"Try to sleep an hour or two, dear," said Greta, "and then perhaps you may get up this afternoon—only perhaps, you know, but we'll see."

"Yes, Greta, yes. How kind you are."

"You will be far kinder to me some day," said Greta, very tenderly.

"No—ah, yes, I remember. How very selfish I am—I had quite forgotten. But then it is so hard not to be selfish when you are a mother. Only fancy, I never think of myself as Mercy now. No, never. I'm just Ralphie's mamma. When Ralphie came, Mercy must have died in some way. That's very silly, isn't it? Only it does seem true."

"Man—go-on—batter," was heard from the kitchen, mingled with the patter of tiny feet.

"Listen to him. How tricksome he is! And you should hear him cry, 'Oh!' You would say, 'That child has had an eye knocked out.' And then, in a minute, behold! he's laughing once more. There, I'm selfish again; but I will make up for it some day, if God is good."

"Yes, Mercy, He is good," said Greta.

Her arms rested on the door-jamb, and her head dropped on to it; her eyes swam. Did it seem at that moment as if God had been very good to these two women?

"Greta," said Mercy, and her voice fell to a whisper, "do you think Ralphie is like—anybody?"

"Yes, dear, he is like you."

There was a pause. Then Mercy's hand strayed from under the bedclothes and plucked at Greta's gown.

"Do you think," she asked, in a voice all but inaudible, "that father knows who it is?"

"I can not say—we have never told him."

"Nor I—he never asked, never once—only, you know, he gave up his work at the mine, and went back to the charcoal-pit when Ralphie came. But he never said a word."

Greta did not answer. There was another pause. Then Mercy said, in a stronger voice, "Will it be soon—the trial?"

"As soon as your eyes are better," said Greta, earnestly; "everything depends on your recovery."

At that moment the bedroom door was pushed open with a little lordly bang, and the great wee man entered with his piece of bread stuck rather insecurely on one prong of a fork.

"Toas," he explained complacently, "toas," and walked up to the empty grate and stretched his arm over the fender at the cold bars.

"Why, there's no fire for toast, you darling goose," said Greta, catching him in her arms, much to his masculine vexation.

Mercy had risen on an elbow, and her face was full of the yearning of the blind. Then she lay back.

"Never mind," she said to herself in a faltering voice, "let me lie quiet and think of all his pretty ways."



CHAPTER VII.

Greta returned to the vicarage toward noon, and overtook Parson Christian and Peter in the lonnin, the one carrying a scythe over his shoulder, the other a bundle of rushes under his one arm. The parson was walking in silence under the noontide sun, his straw hat tipped back from his forehead and his eyes on the ground. He was busy with his own reflections. It was not until Greta had tripped up to his side and slipped his scythe-stone from its strap in the pole that the parson was awakened from his reverie.

"Great news, Greta—great news, my lass!" he said in answer to her liberal tender in exchange for his thoughts. "How well it's said, that he that diggeth a pit for another should look that he fall not into it himself."

"What news, Mr. Christian?" said Greta, and her color heightened.

"Well, we've been mowing the grass in the church-yard, Peter and I, and the scythe is old like ourselves, and it wanted tempering. So away we went to the smithy to have it ground, and who should come up but Robbie Atkinson, leading hassocks from Longridge. And Robbie would fain have us go with him and be cheerful at the Flying Horse. Well, we'd each had a pot of ale and milk, when in came Natt, the stableman at Ritson's, all lather like one of his horses after his master has been astride her. And Natt was full of a great quarrel at the Ghyll, wherein young Mr. Hugh had tried to turn yonder man out of the house in the way I told you of before, but the man denied that he was what Hugh called him, and clung to it that he was Paul Ritson, and brought documents to show that Paul was his father's rightful heir, after all."

"Well, well?" asked Greta, breathlessly.

Peter had shambled on to the house.

"Well, Natt is no very trustworthy chronicler, I fear, but one thing is plain, and that is, that Mr. Hugh, who thought to turn yon man out of the house, has been turned out of it himself."

Greta stood in the road, trembling from head to foot.

"My poor husband!" she said in a whisper. Then came a torrent of questions. "When did this happen? What think you will come of it? Where will Hugh go? What will he do? Ah, Mr. Christian, you always said the cruel instrument would turn in his hand!"

There was a step behind them. In their anxiety they had not noticed it until it was close at their heels. They turned, and were face to face with Mr. Bonnithorne.

The lawyer bowed, but before they had exchanged the courtesies of welcome, a horse's tramp came from the road, and in a moment Drayton rode up the lonnin. His face was flushed, and his manner noisy as he leaped from the saddle into their midst.

Greta lifted one hand to her breast, and with the other hand she clasped that of the parson. The old man's face grew rigid in an instant, and all the mellowness natural to it died away.

Drayton made up to Greta and the parson with an air of braggadocio.

"I've come to tell you once for all that my wife must live under my roof."

No one answered. Drayton took a step near, and slapped his boot with his riding-whip.

"The law backs me up in it, and I mean to have it out."

Still there was no answer, and Drayton's braggadocio gathered assurance from the silence.

"Not as I want her. None of your shrinking away, madame." A hoarse laugh. "Burn my body! if I wouldn't as soon have my mother for a wife."

"What then?" said the parson in a low tone.

"Appearances. I ain't to be a laughing-stock of the neighborhood any longer. My wife's my wife. A husband's a husband, and wants obedience."

"And what if you do not get it?" asked the parson, his old face whitening.

"What? Imprisonment—that's what." Drayton twisted about and touched the lawyer with the handle of his whip. "Here, you, tell 'em what's what."

Thus appealed to, Mr. Bonnithorne explained that a husband was entitled to the restitution of connubial rights, and, in default, to the "attachment" of his spouse.

"The law," said Mr. Bonnithorne, "can compel a wife to live with her husband, or punish her with imprisonment for not doing so."

"D'ye hear?" said Drayton, slapping furiously at the sole of his boot. "Punish her with imprisonment."

There was a pause, and then the parson said, quietly but firmly:

"I gather that it means that you want to share this lady's property."

"Well, what of it? Hain't I a right to share it, eh?"

"You have thus far enjoyed the benefit of her mortgages, on the pretense that you are her husband; but now you are going too far."

"We'll see. Here, you," prodding the lawyer, "take proceedings at once. If she won't come, imprison her. D'ye hear—imprison her!"

He swung about and caught the reins from the horse's mane, laughing a hollow laugh. Greta disengaged her hand from the hand of the parson, and stepped up to Drayton until she stood before him face to face, her eyes flashing, her lips quivering, her cheeks pale, her whole figure erect and firm.

"And what of that?" she said. "Do you think to frighten me with the cruelties of the law?—me?—me?" she echoed, with scorn in every syllable. "Have I suffered so little from it already that you dare to say, 'Imprison her,' as if that would drive me to your house?"

Drayton tried to laugh, but the feeble effort died on his hot lips. He spat on the ground, and then tried to lift his eyes back to the eyes of Greta, but they fell to the whip that he held in his hand.

"Imprison me, Paul Drayton! I shall not be the first you've imprisoned. Imprison me, and I shall be rid of you and your imposture!" she said, raising her voice.

Drayton leaped to the saddle.

"I'll do it!" he muttered; and now, pale, crushed, his braggadocio gone, he tugged his horse's head aside and brought down the whip on its flank.

Parson Christian turned to Mr. Bonnithorne.

"Follow him," he said, resolutely, and lifted his hand.

The lawyer made a show of explanation, then assumed an air of authority, but finally encountered the parson's white face, and turned away.

In another moment Greta was hanging on Parson Christian's neck, sobbing and moaning, while the good old Christian, with all the mellowness back in his wrinkled face, smoothed her hair as tenderly as a woman.

"My poor Paul, my dear husband!" cried Greta.

"Ah! thanks be to God, things are at their worst now, and they can't move but they must mend," said the parson.

He took her indoors and bathed her hot forehead, and dried with his hard old hand the tears that fell from eyes that a moment before had flashed like a basilisk's.

Toward five o'clock that evening a knock came to the door of the vicarage, and old Laird Fisher entered. His manner was more than usually solemn and constrained.

"I's coom't to say as ma lass's wee thing is taken badly," he said, "and rayder sudden't."

Greta rose from her seat and put on her hat and cloak. She was hastening down the road while the charcoal-burner was still standing in the middle of the floor.



CHAPTER VIII.

When Greta reached the old charcoal-burner's cottage, the little one was lying in a drowsy state in Mercy's arms. Its breathing seemed difficult; sometimes it started in terror; it was feverish and suffered thirst. The mother's wistful face was bent down on it with an indescribable expression. There were only the trembling lips to tell of the sharp struggle that was going on within. But the yearning for a sight of the little flushed countenance, the tearless appeal for but one glimpse of the drowsy little eyes, the half-articulate cry of a mother's heart against the fate that made the child she had suckled at her breast a stranger, whose very features she might not know—all this was written in that blind face.

"Is he pale?" said Mercy. "Is he sleeping? He does not talk now, but only starts and cries, and sometimes coughs."

"When did this begin?" asked Greta.

"Toward four o'clock. He had been playing, and I noticed that he breathed heavily, and then he came to me to be nursed. Is he awake now? Listen."

The little one in its restless drowsiness was muttering faintly, "Man—go-on—batter—toas."

"The darling is talking in his sleep, isn't he?" said Mercy.

Then there was a ringing, brassy cough.

"It is croup," thought Greta.

She closed the window, lighted a fire, placed the kettle so that the steam might enter the room, then wrung flannels out of hot water, and wrapped them about the child's neck. She stayed all that night at the cottage, and sat up with the little one and nursed it. Mercy could not be persuaded to go to bed, but she was very quiet. It had not yet taken hold of her that the child was seriously ill. He was drowsy and a little feverish, his pulse beat fast and he coughed hard sometimes, but he would be better in the morning. Oh, yes, he would soon be well again, and tearing up the flowers in the garden.

