"The Love Story of a Bachelor" (continued 4)

When she had covered a distance of about half a mile the difficult question of the safe disposal of Diogenes arose, and, finding her unprepared with any solution of the problem, left her dismayed and perplexed, standing in the road with the subdued Diogenes beside her, at a complete loss what to do next. She looked at Diogenes, looked down the road, looked again at Diogenes, and frowned.

“Oh, you tiresome animal!” she exclaimed. “What am I to do now?”

One thing she dared not do, and that was take Diogenes back.

Peggy sat down in the hedge, risking chills and all the evils attendant on sitting upon damp ground, and drew Diogenes close to her, while she turned over in her busy brain the people she knew who would be most likely to assist her out of this difficulty. The obvious person, the one to whom she would have turned most readily to assist her with every assurance of his helpful sympathy but for that unfortunate interview in the conservatory, was Doctor Fairbridge. She felt incensed when she reflected upon that absurd scene and realised that the man had thereby made his friendship useless to her; that at this crisis when he could have served her she was debarred from seeking his aid, would have been unable to accept it had it been offered. Yet Doctor Fairbridge could have taken Diogenes, would have taken him, she, knew, and might have kept him successfully concealed at Rushleigh. Why, in the name of all that was annoying, had he been so inconsiderate as to propose to her?

“I don’t know what I am to do with you, Diogenes,” she said. “I don’t know where to hide you in a silly little place like this.”

Peggy was upset, and so worried with the whole affair, not only with the business of hiding Diogenes, but at the thought of having to part from this good companion who belonged to her in every sense save that of lawful ownership, that she here broke down and began to cry in earnest. Diogenes lifted a bandy paw and scratched her knee.

“I’m a snivelling idiot, Diogenes,” she sobbed. “But I c-can’t help it. You little know what you’ve done. I wonder whether you will be sorry when you never see me any more?”

Diogenes appeared sufficiently contrite as it was to have settled that doubt. Finding one paw ineffectual, he put both in her lap and licked her downcast face, whereupon Peggy flung her arms about his neck and wept in its thick creases.

It was at this juncture that Mr Musgrave, returning from a country walk, chanced inadvertently upon this affecting scene. So amazed was he on rounding the curve to come all unprepared upon Miss Annersley, seated in the hedge like any vagrant, and weeping more disconsolately than any vagrant he had ever seen, that he came abruptly to a standstill in front of her, and surveying the picture with a sympathy which was none the less real on account of his complete ignorance as to the cause of her grief, he exclaimed in his astonishment:

“Miss Annersley! You’ll catch a chill if you sit on the damp grass like that.”

Peggy, as much amazed at this interruption of her lamentation as the interruptor had been at sight of her lamenting, looked up with a little gasp, and then struggled to her feet, upsetting Diogenes, but not releasing her grasp on the lead, one idea alone unalterably fixed in her mind—the necessity to hold on to Diogenes in any circumstance.

“Oh, Mr Musgrave,” she cried a little wildly, “what does it matter what I catch, since I am so miserable?”

“But why,” asked John Musgrave, not unreasonably, “if you are in trouble should you add to your distress the physical incapacity to battle with it? It is very unwise to sit on the ground so early in the season.”

Peggy emitted a little strangled laugh.

“I don’t think I am very wise,” she admitted. “I am like Diogenes, all made up of impulses and tardy repentances.”

Mr Musgrave eyed Diogenes with marked disfavour. Whether it was due to a suggestion conveyed unconsciously in Peggy’s speech or to the unnaturally subdued air which Diogenes wore, he gathered the impression that the source of Peggy’s tears might be traced to the evil doings of this ferocious-looking animal.

“What,” he asked, “has Diogenes been doing now?”

The “now” was an ungenerous slip which Mr Musgrave’s good feeling would not have permitted had he reflected before speaking; it proved that Diogenes’ past misdeeds were present in his thoughts. But Peggy was too unhappy to take notice of this, as assuredly she would have done in a calmer moment.

“Diogenes,” she said, and leaned down to pat the big flat head, “has committed murder. It is only the pekinese,” she added hastily, on observing Mr Musgrave’s horrified expression. “He pretended it was a rabbit, and hunted it. I have just saved him from capital punishment and he’s in hiding. But it’s so difficult to hide him in Moresby. My uncle and aunt believe that he is shot. If they knew he wasn’t they’d be—well, they’d be glad later, I know, but just at present they would be very angry. I have got to find a home for him right away, and I don’t know where to find it. I don’t know what to do with him.”

She looked up at John Musgrave dolefully, with an appeal in the darkly grey eyes which Mr Musgrave found difficult to resist. They almost seemed to suggest that he, as a tower of strength, might aid her in this matter. Mr Musgrave began to revolve in his mind whether he could not aid her. He did not like Diogenes, and he recalled the damage Diogenes had effected in his own kitchen. That crime weighed with him more than the slaughter of the pekinese; the death of the pekinese did not concern Mr Musgrave. Had it been a case simply of the rescue of Diogenes from a perfectly just punishment it is doubtful whether Mr Musgrave’s kindness of heart would have proved equal to the sacrifice; but the assisting of Peggy Annersley was an altogether different matter. It was a matter which commended itself to Mr Musgrave as worthy of his endeavour.

“Can I not help you,” he suggested, with the faintest show of hesitation, which hesitation vanished before her radiant look, “by removing Diogenes to—to Rushleigh, or some more distant place, and getting some one to dispose of him for you? I could take him in to-day in the car.”

“Oh, will you?” Peggy cried eagerly. “Oh, Mr Musgrave, I shall be eternally grateful to you if you will.”

Mr Musgrave, although slightly embarrassed, was not indisposed to become an object for Miss Annersley’s lasting gratitude; he liked the eager impulsiveness of her speech; it made him feel that he was rendering her an inestimable service; and to render valuable service with so slight personal inconvenience was agreeable; it conveyed a comfortable sense of being useful.

“Certainly I will do that,” he said. “It is a small service. I wish I could help you more effectively.”

Mr Musgrave was quite sincere in the expression of this wish. He was well aware of Peggy’s affection for the ugly brute which was her constant companion, and he knew what a wrench it would be for her to part with Diogenes; but Diogenes’ banishment was inevitable. That point was very clear.

“If you think he will come with me I will take him now,” he said.

Diogenes appeared so very reluctant to accompany Mr Musgrave and so very determined to follow Peggy that Peggy finally suggested taking him herself, and leaving him secure under lock and key in Mr Musgrave’s garage. If this arrangement occurred to Mr Musgrave as somewhat unconventional he lost sight of its inadvisability on that account in view of the greater inadvisability of attempting to drag an unwilling bull-dog, whose unfailing gentleness he had reason to question, away from the only person who appeared to have any sort of control over him. Mr Musgrave therefore relinquished the lead and prepared to accompany Peggy and the bull-dog back to his orderly home.

A good deed may carry its own reward; but in the days that were to follow, in the weeks and months that followed, Mr Musgrave was moved to doubt the infallibility of providential recognition of unselfish deeds. It is fortunate for the persistence in the instinct for obeying a generous impulse that the future is mercifully shrouded in the obscurity of unseen things.

Arrived at the house, Mr Musgrave and Peggy and Diogenes behaved very much after the manner of three conspirators. In a sense they were conspirators, and the third was a criminal conspirator. Diogenes, with agreeable recollections of former sport connected with Mr Musgrave’s back entrance, plucked up his spirit on passing through the gate and looked expectantly round for Mr Musgrave’s cat; Peggy, with less pleasant memories of that former occasion, tightened her hold on the lead and kept an attentive eye on her charge; Mr Musgrave, conscious of nothing save the undesirability of being seen by the servants under existing circumstances, walked with a sheepish and cautious air past the back of his dwelling, and on reaching the stables threw open the door with guilty haste and drew it after him as he followed close upon Peggy’s heels. Once inside, safe from observation, with the door shut against intrusion, he assumed his normal manner, and ceased to look like a middle-aged Guy Fawkes, or a gentlemanly dog-stealer.

Chapter Twenty Four.

“What jolly stables!” Peggy cried, breathing herself more freely since the imminent discovery of Diogenes was a danger past. They had met no one in the road, had been seen by no one from the house. “You will be quite happy here, Diogenes. You must be very good, and give no trouble, mind.”

Diogenes, who was engaged on an inspection of his temporary quarters, disregarded these injunctions; he was snuffling round for rats. Peggy looked at Mr Musgrave. By a strange coincidence Mr Musgrave was looking at Peggy, looking with a close and curious scrutiny.

“You are kind,” she said. “I can never thank you.”

Her gratitude had the effect of inclining Mr Musgrave towards a greater kindliness; but, since he had undertaken to perform the sole service that presented itself as practicable, he could bethink him of nothing kinder, and so modestly deprecated her thanks.

“If Diogenes had been shot,” she said, and shivered, “it would have made me very unhappy. I’m unhappy enough as it is. I hate the thought of losing him. I can’t bear to think of never seeing him in the future.”

To hide the sudden rush of tears which she realised would be as embarrassing for John Musgrave to witness as for her to shed before him, she dropped on her knees in the straw and drew Diogenes to her and put her arms about his neck.

“Oh, Diogenes, my poor dear?” she sobbed. “Why ever did you do it? I’ve got to let you go, Diogenes. I shan’t see you any more, ever. We’ll never go for walks together again. If I’d only been with him,” she said, lifting to John Musgrave her tear-dimmed eyes, “it wouldn’t have happened.”

John Musgrave, with the scene of his wrecked china, and Diogenes standing triumphant amid the wreckage, with Peggy, dismayed and helpless, beside him, had a passing doubt whether her presence would have availed in preventing the tragedy. But, with those upturned, tear-filled eyes appealing for his sympathy, to remind her that her authority was sometimes in default was a brutality of which he was incapable.

“I am exceedingly sorry,” he said gently, “for your distress. I wish I could help you.”

