Hugh Ritson buttoned his coat yet closer and started at a brisk pace.

"No time to lose," he thought, "if I've to be at the station when the north train goes through. Would have dearly liked to keep an eye on my gentleman. Should have done it, but for the girl. 'Summat on,' eh? What is it, I wonder? It might be useful to know."

With a cutting wind at his back he walked faster as his eyes grew familiar with the darkness. He was thinking that Bonnithorne's telegram might be an error. Perhaps it had even been tampered with. It was barely conceivable that Paul and Greta had ever so much as heard of the Hawk and Heron. And what possible inducement could they have to sleep in Hendon when they would be so near to London?

His mind went back to Mercy Fisher. At that moment she was dreaming beautiful dreams of how happy she was very soon to make him. He was thinking, with vexation, that the girl was a connecting link with the people in Cumberland. Yes—and the only link, too. Could it be that Mercy—No; the idea of Mercy's disloyalty to him was really too ridiculous. If he could get to the station before the train from the north was due to stop there, he would see for himself whether Paul and Greta alighted. If they did not, as they must be in that train, he would get into it also, and go on with them to London. Bonnithorne might have blundered.

The journey was long, and the roads were heavy for walking. It seemed a far greater distance than he had thought. At the angle of a gate and a thick brier hedge he struck a match and read the time by his watch. Eleven o'clock. Too late, if the watch were not more than a minute slow.

At that moment he heard the whistle of a train, and between the whirs of the wind he heard the tinkle of the signal bell. Too late, indeed. He was still a quarter of a mile from the station.

Still he held on his way, without hope for his purpose, yet quickening his pace to a sharp run.

He had come within three hundred yards of the station when he heard an unearthly scream, followed in an instant by a great clamor and tumult of human voices. Shrieks, shouts, groans, sobs, wails—all were mingled together in one agonized cry that rent the thick night air asunder.

Hugh Ritson ran faster.

Then he saw haggard men and women appearing and disappearing before him in the light of a fire that panted on the ground like an overthrown horse.

The north train had been wrecked.

Within a dozen yards from the station the engine and three of the front carriages had broken from their couplings and plunged on to the bank. The last four carriages, free of the fatal chain, had kept the rails and were standing unharmed above.

Women who had been dragged through the tops of the overturned carriages fled away with white faces into the darkness of the fields. Men, too, with panic-stricken eyes, sat down on the grass, helpless and useless. Some resolute souls, roused to activity, were pulling at the carriages to set them right. Men from the station came with lanterns, and rescued the injured, and put them to lie out of harm's way.

The scene was harrowing, and only two of its incidents are material to this history. Over all the rest, the clamor, the tumult, the agony, the abject fear, and the noble courage, let a veil be drawn.

Fate had brought together, in that hour of disaster, three men whose lives, hitherto apart, were henceforth to be bound up as one life for good or ill.

Hugh Ritson rushed here and there like a man distraught. He peered into every face. He caught up a lantern that some one had set down, and ran to and fro in the darkness, stooping to let the light fall on those on the ground, holding up the red glare to the windows of the uninjured carriages.

At that moment all his frozen soul seemed to melt. Face to face with the pitiless work of destiny, his own heartless schemes disappeared. At last he saw the face he looked for. Then he dropped the lantern to his side, and turned the glass of it from him.

"Stay here, Greta," said a voice he knew. "I shall be back with you presently. Let me lend them a hand over yonder." The man went by him in the darkness.

Hark!

Hugh Ritson heard a cry from the field beyond the bank. It was there that they had placed the injured.

"Help! help! I am robbed—- help!" came out of the darkness.

"Where are you?" asked another voice.

"Here! Help! help!"

Hugh Ritson ran toward the place whence the first voice came, and saw the figure of a man stooping over something that lay on the ground. At the same moment another man rushed up and laid strong hold of the stooping figure. There was a short, sharp struggle. The two men were of one stature, one strength. There was a sound as of cloth ripped asunder.

At the next moment one of the men went by like the wind and was lost in the blackness of the fields. But Hugh Ritson had held up the lantern as the man passed, and caught one swift glimpse of his face. He knew him.

A group had gathered about the injured person on the ground and about the other man who had struggled to defend him.

"Could you not hold the scoundrel?" said one.

"I held him till his coat came to pieces in my hand. See here," said the other.

Hugh Ritson knew the voice.

"A piece of Irish frieze, I should say" (feeling it).

"You must have gripped him by the lappel of his ulster. Let me keep this. I am a police sergeant. What is your name, sir?"

"Paul Ritson."

"And your address?"

"I was on my way to Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square. What place is this?"

"Hendon."

"Could one get accommodation here for the night? A lady is with me."

"Best go up by the twelve-thirty, sir."

"The lady is too much worn and excited. Any hotel, inn, lodging-house?"

A porter came up.

"The Hawk and Heron's handiest. A mile, sir. Drayton—it's him as keeps it—he's here somewhere. Drayton!" (calling).

"Can you get me a fly, my good fellow?"

"Yes, sir."

The police sergeant moved off.

"Then I may look for you at the Hawk and Heron?" he said.

Hugh Ritson heard all. He kept the lantern down. In the darkness not a face of that group was seen of any man.

A quarter of an hour later, Hugh Ritson, panting for breath, was knocking at the door of the inn. The landlady within fumbled with the iron bar behind it.

"Come, quick!" said Hugh.

The door opened, and he stepped in sharply, bathed in perspiration.

"Is your son back?" he said, catching his breath.

"Back, sir? No, sir; it's a mercy if he gets home afore morning, sir; he's noways—"

"Stop your clatter. The girl is in her room. Go and turn the key on her!"

It was at that moment that Mercy, having stood an instant at the bottom of the stairs, had ventured nervously into the bar. Turning about, Hugh Ritson came face to face with her. At the sight of her his crimsoning cheeks became white with wrath.

"Didn't I tell you to be in bed?" he muttered, in a low, hoarse whisper.

"I've only come for ... I came down for ... Hugh, don't be angry with me."

"Come, get back, then; don't stand there. Quick—and mind you lock your door."

"Yes, I'm going. You wouldn't be angry with me, would you?"

"Well, no, perhaps not; only get off—and quick! Do you hear? Why don't you go?"

"I only came down for ... I only came...."

"God! what foolery is this? The girl's fainting. Never mind. Here, landlady, bring a light! Lead the way. She's not too heavy to carry. Upstairs with you. What a snail you are, old woman! Which room?"

Another knock at the outer door. Another and another in rapid succession.

"I'm a-coming, I'm a-coming!" cried the landlady from the floor above.

She bustled down the stairs as fast as her stiff joints would let her, but the knock came again.

"Mercy me, mercy me! and whoever is it?"

"Damme, move your bones, and let me in!"

The door flew open with pressure from without. Ghastly white, yet dripping with perspiration, his breath coming in short, thick gusts, his neck bare, his shirt-collar torn aside, the lappel of the frieze ulster gone, and the rent of the red flannel lining exposed, Paul Drayton entered. He was sober now.

"Where is he?" with an oath.

"I'm here," said Hugh Ritson, walking through the bar and into the bar-room to the right, and candle in hand.

Drayton followed him, trying to laugh.

"Am I in time?"

"Of course you are," with a hard smile.

"Fearing I might be late."

"Of course you were."

"Ran all the way."

"Of course you did."

"What are you sniggering and mocking at?" with another oath.

Hugh Ritson dropped his banter, and pointed without a word to the torn ulster and the disordered shirt-collar. Drayton glanced down at his dress in the light of the candle.

"Crossed the fields for shortness, and caught in a bramble-bush," he said, muttering.

"Drop it," said Hugh. "There's no time for it. Look here, Drayton, I'm a downright man. Don't try it on with me. As you say, it won't pass. Shall I tell you where the collar of that coat is now? It's at the police-station."

Drayton made an uneasy movement and glanced up furtively. There was no mistaking what he saw in Hugh Ritson's face.

"I've my own suspicions as to what caused that accident," said Hugh.

Drayton shuddered and shrunk back.

"No, damme! That shows what you are, though. Show me the man as allus suspects others of lying, and I'll show you a liar. Show me the man as allus suspects others of stealing, and I'll show you a thief. You suspect me of that, d'ye? I know you now!"

"No matter," said Hugh, impatiently; "your sense of the distinction between crimes is a shade too nice. One crime I do not suspect you of—I saw you commit it. Is that enough?"

Drayton was silent.

"You'll go to the station with the lady. The gentleman will go to London with me. They are to come here, after all, though my first advice was a blunder."

"I'll take the twenty," Drayton mumbled.

"Will you now? We'll discuss that matter afterward."

Drayton seemed stupefied for a moment. Then he lifted his haggard face and grinned. Hugh Ritson understood him in an instant.

"No tricks, I tell you. If you don't put the lady in the train—the right train—and be back here at half past one to-morrow, you shall improve your acquaintance with the Old Bailey."

Drayton carried his eyes slowly up to Hugh Ritson's face, then dropped them suddenly.

