more apparent. "Yes, Pole's," he said gloomily. "And I heard it on good authority. The truth is-it has not extended to the public yet, but in the banks there is panic already. They do not know where the first crash will come, or who may be affected. And any moment the scare may spread to the public. When it does it will run through the country like wild-fire. It will be here in twenty-four hours. It will shake even Dean's. It will shake us down. My God! when I think that for the lack of ten or twelve thousand pounds-which a year ago we could have raised three times over with the stroke of a pen-just for the lack of that a sound business like this-"

He broke off, unable to control his voice. He could not continue. Clement went out softly, and for a minute or so there was silence in the room, broken only by the ticking of the clock, the noise of wheels in the street, the voices of passers-by-voices that drifted in and died away again, as the speakers walked by on the pavement. Opposite the bank, at the corner of the Market Place, two dogs were fighting before a barber's shop. A woman drove them off with an umbrella. Her "Shoo! Shoo!" was audible in the silence of the room.

Before either spoke again, Clement returned. He bore a decanter of port, a glass, a slice of cake. "D'you take this, sir," he said. "You are worn out. And never fear," cheerily, "we shall pull through yet, sir. There will surely be some who will see that it will pay better to help us than to pull us down."

The banker smiled at him, but his hand shook as he poured out the wine. "I hope so," he said. "But we must buckle to. It will try us all. A run once started-have there been any withdrawals?"

They told him what had happened and described the state of feeling in the town. Rodd had been going about, gauging it quietly. He could do so more easily, and with less suspicion, than the partners. People were more free with him.

Ovington held his glass before him by the stem and looked thoughtfully at it. "That reminds me," he said, "Rodd had some money with us-three hundred on deposit, I think. He had better have it. It will make no difference one way or the other, and he cannot afford to lose it."

Arthur looked doubtful. "Three hundred," he said, "might make the difference."

"Well, it might, of course," the banker admitted wearily. "But he had better have it. I should not like him to suffer."

"No," Clement said. "He must have it. Shall I see to it now? The sooner the better."

No one demurred, and he left the room. When he had gone Arthur rose and walked to the window. He looked out. Presently he turned. "As to that twelve thousand?" he said. "That you said would pull us through? Is there no way of getting it? Can't you think of any way, sir?"

"I am afraid not," Ovington answered, shaking his head. "I see no way. I've strained our resources, I've tried every way. I see no way unless-"

"Yes, sir? Unless?"

"Unless-and I am afraid that there is no chance of that-your uncle could be induced to come forward and support us-in your interest."

Arthur laughed aloud, but there was no mirth in the sound. "If that is your hope, if you have any idea of that kind, sir," he said, "I am afraid you don't know him yet. I know nothing less likely."

"I am afraid that you are right. Still, your future is at stake. I am sorry that it is so, lad, but there it is. And if it could be made clear to him that he ran no risk?"

"But could it? Could it?"

"He would run no risk."

"But could he be brought to see that?" Arthur spoke sharply, almost with contempt. "Of course he could not! If you knew what his attitude is towards banks generally, and bankers, you would see the absurdity of it! He hates the very name of Ovington's."

The other yielded. "Just so," he said. Even to him the idea was unpalatable. "It was only a forlorn hope, a wild idea, lad, and I'll say no more about it. It comes to this, that we must depend on ourselves, show a brave face, and hope for the best."

But Arthur, though he had scoffed at the suggestion which Ovington had made, could not refrain from turning it over in his mind. He had courage enough for anything, and it was not the lack of that which hindered him from entertaining the project. The storm which was gathering ahead, and which threatened the shipwreck of his cherished ambition and his dearest hopes, was terrible to him, and to escape from its fury he would have faced any man, had that been all. But that was not all. He had other interests. If he applied to the Squire and the Squire took it amiss, as it was pretty certain that he would, then not only would no good be done and no point be gained, but the life-boat, on which he might himself escape, if things came to the worst, would be shipwrecked also.

For that life-boat consisted in the Squire's influence with Josina. The Squire's word might still prevail with the girl, silly and unpractical as she was. It was a chance; no more than a chance, Arthur recognized that. But at Garth the old man's will had always been law, and if he could be brought to put his foot down, Arthur could not believe that Josina would resist him. And amid the wreck of so many hopes and so many ambitions, every chance, even a desperate chance, was of value.

But if he was to retain the Squire's favor, if he was to fall back on his influence, he must do nothing to forfeit that favor. Certainly he must not hazard it by acting on a suggestion as ill-timed and hopeless as that which the banker had put forward. Not to save the bank, not to save Ovington, not to save anyone! The more, as he felt sure that the application would do none of these things.

Ovington did not know the old man. He did, and he was not going to sink his craft, crank and frail as it already was, by taking in passengers.

CHAPTER XXV

While the leaven of uneasiness, fermenting into fear, and liable at any moment to breed panic, worked in Aldersbury, turning the sallow bilious and the sanguine irritable-while the contents of the mail-bag and the Gazette were awaited with growing apprehension, and inklings of the truth, leaking out, were turning to water the hearts of those who depended on the speculators, life at Garth was proceeding after its ordinary fashion. No word of what was impending, or might be impending, travelled so far. No echo of the alarm that assailed the ears of terrified men, forced on a sudden to face unimagined disaster, broke the silence of the drab room, where the Squire sat brooding, or of the garden where Josina spent hours, pacing the raised walk and looking down on that strip of sward where the water skirted the Thirty Acres wood.

That strip of sward where she had met him, that view from the garden were all that now remained to her of Clement, all that proved to her that the past was not a dream; and they did much to keep hope alive in her breast, and to hold her firm in her resolve. So precious indeed were the associations they recalled, that while, with the hardness of a woman who loves elsewhere, she felt little sympathy with Arthur in his disappointment, she actively resented the fact that he had chosen to address her there, and so had profaned the one spot, on which with some approach to nearness, she could dream of Clement.

Living a life so retired, and with little to distract her, she gave herself to long thoughts of her lover, and lived and lived again the stolen moments which she had spent with him. It was on these that she nourished her courage and strengthened her will; for, bred to submission and educated to obey, it was no small thing that she contemplated. Nor could she have raised herself to the pitch of determination which she had reached had she not gained elevation from the thought that the matter now rested in her own hands, and that all Clement's trust and all his dependence were on her. She must be true to him or she would fail him indeed. Honor no less than love required her to be firm, let her timid heart beat as it might.

On wet days she sat in the Dutch summer-house, the squat tower with the pyramidal roof and fox-vane on top, which flanked the raised walk, and had, when viewed from below, the look of a bastion. But the day after Ovington's return happened to be fine. It was one of those days of mild sunshine and soft air, which occur in late autumn or early winter and, by reason of their rarity, linger in the memory; and she was walking in the garden when, an hour before noon, Calamy came to tell her that "the master" was asking for her. "And very peevish," he added, shaking his head as he stalked away under the apple-trees, "as he's like to be, more and more till the end."

She overtook the man in the hall. "Is he alone, Calamy?" she asked.

"Ay, but your A'nt's been with him. He's for going up the hill."

"Up the hill?"

"Ay, he's one that will walk while he can. But the next time, I'm thinking," shaking his head again, "it won't be his feet he'll go out on."

"Mrs. Bourdillon has gone?"

"Ay, miss, she's gone-as we're all going," despondently, "sooner or later. She brought some paper, for I heard her reading to him. It would be his will, I expect."

Josina thought the supposition most unlikely, for if her father was close with his money he was at least as close with his affairs. As long as she could remember he had held himself in a crabbed reserve, he had moved a silent master in a dependent world, even his rare outbursts of anger had rather emphasized than broken his reticence.