“But you are helping me,” she cried. “You have taken such a load off my mind. I daresay in time I’ll get used to being without him. But he was such a—chum.”

As she knelt almost at his feet, with her arms about the ugly brute from which she was so loth to separate, she presented a picture at once so appealing and pathetic that Mr Musgrave found himself struggling with all manner of absurd impulses in his very earnest and not unnatural desire to see her grief change to gladness, and the tears melt away in smiles. He had the same feeling of uncomfortable distress in witnessing her trouble as he experienced over the lesser but more assertive troubles of John Sommers. Her tears hurt him.

“I suppose,” he said, with a certain halting indecision of manner, “we couldn’t, perhaps, find a home for him somewhere not too far away—somewhere, in fact, near enough for you to see him occasionally? I wonder... Perhaps that might be managed.”

Peggy brightened visibly and looked up at him with such a light of hope in her eyes that Mr Musgrave, from thinking that this might be managed, finally decided that it must be managed; that he, in short, must manage it. This resolve once firmly established in his mind, his thoughts busied themselves with ways and means for the safe and convenient disposal of Diogenes. But the only way which presented itself was so disturbing to Mr Musgrave that, after first considering it, he paused to reflect, and looking upon Diogenes, and having very clearly in mind the great personal inconvenience that would result from such a course, he promptly rejected it. Having rejected it, finally, as he believed, he paused again for reflection; and looking this time not upon Diogenes but straight into those clear, hopeful eyes, which seemed to look to him with such a perfect confidence in his ability to solve this difficulty that to disappoint her expectation seemed cruel after having raised her hopes, Mr Musgrave felt it imperative on him to reconsider the matter. After a somewhat protracted silence, he said: “Do you think it would be possible for me to keep him?”

Peggy was so amazed at this proposal, which in her wildest moments she had not conceived, that she released Diogenes and stood up slowly, fixing upon John Musgrave a look so charged with gratitude and admiration and an emotion which partook of neither of these qualities, but which was so expressive of itself as to move Mr Musgrave to a desire to house Diogenes, or any other beast, in order to oblige her. She approached and put her two hands into his, and, oddly, John Musgrave did not feel embarrassed. He held the small hands firmly, and looked gravely into the earnest face.

“I never thought of that,” she said. “I never thought of anything half so good as that. I don’t know what to say... It doesn’t seem fair to let you do it. I expect he’ll be an awful nuisance for a time.”

Mr Musgrave was very certain that he would be a nuisance; but he was warming to the business, and felt equal to any undertaking with that soft look in the grey eyes melting his reluctance and the small hands gripping his with such eager warmth.

“I don’t suppose we should get through without a little trouble,” he answered, smiling. “It will certainly be necessary to keep him for some weeks on the chain. I could take him for a run every day—in the early morning, and after dusk. The greatest difficulty I foresee is in the matter of his identity. I should not like to annoy Mr Chadwick. It seems acting not quite properly towards him.”

“Uncle would be as grateful as I am,” Peggy assured him, “if he knew. He hated the thought of having Diogenes destroyed. Couldn’t we disguise him somehow—paint him? I believe he could be dyed.”

“I’ll take him into Rushleigh and see what can be contrived,” he replied. “And, anyway, if necessary he can be sent away later. For the present I will adopt him. And—and any time you wish to see him you can come in and take him off the chain.”

Peggy grasped his hands more tightly.

“You are so kind, so very kind,” she said. “I will never forget. I wish there was something I could do for you.”

She looked so earnest in expressing this wish so really anxious to prove her gratitude, that Mr Musgrave felt himself sufficiently rewarded for the service he was rendering. The charge of a dog, even of a dog with such a record as Diogenes, was after, all no superhuman undertaking.

“You overestimate the service,” he said. “There is really no need for you to feel under any obligation.”

But Peggy would not allow this.

“Once,” she said slowly, taking her hands from his and moving a pace or two away, “you asked me to do something to oblige you—and I refused; refused because I saw no reason, I told you, for complying with the request.” She suddenly smiled as she met his quiet scrutiny, and made a slight gesture with her hand in the direction of the dog. “You might quite as aptly apply that argument in this case; there really isn’t any reason why you should oblige me now.”

“Not so,” he interrupted. “The reason lies in my wish to oblige you.” Peggy nodded.

“That is a reason I also have discovered,” she said. “I can give the promise now which you asked me for on Christmas Eve—do you remember?... about the smoking... because the argument I used then doesn’t hold any longer. I wish,” she added, “that I had given the promise at the time.”

“Thank you,” John Musgrave returned quietly.

It was a curious fact, in consideration of how objectionable the practice of smoking in women had once appeared to Mr Musgrave, that he should experience so little triumph in this victory. He had seen Peggy smoke on two separate occasions, and, although the sight had pleased him ill, he had reluctantly admitted that with some women the habit, if deplorable, was not unbecoming. The reason Peggy allowed for making the promise, rather than the promise itself, gave John Musgrave pleasure.

Peggy took an affectionate farewell of the wondering Diogenes, enjoining on him the necessity for behaving with the utmost propriety; and then, while Mr Musgrave held the door cautiously ajar, she slipped out after him through the narrow opening and left Diogenes, indignantly protesting, on the other side.

Peggy returned home with a heart so lightened that she found it difficult to dissemble before the Chadwicks and wear a mien becoming to the double tragedy that had robbed Mrs Chadwick of her pampered pet and herself of her daily companion.

“I am awfully sorry, Peggy,” her uncle said, putting an arm through hers as they went in to lunch together, “about Diogenes. I know you will miss him a lot. But your aunt was so upset there was nothing else for it. He had to be got rid of.”

“He had to be got rid of,” echoed Peggy, and lifted a pair of reproachful eyes to his face. “You might have thought of a kinder way out,” she said. “You could quite easily have found him a home, and have got rid of him that way. Poor Diogenes!”

“I wish I had,” he said. “But Ruby worried me. There wasn’t time to think... Well, his troubles are over now, poor brute!”

Whereat Peggy involuntarily smiled. Diogenes’ troubles, like John Musgrave’s, were, she realised, only just beginning.

Chapter Twenty Five.

The troubles of Mr Musgrave as the owner of a bull-dog began forthwith and multiplied exceedingly. Diogenes was driven into Rushleigh that afternoon in the car, and subsequently, to his secret disgust, returned disguised as a brindle, which disguise he diligently sought to remove with so much success that the journeys to Rushleigh became periodic, and Diogenes underwent chameleon-like changes in the intervals.

A large dog-kennel and brand-new chain were purchased, and, save when Mr Musgrave took Diogenes for the daily run, and Peggy, availing herself of his permission, slipped in through the tradesmen’s entrance and released her excited pet, Diogenes spent his days in complaining inactivity, with ample time in which to reflect upon his misdeeds.

The arrival of Diogenes affected some change in Mr Musgrave’s household. Eliza promptly gave notice. She would, she informed the surprised master of the establishment, as soon remain in a place with an elephant. Martha, who would have suffered elephants and other undesirable pets rather than quit Mr Musgrave’s service, sought to propitiate Diogenes, and, being a disciple of the famous explorer who phrased the axiom that the stomach governs the world, she carried bones and other delicacies to Diogenes’ kennel, to the detriment of his figure, and so won his affections that after Peggy, whom he adored, and Mr Musgrave, to whom he became speedily attached, Martha ranked as his very good friend.

The chauffeur had his doubts about Diogenes, and he nursed darker doubts in regard to his employer. To take a white bull-dog into Rushleigh and fetch home a brindle that was constantly changing its coat occurred to King is a highly suspicious circumstance.

“There’ll be a police case over that dog,” he remarked to Martha. “You mark my words. I’ve known similar cases and they’ve always been found out. The governor’s asking for trouble.”

The weight upon Mr Musgrave’s conscience attendant on the duplicity which he of necessity was called upon to practise daily was so burdensome that he was imperatively moved to confide in some one, and thereby share, if not shift, the responsibility. Some idea of confiding in Walter Errol had been with him from the first; and, meeting the vicar one morning when he was returning from an early walk with Diogenes, the desire to unburden his mind hardened to a determination upon perceiving the amazement in the vicar’s eyes as they rested upon the dog he led an unwilling captive on the chain.

The vicar halted in the road and laughed.

“I heard you were starting kennels,” he said; “but, upon my word! I didn’t believe it. Wherever did you buy that dog?”

Mr Musgrave had not bought Diogenes and he had no intention of pretending that he had.

“It was given to me,” he said.

“Oh, that explains it,” the vicar answered.

But even while he spoke it occurred to Mr Musgrave that the dog had not been given to him; he had offered to take it.

“I am taking care of it for some one,” he corrected himself.

The vicar looked mystified and faintly amused.

“That’s doing a lot for friendship, isn’t it, John?” he asked.

John Musgrave reddened.

“Is obliging a friend an excessive courtesy?” he inquired.

“Well, no. I stand rebuked.”

The vicar stooped and patted Diogenes and looked him over critically.

“It’s a funny thing,” he said, “but he’s extraordinarily like the bull they had up at the Hall—except, of course, for his colour.”

“He is,” Mr Musgrave said, firing off his bomb as calmly as though he were making a very ordinary statement, “the same dog.”

“Oh!” said the vicar, and straightened himself and looked John Musgrave squarely in the eyes. “I understood,” he said, “that Diogenes was shot.”

“Diogenes ought to have been shot,” replied Mr Musgrave, and it ran through his mind at the moment to wish that Diogenes had been shot, but he checked the ungenerous thought, and added: “Miss Annersley rescued him and smuggled him away. He is, as a matter of fact, in hiding from the authorities.”

“Which accounts,” remarked the vicar, “for his colour.” He stooped to pat Diogenes again in order to conceal from his friend’s eyes the smile in his own. “And Miss Annersley brought him to you?” he said, with the mental addition, “Little baggage?”