Toward midnight the pulse fell rapidly, the breathing become quieter, and the whole nature seemed to sink. Mercy listened with her ear bent down at the child's mouth, and a smile of ineffable joy spread itself over her face.

"Bless him, he is sleeping so calmly," she said.

Greta did not answer.

"The 'puss' and the 'man' don't darken his little life so much now," continued Mercy, cheerily.

"No, dear," said Greta, in as strong a voice as she could summon.

"All will be well with my darling boy soon, will it not?"

"Yes, dear," said Greta, with a struggle.

Happily Mercy could not read the other answer in her face.

Mercy had put her sensitive fingers on the child's nose, and was touching him lightly about the mouth.

"Greta," she said in a startled whisper, "does he look pinched?"

"A little," said Greta, quietly.

"And his skin—is it cold and clammy?"

"We must give him another hot flannel," said Greta.

Mercy sat at the bedside, and said nothing for an hour. Then all at once, and in a strange, harsh voice, she said:

"I wish God had not made Ralphie so winsome."

Greta started at the words, but made no answer.

The daylight came early. As the first gleams of gray light came in at the window, Greta turned to where Mercy sat in silence. It was a sad face that she saw in the mingled yellow light of the dying lamp and the gray of the dawn.

Mercy spoke again.

"Greta, do you remember what Mistress Branthet said when her baby died last back-end gone twelvemonth?"

Greta looked up quickly at the bandaged eyes.

"What?" she asked.

"Well, Parson Christian tried to comfort her, and said, 'Your baby is now an angel in Paradise,' and she turned on him with 'Shaf on your angels—I want none on 'em—I want my little girl.'"

Mercy's voice broke into a sob.

Toward ten o'clock the doctor came. He had been detained. Very sorry to disoblige Mrs. Ritson, but fact was old Mr. de Broadthwaite had an attack of lumbago, complicated by a bout of toothache, and everybody knew he was most exacting. Young person's baby ill? Feverish, restless, starts in its sleep, and cough?—Ah, croupy cough—yes, croup, true croup, not spasmodic. Let him see; how old? A year and a half? Ah, bad, very. Most frequent in second year of infancy. Dangerous, highly so. Forms a membrane that occludes air passages. Often ends in convulsions, and child suffocates. Sad, very. Let him see again. How long since the attack began? Yesterday at four. Ah, far gone, far. The great man soon vanished, leaving behind him a harmless preparation of aconite and ipecacuanha.

Mercy had heard all, and her pent-up grief broke out in sobs.

"Oh, to think I shall hear my Ralphie no more, and to know his white cold face is looking up from a coffin, while other children are playing in the sunshine and chasing the butterflies! No, no, it can not be; God will not let it come to pass; I will pray to Him and He will save my child. Why, He can do anything, and He has all the world. What is my little baby boy to Him? He will not let it be taken from me!"

Greta's heart was too full for speech. But she might weep in silence, and none there would know. Mercy stretched across the bed and, tenderly folding the child in her arms, she lifted him up, and then went down on her knees.

"Merciful Father," she said in a childish voice of sweet confidence, "this is my baby, my Ralphie, and I love him so dearly. You would never think how much I love him. But he is ill, and doctor says he may die. Oh, dear Father, only think what it would be to say, 'His little face is gone.' And then I have never seen him. You will not take him away until his mother sees him. So soon, too. Only five days more. Why, it is quite close. Not to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the next, but the day after that!"

She put in many another child-like plea, and then rose with a smile on her pale lips and replaced the little one on his pillow.

"How patient he is," she said. "He can't say 'Thank you,' but I'm sure his eyes are speaking. Let me feel." She put her finger lightly on the child's lids. "No, they are shut; he must be sleeping. Oh, dear, he sleeps very much. Is he gaining color? How quiet he is! If he would only say, 'Mamma!' How I wish I could see him!"

She was very quiet for awhile, and then plucked at Greta's gown suddenly.

"Greta," she said eagerly, "something tells me that if I could only see Ralphie I should save him."

Greta started up in terror. "No, no, no; you must not think of it," she said.

"But some one whispered it. It must have been God Himself. You know we ought to obey God always."

"Mercy, it was not God who said that. It was your own heart. You must not heed it."

"I'm sure it was God," said Mercy. "And I heard it quite plain."

"Mercy, my darling, think what you are saying. Think what it is you wish to do. If you do it you will be blind forever."

"But I shall have saved my Ralphie."

"No, no; you will not."

"Will he not be saved, Greta?"

"Only our heavenly Father knows."

"Well, He whispered it in my heart. And, as you say, He knows best."

Greta was almost distraught with fear. The noble soul in her would not allow her to appeal to Mercy's gratitude against the plea of maternal love. But she felt that all her happiness hung on that chance. If Mercy regained her sight, all would be well with her and hers; but if she lost it the future must be a blank.

The day wore slowly on, and the child sunk and sunk. At evening the old charcoal-burner returned, and went into the bedroom. He stood a moment, and looked down at the pinched little face, and when the child's eyes opened drowsily for a moment he put his withered forefinger into its palm; but there was no longer a responsive clasp of the chubby hand.

The old man's lips quivered behind his white beard.

"It were a winsome wee thing," he said, faintly, and then turned away.

He left his supper untouched and went into the porch. There he sat on a bench and whittled a blackthorn stick. The sun was sinking over the head of the Eel Crag; the valley lay deep in a purple haze; the bald top of Cat Bells stood out bright in the glory of the passing day. A gentle breeze came up from the south, and the young corn chattered with its multitudinous tongues in the field below. The dog lay at the charcoal-burner's feet, blinking in the sun and snapping lazily at a buzzing fly.

The little life within was ebbing away. No longer racked by the ringing cough, the loud breathing became less frequent and more harsh. Mercy lifted the child from the bed and sat with it before the fire. Greta saw its eyes open, and at the same moment she saw the lips move slightly, but she heard nothing.

"He is calling his mamma," said Mercy, with her ear bent toward the child's mouth.

There was a silence for a long time. Mercy pressed the child to her breast; its close presence seemed to soothe her.

Greta stood and looked down; she saw the little lips move once more, but again she heard no sound.

"He is calling his mamma," repeated Mercy, wistfully, "and, oh, he seems such a long way off!"

Once again the little lips moved.

"He is calling me," said Mercy, listening intently; and she grew restless and excited. "He is going away. I can hear him. He is far off. Ralphie, Ralphie!" She had lifted the child up to her face. "Ralphie, Ralphie!" she cried.

"Give me the baby, Mercy," said Greta.

But the mother clung to it with a convulsive grasp.

"Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie!..."

There was a sudden flash of some white thing. In an instant the bandage had fallen from Mercy's head, and she was peering down into the child's face with wild eyes.

"Ralphie, Ralphie!... Hugh!" she cried.

The mother had seen her babe at last, and in that instant she had recognized the features of its father.

At the next moment the angel of God passed through that troubled house, and the child lay dead at the mother's breast.

Mercy saw it all, and her impassioned mood left her. She rose to her feet quietly, and laid the little one in the bed. There was never a sigh more, never a tear. Only her face was ashy pale, and her whitening lips quivered.

"Greta," she said, very slowly, "will you go for him?"

Greta kissed the girl's forehead tenderly. Her own calm, steadfast, enduring spirit sunk. All the world was dead to her now.

"Yes, dear," she whispered.

The next minute she was gone from the room.



CHAPTER IX.

The evening was closing in; now and then the shrill cries of the birds pealed and echoed in the still air; a long, fibrous streak of silver in the sky ebbed away over the head of Hindscarth. Greta hastened toward the pit-brow. The clank of the iron chain in the gear told that the cage in the shaft was working.

It was a year and a half since her life had first been overshadowed by a disaster more black and terrible than death itself, and never for an instant had the clouds been lifted until three days ago. Then, in a moment, the light had pierced through the empty sky, and a way had been wrought for her out of the labyrinth of misery. But even that passage for life and hope and love seemed now to be closed by the grim countenance of doom.

Mercy would be blind forever! All was over and done. Greta's strong, calm spirit sunk and sunk. She saw the impostor holding to the end the name and place of the good man; and she saw the good man dragging his toilsome way through life—an outcast, a by-word, loaded with ignominy, branded with crime. And that unhappy man was her husband, and he had no stay but in her love—no hope but in her faith.

Greta stopped at the door of Hugh Ritson's office and knocked. A moment later he and she were face to face. He was dressed in his pit flannels, and was standing by a table on which a lamp burned. When he recognized her, he passed one hand across his brow, the other he rested on the mantel-piece. There was a momentary twitching of her lips, and he involuntarily remarked that in the time that had passed since they last met she had grown thinner.

"Come with me," she said in a trembling whisper. "Mercy's child is dead, and the poor girl is asking for you in her great trouble."

He did not speak at once, but shaded his eyes from the lamp. Then he said, in a voice unlike his own:

"I will follow you."

She had held the door in her hand, and now she turned to go. He took one step toward her.

"Greta, have you nothing more to say to me?" he asked.

"What do you wish me to say?"

He did not answer; his eyes fell before her.

There was a slight wave of her hand as she added:

"The same room ought never to contain both you and me—it never should have done so—but this is not my errand."

"I have deserved it," he said, humbly.

"The cruel work is done—yes, done past undoing. You have not heard the last of it. Then, since you ask me what I have to say to you, it is this: That man, that instrument of your malice who is now your master, has been to say that he can compel me to live with him, or imprison me if I refuse. Can he do it?"

Hugh Ritson lifted his eyes with a blind, vacant stare.

"To live with him? Him? You to live with him?" he said, absently.

"To live under his roof—those were his words. Can he do it? I mean if the law recognizes him as my husband?"

Hugh Ritson's eyes wandered.

"Do it? Your husband?" he echoed, incoherently.

"I know well what he wants," said Greta, breathing heavily; "it is not myself he is anxious for—but he can not have the one without the other."