"If I'm lagged, it will be a lifer!" he muttered. He fumbled his torn ulster. "I must change my coat," he said.

"No."

"She'll see the rent."

"So much the better."

"But the people at the junction will see it."

"What matter?—you will be there as Paul Ritson, not Paul Drayton."

Drayton began to laugh, to chuckle, to crow.

"Hush!"

The sound of carriage-wheels came from the road.

"They're here," said Hugh Ritson. "Keep you out of sight, as you value your liberty. Do you hear? Take care that he doesn't see you, and that she doesn't see you until he is gone."

Drayton was tramping about the floor in the intensity of his energy.

"Here's the bar-slide. I'll just lift it an inch."

"Not half an inch," said Hugh, and he blew out the candle.

Then he took the key out of the inside of the lock, and put it on the outside.

"What! am I to be a prisoner in my own house?" said Drayton.

"I'll put the key on the bar-slide," whispered Hugh. "When you hear the door close after us, let yourself out—not a moment sooner."

The carriage-wheels stopped outside. There was a sound as of the driver jumping from the box. Then there came a knock.

Hugh Ritson stepped back to Drayton and whispered:

"This is the very man who tried to hold you—keep you close."



CHAPTER VI.

"This way, sir; this way, my lady; we knew you was a-coming, so we kep' a nice warm fire in the parlor. This way, my lady, and mind the step up. Yes, it air dark, but it's clean, sir; yes, it is, sir; but there's a light in here, sir."

Paul and Greta followed the landlady through the dark bar.

"We'll find our way, my good woman. Ah, and how cozy you are here! As warm as toast on a cold night. Thank you, thank you—and—why, surely we've—we've surprised you. Did you say you were expecting somebody? Ah, I see!"

Mrs. Drayton was backing out of the room with a pallid face, and twitching at the string of her apron. When she got to the bar she was trembling from head to foot.

"I don't believe in ghosts," she muttered to herself, "but if so be as I did believe in ghosts, and afeart of 'em, I don't know as ... Lor's a mercy me! Who was a-saying as our Paul was like some one? And now here's some one as is like our Paul. And as much a match as two pewters, on'y one more smarter, mayhap, and studdier."

"Whatever ails the old lady?" said Greta, faintly.

Paul stood a moment and laughed.

"Strange, but we can't trouble now. What a mercy we're safe and unharmed."

"A fearful sight—I'll never, never forget it," said Greta, and she covered her face.

Paul stepped to the door. The flyman was bringing in the luggage.

"Leave the boxes in the bar, driver—there, that will do. Many of them, eh? Rather. Here's for yourself. Why, bless my soul, who's this? What, Hugh!"

Hugh Ritson walked into the room calm and smiling, and held out his hand to Greta and then to his brother.

"I came up to meet your train," he said, in answer to the look of inquiry.

"Well, that was good of you. Of course, you know of the accident. How did you find us here?"

"I heard at the station that a lady and gentleman had gone to the Hawk and Heron."

"And you followed? Well, Hugh, I must say that was brotherly of you, after all. Wasn't it, Greta?"

"Yes, dear," said Greta, faintly, her voice trembling.

Paul observed her agitation.

"My poor girl, you are upset. I don't wonder at it. You must get off for the night. Hugh, you must excuse her. It was a terrible scene, you know. Our new life begins with a great shock to you, Greta. Never mind; that only means that the bright days are before us."

Paul stepped to the door again, and called to Mrs. Drayton.

"Here, my good landlady, take my wife to her room."

The landlady hobbled up.

"Room, sir, room? The gentleman didn't say nothing—"

"Take the lady to your best room upstairs," said Hugh, with a significant look.

Greta was going. Her step was slow and uncertain.

"Won't you say good-night, Greta?" said Hugh.

"Good-night," she said, so faintly as hardly to be heard.

The brothers looked after her.

"God bless her!" said Paul, fervently. "The days before her shall be brighter, if I can make them so."

Hugh Ritson closed the door.

"Paul," he said, "you and your wife must never meet again."

Paul Ritson turned red, and then ashy pale. A scarcely perceptible tremble of the eyelids, then a jaunty laugh, and then an appalling solemnity.

"What d'ye mean, man?" he said, with a vacant stare.

"Sit down and listen," said Hugh, seating himself, and lifting the poker to draw the fire together.

"Quick, tell me what it, is!" said Paul again.

"Paul, don't chafe. We are hot-tempered men, both, at bottom," said Hugh, and his eye perused his brother with searching power.

"Don't look at me like that," said Paul. "Don't try to frighten me. Speak out, and quickly."

"Be calm," said Hugh.

"Bah! you take me blindfold to the edge of a precipice, and tell be to 'be calm.'"

"You are wrong. I find you there, and remove the bandage," said Hugh.

"Quick! what is it? In another moment I shall cry out!"

Hugh Ritson rose stiffly to his feet.

"Paul, did you tell Greta she was marrying a bastard?"

With one look of anguish Paul fell back mute and trembling.

"Did you tell her?" said Hugh, with awful emphasis.

Paul's eyes were on the ground, his head bent forward. He was silent.

"I thought you did not mean to tell her," said Hugh, coldly. His eyes looked steadfastly at Paul's drooping head. "I think so still."

Paul said nothing, but drew his breath hard. Hugh watched him closely.

"To marry a woman under a false pretense—is it the act of an honorable man? Is it a cheat? Give it what name you will."

Paul drew himself up; his lips were compressed, and he smiled.

"Is this all?" he asked.

"Why did you not tell her?" said Hugh.

"Because I had sworn to tell no one. You will read that secret, as you have read the other."

Hugh smiled.

"Say, rather, because you dare not do so; because, had you told her, she had never become your wife."

Paul laughed vacantly.

"We shall see. My own lips are sealed, but yours are free. You shall tarnish the memory of our father and blacken the honor of our mother. You shall humble me, and rob me of my wife's love—if you will and can."

Saying this, Paul stepped hastily to the door, flung it open, and cried: "Greta! Greta!"

Hugh followed him and caught him arm.

"What are you doing?" he said, in a hoarse whisper; "be quiet, I tell you—be quiet."

Paul turned about.

"You say I am afraid to tell her. You charge me with trapping her into marrying me. You shall tell her yourself, now, here, and before my very face!"

"Come in and shut the door," said Hugh.

"It would do no good, and perhaps some harm. No matter, you shall tell her. I challenge you to tell her."

"Come in, and listen to me," said Hugh, sullenly; and putting himself between Paul and the door, he closed it. "There is more to think of than what Greta may feel," he added. "Have you nothing to say to me?"

Paul's impetuous passion cooled suddenly.

"I have made you atonement," he said, faintly, and dropped into a seat.

"Atonement!"

Hugh Ritson smiled bitterly.

"When you return you will see," said Paid, his eyes once more on the ground.

"You are thinking of the deed of attorney—I have heard of it already," said Hugh. A cold smile played on his compressed lips.

"It was all that was left to do," said Paul, his voice hardly stronger than a whisper. His proud spirit was humbled, and his challenge dead.

"Paul, you have robbed me of my inheritance, consciously, deliberately. You have stood in my place. You stand there still. And you leave me your pitiful deed by way of amends!"

A black frown crossed Hugh Ritson's face.

"Atonement! Are you not ashamed of such mockery? What atonement is there for a wrong like that?"

"I did it for the best; God knows I did!" said Paul, his head fell on the table.

Hugh Ritson stood over him, pale with suppressed wrath.

"Was it best to hold my place until my place was no longer worth holding, and then to leave it with an empty show of generosity? Power of attorney! What right have you to expect that I will take that from you? Take my own from the man who robbed me of it, and to receive it back on my knees! To accept it as a gift, whereof the generosity of giving is yours, and the humility of receiving is mine!"

A strong shudder passed over Paul's shoulders.

"I was helpless—I was helpless!" he said.

"Understand your true position—your legal position. You were your mother's illegitimate son—"

"I did it to protect her honor!"

"You mean—to hide her shame!"

"As you will. I was helpless, and I did it for the best."

Hugh Ritson's face grew dark.

"Was it best to be a perjured liar?" he said.

Paul gasped, but did not reply.

"Was it best to be a thief?"

Paul leaped to his feet.

"God, give me patience!" he muttered.

"Was it best to be an impostor?"

"Stop, for God's sake, stop!"

"Was it best to be a living lie—and all for the sake of honor? Honor, forsooth! Is it in perjury and robbery that honor lies?"

Paul strode about the room in silence, ashy pale, his face convulsed and ugly. Then his countenance softened, and his voice was broken as he said:

"Hugh, I have done you too much wrong already. Don't drive me into more; don't, don't, I beseech you!"

Hugh laughed lightly—a little trill that echoed in the silent room.

At that heartless sound all the soul in Paul Ritson seemed to freeze. No longer abashed, he lifted his head and put his foot down firmly.

"So be it," he said, and the cloud of anguish fell from his face. "I say it was to save our mother's good name that I consented to do what I did."