“No,” said Mr Musgrave, and proceeded with great care to outline the facts of the case, omitting details as far as possible. “She was so very upset,” he finished. “And really it seemed regrettable to sacrifice a valuable dog after the mischief was done. The only uneasiness I feel in the matter is in regard to the Chadwicks. I should not like to annoy them.”

“I think you may put that fear out of your thoughts at least,” Mr Errol replied. “Only yesterday Mr Chadwick was telling me how vexed he was to have been obliged to destroy the dog. He expressed the wish that he had sent him away instead.”

Reassured on this head, Mr Musgrave looked relieved.

“I’m glad to know that,” he said. “Quite possibly Diogenes will be received back into the family later on, when time has softened Mrs Chadwick’s chagrin.”

“In the meanwhile,” Walter Errol said, laughing, “I foresee your attachment for the—dog having grown to the extent of refusing to part with him.”

John Musgrave was by nature literal, nor did he on this occasion depart from his habit of interpreting his friend’s speech to the letter rather than the spirit.

“My affection for Diogenes,” he returned, “will be tempered always with anxiety. And in any case the motive which led to my adoption of him will qualify any distress I may feel in parting with him. It will give me immense pleasure to restore her pet to Miss Annersley.”

“Yes,” agreed the vicar decidedly, “Miss Annersley, of course, must have Diogenes back.”

He returned to the vicarage for breakfast in a highly amused frame of mind, but, having been sworn by John Musgrave to secrecy, was denied the pleasure of relating this amazing tale of Mr Musgrave’s benevolence for the benefit of his wife. The story of Diogenes must for the present remain a secret.

But as a secret shared by an increasing number of persons it stood in considerable danger of ultimate disclosure. The risk of discovery in the quarter in which discovery was most to be avoided was minimised by the departure, of the Chadwicks for the Continent a month earlier than had been intended. The responsibility for hastening the departure rested with Mr Chadwick, who, worried with his wife’s constant bewailing her pet’s untimely end, and equally harassed by his niece’s uncomplaining but very obvious regret for her faithful four-footed companion, decided that change of scene might help them to forget these small troubles which depressed the atmosphere of his hitherto genial home.

Peggy, from motives quite apart from the distress she successfully feigned, encouraged him in this belief, and once away from Moresby brightened so suddenly and became so surprisingly cheerful that her uncle was puzzled to understand why his wife did not show a corresponding gaiety, but continued to bemoan her loss as she had done at home.

Because the murder of Diogenes had lain heavily on his conscience in consideration of the girl’s affection for the dog, the reaction of Peggy’s spirits occasioned Mr Chadwick immense relief. She could not, he decided, have been so devoted to the brute as he had supposed. But in any case he felt grateful to her for her generosity in sparing him reproach. The only reproach he received in respect of Diogenes’ end came from a quarter whence he least expected it, and from whence it was least deserved. So little prepared was he to hear his wife denounce the execution of Diogenes as mistaken and absurd, and to complain of this ill-advised act as vexatious to herself, that he found no words in which to answer her. It was significant of the unreasonableness of human nature, he reflected, that she could hurl such a charge at him, and feel herself ill-used by a prompt obedience to her expressed wish. Also it pointed to the unwisdom of carrying out a death sentence within twenty-four hours of its delivery. The road was already in the making along which Diogenes would eventually return.

Peggy decided that when they got home she would bring Diogenes to life by degrees. She was not specially desirous of bringing him to life in a hurry, her reasons for a gradual resuscitation being governed by considerations of so complex and feminine a character that Mr Musgrave would have failed to follow them. The vicar, on the other hand, would have apprehended her motives very readily; he had a surer grasp than John Musgrave on the complexities of the human mind.

To one person in Moresby the addition of Diogenes to Mr Musgrave’s establishment afforded entire satisfaction; that person was Miss Simpson. For the bull-dog at the Hall she had confessed to absolute terror; but Mr Musgrave’s brindle was a dear, so much handsomer and more gentle.

She noted the hour for Mr Musgrave’s walk in Diogenes’ company and, though he changed the direction of his walk daily, almost invariably the pertinacious spinster ran him to earth, and, to his intense annoyance, joined him and entreated permission to hold Diogenes’ chain.

That was the greatest of the many embarrassments Diogenes occasioned Mr Musgrave. He began unconsciously to look for Miss Simpson’s spare figure furtively behind trees and hedges as he proceeded on his way; when it flashed abruptly upon him, appearing unexpectedly round a bend of the road, or starting up, as it seemed to his surprised eyes, out of the very ground, he experienced a desire to loosen Diogenes’ chain and set him at her. He was growing to hate the sight of her thin, eager face. And her comparisons of the two dogs, which were one dog, disconcerted him. He came near to taking her into the secret at times. It puzzled him to think what she would make of it if she learned the truth.

Miss Simpson was so anxious to establish the fact of the marked similarity in their tastes that she blundered into the declaration that she doted on dogs, particularly bull-dogs. Mr Musgrave received this statement coldly.

“I am afraid I cannot sympathise with your enthusiasm,” he replied. “I dislike dogs—particularly bull-dogs.”

“Then why,” asked Miss Simpson very naturally, “do you keep a bull-dog?”

“I am only taking care of it for a friend,” he explained.

“How very kind of you,” she gushed. “Such a responsibility, other people’s pets.”

She embarked upon a windy dissertation about a cat she had once taken charge of for some one, and the trouble and expense this ungrateful animal had caused her.

“But you can’t chain up a cat,” she explained. “People are so selfish. They never consider how they trespass on one’s kindness.”

“If service called for no sacrifice it would not be kindness,” Mr Musgrave replied sententiously.

“Ah, how true that is!” exclaimed Miss Simpson. “You have such a comprehensive way of putting things. One ought to be kind, of course.”

“I think,” he replied with emphasis, “if the desire to be kind is lacking, it is just as well to leave it alone.”

“Yes,” she acquiesced flatly. “That’s true, too. But we most of us desire to be kind, don’t we?”

“No,” he returned in his bluntest manner; he was feeling too annoyed to wish to be civil. “I fancy in the majority of us that desire is a negligible quantity.”

“But not in you,” she said insinuatingly.

“In me most pronouncedly,” he asserted with conviction.

If this quality were not lacking in himself in a general sense he knew at that moment it was most assuredly lacking in relation to her. Mr Musgrave, having been guilty of ungraciousness, was immediately ashamed of his irritation, and during the remainder of the walk he sought to atone for his former discourtesy by a greater amiability than Miss Simpson was accustomed to from him—a mistaken form of kindness which led to the encouragement of all manner of false hopes in Miss Simpson’s maiden mind.

Chapter Twenty Six.

John Musgrave sat at his solitary breakfast-table and regarded the covered dishes before him with, for the first time within his memory, so little interest in their contents that he felt a strange disinclination to uncover them. This lack of appetite, he decided, resulted either from indisposition or from approaching age. Since he felt no indisposition, he attributed it to the latter cause. Persons of advancing middle-age were less hearty than youth at the beginning of the day. That was only natural. Therefore he did not lift the covers, but made an indifferent breakfast of toast and coffee.

Nevertheless, as the day advanced, he made the further discomfiting discovery that this lack of interest was not confined solely to the table, but spread itself like a blight over the ordinary affairs of life. He was oddly disinclined to follow any of his usual pursuits. Mr Musgrave was unaccountably bored with everything. He experienced a restlessness foreign to his habitual placidity, which restlessness, by reason of its strangeness, worried him considerably. It was inconceivable that after forty years of tranquil contentment he should develop the quality which of all others he had found so difficult to comprehend or sympathise with. Yet restless he was, and dissatisfied—dissatisfied, with Moresby and the even tenor of his days. He wanted inexplicably to fling things into a portmanteau and start off for some place—any place that was fairly distant.

He did not, of course, yield to this extraordinary impulse. Being moved by such an impulse was sufficiently amazing; to have obeyed it would have been more amazing, still. He went instead into the garden and freed Diogenes from the chain, and allowed him to exercise unchecked over the flower borders, to the indignant astonishment of Bond, who was preparing the beds for the spring planting.

“Blest if he ain’t gone dotty over that there dog,” he complained.

And the cat, who was airing herself in the belief that her enemy was confined to the restricted limits of the chain, sought refuge up a tree, and gloomily watched Diogenes as he gambolled below. She had refused to follow Eliza’s example and evacuate in the enemy’s favour, but her resentment of Diogenes’ presence was bitter and prolonged; it declined to soften before Diogenes’ persistent overtures towards a greater friendliness. Her disapproval remained closely associated with that first unfortunate meeting, which proved an unforgiving spirit. Diogenes and Mr Musgrave had decided to forget that occasion and were, as a result, firm friends.

When Diogenes was again on the chain, and Mr Musgrave was once more facing the unwanted viands on his table, looking about him round the large empty room—empty that is, in the matter of companionship—he made the biggest and most startling discovery of the lay: he was lonely—really lonely, as he had not been since the months immediately following his sister’s marriage. Why, in the name of mystery, should he, who had not enjoyed companionship in his home since his sister had left it, who had not, save in a vague fashion when she left him solitary after one of her brief return visits, felt the need of companionship, be suddenly gripped with this desolating sense of loneliness? He could not understand it; and it was the more disconcerting on account of his inability to comprehend this obsession which fretted him, and prevented him from settling calmly to the ordinary routine of the lay.

Mr Musgrave lunched sparingly and later set out for the vicarage for a chat with the vicar. He remained for tea, and in the genial society of the Errols forgot his depression to the extent of believing himself cured of the inconvenience. But the depression had lightened merely temporarily under the influence of that cheery little home circle: out again in the open, facing the keen east wind, John Musgrave felt the heaviness of his mood descending upon him once more, and with an odd distaste for his lonely fireside he fetched Diogenes and took him for a long walk.

