"Well," she began, leaning forward a little more and keeping her eyes fixed upon him, "perhaps you won't have the chance of defending anybody long. There's been a woman about here lately, making inquiries and hunting about, and one of these fine days she may light upon something that'll put her upon your track."

"What do you mean? Whom do you mean?"

"Why, Edward Jacobs's widow, of course. She had an idea where to look, you see."

Dudley could not hide the fact that he was much disturbed by this intelligence.

"Poor woman! Poor woman! Who can blame her?" said he at last, more to himself than to Mrs. Higgs, "I've done what I could for her, sent her money every week since—"

To his amazement, Mrs. Higgs suddenly interrupted him, bringing her fist down upon the table with a sounding thump.

"You fool!" screamed she. "You—fool! You've given yourself away! You deserve all you'll certainly get! Do you suppose a Jewess wouldn't have wits enough to trace you by that? By the fact that you sent her money?"

"But I sent it anonymously," said Dudley.

"That doesn't matter. Money? Postal-orders, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"Well, they can be traced. Oh, you fool, you wooden-headed fool!"

There was a pause. Mrs. Higgs appeared to have exhausted herself in vituperation, while Dudley considered this new aspect of the affair in silence.

"Well," said he at last, "if she does trace me, who will be the sufferer, do you suppose—you or I?"

"Why, you, you, you, of course!" retorted the old woman with heat. "You will be hanged, while I can bury myself like a mole in the ground and be forgotten, lost sight of altogether."

She said this with unctuous satisfaction, and Dudley gave her a glance of horror.

"And what particular pleasure will it give you, even supposing such an outcome possible, to see me hanged?"

The old woman's indecent delight faded gradually from her face as she looked at him. Then she rose slowly from her chair and came a step nearer to Dudley, who instinctively recoiled from the threatened touch. She noticed this movement, and resented it fiercely.

"Why do you go back? Why do you want to get away? Always to get away?" she asked, angrily. "That's what makes me so mad! Why do you try to get out of the business in the way you do? Sneaking out of it, as if it had nothing to do with you? Why don't you throw in your lot with me and go away with me, as I wished you to, as you once were ready to do?"

Dudley looked searchingly into the wrinkled face.

"I was never ready to go," said he. "I did affect to be ready. I was ready to go as far as Liverpool with you, to get you safely out of the country, out of danger to me and to yourself. But I should never have gone farther than that. I never meant to. I would run any risk rather than that."

Mr. Higgs never blinked. Staring steadily up into his face, with a malignity more pronounced than ever, she asked, in a mocking tone:

"Why? Why?"

Dudley was silent.

Mrs. Higgs laughed, and shook her head with a look of unspeakable cunning.

"You needn't answer," said she, dryly, "for I know the reason. You won't leave England because of a girl."

Dudley did not start, but the quiver which passed over his features betrayed him.

"Ha, ha!" laughed Mrs. Higgs. "It's not much use telling me a fib when I want to know anything. You wouldn't own up, so I went ferreting on my own account, and I found out what I wanted. You're in love with a girl named Wedmore—Doreen Wedmore—and it's on her account that you won't leave England, and throw in your lot with me, like a man!"

Dudley's face had grown gray with fear. When he spoke it was in a changed tone. He had lost his confidence, his defiant robustness. He almost seemed to be begging for mercy, as he answered:

"I don't deny it. I don't deny anything. I did care for a girl; I do now. But I have given her up. I was bound to, with this ghastly business hanging to my heels. I shall never see her again."

Mrs. Higgs cut in with decision:

"No, that you won't. I'll answer for it!"

Dudley looked at her, but did not dare to speak. There was something in the spiteful tones of her voice, when she mentioned Doreen, which filled him with vague dread. It was in a subdued and conciliatory voice that he presently tried to turn the conversation to another subject.

"Who was the girl you sent this evening, the girl who brought your message?"

"Nobody of any consequence," answered Mrs. Higgs, as if the subject was not to her taste. "A girl who lives here. We call her Carrie."

"And her other name?"

His tone betrayed his suspicions. Mrs. Higgs shrugged her shoulders.

"What does that matter to you? She is your half-sister, but I don't suppose you wish to claim relationship?"

"Does she know—anything?"

"Something, perhaps. Not too much, I think. But it doesn't matter. She is a weak, namby-pamby creature, and I'm sick of the sight of her white face. So I've got rid of her."

"How?"

"I've given her notice to quit. I don't expect her back again."

"And aren't you afraid that she may give information?"

"Ah! Your solicitude is for yourself, eh? No, she'll hold her tongue for her own sake." And Mrs. Higgs's features relaxed into a menacing grin. "She's seen enough of me to know she must be careful!"

Dudley moved restlessly.

"Isn't it rough on the girl to bring her up like this? In this hole, among these human vermin? She seems to have some decent instincts."

Mrs. Higgs frowned.

"She was brought up as well as she had any right to expect," said she, shortly; "educated fairly well into the bargain. She has not had much to complain of."

Dudley made no answer to this for some minutes, and during this time Mrs. Higgs kept him steadily under observation, not a movement of his hands, a change of his expression, escaping her. At last he looked at her, and seemed to be struck by something in her face. He put his fingers upon the handle of the door as he turned to go.

"Well," said he—his voice sounded hollow, cold—"I have said what I came to say. I need not stay here any longer. I don't wish to meet any of your friends."

Mrs. Higgs got slowly to her feet.

"My friends!" cried she, angrily. "My friends! They've done you no harm, at any rate; while your friends come spying round the place, poking their noses into business which is none of theirs."

Dudley's hand dropped to his side.

"Do you mean Max Wedmore?" said he, earnestly. "Why, he is the son of the man who has been a father to me, who brought me up, who saved me from becoming the outcast that poor girl is—"

Mrs. Higgs interrupted him fiercely.

"That'll do. I'm sick of the very name of Wedmore. They've had their own interests to serve, whatever they've done, depend upon it. And if he comes fooling round here again, I'll treat him as you—"

Dudley broke in sharply, stopping her as her voice was growing loud and her gestures threatening. After a short pause, during which she watched him as keenly as ever, he asked, in a hoarse whisper:

"What did you do with—him? Did anybody help you—any of your friends here? Or did you—"

Mrs. Higgs cut him short with an ugly laugh. At the mention of the dead man her face had changed, and a strange gleam of mingled cunning and ferocity came into her small, light eyes.

"Come and see—come and see," mumbled she, as she took up the candlestick from the table and shuffled across the room to the door which opened into the disused shop.

Dudley hesitated a moment; indeed, he glanced at the door by which he stood as if he felt inclined to make his escape without further delay. But Mrs. Higgs, slow as she seemed, turned quickly enough to divine his purpose.

"No," said she, sharply, "not that way. This!"

Seizing him by the arm, she thrust a key into the lock of the door with her other hand, and half led, half pushed him into the dark front room.

Dudley was seized with a nervous tremor when he found himself inside the room. By the light of the candle the woman held, he could see at a glance into every corner of the bare, squalid apartment—could see the stains on the dirty walls, the cracks and defects in the dilapidated ceiling, even the thick clusters of cobwebs that hung in the corners. Having taken in all these details in a very rapid survey, he looked down at the floor, at the very center of the bare, grimy boards, with a fixed stare of horror which the old woman, by passing the candle rapidly backward and forward before his eyes, tried vainly to divert.

Even she, however, seemed to be impressed by the hideous memory the room called up in her, for she spoke, not in her usual gruffly indifferent tones, but in a husky whisper.

"Tst—tst!" she began, testily. "Haven't you got over that yet? One Jew the less in the world! What is it to trouble about? Be a man—come, be a man! See, this is how I got rid of him."

As she spoke, Mrs. Higgs suddenly dropped Dudley's arm, which she had been clutching tenaciously, and hobbling away from him at an unusual rate of speed for her, she went back to the door, turned the key in the lock, and then withdrew it and dropped it into her pocket. This action Dudley was too much absorbed to notice.

Then she made her way at her usual pace, leaning heavily on the stout stick she was never without, toward the corner where the heap of lumber lay, on the left-hand side of what had once been the fireplace. Here she stooped, lifted a couple of bricks and a broken box-lid from the floor, and then easily raised the board on which they had stood, and beckoned to Dudley to come nearer. He did so, slowly, and with evident reluctance.

"Look here," said she, pointing down to the space where the board had been. "Look down. Don't be afraid," she added, in a jeering tone. "There's nothing there to frighten you. See for yourself."

Dudley stooped, and looking through the small opening available, saw that there was a space hollowed out underneath.

"And you put him there—under the boards?" said Dudley, in a low voice. "But it was in the water that the body was found—in the river outside."

"Why, yes, so it was," said the old woman, slowly, as she lifted the board out of its place altogether, and displacing also the one next to it, descended through the opening she had made.

Dudley watched her with fascinated eyes. Apparently the space below was not very deep, for she had only disappeared as far as the knees down-ward, and then knelt down, and for a moment was lost to sight altogether. She appeared to be struggling with something, and Dudley, consumed with horror, took a step back as he watched.

Presently she looked up. Her face was in shadow, but he could see that she was panting, as if with some great exertion.

"Get back! Stand in the middle of the room there, if you're afraid," said she, mockingly. "Right out of my reach, mind, where I can't get at you."

Instinctively Dudley obeyed, stepping back into the little patch of light thrown by the candle.

He had scarcely reached the middle of the room when he felt the boards under his feet give way. Staggering, he tried to retrace his steps, to reach the end of the room where the old woman, now again on a level with him, was watching him in silence.