And since the attack which had consigned him to darkness he had grown even more taciturn. He had not repelled sympathy; he had rendered it impossible by ignoring the existence of a cause for it. While all about him had feared for his sight and, as hope faded, had dreaded the question which they believed to be trembling on his lips, he had either never hoped, or, drawing his own conclusions, had abandoned hope. At any rate, he had never asked. Instead he sat-when Arthur was not there to enliven him or Fewtrell to report to him-wrapped in his own thoughts, too proud to complain or too insensible to feel, and silent. Whatever he thought, whatever he feared, he hid all behind an impenetrable mask; and whether pride or patience or resignation were behind that mark, none knew. Complaint, pity, sympathy, these, he seemed to say, were for the herd. He had ruled; darkness and helplessness had come upon him, but he was still the master.

Arthur might think that he failed, but those who were always about him saw few signs of it. To-day, when Josina entered his room she found him on his feet, one hand resting on the table, the other on his cane. "Get your hat and cloak," he said. "I am going up the hill."

So far his longest excursion had been to the mill, and Josina thought that she ought to remonstrate. "Won't it be too far, sir?" she said.

"Do as I say, girl. And tell Calamy to bring my hat and coat."

She obeyed him, and a minute later they left the house by the yard door. He walked with a firm step, his hand sometimes on her shoulder, sometimes on her arm; but aware how easily she might forget to warn him of an obstacle, or to allow for his passage, she accompanied him with her heart in her mouth. Yet she owned a certain sweetness in his dependence on her, in the weight of his hand on her shoulder, in his nearness.

Before they left the yard he halted. "Look in the pig-styes," he said. "Tell me if that idle dog has cleaned them?"

She went and looked, and assured him that they were in their usual state. He grunted, and they moved on. Passing beneath the gable end of the summer-house they descended the steep, rutted lane which led to the mill. "The first day of the year was such a day," the Squire muttered, and raised his face that the sun might fall upon it.

When they came to the narrow bridge beside the mill, with its roughened causeway eternally shaken by the roar and wet with the spray of the overshot wheel, she trembled. There was no parapet, and the bridge was barely wide enough to permit them to pass abreast. But he showed no fear, he stepped on to it firmly, and on the crown he halted. "Look what water is in the pound," he said.

"Had I not better wait-till you are over, sir?"

"Do as I say, girl! Do as I say!" He struck his cane impatiently on the stones.

She left him unwillingly, and more than once looked back, but always to see him standing, gaunt and slightly stooping, his sightless eyes bent on the groaning, laboring wheel, on the silvery cascade that poured over its black flanges, on the fragment of rainbow that glittered where the sun shot the spray with colors. He was seeing it all, as he had seen it a thousand times: in childhood, when he had lingered and wondered before it, fascinated by the rush and awed by the thunder of the falling water; in youth, when with gun or rod he had just glanced at it in passing; in manhood, when it had come to be one of the amenities of the property, and he had measured its condition with an owner's eye; ay, and in later life, when to see it had been rather to call up memories, than to form new impressions. Now, he would never see it again with his eyes, and he knew it. And yet he had never seen it more clearly than he did to-day, as he stood in darkness, with the cold breath of the water-fall on his cheek.

She grasped something of this as she hurried back, and satisfied as to the pound he went on. They ascended the lane which, on the farther side of the brook, led to the highway, and crossing the road began to climb the rough track, that wound up through that part of the covert which was above the road.

Here and there a clump of hollies, a spreading yew, a patch of young beech to which the leaves still clung, blocked the view, but for the most part the eye passed unobstructed athwart trees stripped of foliage, and disclosing here a huge boulder, there a pile of moss-grown stones. A climb of a third of a mile, much of it steep, brought them without mishap-though a hundred times she trembled lest he should trip-to the abrupt glacis of sward that fringed, and in places ran up into, the limestone face.

It was broken by huge stones, precariously stayed in their descent, or by outcrops of rock from which sprang slender birches, light, graceful, their white bark shining.

"Are we clear of the wood?" he asked, lifting his face to meet the breeze.

"Yes, sir."

He turned leftwards. "There's a flat stone with a holly to north of it. D'you see it? I'll sit there."

She led him to it and he sat down on the stone, his stick between his knees, the sunshine on his face. She sat beside him, and as she looked over the expanse of pleasant vale and the ring of hills that compassed it about, the sense of his blindness moved her almost to tears. At their feet Garth, its red walls, its buildings and yards and policies, lay as on a plan. Beyond it, the tower of Garthmyle Church rose in the middle distance, a few thatched roofs peeping through the half-leafless trees about it. Leftwards the valley narrowed as the Welsh hills closed in, while to their right it melted into the smiling plain with its nestling villages, its rows of poplars, its shining streams. She fancied that he had been in the habit of coming to this place, and the thought that he saw no more from it now than when he sat in his room below, that he viewed nothing of the bright landscape spread beneath her own eyes, swelled her breast with pity. She could have cast her arms about him and wept as she strove to comfort him-could have sworn to him that while he lived her eyes should be his! Ay, she could have done this, all this-if he had been other than he was!

Perhaps it was as well-or perhaps it was not as well-that she did not give way to the impulse. For presently in a voice as dry as usual, "Do you see the gable of Wolley's Mill, girl? Carry your eyes right of the hill, over the coppice at the corner of Archer's Leasow?"

She told him that she could see it.

"That's two miles away. It's the farthest I own in that direction, but there's a slip of Acherley's land between us and it. Now look down the valley-d'you see five poplars in a row?"

"Yes, sir, I see them."

"That's our boundary towards the town. Behind us we march with the watershed. Facing us-the boundary is the far fence of Whittall's farm at the foot of the hills."

"The black and white house, sir?"

"Ay. Well, look at it, girl. There's five thousand acres and a bit over; and there's two hundred and ninety people living on it-there's barely one of them I don't know. I've looked after them, but I've not cosseted them, and don't you cosset them. And it's not only the people; there's not a field I don't know nor a bit of coppice that I can't see, nor a slate roof that I have not slated, and the Lord knows how much of it I've drained. It's been ours, the heart of it since Queen Bess, and part of it since Mary; sometimes logged with debt, and then again cleared. I came into it logged, and I've cleared it. It's come down, sometimes straight, sometimes sideways, but always in a man's hands. Well, it will soon be in a girl's. In two or three years, more or less, it will be yours, my girl. And do you mark what I say to you this day. You're the heir of tail, and I couldn't take it from you, if I would-but do you mark me!" He found her hand and gripped it so hard as to give her pain, but she would not wince. "Don't you part with an acre of it! Not with an acre of it! Not with an acre of it! Do you hear me, girl; or I think I'll turn in my grave! If you are bidden to do it when your son comes of age, you think of me and of this day, and don't put your hand to it! Hold to the land, hold to the land, and they as come after you shall hold up their heads as we have held ours! It isn't money, it isn't land bought with money, it's the land that's come down, that will keep Griffins where Griffins have been. When I am gone do you mark that! Whatever betide, let 'em say what they like, don't you be one of those that sell their birthright, the right to govern, for a mess of pottage!"

"I will remember, sir!" she said with tears. "I will, I will indeed!"

"Ay, never forget it, don't you forget this day. I ha' brought you up the hill on purpose to show you that. For fifty years I have spared and lived niggardly and put shilling to shilling to clear that land and to drain it and round it-and may be, for Acherley is a random spendthrift, I'll yet add that strip of his to it! I've lived for the land, that those who come after me may govern their corner as Griffins have governed it time out of mind. I've done my duty by the people and the land. Don't you forget to do yours."

She told him earnestly that she never would-she never would. After that he was silent awhile. He let her hand go. But presently, and without warning, "Why don't you ha' the lad?"