"Consented?" said Hugh, elevating his eyelids.

"You don't believe me? Very well; let it pass. You say my atonement is a mockery. Very well, let us say it is so. You say I have kept your place until it is no longer worth keeping. You mean that I have impoverished your estate. That is not true. And you know it is not true. If the land is mortgaged, you yourself have had the money!"

"And who had a better right to it?" said Hugh, and he laughed again.

Paul waved his hand, and gulped down the wrath that was rising.

"You have led me the life of the damned. You know well what bitter cup you have made me drink. If I have stood to the world as my father's heir, you have eaten up the inheritance If my father's house was mine, I was no more than a cipher in it. I have had the shadow, and you the substance. You have undermined me inch by inch!"

"And, meantime, I have been as secret as the grave," said Hugh, and once more he laughed lightly.

"God knows your purpose—you do nothing without one," said Paul. "But it is not I alone that have suffered. Do you think that all this has been going on under our mother's eyes without her seeing it?"

Hugh Ritson dropped the bantering tone.

Paul's face grew to an awful solemnity.

"When our father died, it was to be her honor or mine to die with him. That was the legacy of his sin, Heaven forgive him. I did not hesitate. But since that hour she has wasted away."

"Is this my fault?" Hugh asked.

"Heaven knows, and Heaven will judge between you," said Paul. "She could bear it no longer." Paul's voice trembled as he added, "She's gone!"

There was a moment's silence. It was as if an angel went by weeping.

"I know it," said Hugh, coldly. "She has taken the veil. I have since seen her."

Paul glanced up.

"She is in the Catholic Convent at Westminster," said Hugh.

Paul's face quivered.

"Miserable man! but for you, how happy she might have been!"

"You are wrong," said Hugh. "It came of her own misdeed—and yours."

Paul strode toward his brother with uplifted hand.

"Not another word of that," he said, and his voice was low and deep.

"How could she examine her conscience and be happy? She had put an impostor in the place of my father's heir," said Hugh.

"She had put there your father's first-born son," said Paul.

"It is false! She had put there her bastard by another man!"

Silent and awful, Paul stood a moment, with an expression of agony so horrible that for an instant even Hugh Ritson quailed before it.

"Go on," he said, huskily, and crouched down into his seat.

"Your mother was married before," said Hugh, "and her marriage was annulled. It was invalid. A child was born of that union."

Paul lifted his head.

"I won't believe it!"

"It is true, and you shall believe it!"

Paul's heart sickened with dread.

"Your father married again, and had a daughter. Your mother married again, and had a son. Your father's daughter is now living. Shall I tell you who she is? She is your wife—the woman you have married to-day!"

Paul sprung to his feet.

"It is a lie!" he cried.

"See for yourself," said Hugh Ritson; and taking three papers from his pocket, he threw them on to the table. They were the copies of certificates which Bonnithorne had given him.

Paul glanced at them with vacant and wandering eyes, fell back in his chair, dropped his head on to the table, and groaned.

"Oh, God! can this thing be?"

"When your mother told you that you were an illegitimate son, she omitted to say by what father. That was natural in her, but cruel to you. I knew the truth from the first."

"Then you are a scoundrel confessed!" cried Paul.

Hugh rolled his head slightly, and made a poor pretense to smile.

"I knew how she had passed from one man to another; I knew what her honor counted for. And yet I was silent—silent, though by silence I lost my birthright. Say, now, if you will, which of us—you or I—has been the true guardian of our mother's name?"

Paul got up again, abject, crushed, trembling in every limb.

"Man, man, don't gnaw my heart away! Unsay your words! Have pity on me, and confess that it is a lie—a black, foul lie! Think of the horror of it—only think of it, and have pity!"

"It is true!"

Then Paul fell on his knees and caught his brother by the arm.

"Hugh, Hugh! my brother, confess it is false! Don't let my flesh consume away with horror! Don't let me envy the very dead who lie at peace in their graves! Pity her, if you have no pity left for me!"

"I would save you from a terrible sin."

Paul rose to his feet.

"Now I know it is a lie!" he said, and all the abject submission of his bearing fell away in one instant.

Hugh Ritson's face flushed.

"There is that here," said Paul, throwing up his head and striking his breast, "that tells me it is false!"

Hugh smiled coldly, and regained his self-possession.

"My mother knew all. If Greta had been my half-sister, would she have stood by and witnessed our love?"

Hugh waved his hand deprecatingly.

"Your mother was as ignorant of the propinquity as you were. Robert Lowther was dead before she settled at Newlands. The survivors knew nothing of each other. The secret of that early and ill-fated marriage was buried with him."

"Destiny itself would have prevented it, for destiny shapes its own ends, and shapes them for the best," said Paul.

"Yes, destiny is shaping them now," said Hugh, "here, and in me. This is the point to which the pathways of your lives have tended. They meet here—and part."

Paul's ashy face smiled.

"Then nature would have prevented it," he said. "If this thing had been true, do you think we should not have known it—she and I—in the natural recoil of our own hearts? When true hearts meet, there is that within which sanctions their love, and says it is good. That is Heaven's own license. No sanction of the world or the world's law, no earthly marriage is like to that, for it is the marriage first made by nature itself. Our hearts have met, hers and mine, and the same nature has sanctioned our love and sanctified it. And against that last, that first, that highest arbiter, do you ask me to take the evidence of these poor, pitiful papers? Away with them!" Paul's eyes were bright, his face had lost its shadows.

"That is very beautiful, no doubt," said Hugh, and he smiled deeply. "But I warn you to beware."

"I have no fear," said Paul.

"See to it, I tell you. These lofty emotions leave a void that only a few homely facts can fill. Verify them."

"I will, please God!"

"Accept my statements and these papers, or—disprove both."

"I will disprove them."

"Meantime, take care. Leave your wife in this house until morning, but do you go elsewhere."

"What!"

Paul's anger was boiling up.

"If you have wronged Greta—"

"I have done her no wrong," said Paul, growing fiercer.

"I say, if you have wronged her, and would have it in your power to repair the injury, you must pass this night apart."

"Hugh!" cried Paul, in white rage, rising afresh to his feet, "you have tortured me and broken the heart of my mother; you have driven me from my home and from the world; you have thrust yourself between me and the woman who loves me, and now, when I am stripped of all else but that woman's love, and am going out to a strange land, a stranger and with empty hands, you would take her from me also and leave me naked!"

"I would save you from a terrible sin," said Hugh Ritson, once again.

"Out of my way!" cried Paul, in a thick voice, and he lifted his clinched fist.

"Take care, I tell you," said Hugh.

Paul looked dangerous; his forehead contracted into painful lines; his quick breathing beat on Hugh's face.

"For the love of Heaven, get out of my way!"

But with awful strength and fury his fist fell at that moment, and Hugh Ritson was dashed to the ground.

In an instant Paul had lifted his foot to trample him, but he staggered back in horror at the impulse, his face ghastly white, his eyes red like the sun above snow. Then there was silence, and then Paul gasped in a flood of emotion:

"Get up! get up! Hugh, Hugh! get up!"

He darted to the door and threw it open.

"Come in, come in! will nobody come?" he cried.

The landlady was in the room at a stride. She had been standing, listening and quivering, behind the door.

In another moment Greta hurried down-stairs, and hastened to Paul's side.

Paul was leaning against the wall, his face buried in his hands.

"Take him away," he groaned, "before I rue the day that I saw him!"

Hugh Ritson rose to his feet.

"Paul, what has happened?" cried Greta.

"Take him away."

And still Paul covered his eyes from the sight of what he had done and had been tempted to do.

"Hugh, what is it?"

Hugh Ritson stepped to the door.

"Ask your husband," he said, with emphasis, and an appalling calmness. "And remember this night. You shall never forget it!"

Then he halted out of the room.



CHAPTER VII.

Hugh Ritson walked to the bare room opposite. The handle of the door did not turn in his hand. Drayton held it at the other side, and with head bent low he crouched there and listened.

"Who is it?" he whispered, when Hugh Ritson unlocked the door and pushed at it.

"Let me in," said Hugh, sullenly.

"Does he suspect?" whispered Drayton, when the door closed again. "Did he follow me? What are you going to do for a fellow? Damme, but I'll be enough for him!"

And Drayton groped in the dark room among the dead cinders on the hearth, and picked up the poker.

"You fool!" said Hugh, in a low voice. "Put that thing down."

"Isn't he after me? D'ye think I'm going to be taken? Let him come here and see!"

Drayton tramped the room, and the floor creaked beneath his heavy tread.

"Speak lower, you poltroon!" Hugh whispered, huskily. "He knows nothing about you. He has never heard of you. Be quiet. Do you hear?"

There was a light, nervous knock at the door.

"Who's there?" said Hugh.

"It's only me, sir," said Mrs. Drayton, from without, breathing audibly, and speaking faintly amid gusts of breath.

Hugh Ritson opened the door, and the landlady entered.