But as he moved towards her she made a spring at him, and forcing him back with so much suddenness that he, quite unprepared, was unable to resist her attack, she flung him to the ground in the very middle of the room.

As he fell he felt the flooring give way under him. The next moment he was struggling, like a rat in a well, in deep water.



CHAPTER XX.

THE PREY OF THE RIVER.

"Help! Help!" shouted Dudley. "Do you want to drown me?"

Great as the shock was of finding himself flung suddenly into what he supposed was a flooded cellar, Dudley did not at first believe that the old woman had any worse intention than that of playing him an ugly and malicious trick.

But as he uttered this question he looked up, and saw her face half a dozen feet above him, wearing an expression of fiendish malignity which froze his blood.

She was holding the candle so that she might see his face, and as he kept himself afloat in the small space available—for he had no room to strike out, and no foothold on the slimy earthen sides—he began to understand that she was in grim, deadly earnest, and that the place where the dead body of Edward Jacobs had been concealed was to be his own grave.

Then he did not cry out. He saw that he would only be wasting his breath; that there was no mercy in the hard-light eyes, in the lines of the wicked, wrinkled mouth.

He made a struggle to climb up one side of the pit in which he found himself; but the soft earth, slimy with damp, slipped and gave way under him. He tore out a hole with his fingers, then another, and another above that. And all the while she watched him without a word, apparently without a movement.

But just as he came to a point in his ascent from which he might hope to make a spring for the top, she raised her thick stick and dealt him a blow on the head which sent him, with a splash and a gurgling cry, back into the water.

He saw strange lights dancing before his eyes. He heard weird noises thundering in his ears, and above them all a chuckling laugh, like the merriment of a demon, as the boards of the displaced flooring were drawn slowly up by a cord from above until they closed over his head, shutting him down.

* * * * *

When the police made their descent upon Dudley's chambers, Max, after giving his name and address, was allowed to go away without hindrance.

He wanted Carrie to go with him, but as she persistently held down her head and refused to look at him, he came to the conclusion that she had her own reasons for wishing him to go away without her.

So he went slowly down into the Strand, wondering whether he dared to go to the wharf to try to warn Dudley, or whether he would be drawing down danger upon his friend's head by doing so. For although he could not ascertain that he was himself shadowed, he thought that it might very possibly be the case.

He had reached the corner of Arundel Street, when he found that Carrie was beside him. She was panting, out of breath.

"Hello!" said he.

"I've been such a round!" said she. "Just to see whether they were following me. But they weren't. I guessed you'd come this way, and I went down by the embankment and up to try to meet you. Are they after you?"

"I don't think so. Dare we—"

"Wharf? Yes, I think we may. By the way, I'll show you."

She took him across Waterloo Bridge, where they took a cab and traversed southward to a point at which she directed the driver to stop.

On the way, Max, from his corner of the hansom, watched the girl furtively. For a long time there was absolute silence between them. Then he came close to her suddenly, and peered into her face.

"Carrie," said he, "I want you to marry me."

Now Max had been some time making up his mind to put this proposition—some minutes, that is to say. He had been turning the matter over in his brain, and had imagined the blushing, trembling astonishment with which the lonely girl would receive his most unexpected proposal.

But the astonishment was on his side, not on hers; for Carrie only turned her head a little, scarcely looking at him and staring out again in front of her immediately, remarked in the coolest manner in the world:

"Marry you! Oh, yes, certainly. Why not?"

Max was taken aback, and Carrie, at last stealing a glance at him, perceived this. She gave a pretty little kindly laugh, which made him expect that she would say something more tender, more encouraging.

But she didn't.

Turning her head away again, she went on quietly laughing to herself, until Max, not unnaturally irritated by this acceptance of his offer, threw himself back in his corner and tried to laugh also.

"It's a very good joke, isn't it—an offer of marriage?" said he at last, in an offended tone.

"Very," assented Carrie at once. "About the best I ever heard."

And she went on laughing.

"And I suppose," went on Max, unable to hide his annoyance, "that if I were to tell you it was not a joke at all, but that I spoke in downright earnest, you would laugh still more?"

"Well, I think I should."

"Well, laugh away, then. I was in earnest. I meant what I said. I was idiot enough to suppose you might find marrying me a better alternative than wandering about without any home. Extraordinary, wasn't it?"

"Well," answered Carrie, subduing her mirth a little and speaking in that deep-toned voice she unconsciously used when she was moved—the voice which Max found in itself so moving—"I should say it was extraordinary, if I didn't know you."

"If you didn't know me for an idiot, I suppose you mean," said Max, coldly, with much irritation.

"Not quite that," replied she, in the same tone as before. "I meant if I hadn't known you to be one of those good-natured people who speak before they think."

Max sat up angrily.

"I have not spoken without thinking," said he, quickly. "I have done nothing but think of you ever since I first saw you; and my asking you to marry me is the outcome of my thinking."

"Well, if I were you, I should think to better purpose than that."

Her tone was rather puzzling to Max. There was mockery in it; but there was something more. He came to the conclusion, after a moment's consideration of it, and of the little that he could see of her face, that she felt more than she chose to show. So he put his arm around her and caught one of her hands.

"Look here, Carrie," said he in a whisper. "I understand you. I know how you feel. I know you think it's neither decent nor wise to ask a girl to be your wife when you've only seen her twice. But just consider the circumstances. If I don't get you to say what I want you to say now, I shall lose sight of you to-night and never see you again. Now, I couldn't bear that—I couldn't, Carrie. I never saw a girl like you; I never met one who made me feel as you make me feel. And you like me, too. You wouldn't have troubled yourself about my going to the wharf if you hadn't cared. It's no use denying that you like me."

Carrie turned upon him with energy.

"Well, I don't deny it, if you care to hear that," said she, quickly. "I do like you. How could I help it? I liked you the moment I first saw you; I shouldn't have spoken to you if I hadn't; I should have been afraid. But what difference does that make? Do you think I'm a fool? Do you think I don't know that this feeling you have—and I believe in it, mind—is just because I'm a new sensation to you, who are a spoiled child—nothing more nor less. Oh, don't let's talk about it; it's silly."

She had wrenched herself impatiently away from him, and now sat upright, frowning and looking straight in front of her as before.

Max, not finally rebuffed, but rather puzzled what to make of this form of repulse, was silent for a few moments.

"Well, if you won't let me talk about that," he said at last, "will you promise to let me know where you are going to, so that I shan't have to lose sight of you? Come, you like me well enough to agree to that, don't you?"

Carrie hesitated.

"I told you," she said at last, in a low voice, "that I didn't know myself where I was going. Have you forgotten that?"

"But it wasn't true. You said it to put me off. You must know!"

"Well, I shan't tell you. There!"

"Why?"

"Because it would be the beginning of what I don't want and won't have. Because you'd come and see me, and I shouldn't have the heart to say you mustn't come; and in the end, if you persisted, I shouldn't have the heart to stop you from making a fool of yourself."

"How, making a fool of myself?"

"Why, by marrying me. Now don't pretend you don't know it's true. Marrying me would be just ruin—ruin! Oh, I know! What would your family say, and be right in saying? That you'd been got hold of by a girl nobody knew anything about, without any parents or friends, and who came from nobody knew where."

"Ah, but when they knew you—"

"They'd think less of me than they did before."

"Nonsense! When they saw how beautiful you are and well educated and refined, they wouldn't believe you came from such a place as Limehouse."

Carrie smiled.

"I seem refined to you, because you didn't expect much where you found me. Put me beside your sisters and their friends, and I should be shy and awkward enough. No, I will not listen, and I want you to tell the driver to stop here."

Whether this was the point she had proposed to reach or whether she wanted to cut short the subject, Max could not tell. But as the hansom stopped she sprang out and led the way hurriedly in the direction of the river. She knew her way about on this side of the river as well as on the other, for she went straight to the water's edge, got into a boat which was moored there with a dozen others, and, with a nod to a man with a pipe in his mouth who was loafing near the spot, she directed Max to jump in, and seized one oar while he took the other.

"If we go from this side," she said, "we can make sure we're not followed, at all events."

In the darkness they began to row across the river, where the traffic had practically ceased for the night.

Threading their way between the barges, the great steam traders, with their ugly square hulks standing high out of the water, and the lesser craft that clustered about the larger like a swarm of bees round the hive, they came out upon the gray stream, slowly leaving behind one dim shore, with its gloomy wharves and warehouses, and nearing the other. The London lights looked dim and blurred through the mist.

As they drew near the wharf, Carrie jerked her head in the direction of the little ugly cluster of buildings which Max remembered so well.

"There's a passage under there," she said in a whisper, leaning forward on her oar, "through which they let the dead body of the man—you know—out into the river. It's just near here."

Max shuddered, and at the same moment there burst from the girl's lips a hoarse cry.

Max turned sharply, and saw that she was staring down into the water.

"Look! Look there!" whispered she, gasping, trembling.

"What is it?" cried he.

But even as he asked, he knew that the dark object he saw floating in the water was the body of a man.

By a dexterous movement of her oar, Carrie had brought the boat alongside the black mass, and then, with the boat-hook, which she used with an evidently practiced hand, she drew the body close.

Max, sick with horror, leaned over just as Carrie's exertion's brought the face of the man to view.

"He's dead!" cried he, hoarsely. "It's another murder by those vile wretches in there!"

An exclamation burst from the girl's lips.

"Look at him! Look at his face! Who is he?" whispered she, with trembling lips.

Max looked, putting his hand under the head and lifting it out of the water.

Then, with a great shout, he tore at the body, clutching it, trying to drag it into the boat.

"Great Heaven! It's Dudley!"



CHAPTER XXI.

A DUBIOUS REFUGE.