Josina was surprised and yet not surprised; or if surprised at all, it was at her own calmness. Her color ebbed, but she neither trembled nor faltered. She had not even to summon up the thought of Clement. The charge to which she had just listened clothed her with a dignity which the prospect, spread before her eyes and insensibly raising her mind to higher issues, helped to support. "I couldn't, sir," she said quietly. "I do not love him."

"Don't love him?" the Squire repeated-yet not half so angrily as she expected. "What's amiss with him?"'

"Nothing, sir. But I do not love him."

"Love? Bah! Love'll come! Maids ha' naught to do with love! When they're married love'll come fast enough, I'll warrant! The lad's straight and comely and a proper age-and what else do you want? What else do you want, eh? He's of your own blood, and if he's wild ideas 'tis better than wild oats, and he'll give them up. He's promised me that, or I'd never ha' said yes to him! Why, girl!" with sudden exasperation, "'twas only the other day you were peaking and puling for him! Peaking and puling like a sick sparrow, and I was saying, no! And now-why, damme, what do you mean by it?"

"It was all a mistake, sir," she said with dignity. "I never did think of him, or wish for him. It was a mistake."

"A mistake! What do you mean?"

"You bade me think no more of him, and I obeyed. But-but I never had any thought of him."

That did irritate the old man; it seemed to him that she played with him. In a rage he struck his cane on the ground. "Damme!" he exclaimed. "That's womanlike all over! Give her what she wants and she doesn't want it. But, see here, I'll not have it, girl. I know your flimsies and you've got to have him! Do you hear?"

He was enraged by this queer twist in her, and he blustered. But his anger-and he felt it-lacked something of force. He did not know how to bring it to bear. And when she did not reply to him at once, "Do you forget that he saved my life?" he cried, dropping to a lower level. "D'you forget that, you ungrateful wench?"

"But he did not save mine, sir!" she answered, with astonishing spirit. "Yet it is mine that you ask me to give him. And indeed, indeed, sir, he does not love me."

"Then why should he want you?" he retorted. "But he'll soon make you sure of that, if you'll let him. And you've got to take him. You've got to take him. Let's ha' no more words about it. I've said the word."

"But I've not, sir," she replied, with that new and astonishing courage of hers. "And I cannot say it. I am grateful to him, I shall ever be grateful to him for saving you-and he is my cousin. But he does not love me, he has never made love to me. And am I, your daughter, to-to accept him, the moment it suits him to marry me?"

That touched the Squire's pride. It gave him to think. "Never made love to you?" he exclaimed. "What do you mean, girl?"

"Until he came to me in the garden on Tuesday he never-he never gave me reason to think that he would come. Am I," with a tremor of indignation in her voice, "of so little account, is that which you have just told me that I may some day bring to him so little, that I must put all in his hand the moment he chooses to lift it?"

The Squire was bothered by that, and "You are like all women!" he exclaimed. "I don't know where to ha' you. That's where it is. You twist and you turn, and you fib-"

"I am not fibbing, sir."

"And you've as many quirks as-as a hunted hare. There's no holding you! My father would ha' locked you up with bread and water till you did what you were told, and my mother'd ha' boxed your ears till she put some sense into you. But we're a d-d silly generation. We're too soft!"

She minded this little, as long as he did not put her to the supreme test; as long as he did not ask her if there was anyone else, any other lover. But his mind was now busy with Arthur. Was it true that the young spark was thinking more of Garth than of the girl? More of the heiress than of the sweetheart? More of lucre than of love? If so, d-n his impudence! He deserved what he had got! From which point it was but a step to thoughts of the bank. Ay, Arthur was certainly one who had his plans for getting on, and getting on in ways to which no Griffin had stooped before. Was this of a piece with them?

The doubt had a cooling effect upon him. While Josina trembled lest the fateful question should still be put, and clenched her little hands as she summoned up fortitude to meet it-while she tried to still the fluttering of her heart, the old man relapsed into thought, muttered inarticulately, fell silent.

She would have given much to know the direction of his thoughts.

At last, "Well, you're so clever you must settle your own affairs," he grumbled. "I'm d-d if I understand either of you, girl or man. In my time if a wench said No, we took her and hugged her till she said Yes! We didn't go to her father. But since the old king died there's no red blood in the country-it's all telling and no kissing. There, I've done with it. Maybe when he turns his back on you, you'll be wanting him fast enough."

"No, sir, never!" she answered, overwhelmed by a victory so complete.

"Anyway, don't come fretting to me if you do! Your aunt told me that you were pining for him, but I'm hanged if she knows more than I do-or happen you don't know your own mind. Now look out, and tell me if they've finished thatching that wagoner's cottage at the Bache?"

"Yes, sir. I can see the new straw from here," she said.

"Have they brought it down over the eaves?"

"I'm afraid I can't see that. It's too far."

"Mind me to ask Fewtrell. Now get me home. Where's your arm? I'll go down through the new planting."

"But it's not so safe, sir," she remonstrated. "There's the stone stile, and-"

"When I canna get over the stone stile I'll not come up the hill. I want to see the planting. D'you take me that way and tell me if the rabbits ha' got in. March, girl!"

She obeyed him, but in fear and trembling, for there was not only the awkward stile to climb, but the track ran over outcrops of rocks on which even a careful walker might slip. However, he crossed the stile with ease, aided less by her arm than by his own memory of its shape, and of every stone that neighbored it; and it was only over the treacherous surface of the rock that he showed himself really dependent on her care. Memory could not help him here, and here it was, as he leant on her shoulder, that she felt, her breast swelling with pity, the real, the blood tie between them. Her heart went out to him, and her eyes were dim with tears when at length they stood again on the high road, and viewed, on a level with themselves but divided from them by the trough of green meadows in which the brook ran, the gables and twisted chimneys, the buttressed walls, that gave to Garth its air of a fortress.

The girl gazed at it, the old man's hand still on her shoulder. It was her home: she knew no other, she had never been fifty miles from it. It stood for peace, safety, protection. She loved it-never more than now, and never as much as now. And never as much as now had she loved her father; never before had she understood him so well. The last hour had wrought a change, dimly suspected by both, in their relations. They stood on a level-more on a level, at any rate; with no gulf between them but the natural interval of years, a green valley as it were, which the eyes of understanding and the light foot of love could cross at will.

CHAPTER XXVI

A week and a day went by after the banker's return and there was no run upon the bank. But afar off, in London and Manchester and Liverpool, and even in Birmingham, there were shocks and upheavals, failures and talk of failures, fear in high places, ruin in low. For there was no doubt about the crisis now. The wheels of trade, which had for some time been running sluggishly, stopped. It was impossible to sell goods, for the prudent and foreseeing had already flung their products upon the market, and glutted it, and later, others had come in and, forced to find money, had sold down and down, procuring cash at any sacrifice. Now it was impossible to sell at all. Men with the shelves of their warehouses loaded with goods, men whose names in ordinary times were good for thousands, could not find money to meet their trade bills, to pay their wages, to discharge their household accounts.

And it was still less possible to sell shares, for shares, even sound shares, had on a sudden become waste paper. The bubble companies, created during the frenzy of the past two years, were bursting on every side, and the public, unable to discriminate, no longer put faith in anything. Rudely awakened, they opened their eyes to reality. They saw that they had dreamed, and been helped to dream. They discovered that skates and warming pans were in no great request in the tropics, and could not be exported thither at a profit of five hundred per cent. They saw that churns and milkmaids, freighted to lands where the cattle ran wild on the pampas and oil was preferred to butter, were no certain basis on which to build a fortune. Their visions of South American argosies melted into thin air. The silver from La Plata which they had pictured as entering the mouth of the Thames, or at worst as within sight from the Lizard, was discovered to be reposing in the darkness of unopened seams. The pearling ships were yet to build, the divers to teach, and, for the diamonds of the Brazils which this man or that man had seen lying in skin packages at the door of the Bank of England, they now twinkled in a cold and distant heaven, as unapproachable as the Seven Stars of Orion. The canals existed on paper, the railways were in the air, the harbors could not be found even on the map.