"The one without the other?" echoed Hugh Ritson in a low tone. Then he strode across the room in visible agitation.

"Greta, that man is—. Do you know who he is?"

"Paul Drayton, the innkeeper of Hendon," she answered, calmly.

"No, no; he is your—"

He paused, his brows knit, his fingers interlaced. Her bosom swelled.

"Would you tell me that he is my husband?" she said indignantly.

Hugh Ritson again passed his hand across his brow.

"Greta, I have deserved your distrust," he said, in an altered tone.

"What is done can never be undone," she answered.

His voice had regained its calmness, but his manner was still agitated.

"I may serve you even yet," he said; "I have done you too much wrong; I know that."

"What is your remorse worth now?" she asked. "It comes too late."

Then he looked her steadily in the face, and replied:

"Greta, it is well said that the most miserable man in all the world is he who feels remorse before he does the wrong. I was—I am—that man. I did what I did knowing well that I should repent it—ay, to the last hour of my life. But I was driven to it—I had no power to resist it—it mastered me then—it would master me now."

The finger-tips of Greta's right hand were pressed close against her cheek. Hugh Ritson took a step nearer.

"Greta," he said, and his voice fell to a broken whisper, "there are some men to whom love is a passing breath, a gentle gale that beats on the face and sports in the hair, and then is gone. To me it is a wound, a deep, corrosive, inward wound that yearns and burns."

Greta shuddered; it was as if his words stung her. Then with an impatient gesture she turned again toward the door, saying:

"This is the death-hour of your child, and, Heaven pardon you, it seems to be the death-hour of your brother's hopes too!" She faced about. "Do you think of him?" she added, lifting her voice. "When you see this man in his place, wasting his substance and mine, do you ever think of him where he is?"

Her voice trembled and broke. There was a moment's silence. She had turned her head aside, and he heard the low sound of sobs.

"Yes, I think of him," he answered, slowly. "At night, in the sleepless hours, I do think of him where he is; and I think of him as a happy man. Yes, a happy man! What if he wears a convict's dress?—his soul is yoked to no deadening burden. As for me—well, look at me!"

He smiled grimly.

"I have heard everything," said Greta; "you have sown the wind, and you are reaping the whirlwind."

Something like a laugh broke from him. It came from the waters of bitterness that lay deep in his heart.

"Not that," he said. "All that will pass away."

She was on the threshold; a force of which she knew nothing held her there.

"Greta, I am not so bad a man as perhaps I seem; I am a riddle that you may not read. The time is near when I shall trouble the world no more, and it will be but a poor wounded name I shall leave behind me, will it not? Greta, would it be a mockery to ask you to forgive me?"

"There are others who have more to forgive," said Greta. "One of them is waiting for you at this moment; and, poor girl! her heart is broken."

Hugh Ritson bent his head slightly, and Greta pulled the door after her.



CHAPTER X.

The evening had closed in; the watery veil that goes between day and night was hanging in the air; the wind had risen, and the trees were troubled. When Hugh Ritson reached the cottage, all was dark about the house save for the red glow from the peat fire which came out into the open porch. The old Laird Fisher was sitting there, a blackthorn stick at his feet, his elbows on his knees, his cheeks rested on his hands. The drowsy glow fell on his drooping white head. As Hugh Ritson passed into the kitchen, the old man lifted to his a countenance on which grief and reproach were stamped together. Hugh Ritson's proud spirit was rebuked by the speechless sorrow of that look. It was such a look as a wounded hound lifts to the eyes of a brutal master.

A sheep-dog was stretched at full length before the slumbering fire. The kitchen was empty, and silent too, except for the tick of the clock and the colly's labored breathing. But at the sound of Hugh's uncertain step on the hard earthen floor, the door of the bedroom opened, and Greta motioned him to enter.

A candle burned near the bed. Before a fire, Mercy Fisher sat with Parson Christian. Her head lay on a table that stood between, her face buried in her encircled arms. One hand lay open beside the long loose tresses of yellow hair, and the parson's hand rested upon it caressingly. Parson Christian rose as Hugh Ritson entered, and bowing coldly, he left the room; Greta had already gone out, and he rejoined her in the kitchen.

Mercy lifted her head and looked up at Hugh. There was not a tear in her weary, red, swollen eyes, and not a sigh came from her heaving breast. She rose quietly, and taking Hugh's hand in her own, she drew him to the bedside.

"See where he is," she said in a voice of piercing earnestness, and with her other hand she lifted a handkerchief from the little white face. Hugh Ritson shuddered. He saw his own features as if memory had brought them in an instant from the long past.

Mercy disengaged her hand, and silently hid her face. But she did not weep.

"My little Ralphie," she said, plaintively, "how quiet he is now! Oh, but you should have seen him when he was like a glistening ray of morning light. Why did you not come before?"

Hugh Ritson stood there looking down at the child's dead face, and made no answer.

"It is better as it is," his heart whispered at that moment. The next instant his whole frame quivered. What was the thought that had risen unbidden within him? Better that his child should lie there cold and lifeless than that it should fill this desolate house with joy and love? Was he, then, so black a villain? God forbid! Yet it was better so.

"All is over now," said Mercy, and her hands fell from her face. She turned her weary eyes full upon him, and added: "We have been punished already."

"Punished?" said Hugh. "We?" There was silence for a moment; and then, dropping his voice until it was scarcely audible, he said: "Your burden is heavy to bear, my poor girl."

Her slight figure swayed a little.

"I could bear it no longer," she answered.

"Many a one has thought that before you," he said; "but God alone knows what we can not bear until we are tried."

"Well, all is over now," she repeated listlessly.

She spoke of herself as if her days were already ended and past; as if her orb of life had been rounded by the brief span of the little existence that lay finished upon the bed. Hugh Ritson looked at her, and the muscles of his face twitched. Her weary eyes were still dry; their dim light seemed to come from far away.

"How I prayed that I might see my Ralphie," she said. "I thought surely God had willed it that I should never see my child. Perhaps that was to be my punishment for—all that had taken place. But I prayed still. Oh, you would not think how much I pray! But it must have been a wicked prayer."

She hid her face once more in her hands, and added, with unexpected animation:

"God heard my prayer, and answered it—but see!" She pointed to the child. "I saw him—yes, I saw him—die!"

Hugh Ritson was moved, but his heart was bitter. At that moment he cursed the faith that held in bondage the soul of the woman at his side. Would that he could trample it underfoot, and break forever the chains by which it held the simple.

"Hugh," she said, and her voice softened, "we are about to part forever. Our little Ralphie—yours and mine—he calls me. I could not live without him. God would not make me do that. He has punished me already, and He is merciful. Only think, our Ralphie is in heaven!"

She paused and bit her lip, and drew her breath audibly inward. Her face took then a death-like hue, and all at once her voice overflowed with anguish.

"Do you know, something whispered at that instant that God had not punished us enough, that Ralphie was not in heaven, and that the sins of the fathers—Oh, my darling, my darling!"

With a shrill cry she stopped, turned to the bed, threw her outspread arms about the child, and kissed it fervently.

The tears came at length, and rained down on that little silent face. Hugh Ritson could support the strain no longer.

"Mercy," he said, and his voice had a deep tremor—"Mercy, if there is any sin, it is mine, and if there is to be any punishment hereafter, that will be mine too. As for your little boy, be sure he is in heaven." He had stepped to the door, and his thumb was on the wooden latch. "You say rightly, we shall never meet again," he said in a muffled voice. "Good-bye."

Mercy lifted her tearful face. "Give me your hand at parting," she said in an imploring tone. He was on the opposite side of the bed from where she stood, and she reached her hand across it. He took a step nearer, and his hand closed in hers. Between them and beneath their clasped hands lay the child. "Hugh, we could not love in this world—something went astray with us; but we shall meet again, shall we not?"

He turned his eyes away.

"Perhaps," he answered.

"Promise me," she said—"promise me."

He drew his breath hard.

"If there is a God and a judgment, be sure we shall meet," he said.

His voice broke. He turned abruptly aside and hurried out of the house.



CHAPTER XI.

The night was now dark; there was no moon, and there were no stars; the wind soughed mournfully through the trees. In the occasional lull the rumble of the cataracts drifted heavily through the air.

Hugh Ritson walked in the darkness with drooping head. He was not making for the pit-brow; he had taken the opposite direction. When he reached the village, he stopped at the Flying Horse. Loud peals of laughter came from the parlor, hidden by red blinds from the road.

He stood at the door that opened into the bar. The landlady, her face turned from him, was talking with obvious animation to a daleswoman who stood with a jug in her hand at the other side of the counter.

"What, woman, thoo's surely heard what happen't at the Ghyll this morning?"

"Nay, Bessie, I's been thrang as Throp wife, cleaning and tittivating."

"Well, lass, they've telt me as it were shocking. Two brothers, and such a fratch! It coom't to blows at last, and they do say 'at Master Hugh is nigh amaist dead with a bash the girt fellow gave him."

Hugh Ritson rapped sharply at the door.

"Tell your husband I wish to see him," he said.

The landlady looked up, fumbled with a napkin, and answered nervously, "Yes, sir." Then she hobbled to the door of the parlor and opened it. A wave of mingled noise, vapor, and foul odors came through the aperture. "Tommy!" she screamed above the babel.

The landlord appeared.

"Can you send me a dog-cart at half past four in the morning?" said Hugh.

"Maybe—it's a gay canny hour, I reckon," said the landlord.

He pulled at a long pipe as he spoke, and his face, which was flushed, wore an impudent smile.

"I have to catch the five-o'clock train," Hugh answered.

"To London?" One cheek was twisted into numerous wrinkles.

"I said the five train," said Hugh, sternly. "Can you do it?"

"I's niver said nay—it'll be three half-crowns."

Hugh put half a sovereign on the counter.

"Let it be sent at half past four promptly.

"To the Ghyll?"

The twist of the cheek was a shade less perceptible.

"To the pit-brow."