The night was clammy and cold. The fog was growing thicker, blacker. And the water of the Thames, as Max plunged his hand into it, struggling to raise the body of his friend, was ice-cold to the touch.

Carrie had seized her oar again, and was bringing the boat's head rapidly round, right under the stern of a barge which was moored close to Plumtree Wharf.

"Hold him; don't let him go!" cried she imperiously. "But don't try to drag him into the boat until I get her alongside. You can't do it without help. And if you could you'd pull the boat over."

The caution was necessary. Max had lost his head, and was making frantic efforts to raise the body of his friend over the boat's side.

"But he may be alive still! And if there's a chance—oh, if there's the least chance—"

"There'll be none if you don't do as I tell you!" cried Carrie, tartly.

By this time a lad on board the barge was looking over the side at them, not seeing much, however, in the gloom. Carrie whistled twice.

"Hello!" replied he, evidently recognizing a signal he was used to.

"Is that Bob?"

"Yes."

"Lower a rope, and hold on like a man, Bob. We've got a man here drowned or half-drowned; and we want to get him on the wharf in a twinkling."

"Right you are."

The next moment the lad had lowered a rope over the side of the barge, and Carrie directed Max to pass it round the body of his friend. Then, she giving the orders as before, Bob from the barge above and Max from the boat below raised the body out of the water. Carrie had brought the little boat close to the barge, and held it in place with the boat-hook until the difficult task was safely accomplished, and the body of Dudley Horne laid upon the deck of the barge.

"Now," said she to Max, "get up and help Bob to carry him ashore."

Max, who was speechless with grief and as helpless as a child in these new and strange circumstances, obeyed her docilely, and climbed to the deck of the barge.

"Now, Bob," went on Carrie, as she seized the second oar and prepared to row away, "carry him into the kitchen—you know your way—as fast as you can. And lay him down before the fire, if there is a fire; if not, make one. Sharp's the word, mind!"

"All right, missus."

Max looked down. Already she had disappeared in the gloom, and only the muffled sound of the oars as they dripped on the water told him that she had not yet gone far away.

Suddenly he felt a rough pull at his arm.

"Come on, mister!" cried Bob, briskly. "She said, 'Sharp is the word.' And when she says a thing she means it, you bet your life."

Max pulled himself together and turned quickly, ashamed of his own lack of vigor in the face of Carrie's intelligence and energy. Bob and he raised the body of Dudley and carried it across the plank to the wharf, where Bob, who knew his way about there, led the way to the door which Max remembered so well.

It was open, and they passed through the outhouse, meeting no one, to the kitchen, which was also deserted. There they laid Dudley on the hearth, as Carrie had directed, and Bob proceeded to rake up the fire, which had died down to a few embers.

Meanwhile Max had taken off some of Dudley's clothes, and began to apply friction with his hands to the inanimate body. He had scarcely begun, when Carrie came in with an armful of dry towels and a couple of pillows.

"He is dead, quite dead!" cried Max, hoarsely.

Carrie never even looked at him. Placing herself at once on her knees behind Dudley's head, she curtly directed Max to raise the upper part of his body, and slipped the two pillows, one on the top of the other, under the shoulders of the unconscious man.

"Now," said she, "go on with your rubbing—rub with all your might; and you, Bob, bring in a couple of big stone-bottles you'll find in the wash-house, fill them with hot water from the boiler, wrap them up in something, and put one to his feet and the other to the side that's away from the fire."

While she spoke she was working hard in the endeavor to restore respiration, alternately drawing Dudley's arms up above his head and laying them against his sides, with firm and steady movements.

For a long time all their efforts seemed to be useless. Max, indeed, had little or no hope from the first. He still worked on, however, perseveringly, but with despair in his heart, until he heard a sharp sound, like a deep sigh, from Carrie's lips.

She had detected a movement, the slightest in the world, but still a movement, in the senseless body. With straining eyes she now watched, that her own movements might coincide with the natural ones which Dudley had begun to make, and that real breathing might gradually take the place of the artificial.

"Let me do it. Let me help you," cried Max, who saw the strained look of utter fatigue which Carrie wore in spite of her excitement.

"No, no; I dare not. I must go on!" cried the girl, without lifting her eyes.

And presently another cry escaped her lips, a cry of joy.

"He is alive!"

"Thank God!"

The tears sprang to the eyes of Max. It was more than he had hoped.

"A doctor! Shall I fetch a doctor?" said he.

Carrie shook her head.

"A doctor could do no more than we've done," said she. "He'll be all right now—well enough to be got away, at all events. And the wound on his head isn't much, I think."

"Wound on his head!"

"Yes. It saved his life, most likely. Prevented his getting so much water into his lungs. Stunned him, you see."

Something like a sigh from the patient stopped her and directed the attention of them all to him. Bob, who had been standing in the background, almost as much excited as the others, came a few steps nearer. There was a moment of intense, eager expectancy, and then Dudley half opened his eyes.

Max uttered a deep sob and glanced at Carrie. She was deadly pale, and the tears were standing in her eyes.

"You've saved him!" said Max, hoarsely.

The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Dudley, who looked at him with a vacant stare, and then let his eyelids drop again.

"So glad, old chap—so glad to—to see you yourself again!" whispered Max, huskily.

But Dudley was not himself. He looked up again, then tried to smile, and at last turned his head abruptly and seemed to be listening.

Carrie beckoned to Max and spoke low in his ear.

"You'd better take him away from here as quickly as you can, for half a dozen reasons."

Max nodded, but looked doubtful.

"He's ill," said he. "How shall I get him away? And where shall I take him to?"

"Down to your father's house" answered she at once.

Max looked rather startled.

"But—you know—the police!" muttered he, almost inaudibly. "Won't that be the very first place they'd come to—my home?"

"Never mind that. You must risk it. He's going to be ill, I think, and he can't be left here. Surely you know that."

She gave a glance round which made Max shiver.

"And how am I to get him all that way to-night? The last train has gone hours ago."

"Take him by road, then. We'll get a carriage—a conveyance of some sort or other—at once. I'll send Bob."

She turned to the lad and gave him some directions, in obedience to which he disappeared. Then she turned fiercely to Max.

"Don't you see," said she, "that if he wakes up and finds himself here, after what's happened, it'll about settle him?"

The words sent a shudder through Max.

"After what's happened!" repeated he, with stammering tongue. "What was it? Who did it?"

But, instead of answering, Carrie threw herself down beside Dudley, who was now rapidly recovering strength, although he hardly seemed to understand where he was or by whom he was being tended.

"Do you feel all right now?" she asked, cheerfully.

He looked at her with dull eyes.

"Oh, yes," said he. "But I—I don't remember what—"

"Take a drink of this," interrupted Carrie, quickly, as she put to his lips a flask of brandy which Bob had fetched. "You've got to take a long drive, and you want something to warm you first."

"A drive! A long drive!"

Dudley repeated the words as if he hardly understood their meaning. But he was not satisfied, and as he sipped the brandy he looked at her curiously. His next words, however, were a criticism on the restorative.

"What vile stuff!"

"Never mind. It's better than nothing. Try a little more."

But instead of obeying, he looked her steadily in the face.

"Where did I see you? I remember your face!" said he. "And who was that I heard talking just now?"

Suddenly, without any warning, he disengaged one hand from the hot towels in which he was swathed and sat up. A hoarse cry broke from his lips as full recognition of the place in which he found himself forced itself upon him. With a wild light of terror in his eyes, he looked searchingly round him.

"Where is he? Where is he?" cried he, in a thick whisper.

Carrie's face grew dark.

"Here is your friend," she cried cheerily, "here is Mr. Wedmore. He's going with you; he's not going to leave you; be sure of that."

"Yes, old chap, I'm going with you," said Max, hurrying forward and trying to shut out the view of the room with his person as he knelt down by his friend.

Dudley frowned impatiently.

"You, Max!" said he. "What are you doing here?"

But he asked the question without interest, evidently absorbed in another subject.

"I'm going to take you down to The Beeches," answered Max, promptly.

To his infinite satisfaction, this reply had the effect of distracting Dudley's thoughts. Into his pallid face there came a tinge of color, as he looked intently into his friend's eyes, and repeated:

"The Beeches! You don't mean that!"

"I do; the carriage will be here in a minute or two. And in the meantime we must think upon getting you dressed."

This question of clothing promised to be a difficult one, as Dudley's own things were saturated with water. Carrie sprang to her feet.

"I'll see about that," said she, briskly, as she disappeared from the room.

Max, alarmed at being left alone with Dudley, in whose eyes he could see the dawn of struggling recollection, babbled on about Christmas, his mother, his sisters, anything he could think of till Carrie came back again, with her arms full of men's clothes—a motley assortment.

Max looked at them doubtfully. They were all new—suspiciously new.

Carrie laughed, with a little blush.

"Better not ask any questions about them," said she. "Take your choice, and be quick."

With his lips Max formed the word: "Stolen?" but Carrie declined to answer. As there was no help for it, Max dressed his friend in such of the clothes as were a passable fit for him, while Carrie went out to watch for the expected carriage. When she returned to the kitchen, Dudley was ready for the journey. He was lying back in a chair, looking very white and haggard and exhausted, casting about him glances full of expectancy and terror, and starting at every sound.

But he asked no more questions, and he made no mention of Mrs. Higgs.

Bob had fulfilled his errand well. Outside the wharf they found a comfortable landau, with two good horses, hired from the nearest livery-stable.



CHAPTER XXII.

TWO WOMEN.

Bob grinned with satisfaction when Max, expressing his gratification, dropped into his hand a half-sovereign.