"Lor's a mercy me! whatever ails the gentleman? Oh, is it yourself in the dark, Paul? I'm that fearsome, I declare I shiver and quake at nothing. And the gentleman so like you, too! I never did see nothing like it, I'm sure!"

"Hush! Stop your clatter. What does he say?" said Hugh.

"The gentleman? He says and says and says as nothing and nothing and nothing will make him leave the lady this night."

"He'll think better of that."

"And wherever can I put them? And me on'y one room, forby Paul's. And no cleaning and airing, and nothing. That's what worrits me."

"Hold your tongue! Put the lady in your son's room. Your son won't need it to-night."

"That's where I did put her."

"Very well; leave her there."

"And the gentleman, too, belike?"

"The gentleman will go back with me. Come, get away!"

"Quite right; on'y there's no airing and cleaning; and I declare I'm that fearsome—"

Hugh Ritson had taken the landlady by the shoulders and was pushing her out of the room.

"One moment," he whispered, and drew her back. "Anything doing upstairs?"

"Upstairs?—the bed—airing—"

"The girl? Has she made any noise yet? Is she conscious?"

"Not as I know of. I went up and listened, and never a sound. Deary me, deary me! I'm that fearsome—"

"Go up again, and put your ear to the door."

"I'm afeart she'll never come round, and her in that way, and weak, too, and—"

At that instant there came from the dark road the sound of carriage-wheels approaching. Hugh Ritson thrust the landlady out of the room, slammed the door to, and locked it.

"What's that?" said Drayton, in a husky whisper. "Who do they want? You've not rounded on a fellow, eh?"

"It's the carriage that is to take you and the lady to Kentish Town," said Hugh. "Hush! Listen!"

The driver rapped at the door with the end of his whip, and shouted from his seat: "Heigho, heigho—ready for Kentish Town? Eleven o'clock struck this half hour!" Then he could be heard beating his crossed arms under his armpits to warm his hands.

"The fool!" muttered Hugh, "can't he keep his tongue in his mouth?"

"Quite right," shouted Mrs. Drayton, in a shrill voice, putting her face to the window-pane. "Belike it's for the gentleman," she explained to herself, and then, with candle in hand, she began to mount the stairs.

The door of the room to the left opened, and Paul Ritson came out. His great strength seemed to be gone—he reeled like a drunken man.

"Landlady," he said, "when does your last train go up to London?"

"At half past twelve," said Mrs. Drayton, from two steps up the stairs.

"Can I get a fly, my good woman, at this hour of the night?"

"The fly's at the door, sir—just come, sir."

Paul went back into the room where he had left his wife.

The two men in the dark room opposite listened intently.

"Be quiet," whispered Hugh Ritson. "I knew he must think better of it. He is going. Keep still. Five minutes more, and you start away with the lady for Kentish Town. He shall walk to the station with me. The instant we leave the house, you go to the lady and say, 'I have changed my mind, Greta. We must go together. Come.' Not a word more; hurry her into the fly, and away."

"Easier said nor done, say I."



CHAPTER VIII.

Alone with Greta, Paul kissed her fervently, and his head fell on her shoulder. The strong man was as feeble as a child now. He was prostrate. "The black lie is like poison in my veins!" he said.

"What is it?" said Greta, and she tried to soothe him.

"A lie more foul than man ever uttered before—more cruel, more monstrous."

"What is it, dearest?" said Greta again, with her piteous, imploring face close to his.

"I know it's a lie. My heart tells me it is a lie. The very stones cry out that it is a lie!"

"Tell me what it is," said Greta, and she embraced him tenderly.

But even while he was struggling with the poison of one horrible word, it was mastering him. He put his wife from him with a strong shudder, as if her proximity stung him.

Her bosom heaved. She looked appealingly into his face.

"If it is false," she said, "whatever it is, why need it trouble you?"

"That is true, my darling," he said, gulping down his fear and taking Greta in his arms, and trying to laugh lightly. "Why, indeed? Why need it trouble me?"

"Can you not tell me?" she said, with an upward look of entreaty. She was thinking of what Hugh Ritson had said of an impediment to their marriage.

"Why should I tell you what is false?"

"Then let us dismiss the thought of it," she said, soothingly.

"Why, yes, of course, let us dismiss the thought of it, darling," and he laughed a loud, hollow laugh. His forehead was damp. She wiped away the cold sweat. His temples burned. She put her cool hand on them. He was the very wreck of his former self—the ruin of a man. "Would that I could!" he muttered to himself.

"Then tell me," she said. "It is my right to know it. I am your wife now—"

He drew himself away. She clung yet closer. "Paul, there can be no secrets between you and me—nothing can be kept back."

"Heavenly Father!" he cried, uplifting a face distorted with agony.

"If you can not dismiss it, let it not stand between us," said Greta. Could it be true that there had been an impediment?

"My darling, it would do no good to tell you. When I took you to be my wife, I vowed to protect and cherish you. Shall I keep my vow if I burden you with a black lie that will drive the sunshine out of your life? Look at me—look at me!"

Greta's breast heaved heavily, but she smiled with a piteous sweetness as she laid her head on his breast, and said, "No, while I have you, no lie can do that!"

Paul made no answer. An awful burden of speech was on his tongue. In the silence they heard the sound of weeping. It was as if some poor woman were sobbing her heart out in the room above.

"Dearest, when two hearts are made one in marriage they are made one indeed," said Greta, in a soft voice. "Henceforth the thought of the one is the thought of both; the happiness of one is the happiness of both, the sorrow of one is the sorrow of both. Nothing comes between. Joy is twofold when both share it, and only grief is less for being borne by two. Death itself, cruel, relentless death itself, even death knits that union closer. And in sunshine and storm, in this world and in the next, the bond is ever the same. The tie of the purest friendship is weak compared with this tie, and even the bond of blood is less strong!"

"Oh, God of heaven, this is too much!" said Paul.

"Paul, if this union of thought and deed, of joy and grief, begins with marriage and does not end even with death, shall we now, here, at the threshold of our marriage, do it wrong?"

A great sob choked Paul's utterance. "I can not tell you," he cried; "I have sworn an oath."

"An oath! Then, surely, this present trouble was not that which Hugh Ritson has threatened?"

"Greta, if our union means anything, it means trust. Trust me, my darling. I am helpless. My tongue is sealed. I dare not speak. No, not even to you. Scarcely to God Himself!"

There was silence for a moment.

"That is enough," she said, very tenderly, and now the tears coursed down her own cheeks. "I will not ask again. I do not wish to know. You shall forget that I asked you. Come, dearest, kiss me. Think no more of this. Come, now." And she drew his head down to hers.

Paul threw himself into a chair. His prostration was abject.

"Come, dearest," said Greta, soothingly, "be a man."

"There is worse to come," he said.

"What matter," said Greta, and smiled. "I shall not fear if I have you beside me."

"I can bear it no more," said Paul. "The thing is past cure."

"No, dearest, it is not. Only death is that."

"Greta, you said death would bind us closer together, but this thing draws us apart."

"No, dearest, it does not. That it can not do."

"Could nothing part us?" said Paul, lifting his face.

"Nothing. Though the world divided us, yet we should be together."

Again the loud sobs came from overhead.

Paul rose to his feet, a shattered man no more. His abject mien fell from him like a garment. "Did I not say it was a lie?" he muttered, fiercely. "Greta, I am ashamed," he said; "your courage disgraces me. See what a pitiful coward you have taken for your husband. You have witnessed a strange weakness. But it has been for the last time. Thank God, I am now the man of yesterday!"

Her tears were rolling down her cheeks, but her eyes were very bright. "What do you wish me to do?" she whispered. "Is it not something for me to do?"

"It is, darling. You said rightly that the thought of one is the thought of both."

"What is it?"

"A terrible thing!"

"No matter. I am here to do it. What?"

"It is to part from me to-night—only for to-night—only until to-morrow."

Greta's face broke into a perfect sunshine of beauty. "Is that all?" she asked.

"My darling!" said Paul, and embraced her fervently and kissed the quivering lips, "I am leading you through dark vaults, where you can see no single step before you."

"But I am holding your hand, my husband," Greta whispered.

Speech was too weak for that great moment. Again the heart-breaking sobs fell on the silence. Then Paul drew a cloak over Greta's shoulders and buttoned up his ulster. "It is a little after midnight," he said with composure. "There is a fly at the door. We may catch the last train up to London. I have a nest for you there, my darling."

Then he went out into the bar. "Landlady," he said, "I will come back to-morrow for our luggage. Meantime, let it lie here, if it won't be in your way. We've kept you up late, old lady. Here, take this—and thank you."

"Thankee! and the boxes are quite safe, sir—thankee!"

He threw open the door to the road, and hailed the driver of the fly, cheerily. "Cold, sleety night, my good fellow. You'll have a sharp drive."

"Yes, sir; it air cold waiting, very, specially inside, sir, just for want of summat short."

"Well, come in quick and get it, my lad."