The parlor door opened again, and Natt stood on the threshold. The stableman's sleepy eyes awakened to a knowing twinkle. Then his flat face disappeared, and a thin titter mingled audibly with the clamor within. In another moment the door was thrown wide open, and Drayton came slouching out. His hair fell back over his forehead, from which his hat was tipped back. A cigar was perched between his teeth; the tips of his fingers were thrust into his waistcoat pockets.

"Come in; I've summat to show you," he said.

Hugh did not stir, but he lifted his head and looked into the room. Half a score of the riff-raff of the dale were seated amid clouds of smoke. On the wooden mantel-shelf above the wide ingle a large book stood open, and the leaves fluttered with the wind that came through the door.

"I hain't forgotten what you said long ago about the parson's book," said Drayton, "so here it is, and a mighty valuable thing I call it. You thought to frighten me with it, but bless yer soul, I like it, I do. Listen."

Drayton stepped back into the room, turned the leaves, and began to read in a lusty tone:

"1847.—November 18.—Thomas said Allan was fresh from Scotland, being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and that they had a child called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet walking."

It was the parson's diary.

"That's good enough, ain't it, Master Hugh Ritson?" said Drayton, with an ungainly bow, and a vast show of civility, followed instantly by a sidelong leer at his cronies about him.

Hugh Ritson held himself stiffly, and merely said:

"Where did you get it?"

At this question there were sundry snorts and titters and muttered responses from the men at the tables. Hugh's eyes passed over them with a steely glance.

"Stolen it, I suppose," he said quietly.

"Ay," said Drayton, "and a neat job too. Natt 'ticed away the Methodee man while I borrowed it."

Drayton seemed to be proud of his share in the transaction, and his friends laughed loudly at the adroit turn he had given to the matter. Natt's drowsy eyes were preternaturally bright at that great moment.

Hugh Ritson's forehead darkened with ire.

"This is your gratitude to the clergyman," he said.

Sundry further snorts and sniggers went round the tables.

"There's not a man of you who is not beholden to Parson Christian," said Hugh, sternly. He twisted sharply round upon one graybeard whose laugh still rumbled between his teeth. "Reuben Rae, who nursed your sick wife? John Proudfoot," to the blacksmith, "what about your child down with the fever?" His quick eye traversed the parlor, and more than one lusty crony was fain to bury his face in his breast. "Yet you laugh, brave fellows as you are, when the good man's house is broken into by a thief."

Drayton took a swift stride toward him.

"Drop it, and quick!" he shouted.

Hugh Ritson governed himself with an effort.

"I'm not here to brawl," he said quietly.

"Pigeon-livered blatherskite!—that's what I call ye—d'ye hear?" said Drayton.

Hugh's face flinched, but he turned on his heel, and was on the road at the next instant.

Drayton followed him out, laughing boisterously. Hugh made one quick step backward and shut the door; then he turned about on Drayton, whose cruel face could be dimly seen in the hazy red light that came through the blinds.

"You have tried to torture me," he said, "just as you would hang a dog by its tail, or draw the teeth of a rat. You have threatened with worse torture a good and loyal woman. You are a scoundrel, and you know it! But even you would hesitate if you knew for certain who or what you are. Let me tell you again, now, when we are alone, and while I have no personal interest to serve: You are the man whose name I gave you—Paul Lowther, son of Robert Lowther—and that lady, my brother's wife, whom for reason of profit you would compel to live under the same roof with you, is your own sister!"

Drayton's loud guffaw rang out above the wind's moan in the trees. His cronies within heard it and listened.

"It's a rare old story, that is. Let me see; you've told it before, I fancy."

"Then it was a lie; now it's God's truth!" said Hugh.

Drayton laughed again.

"And then it was believed, but now it's not. No, no, Master Hugh, it won't pass."

"We will see."

Hugh Ritson had swung about and was gone.

Drayton went back to his friends.

"Hasn't the pluck of a pigeon when it comes to the push," he muttered.

"Ey, he wears a bonny white feather in his cap, for sure," said old Reuben Rae.

"No fight in'im—no'but tongue lather," said John, the blacksmith.

* * * * *

Hugh Ritson walked through the darkness to the pit-brow. The glow of the furnace lighted up the air to the south, and showed vaguely the brant sides of the fell; the dull thud of the engine, the clank of the chain, and the sharp crack of the refuse tumbling down the bank from the banksman's barrow were the only sounds that rose above the wind's loud whistle.

Gubblum was at the mouth of the shaft.

"Oglethorpe," said Hugh, "how many of the gangs are below to-night?"

"All but two—auld Reuben's and Jim South'et's."

"Then they have chosen to work on?"

"Ey, another fortnight—trusting to get their wage afore that, please God."

"They shall not be disappointed."

Hugh Ritson turned away. Gubblum trundled his last wheelbarrow to the edge of the bank, and then rested and said to himself, "He takes it cool enough onyway."

But the outside tranquillity disappeared when Hugh Ritson reached his own room on the pit-brow. He bathed his hot forehead again and again. His fingers twitched nervously, and he plunged his perspiring hands into cold water above the wrists, holding them there for several minutes. Not for long did he sit in one seat. He tramped the room uneasily, his infirm foot trailing heavily. Then he threw himself on the couch, tossed from side to side, rose, and resumed his melancholy walk. Thus an hour passed drearily.

His mind recalled one by one the events of the day. And one by one there came crowding back upon him the events of the two years that had passed since his father's death. A hurricane was upheaving every memory of his mind. And every memory had its own particular sting, and came up as a blight to fret his soul. He tried to guard himself from himself. What he had first thought to do was but in defense of his strict legal rights, and if he had gone further—if he had done more, without daring to think of it until it was done—then it was love that had led him astray. Was it so cruel a thing to be just? So foul a thing to love?

But above the shufflings of remorse, above the stiflings of regret, above the plea of a maddening love, was the voice of revenge speaking loudly in his soul. That man, his instrument, now his master, Paul Lowther, must be brought down, and his time-serving sponsor with him. But how? There was but one way—by denouncing himself. Yes, that was the sole outlet for his outraged and baffled spirit. He must go to the proper quarter and say, "I have perjured myself, and sworn away my brother's liberty. The man who was condemned as Paul Drayton is Paul Ritson. I did it all."

That would bring this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price! The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him. And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the day of his life was done.

What if he allowed everything to take its course? Well, he was a disgraced and ruined man, turned adrift from his father's house, and doomed to see a stranger living there. Did he lack gall to make such a climax bitter? Bitter, eh! and a thousand times the more bitter because he himself had, for ends of his own, first placed the scoundrel where he sat.

No, no, no; Paul Lowther must be brought down, and with him must fall the poor ruins of a better man. Yes a better man, let the world say what it would.

Could it occur that he would not be believed? that when he said "Take me, I am a perjurer," they would answer, "No, your self-denunciation is only a freak of revenge, a mad attempt to injure the relative who has turned you out of his house?" Hugh Ritson laughed as the grim irony of such a possible situation flashed upon him: a man self-condemned and saved from punishment by the defense of his enemy!

There was a knock at his door. In his stupor he was not at first conscious of what the knock meant. At length he recalled himself and cried:

"Come in."

Gubblum Oglethorpe entered.

"The men on the twelve o'clock shift are just about ganging down, and they want to tak' a few mair forks with them. They've telt me 'at the timber is splitting like matchwood under the sandy vein."

Hugh Ritson made an effort to gather the purport of Gubblum's message.

"Tell them to take the forks," he said in a low tone.

Gubblum was backing out, and stopped.

"I reckon thoo's not heard the last frae auld Mattha's," he said in another voice.

"What is it, Oglethorpe?" said Hugh, his head bent over the table.

"Robbie South'et's wife has been up to t' brow, and says that Mercy's laal thing is gone."

Hugh did not lift his eyes.

"Is that the last?" he said.

"Nay, but warse. The lass herself tore the bandage frae her eyes, and she's gone stone blind, and that's foriver."

Hugh's head bent closer over the table.

"Good-night, Oglethorpe," he said.

Gubblum backed out, muttering to himself as he returned to the shaft, "A cool hand, how-an'-iver."

The moment the door closed, Hugh Ritson tramped the floor in restless perambulations. What had he thought of doing? Delivering himself to justice as a perjurer? Had he, then, no duty left in life that he must needs gratify his revenge in a kind of death? What of the woman who had suffered for him? What of the broken heart and the wretched home? Were these as nothing against the humiliation of a proud spirit?

Never for an instant, never in his bitterest agony, did Hugh Ritson lie to his own soul and say that the resolution he had formed was prompted by remorse for what he had done to Paul Ritson; not revenge for what he had suffered from Paul Drayton. To be a saint when sick; to find the conscience active when defeat overwhelmed it—that was for the weak dregs of humanity. But such paltering was not for him.

On the one hand revenge, on the other duty—which was he to follow? The wretched man could come to no decision; and when the fingers of his watch pointed to one o'clock he lay down on the couch to rest.

It was not sleep that he wanted; sleep had of late become too full of terrors; but sleep overcame him, nevertheless. His face, when he slept, was the face of a man in pain; and dreams came that were the distorted reflections of his waking thoughts. He dreamed that he had died in infancy. Calm, serene, very sweet, and peaceful, his little innocent face of childhood looked up from the white pillow. He thought his mother bent over him, and shed many tears; but he himself belonged to another world of beings, and looked down on both.

"It is better so," he thought, "and the tears she weeps are blest."

At this he awoke, and rose to his feet. What soft nothings men had said of sleep! "Oh, sleep, it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole!" Gentle! More tyrannous than death. The melancholy perambulation ended, and he lay down once more. He slept and dreamed again. This time he had killed his own brother. A moment before they had stood face to face—vigorous, wrathful, with eyes that flashed, and hands uplifted. Now his brother lay quiet and awful at his feet, and the great silence was broken by a voice from heaven crying, "A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on the earth!"

He started to his feet in terror. "Mercy, mercy!" he cried.