"Thought you'd be pleased, sir," said he, as he helped to get Dudley into the carriage. "I said it was for a toff, a reg'lar tip-topper; and so it was, s' help me!"

Dudley, who was very lame, and who had to be more than half carried, looked out of the window.

Max was still outside, trying to get hold of Carrie, who was on the other side of the carriage.

"You're coming, Max?"

"Yes, oh, yes, rather."

"And—you?"

Dudley turned to Carrie, who drew back quickly and shook her head.

"I? No."

Max ran round at the back of the carriage and caught her by the arm as she was slinking quietly away.

"Where are you going? Not back in there? You must come with us."

"I!—come with you? To your father's house? Catch me!"

"Well, part of the way, at any rate," urged Max, astutely. "I dare not go all that way with him alone. See, he wants you to go. You shall get out just when you please."

Carrie hesitated. Although she saw through the kindly ruse which would protect her against her will, she saw, also, that Dudley was indeed in no fit state to take the long journey which was before him, and at length she allowed herself to be persuaded to accompany them on at least the first part of the journey.

And so, in the fog and the gloom of a January night, they began their strange drive.

The road they took was by way of Greenwich and Dartford to Chatham, where there would be no difficulty in getting fresh horses for the rest of the journey.

Dudley, who had been made as comfortable as possible by a sort of bed which was made up for him in the roomy carriage, seemed, after a short period of restlessness and excitability, to sink into sleep.

Max was rejoicing in this, but Carrie looked anxious.

"It isn't natural, healthy sleep, I'm afraid," said she, in a low voice. "It's more like stupor. It wasn't the water that did it, it was a blow on the head. You saw the mark. I'm afraid it's concussion of the brain."

"Ought he to travel, then?" asked Max, anxiously.

Carrie, who was sitting beside Dudley, and opposite to Max, hesitated a little before answering:

"What else could we do? We couldn't leave him there at the wharf, could we? And where else could we have taken him? Not back to his chambers, certainly!"

There was silence. The carriage jogged on in the darkness through London's ugly outskirts, and the two watchers listened solicitously to the heavy breathing of their patient. It was a comfort to Max, a great one indeed, to have Carrie for a companion on this doleful journey. But she was not the same girl, now that she had duties to attend to, that she had been over that tete-a-tete dinner, or even during the journey in the hansom. He himself felt that he now counted for nothing with her, that he was merely the individual who happened to occupy the opposite seat; that her interest, her attentions, were absorbed by the unconscious man by her side.

"Why didn't you become a hospital nurse?" asked Max, suddenly.

He heard rather than saw that she started.

"That's just what I thought of doing," she answered, after a little pause. "I'm just old enough to enter one of the Children's Hospitals as a probationer. They take them at twenty."

"I see. Then you couldn't have tried before."

"No; they're very strict about age."

"I should think you were cut out for the work, if only you are strong enough," said Max, with warmth. "You seem to do just the right thing in just the right way."

"I've had plenty of experience," said Carrie, shortly, breaking in upon rhapsodies which threatened to become tender. "I did a lot of visiting among poor people who had no one to nurse them when I lived with Miss Aldridge. Down in these parts, the East End, you get practice enough like that, I can tell you!"

"But the treatment of a drowning man—that requires special knowledge, surely!"

"Yes, but down by the river is just the place to get it. He's the fifth person I've seen taken out for dead in the time I've lived there. Three out of the five were dead. The other two, a boy and a woman, were brought around."

There was silence again.

Presently Max whispered:

"Do you know—can you guess—how he got into the water?"

Carrie shivered.

"Wait—wait till he can tell us himself," said she, hurriedly. "It's no use guessing. Perhaps it was an accident, you know."

"You don't think so?"

"Sh—sh!" said Carrie.

But Max persisted.

"You know as well as I do that that villainous old Mrs. Higgs is at the bottom of the affair."

Carrie bent over Dudley, to assure herself that, if not asleep, he was at least unconscious of what was passing. Then she turned to Max.

"You are wrong," said she then, quickly. "Mrs. Higgs was an agent only, in the hands of some one else. If I tell you what I believe, you will only laugh at me."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that she was a harmless, good-hearted, kind woman until—until Mr. Horne came to see her; that she was always good to me till then. And that, after that awful day when the man was killed—murdered by Mr. Horne—"

"It's not true! It can't be true!" burst out Max.

But Carrie went on, as if he had not spoken:

"After that day she changed; she was irritable, unkind, neglectful—not like the same woman. She left me alone sometimes; she gave me no food at others; she hid herself away from me; she was angry at the least thing. And then—then," went on the girl, in a frightful whisper, "I found out something."

"What was it?"

"That some one used to get into the place at night—I don't know how; some one she was afraid of—a man."

"Well?" said Max, excited by her tone.

"I have heard him—seen him twice," went on Carrie, in the lowest of whispers. "And I believe—"

"Yes, yes; go on!"

"That it was Mr. Dudley Horne."

"Oh, rubbish!"

Carrie was silent. Max went on, indignantly:

"How could you take such a silly idea into your head? What reason should Mr. Horne have for creeping about a hole like that at night?"

"Well, what reason should he have for coming to it at any time? Yet you know he came in the daytime."

It was the turn of Max to remain silent. There was a long pause, and then Carrie went on:

"I used to sleep in a little attic over the outhouse, just a corner of the roof it was. And twice at night I have heard a noise underneath, and looked through the cracks in the boards and seen a man down there, with a light. And each time, when the light was put out and the noise had stopped, I have gone downstairs and found the doors bolted still on the inside."

"Well, the place seems to be honeycombed with ways in and ways out. The strange man either went out by some way even you knew nothing about, or else Mrs. Higgs let him out."

"No, she didn't. I should have heard or seen her."

"Well, but what reason can you have for supposing that this man was Mr. Dudley Horne?"

"Once I saw his face," answered Carrie.

"And you think it was the face of this man here beside you?"

Max struck a light and held it over the face of the unconscious Dudley. Carrie looked at him steadily.

"Well," she said at last, "it did look like him, that's all I can say."

Max frowned uneasily. But after a few moments a new thought struck him, and he turned to her sharply. The match he had struck had burned itself out, and they were again in darkness.

"If Mrs. Higgs was only a tool in his hands, as you suggest, for some mysterious purposes which nobody can understand or guess at, how do you account for her trying to drown him?"

"They must have quarreled," said Carrie, quickly. Then, instantly perceiving that she had made an admission, she added: "That is, supposing she had anything to do with it."

"Amiable old lady!" exclaimed Max.

The mystery of the whole affair hung over both him and Carrie like a pall; and the long night-drive seemed never-ending in the death-like silence. Max tried from time to time to break it, but Carrie grew more reserved as the hours went by, until her curt answers ceased altogether.

Then, when dawn came, the dull dawn of a foggy morning, and the carriage drew up at the hotel in Chatham where they were to change horses, Max discovered that she was asleep.

Dudley opened his eyes when the carriage stopped, but shut them again without a word to Max, who asked him how he felt.

Max, when the people of the hotel had been roused, succeeded in borrowing a rug, which he wrapped gently round Carrie, without waking her. And presently the carriage jogged on again on its journey, and the morning sun began to pierce the mist as the bare Kentish hop-fields and orchards were reached.

Max leaned forward and looked at Carrie's sweet face with infinite tenderness. Now in her sleep she looked like a child, with her lips slightly parted and her eyelashes sweeping her thin, white cheeks. The alert look of the Londoner, which gave an expression of premature shrewdness to her waking face, had disappeared under the relaxing influence of slumber. She looked pitifully helpless, sad and weak, as her tired, worn-out little body leaned back in the corner of the carriage.

Max looked at her with yearning in his eyes. This young ne'er-do-weel, as his father called him, had enjoyed the privilege of his type in being a great favorite with women. As usual in such cases, he had repaid their kindness with ingratitude, and had had numerous flirtations without ever experiencing a feeling either deep or lasting.

Now, for the first time, in this beautiful waif of the big city he had found a mixture of warmth and coldness, of straightforward simplicity and boldness, which opened his eyes as to there being in her sex an attraction he had previously denied. He felt as he looked at her that he wanted her; that he could not go away and forget her in the presence of the next pretty face he happened to see.

This shabbily dressed girl, with the shiny seams in her black frock and the rusty hat, inspired him with respect, with something like reverence.

In his way he had been in love many, many times. Now for the first time he worshiped a woman.

When the carriage stopped at the park gate of The Beeches, Max sprang out, and without waiting to answer the hurried questions of Carrie, who had awakened with a start, he ran across the grass and up the slope to the house.

It was nine o'clock, and, when the door was opened by Bartram, Max came face to face with Doreen, who was entering the hall on her way to the breakfast-room.

"Why, Max, is it you? What a strange time to arrive! And where have you been? You look as if you'd been up all night!" cried she, and she ran forward to kiss him, and swinging him round to the light, examined him, with an expression of amazement and horror.

"I have been up all night," said he, briefly. "I've driven all the way from London—"

"What!"

"And—and I've brought some one with me—some one who is ill, who is in trouble. Some one—"

A cry broke from her lips. She had grown quite white, and her hands had dropped to her sides.

She understood.

"Dudley!" she whispered. "Where is he? Why haven't you brought him in?"

"He is at the gate. Where is my father? I must speak to him first, or to mother."

Mrs. Wedmore herself, having been informed by Bartram of the arrival of her son, now came out of the breakfast-room to meet him. In a few words he informed her of the circumstances, adding, as he was bound to do, that there was a possibility that the police might come to make inquiries, if not to arrest Dudley. But Doreen, who insisted on hearing everything, overruled the faint objection which Mrs. Wedmore made, and determined to have him brought in before her father could learn anything about it.