"Right, sir."

When Paul returned to the room to call Greta, he found her examining papers. She had picked them up off the table. They were the copies of certificates which Hugh Ritson had left there. Paul had forgotten them during the painful interview. He tried to recover them unread, but he was too late.

"This," she said, holding out one of them, "is not the certificate of your birth. This person, Paul Lowther, is no doubt my father's lost son."

"No doubt," said Paul, dropping his head.

"But he is thirty years of age—see! You are no more than twenty-eight."

"If I could but prove that, it would be enough," he said.

"I can prove it, and I will!" she said.

"You! How?"

"Wait until to-morrow, and see," she said.

He had put one arm about her waist, and was taking her to the door.

She stopped. "I can guess what the black lie has been," she whispered.

"Now, driver, up and away."

"Right, sir. Kentish Town Junction?"

"The station, to catch the 12:30."

The carriage door was opened and closed. Then the bitter weeping from the upper room came out to them in the night.

"Poor girl! whatever ails her? I seem to remember her voice," said Greta.

"We can't wait," Paul answered.



CHAPTER IX.

The clocks of London were striking one when Paul and Greta descended the steps in front of St. Pancras Station. The night was dark and bitterly cold. Dense fog hung in the air, and an unaccustomed silence brooded over the city. A solitary four-wheeled cab stood in the open square. The driver was inside, huddled up in his great-coat, and asleep. A porter awakened him, and he made way for Greta and Paul. He took his apron from the back of his horse, wrapped it about his waist, and snuffed the wicks of his lamps—they burned low and red, and crackled in the damp atmosphere.

"What hotel, sir?"

"The convent, Westminster."

"Convent, sir? Did you say the convent, sir? St. Margaret's, Westminster, sir?"

"The Catholic convent."

Greta's hand pressed Paul's arm.

The cabman got on to his box, muttering something that was inaudible. As he passed the gate lodge he drew up while the porter on duty came out with a lamp, and took the number of the cab.

The fog grew more dense at every step, and the pace at which they traveled was slow. To avoid the maze of streets that would have helped them to a shorter cut on a clearer night, the driver struck along Euston Road to Tottenham Court Road, and thence south toward Oxford Street. This straighter and plainer course had the disadvantage of being more frequented. Many a collision became imminent in the uncertain light.

The cabman bought a torch from a passer-by, and stuck it in his whip-barrel. As they reached the busier thoroughfares he got down from his box, took the torch in one hand and the reins in the other, and walked at his horse's head.

The pace was now slower than before. It was like a toilsome passage through the workings of an iron mine. Volumes of noisome vapor rolled slowly past them. The air hung close over their heads like an unseen, vaulted roof. Red lights gleamed like vanishing stars down the elastic vista. One light would turn out to be a coffee-stall, round which a group of people gathered—cabmen muffled to the throat, women draggled and dirty, boys with faces that were old. Another would be a potato-engine, with its own volumes of white vapor, and the clank of its oven door like the metallic echo of the miner's pick. The line of regular lamps was like the line of candles stuck to the rock, the cross streets were like the cross-workings, the damp air settling down into streaks of moisture on the glass of the cab window was like the ceasless drip, drip of the oozing water from overhead.

And to the two laden souls sitting within in silence and with clasped hands, the great city, nay, the world itself, was like a colossal mine, which human earthworms had burrowed underground, while the light and the free air were both above.

At one point, where a patch of dry pavement indicated a bake-house under the street, three or four squalid creatures crouched together and slept. The streets were all but noiseless. It would be two hours yet before the giant of traffic would awake. The few cabmen hailed each other as they passed unrecognized, and their voices sounded hoarse. When the many clocks struck two, the many tones came muffled through the dense air.

The journey was long and wearisome, but Paul and Greta scarcely felt it. They were soon to part; they knew not when they were to meet again. Perhaps soon, perhaps late; perhaps not until a darkness deeper than this should cover the land.

Turning into Oxford Street, the cabman struck away to the west, in order to come upon Westminster by the main artery of Regent Street. The great thoroughfare was quiet enough now. Fashion was at rest, but even here, and in its own mocking guise, misery had its haunt. A light laugh broke the silence of the street, and a girl, so young as to be little more than a child, dressed in soiled finery, and reeling with unsteady step on the pavement, came up to the cab window and peered in.

At the open door of a hotel, from whence a shaft of light came out into the fog, the cabman drew up. "Comfortable hotel, sir; think you'd like to put up, sir?"

Paul dropped the window. "We want the Catholic convent at Westminster, my man."

The cabman had put up his torch and was flapping his arms under his armpits. "Cold job, sir. Think I've had enough of it. Ha'past two, and a mile from St. Margaret's yet, sir. Got a long step home, sir, and the missis looking out for me this hour and more."

The night porter of the hotel had opened the cab door, but not for an instant did Paul's purpose waver. "I'm sorry, my good fellow, but we must reach the convent, as I tell you."

"Won't to-morrow do, sir? Comfortable quarters, sir. Can recommend 'em," with a tip of his hand over his shoulder.

"We must get to the convent to-night, my man."

The cabman returned to his horse's head with a grunt of dissatisfaction. "Porter, can you keep a bed for me here? I shall be back in an hour," said Paul. The porter signified assent, and once again the cab moved off on its slow journey.

As it passed out of Trafalgar Square by way of Charing Cross, the air suddenly lightened. It was as if waves of white mist rolled over the yellow vapor. The cabman threw away his torch, mounted his box, and set off at a trot. When he reached Parliament Square the fog was gone. The great clock of Westminster was striking three; the sky was a dun gray behind the clocktower, and the dark mass of the abbey could be dimly seen.

The cab drew up on the south-west of Abbey Gardens and before a portico railed in by an iron gate. The lamp burning on the sidewalk in front cast a hazy light on what seemed to be a large brick house plain in every feature.

"This is Saint Margaret's, sir. Eight shillings, sir, if you please."

Paul dismissed the cabman and rang the bell; the hollow tongue sent out a startling reverberation into the night. The sky to the east was breaking; thin streaks of a lighter gray foretold the dawn.

The door opened and the iron gate swung back. A sister carrying an open oil lamp motioned them to enter.

"Can I see the superior?" said Paul.

"She is newly risen," said the sister, and she fixed the lamp to a bracket in the wall and went away. They were left in a bare, chill, echoing hall.

The next moment a line of nuns in their coifs passed close by them with quick and silent steps. At that gray hour they had risen for matins. Some of them were pale and emaciated, and one that was palest and most worn went by with drooping head and hands that inlaced her rosary. Paul stepped back a pace. The nun moved steadily onward with the rest. Never a sign of recognition, never an upward glance, only the quivering of a lip—but it was his mother!

He, too, dropped his head, and his own lips trembled. The mother superior was standing with them before he was aware. For an instant his voice was suspended, but he told her at length that a great calamity had befallen them, and begged her to take his wife for a time into her care.

"Charity is our office," said the mother, when she had heard his story. "Come, my sister, the Church is peace. Your poor laden soul may put off its load while you are here."

Paul begged to be allowed a moment to say farewell, and the good mother left them together.

Then from an inner chamber came the solemn tones of an organ and the full voices of a choir. The softened harmonies seemed to float into their torn hearts, and they wept. The gray dawn was creeping in. It blurred the red light of the lamp.

"Good-bye, darling, good-bye!" Paul whispered; but even while he spoke he clung the closer.

"Good-bye for the present, dear husband," said Greta, and smiled.

"Who would have thought that this calamity could wait for you at the very steps of God's altar?"

"A day will turn all this evil into good."

"At the threshold of our life together to be torn apart!"

"Think of it no more, dearest. Our lives will yet be the brighter for this calamity. Do you remember what Parson Christian used to say? The happiest life is not that which is always in the sunlight, but rather that over which a dark cloud has once lowered and passed away."

Paul shook his head. "My lips are sealed. You do not know all. It is a cruel lie that separates us. But what if it can not be disproved?"

Greta's eyes were full of a radiant hopefulness. "It can, and shall!"

Paul bent his head and touched her forehead with his lips. "The past is a silence that gives back no answer," he said. "My mother alone could disprove it, and she is dead to the world."

"Not alone, dearest. I can disprove it. Wait and see!"

Paul smiled coldly, and once more shook his head. "You don't know all," he said again, and kissed her reverently. "What if to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow brings no light to unravel this mystery?"

"Never fear it. The finger of Heaven is in this," said Greta.

"Say, rather, the hand of destiny. And how little we are in the presence of that pitiless power!"

"God sees all," said Greta. "He has led me in here, and He will guide me out again."

"What if I brought you for a day, and you remain for a year, for life?"

"Then think that God Himself has taken your wife at your hands."

Paul's face, that had worn a look of deep dejection, became distorted with pain. "Oh, it is horrible! And this cloister is to be your marriage-bed!"

"Hush! All is peace here. Good-bye, dearest Paul. Be brave, my husband."