The shares of companies which had passed from hand to hand at fourfold and tenfold their face value fell with appalling rapidity. They fell and fell until they were in many cases worth no more than the paper on which they were printed. And the bursting of these shams, which had never owned the smallest chance of success, brought about the fall of ventures better founded. The good suffered with the bad. Presently no man would buy a share, no man would look at a share, no bank advance on its security. Men saw their fortunes melt day by day as snow melts under an April sun. They saw themselves stripped, within a few weeks or even days, of wealth, of a competence, in too many cases of their all.

And the ruin was widespread. It reached many a man who had never gambled or speculated. Business runs on the wheels of credit, and those wheels are connected by a million unseen cogs. Let one wheel stop and it is impossible to say where the stoppage will cease, or how many will be affected by it. So it was now. The honest tradesman and the manufacturer, striving to leave a competence to a family nurtured in comfort, were involved in one common ruin with the spendthrift and the speculator. The credit of all was suspect; from all alike the sources of accommodation were cut off. Each in his turn involved his neighbor, and brought him down.

There was a great panic. The centres of commerce and trade were convulsed. The kings of finance feared for themselves and closed their pockets. The Bank of England would help no one. Men who had never sought aid before, men who had held their heads high, waited, vain petitioners, at its doors.

Fortunately for Ovington's, Aldersbury lay at some distance from the centres of disturbance, and for a time, though the storm grumbled and crackled on the horizon, the town remained calm. But it was such a calm as holds the tropic seas in a breathless grip, before the typhoon, breaking from the black canopy overhead, whirls the doomed bark away, as a leaf is swept before our temperate blasts. Throughout those six days, though little happened, anything, it was felt, might happen. The arrival of every coach was a thing to listen for, the opening of every mail-bag a terror, the presentation of every bill a pang, the payment of every note a thing at which to wince; while the sense of danger, borne like some infection on the air, spread mysteriously from town to village, and village to hamlet, to penetrate at last wherever one man depended on another for profit or for subsistence. And that was everywhere.

A storm impended, and no man knew where it would break, or on whom it would fall. Each looked in his neighbor's face and, seeing his fear reflected, wondered, and perhaps suspected. If so-and-so failed, would not such-an-one be in trouble? And if such-an-one "went," what of Blank-with whom he himself had business?

The feeling which prevailed did not in the main go beyond uneasiness and suspicion. But, in quarters where the facts were known and the peril was clearly discerned, these days of waiting were days-nay, every day was a week-of the most poignant anxiety. In banks, where those behind the scenes knew that not only their own stability and their own fortunes were at stake, but that if they failed there would be lamentation in a score of villages and loss in a hundred homes, endurance was strained to the breaking point. To show a cheerful face to customers, to chat over the counter with an easy air, to smile on a visitor who might be bringing in the bowstring, to listen unmoved to the murmur in the street that might presage bad news-these things made demands on nerve and patience which could not be met without distress. And every hour that passed, every post that came in, added to the strain.

Under this burden Ovington's bearing was beyond praise. The work of his life-and he was over-old to begin it again-was in danger, and doubtless he thought of his daughter and his son. But he never faltered. He had, it is true, to support him the sense, of responsibility, which steels the heart of the born leader, even as it turns to water that of the pretender; he knew, and doubtless he was strengthened by the knowledge, that all depended on him, on his calmness, his judgment, his resources; that all looked to him for guidance and encouragement, watched his face, and marked his demeanor.

But even so, he was the admiration of those in the secret. Not even Napoleon, supping amid his marshals, and turning over to sleep beside the watch-fire on the night before a battle, was more wonderful. His son swore fealty to him a dozen times a day. Rodd, who had received his money in silence, and now stood to lose no more than his place, followed him with worshipping eyes and, perhaps, an easier mind. The clerks, who perforce had gained some inkling of the position, were relieved by his calmness, and spread abroad the confidence that they drew from him. Even Arthur, who bore the trial less well, admired his leader, suspected at times that he had some secret hope or some undisclosed resources, and more than once suffered himself to be plucked from depression by his example.

The truth was that while financial ability was common to both, their training had been different. The elder man had been always successful, but he had been forced to strive and struggle; he had climbed but slowly at the start, and there had been more than one epoch in his career when he had stood face to face with defeat. He had won through, but he had never shut his eyes to the possibility of failure, or to the fact that in a business, which in those days witnessed every twenty years a disastrous upheaval, no man could count on, though with prudence he might anticipate, a lasting success. He had accepted his profession with its drawbacks as well as its advantages. He had not closed his eyes to its risks. He had viewed it whole.

Arthur, on the other hand, plunging into it with avidity at a time when all smiled and the sky was cloudless, had supposed that if he were once admitted to the bank his fortune was made, and his future secured. He knew indeed, and if challenged he would have owned, that banking was a precarious enterprise; that banks had broken. He knew that many had closed their doors in '16, still more on one black day in '93. He was aware that in the last forty years scores of bankers had failed, that some had taken their own lives, that one at least had suffered the last penalty of the law. But he had taken these things to be exceptions-things which might, indeed, recur, but not within his experience-just as in our day, though railway accidents are not uncommon, no man for that reason refrains from travelling.

At any rate the thought of failure had not entered into Arthur's mind, and mainly for this reason he, who in fair weather had been most confident and whose ability had shone most brightly, now cut an indifferent figure. It was not that his talent or his judgment failed; in these he still threw Clement and Rodd into the shade. But the risk, suddenly disclosed, was too much for him. It depressed him. He grew crabbed and soured, his temper flashing out on small provocation. He sneered at Rodd, he snubbed the clerks. When it was necessary to refuse a request for credit-and the necessity arose a dozen times a day-his manner lacked the suavity that makes the best of a bad thing.

In very truth they were trying times. Men who had bought shares through Ovington's, and might have sold them at a profit but had not, could not understand why the bank would not now advance money on the security of the shares, would not even pay calls on them, and had only advice, and that unpalatable, at their service. They came to the parlor and argued, pleaded, threatened, stormed. They would close their accounts, they would remove them to Dean's, they would publish the treatment that they had received! Again, there were those who had bought railway shares, which were now at a considerable discount and looked like falling farther; the bank had issued them-they looked to the bank to take them off their hands. More trying still were the applications of those who, suddenly pressed for money, came, pallid and wiping their foreheads with bandanna handkerchiefs, to plead desperately for a small overdraft, for twenty, forty, seventy pounds-just enough to pay the weekly wage-bill, or to meet their household outgoings, or to settle with some pressing creditor. For all creditors were now pressing. No man gave time, no man trusted another, and for those in the bank the question was, How long would they trust Ovington's? For every man who left the doors of the bank after a futile visit, every man who went away with his request declined, became a potential enemy, whose complaint or chance word might breed suspicion.

"Still, every day is a day gained," the banker said as he dropped his mask on the Friday afternoon and sank wearily into a chair. It was closing time, and the clerks could be heard moving in the outer room, putting away books, counting the cash, locking the drawers. Another day had passed without special pressure. "Time is everything."

Arthur shrugged his shoulders. "It would be, if it were money."

"Well, I think that we are doing capitally-capitally so far," said Clement.

"I am glad you are satisfied," Arthur retorted. "We are four hundred down on the day! I can't think, sir" – peevishly-"why you let Purslow have that seventy pounds."