Max, therefore, went down to bring the carriage up to the door, and Dudley, having been roused into a half-conscious condition, was assisted into the house and up to one of the spare bedrooms—Max on one side and Bartram on the other.

By this time Mr. Wedmore had, of course, become aware of what was going on; but it was now too late to interfere, even if he had wished to do so. When Dudley had been taken upstairs, Doreen met her brother as he came down.

"Who is the girl with the sweet face inside the carriage?"

Max stammered a little, and then said, by a happy inspiration:

"Oh, that's the nurse. You see—he was so ill—"

Doreen looked at him keenly, but did not wait for anymore explanations.

"Why doesn't she come in, then? Of course she must come in."

And she ran out to the door of the carriage, with Max not far behind.

"Aren't you coming in? They've taken your patient upstairs," she said gently, as poor Carrie, who looked more dead than alive, sat up in the carriage and tried to put her hat and her cape straight.

"Oh, I shan't be wanted now, shall I?" asked Carrie, with a timid voice and manner which contrasted strongly with her calm, easy assurance while she was at work.

Max threw a glance of gratitude at his sister, as he quickly opened the door of the carriage and more than half dragged Carrie out.

As the girl stepped, blinking, into the broad sunlight, Doreen stared at her intently, and then glanced inquiringly at her brother, who, however, did not see her questioning look. He led Carrie into the house and straight up the stairs toward the room where they had put Dudley.

"Don't make me stay," pleaded she, in a low voice. "They will know I'm not a regular nurse, and—and I shall be uncomfortable, miserable. You can do without me now."

She was trying to shrink away. Max stopped in the middle of the stairs, and answered her gravely, earnestly:

"I only ask you to stay until we can get a regular nurse down. He is too ill to do without a trained attendant; you know that. Will you promise to wait while we send for one?"

Carrie could scarcely refuse.

"Yes, I will stay till then, if I am really wanted," assented she.

"Ask my sister. Here she comes," said Max.

Doreen was on the stairs behind them.

"Is it really necessary—do you want me to stay while a nurse is sent for?" asked Carrie, diffidently.

Doreen looked up straight in her face.

"What more natural than that you should stay with him?" returned she, promptly; "since you are his sister."

Max and Carrie both started. The likeness between Dudley and Carrie, which Max had taken time to discover, had struck Doreen at once. Carrie would have denied the allegation, but Max caught her arm and stopped her.

"Quite true," said he quietly. "This is the way, Miss Horne, to your brother's room."

Doreen was quick enough to see that there was some little mystery about the relationship which she had divined, and she went rapidly past her brother without asking any questions.

It was about two hours after Dudley's arrival that Carrie, now installed in the sick-room, came to the door and asked for Max. Her face was rigid with a great terror. She seemed at first unable to utter the words which were on her tongue. At last she said, in a voice which sounded hard and unlike her own:

"Don't send for a nurse. I must stay with him. He is delirious, and I have just learned—from him—from his ravings, a secret—a terrible secret—one that must not be known!"



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BLUE-EYED NURSE.

It was at the door of Dudley's sick-room that Carrie informed Max that she had learned a secret from the lips of the sick man, and Max, by a natural impulse of curiosity, nay, more, a deep interest, pushed the door gently open.

Dudley's voice could be heard muttering below his breath words which Max could not catch.

But Carrie pulled the young man sharply back by the arm into the corridor, and shut the door behind her. Her face was full of determination.

"No," said she, "not even you."

Max drew himself up, offended.

"I should think you might trust me," he said, stiffly. "The doctor will have to hear when he comes. And the secret, whatever it is, will be safer with me than with old Haselden."

Carrie smiled a little, and shook her head.

"The doctor," said she, "wouldn't be able to make head or tail of what he says. Now, you would."

"And if I did, what of that? Don't I know everything, or almost everything, already? Didn't I bring him down here, to my father's house, after I knew that there was a warrant out against him? What better proof do you want that the secret would be safe with me?"

But Carrie would not give way. Without entering into an argument, she stood before him with a set look of obstinacy in her mouth and eyes, slowly shaking her head once or twice as he went on with his persuasions.

"Do you think I should make a wrong use of the secret?" asked Max, impatiently.

"Oh, no."

"Do you think it would turn me against him?"

But at this question she hesitated.

"I don't know," said she, at last.

"It is something that has given you pain?" Max went on, noting the traces of tears on her face and the misery in her eyes.

"Yes, oh, yes."

The answer was given in a very low voice, with such a heart-felt sob that Max was touched to the quick. He came quite close to her, and, bending down, so that his mustache almost brushed the soft fair hair on her forehead, he whispered:

"I'm so sorry. Poor Carrie! I won't worry you, then; I won't ask any more questions, if only—if only you'll let me tell you how awfully sorry I am."

He ventured to put his hand upon her shoulder, as he bent down to look into her face.

And, as luck would have it, Mr. Wedmore at that very moment bounced out of one of the rooms which opened on the corridor, and caught sight of this pretty little picture before it broke up.

Of course, Max withdrew his hand and lifted up his head so swiftly that he flattered himself he had been too quick for his father, who walked along the corridor toward the drawing-room as if he had seen nothing.

But Max was mistaken. Mr. Wedmore, already greatly irritated by his son's repeated failures to settle down, found in this little incident a pretext for a fresh outburst of wrath.

Unluckily for poor Carrie, Mrs. Wedmore was in a state of irritation, in which she was even readier than usual to agree with her husband. The arrival of Dudley, with a terrible charge hanging over his head, in such circumstances as to stir up Doreen's feelings for him to the utmost, was bad enough. But for him to descend upon them in the company of a young woman of whom she had never heard, and in whose alleged relationship to Dudley she entirely disbelieved, had reduced the poor lady to a state which Queenie succinctly described as "one of mamma's worst."

As soon as Mr. Wedmore entered the drawing-room, where his wife and daughters were discussing some invitations to dinner which were to have been sent out, but about which there was now a doubt, he abruptly ordered the two girls to leave the room. They obeyed very quietly, but Doreen threw at her mother one imploring glance, and gently pulling her father's hair, told him that he was not to be a hard, heartless man.

When the door was shut, however, Mr. Wedmore addressed his wife in no very gentle tones.

"Ellen," said he, curtly, "you must get rid of that baggage they call the nurse. She's no more a nurse than you are!"

"And she's no more his sister than I am, either!" chimed in Mrs. Wedmore, who had risen from her chair in great excitement.

Mr. Wedmore stared at his wife.

"Sister!" cried he, in a voice of thunder. "Whose sister? Dudley Horne never had a sister!"

"I know that, but that's the story they have made up for us; and the girls—our girls—are ready to believe it, and I don't want them to know it isn't true."

"Well, whatever she is, and whoever she is, I want her to be outside the house before lunch time," said Mr. Wedmore. "I've just caught Max with his arm around her, and I haven't the slightest doubt that it was he who made up the story. Any tale's good enough for the old people! Look at her face—look at her dress! She is some hussy who ought never to have been allowed inside the house!"

"It was Doreen who brought her in. And, to do her justice, George, I believe the girl didn't want to come," said Mrs. Wedmore. "And it's about Doreen I wanted to talk to you, George. This coming of Dudley has upset all the good we did by never mentioning him to her. To-day she's as much excited, as anxious and as miserable as if they were still engaged. And—and—oh! if the police come here to the house and take him awa-a-ay,"—and here the poor lady became almost too hysterical to articulate—"it will break the child's heart, George; it will indeed. And, oh! do you think it possible he really did—really did—"

"Did what?"

"Oh, you know! It's to dreadful to say. Why do you make me say it? They say something about his having gone out of his mind, and—and—killed somebody. It isn't true, George, is it?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Who told you?"

"Max first, and then I learned the rest from the guesses of the girls. Oh, it is dreadful—shocking! And to think of his having been planted down upon us like this, just when I was beginning to hope that Doreen was getting kinder to Mr. Lindsay."

"It's all the doing of that idiot Max!" said Mr. Wedmore, angrily. "I'll send him out to the Cape, and make an end of it. He shall go next month."

"Oh, I didn't want that," pleaded Mrs. Wedmore, with a sudden change to tenderness and self-reproach. "Don't do anything in a hurry, George, anything you will be sorry for afterward."

"Sorry for! The only thing I'm sorry for is that I didn't send him before, and saved all this."

"And as for the girl, no doubt it's her fault, and Dudley's, a great deal more than Max's," went on the mother of Max, with the usual feminine excuse for the darling scapegrace. "When she's gone he will forget all about her, as he always does."

This speech was an unlucky one.

"Yes, that's just what I complain of, that he always forgets," said he, turning sharply upon his wife. "If he would stick to anything or to anybody for so much as a week, or a day, or an hour, I shouldn't mind so much. But he isn't man enough for that. As soon as this girl's out of the house, he'll be looking about for another one."

"I'm sure it wasn't his fault that she came here at all," persisted Mrs. Wedmore, who never opposed her husband except in the interest of her son. "And I'm sure you can't blame him for doing what he could for his friend, even if he does put us to a little inconvenience. After all, Dudley's been like a son to you for a great many years—"

"That's just what I complain of—that he's so like a son," interrupted her husband. "That is to say, he has brought upon us no end of worry and bother, and a bill for five guineas for this pleasant little drive down from London."

"Well, how could we refuse to take him in?"

"How did he get into the mess?"

"What mess?"