Then he drew his breath hard and looked about him. "A dream—only another dream," he said to himself, and laughed between his close-set teeth. The lamp still burned on the table. He rose, drew a key from his pocket, opened a cupboard, and took out a small bottle. It contained an opiate. "Since I must sleep, let my sleep at least be dreamless," he said, and he measured a dose. He was lifting the glass to his lips, when he caught sight of his face in the glass. "Pitiful! pitiful! A mere dream unnerves me. Pitiful enough, forsooth! And so I must needs hide myself from myself behind a bulwark like this!" He held the drug to the light, and while his hand trembled he laughed. Then he drank it off, put out the light, and sat on the couch.

The dawn had fretted the sky, and the first streaks of day crept in at the window, when the lamp's yellow light was gone. Hugh Ritson sat in the gray gloom, his knees drawn close under his chin, his arms folded over his breast, his head bent heavily forward. He was crooning an old song. Presently the voice grew thick, the eye became clouded, and then the head fell back. He was asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed again. Or was it a vision, and not a dream, that came to him now? He thought he stood in a room which he had seen before. On the bed some white thing lay. It was a child, and the little soul had fled. Beside it a woman cowered, and moaned "Guilty, guilty!" Her eyes were fixed on the child, yet she saw nothing; the sightless orbs were bleached. But with her heart she saw the child; and she saw himself also as he entered. Then it seemed that she turned her blind face toward him, and called on him by name. The next instant she was gone. Her seat was vacant, the bed was empty; only a gray-bearded man sat by a cold grate. With an overpowering weight pressing him down, it seemed to Hugh that he threw up his head, and again he heard his name.

He leaped to his feet. Big beads of cold sweat stood on his forehead. "Mercy is dead," he whispered with awe. "She has gone to put in her plea of guilty. She is in God's great hand!"

The next moment a voice shouted, "Mr. Ritson!"

He listened, and in the gray light his stony countenance smiled grimly.

"Mr. Ritson!" once more, followed by the rap of a whip-handle against the door.

"Tommy the landlord," said Hugh, and he broke into a harsh laugh. "So you were my angel, Tommy, eh?"

Another harsh laugh. The landlord, sitting in the dog-cart outside, heard it, and thought to himself, "Some one with him."

Hugh Ritson plunged his head into the wash-basin, and rubbed himself vigorously with a rough towel. "My last sleep is over," he said, glancing aside with fearful eyes at the couch. "I'll do this thing that I am bent upon; but no more sleep, and no more dreams!"

He opened the door, threw a rug up to the landlord, put on an ulster, and leaped into the dog-cart. They started away at a quick trot. A chill morning breeze swept down the vale. The sun was rising above Cat Bells, but Hugh Ritson still felt as if he were traveling toward the deepening night. He sat with folded arms, and head bent on his breast.

"Hasta heard what happened at auld Laird Fisher's this morning?" said the landlord.

Hugh answered in a low voice:

"I've heard nothing."

"The lass has followed her barn rather sudden't. Ey, she's gone, for sure. Died a matter of half an hour ago. I heard it frae the parson as I coom't by."

Hugh Ritson bent yet lower his drooping head.



CHAPTER XII.

At 2 o'clock that day Hugh Ritson arrived at Euston. He got into a cab and drove to Whitehall. At the Home Office he asked for the Secretary of State. A hundred obstacles arose to prevent him from penetrating to the head of the department. One official handed him over to another, the second to a third, the third to a fourth.

Hugh Ritson was hardly the man to be balked by such impediments. His business was with the Secretary of State, and none other. Parliament was in session, and the Home Secretary was at the afternoon sitting of the House. Hugh Ritson sought and found him there. He explained his purpose in few words, and was listened to with a faint smile of incredulity.

The secretary was a stolid Yorkshireman, who affected whatever measure of bluffness had not been natural to him from birth. He first looked at his visitor with obvious doubts of his sanity; and when this suspicion had been set at rest by Hugh's incisive explanation, with an equally obvious desire to feel his bumps.

But the face of the Yorkshireman soon became complicated by other shades of expression than such as come of distrust of a man's reason or contempt of his sentimentality.

"Hadn't you better sleep on it, and come to see me at Whitehall in the morning?" he said, with more respect than he had yet shown. "Then if you are still of the same mind, I will send for the Public Prosecutor."

Hugh Ritson bowed his acquiescence.

"And can I have the order for Portland?" he said.

"Probably. It will be against the new regulation that none may visit a convict prison except prison officials and persons interested in prison discipline. But we'll see what can be done."

That night, Hugh Ritson called at the Convent of St. Margaret. It was late when he entered, and when he came out again, half an hour afterward, the lamps were lighted in the Abbey Gardens. The light fell on the face of the lay sister who opened the door to him. She wore a gray gown, but no veil or scapular, and beneath the linen band that covered her hair her eyes were red and swollen.

Hugh Ritson hailed a hansom in the Broad Sanctuary, and drove to Hendon. The bar of the Hawk and Heron was full of carriers, carters, road-menders, and farm-laborers, all drinking, and all noisy. But, despite this evidence of a thriving trade, the whole place had a bankrupt appearance as of things going to wreck. Jabez served behind the counter. He had developed a good deal of personal consequence, and held up his head, and repeatedly felt the altitude of a top-knot that curled there, and bore himself generally with the cockety air of the young rooster after the neck of the old one has been screwed. Mrs. Drayton sat knitting in the room where Mercy and the neighbor's children once played together. When Hugh Ritson went in to her, the old body started.

"Lor's a mercy, me, sir, to think it's you! I'm that fearsome, that I declare I shiver and quake at nothing. And good for nowt i' the world neither, not since my own flesh and blood, as you might say, disowned me."

"Do you mean at the trial?" asked Hugh Ritson.

"The trial, sir!" said the landlady, lifting bewildered eyes, while the click of the needles ceased. "My Paul weren't there. Cummerland, sir—and you heard him yourself what he said of me." A corner of her house-wife's apron went up to her face. "Me as had brought him up that tender! Well," recovering composure, "I've lost heart, and serve him right. I just lets the house and things go, I do. I trusts to Providence; and that Jabez, he's no better nor a babby in the public line."

When Hugh Ritson left the inn, the old body's agitation increased. She had set down the knitting, and was fidgeting, first with her cap and then her apron.

"Listen to me," said Hugh. "To-day is Friday. On Monday you must go to the convent where you saw the mother of Paul. Ask for Sister Grace. Will you remember—Sister Grace? She will tell you all."

It was hard on eleven o'clock when Hugh Ritson returned to town. The streets were thronged, and he walked for a long hour amid the crowds that passed through the Strand. In all that multitudinous sea of faces, there was not a countenance on which the mark of suffering was more indelibly fixed than on his own.

His sensibilities were wrought up to an unwonted pitch. He was like a waif adrift in unknown waters, a cloud without anchor in a tempestuous sky; yet he felt that night as he had never felt before, that he had suddenly become possessed of another and most painful sense. Not a face in that sea of faces but he seemed to know its secret fear, its joy and sorrow, the watchful dread that seared the hidden heart, the fluttering hope that buoyed it up.

It was an awful thing to be turned adrift in a world of sin and suffering with this agonizing sense. He could look, whether he would or not, beneath the smiling and rubicund countenance of the hail-fellow-well-met to that corrosive spot within where the trust of the widow and fatherless had been betrayed; or see beyond the stolid and heavy appearance proper to the ox the quivering features of the man who had stood long years ago above the dead body of the woman who had thrown her death at his door as sole reward for the life he had wrecked.

Nay, not only did the past write its manual there, but the future wrote its sign. He knew that the young girl in pink ribbons who was hurrying along with a smile on her lips, from the shop in the west to that unknown home in the east where the child of her shame had laughed and crowed and climbed up her bosom to her chin, was doomed to find that the source of all her joy and half her sorrow lay cold and stiff in its crib.

He grew fearful of himself; he shuddered as the unsuspected murderer brushed his elbow; he shuddered yet more as a mirror flashed back the reflection of his own hard face, and the idea came to him that perhaps other eyes could see what his eyes saw.

He turned down Arundel Street and on to the Embankment. No! no! no! the merciful God had not willed it that any man should look so deeply into the heart of his fellow-man. That was indeed to know good and evil; and the thought stole over him that perhaps it was in degree as a man had eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of life that he was cursed with this bitter knowledge.

Here, on the quiet pavement that echoed to his footsteps, the air was free. He uncovered his head, and the light west wind played in his hair and cooled his temples. Not a star shone overhead, and the river that flowed in the bed below was dark. More dark to him was the sea of humanity that flowed above.

He had heard that the death-roll of the Thames was one of every day for the year, and he leaned over the granite wall and wondered if the old river had claimed its toll for the day that was now almost done. His hair seemed to rise from its roots as he thought that perhaps at that very instant, in the black waters beneath him, the day's sacrifice was washing past.

He walked on, and the dull buzz of the Strand fell on his ear. What, after all, was the old god of the river to the Juggernaut of the city? And it was now, when the fret of the day had worn down, that Hugh Ritson thought of all that he had left behind him in the distant north. There in the darkness and the silence, amid the mountains, by the waving trees and the rumbling ghylls, lay half the ruins of his ruined life. The glow of old London's many lights could not reach so far, but the shadow of that dark spot was here.



CHAPTER XIII.

The clocks struck midnight, and he returned to the hotel at which he had engaged a bed. He did not lie down to sleep, but walked to and fro the night through.

Next morning at ten he was at the Home Office again. He saw the secretary and some of the law officers of the Crown. When he came out he carried in his pocket an order to visit a convict in Portland, and was attended by a police-sergeant in plain clothes. They took train from Waterloo at two in the afternoon, and reached Weymouth at six. When they crossed the strip of sea, the best of the day was gone, and a fresh breeze blew across the breakwater.

The Saxon walls of the castle at the foot of the Vern Hill reflected the chill blue of the water; but far above, where the rocky coast dipped to the beach, the yellow stone, with the bluish clay in its crevices, shone in the glow of the sinking sun.