"Well, he is a very old customer," the banker replied patiently, "and he's hard hit-he wanted it for wages, and I fear that he's behindhand with them. And if we withhold all help, my boy, we shall certainly precipitate a run. On Monday those bills of Badger's fall due, and I think will be met. We shall receive eleven hundred from them. On Tuesday another bill for three hundred and fifty matures, and I think is good. If we can go on till Wednesday we shall be a little stronger to meet the crisis than we are to-day. And we can only live from day to day" – wearily. "If Pole's bank goes" – he glanced doubtfully at the door-"I fear that Williams's will follow. And then-"

"There will be the devil to pay!"

"Well, we must try to pay him!"

"Bravo, sir!" Clement cried. "That's the way to talk."

"Yes, it is no use to dwell on the dark side," his father agreed. "All the same" – he was silent a while, reviewing the position and making calculations which he had made a hundred times before-"all the same, it would make all the difference if we had that twelve thousand pounds in reserve."

"By Jove, yes!" Arthur exclaimed. For a moment hope animated his face. "Can you think of no way of getting it, sir?"

The banker shook his head. "I have tried every quarter," he said, "and strained every resource. I cannot. I'm afraid we must fight our battle as we are."

Arthur gazed at the floor. The elder man looked at him and thought again of the Squire. But he would not renew his suggestion. Arthur knew better than he what was possible in that quarter, and if he saw no hope, there doubtless was no hope. At best the idea had been fantastic, in view of the prejudice which the Squire entertained against the bank.

While they pondered, the door opened, and all three looked sharply round, the movement betraying the state of their nerves. But it was only Betty who entered-a little graver and a little older than the Betty of eight or nine months before, but with the same gleam of humor in her eyes. "What a conclave!" she cried. She looked round on them.

"Yes," Arthur answered drily. "It wants only Rodd to be complete."

"Just so." She made a face. "How much you think of him lately!"

"And unfortunately he's taken his little all and left us."

The shot told. Her eyes gleamed, and she colored with anger. "What do you mean? Dad" – brusquely-"what does he mean?"

"Only that we thought it better," the banker explained, "to make Rodd safe by paying him the little he has with us."

"And he took it-of course?"

The banker smiled. "Of course he took it," he said. "He would have been foolish if he had not. It was only a deposit, and there was no reason why he should risk it with us-as things are."

"Oh, I see. Things are as bad as that, are they? Any other rats?" – with a withering look at Arthur.

"I am afraid that there is no one else who can leave," her father answered. "The gangway is down now, my dear, and we sink or swim together."

"Ah! Well, I fancy there's one of the rats in the dining-room now. That is what I came to tell you. He wants to see you, dad."

"Who is it?"

"Mr. Acherley."

Ovington shrugged his shoulders. "Well, it is after hours," he said, "but-I'll see him."

That broke up the meeting. The banker went out to interview his visitor, who had been standing for some minutes at one of the windows of the dining-room, looking out on the slender stream of traffic that passed up and down the pavement or slid round the opposite corner into the Market Place.

Acherley was not of those who go round about when a direct and more brutal approach will serve. Broken fortunes had soured rather than tamed him, and though, when there had been something to be gained by it, he had known how to treat the banker with an easy familiarity, the contempt in which he held men of that class made it more natural to him to bully than to fawn. Before he had turned to the street for amusement he had surveyed the furniture of the room with a morose eye, had damned the upstart's impudence for setting himself up with such things, and consoled himself with the reflection that he would soon see it under the hammer. "And a d-d good job, too!" he had muttered. "What the blazes does he want with a kidney wine-table and a plate-chest! It will serve Bourdillon right for lowering himself to such people!"

When the banker came to him he made no apology for the lateness of his visit, but "Hallo!" he said bluntly, "I want a little talk with you. But short's the word. Fact is, I find I've more of those railway shares than it suits me to keep, Ovington, and I want you to take a hundred off my hands. I hear they're fetching two-ten."

"One-ten," the banker said. "They are barely that."

"Two-ten," Acherley repeated, as if the other had not spoken. "That's my price. I suppose the bank will accommodate me by taking them?"

Ovington looked steadily at him. "Do you mean the shares you pledged with us? If so, I am afraid that in any event we shall have to put them on the market soon. The margin has nearly run off."

"Oh, hang those!" – lightly. "You may as well account for them at the same price-two and a half. I'll consider that settled. But I've a hundred more that I don't want to keep, and it's those I am talking about. You'll take them, I suppose-for cash, of course? I'm a little pressed at present, and want the money."

"I am afraid that I must say, no," Ovington said. "We are not buying any more, even at thirty shillings. As to those we hold, if you wish us to sell them at once-and I am inclined to think that we ought to-"

"Steady, steady! Not so fast!" Acherley let the mask fall, and, drawing himself to his full height-and tall and lean, in his long riding coat shaped to the figure, he looked imposing and insolent enough-he tapped his teeth with the handle of his riding whip. "Not so fast, man! Think it over!" – with an ugly smile. "I've been of use to you. It is your turn to be of use to me. I want to be rid of these shares."

"Naturally. But we don't wish to take them, Mr. Acherley."

Acherley glowered at him. "You mean," he said, "that the bank can't afford to take them? If that's your meaning-"

"It does not suit us to take them."

"But by G-d you've got to take them! D'you hear, sir? You've got to take them, or take the consequences! I went into this to oblige you."

"Not at all," Ovington said. "You came into it with your eyes open, and with a view to the improvement of your property, if the enterprise proved a success. No man came into it with eyes more open! To be frank with you-"

But Acherley cut him short. "Oh, d-n all that!" he cried. "I did not come here to palaver. The long and short of it is you've got to take the shares, or, by Gad, I go out of this room and I say what I think! And you'll take the consequences. There's talk enough in the town already as you know. It only needs another punch, one more good punch, and you're out of the ring and in the sponging house. And your beautiful bank you know where. You know that as well as I do, my good man. And if you want a friend instead of an enemy you'll oblige me, and no words about it. That's flat!"

The room was growing dark. Ovington stood facing such light as there was. He looked very pale. "Yes, that's quite flat," he said.

"Very good. Then what do you say to it?"

"What I said before-No! No, Mr. Acherley!"

"What? Do you mean it? Why, if you are such a fool as not to know your own interests-"

"I do know them-very well," Ovington said, resolutely taking him up. "I know what you want and I know what you offer. It is, as you say, quite flat, and I'll be equally-flat! Your support is not worth the price. And I warn you, Mr. Acherley, and I beg you to take notice, that if you say a word against the solvency of the bank after this-after this threat-you will be held accountable to the law. And more than that, I can assure you of another thing. If, as you believe, there is going to be trouble, it is you and such as you who will be the first to suffer. Your creditors-"

"The devil take them! And you!" the gentleman cried, stung to fury. "Why, you swollen little frog!" losing all control over himself, "you don't think my support worth buying, don't you? You don't think it's worth a dirty hundred or two of your scrapings! Then I tell you I'll put my foot on you-by G-d, I will! Yes! I'll tread you down into the mud you sprang from! If you were a gentleman I'd shoot you on the Flash at eight o'clock to-morrow, and eat my breakfast afterwards! You to talk to me! You, you little spawn from the gutter! I've a good mind to thrash you within an inch of your life, but there'll be those ready enough to do that for me by and by-ay, and plenty, by G-d!"

He towered over the banker, and he looked threatening enough, but Ovington did not flinch. He went to the door and threw it open. "There's the door, Mr. Acherley!" he said.

For a moment the gentleman hesitated. But the banker's firm front prevailed, and with a gesture, half menacing, half contemptuous, Acherley stalked out. "The worse for you!" he said. "You'll be sorry for this! By George, you will be sorry for this next week!"

"Good evening," said the banker-he was trembling with passion. "I warn you to be careful what you say, or the law will deal with you." And he stood his ground until the other, shrugging his shoulders and flinging behind him a last curse, had passed through the door. Then he closed the door and went back to the fireplace. He sat down.