On returning from this walk Mr Musgrave did an unexampled thing. Instead of taking Diogenes back to his kennel he led him into the house, into the drawing-room, having removed the chain in the hall and left it hanging there. Diogenes, with the noblesse oblige of good breeding, accepted all this as a matter of course, and, having first made a snuffing tour of inspection round the room, walked to the big skin rug before the fire and lay down. So uncertain was he of the enduring nature of this concession that he did not permit himself to sleep, but lay, winking complacently at the flames, and furtively every now and again blinking at Mr Musgrave. Mr Musgrave seated himself wearily in a chair and stared reflectively at Diogenes.

“I begin to believe,” he said half aloud, “that there is considerable companionableness in a dog. I wonder that I never kept a dog.”

Diogenes, under the impression that he was being directly addressed, got up and moved nearer to Mr Musgrave and sat on his haunches, looking with his bulging, affectionate eyes into Mr Musgrave’s face. The man put out a hand and caressed the big head.

“I daresay you are lonely too,” he said. “You miss your mistress, I expect.”

The bulging eyes were eloquent.

“I think, Diogenes,” Mr Musgrave added, “that you are sufficiently well behaved to be allowed indoors. I—like to see you here.”

Diogenes thumped the carpet with his tail, which was tantamount to replying that he liked being there and was very well satisfied to remain.

Mr Musgrave continued caressing the big head and talking fragmentally with his dumb friend, until the booming of the gong warned him of the hour. He rose to go to his room to dress, and, when Diogenes would have accompanied him, pointed to the rug and bade him lie there and wait. Perplexed, but obedient, Diogenes returned to the fire, and Mr Musgrave left him there, and stepping forth into the hall and closing the door behind him, was surprised to find himself confronted with Martha, Martha hot and red in the face from the exertions of preparing the evening meal, and so manifestly worried that something more than Mr Musgrave’s dinner must have been bearing on her mind.

Mr Musgrave halted and regarded her inquiringly, and Martha, with the fear of King’s warning relative to the police and the criminal nature of concealing dogs exciting her worst apprehensions, informed him dolefully that some one must have taken Diogenes away.

“I went out to ’is blessed kennel to take him a few bones,” she explained, “an’ the turn it give me to find the dear hanimal gone—chain an’ all, sir.”

Mr Musgrave with the utmost gravity pointed to the door at his back.

“Diogenes is in there,” he announced. “I forgot his feeding time.”

Martha gasped.

“In the drawing-room, sir?” she ejaculated.

“I was lonely,” Mr Musgrave explained. From force of long habit he treated Martha as a tried and trusted friend. “I find him companionable.”

“Lor’!” remarked Martha. She scrutinised her master attentively, the idea that he must be sickening for something suggesting itself to her mind. “Dogs are company, that’s certain,” she said. “When he’s ’ad ’is supper you’d like ’im back in the drawing-room, I suppose, sir?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I think he is sufficiently at home now to be allowed to run about as he likes.”

Martha took Diogenes to the kitchen and fed him, contemplating him with renewed interest while he gnawed his bones under the table.

“There’s something about that hanimal as I don’t understand,” she mused. “If that ain’t the same dog, though different, as burst in after the cat with the young lady from the ’All, I’ll eat my apron. It’s the same young lady comes to see ’im, anyway. If it isn’t ’er dog what does she come for? And if it is ’er dog what’s the master doing with it? It’s my belief,” she further reflected, wiping the perspiration from her face with the apron she had dedicated to gastronomic purposes, “that the master is courtin’ the young lady, or the young lady is courtin’ the master, through that blessed dog. Now I wonder,” and Martha turned to the stove and went through mysterious manoeuvres with the vessels upon it, “how that will work? Come to my time o’ life and his, change—that kind of change—makes for trouble as a rule.”

Small wonder that in the disturbed preoccupation of his cook’s mind Mr Musgrave’s dinner that night suffered in the cooking. But Mr Musgrave was himself too preoccupied to notice this; the business of eating had no interest for him.

He was relieved on returning to the drawing-room to find Diogenes in occupation of the rug once more; and Diogenes, who had the gregarious instinct even more deeply implanted than Mr Musgrave, in whom it was a recent development, welcomed him effusively and finally stretched himself at Mr Musgrave’s feet and snorted contentedly, while the master, of the house sat back in his chair and read, and—which did not astonish Diogenes, though it would have amazed anyone intimate with John Musgrave’s lifetime habits—violated another rule by smoking a cigar while he read.

The grouping of the man and the dog in the warm, firelit room made a pleasing, homelike picture, so different in effect from the ordinary picture of John Musgrave reading in scholarly solitude by his shaded lamp, without the solace of tobacco even, that it scarcely seemed the same room or the same man seated in the big chair wreathed in ascending clouds of blue smoke spirals.

This picture, as it impressed the vicar, when a few evenings later he was shown in and beheld a similar grouping, so similar that it appeared as if the man and dog had remained in the same positions without interruption, was so surprising, despite its cosy, natural air, that he entirely forgot the object of his visit, nor remembered it until he was on his homeward way.

“Hallo!” he exclaimed, as John Musgrave rose to greet him, and, removing the cigar from his mouth, wrung his hand warmly. “You look jolly comfortable. The wind is bitter to-night. It is good to shelter in a room like this.”

“Sit down,” said Mr Musgrave. He pushed the cigars towards his friend. “Will you smoke?” he asked.

Walter Errol’s eyes twinkled as he accepted a cigar and snipped the end with a contemplative stare at Diogenes. He did not, however, betray the amazement he felt, but appeared to regard these innovations as very ordinary events.

The big dog sprawling before the hearth and the smoke-laden atmosphere of the room which, until Mrs Chadwick had first profaned it, had been preserved from the fumes of tobacco, were surprisingly agreeable novelties. The vicar had seldom enjoyed an evening in John Musgrave’s drawing-room so much as he enjoyed that evening, sitting chatting with his friend over old college days and acquaintances. It was late when he rose to go, and still he had not mentioned the matter about which he had come, did not mention it at all; it had slipped from his mind entirely.

“It’s so comfortable here,” he said, with his jolly laugh, “that I’m loth to go, John. There is only one substitution I could suggest, and one addition, to improve the picture.”

“What are they?” asked Mr Musgrave, his glance travelling round the homelike room.

The vicar paused and seemed to reflect.

“Well,” he said at last, “I would substitute a child in place of the dog, and... But you don’t need to inquire what form the addition would take. We’ve discussed all that before. I’m not sure I wouldn’t make them both additions,” he added, “and let the dog remain.”

Mr Musgrave reddened.

“Don’t you think,” he suggested, with a diffidence altogether at variance with his usual manner of receiving this advice, “that I am rather old for such changes?”

“You are just over forty,” the other answered, “and forty is the prime of life... Any age is the prime of life when a man is disposed to regard it so. You grow younger every day, John.”

When the vicar left him John Musgrave returned to the fire and stood beside Diogenes on the rug, staring thoughtfully down into the flames. In the heart of the flames he saw a picture of an upturned face, of a pair of darkly grey eyes gazing earnestly into his.

“You are so kind, so very kind.” The words repeated themselves in his memory. “I wish there was something I could do for you...”

John Musgrave stirred restlessly. Were the words sincere, he wondered? They had been sincere at the time, he knew; but possibly they had been prompted by the gratitude of the moment; and gratitude is no more enduring than any other quality. He glanced at Diogenes, who, with a much-wrinkled brow, was also contemplating the flames.

“I think it would be extortionate to demand payment for the service, Diogenes,” he said.

Diogenes looked up and snorted approval.

“It is, after all, a privilege to feel that one has rendered some service and has received her thanks. I don’t think it would be fair—to her—to expect more.”

Chapter Twenty Seven.

May was well advanced before the Chadwicks returned from their wanderings. They came home unexpectedly towards the middle of the month, cutting short their stay in London because certain matters in Moresby called imperatively for Mrs Chadwick’s immediate attention; and Peggy, for another reason which she did not explain, was very ready to fling aside the holiday mood and return to work.

The first intimation John Musgrave received of the Chadwicks’ return came from the fountain head, being conveyed to him in a manner and at a moment when, glad though he was to learn that the family was home again, he would have preferred to have remained in ignorance until a more favourable opportunity. As matters fell out, however, he made the best of them, and wore as composed a mien as possible in face of an embarrassing situation.

Mr Musgrave was starting out for his customary morning walk in Diogenes’ company when outside his gate he came very unexpectedly full upon Will Chadwick. Had Diogenes’ memory been less faithful the meeting might have passed off without awkwardness; but Diogenes, recognising his former master, became so wildly effusive in his welcome that Mr Chadwick during the first few moments could not disentangle himself from the dog’s excited embraces, or return Mr Musgrave’s greeting. He laughed when finally he shook John Musgrave’s hand.

“Your dog seems to have taken a violent fancy to me,” he said.

“Quiet, Diogenes!” Mr Musgrave commanded unthinkingly. “Down, sir!”

Will Chadwick looked at Diogenes, and from the dog to Mr Musgrave. Then he looked again at Diogenes more attentively. There was in the protracted scrutiny, in the queer glint in the indolent blue eyes, a hint of something very like suspicion, as though Mr Musgrave’s ingenuousness were being questioned. King’s face, when Mr Musgrave took the dog into Rushleigh for purposes of the toilet, wore much the same expression.

“This is a surprise,” exclaimed Mr Musgrave. “I had no idea you were back.”

“We got home last night. Motored from town; a good run, but tiring.”

“I trust,” Mr Musgrave said, “that the ladies are well?”

“First rate, thanks.” Will Chadwick watched Mr Musgrave as, having succeeded in grasping Diogenes’ collar, he promptly fixed the chain. “New dog, eh?” he said.

“I have had him some months,” Mr Musgrave replied. “But I prefer to keep him on the chain when we get outside the gate. He is a bit wild.”

“Seems to be—yes.”

Mr Chadwick continued to regard the dog reflectively. He had heard of people turning suddenly white through shock; he was wondering whether change of residence could have the effect of changing a white bull-dog into a brindle.