Hugh Ritson and his companion put up for the night at the Portland Arms Inn. A ruddy, round-faced man in middle life, clean shaven and dressed youthfully, was smoking in the parlor. He exchanged a salutation with the cordiality of one who was nothing loath for a chat; then he picked up the old Reeve staff, and explained the ancient method of computing tithes. But Hugh Ritson was in no humor for conversation, and after dinner he set out for a solitary walk. He took the road that turns from the beach through the villages of Chiswell and Fortune's Well. When he reached the top of the hill the sea lay around him; and beneath him, to the right and left of the summit, were the quarries where the convicts labored, with two branches of an inclined railway leading down to the breakwater. On the summit itself, known as the Grove, was a long, high granite wall, with a broad gate-way, and the lancet lights of a lodge at one side of it. This was the convict prison, and the three or four houses in front of it were the residences of governor, chaplain, and chief warder. A cordon of cottages at a little distance were the homes of the assistant warders. There were a few shops amid this little group of cottages, and one public house, the Spotted Dog.

Hugh Ritson strolled into the tavern and sat down in a little "snuggery," which was separated from a similar apartment by a wooden partition that stood no higher than a tall man's height, and left a space between the top stile and the ceiling. A company of men gossiped at the other side of the partition.

"Talk of B 2001," said a guttural voice (Hugh Ritson started at the sound), "I took the stiff'ning out of him first go off. When he'd done he separates and come on from the moor; I saw he wasn't an old lag, so says I to 'im, 'Green 'un,' I says, 'if you're leary, you'll fetch a easy lagging, and if you're not, it'll be bellows to mend with you.' 'What d'ye mean?' he says. 'It's bloomin' 'ard work here,' I says, 'and maybe you don't get shin-of-beef soup to do it on. Bread and water, for a word,' I says. 'You're in my gang, quarrying, and I won't work you 'ard except I'm druv to it, but I want wide men in my gang,' I says, 'and no putting the stick on agen the screw.' 'Don't understand,' he says. 'Then follow a straight tip,' I says; 'stand by your warder and he'll stand by you.' Blest if that lag as I'd give that good advice to didn't get me fined the very next day."

"Never!" said sundry incredulous voices.

"It was a hot afternoon, and I'd just whipped a quid in my mouth and leaned atop of my musket for forty winks after dinner. The second-timers was codding afront of me, and 2001 and the young chap as was dying of the consumption was wheeling and filling ahead. Well, up comes the governor right in front of 2001, and shouts, 'Warder,' he shouts, 'you're fined for inattention.' Then off he goes. All right, Mr. 2001, I says, I'll not misremember."

"What did you do?"

"Do?" (a loud, hollow laugh). "That was when the barracks was building, and one day a bit of a newspaper blowed over from the officers' quarters, and 2001 came on it, and the botcher picked it up. He'd chucked hisself quick. 'Right about face—march.' He got seven stretch, a month's marks, and lost his bedding."

A hearty laugh followed this account of a "screw's" revenge on a "green" convict. Hugh Ritson listened and shuddered.

"I ain't surprised at anything from that luny," said another voice. "He was in my gang at the moor, and I know'd 'im. They put 'im in the soap-suds gang first, but he got hisself shifted. Then they sent 'im botching with the tailors, but he put out his broom for the governor, and said a big lusty man same as 'im wasn't for sitting on a board all day. The flat didn't want to fetch a easy lagging, that's the fact."

There was a loud guffaw.

"So they put 'im in my turf gang out on the moor, and one day a old clergyman come in gaiters and a broad-brimmer, and a face as if the master of the house were a-shaking at his hand, and the missis flopping down-stairs to give him a smack of the lips. Well, 2001 saw him in Principal Warder Rennell's office, and not afore the bars. So next day I says, 'Got anybody outside as would like to send you summat by the Underground?' 'The what?' he says, reg'lar black in the face. 'The underground railway,' I says, tipping him a wink. 'Get away from me, you bloodsucker!' he says. But I pinched 'im. The old lags were laughing at one of the grave-digger's oyster-openers, when up comes Rennell. 'Who's laughing?' he says. 'It's 2001,' I says; 'he's always idling and malingering.'"

"Ha, ha, ha! what did he get?"

"Three days' bread and water, a week's marks, and loss of class privileges. He didn't mind the grub and the time, but Jack-in-the-box, who was warder on his landing, said he took it proper bad as he couldn't write home to the missis."

"What's his dose?"

"Three. One of the old lags would do it on his head, and fetch it easy, too. He's a scholar, and could get to be a wardsman in the infirmary, or medicine factotum for the croaker, or maybe book-keeper for the governor. But he's earned no remissions, and he'll fill his time afore he slings his hook again."

Hugh Ritson could support the gossip no longer. He got up to leave the house, but before doing so he pushed open the door that led to the adjoining room, and stood a moment on the threshold, comprehending everything and everybody in one quick glance. The air breathed fresh outside. He walked in the gathering gloom of evening to the ruins of the church by the cliff, and, passing through the lych-gate, he came on the beaten track to the rocks. The rocks lay a hundred feet beneath, torn from the mainland in craggy masses that seemed ready to slide from their base to the deep chasm between. Could it be possible that men who were the slaves of hinds like those in yonder tavern could cling to their little lives while a deliverance like this beetling cliff stood near? A cold smile played on Hugh Ritson's face as he thought that, come what would, such slavery was not for him.

The sycamore by the ruined chancel pattered in the breeze, and the wheatear's last notes came from its top-most bough. Far below the waves were rocking lazily. There were other waves at Hugh Ritson's feet—the graves of dead men. Some who were buried there long ago were buried in their chains. Under the earth the fettered men—on the ruins of the church the singing bird. Across the sea the light was every moment fading. In another hour the day would be done, and then the moon would look down peacefully on the fettered and the free.

Hugh Ritson returned to the Portland Arms Inn. He found the police-sergeant in conversation with the ruddy-faced gentleman who had wished to explain to him the mysteries of the Reeve staff.

"He is the doctor at the prison," whispered the sergeant aside.

Presently Hugh turned to the doctor and said:

"Do you happen to know the convict B 2001?"

"Yes—Drayton," said the doctor; "calls himself Ritson. Are you a friend?"

Hugh Ritson's face quivered slightly.

"No," he answered, "I am not his friend." Then, after a pause, "But I have an order to see him. Besides, I have just heard him discussed by a company of wardens in a pot-house on the hill."

"Who were they? What were they like?"

"A tall man, one of them, fifty-five years of age, gray hair, grizzly beard, dark, vindictive eyes, a gash on one cheek, and a voice like a crow's."

"Humph! Jim-the-ladder—a discharged soldier."

"Another, a cadaverous fellow, with a plausible tongue."

"Horrocks—an old second-classer; served his time at Dartmoor and got promotion—doubtful official discipline."

"They both deserve one more and much higher promotion," said Hugh Ritson, with emphasis.

"You mean this." The doctor laughed, and put the forefinger of one hand, held horizontally, to the tip of the other, held upright.

"Can it be possible that the law is unable to maintain a fair stand-up fight with crime, and must needs call a gang of poltroons and blackmailers to its assistance?"

"You heard a bad account of B 2001, I judge?"

"I heard of nothing that he had done which the Pope of Rome might have feared to acknowledge."

"You are right—he's as good a man as there's on Portland Bill," said the doctor, "and if he's not quite as immaculate as his holiness, he's in the right of it this time."

Hugh Ritson glanced up.

"You've heard he's in the punishment cells," said the doctor. "By the way, you'll not see him until Monday; he can't join his gang before, and he hasn't a class privilege left, poor devil."

Hugh inquired the cause.

"Since he came here he's been yoked to a young fellow dying of consumption. The lad didn't relish the infirmary—he lost his marks toward remission there. He knew the days he had to serve, and used to nick them off every night on his wooden spoon. It was a weary way from a thousand back, back, back to one. And that Jim-the-ladder took delight in keeping up the count by reports. The poor boy wanted to die in his mother's arms. He had got his time down to a week, when the 'screw' clapped as many marks on to him as added a month to his imprisonment. Then he lost heart, and dropped down like a flounder, and when they picked him up he was dead."

"Was B 2001 with him as usual?"

"He was; and he broke the strap, sprung on the warder, and tore his rifle out of his hands. Jim-the-ladder has been a prize-fighter in his day, and there was a tussle. He leaped back on B 2001 with a howl, and the blows fell like rain-drops. There was a fearful clamor, the convicts screaming like madmen."

"B 2001 is a powerful man," said Hugh Ritson.

The doctor nodded.

"He closed with the warder, gripped him by the waist, twisted him on his loins, turned him heels overhead, and brought him down in a sweep that would have battered the life out of any other man. Up came the civil guard, and the convict was brought into the lodge covered with dust, sweat and blood, his eyes flashing like balls of fire. They had the lad's body on a stretcher beside him, the lips white, and the cheeks a mask of blue. It was a tremendous spectacle, I can tell you."

Hugh Ritson's breast heaved, and somewhere deep down in his soul he surprised a feeling of pride. That man was a hero and his own brother!

"And so the convict was punished?"

"Fourteen days' penal class diet, and marks enough for six months. He'll be out on Monday, and then he'll wear the blue cap that denotes a dangerous man."

Hugh Ritson shuddered.

"Is it impossible to see him to-morrow?" he asked.

"Come up before church in the morning and ask for me, and we'll speak to the governor."



CHAPTER XIV.

Early next morning Hugh Ritson showed his order at the prison gates, and was admitted to the doctor's quarters. Hugh and the doctor went in search of the governor, but learned that he was away from home for the day. The deputy-governor was abed with a raging tooth, and there was nothing to do but to wait until morning in order to speak with the convict.

"You can stay here until to-morrow," said the doctor; "I can give you a shake-down. And now let us go off to church. But come this way first."