"That's what I want to know, too—what mess? I am told he fell into the water, striking his head against the side of a bridge, or of a church, or it doesn't matter what, as he fell. They haven't thought it worth while to make up a good story. But whether he was drunk, or whether he was escaping from the police, or what he was doing, nobody seems to know. If I'd been consulted, if I hadn't been treated as a cipher in the matter, he should have driven straight back to London again with the girl, and with Max himself."

Mrs. Wedmore thought it better to say nothing to this, but to let her husband simmer down. These ferocious utterances came from the lips only, as she very well knew, and might safely be disregarded.

Fortunately his attention was diverted at this point by the arrival of the doctor, who had been out on his rounds when they first sent for him.

Rather relieved to have a fresh person to pour out his complaints to, Mr. Wedmore hastened to give his old friend a somewhat confused account of the patient's arrival and condition, in which "cheap, ready-made clothes," "a bill for five guineas," "a baggage of a girl" and "the police" were the prominent items.

But as for any details concerning the patient's state of health and the reasons for his needing medical care, Doctor Haselden could learn nothing at all until he had prevailed upon Mr. Wedmore to let him see Dudley instead of listening to abuse of him.

Doctor Haselden was a long time in the sick-room, and when he came out he looked grave. Mr. Wedmore, who met him outside the door, was annoyed.

"It's nothing, I suppose, that a few days' quiet won't set right?" he asked quickly.

"I don't know, I'm sure," answered the doctor. "It's more serious than I thought by what you said—a great deal more serious. I don't know, I'm sure, whether we shall get him round at all."

A little cry startled both men and made them look round. In a recess of the corridor above they could distinguish the figure of a woman, and Mr. Wedmore's heart smote him, for it was Doreen.

"Go away, child! Go away!" said he, half petulantly, but yet with some remorse in his tone. "The girl's crazy about him," he added, with irritation, when his daughter had silently obeyed.

"Poor child! Poor child!" said Doctor Haselden, sympathetically. "She's the real old-fashioned sort, with a warm heart under all her little airs. I hope he'll get round, if only for her sake. But—"

"She couldn't marry him in any case," said Mr. Wedmore, shortly. "I thought I told you that affair was broken off—definitely broken off—weeks ago. And now—"

He stopped and intimated by a gesture of the hand that the break was more definite than ever.

The doctor was curious, but he tried not to show it.

"I should wire up to town for another nurse, I think," said he. "This little girl can't do it all."

Mr. Wedmore pricked up his ears.

"Then I must wire for two—for two nurses," said he, decidedly. "We're going to send this girl off. She's not a nurse at all."

"Ah, but she does very well," objected the doctor, promptly, "and you will be doing very unwisely if you send her away. It seems she understands all the circumstances of the case, and that counts for something in treating a patient who has evidently something on his mind. She seems to be able to soothe him, and in a case of concussion—"

"But she's trying to get hold of my fool of a son Max!" protested Mr. Wedmore.

"But it isn't a question of your son Max, but of young Horne," said Doctor Haselden, with decision. "As for Max, he can take care of himself; and, at any rate, he's got all his family about to take care of him. You keep the girl. She's got a head on her shoulders. Most uncommon thing, that—in a girl with such eyes!"

And the doctor, with a humorous nod to his angry friend, went downstairs.

After this warning of the real danger in which Dudley lay, it was, of course, impossible for Mr. Wedmore to send poor Carrie away, at any rate until the arrival of some one who could take her place. And as there was clearly some sense in the doctor's suggestion that her knowledge of the case was valuable, Mr. Wedmore ended by sending up for one trained nurse to relieve her, instead of for two, as he had proposed.

And, after all, there seemed to be less danger in the direction of Max than he had supposed; for Carrie never once left the sick-room until the professional nurse arrived at ten o'clock that night. And as Mrs. Wedmore was then in waiting to mount guard over Carrie, and to carry her off to her supper and then to her bedroom, the first day's danger to the susceptible son and heir seemed to have been got through rather well.

On the following morning, however, the well-watched Carrie escaped from the supervision of her jailers, and boldly made a direct attack upon Max under the family's nose.

Carrie was looking out of one of the back windows of the house to get a breath of fresh air, before taking her turn of duty in the sick-room, when she saw Max talking to one of the grooms outside the stables. He saw her, and his face flushed. Mrs. Wedmore, who was standing on guard a few paces from Carrie, noted the fact with maternal anxiety. She rather liked the girl, whose modest manners were as attractive as her pretty face; but with the fear of "entanglements" before her eyes, she tried to check her own inclination. Carrie turned to her abruptly.

"The nurse won't mind waiting a few minutes for me," said she, quickly. "I must speak a few words to Mr. Max."

And before Mrs. Wedmore could get breath after this audacious statement, Carrie was down the stairs and half away across the yard, where Max hastened to meet her.

"I have something to say to you," she began at once with a grave face. "Do you know that—they've come?"

"Who? Who have come?"

"The police."

Max started.

"Nonsense! What makes you think so? I've seen no one."

"I have, though. I've been expecting them, for one thing, and it's made me sharp, I suppose. But I've seen in the park, among the trees, this morning before anybody was up almost, a man walking about, taking his bearings and looking about him."

"One of the gardeners," said Max. "There are several."

"Oh, no, it wasn't a gardener. Can't you trust my London eyes? And listen: Presently another one came up, and they talked together. Then one went one way and the other another, not like gardeners or workingmen, but like men on the lookout."

"What should they be on the lookout for?" asked Max. "If they want Dudley, why don't they come up to the house? I don't doubt that by this time they know where he is."

Carrie said nothing; but there was in her eyes, as she glanced searchingly round her, a peculiar look of wistful dread which puzzled Max and made him wonder what fear it was that was in her mind.



CHAPTER XXIV.

MAX MAKES A STAND AND A DISCOVERY.

There was a pause, and then Carrie, without answering him, turned to go back into the house. But Max followed and caught her by the arm.

"Carrie," said he, "they're making a slave of you, without a word of thanks. You look worn out."

"No, I'm not," said she, briskly. "I've only taken my turns; I should look all right if it hadn't been for that long, tiring journey yesterday. I haven't quite got over that yet."

She was trying to free her hand, which Max was holding in his.

"You'll never be strong enough for a hospital nurse, Carrie!"

"Oh, yes, but I shall!" retorted she. And as she spoke, the pink color, the absence of which made her usually look so delicate, came into her cheeks. "And you must remember that I shall be better fed, better clothed then. I am not really weak at all."

"I repeat—you will never be strong enough for a nurse. Better take my advice and marry me, Carrie!"

But at that, a sudden impulse of hot anger gave the girl the necessary strength to snatch her hand away from him. She faced him fiercely.

"What! To be looked at always as your father, your mother, look at me now? As if I were a thief who must be watched, lest she should steal something? They needn't be afraid either, if only they knew! And before I go I'll tell them. Yes, I'll tell them what a mistake they make in thinking I want to take their son, their precious son, away from them! That for their son!"

And Carrie, very ungratefully, to be sure, held her right hand close to the face of Max and snapped her fingers scornfully. She had seen Mrs. Wedmore's eyes over the half blind of one of the windows, and the minx thought this little scene would be a wholesome lesson.

But Max, following the direction of Carrie's eyes, had also seen the watching face, and a manful spirit of defiance on the one hand, of passion on the other, moved him to show both Carrie and his mother how things were going with him.

Seizing the girl round the waist when her little spurt of defiance was scarcely over, he held her head with his disengaged hand and pressed upon her eyes, her cheeks and her lips a dozen hot kisses.

"There!" said he, when at last he let her go, and she, staggering, blushing, ran toward the shelter of the house. "That's what you get for being ungrateful, you little cat. And it's nothing to what you'll get from my mother, who's sure to say it's all your fault. And so—" roared he up the stairs after her, as she reached the top, "so it is, of course!"

But Carrie found a refuge inside the sick-room, where Dudley, who had passed a better night than they had even hoped, was now lying with closed eyes, quiet and apparently calm.

It was upon Max himself, for a wonder, that the vials of the family wrath were poured. Mrs. Wedmore, happening to meet her husband while the last grievance against the girl was fresh, and before she had had the time to meditate on the result of a premature disclosure, made known to him the outrage of which she had been a witness, taking care to dwell upon the audacity of the girl in pursuing and provoking Max.

Mr. Wedmore listened in silence, and then said, curtly:

"Where is he now? Send him to me."

Max, bent upon making himself as conspicuous and, therefore, as offensive as possible, was whistling in the hall at the moment. And there was a defiant note in his very whistling which worked his father up to boiling point. Mr. Wedmore sprang off his chair and dashed open the door.

"Max, you fool, come here!" was his unpromising summons.

Max came at once, rather red in the face and bright of eyes. Mrs. Wedmore, standing, frightened and anxious, in the background, thought she had never seen her darling boy look so handsome, so manly. He came in very quietly, without swaggering, without defiance, as if he had not noticed the offensive epithet.

His father, who was by this time on the post of vantage, the hearth-rug, with his hands behind him and his back to the fire, pointed imperiously to a chair.

"Sit down, sir."

Max sat down very deliberately on a chair other than the one his father had chosen for him, and looked down on the floor.

"So you are at your old tricks, your old habits!" began Mr. Wedmore.

Max looked up. Then he sat up.

"What old tricks and habits do you mean, sir?"

"Running after every girl you see, and in defiance of all decency, under your mother's very nose."

Mrs. Wedmore would have interposed here, but her husband waved his hand imperially, and she remained silent. Max leaned back in his chair and met his father's eyes steadily.

"You have made a mistake, sir, and my mother has made a mistake, too. It is quite true she may have seen me kissing Miss—Miss—Carrie, in fact. But I hope to have the right to kiss her. I want to marry her."