“You call him Diogenes?” he observed. “It’s odd, but he is so like the dog we had I could almost swear it is the same. Same stock, perhaps. What’s his pedigree?”

“I really haven’t an idea,” Mr Musgrave replied, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. “The resemblance you speak of to your dog is very marked. I have observed it myself. I call him Diogenes on that account.”

“Oh!” said Mr Chadwick.

The talk hung for a time. Mr Chadwick was debating whether a strong family likeness between two animals might extend to the affections in so far as to incline them towards the same persons. Mr Musgrave’s brindle betrayed the fawning devotion towards himself that he had been accustomed to from his own dog.

“He’s a nice-looking beast,” he remarked, still scrutinising Diogenes closely. “Might be a prize dog if it wasn’t for his coat.”

“What is wrong with his coat?” inquired Mr Musgrave anxiously.

“That is what I should like to be able to state definitely. The colour isn’t good.”

The speaker here examined the dog at a nearer range, to Mr Musgrave’s further discomfiture. When he faced Mr Musgrave again there was a puzzled questioning in his eyes, but he made no further allusion to the dog; the subject was tacitly dropped.

The wisdom of having Diogenes on the chain was manifested when the moment arrived for Mr Chadwick to separate from Diogenes and his new master and proceed on his homeward way. Diogenes, despite a very real attachment for his new owner, was faithful to the old allegiance and showed so strong a desire to follow Will Chadwick to the Hall that Mr Musgrave had to exert his strength in order to restrain him. The business of holding Diogenes as he tugged determinedly at the chain put Mr Musgrave to the undignified necessity of tugging also. Mr Chadwick left them struggling in the road and proceeded on his way with an amused smile; a smile which broadened and finally ended in a laugh.

“I wonder what he smears on the coat to make him that colour?” he mused as he walked. Then he laughed again.

With the knowledge of the Chadwicks’ return Mr Musgrave realised the necessity for keeping Diogenes once more strictly on the chain, save only when he had the dog with him in the house; and Diogenes, resenting this return to captivity, sulked in his kennel and brooded dark plans of escape during his compulsory inactivity. The desire to escape hardened into an unalterable resolve following on a visit from Peggy, which visit moved him to such transports of delight that Peggy found it as much as she could do to prevent herself from being knocked over. She clung, laughing, to Mr Musgrave’s arm for support when Diogenes hurled himself upon her; and King, who at the moment of her arrival had been engaged in the motor-house with Mr Musgrave, regarded the grouping with disfavour, until, catching Mr Musgrave’s eye, he left what he was doing and retired.

“Oh,” cried Peggy, “isn’t he glad to see me?”

She let go of Mr Musgrave’s arm and busied herself with Diogenes, while Mr Musgrave looked on, feeling unaccountably very much out in the cold.

“He is looking well,” she said, glancing up at John Musgrave and flushing brightly as she met his eye. “He has grown quite stout.”

“That,” said Mr Musgrave, “is Martha’s fault. She can’t understand that over-feeding is as injurious as the other extreme. She shows her affection for Diogenes by pandering to his appetite.”

“Martha is a dear,” the girl said warmly. “You are a lucky dog, Diogenes, to have found so kind a home. I hope he is good, that he doesn’t give any trouble. Has he broken anything more?”

“No,” said Mr Musgrave, and smiled at the memories her words recalled. “He behaves excellently. Of late I have accustomed him to the house. I find him companionable, and he dislikes being chained here.”

Peggy looked amazed.

“But I thought you—didn’t allow dogs indoors?” she said.

“I have never had a dog before,” he replied. “I allow Diogenes the run of the house. The concession was made when you went away, because—because he seemed to miss you.”

“You dear?” Peggy said, hugging Diogenes.

It was not very clear whether the term of endearment referred to Mr Musgrave or the dog; but, since it was Diogenes who received the embrace, the verbal caress might have been intended for the man. Peggy stood up, and turned to John Musgrave impulsively.

“What can I say,” she cried, “what can I do to prove how grateful I am?”

“I don’t think any proof of your gratitude is needed,” he replied. “Besides, there is no reason why you should feel grateful. In the first place, it was a small thing to do; and in the second, I have grown attached to the dog, and am glad of his company. My fireside would seem very solitary without him.”

Peggy’s bright face clouded.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, thinking of her plans for the resurrection of Diogenes. “Then you will want to keep him?”

He shook his head.

“I quite appreciate the fact that he is only a trust. When you are ready for him he will be more than glad to return.”

“But,” she protested, “that wouldn’t be fair—to you.”

Unwittingly Mr Musgrave had roused her sympathy by that reference to his solitary fireside. It seemed rather selfish to claim Diogenes when he had grown attached to the dog.

“It wouldn’t be fair to you,” he returned, “or to Diogenes, if I kept him. That was not a part of the contract.”

“Was there any contract?” she asked, smiling. “I understood that you sacrificed your personal inclination in order to get Diogenes and me out of a hole. It was a hole, wasn’t it?”

She laughed. It was easy to laugh now over the miseries of that morning, but it had been no laughing matter at the time. John Musgrave had rendered her an unforgettable service in rescuing her from that dilemma.

“It was a hole—yes,” he admitted. He looked at her fixedly. “If, as you say, I sacrificed my inclination on that occasion, I have been adequately rewarded since; and so, you see, I can’t look on the matter as one requiring thanks. I will keep Diogenes until you are quite ready for him; then you can come in and fetch him, as you do now—and not bring him back again.”

While he spoke it was abruptly borne in on John Musgrave’s consciousness that he would miss, besides Diogenes, these surreptitious visits of Peggy Annersley’s to which he was growing accustomed, though he did not always see her when she slipped in at his back entrance; but when he purposely put himself in the way, as upon the present occasion, he felt increasingly obliged to Diogenes, and to the accident of circumstances that was responsible for bringing her there.

“I believe,” Peggy said unexpectedly, “that I shall be rather sorry when that day comes. It’s such fun sharing a jolly secret like this. There is a feeling of adventure... a sort of alliance of conspiracy. If Moresby only knew!”

If Moresby did not actually know, it suspected more than Miss Annersley guessed, and it was beginning to talk. Mr Musgrave’s reputation, which had stood the test of years, was suddenly observed to be inclining dangerously, upsetting the popular belief in the rocklike foundations of its structural character; suggesting, indeed, the sandy nature of the soil which formed its basis. The best of servants will talk; and, save for Martha, Mr Musgrave’s servants were not superior in this respect to any others. Miss Peggy Annersley’s visits to Mr Musgrave’s establishment were fairly generally known and discussed in the village.

“When I take Diogenes from you,” Peggy added, “you will have to come and visit him. He’ll feel hurt if you don’t.”

“I shall come,” John Musgrave answered quietly, “often. After all, I have a certain right in the dog.”

Peggy nodded.

“He’s yours and mine,” she rejoined, with a beautiful disregard for the fact that Diogenes was in reality Mr Chadwick’s property. “He’s really more yours than mine, because he would have had to go to strangers if you hadn’t saved him, and then I should never have seen him again. It’s rather amusing being joint owners in a dog. Do you remember telling me you didn’t like dogs? I knew you must be mistaken.”

“I am beginning to believe,” he replied, “that that was only one of many mistaken ideas. It is, as a matter of fact, a mistake to express a decided opinion on any subject in which one is inexperienced.”

Peggy glanced at him with newly-kindled interest, a little puzzled as well as pleased at his frank admission. Then meeting his gaze fully she abruptly lowered her own, and looked delightfully shy.

“I think,” she said irrelevantly, “I’ll take Diogenes for his walk.”

Mr Musgrave stooped and unfastened the chain. There was no need for a lead when Diogenes went abroad with Peggy.

“Come with me,” she said coaxingly, when they reached the gate, “as far as the second field. There are bulls in it.”

Mr Musgrave thought it very proper that Peggy should be afraid of bulls; he therefore very willingly accompanied her for her protection. And when the danger was past, having in mind that possibly the bulls would be still there when she returned from her walk, he suggested the advisability of his accompanying her all the way.

“Will you?” Peggy cried. “That will be nice. You are sure you don’t mind?”

Mr Musgrave was very positive on this point. Indeed, he minded so little that when they met the vicar, and subsequently Miss Simpson, he experienced so little embarrassment in being seen in Miss Annersley’s company that he felt rather pleased than disconcerted when these encounters sprang unexpectedly upon them. Mr John Musgrave was, in the light of Moresby tradition, “walking out.”

Chapter Twenty Eight.

Mr Errol, seated in his pleasant drawing-room scanning a newspaper while his wife occupied herself with some sewing in the twilight hour before the lamps were lighted, suddenly lowered his paper, and looked with surprised eyes towards the window, which he faced. For a moment he doubted the evidence of his senses. Had his eyesight been less keen and his mind less evenly balanced, he might have been deceived into believing that his imagination was playing him tricks; but, after the first moment of doubt, he realised that the amazing sight of Mr Musgrave peeping surreptitiously in through the window and almost immediately withdrawing with the guilty alacrity of a person caught in some unlawful act was no optical illusion, but a very astounding actuality.

He glanced at his wife to discover whether she had observed these unusual proceedings, and, finding that her attention was absorbed in her occupation, he rose quietly, and without saying anything to her went out to investigate matters. Why, in the name of mystery, should John Musgrave prowl about outside the house after the manner of a clumsy trespasser, instead of ringing the bell and stating his business in the ordinary way?

The vicar opened the front door and stepped out on the gravelled path, whereupon Mr Musgrave came quickly forward from his place of concealment, and, still looking nervous and painfully self-conscious, approached him.

“I am so glad you have come,” he said. “I was not sure whether you saw me.”

“Oh, I saw you,” the vicar answered. “Anyone might have seen you. If it had not been yourself, I should have suspected a design on my spoons. Why didn’t you come in?”