They walked in the direction of that portion of the parade-ground which was marked, in great white letters, "34 gang," with the broad arrow beneath. Near to this stood a building composed chiefly of wood and iron, and marked in similar letters "E Hall." They entered a corridor that led to an open landing in the shape of a many-sided polygon, each side being a door. In the middle of the landing there was an iron circular staircase that led to landings above and below. A warder paraded the open space, which was lighted by gas-jets.

"Hush! Look," said the doctor, standing by the peep-hole in one of the doors, and at the same time putting out the gas-jet that burned on the door-jamb.

Hugh Ritson approached, and at first he could see nothing in the darkness. But he heard a curious clanking noise from within. Then the glimmer of a feeble candle came through the bars, and he saw a box-like apartment, some seven feet long by four feet broad and eight feet high. It was a punishment cell. There was a shelf at the opposite end, and a tin wash-basin stood on it.

On the side of the door there must have been a similar shelf, on which the candle burned. A broom, a can, and a bowl were on the brick floor. There was no other furniture except a hammock swung from end to end, and the convict was lying in it at this moment. It could be seen that a heavy chain was fastened with riveted rings around each ankle, and linked about the waist by a strap. At every movement this chain clanked; night and day it was there; if the prisoner shifted in his sleep, its grating sound broke on the silence of the cell, and banished the only sunshine of his life, the sunshine of his dreams. His head was back to the door so that the light of the candle burning on the shelf might fall on a slate which rested on his breast. Though he occupied a punishment cell he was writing, and Hugh Ritson's quick eyes could decipher the words: "Oh, that it would please God to destroy me; that He would but loose His hand and cut me off! Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" He paused in his writing and pecked like a bird at a hard piece of bread beside him.

Hugh Ritson fell back, and as his infirm foot grated along the floor, the convict started and turned his face. It was a blank, pale face, full of splendid resolution and the nobility of suffering, but without one ray of hope.

"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.

But Hugh Ritson's eyes were on the ground, and he made no answer.

They went to church. The civil guard was drawn up under the gallery with loaded rifles. Eight hundred convicts attended service; some of them were penitent; most of them were trying to make a high profession of contrition as a bid for the good graces of the chaplain. The obtrusive reverence of one sinister gray-head near at hand attracted Hugh Ritson's especial attention. He knelt with his face to the gallery in which the choir sat. Beside him was a youth fresh from Millbank. The hoary sinner was evidently initiating the green hand into the mysteries of his new home. He was loud in his responses, but his voice had a trick of dropping suddenly to a whispered conference.

"Who's the fat 'un in the choir? A chap as is doing his ten. His missis chared to keep the kids, and one morning early he popped the old girl's shoes."

The voice of the chaplain interrupted further explanation; but after another loud response the old rascal's mouth was twisted awry with the words:

"He's a wide 'un, he is—seat in the choir got comfortable cushions. Besides, he gets off Saturday morning's work for practicing—got no more voice nor a corn-crake."

Evidently it was no disadvantage here to be the greatest of vagabonds. When a cadaverous old Jew came hobbling up the aisle with his gang, the gray-head whispered, with awe:

"It's old Mo; he's in the stocking gang; but I did business with him when he could ha' sent old Rothschild home for a pauper."

At one moment the attention of the green hand was arrested by a tall man in the black and gray that indicated a convict who had attempted to escape.

"Says he's in for twenty thousand, but it's a lie," whispered the old man; "he only knocked a living out of the religious fake."

The last of the conference that Hugh Ritson overheard was a piece of touching advice.

"Them as 'as any pluck in 'em turns savage, same as B 2001; them as 'asn't, knocks under, same as me; and I says to you, knock under."

After service the sacrament was celebrated. There must have been many hundreds of communicants, all humble in their piety. It could be noticed that the chaplain had sometimes to keep a tight grip of the goblet containing the wine.

That night Hugh Ritson lodged at the doctor's quarters. He did not lie, but, as on the night before, he walked the long hours through, steadfastly resisting every temptation to sleep. At five in the morning he heard the great bell at the gate ring for two minutes, and, shortly afterward, the tramp, tramp, tramp of many feet under his window. The convicts, to the number of fifteen hundred, were drawn up on the parade-ground. They looked chill in the cold light of early morning; their gray jackets lay loose on their spare shoulders; their hands hung inertly at their sides, and they walked with the oscillating motion of men whose feet were sore in their heavy boots. The civil guard was drawn up, the chief warder whistled, and then the men fell out into gangs of twenty-five each, attended by an assistant warder.

"Rear rank, take two paces to the right—march."

Then the tramp, tramp again. As the outside gangs passed through the gate, each officer in charge received his rifle, bayonet, belt, and cartridge-box from the armorer at the lodge. The stone-dressing gang passed close under the window, and Hugh Ritson reeled back as one of the men—a stalwart fellow in a blue cap, who was walking abreast of a misshapen creature with a face full of ferocity—lifted his eyes upward from the file.

At eight o'clock the governor appeared at his receiving-office. He was a slight man with the face and figure of a greyhound. His military frock-coat was embossed with Crimean medals, and he was redolent of the odor of Whitehall. He received Hugh Ritson's papers with a curious mixture of easy courtesy and cold dignity—a sort of combination of the different manners in which he was wont to bow to a secretary of state and condemn a convict to the chain and bread and water.

"The men are back to breakfast at nine," he said. "Watkins," to the chief warder, "have B 2001 brought round to the office immediately 34 gang returns."

Hugh Ritson had left the receiving-office and was crossing the parade-ground when a loud hubbub arose near the lodge.

"The boat!" shouted twenty voices, and a covey of convicts ran in the direction of a shed where an eight-oar boat was kept on the chocks. "A man has mizzled—run a wagon into the sea and is drifting down the race."

How the demons laughed, how they cursed in jest, how they worked, how luminous were their eyes and haggard faces at the prospect of recapturing one of their fellow-prisoners who had tried to make his escape! Every convict who helped to catch a fugitive was entitled to a remission of six days. The doctor took Hugh Ritson up on to the lead flat that covered his quarters. From that altitude they could see over the prison wall to the rocky coast beyond. Near the ruins of the old church a gang of convicts were running to and fro, waving their hands, and shouting in wild excitement.

"It's gang 34," said the doctor, "Jim-the-ladder's gang."

The sun had risen, the sea was glistening in its million facets, and into many a rolling wave a sea-bird dipped its corded throat. In the silvery water-way there was something floating that looked as if it might have been a tub. It was the wagon that the convict had driven into the water for a boat.

"It will sink—it's shod with thick hoops of iron," said the doctor.

The convict could be seen standing in it. He had thrown off his coat and cap, and his sleeveless arms were bare to the armpits. The civil guard ran to the cliff and fired. One shot hit. The man could be seen to tear the coarse linen shirt from his breast and bind it above the wrist.

"Why does he not crouch down?" said Hugh Ritson: he did not know who this convict was, but in his heart there was a feverish desire that the prisoner should escape.

"He's a doomed man—he's in the race—it's flowing hard, and he'll drift back to the island," said the doctor.

Half an hour later a posse of the civil guard, with two assistant warders, brought the recaptured fugitive into the governor's receiving-office. The stalwart fellow strode between the warders with a firm step and head erect. He wore no jacket or cap, and on one bare arm a strip of linen was roughly tied. His breast was naked, his eyes were aflame, and save for a black streak of blood across the cheek, his face was ashy pale. But that man was not crushed by his misfortunes; he seemed to crush them.

"Take that man's number," said the governor.

"Ay, take it, and see you take it rightly," said the convict.

"It's B 2001," said the chief warder.

The governor consulted a paper that lay on his table.

"Send for the gentleman," he said to an attendant. "It's well for you that you are wanted by the law officers of the Crown," he added, turning to the prisoner.

The convict made no answer; he was neither humble nor sullen; his manner was frank but fierce, and made almost brutal by a sense of wrong.

The next moment Hugh Ritson stepped into the office. His eyes dropped, and his infirm foot trailed heavily along the floor. He twitched at his coat with nervous fingers; his nostrils quivered; his whole body trembled perceptibly.

"This is the man," said the chief warder, with a deferential bow.

Hugh Ritson tried to raise his eyes, but they fell suddenly. He opened his lips to speak, but the words would not come. And meantime the wet, soiled, naked, close-cropped, blood-stained convict, flanked by armed warders, stood before him with head erect and eyes that searched his soul. The convict rested one hand on his hip and pointed with the other at Hugh Ritson's abject figure.

"What does this man want with me?" he said, and his voice was deep.

At that Hugh Ritson broke in impetuously:

"Paul, I will not outrage your sufferings by offering you my pity."

The officers looked into each other's faces.

"I want none of your pity!" said the convict, bitterly.

"No; it is I who need yours," said Hugh Ritson, in a low tone.

The convict laughed a hard laugh, and turned to the warders.

"Here, take me away—I've had enough of this."

"Listen. I have something to say to you—something to do for you, too."

The convict broke afresh into a laugh.

"Take me away, will you?"

"What if I say I am sorry for the past?" said Hugh.

"Then you are a hypocrite!" the convict answered.

Hugh Ritson drew himself up, and took his breath audibly. In one swift instant his face became discolored and his features pinched and rigid. There was silence, and then in a low, broken tone, he said:

"Paul, you know well what sort of a man I am; don't drive me too hard. I have come here to do you a service. Remember your sufferings—"

Once again the convict broke into a cold laugh.

"Remember that others—one other—may be suffering with you."

The convict's haughty look fled like a flash of light.

"Here, take me out of this," he muttered in a low, hoarse voice. He took a step back, but the guard closed around him. "I won't stand to listen to this man. Do you hear? I won't listen," he said hotly; "he has come to torture me—that's all!"

"I have come to undo what I have done," said Hugh. "Paul, let me undo it. Don't rouse the bad part of me at this crisis of your life and mine."

The convict paused, and said more quietly:

"Then it's your policy to undo it."