"Brave? Before death a man may be brave; but in the face of a calamity like this, what man could be brave?"

"God will turn it away."

"God grant it. But I tremble to ask for the truth. The future is not more awful to me now than the past."

"Keep up heart, dear Paul. You know how pleasant it is to fall asleep amid storms that shake the trees, and to awake in the stillness and the sunshine, and amid the songs of the birds. To-morrow the falsehood will be outfaced, and you will return to fetch me."

"Yes," said Paul, "or else drag out my days as an outcast in the world."

"No, no, no. Good-bye, dearest." Then the voice of the comforter failed her, and she dropped her head on his breast.

The choir within chanted the matin service. Paul removed the iron bar that crossed the door, and opened it. The opposite side of the street was a blank wall, with gaunt boughs of leafless trees behind it and above it, and beyond all was the dim sanctuary. Traffic's deep buzz flowed in the distance. The dawn had reddened the eastern sky, and the towers of the abbey were black against the glory of the coming day.

"It may be that there is never a sunrise on this old city but it awakens some one to some new calamity," said Paul; "yet surely this is the heaviest stroke of all Good-bye, my darling!"

"Good-bye, my husband!"

"Yonder gray old fabric has looked on the scarred ruins of many a life, but never a funeral that has passed down its aisles was so sad as this parting. Good-bye, dearest wife, good-bye!"

"Good-bye, Paul!"

He struck his breast and drew his breath audibly, "I must go. The thing is not to be thought of and endured!"

"Good-bye, Paul!" Her face was buried in his breast, to hide it from his eyes.

"They say that the day a dear friend is lost to us is purer and calmer in remembrance than the day before. May it be so with us!"

"Hush! You will soon be back to take me away." And Greta nestled closer to his breast.

"If not—if not"—his hot breathing beat fast on her drooping head—"if not, then—as the world is dead to both without the other's love—remain here—in this house—forever. Good-bye! Good-bye!"

He disengaged her clinging arms. He pressed her cold brow with his quivering lips. Her fears conquered her brave heart at last. A mist was fast hiding her from him.

"Good-bye! good-bye!"

A moment's silence, a breaking sigh, a rising sob, a last lingering touch of the inlaced fingers, and then the door closed behind him. She was alone in the empty hall; her lips were cold; her eyes were shut. The rosy hues of morning were floating in the air, now rich and sweet and balmy and restful, with the full, pure, holy harmonies of the choir.



CHAPTER X.

It was merely a momentary vexation which Hugh Ritson felt when the course that Paul had taken falsified his prescience. "No matter," he said, "it is only a question of a day, more or less. The thing must be done."

Drayton made no attempt to conceal his relief when the door closed and the fly drove off. "I ain't sorry the fence is gone, and that's flat!"

"Only, being gone, you will have a bigger risk to run now, my friend," said Hugh Ritson, with undisguised contempt.

Drayton looked up with a glance half of fear, half of suspicion. "You ain't gone and rounded on a fellow, after all? You ain't told him as I'm here?"

"Don't be a fool! Get off to bed. Wait, you must put me up for the night. You'll take care of yourself if you're wise. The police will be here in the morning; take my word for that."

"Here? In the morning? No!"

"When they asked for his address, he gave them the name of this house. They'll not forget it. Men of that sort don't forget."

"I'll pound if they don't."

"They have memories for other things besides addresses. Consider if they have any other reason to remember the landlord of your house."

"No criss-crossing! you don't do me the same as the old woman."

"No matter. You know best. Take care of yourself, Mr. Drayton."

Drayton buttoned his coat as near to the throat as the torn lapel would allow. "That's what I mean to do. I ain't going to be lagged. It's a lifer this time, and that would take the stiff'ning out of a man."

"Where are you going?"

"No criss-crossing, I say."

"Leave this house, and they'll have you in twenty-four hours."

"Stay here, and they'll lag me in twelve. Being as that's twelve to the good, I'm off."

Drayton's hand was on the door-handle. Hugh Ritson snatched it away. "An idiot like you deserves to be taken. Such men ought to be put away."

Drayton lifted his fist. "Damme, but I'll put you away if—if—"

Hugh Ritson did not flinch. "What if I show you how to escape the consequences of to-night's work altogether?"

Drayton's uplifted hand fell. "I ain't objecting to that," he growled. "How?"

"By putting another man in your place."

Drayton's eyes opened in a stare of blank amazement.

"And what about me?" he asked.

"You," said Hugh Ritson, and a scarcely perceptible sneer curled his lip—"you shall stand in his shoes."

A repulsive smile crossed Drayton's face. He fumbled the torn lapel with restless fingers. His eyes wandered to the door. There was a moment's silence.

"Him?" he said, with an elevation of the eyebrows.

Hugh Ritson bent his head slightly. Drayton stood with mouth agape.

Old Mrs. Drayton was pottering around the bar preparatory to going to bed.

"I'll be a-bidding you good-night, sir. Paul, you'll lock up after the gentleman."

"Good-night, Mrs. Drayton."

The landlady hobbled away. But from midway up the stairs her querulous voice came again. "The poor young thing—I declare she's a-crying her eyes out."

"Why d'ye mean to do?" asked Drayton.

"To get him here."

"How'll ye track him? He's gone to London, ain't he? That's a big haystack to find a needle in, ain't it?"

"London is not a haystack, Mr. Drayton. It's a honey-comb, and every cell is labeled. On getting out of the train at St. Pancras Station they will either hire a cab or they will not. If they hire one, then the number will be taken at the lodge. By that number the cabman can be found. He will know where he drove his fare. If my brother left his wife at one place, and settled himself at another, the cabman will know that also. If they do not hire a cab, then, as the hour is late, and one of them is a lady, they must be somewhere in the vicinity of the station. Thus, in that vast honey-comb, their particular cells are already marked out for us. That's enough for the present. Who sleep in this house beside yourselves—and the girl?"

"Nobody but a lad—a pot-boy."

"Where is he now—in bed?"

"Four hours agone."

"Where does he sleep?"

"Up in the attic."

"Don't let that lad see you. On which side of the house does the attic lie?"

"In the gable, this end."

"Is there an attic in the other gable?"

"Yes, a bad one."

"No matter. Get a mattress and sleep there yourself, and lie close all day to-morrow. Take food, but no liquor, mind that. I'll come for you when all is clear. And now show me to your room."

After some preparation the two men went upstairs, carrying the only remaining light.

"Give me the candle. You had best go up to your attic in the dark. Here, put this key in the girl's door and unlock it. She's quiet enough now. Hush—! No; it was only the wind. Good-night—and mind what I say, don't let that boy see you—and, listen, no liquor!"



CHAPTER XI.

The day had not yet dawned, and all lay still in that house when Mercy Fisher opened noiselessly the door of her room and crept stealthily down the stairs. It was very dark in the bar below, and she had no light. The sickening odor of dead tobacco was in the air. She carried a little bundle in one hand, and with the other she felt her way around the walls until she came to the outer door. A heavy chain fastened it, and with nervous fingers she drew it out of the slide. When free of its groove, it slipped from her hand, and fell against the door-jamb with a clang. The girl's heart leaped to her throat. At first she crouched in fear, then lifted the latch, opened the door, and fled away into the gloom without, leaving the door wide open.

Never to the last day of her life did she know what purpose guided her in that hour. She had no object, no aim. Only to fly away from a broken heart. Only to lie down on the earth and know no more, with all the heartache over. But she was drifting in her blind misery to that reservoir of life, London.

She hurried down the road, never once looking back. The leafless trees were surging in the night-wind; their gaunt branches were waving grimly over her head. The hedges took fantastic shapes before her, and beside her. Her limbs trembled and her teeth chattered, yet she hastened on. Her head ached. She felt suffocated. The world was so cruel to her. If only she could fly from it and forget—only forget!

The day was dawning; the deep blue of the sky to the left of her was streaked with thin bars. All before her was a blank void of dun gray. A veil of vapor beat against her cheeks. The wide marshy lands lay in mist around her. Not a sound but her own footstep on the road. Not a bird in the empty air, not a cloud in the blank sky. It was a dreary scene; neither day nor night.

And through this grim realm that is aloof from all that is human, one poor, broken-hearted girl hurried on, her little bundle in her hand, a shawl wrapped about her shoulders, her red, tearless eyes fixed in front of her.

Like the spirit of unrest, the wind moaned and soughed. Now and then a withered leaf of last year went by her with a light rustle and stealthy motion. Desolate as the heart within her was the waste ground.

Bit by bit the gray sky lightened; the east was fretted over with pink, and a freshness was breathed into the air. Then she began to run. Behind her were all her pretty dreams, and they were dead. Behind her was the love she had cherished, and that was dead, too. From a joyful vision she had awakened to find the idol cold at her breast.

Running hard along the gloomy road, under the empty sky, through the surging wind, the outcast girl cried in her tearless grief as a little child cries for the mother who is in her grave—never knowing its loss until it has grown tired, and weary, and sick, and the night is very near.