“I wanted to see you alone—on a very private matter. I want your help.”

The vicar looked faintly surprised. He had on occasions required John Musgrave’s help, though not in any personal sense, but he could not remember in all their long acquaintance that John Musgrave had made a demand of this nature before. It puzzled him to think what form the request would take.

“Whatever the service may be, you can count it as promised,” he said.

“Thank you,” Mr Musgrave returned warmly. “I know I can rely both on your assistance and on your discretion. The fact is, Walter, I have a—a—ahem! a note which I wish delivered to Miss Annersley by a trusty messenger. It must not reach any hand but her own, and—and I do not wish to send it by one of my servants. I would prefer that the messenger should be ignorant as to whom the note comes from.”

“Won’t the post serve?” the vicar asked, feeling strongly tempted to laugh.

“There isn’t time for the post; she must have the note this evening.”

“So imperative as all that!”

Walter Errol looked curiously at the perturbed Mr Musgrave and reflected awhile. Mr Musgrave filled in the pause by explaining the nature of the communication which he was so anxious that Miss Annersley should receive without delay. The explanation robbed the adventure of the quality of romance with which Walter Errol had been colouring it, and thereby detracted considerably from the interest of the enterprise. Had John Musgrave been more experienced in the ways of the world he would have given the explanation first and then have preferred his request, having disarmed suspicion in advance. But Mr Musgrave was so concerned with the necessity for secrecy and dispatch that he lost sight altogether of certain aspects of the case which would have struck anyone less simple of purpose; which did, in fact, strike the vicar, in whose mind the picture of John Musgrave accompanying Miss Annersley and Diogenes on their walk was still sufficiently vivid to predispose his thoughts towards speculations which John Musgrave would never have dreamed of.

The purpose of Mr Musgrave’s communication to Miss Annersley was to warn her of the escape of Diogenes, who had broken bounds when Mr Musgrave, having freed him from the chain, imagined him to be following him as usual into the house. Without a doubt Diogenes would return to the Hall. The note was to warn Peggy of his possible appearance.

“It would seem,” observed Mr Errol with a quiet laugh, “that it is impossible to have Miss Annersley and Diogenes both in Moresby and keep them apart. I should advise you to confer together, John, and come to some better arrangement. Otherwise it looks as though you will have trouble.”

“I do not mind the trouble,” replied Mr Musgrave seriously. “But I should like Miss Annersley to be prepared. It might prove embarrassing for her if Diogenes suddenly revealed himself to her aunt. I don’t fancy Mrs Chadwick would be deceived.”

“I think it highly improbable,” the vicar agreed.

He turned the note which Mr Musgrave had delivered to him on his palm, and seemed to weigh it while he scrutinised the writer, weighing other matters in his mind with equal deliberation.

“I’ll see to this. Miss Annersley shall have it. I’m expecting Robert every minute—he should be here now. When he comes I will send him up to the Hall straight away. You need not fear to trust its safe delivery to Robert; he will take very good care that it reaches no hand but the right one.”

And thus it transpired that Robert, who generally officiated in all the more important events in the lives and after the lives of the inhabitants of Moresby, became mixed up in the affairs of Mr Musgrave; though when he received the letter from the hand of his vicar, with the latter’s careful and explicit instructions, Robert had no idea that he was acting as secret agent between Mr John Musgrave and the young lady at the Hall. He cherished, indeed, a dark suspicion that Mr Errol was corresponding with the young lady, and was unmindful that his wife should know it. For the first time since they had worked together the sexton entertained grave doubts of his vicar, and while he pursued his leisurely way to the Hall in the deepening dusk of advancing night he recalled the story of the strong man with the shorn locks and the woman whose beauty had robbed him of his strength. Robert held Samson in as great contempt as he held Saint Paul in veneration. It was a relief to him to reflect that the vicar wore his hair clipped close to his head.

Robert, while he walked to the Hall, engaged in a pleasant reverie of his own in which a prospective reward for his services figured prominently. A young lady receiving a billet doux—Robert did not call it thus, being no sympathiser with foreign languages—would naturally reward the messenger. Since he carried in his pocket a shilling which John Musgrave had left with the note, these, reflections savoured of a mercenary spirit; but payment in advance is rather an earnest of good-will than a reward for service; the discharge of the obligation should undoubtedly follow the faithful discharge of the duty.

As an earnest of good-will on his side Robert halted at the village inn and wasted more valuable time there than Mr Musgrave would have approved of in consideration of the urgent nature of his message. When eventually Robert proceeded on his way the shadows had gathered with sufficient density to turn his thoughts into the less pleasing direction of the misty horrors associated with the Hall, which in the broad light of day he was wont to deride.

Thinking of these things against his volition, he quickened his steps; and it was possibly due to the rapidity of his pace and not to extreme nervousness that, in passing under the dense overbranching elm-trees in the drive, which entirely excluded the last faint glimmering of light, the perspiration started on his forehead in large beads and a curious thrill ran down his spine. It was not until he came within view of the house that these uncomfortable symptoms of over-exertion abated somewhat, and he was complacently comparing his masculine temerity with Hannah’s foolish feminine fears of ghosts and such things, when abruptly something, unearthly of shape and terrible in appearance, started up out of the shadows and dashed past him, nearly upsetting him in its furious charge, and disappearing again in the shelter of the trees.

With a yell, more terrifying than any ghostly apparition, Robert started to run, and ran on, passing Mr Chadwick, who, cigar in mouth, was taking an evening stroll, and whom the sexton in his alarm mistook for the Evil One, emitting fire from his mouth. And while Mr Chadwick turned to stare after the amazing sight of the little man running for dear life, and while Diogenes, having hunted an imaginary night-bird, returned more leisurely to the drive and joined Mr Chadwick in his walk, Robert gained the house, gained admittance by the back door, and frightened the Hall servants badly with his blood-curdling description of the horrors he had encountered on the way. It was the cook’s firm conviction, and nothing Robert found to say in expostulation could shake her belief, that he had been drinking.

“If you aren’t drunk,” she announced in conclusion, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself. A grown man to be scared out of his wits by a ghost!”

So unreasonable is feminine logic!

It took Robert some little while to collect his scattered thoughts sufficiently to be able to state the business that brought him there. Had it not been for a glass of wine which a sympathetic parlourmaid brought him, and held for him while he drank, he might not even then have remembered the note in his pocket, and the vicar’s explicit instructions that he was to hand it to Miss Annersley himself. His insistent demand to see the young lady confirmed the cook in her opinion of him; but the sympathetic parlourmaid undertook to acquaint Miss Annersley with the news of his presence and his wish to see her, and finally Robert was conducted to a room which was known as the library, where Peggy, a shining white figure against the dusky background of book-lined walls, received him, with manifest wonder in her grey eyes—a wonder which changed by imperceptible degrees to amusement as, having received and read her note, she listened to Robert’s eloquent tale of the misty sort of thing which had risen out of the ground at his feet, had almost knocked him over, and had then vanished into the ground again.

“And you weren’t afraid?” said Peggy, her hand resting on the writing-table beside which she stood, her admiring gaze on Robert’s ashen face. “But that’s splendid. I wish I were as brave as you. If I had been nearly knocked down by a misty sort of thing I should never be able to pass the spot again. Yet you’ll go back presently, and won’t mind in the least. That’s real courage.”

Robert looked uncomfortable. He wished she had not reminded him of the return journey. He felt far from happy when he thought of it; far from confident that he dared pass the spot again. He had it in his mind to invite the sympathetic parlourmaid to accompany him.

“Are you quite sure it was a ghost?” Peggy asked suddenly. “I don’t see how a misty sort of thing could knock anyone down. Wasn’t it, perhaps, a dog?”

Robert felt offended, and showed it.

“I reckon I knows a dog when I sees one,” he replied with dignity, “an’ I reckon I knows a ghost. Hannah always allows she seen the ghost in the elm avenue, and it was in the avenue as I seed it. Big, it was—big as a elephant, and misty like. There was two of ’em.”

“Two?” said Peggy, with a questioning intonation. “That’s strange, Robert, because there are supposed to be two ghosts—a lady and a dog. Are you quite sure there wasn’t a dog, after all?”

“There mid ’a’ been a dog,” Robert conceded reluctantly. “But it warn’t like a human dog, nohow. Its eyes was like flames, an’ it didn’ seem to ’ave any legs, seemed to move wi’out touching of the ground. Why not come an’ see for yourself?” he suggested cunningly, “if you don’t believe me. I’ll take care of ’ee.”

Peggy looked thoughtfully at the trembling sexton and appeared to deliberate. It was plain to her that Robert was badly shaken, that his nerve was not equal to the strain of making the return journey alone. She was shrewd enough to penetrate his design in suggesting that she should accompany him, and being of a naturally kindly disposition she fell in with the idea, the more readily because, since reading the note, she was anxious to meet Robert’s ghost, and secure it.

“I don’t disbelieve you,” she returned. “But I should like to see for myself. I should never feel afraid with you.”

So subtle was this flattery and so seemingly sincere, that Robert unconsciously assumed the courageous bearing expected of him; and, when Miss Annersley led him out through a side door into the grounds, he drew himself up and expanded his chest, and bade her keep close to him and he would see she came to no harm. Peggy laughed softly as she drew nearer to him, and the contact of the tall slender figure afforded Robert that comfortable sense of human companionship which helps to minimise the unknown terrors of the dark, even a darkness peopled with misty apparitions. He began to believe quite firmly in his intrepidity.

At the entrance to the avenue they encountered Mr Chadwick; and for a moment it seemed as though Robert’s vaunted courage would desert him, as Diogenes bounded forward out of the gloom and sprang excitedly upon Peggy, greeting her with an effusiveness which, with her uncle looking on, Peggy found secretly embarrassing.

“Is this your ghost?” she asked, glancing up at Robert, while she attempted to restrain the dog, which, in the first moments of joyful recognition, was an impossibility. “I begin to believe we are about to solve the mystery.”