Hugh Ritson flinched. The words had gone to his heart like a spear. If he had dared to mask his motive, that thrust would have left it naked.

"I will not wrong the truth by saying I am a changed man," he answered meekly. "My motive is my own; but my act shall be all in all to you."

The convict's face lightened.

"You have used me for your vengeance," he said; "you shall not use me for your contrition also. Guards, let me out—let me out, I tell you!"

The governor interposed:

"When you leave this room you go direct to the cells."

"Ay, take me to your cells, and let me lie there and die and rot," said the convict.

"Take him away," said the governor.

"Paul, I beseech you to hear me!" cried Hugh, amid the clanking of the arms of the guard.

"Take him away!" the governor shouted again.

An hour after, B 2001 was recalled to the receiving-office. He was quiet enough now.

"We have an order respecting you from the Secretary of State," said the governor. "You are required to give evidence at a trial. At two o'clock you leave Portland for Cumberland, and your guard goes with you."

The convict bent his head and went out in silence.



CHAPTER XV.

Paul Ritson—let him be known by his official number no more—was not taken to the punishment cells. He was set to work with the stone-dressing gang stationed near the gate of the prison. The news of his attempt to escape had not spread more rapidly than rumors of his approaching departure.

"I say," shouted a hoary convict, "take a crooked message out?"

"What's your message?"

"On'y a word to the old girl telling her where she'll find a bunch of keys as she wants partic'lar."

"Write her yourself, my man."

"What, and the governor read it, and me get a bashing, and the crushers pinch the old moll? Well, I am surprised at ye; but I forgot, you're a straight man, you are."

A mocking laugh followed this explanatory speech.

A young fellow with a pale, meek face and the startled eyes of a hare crept close up to where Paul Ritson worked, and took a letter out of one of his boots.

"This is the last I had from home," he said, quietly, and put the letter into Paul's hands.

It was a soiled and crumpled paper, so greasy from frequent handlings and so much worn by many foldings that the writing could scarcely be deciphered. Home? It was dated from the Union of Liverpool, and had come from his invalid wife and his children, all living there.

The poor fellow could not read, but he had somehow learned the letter by heart, and was able to point out each bit of family history in the exact place where it was recorded.

He had lost his class privileges, and was not allowed to reply; and now he wanted to know if Paul Ritson could get down to Liverpool and see his wife and little ones, and tell them how well he was, and how lusty he looked, and what fine times he had of it—"just to keep up their spirits, you know."

"I say, you sir," bawled a sinister gray-head—the same whose conversation was overheard in church—"I hear as you're a employer of labor when yer not lagged. Any chance? I wants to leave my sitivation. Long hours, and grub reg'lar onsatisfactory. Besides, my present employer insists on me wearing a collar with a number—same as a wild beast or a bobby. It's gettin' ridic'lus. So I've give notice, and I flit in September. Maybe ye see as I'm growing my wings to fly." The hoary sinner pointed upward to his grizzly hair, which was longer than the hair of his comrades. "On'y it's coming out another tint o' awrburn nor what it was ten years ago, and the old woman won't have the same pride in my pussonal appearance."

At two o'clock the assistant warder known as Jim-the-ladder marched Paul Ritson to the chief warder's office. There the convict was handcuffed and the warder armed. Then they set out.

On the steamboat that plied between the Portland Ferry and Weymouth the convict dress attracted much attention. The day was some sort of chapel festival, and great numbers of chapel people in holiday costume crowded the decks and climbed the paddle-boxes; the weather was brilliant; the sun danced on the waters like countless fairies on a floor of glass; a brass band played on the bridge.

Again at the Weymouth railway station the people gathered in little groups, and looked askance at the convict. During the few minutes which elapsed before the train left the platform, a knot of spectators stood before the carriage and peered in at the window.

Paul Ritson paid little heed to these attentions, but they were often unwelcome enough. "Keep clear of him—see the blue cap?" "What an ill-looking fellow—to be sure, his looks are enough to hang him."

Paul laughed bitterly. His heart felt cold within him at that moment. If he had worn broadcloth and a smile, how different the popular verdict might have been. Who then would have said that he was a villain? Certainly not yonder sleek minister of Christ who was humming a psalm tune a moment ago, and paused to whisper, "Be sure your sin will find you out." The black-coated Pharisee was handing a lady into a first-class carriage.

The train started. Paul threw himself back in his seat, and thought of all that had occurred since he made this journey before. He was traveling in the other direction then, and what an agony was that first experience of convict life! He had never thought of it from that day to this.

Other and more poignant memories had day after day obliterated the recollection of that experience. But it came back now as freshly as if it had all occurred yesterday. He was one of a gang of twenty who were traveling from Millbank to Dartmoor. The journey to Waterloo in the prison van had been a terrible ordeal. He had thought in the cells that it would be nothing to him if people in the streets recognized him. The shameful punishment of an innocent man was not his, but the law's disgrace.

Yet, when he was marched out into the prison grounds abreast of a cadaverous wretch with shrunken brows and the eyes of a hawk, an old thief in front of him, and a murderer convicted of manslaughter treading on his heels, the cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead.

He had meant to hold up his head, and if people looked into his face to look frankly back into their faces. But when his turn came he leaped into the van, and his chin buried itself in his breast.

Then the crowds drawn up on the pavement outside as the gates rolled back and the van passed through; the crush in a busy thoroughfare when the van stopped to let a line of crowded omnibuses go by; the horrible scene at the station when the convicts were marched down the platform, and every ear was arrested by the tramp, tramp of twenty fettered men!

Above all, the jests and the laughter of the older hands who had served their time before, and were superior to all small considerations of public shame! "I say, you with the gig-lamps, toss a poor devil a bit o' 'bacco." "Seen us afore? In coorse you have. You in the white choker, look hard while yer at it, and you'll know us again." "Oh, Mother Shipton, and is that yourself? and how pleased we is to see ye, and just tip us yer welwet purse, and we'll give it yer back when we're this way again." And not all the rigor of the attendant warders was enough to suppress such jesting.

Paul Ritson could not forbear to laugh aloud when he remembered with what an agony of sweat he had that day crept back into his seat.

Times had changed since then. He had spent a year and a half in a government school, and had been educated out of all torturing delicacy.

The warder attempted to draw him into conversation. Jim-the-ladder repeatedly protested that he bore no malice. "I'm a good fellow at bottom," he said more than once, and Paul Ritson showed no malice. But he laughed bitterly at a grim and an obvious thought that the warder's dubious words suggested. Failing in his efforts at conciliation, the warder charged his pipe and relapsed into a long silence.

They had a compartment to themselves. At a station where the train stopped a man opened the door and had already put one foot into the carriage when he recognized the caste of his traveling companions. He disappeared in a twinkling. Paul Ritson did his best to restrain the anger that well-nigh choked him. He merely sent a ringing laugh after the retreating figure. At another station a police inspector, dressed in a little brief authority, caught sight of the blue cap and gray jacket, and bustled up to examine the warder's papers. Then, with a lofty look, he strode through the group of spectators whom his presence had attracted.

Arrived at Waterloo, the warder hailed a cab, and they drove to Scotland Yard to report themselves. There they supped on cocoa and brown bread, with the addition of a rasher of bacon and a pipe for the warder. Thence they were driven to Euston to catch the nine-o'clock train to Penrith.

The journey north was uneventful. At Rugby, Stafford, and elsewhere, the train stopped, and little groups of people looked in at the convict, and made apposite comments on his appearance, crime, and condition. Paul Ritson often shut his eyes and said nothing. Sometimes a sneer curled his lip, sometimes he burst into a bitter laugh. He was thinking that this was a fitting close to the degradation of his prison life. If one feeling of delicacy, one tender sentiment, one impulse of humanity remained to him when the gates of Portland closed behind him; it only required this cruel torture to crush it forever.

In spite of the risk of dismissal and the more immediate danger at the hands of Paul Ritson, the warder coiled himself up and fell asleep. It was after midnight when they reached Crewe, and from that point of the journey the worst of the torment ceased. Their merciful fellow-men were mostly in bed, dreaming of heroic deeds that they were doing. But the silence of night had its own torture. As the train rumbled on through the darkness, now rattling in a long tunnel, now sliding into open air like a boat into still water, Paul Ritson's mind went back to the day which seemed now to be so far away that it might have belonged to another existence, when he traveled this road with the dear soul who had trusted her young and cloudless life to his keeping. Where was she now? Peace be with her, wheresoever she was! He recalled her tenderest glance, he seemed to hear her softest tone; the light pressure of her delicate fingers was now on his hands—the hard hands that wore the irons. And even at that moment, when all his soul went out to the pure young wife who had shared his sufferings, and he felt as if time and space were nothing, as if he had drawn her to him by the power of his yearning love, it seemed to him that all at once there rang in his ears the shrill, sharp voices of the convicts rapping out their foul and frightful oaths.

He leaped to his feet, with a muttered oath on his own lips, and when the imagined agony with which he surprised himself had given way to a new sense of his actual sufferings, his heart grew yet more cold and bitter. He thought of what he had been and of what he was. There could be no disguising the truth—he was a worse man. Yes; whatsoever had once been pure in him, whatsoever had once been generous, whatsoever had once been of noble aspiration, was now impure, and ungenerous, and ignoble. Above all else, he had lost that tenderness which is the top and crown of a strong man. He felt as if the world had lifted its hand against him, and as if he were ready and eager to strike back.

They reached Penrith toward four in the morning, and then the carriage in which they traveled was shunted on to the branch line to await the first train toward Cockermouth. The day was breaking. From the window Paul Ritson could see vaguely the few ruins of the castle. That familiar object touched him strangely. He hardly knew why, but he felt that a hard lump at his heart melted away. By and by the brakeman shouted to the signalman in the gray silence of the morning. The words were indifferent—only some casual message—but they were spoken in the broad Cumbrian that for a year and a half had never once fallen on Paul Ritson's ear. Then the lump that had melted as his heart seemed to rise to his throat.