The matter was no surprise to him. He knew his man, and neither the demand nor the threat was unexpected. But he knew, too, that Acherley was shrewd, and that the demand and the threat were ominous signs. More forcibly than anything that had yet occurred, they brought before him the desperate nature of the crisis, and the likelihood that, before a week went by, the worst would happen. He would be compelled to put up the shutters. The bank would stop. And with the bank would go all that he had won by a life of continuous labor: the position that he had built up, the status that he had gained, the reputation that he had achieved, the fortune which he had won and which had so much exceeded his early hopes. The things with which he had surrounded himself, they too, tokens of his success, the outward and handsome signs of his rise in life, many of them landmarks, milestones on the path of triumph-they too would go. He looked sadly on them. He saw them, he too, under the hammer: saw the mocking, heedless crowd handling them, dividing them, jeering at his short-lived splendor, gibing at his folly in surrounding himself with them.

Ay, and one here and there would have cause to say more bitter things. For some-not many, he hoped, but some-would be losers with him. Some homes would be broken up, some old men beggared: and all would be laid at his door. His name would be a byword. There would be little said of the sufferers' imprudence or folly or rashness: he would be the scapegoat for all, he and the bank he had founded. Ovington's Bank! They would tell the story of it through years to come-would smile at its rise, deride its fall, make of it a town tale, the tale of a man's arrogance, and of the speedy Nemesis which had punished it!

He was a proud man, and the thought of these things, the visions that they called up, tortured him. At times, he had borne himself a little too highly, had presumed on his success, had said a word too much. Well, all that would be repaid now with interest, ay, with compound interest.

The room was growing dark, as dark as his thoughts. The fire glowed, a mere handful of red embers, in the grate. Now and again men went by the windows, talking-talking, it might be, of him: anxious, suspicious, greedy, ready at a word to ruin themselves and him, to cut their own throats in their selfish panic. They had only to use common sense, to control themselves, and no man would lose a penny. But they would have no common sense. They would rush in and destroy all, their own and his. For no bank called upon to pay in a day all that it owed could do so, any more than an insurance office could at any moment pay all its lives. But they would not blame themselves. They would blame him-and his!

He groaned as he thought of his children. Clement, indeed, might and must fend for himself. And he would-he had proved it of late days by his courage and cheerfulness, and the father's heart warmed to him. But Betty? Gay, fearless, laughing Betty, the light of his home, the joy of his life! Who, born when fortune had already begun to smile on him, had never known poverty or care or mean shifts! For whom he had been ambitious, whom he had thought to see well married-married into the county, it might be! Poor Betty! There would be an end of that now. Past his prime and discredited, he could not hope to make more than a pittance, happy if he could earn some two or three pounds a week in some such situation as Rodd's. And she must sink with him and accept such a home as he could support, in place of this spacious old town-house, with its oaken wainscots and its wide, shallow stairs, and its cheerful garden at the back.

His love suffered equally with his pride.

He was thinking so deeply that he did not hear the door open, or a light foot cross the room. He did not suspect that he was observed until a pair of warm young arms slid round his neck, and Betty's curls brushed his check. "In the dumps, father?" she said. "And in the dark-and alone? Poor father! Is it as bad as that? But you have not given up hope? We are not ruined yet?"

"God forbid!" he said, hardly able, on finding her so close to him, to control his voice. "But we may be, Betty."

"And what then?" She clasped him more closely to her. "Might not worse things happen to us? Might you not die and I be left alone? Or might I not die, and you lose me? Or Clement? You are pleased with Clement, father, aren't you? He may not be as clever as-as some people. But you know he's there when you want him. Suppose you lost us?"

"True, child. But you don't know what poverty is-after wealth, Betty-how narrowing, how irksome, how it galls at every point! You don't know what it is to live on two or three pounds a week, in two or three rooms!"

"They will bring us the closer together," said Betty.

"And to be looked down upon by those who have been your equals, and shunned by those who have been your friends!"

"Nice friends! We shall do better without them!"

"And things will be said of me, things it will be hard to listen to!"

"They won't say them to me," said Betty. "Or look out for my nails, ma'am! Besides, they won't be true, and who cares, father! Lizzie Clough said yesterday I'd a cast in one eye, but does it worry me? Not a scrap. And we'll shut the door on our two or three rooms and let them-go hang! As long as we are together we can face anything, father-we can live on two pounds or two shillings or two pence. And consider! You might never have known what Clement was, how lively, how brave, how" – with a funny little laugh-"like me," hugging him to her, "if this had not happened-that's not going to happen after all."

He sighed. He dealt with figures, she with fancy. "I hope not," he said. "At any rate I've two good children, and if it does come to the worst-"

"We'll lock ourselves in and our false friends out!" she said; and for a moment after that she was silent. Then, "Tell me, father, why did Mr. Rodd take that money-when you need all that you can get together, and he knows it? For he's taking the plate to Birmingham to pledge, isn't he? So he must know it."

"He is, if-"

"If it comes to the worst? I know. Then why did he take his money, when he knew how things stood?"

"Why did he take his own when we offered it?" the banker replied. "Why shouldn't he, child? It was his own, and business is business. He would have been very foolish if he had not taken it. He's not a man who can afford to lose it."

"Oh!" said Betty. And for some minutes she said no more. Then she roused herself, poked the fire, and rang for the lamp.

CHAPTER XXVII

"Well," said the Squire peevishly, "I can do no more. Girls ha' their whimsies, and it's much if you can hinder 'em running after Mr. Wrong without forcing 'em to take Mr. Right. At any rate I've said what I could for you, lad, and the end was as if I hadn't. You must fight your own battle. Jos hasn't" – this would never have occurred to the Squire in his seeing days-"too gay a life of it, and if you're not man enough to get on the soft side of her, with a clear field, why, damme, you don't deserve to have her."

"I was well enough with her," Arthur said resentfully, "till lately. But she is changed, sir."

"Well, like enough. Girls are like that."

"There may be-someone else."

The Squire snorted. "Who?" he said. "Who?" – more roughly. "You're talking nonsense."

Arthur could not say who. He could not name anyone. So far as he knew there could not be anyone. But his temper, chafed by a week of suspense and anxiety, was not smoothed by the old man's refusal to do more. And then to fail with Josina! To be rejected by Josina, the simple girl whom, in his heart, he had regarded as a pis alter, on whom he had designed to confer a half-contemptuous affection, on whose youthful fancy he had played for his pastime! This was enough to try him, apart from the fact that things in Aldersbury looked black, and that, losing her, he lost the consolation prize to which he had looked forward to make all good. So, taken to task by the Squire, he did not at once assent. "Who?" he repeated gloomily. "Ah, I don't know."

"Nor I!" the Squire retorted. "There is nobody. Truth is, my lad, the man who has been robbed sees a face in every bush. However, there 'tis. I've said my say, and I've done with it. Did you bring those deeds from Welsh's?"

Arthur swallowed his mortification as best he might-fortunately the old man could not see his face. "Yes," he said. "I left them downstairs." The Squire had caught a cold, sitting out on the hill on the Saturday, and had been for some days in his bedroom.

"Well, I'm going to pay wages now," he rejoined. "Bring 'em up after dinner and I'll sign 'em. You and the girl or Peacock can witness them. And, hark you-here, wait a minute!" irascibly, for Arthur, giving as much rein to his temper as he dared, had turned on his heel and was marching off. "Take my keys and open the safe-cupboard downstairs, and bring me up the agreement. I've got to compare it with the lease-I shan't sign it without! Lock the door, d'you hear, before you open the cupboard, and have a care no one sees you."