Robert drew his squat figure up to its full height, which was insignificant enough, and eyed her with contemptuous disapproval.

“Be that hanimal as big as a elephant?” he asked. “Be ’e misty like? Would you say, now, that ’e could move wi’out walking, or that ’e shot flames from his eyes? Would you, now?”

“No,” Peggy answered. “I don’t think he tallies with that description.”

“Then ’ow can thicky be wot I seed?”

“True,” she mused. “Plainly it wasn’t Diogenes. We’ll walk on, I think, and look for your ghost.”

Peggy was anxious to walk on. Mr Chadwick was advancing towards them and she was not prepared just then for an encounter. She waved a hand to him.

“I am going to the gate with Robert,” she called to him, “to look for spooks. You can come to meet me, to see that I am not carried away on a broomstick.”

Robert did not approve of the levity of her manner. He felt, indeed, so resentful as he hurried along the avenue at her side, with Diogenes in attendance, that he was doubly relieved when they reached the lodge gates without any further supernatural visitation, the absence of which he attributed, he informed her, to the presence of the dog. But the transfer of half a crown from Peggy’s slim hand to Robert’s horny palm softened his resentment sufficiently to allow him to wish her a friendly good-night, and to further express the hope that “nothing dreadful” met her on the way back.

Nothing more dreadful than Mr Chadwick awaited her in the elm avenue; but Peggy at the moment would almost as soon have encountered a ghost as her uncle; a ghost, at least, would not have asked awkward questions.

“What did Robert want?” Mr Chadwick inquired.

“He came with a message—for me.”

“What about?”

“A private message,” Peggy replied.

“Oh?” he said. He threw away his cigar and linked an arm within Peggy’s. “I thought he might have come to fetch Musgrave’s dog. That animal seems pretty much at home here.”

“Y-es,” Peggy returned dubiously.

“I wonder if Musgrave would be inclined to sell him. I’ve half a mind to ask him.”

“Oh, please don’t do that!” Peggy said quickly.

“Why not?”

“I think—he wouldn’t like it. He is so fond of the dog.”

Will Chadwick laughed, and since his niece did not express any curiosity as to the cause of his amusement, he did not explain it. But he wondered why, when they changed the colour of Diogenes’ coat, they had not taken the precaution to buy him a new collar. He had been interested that evening in inspecting the collar and reading his own name and address inscribed thereon.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

When Mr Musgrave entered the yard on the following morning, from force of habit rather than in the expectation of finding Diogenes there, it was to discover Diogenes in his kennel, for all the world as though he had never absented himself in the interval.

Diogenes’ welcome of Mr Musgrave was almost as effusive as his greeting of Peggy on the previous evening; he was beginning to realise his position as a dog with two homes and a divided allegiance. Doubtless were he received back at the Hall he would on occasion find his way to Mr Musgrave’s home as a matter of course. There were many things in Mr Musgrave’s home that Diogenes approved of. He approved of Martha’s attentions in the matter of table delicacies, and he appreciated the thick skin rug before the fire in Mr Musgrave’s drawing-room; but the kennel and the chain were indignities against which he felt constrained to protest.

Mr Musgrave unfastened the chain and took Diogenes for his walk, an attention which Diogenes did not merit, but Mr Musgrave felt so ridiculously pleased to see him again that he forgave the overnight defection, as he had forgiven the smashing of his dinner-service; he simply ignored it.

In view of this magnanimous treatment it was distinctly ungracious of Diogenes to repeat his truant performance within a fortnight of his previous escapade; yet repeat it he did, as soon as by his docile behaviour he had allayed Mr Musgrave’s doubts of him so far as to lead to a decrease of vigilance, and a greater laxity in the matter of open doors.

Diogenes broke bounds again at about the same hour on a balmy evening in June; and Mr Musgrave hastened as before to the vicarage with a second note to be entrusted to the handy sexton. But here a check awaited him. Robert, on being appealed to by the vicar, stoutly refused to go to the Hall on any business after dusk.

“Not if you was to offer me a hund’ed pounds, sir,” he affirmed earnestly. “I wouldn’ go up thicky avenue in the dimpsy again, not for a thousand—no, I wouldn’. Leave it bide till the mornin’ an’ I’ll take it.”

Mr Errol returned to John Musgrave with the tale of his non-success.

“I daresay I could find someone else to take it, John,” he said, with a whimsical smile. “But my reputation is likely to suffer, unless you sanction the note being delivered at the door, instead of into Miss Annersley’s own hand. That stipulation is highly compromising.”

Mr Musgrave flushed.

“I am afraid I didn’t think of that,” he said, and took the note from the vicar and tore it in half. “I am glad you mentioned it. It is not fair, either, to Miss Annersley.”

“What is to be done now?” the vicar said.

“I will,” returned Mr Musgrave quietly, “go to the Hall myself, and bring Diogenes back.”

“Well, I rather wonder you didn’t do that before.”

Mr Musgrave wondered also. The idea had not, as a matter of fact, presented itself to him until the delicacy of entrusting the mission to a third person had been pointed out. Now that it had presented itself it occurred to him not only as the proper course to pursue, but the more agreeable. He therefore scattered the fragments of his note to the winds of heaven, and set forth on his walk to the Hall.

It was dusk when he started; when he arrived at the gates and passed through, the dusk appeared to deepen perceptibly, and as he pursued his way, as Robert had done, along the avenue beneath the green archway of interlacing boughs, it seemed to him that night descended abruptly and dispersed the last lingering gleams of departing day.

Mr Musgrave was not superstitious, and his thoughts, unlike his footsteps, did not follow in the direction which Robert’s had taken. Nothing was farther from his mind at the moment than ghosts; therefore when an ungainly-looking object pounded towards him in the gloom, instead of his imagination playing him tricks, he recognised immediately the clumsy, familiar figure of Diogenes, even before Diogenes rushed at him with a joyous bark of welcome. Mr Musgrave’s thought on the spur of the moment was to secure Diogenes and take him home; but, as though suspicious of his motives in grabbing at his collar, Diogenes broke away from the controlling hand, and dived hastily for cover, making for some bushes of rhododendrons, into which Mr Musgrave plunged recklessly in pursuit, so intent on the capture of his elusive trust that he failed to note the figure of a man, which, bearing in sight as he broke into the bushes, hurried forward in hot pursuit, and, following close upon his heels, seized him with a pair of strong arms and dragged him, choking and amazed, into the open path.

“Musgrave!” said Mr Chadwick. He released Mr Musgrave’s collar, and stood back and stared at his captive. “What, in the name of fortune, are you up to?”

Mr Musgrave inserted two fingers inside his collar, felt his throat tenderly, and coughed.

“You need not have been so rough,” he complained.

“Upon my word, I mistook you for a tramp,” Mr Chadwick explained, laughing. “What on earth were you playing hide-and-seek in the bushes for? I begin to believe this path must be bewitched, by the extraordinary manner in which people using it behave. Have you been seeing ghosts too?”

“I saw my dog,” Mr Musgrave explained with dignity. “I was following him.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? Well, you had better come on to the house. I expect we shall find Diogenes there. He was, before you arrived, taking a stroll with me. Seems to be pretty much at home here. Why can’t you keep him at your place?”

“He is—” Mr Musgrave coughed again, as though his throat still troubled him—“very much attached to Miss Annersley.”

“Rather sudden in his attachments, isn’t he?” Mr Chadwick suggested.

“Miss Annersley takes considerable notice of him,” Mr Musgrave replied. “I have been thinking that, subject to your permission, I would like to make her a present of the dog.”

“I am at least gratified to find that you realise I have a right to a say in the matter,” Diogenes’ lawful owner remarked with irony. “I should like to ask you a question, Musgrave. Possession being nine-tenths of the law, should you say that constituted the right to give away what doesn’t, in the strict sense of the word, belong to you?”

Mr Musgrave, experiencing further difficulty with his throat, was thereby prevented from replying to this question. His interlocutor tapped him lightly on the chest.

“There is another inquiry I would like to put while we are on the subject,” he said. “Don’t you think you might offer to pay for the collar?”

John Musgrave regained his voice and his composure at the same time.

“No,” he said; “I don’t. If there has been any ill-practice over this transaction, my conscience at least is clear.”

Abruptly Will Chadwick put out a hand and grasped the speaker’s.

“Come along to the house,” he said, “and make your offering to Peggy.”

When they were within full view of the house Mr Musgrave became suddenly aware of two significant facts; these, in their order, being the presence of Peggy walking on the terrace companioned by Diogenes, and the disturbing knowledge that the sight of her pacing leisurely among the shadows beyond the lighted windows filled him with a strange, almost overwhelming shyness, an emotion at once so unaccountable and so impossible to subdue that, had it not been for the restraining influence of Mr Chadwick’s presence at his elbow, he would in all probability have beaten a retreat.

Arrived below the terrace he halted, and Peggy, having advanced to meet them as they approached, leaned down over the low stone parapet and gave him her hand.

“You!” she said softly.

This greeting struck Mr Chadwick as peculiar. He was conscious of an immense curiosity to hear Mr Musgrave’s response; he was also conscious of feeling de trop. Plainly he and Diogenes had no place in this conspiracy. They had both been hoodwinked.

“You must not blame me,” Mr Musgrave said. “It is Diogenes who has given us away. I fear the secret is out.”

“You don’t flatter my intelligence,” Mr Chadwick interposed, “by suggesting there was any secret to come out. If it hadn’t been for implicating my niece I would have run you in for dog-stealing. A fine figure you’d cut in court, Musgrave.”

Peggy laughed quietly.

“Don’t take any notice of uncle, Mr Musgrave,” she said. “He is really obliged to you. So am I,” she added, and the grey eyes, looking straight into John Musgrave’s, were very kind. “Come up here and talk to me,” she said.