She came to a brick-kiln that stood back from the road. Its wreathing smoke coiled slowly upward in the smoke-like atmosphere. The red haze drew her to it, as it drew the shivering waifs of the air. Cold and tired, she crept up and stood some minutes in the glow; but a step fell on her ear from behind the kiln, and she stole away like a guilty thing.

Away, away, she knew not where. On, on, she knew not why.

The day had dawned now. In the brightness of morning her heart sunk lower. Draggled and soiled, her hair still damp with the dew, and the odor of night in her dress, she walked on in the golden radiance of the risen sun.

Oh, to bury herself forever, and yet not to die—no, no, not to die!

At a cross-road there was a finger-post, and it read, "To Kilburn." Beyond it there was a wood, and the sunlight played on the pine-trees and reddened the dead leaves that still clung to an oak. She was warm now, but, oh! so tired. Behind the ambush of a holly-bush, close to the road, Mercy crouched down on a drift of withered leaves at the foot of a stout beech. She dozed a little and started. All was quiet. Then weary nature conquered fear, and overcame sorrow, and she slept.

And sleep—that makes kings and queens of us all—gracious sleep, made a queen of the outcast girl, a queen of love; and she dreamed of her home among the mountains.

Mercy was still sleeping when a covered wagon, such as carriers use, came trundling along the road. The driver, a bright-eyed man, with the freshness of the fields in his face, sat on the front rail and whistled. His horse shied at something, and this made him get up. He was at that moment in front of the holly-bush, and he saw Mercy lying behind it.

Her face was worn and pale, her bonnet fallen back from her forehead, her head leaning against the trunk of the tree, one hand on her breast, the other straying aside on the drift of yellow leaves, where a little bundle covered by a red handkerchief had fallen from her graspless fingers, and the radiant morning sunlight over all.

The driver of the wagon jumped to the ground. At the same moment Mercy awoke with a frightened look. She rose to her feet, and would have hurried away.

"Young to be wagranting about, ain't ye, miss?" said the driver. His tone was kindlier than his words.

"Let me go, please," said Mercy, and she tried to pass.

"Coorse, coorse; if yer wants to."

Mercy thanked him, her eyes on the ground. She was already on the road.

"Being as you're going my way, I ain't objecting to giving you a lift."

"No, thank you. I have no—I've no money. I must run."

"You'll wait till I ax for it, won't ye, missy? Come, get up."

"And will you let me go down whenever I like?"

"Coorse I will; why not? Up with ye! There, easy, kneel on the shaft, that's the size of it. Now, go set yourself down on them sacks. Them's apples, them is. Right? Very well. We're off, then."

The wagon was about half full of sacks, and Mercy crept down in the furthest corner.

"I ain't in the apple line reg'lar. I'm a fern-gatherer, that's wot I am. On'y nature don't keep ferning all the year round, so I'se forced to go fruiting winter times—buying apples same as them from off'n the farmers down the country, and bringing 'em up to Covent Garden. That's where I'm going now, that is. And got to be there afore the sales starts."

Mercy listened, but said nothing.

"You know Covent Garden—not fur from Leicester Square and the Haymarket?"

Mercy shook her head.

"What! Never been there—and that near?"

Mercy shook her head again and dropped her eyes.

The driver twisted about to look at her. "Let a be, she's feeling it bad," he thought, and was silent for a moment. Then he twisted about for another look.

"I say, missy, got bad eyes?"

"They're sore, and a little dim," said Mercy.

"Blest if you don't look the spitting image of a friend of mine—'boutn the eyes, I mean—red and swelled up and such. It was Tom Crow, a partner of mine, in fact. Tom caught cold sleeping out one night as we was ferning down Roger Tichborne's estates—him as was the claimant for 'em, you know, on'y he didn't get 'em. The cold flew to Tom's eyes straight, and blest if he ain't gone blind as a mole."

Mercy's lips quivered. The driver stopped his chatter, conscious that he had gone too far, and then, with somewhat illogical perversity, he proceeded to express his vexation at himself by punishing his horse.

"Get along, you stupid old perwerse old knacker's crutch!"

The horse set off at a trot. They passed through a village, and Mercy read the name "Child's Hill" printed on the corner of a house.

"Is it London you are going to?" said Mercy, timidly; "Covent Garden—is that London?"

"Eh?" The driver opened his eyes very wide in a blank stare.

Mercy trembled and held down her head. They jogged on awhile in silence, and then the driver, who had cast furtive glances at the girl, drew rein, and said: "I'm wexed as I said Tom Crow was as blind as a mole. How-and-ever, a mole ain't blind, and it's on'y them coster chaps as think so, but I've caught a many of 'em out ferning. Besides, Tom was a-worrited with his missus, Tom was, and happen that was worse nor his cold.

("Git along, you old perwerse old file!)

"You see, Tom's missus cut away and left him. As young as you, and maybe as good to look at, but a bad 'un; and she broke Tom's heart, as the saying is. So Tom left the ferning. He hadn't no heart for it. Ferning's a thing as wants heart, it do. He started costering first, and now Tom's got a 'tater-ingine, on'y being as he's blind he has a boy to wheel it. And that woman, she done it all. 'Jim Groundsell,' he says to me—that's my name—'Jim,' he says, 'don't fix your heart on nothing,' he says, 'and keep to your sight and the ferning.'

("Well, you perwerse old crutch! Get along with you!)

"But I went and done it myself. And now my missus, she's a invalide, as they say, and she ain't out o' bed this twelvemonth come Christmas, and she gets lonesome lying all by herself, and frets a bit maybe, and—

("Git along, will you, you wexing old fence!")

There was a long silence this time. They were leaving the green fields behind them, and driving through longer streets than Mercy had ever seen before. Though the sun was shining feebly, the lamps on the pavement were still burning. They passed a church, and Mercy saw by the clock that it was hard on eight. They drove briskly through Camden Town into St. Giles's, and so on to Long Acre.

The streets were thronged by this time. Troops of people were passing to and fro. Cabs and omnibuses were rattling hither and thither. At every turn the crowd became denser and the noise louder. Mercy sat in her corner, bewildered. The strange city frightened her. For the time it drove away the memory of her sorrow.

When they reached Covent Garden, Jim, the driver, drew up with a jerk, and nodded to some of the drivers of similar wagons, and hailed others with a lusty shout. All was a babel to the girl's dazed sense: laughter, curses, yelling, whooping, quarreling.

Mercy's head ached. She got down, hardly knowing what to do next. Where was she to go? In that wilderness of London, more desolate than the trackless desert, what was she?

She stood a moment on the pavement, her little bundle in her hand, and all the bewildering scene went round and round. The tears rose to her eyes, and the glare and noise and the tumult were blotted out.

The next instant she felt herself being lifted back into the wagon, and then she remembered nothing more.



CHAPTER XII.

Two days later Hugh Ritson entered the convent church of St. Margaret. It was evening service, and the nave was thronged from chancel to porch. The aisles, which were bare of seats, were filled only half-way down, the rest of the pavement being empty save for a man here and there who leaned lightly against the great columns of the heavy colonnade.

The sermon had already begun. Hugh Ritson walked up the aisle noiselessly until he came close behind the throng of people standing together. Then he stood at the side of a column and looked around on those in the nave.

He was within range of the preacher's voice, but he hardly listened. His eyes traversed the church until at last they rested on one spot in the south transept, where a company of nuns sat with downcast eyes half closed. The face of one of them was hidden beneath her drooping coif; the rosary held to her breast was gripped with nervous fingers. Near at hand there was another face that riveted Hugh Ritson's gaze. It was the face of Greta, radiant in its own beauty, and tender with the devotional earnestness of parted lips and of lashes wet with the dew of a bruised spirit.

From these two his eyes never wandered for longer than a minute! Languidly he listened to the words that floated over the people, and held them mute. The preacher was a slight young man, emaciated, pale, with lustrous eyes, and a voice that had a thin, meek pipe. But the discourse was in a strain of feverish excitement, a spirit of hard intolerance, a tone of unrelenting judgment, that would have befitted the gigantic figure and thunderous accents of the monk Jerome.

"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is death." This was the text, twenty times repeated. Men talked of the rights of conscience, as if conscience were God's law. They babbled of toleration, as if any heresy were to be endured, if only it were believed. Conscience! It was the slave of Circumstance. Toleration! It was the watchword at the gate of hell.

Hugh Ritson listened with a vague consciousness, his eyes fixed alternately on the nun with the drooping coif and on the fair, upturned face beside her. At last a word struck him, and made his whole soul to vibrate. Men, women, the great mute throng, pillars, arches, windows of figured saints, altar aflame with candles, the surpliced choir, and the pale, thin face with the burning eyes in the pulpit above—all vanished in an instant.

What was true, said the preacher, in the realm of thought, could not be false in the world of life. Men did evil deeds, and justified them to their own enslaved minds. No way so dark but it had appeared to be the path of light; none so far wrong but it had seemed to be right. Let man beware of the lie that he told to his own heart. The end thereof is death.