"Very well," Arthur said, and was half-way to the door when again, as if to try his patience, the old man stopped him. "What's this they're saying about Ovington's, eh? 'Bout the bank? Pretty thing, if he's let you in and your money too! But I'm not surprised. I told you you were a fool, young man, to dirty your hands in that bag, whatever you thought to get out of it. And if you're not going to get anything out of it, but to leave your own in, as I hear talk of-what then? Come, let's hear what you have to say about it! I'd like to know."

"I don't know what you've heard, sir," Arthur answered, sparring for time. For self-control, provoking as the old man was, he had no longer need to fight. For he had seen, the moment the Squire spoke, that here, here if he chose to avail himself of it, was his chance of the twelve thousand! Here was an opening, if he had the courage to seize it. Granted the chance was desperate, and the opening unpromising-a poorer or less promising could hardly be. And the courage necessary was great. But here it was. The Squire himself had brought up the subject. He knew of the rumors: he had broken the ice. Here it was, and for a moment, uncertain, wavering, giddy with the swift interchange of pros and cons, Arthur tried for time-time to think. "What was it? What did you hear, sir?" he asked.

"What did I hear?" the Squire answered. "Why, that they're d-d suspicious of them in the town. And I don't wonder. Up in a night, and cut off in a day, like a rotten mushroom!" He spoke with gusto, forgetting for the moment what this might mean to his listener; who, on his side, hardly heeded the brutality, so absorbed was he in the question which he must answer-the question whether it would be wise or foolish, ruin or salvation, to ask the Squire for help. "He'll be another Fauntleroy, 'fore he's done," the old man went on with relish. "He'll stretch a rope, you'll see if he won't! I told him as much myself. I told him as much in those very words the day he came here about his confounded silly toy of a railroad. He might take in Woosenham and a lot of other fools, I told him, but he did not deceive me. Now I hear that he's going to burst up, and where'll you be, my lad? Where'll you be? By Gad, you may be in the dock with him!"

Certainly he might speak on that. The old man was harsh and hard-fisted, but he was also hard-headed and very shrewd; and conceivably the case might be so put to him that he might see his profit in it. Certainly it might be so put that he might see a fair prospect of saving his nephew's five thousand at no great risk to himself. The books might be laid before him, the figures be taken out. the precise situation made clear. There was-it could not be put higher than this-just a slender chance that he would listen, prejudiced as he was.

But twelve thousand! It was such a stupendous sum to name. It needed such audacity to ask for it. And yet it was that or nothing. Less might not serve; while to ask for less, to ask for anything at all, might cost the petitioner the favor he had won-his standing in the house, and the advantages which the Squire's support might still gain for him. And then it was such a forlorn hope, such a desperate, feckless venture! No, he would be a fool to risk it. He dared not do it. He had not the face.

Yet, for a few seconds after the Squire had ceased to speak, Arthur hesitated, confession trembling on his lips. The twelve thousand would make all good, save all, redeem all-ay, and bind Ovington to him in bonds of steel. But no, he dared not. He would be a fool to speak. And instead of the words that had risen to his lips, "I think you mistake, sir," he said coldly. "I think you'll find that this is all cry and little wool! Of course money is tight, and there is trouble in the City. I've heard talk of two or three weak banks being in difficulties, and I should not wonder if one or two of them stopped payment between this and Christmas. We are told that it is likely. But we are perfectly solvent. It will take more than talk to bring Ovington's down."

"Umph!" the Squire grumbled. "Well, maybe, maybe. You talk as if you knew, and you ought to know. I hope you do know. After all-I don't want you to lose your money-Gad, a pretty fool you'd look, my lad! A pretty fool, indeed! But as for Ovington, a confounded rascal, who thinks himself a gentleman because he has filled his purse at some poor devil's expense-I'd see him break with pleasure."

"I don't think you'll have the pleasure this time!" Arthur retorted with a bitterness which he could not repress-a bitterness caused as much by his own doubts as by the other's harshness. He left the room without more, the keys in his hand, and went downstairs.

It wanted about an hour of the Squire's dinner-time, but Calamy had laid the table early, and the dining-room was dark. Arthur carried in a lamp from the hall, and himself closed the shutters. He locked the door. Then he opened the nearer panel and the cupboard behind it, and sought for and found the agreement-but all mechanically, his mind still running on the Squire's words, and now approving of the course he had taken, now doubting if he had not missed his opportunity. The agreement in his hand, his errand done, he closed the cupboard door, and was preparing to close the panel, when, with his hand still on it, he paused. More clearly than when his bodily eyes had rested upon them he saw the contents of the cupboard.

And one thing in particular, a small thing, but it was on this that his mind focussed itself-the iron box containing the India Stock. He saw it before him; it stood out dark, its every outline sharp. And with equal clearness he saw its contents, the two certificates that remained in it. He recalled the value of them, and almost against his will he calculated their worth at the price of the day. India Stock, sound and safe security as it was, had fallen more than thirty points since the Squire had sold. It stood to-day, he thought, at two hundred and forty or a little over or a little under-somewhere about that. At the lowest figure five thousand pounds would fetch-just twelve thousand, he calculated.

Twelve thousand!

He stood staring at the door, and even by the yellow light of the lamp his face looked pale. Twelve thousand! And upstairs in a pigeon-hole of the old bureau, where he had carelessly thrust it, was the blank transfer.

It seemed providential. It seemed as if the stock-stock to the precise amount he required-had been placed there for a purpose. Twelve thousand! And realizable, no matter what the pinch. If he borrowed it for a month, what harm would there be? Or what risk? The bank was solvent, he knew that: give it time, and it would stand as strong as ever. Within a month, or two months at the most, he could replace the stock, and no one would be the wiser. And the bank and his own fortune would be saved.

Whereas-whereas, if the bank failed, he lost everything. And what was it his uncle had said? "A pretty fool you will look!" It was true, it was horribly true. He would be the laughing stock of the county. Men of his own class would say with a sneer that it served him right. And the Squire-what would he say? His life would be a hell!

Still he hesitated, though he told himself that it was not by boggling at trifles that men arrived at great ends-nor by poltroonery. And who would be the loser? No one. It would be all gain. The Squire, if he had common sense, would be the first to wish it done.

Yet, as he felt through the bunch, with fingers that shook a little, for the small key that opened the box, he glanced fearfully over his shoulder. But the door of the room was locked, the windows were shuttered: no one could see him. No one could ever say what he had done in that room. And he was lawfully there, at the Squire's own request, on his errand.

Five minutes later he closed the door, closed the panel. He took up the lamp with a steady hand and left the room. He went into the Squire's bedroom to return the keys, loitered a minute or two at the bureau, then he went to his own room. On the table lay the lease and the counterpart that he had brought from Aldersbury for the old man's signature. He closed and locked the door.

It was some hour and a half later that, having finished dinner-and he had talked more fluently at the meal, and with less restraint than of late-he rose from the table with Miss Peacock and Josina. "I'll come with you," he said. "I shall have my wine upstairs." And then, turning to Miss Peacock, "The Squire will want you to witness his signature," he said. "Will you come? He has to sign some deeds that Welsh's have sent."

Miss Peacock bewailed herself. She was in a flurry at the prospect. "Oh, dear, dear," she said, "I wish he didn't! I am all of a twitter, and then he scolds me. I am sure to put my name in the wrong place, or write his or something."

Josina laughed. "What will you give me to go instead?" she asked. "Come? But, there, I'll go. In fact, he told me before dinner that I was to go." She moved towards the door.

But Arthur did not move. He looked disturbed. "I don't think that that will do," he said slowly. "Considering what it is-I think the Peahen would be the better."

"But if she doesn't like it?" Jos objected. "And I must go, Arthur, for he told me to go. So the sooner the better. We have sat longer than usual, and, though Calamy is with him, he won't like to be kept waiting."