John Musgrave ascended the steps, and, since the invitation had not seemed to include himself, Mr Chadwick turned on his heel and continued the stroll which Mr Musgrave’s arrival had interrupted. Peggy and John Musgrave paced the terrace slowly side by side; and Mrs Chadwick, reading a novel in solitary enjoyment in the drawing-room, listened to the low hum of their voices as they passed and re-passed the windows, and wondered between the diversion of her story who Peggy was talking with.

“You came to fetch Diogenes?” Peggy said.

“Not altogether,” Mr Musgrave replied. “I wanted... to see you... You haven’t been down for some days.”

“No,” Peggy admitted, and blushed in the darkness.

“Why?” he asked.

The blush deepened. Had it been light enough to see her face Mr Musgrave must have observed how shy she looked at his question. Since it was impossible to explain that those visits, once so light-heartedly made to Diogenes in Mr Musgrave’s stable-yard, had become an embarrassment for reasons too subtle to analyse, she remained silent, in her self-conscious agitation playing with a rose in her belt with nervous, inconsequent fingers.

“I believe,” Mr Musgrave continued, “that Diogenes has felt neglected.”

“He is forgiving,” she answered. “He came to find me.”

John Musgrave looked at her steadily.

“Do you think it is altogether kind—to Diogenes,” he asked, “to stay away so long? Don’t you think that perhaps he misses you—badly?”

Peggy smiled faintly.

“I think it is better he should forget,” she replied.

“It isn’t always possible to forget,” he returned slowly. “I am so sure he will never forget that I am glad our secret is exposed. I am going to return you your pet, Miss Annersley.”

Peggy turned to him quickly in protest, and put out a small hand and laid it on his sleeve.

“No,” she cried, “no. You have more right to him than anyone. You are fond of him too. You must keep him. I want you to keep him.”

John Musgrave looked at the hand on his sleeve. He had seen it there once before, and the sight of it had caused him embarrassment. It did not cause him embarrassment now; he enjoyed the feel of the slight pressure on his arm. Suddenly, without pausing to consider, he put his own hand over it, and kept it there.

“I want you to have him, and I want to keep him too,” he said. “How are we going to get over that?”

Peggy laughed nervously.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t see how that can be.”

“I hoped you would see,” he returned gravely, and halted and imprisoned her other hand, and stood facing her. “There is a way, if only I wasn’t so old and dull for your bright youth.” He released her hands gently. “I suppose you are right, and it isn’t possible.”

“You don’t appear old or dull to me,” she said softly. “I—didn’t mean that.”

He went closer to her and remained gazing earnestly into the downcast face, his own tense features and motionless pose not more still than the girl’s, as she waited quietly in the silent dusk with a heart which thumped so violently that it seemed to her he must hear its rapid beat.

“It appears to me preposterous,” he said, in a voice which held a ring of wonder in its tones, “that I, so much older than you, so unsuited in every sense, should find the courage to tell you how greatly I love you. It is scarcely to be expected that you can care for me sufficiently to allow me any hope... And yet... Miss Annersley, am I too presumptuous?”

“No,” Peggy whispered. She slipped a hand shyly into his and laughed softly. “I think you have discovered the best way of settling the ownership of our dog,” she said.

“I am not thinking of the dog,” he answered, bending over her.

“I wasn’t thinking of the dog either,” she replied.

With her hand still in John Musgrave’s she walked to the parapet and sat down. Mr Musgrave seated himself beside her, and, gaining courage from the contact of the warm hand lying so confidingly in his own, he felt emboldened to proceed with his avowal of love.

“My feeling for you, Miss Annersley, is as unchangeable as it is deep. It has developed so imperceptibly that, until you went away, and I realised how greatly I missed you, what a blank in my days your absence made, I never suspected how dear you were becoming to me. When I suspected it I was distressed, because it seemed to me incredible that you, young and beautiful and so greatly admired, could ever entertain for me any kinder feeling than that of friendship. I can scarcely believe even now that you feel more than friendship for me. I must appear old to you, and my ideas are old-fashioned, and, I begin to see now, intolerant.”

“Not intolerant,” Peggy corrected. “If I wasn’t confident that your heart is so kind, and your sympathies so wide, that it will be as easy for you to give and take as for me to meet you in this respect, I should be afraid to risk the happiness of both our futures. But I haven’t any fears at all. I think I have loved you from the moment when you met me weeping in the road, and took charge of Diogenes.”

“That,” he said a little doubtfully, “is gratitude.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she insisted, “it is something more enduring than that.”

At which interesting point in the discussion, to John Musgrave’s annoyance, a shrill scream penetrated the stillness, and Mrs Chadwick’s voice was heard exclaiming in accents of astonishment and delight:

“Oh, Diogenes, Diogenes, dear old fellow!... Wherever did you come from? And how did you get your coat in that horrible mess?”

Diogenes, finding it slow on the terrace, had sauntered into the drawing-room and discovered himself to Mrs Chadwick.

Peggy glanced swiftly into the face of the man beside her and laughed happily, and John Musgrave, finding to his vast amazement the laughing face held firmly between his two hands, bent his head suddenly and kissed the curving lips.

It is possible that could he have looked back into the days before he knew Peggy he would have failed to recognise as himself the man who, in response to the vicar’s assertion that occasionally people married for love, had made the shocked ejaculation: “Do they, indeed?” John Musgrave was learning.

Chapter Thirty.

The Rev. Walter Errol, removing, his surplice in the little vestry at the finish of one of the simplest and most pleasing ceremonies at which he had ever been required to officiate, looked forth through the mullioned window to watch his oldest and best-loved friend passing along the gravelled path in the sunlight with his bride upon his arm.

The sight of John Musgrave married gave him greater satisfaction than anything that had befallen since his own happy marriage-day. The one thing lacking to make his friend the most lovable of men was supplied in the newly-made contract which bound him for good and ill to the woman at his side. There would be, in the vicar’s opinion, so much of good in the union that ill would be crowded out and find no place in the lives of this well-assorted pair, who, during the brief period of their engagement, had practised so successfully that deference to each other’s opinions which smooths away difficulties and prevents a dissimilarity in ideas from approaching disagreement. The future happiness of Mr and Mrs John Musgrave was based on the sure foundation of mutual respect.

While the vicar stood at the window, arrested in the business of disrobing by the engrossment of his thoughts, Robert, having finished rolling up the red carpet in the aisle, entered the vestry and approached the window and stood, as he so often did, at the vicar’s elbow, and gazed also after the newly-married couple, a frown knitting his heavy brows, and, notwithstanding the handsome fee in his pocket, an expression of most unmistakable contempt in his eyes as they rested upon the bridegroom.

“They be done for, sir,” he said, with a gloomy jerk of the head in the direction of the vanishing pair.

The vicar turned his face towards the speaker, the old whimsical smile lighting his features.

“Not done for, Robert. They are just beginning life,” he said.

“They be done for,” Robert persisted obstinately, and stared at the open register which John Musgrave and his wife had signed. “Ay, they be done for.”

“When you married Hannah were you done for?” the vicar inquired.

“Yes, sir, I were,” Robert answered with sour conviction.

It passed through Walter Errol’s mind to wonder whether the non-success of Robert’s marital relations was due solely to Hannah’s fault.

“How came you to marry Hannah?” he asked.

“Did I never tell you ’ow that came about?” Robert said. “I didn’ go wi’ Hannah, not first along. I went wi’ a young woman from Cross-ways. Me an’ ’er had been walking out for a goodish while when ’er says to me one night, ‘Will ’ee come in a-Toosday?’ I says, ‘Yes, I will.’ Well, sir, you never seed rain like it rained that Toosday. I wasn’t goin’ to get into my best clothes to go out there an’ get soaked to the skin in; so I brushed myself up as I was, an’ changed my boots; an’ when I got out ’er turned up ’er nose at me. So I went straight off an’ took up with Hannah.”

“I think,” observed the vicar, “that you were a little hasty.”

“I’ve thought so since, sir,” Robert admitted. “The mistake I made was in ’avin’ further truck wi’ any of them. Leave the wimmin alone, I says, if you want to be comfortable. A man when ’e marries is done for.”

Walter Errol, having finished disrobing, took his soft hat and went out to the motor, which had returned from the Hall to fetch him, and was driven swiftly to the scene of the festivities, the joyous pealing of the bells sounding harmoniously in the lazy stillness of the summer day. Past John Musgrave’s home the motor bore him; past Miss Simpson’s comfortable house, where the blinds were jealously lowered as though a funeral, instead of a wedding, were in progress. And, indeed, for the Moresby spinster the chiming of the marriage-peal was as the funeral knell ringing the last rites over the grave of her dead hopes. Miss Simpson was the only person in Moresby who sympathised with the sexton’s opinion that John Musgrave was done for.

At the Hall only the immediate members of both families were present, with the exception of the vicar and his wife. John Musgrave had stipulated for a quiet wedding. Very proud and happy he looked as, with his wife beside him, he greeted his oldest friend; and the vicar, with an affectionate hand on his shoulder, exclaimed:

“It isn’t Coelebs any longer, John. You were a wise man and waited patiently for the right woman.”

“I hope I shall prove to be the right woman, John,” Peggy whispered, drawing more closely to him as the vicar passed on, and looking up in her husband’s face with wide, diffident grey eyes, eyes that were wells of happiness, despite their anxious questioning.

“My only doubt,” John Musgrave answered gently, “is whether I shall prove worthy of your love, my wife.”

The End.

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Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

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Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

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Chapter 7

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Chapter 8

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Chapter 9

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Chapter 10

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Chapter 11

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Chapter 12

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Chapter 13

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Chapter 14

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Chapter 15

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Chapter 16

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Chapter 17

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Chapter 18

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Chapter 19

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Chapter 20

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Chapter 21

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Chapter 22

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Chapter 23

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Chapter 24

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Chapter 25

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Chapter 26

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Chapter 27

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Chapter 28

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Chapter 29

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Chapter 30

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