Staring from a bloodless face, Hugh Ritson reeled a step backward, and then clung with a trembling hand to the pillar against which he had leaned. The harsh scrape of his foot was heard over the hushed church, and here and there a neck was craned in his direction. His emotion was gone in an instant. A light curl of the hard lip told that the angel within him had once again been conquered.

The sermon ended with a rapturous declaration of the immutability of God's law, and the eternal destinies of man. The world was full of change, but man, who seemed to change most, changed least. The stars that hung above had seen the beginning and the end of ages. Before man was, they were. The old river that flowed past the old city that night had flowed there centuries ago, and generations of men had lived and died in joy and sorrow, and still the same waters washed the same shore. But the stars that measure time itself, and the sea that recorded it, would vanish away, and man should be when time would be no more. "They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. They shall wax old as doth a garment.... But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."

The preacher finished, and the buzz and rustle of the people shifting in their seats told of the tension that had been broken. Faces that had been distorted with the tremors of fear, or contracted with the quiverings of remorse, or glorified with the lights of ecstasy, resumed their normal expression.

The vesper hymn was sung by the whole congregation, standing. It floated up to the blue roof, where the lights that burned low over the people's heads left in the gloom the texts written on the open timbers and the imaged Christ hung in the clerestory. There was one voice that did not sing the vesper hymn; and the close-locked lips of Hugh Ritson were but the symbol of the close-locked heart.

He was asking himself, was it true that when the fire of the stars should be burned to ashes, still man would endure? Pshaw! What was man? These throngs of men, whose great voice swelled like the sea, what were they? In this old church where they sung, other men had sung before them, and where were they now? Who should say they had not perished? Living, believing, dying, they were gone: gone with their sins and sorrows; gone with their virtues and rewards; gone from all sight and all memory; and no voice came from them, pealing out of the abyss of death to join this song of hope. Hope! It was a dream. A dream that great yearning crowds like these, filling churches and chapels, dreamed age after age. But it was a dream from which there would be no awakening to know that it was not true.

The priest and choir left the church. Then the congregation broke up and separated. Hugh Ritson stood awhile, still leaning against the column of the colonnade. The nuns in the south transept rose last, and went out by a little aperture opening from the south aisle. Hugh watched them pass at the distance of the width of the nave. Greta walked a few paces behind them. When the people had gone, and she rose from her seat, her eyes fell on Hugh. Then she dropped her head, and walked down the aisle with a hurried step. Hugh saw her out; the church was now empty, and the voluntary was done. He followed her through the door, and entered into the sacristy.

Before him was another door; it led into the convent. The last of the line of nuns was passing through it. Greta stood in the sacristy, faint, with a scared face, one hand at her breast, the other on the base of a crucifix that stood by the wall. When she saw that he had followed her, her first impulse was to shrink away; her second was to sink to her knees at his feet. She did neither. Conquering her faintness, but still quivering from head to foot, she turned upon him with a defiant look. "Why do you come here? I do not wish to speak with you. Let me pass," she said.

Hugh Ritson made no effort to detain her. He stood before her with downcast eyes, his infirm foot bent under him. "I come to bid you farewell," he said, calmly; "I come to say that we meet no more."

"Would that we had parted forever before we met the last time!" said Greta, fervently.

"Would that we had never met!" said Hugh, in a low voice.

"That was a lie with which you parted me from my husband," she said.

"It was—God forgive me."

"And you knew it was a lie?" said Greta.

"I knew it was a lie."

"Then where is your shame, that you can look me in the face? Have you no shame?" she said.

"Have you no pity?" said Hugh.

"What pity had you for me? Have you not done me wrong enough already?"

"God knows it is true. And He knows I am a miserable man. Have pity and forgive me, and say farewell!"

Something of contrition in the tone touched her. She was silent.

"The preacher was wrong," he said. "There is no spirit of evil. We are betrayed by our own passions, and the chief of those passions is love. It is the Nemesis that stalks through the world, haunting all men, and goading some to great wrong."

"It was of your doing that I came here," said Greta.

"Would to God it may be of my doing that you remain here," said Hugh.

"That is a prayer He will not hear. I am leaving this house to-night. There is some one coming who can unmask your wicked falsehood."

"Parson Christian?" said Hugh.

Greta made no answer, and Hugh continued, "His journey is needless. A word from my mother would have done all. She is in this house."

"Yes, Heaven forgive you, she is here!" said Greta.

"You are wrong; you do not know all. Where is your husband?"

Greta shook her head. "I have neither seen him nor heard from him since we parted at these doors," she said.

"And when you leave them to-night, do you leave him behind you?" said Hugh.

"Heaven forbid!" said Greta, passionately.

Hugh Ritson's bloodless face was awful to look upon. "Greta," he said, in a tone of anguish, "give up the thought. Look on that false union as broken forever, and all this misery will end. It was I and you—you and I. But that is over now. I do not come between you. It is useless to think of that. I do not offer you my love; you refused it long ago. But I can not see you my brother's wife. That would be too much for me to endure. I will not endure it. Have pity upon me. If I have no claim to your love, have I no right to your pity? What have I suffered for your love? A life's misery. What have I sacrificed to it? My name—my place—my inheritance."

Greta lifted her eyes with a look of inquiry.

"What? Has he not even yet told you all?" said Hugh. "No matter. What has he done to earn your love that I have not done? What has he suffered? What has he sacrificed?"

"If this is love, it is selfish love," said Greta, in a broken voice.

"Selfish?—be it so. All love is selfish."

"Leave me—leave me!"

Hugh Ritson paused; the warmth of his manner increased. "I will leave you," he said, "and never seek you again; I will go from you forever, and crush down the sorrow that must be with me to the end, if you will promise me one thing."

"What is it?" said Greta, her eyes on the ground.

"It is much," said Hugh, "but it is not all. If the price is great, think of the misery that it buys—and buries. You would sacrifice something for me, would you not?"

His voice swelled as he spoke, and his pale face softened, and the light of hopeless love was in his great eyes.

"Say that you would—for me—me!" He held out his arms toward her as if soul and body together yearned for one word, one look of love.

Greta stood there, silent and immovable. "What is it?" she repeated.

"Let me think that you would do something for my sake—mine," he pleaded. "Let me carry away that solace. Think what I have suffered for you, and all in vain. Think that perhaps it was no fault of mine that you could not love me; that another woman might have found me worthy to be loved who had not been unworthy of love from me."

"What is it?" repeated Greta, coldly, but her drooping lashes were wet with tears.

"Think that I am of a vain, proud, stubborn spirit; that in all this world there is neither man nor woman, friend nor enemy, to whom I have sued for grace or favor; that since I was a child I have never even knelt in prayer in God's house that man might see or God might hear. Then think that I am at your feet, a miserable man."

"What is it?" said Greta, again.

Hugh Ritson paused, and then added, more calmly: "That you should take the vows and the veil, and stay here until death."

Greta lifted her eyes. Hugh's eyes were bent upon her.

"No, I can not. I should be false to my marriage vows," she said, quietly.

"To be true to them is to be false to yourself, to your husband, and to me," said Hugh.

"I love my husband," said Greta, with an eloquent glance. "To be true to them is to be true to him."

There was a pause. Hugh Ritson's manner underwent a change. It was the white heat of high passion that broke the silence when he spoke again.

"Greta," he said, and his deep voice had a strong tremor, "if there is any truth in what that priest told us to-night—if it is not a dream and a solemn mockery made to enchant or appal the simple—if there is a God and judgment—my soul is already too heavily burdened with sins against you and yours. I would have eased it of one other sin more black than these; but it was not to be."

"What do you mean?" said Greta. Her face was panic-stricken.

Hugh Ritson came a step nearer.

"That your husband is in my hands—that one word from me would commit him to a doom more dreadful than death—that if he is to be saved as a free man, alive, you must renounce him forever."

"Speak plain. What do you mean?" said Greta.

"Choose—quick! Which shall it be? You for this convent, or your husband for lifelong imprisonment?"

Greta's mind was in a whirl. She was making for the door in front of them. He stepped before her.

"I parted you with a lie," he said, "but to me it was not always a lie. I believed it once. Do you think I should have denied my self my inheritance, and let a bastard stand in my place, if I had not believed it?"

"What further lie is this?" said Greta.

"No matter. Heaven knows. And all I did was for love of you. Is it so guilty a thing that I have loved you—to all lengths and ends of love? I meant to put a hemisphere between you—to send him to Australia, and you back home to Cumberland. What if the lie had then been outfaced? I should have parted you, and that would have been enough."

"And now, when your revenge falls idle at your feet, you come to me on your knees," said Greta.

"Revenge? That was but a feeble revenge," said Hugh. "He would have learned the truth and come back to claim you. There would have been no peace for me while he was alive and free. Do I come to you on my knees? Yes; but it is to pray of you to save your husband. Is it so much that I ask of you? Think what is earned by it. If you have no pity for me, have you none for him?"