Arthur seemed to consider it. "Oh, very well," he said at last. He followed her from the room.

The Squire was sitting before the fire, at the small round table at which he had eaten his meal. A decanter of port and a couple of glasses stood at his elbow. Two candles in tall silver candlesticks shed a circle of light on the table, and showed up his white head and his hands, but failed to illumine the larger part of the room. The great bed with its drab hangings, the lofty press with its brass handles, the dark Windsor chairs, now lurked in and now sprang from the shadows, as the fire flickered up or sank. On the verge of the circle of light the butler moved mysteriously, now appearing, now disappearing; now coming forward to set an inkstand and goose-quills beside the decanter, now withdrawing to pile unseen plates upon an unseen tray.

The Squire was tapping impatiently on the table when they entered. "Well, you're in no hurry for your wine to-night," he said. "Have you brought the papers? You might have a'most written them in the time you've been."

"Sorry, sir," said Arthur. "They are here. Will you sit here, Jos?"

"Nay, nay, she must be near by," the old man objected. His hearing was still good. "Close up! Close up, girl! I want her eyes. And do you fill your glass. Now have you all ready? Then do you read me the agreement first, that I may see if the lease tallies. And read slowly, lad, slowly. Calamy?"

"I am here, sir," lugubriously. "Where we'll be tomorrow-"

"D-n you, don't whine, man, but snuff the candles. And then get out. Do you hear?"

Calamy mumbled that it would be all the same at the latter end. He went out with his tray, and closed the door behind him.

"Now!" said the Squire, and obediently to the word Arthur began to read. Once or twice his voice failed him, and he had to clear his throat. Josina would have thought that he was nervous, had she ever known him nervous. Fortunately, the document was short, as legal documents go, and some five minutes, during which the Squire sat listening intently, saw it at an end.

"Umph! Sounds all right," he commented. "Sight o' words! But there, they've got to charge. Now do you give the girl the counterpart, and do you read the lease, lad, and read it slowly, so as I may understand. And hark you, Jos, speak up if there is any differ-nail it like a rat, girl, and don't go to sleep over it! Don't you let me be cheated. Welsh is as honest, and I'd as lief trust him, as another, but if aught's amiss it's not he that will suffer, nor the confounded scamp of a clerk that made the mistake. And see you there's no erasures: I'm lawyer enough to know that. Now, slow, lad, slow," he commanded, "so that I can take it in."

Arthur complied, and began to read slowly and carefully. But again he had more than once to stop, his voice failing. He explained it by saying that the light was not good, and he rose to snuff the candles. The lease, too, was longer than the agreement, and was full of verbiage, and it took some time to read, and some patience. But at long last the delivery clause was reached. No discrepancy or erasure had been discovered, and the Squire, whose attention had never faltered-he was an excellent man of affairs-declared himself satisfied.

"Well, there," he said, in a tone of relief, "that's done! Drink up, lad, and wet your throttle." He turned himself squarely to the table. "Give me the pen I used last," he continued. "And do you guide my hand to the right place."

"I am afraid your pen was left to dry," Arthur said, "and the nib has opened. You'll have to use a new one, sir, and try it first. And-the sand? We shall want that. I am afraid it is downstairs. If Josina would not mind running down for it?"

"Pooh! pooh! Never mind the sand! Let 'em dry o' themselves. Less chance of blotting. Where's the pen?" – holding out his hand for it.

"Here, sir. Will you try it on this? If you'll write your name in full, as if you were signing the deeds" – he guided the Squire's hand to the place-"I shall see if it is right-and straight."

"Ay, ay, best be careful," the Squire agreed, squaring himself to his task. "'Twon't do to spoil 'em. Here?"

"Yes-just as you are now."

The old man bent over the table, his white hair shining in the centre of the little circle of light cast by the candles. Slowly and laboriously, in a tense silence, while Arthur, leaning over his shoulder, followed each movement of the pen, and Josina, half in light, half in shadow, watched them both from the farther side of the table, he wrote his name.

It was a perfect signature, though rather bolder and larger than usual, and "Excellent!" Arthur cried in a tone of relief, which betrayed the anxiety he had felt. "Good! It could not be better! Well done, sir!" He removed the paper as he spoke, but in the act looked sharply across at Josina. The girl's eyes were upon him, but her face was in shadow, and he could not read its expression. He hesitated a moment, the paper in his hand, then he laid it on the table beside him-and out of her reach.

"Right!" said the Squire. "Then, now for business. Let's have the lease. My hand's in now."

Arthur laid it before him, and guided his hand to the place. "Is there ink enough in the pen?" the old man asked.

"Quite enough, sir. It won't do to blot it."

"Right, lad, right!" The Squire wrote his name. "Now the counterpart!" he continued briskly, holding the quill suspended.

Arthur put it before him. He signed it, steadily and clearly. "All right?" he asked.

"Quite right. Couldn't be better, sir."

"Then, thank God that's done!" He sank back in his chair, and raised his hand to take off his glasses, then remembered himself. "Pheugh!" he said, "it's a job when you can't see." But it was plain that he was pleased with himself.

Arthur turned to Josina. "Your turn next!" he said; and he gave her the pen. He put the lease before her, and pointed to the place where she was to sign.

She was not as nervous as Miss Peacock, but she was anxious to make no mistake. "Here?" she asked.

"Yes, there. Be careful." Arthur snuffed the candles, and as he did so he glanced over his shoulder, his eyes searching the shadows. Then he leant over her, watching her pen.

She wrote her name, slowly and carefully. "Good!" he said, and he removed the document. He set another before her, and silently showed her with his finger where to write. She wrote her name.

"Now here," he said. "Here! But wait! Is there enough ink in the pen?"

She dipped the pen in the inkpot to make sure, and shook it, that there might be no danger of a blot. Again she wrote her name.

"Capital!" he said. His voice betrayed relief. "That's done, and well done! Couldn't be better. Now it's my turn."

"But" – Jos looked up in doubt, the pen still in her hand-"but I've signed three, Arthur! I thought there were but two."

"Three!" exclaimed the Squire, turning his head, his attention caught. "Damme!" – peevishly-"what mess has the girl made now?" It was part of his creed that in matters of business no woman was to be trusted to do the smallest thing as it should be done.

But Arthur only laughed. "No mess, sir," he said. "Only a goose of herself! She has witnessed your trial signature as well as the others. That's all. I thought I could make her do it, and she did it as solemnly as you like!" He laughed a little loudly. "I shall keep that Jos."

The Squire, pleased with himself, and glad that the business was over, was in a good humor, and he joined in the laugh. "It will teach you not to be too free with your signature, my girl," he said. "When you come some day to have a cheque book, you'll find that that won't do! Won't do, at all! Well, thank God, that's done."

Arthur, who was stooping over the table, adding his own name, completed his task. He stood up. "Yes, sir, that's done. Done!" he repeated in an odd, rising tone. "And now-the lease goes back to Welsh's. Shall I lock up the counterpart-downstairs, sir?"

"No, lad," the Squire announced. "I'll do that myself o' Monday."

"But it's no trouble, sir." He held out his hand for the keys. "And perhaps the sooner it's locked up-the tenant's signed it, and it is complete now-the safer."

But, "No, no, time enough!" the Squire persisted. "I'll put it back on Monday. I am not so helpless now I can't manage that, and I shall be downstairs o' Monday."

For a moment Arthur hesitated. He looked as if something troubled him. But in the end, "Very good, sir. Then that's all?" he said.

"Ay; put the counterpart in the old bureau there. 'Twill be safe there till Monday. How's the wine? Fill my glass and fill your own, lad. You can go, Jos. Tell Calamy to come to me at half-past nine."