"To marry this—this—"

"This beautiful young girl, whom nobody has a word to say against," interrupted Max, in a louder voice. "Come, sir, you can't say I'm at my old tricks now. I've never wanted to marry any girl before."

For the moment Mr. Wedmore was stupefied. This was worse, far worse than he had expected. Mrs. Wedmore, also, was rather shocked. But the sensation, was tempered, in her case, with admiration of her boy's spirit in daring to make this avowal.

"Mind, I only say I want to marry her. Because, so far, she has refused to have anything to say to me."

"Not refused to marry you!" broke in Mrs. Wedmore, unable to remain quiet under such provocation as this.

"Yes, refused to marry me, mother. I have asked her—begged her."

"Oh, it's only artfulness, to make you more persistent," cried Mrs. Wedmore, indignantly.

"Or perhaps," suggested Mr. Wedmore, in his driest tones, "the girl is shrewd enough to know that I should cut off a son who was guilty of such a piece of idiocy and leave him to his own resources."

Max said nothing for a moment; then he remarked, quietly:

"You have been threatening to do that already, sir, before there was any question of my marrying."

Mrs. Wedmore was frightened by the tone Max was using. He was so much quieter than usual, so much more decided in his tone, that she began to think there was less chance than usual of his coming to an agreement with his father.

"You know, Max," she said, coming over to his chair and putting an affectionate hand on his head, "that your father has only spoken to you as he has done because he wanted to rouse up your spirit and make you ashamed of being lazy."

Max rose from his chair and turned to her with flashing eyes.

"And now, when there is a chance of my rousing myself at last, when I am ready and anxious to prove it, and to set to work, and to settle down, he is angrier with me than ever. Mother, you know I'm right, and you know it isn't fair."

Mrs. Wedmore looked with something like terror into her son's handsome, excited face.

"But, my dear boy, don't you see that this would be ruin, to tie yourself to a girl like that? Why, she told me herself that she didn't belong to anywhere or anybody."

"And is that any reason why she should never belong to anywhere or to anybody? If there was anything wrong about the girl herself, I would listen to you—"

"Listen to us! You'll have to listen!" interrupted his father.

Max glanced at him, and went on:

"But there is not."

"And how do you know that? How long have you known her?"

Max was taken aback. It had not occurred to him to think how short his acquaintance with Carrie had been.

"Long enough to find out all about her," he answered, soberly; "and to make up my mind that I'll have her for my wife."

"Then that settles it," broke in Mr. Wedmore, whose ill-humor had not been decreased by the fact that Max evidently considered it more important to conciliate his mother than to try to convince him. "You will go to the Cape next month; and if you choose to take this baggage with you, you can do so. It won't much matter to us what sort of a wife you introduce to your neighbors out there."

But Max strode across the room and stood face to face with his father, eye to eye.

"No, sir," he said, in a dogged tone of voice, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets and looking at him steadily. "I shall not go to the Cape. You have a right to turn me out of your house if you please. In fact, it's quite time I went, I know. It's time I did settle down. It's time I did try to do something for myself. And I'm going to. I'm going to try to earn my own living and to make enough to keep a wife—the wife I want. And I shall do it somehow. But I'm not going to be packed off to Africa, as if my marrying this girl were a thing to be ashamed of. I'm going to stay in England. I sha'n't come near you. You needn't be afraid of that. I shall be too proud of my wife to bring her among people who would look down upon her. And perhaps you'd better not inquire where I live or what I'm doing, for we sha'n't be able to live in a fashionable neighborhood, nor to be too particular about what we turn our hands to."

While Max made this speech very slowly, very deliberately, his father listened to him with ever-increasing anger and disgust, and his mother, not daring to come too close while he was right under the paternal eye, hung over the table in the background, with yearning, tremulous love in her eyes, and with her lips parted, ready to utter the tender words of a pleading peacemaker.

But the tone Mr. Wedmore chose to take was that of utter contempt, complete irresponsibility. When his son had finished speaking he waited as if to hear whether there was any more to come, and then abruptly turned his back upon him and began to poke the fire.

"Very well," said he, with an affectation of extreme calmness. "Since you have made up your mind, the sooner you begin to carry out your plans the better. I'm very glad to see that you have a mind to make up."

"Thank you, sir," said Max.

And he was turning to leave the room, when his mother sprang forward and stopped him.

"No, no! Don't go like that! My boy! George! Don't say good-bye yet. Take a little time. Let him try a little trouble of his own for a change. He has made up his mind, he says. I'm sure he's old enough. Leave him alone."

Max put his arm round his mother, gave her a warm kiss, disengaged himself, and left the room.

The poor woman was almost hysterical.

"He means it, George! He means it this time!" she moaned.

And her husband, though he laughed at her, and though he said to himself that he did not care, was inclined to agree with her.

Max went straight up to his own room, and began to do his packing with much outward cheerfulness. Indeed he felt no depression over the dashing step he was taking, although he felt sore over the parting with home and his mother and sisters.

He was debating within himself whether he should try to see Carrie before he went, or whether he should only leave a note to be given to her after he was gone, when he heard the voice of his sister Doreen calling him. He threw open the door and shouted back.

She was in the hall.

"Max," cried she, in a hissing whisper, "I want to speak to you. Make haste!"

He ran downstairs and found her standing with two of the maids, both of whom looked rather frightened.

"Max," said Doreen, "there's an old woman hanging about the place—" Max started. He guessed what was coming. "The same old woman that came at Christmas time. She jumped up in the well-house at Anne, and sent her into hysterics. And now they've lost sight of her, just as they did last time, and we want you to help to ferret her out and send her away."

"All right," said Max. "We'll pack her off."

He was at the bottom of the staircase by this time, and was starting on his way to the yard, when a little scream from one of the two maids, as she glanced up the stairs, made him look around. Carrie had come down so lightly and so swiftly that she was upon the group before they had heard a sound. She beckoned to Max, who came back at once.

Carrie was shaking like a leaf; her eyes were wide with alarm, with terror. Max went up a few stairs, to be out of hearing of the others, as she seemed to wish. Then she whispered:

"You know who it is. I saw her. Leave her alone. I implore you to leave her alone! She'll do no harm. Let her rest. Let the poor creature rest. If—if the police—"

At that moment there was a shout from the yard outside. Carrie sprang like a hare up the stairs to the window, and looked out with straining eyes.

The afternoon was one of those dull misty winter days, with a leaden sky and an east wind.

"I'll see that she isn't hurt!" called out Max, as he bounded down the stairs and ran into the yard behind the house.

Here he found a motley group—the stablemen, the laundry-maids and the gardeners—all hunting in the many corners and crannies of the outbuildings for the old woman who had alarmed Anne.

Max spoke sharply to the men.

"Here, what are you about?" said he. "Hunting a poor old woman as if she were a wild animal? Go back to your work. She'll never dare to show her face while you are all about!"

"She's left the well-house, sir, and, we think, she's got into the big barn," explained one of the lads, with the feeling that Mr. Max himself would want to join in the chase when he knew that the game was to hand.

"Well, leave her there," answered Max, promptly. "She'll come out when you've all gone, and I'll send her about her business."

Max saw, as he spoke, that there was a man standing at a little distance just outside the stable-gate, whom he did not recognize. Before he could ask who he was, however, the man had disappeared from view. He remembered what Carrie had said about the presence of a policeman, and he thought the time was come to take the bull by the horns.

So he walked rapidly in the direction of the gate, and addressed the man whom he found there.

"Are you a policeman?" he asked, abruptly.

"Yes, sir," answered the man, touching his hat.

"What is your business here?"

"I'm on the lookout for some one I have a warrant for. Charge of murder, sir."

"Man or woman?"

"Man, sir."

"Will you tell me his name?"

"Horne, sir."

Max thought a moment.

"Why are you pottering about here, instead of going straight up to the house?"

"Well, sir, I'm obeying orders."

"Come with me," said Max suddenly. "There's an old hag hiding in the barn now, who knows more about this business than Mr. Horne."

Behind the young gentleman's back the detective smiled, but he professed to be ready to follow him.

"There's only one way out of this barn," explained Max, as he approached the door, beside which a groom was standing. "By this door, which is never locked. There is a window, but it's too high up for anybody to get out by."

Telling the groom to guard the door, Max went into the barn, followed by the detective. There was still light enough for them to find their way about among the lumber.

"Where's the window, sir?" asked the detective.

Max pointed to a speck of light high in the south wall of the barn.

"She couldn't get out there," said he, "even if she could climb up to it. Unless she could swarm a rope."

And he touched one of the ropes which dangled from a huge beam.

The detective, however, walked rapidly past him, and stopped short, pointing to something which was lying on the floor under the window.

It was the body of a man, lying in a heap.



CHAPTER XXV.

THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.

Max helped the detective raise the man from the ground. He was quite dead, and from the position in which they had found him, both men concluded that he had been in the act of climbing up to the high window, when the rope by which he was holding broke under his weight. It was evident that he had fallen upon an old millstone which was among the lumber on the floor beneath, and that the shock of the fall had broken his neck.

They had found out all this before Max could form any opinion as to the identity of the dead man. He was short of stature, and apparently between fifty and sixty years of age, slightly built, but muscular. The body was dressed in the clothes of a respectable mechanic.

There was very little light in the barn by this time, and Max directed the groom, who had been standing outside, and who had entered, attracted by Max's shout of discovery, to bring a lantern.

"I suppose we'd better send for a doctor," said Max, "though the man's as dead as a doornail. In the meantime, just give a look around and see whether the woman is anywhere about."

The detective appeared to follow the suggestion, for he at once proceeded to a further inspection of the building by the aid of one of the two lanterns which the groom had by this time brought. And presently he came back to Max with a bundle in his hand.

Max, by the light of the lantern which the groom was holding for him, was looking at the face of the dead man, whom he guessed to be one of Mrs. Higgs's accomplices, perhaps the mysterious person whose influence over the old woman, according to Carrie, was so bad.

While he was staring intently at the dead face, he heard a stifled cry, and looking up, saw that Carrie had stolen into the barn behind the groom, and had her eyes fixed upon the body.

Max sprang up.

"Do you know him? Is it the man who used to get into the place by night?" asked he, eagerly.

Carrie, without answering, looked from the dead man to the detective, and from him to the bundle he was carrying.

"Ah!" exclaimed she.

Max looked in his turn. The detective was displaying, one by one, a woman's skirt, bodice, bonnet, shawl and a cap with a "front" of woman's hair sewn inside it.

"I think you can guess, sir, what's become of the woman now?" said the officer, grimly.

Max started violently, shocked by a surprise which, both for the detective and for Carrie, had been discounted some time ago.

"Mrs. Higgs" was a man.

Even with this knowledge to help him, Max, as he stared again at the dead face, found it difficult to recognize in the still features those which in life had inspired him with feelings of repulsion.

Just a quiet, inoffensive, respectable-looking man not coarse or low in type; this would have been his comment upon the dead man, if he had known nothing about him. Max shuddered as he withdrew his gaze; and, as he did so, he met the eyes of Carrie.

He beckoned to her to come away with him, and she followed him as far as the door, toward which some members of the household, to whom the news had penetrated, were now hastening.

"Carrie!" cried he, as he looked searchingly in her face, "you knew this? How long have you known it?"

She could scarcely answer. She was shaking from head to foot, and was evidently suffering from a great shock.

"Yes, I knew it, but only since I came here. It was part of what Mr. Dudley Horne let out in his raving."

"Only part of it?" cried Max.

But Carrie would confess nothing more. And, as Mr. Wedmore came across the yard at this moment, followed by Dr. Haselden, Carrie ran back into the house as Max met his father.

"What's all this about a dead man found in the barn?" asked Mr. Wedmore, with all the arrogance of the country gentleman, who thinks that no one has a right to die on his premises without his permission.

Max held his father back for a moment until the doctor had passed on. In the excitement of this occurrence, Mr. Wedmore was glad to have an opportunity of appearing to forget that there was any quarrel between them. On second thoughts, he inclined to think that he had perhaps, on this occasion, been a little too hard on his son, and he was anxious for some loop-hole by which he could creep out of the consequences of his own sternness. This, however, could hardly have been guessed by his manner, which was at least as arrogant as ever.

"It's somebody who was mixed up in the death of Edward Jacobs, sir, I think," said Max, in a low voice. "A man who has been living down at the East End of London disguised as a woman, and who was, I believe, at the bottom of all the mischief."

"Man disguised as a woman?" cried Mr. Wedmore, incredulously. "What an improbable story! And what should he do down here in my barn?"

"I think he must have come down to see Dudley, sir. We believe that it was he who tried to drown Dudley, after he had succeeded in drowning Edward Jacobs."

Mr. Wedmore frowned in perplexity.

"Trying to drown Dudley! What on earth should he do that for? What had Dudley to do with him?"

"Well, sir, we don't quite know. But Dudley was acquainted with this man, undoubtedly, though we don't know whether he knew him to be a man, or only as Mrs. Higgs, which was the name the man went by."

"Let me see the man," said Mr. Wedmore.

And, pushing past his son, he entered the barn.

The doctor made way for him.

"He is quite dead. He must have been killed instantly," said Doctor Haselden, as his friend came up.

Mr. Wedmore took the lantern from the man who held it, and looked at the dead face. As he did so, his first expression of curiosity gave place to one of perplexity, followed by a stare of intense amazement and horror.

"What is it? Do you know him?" asked Doctor Haselden, while Max, who had followed his father in, watched with intense interest and surprise.

Mr. Wedmore did not seem to hear. He continued to look at the dead face for some moments with an appearance of utter absorption, and then, suddenly staggering back, he made for the open air without a word of explanation.

Max stared at the doctor, and then followed his father out. But Mr. Wedmore was already half way to the house, where he shut himself into the study, and locking the door, refused to be disturbed.

Max was more bewildered than ever by this new turn of affairs. With a dogged determination not to be kept any longer out of a secret of which everybody but himself seemed to know something, he went straight up to the sick-room in search of Carrie. His knock, however, was answered by the professional nurse, who opened the door and asked him what he wanted.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Max. "At least—I wanted to know how Mr. Horne is now."

"He won't be so well to-night, I expect," answered the nurse, tartly. "There's been a great noise and disturbance outside, and he's heard something of it, and it's made him restless and curious. He is asking questions about it all the time, and he won't be satisfied. He keeps asking for the other nurse, who is out taking her walk, as I tell him."

At this point Dudley's voice was heard from the bed. "Who's that at the door? Who is it?"

Max, after a moment's hesitation, during which the nurse assumed an air of washing her hands of the whole matter, answered:

"Me, old chap—Max. How are you?"

Dudley sprang up in bed. The nurse folded her arms and frowned.

"Come in, oh, come in, just one moment! I'll be quiet, nurse, quite quiet. But I must see him—I must see somebody."

Max threw an imploring glance at the nurse, who refused to look at him. Then he went in.

"Only a minute—I won't stay a minute."

The nurse shrugged her shoulders.

"It's against the doctor's orders. I wash my hands of the consequences," said she.

And, with her head held very high, she left the room.

Max stood irresolute. By the look of excitement on Dudley's face, he judged that anything must be better for him than the eager suspense from which he was evidently suffering. This news of the death of the odious inhabitant of the house by the wharf must surely bring relief to him. As soon as they were alone together, Dudley burst out eagerly:

"That noise! It's no use deceiving me; I know what it was. They were after him. Tell me—has he got away? Has my father got away?"



CHAPTER XXVI.

BACK TO LOVE AND LIFE.

Max fell into a chair. He stared at Dudley for a few moments before he could speak. Dudley's father! The man supposed to have died years and years ago in an asylum abroad, was the person who had passed as "Mrs. Higgs!" Even before he had had time to learn any of the details of the strange story, the outlines of it were at once apparent to the mind of Max.

Here was, then, the explanation of the mysterious bond between Dudley and Mrs. Higgs; here was the meaning of his visits to Limehouse.

Dudley repeated his question before Max had recovered from the shock of his surprise.

"Yes," said he at last, "he has got away."

But Dudley detected some reserve in his manner, or perhaps his own suspicions were aroused. He looked searchingly at Max, and asked abruptly:

"Is he dead?"

Max looked at him askance.

"Yes," he said at last.

Dudley lay back in his pillows.

"Thank God!"

And Max knew by the look of intense relief on his friend's face that he had done right in telling him the truth.

But, indeed, Max could not guess how intense the relief was from the burden of the secret which Dudley had had to bear for so long; and undoubtedly the discovery that it was a secret no longer, that the necessity for concealment was now over, helped his recovery materially.

Max told him, as briefly as possible, the details of the occurrence; but he neither asked nor invited any more questions.

It was not until some time afterward, when Dudley had left the sick-room, that the whole of the story became known to the family. But, in the meantime, the inquest on the body brought many facts to light.

Mrs. Edward Jacobs, the widow of the man who had been found drowned in the Thames off Limehouse some weeks before, had been, so it was discovered, the person to give information to the police against Dudley, as the suspected murderer of her husband. She had traced to him the weekly postal orders, which she looked upon as blood-money, and she had then hung about his chambers, and on one occasion followed him to Limehouse, without, however, penetrating farther than the entrance of the wharf.

Upon the information given by her a warrant was issued against Dudley; but in searching his chambers a number of letters were found, all addressed to Dudley, which threw a new and lurid light upon the affair. The letters were written by the father to the son, and contained the whole story of his return to England a few months before; of his anxiety to see his son; his morbid fear of being recognized and shut up as a lunatic, and his equally morbid hankering after information concerning Edward Jacobs, the man who had ruined him.

All these letters, which were directed in a feigned handwriting, seemed sane and sensible enough, although they showed signs of eccentricity of character.

The next batch were written after the disappearance of Edward Jacobs, and in them the signs of morbid eccentricity were more apparent. The writer owned to having "put Jacobs out of the way," upbraided Dudley for interfering on behalf of such a wretch, and accused him of ingratitude in refusing to leave England with his father, who had done mankind in general and him in particular a service in killing a monster. The writer went on to accuse Dudley of siding with his father's enemies, of wishing to have him shut up, and told him that he should never succeed.

Some of these letters were directed to The Beeches, and some to Dudley's chambers, showing an intimate knowledge of his whereabouts.

The latest letters were wilder, more bitter, showing how insanity which had broken out into violence before was increasing in intensity, and how the feelings of regard which he had seemed to entertain for his son had given place to strong resentment against him.

After the reading of these letters, it was plain that the crime of murder which Mrs. Jacobs had laid to Dudley's charge had been really the work of his father; and Mrs. Jacobs herself, on being made acquainted with these facts, agreed with this conclusion.

There remained only the question of Dudley's complicity in the crime to be considered, and that was a matter which could be left until the sick man's recovery.

It was on the first day of Dudley's appearance in the family circle that the subject was broached, clumsily enough, by Mr. Wedmore, who was dying to know a great deal more than anybody had been willing to tell him.

Dudley had come into the drawing-room, which had been well warmed for the occasion with a roaring fire, and it was here that they found him after luncheon, with the professional nurse beside him.