George Manville Fenn

"King of the Castle"

Volume One—Chapter One.

Part of the Garrison.

“Hullo, Claude, going for a walk?”

“Yes, papa.”

“Alone?”

“No: Mary is going with me.”

“Humph! If you were as giddy as Mary, I’d—I’d—”

“What, papa?”

“Don’t know; something bad. But, Claude, my girl.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Why the dickens don’t you dress better? Look at you!”

The girl admonished turned merrily round, and stood facing an old bevelled-glass cabinet in the solid-looking, well-furnished library, and saw her reflection—one which for some reason made her colour slightly; perhaps with pleasure at seeing her handsome oval face with soft, deep brown hair, and large dark, well-shaded eyes—a face that needed no more display to set it off than the plain green cloth well-fitting dress, held at the throat by a dead gold brooch of Roman make.

“Well, papa,” she said, as she altered the sit of her natty, flat-brimmed straw hat, “what is the matter with my dress?”

The big-headed, grey-haired man addressed gave his stiff, wavy locks an impatient rub, wrinkled his broad forehead, and then smiled in a happy, satisfied way, his dark eyes lighting up, and his smile driving away the hard, severe look which generally rested upon his brow.

“The matter?” he said, drawing the girl on to his knee and kissing her. “I don’t understand such things; but your dress seems too common and plain.”

“But one can’t wear silks and satins and muslins to scramble among the rocks and go up the glen.”

“Well, there, don’t bother me. But dress better. If you want more money you can have it. You ought to take the lead here, and there were ladies on some of the yachts and on the pier yesterday who quite left you behind.—Yes! What is it?”

“Isaac Woodham, from the quarry, sir, would like to see you,” said a servant.

“Confound Isaac Woodham! Send him in.”

The servant retired, leaving his master muttering.

“Wants to spend money in some confounded new machinery or something. I made all my money without machinery, Claude, but these people want to waste it with their new-fangled plans.”

“But, papa dear, do speak more gently to them.”

“What! let them be masters and eat me out of house and home? Not such a fool.”

“But, papa—”

“Hold your tongue. Weak little goose. You don’t know them; I do. They must be ruled—ruled. There: be off, and get your walk. Seen Mr Glyddyr to-day?”

The girl flushed scarlet.

“Hallo, pussy; that brings the colour to your cheeks.”

“No, papa; indeed I—”

“Yes, I know. I say, Claudie, fine handsome fellow, eh? Bit too pale for a yachtsman. But what a yacht! Do you know he came in for three hundred and fifty thousand when his father died?”

“Indeed, papa?” said the girl carelessly.

“Yes! Old Glyddyr was not like your grandfather, confound him.”

“Papa!”

“Con—found him! Didn’t I speak plain? Glyddyr left his boys a slate quarry in Wales for the eldest, and three hundred and fifty for the younger. Parry’s the younger. Eh? Nice fortune for a handsome young yachtsman, Claudie. There, go and have your walk, and keep Mary out of mischief.—Well?”

This was to a hard, heavy-looking man in working clothes, covered with earth stains and stone dust, who was ushered into the room, and who, ignoring the speaker’s presence, stood bowing awkwardly, cap in hand, and changing it from right to left and back.

“Quite well, thank ye, miss, and sent her dooty to you.”

“I’m very glad, Woodham. Remember me kindly to Sarah, and tell her I shall call at the cottage soon.”

“Yes, yes,” said the old man impatiently, following his daughter to the door; “go on now. I have business with Woodham. Don’t be so familiar with the work-people,” he whispered, as he closed the door after the girl, who ran lightly to the foot of the great carved oak staircase, to call out merrily,—

“Not ready, Mary?”

“Yes; coming, coming, coming,” and a quaint, mischievous-looking little body came tripping down the stairs, halting slightly as if from some form of lameness, which her activity partly concealed. But no effort or trick of dress could hide the fact that she was deformed, stunted in proportion, and with her head resting closely between her shoulders, which she had a habit of shrugging impatiently when addressed.

“Oh, do make haste, Mary, or we shall have no time before lunch.”

“Yes, I know. You’ve seen him go by.”

“For shame, Mary!” said Claude, flushing. “You are always thinking of such things. It is not true.”

“Yes, it is; and I don’t think more of such things than you do. ‘Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, ’tis love that makes the world go round,’” she sang, in a singularly sweet, thrilling soprano voice, her pretty but thin keen face lighting up with a malicious smile. But the old song was checked by Claude’s hand being clapped sharply over her mouth.

“Be quiet, and come along. Papa will hear you.”

“Well, I daresay he wants to see his darling married. Take away your hand, or I’ll bite it.”

“You’re in one of your mocking moods this morning, Mary, and you really make me hate you.”

“Don’t tell fibs,” said the deformed girl, throwing her arms lovingly about her companion. “You couldn’t hate anybody, you dear old pet; and why shouldn’t you have a true, handsome lover?”

“Oh, Mary, you are insufferable. You think of nothing else but lovers.”

“Well, why not, Claudie?” said the girl with a sigh, and a peculiarly pinched look coming about her mouth, as her clear, white forehead wrinkled up, and her fine eyes seemed full of trouble. “One always longs for the unattainable. Nobody will ever love me, so why shouldn’t I enjoy seeing somebody love you?”

“Mary, darling, I love you dearly.”

“Yes, pet, like the dearest, sweetest old sister that ever was. You worship poor old humpty dumpty?”

“Don’t ridicule yourself. Mary dear.”

“Why not? But I meant no nice, handsome Christopher Lisle will ever want to look in my eyes and say—”

“Will you be quiet, Mary? Why will you be always bringing up Mr Christopher Lisle? I never tease you about Mr Gullick.”

“Because—because—because—” She did not finish her speech, but burst out into a loud, ringing laugh, full of teasing, malicious mirth, till she saw Claude’s flushed face, and then she stopped short.

“There, I’ve done. Which way shall we go?”

“I don’t care. I feel as if I’d rather stay at home now.”

“No, no; I won’t tease. Shall we go as far as the town?”

“No; anywhere you like.”

“Say somewhere.”

“Not I. You’ll only tease me, and say I had some reason. I’ll only go where you choose.”

“Then you shall, dear. We’ll go up the east glen to the fall, and then cross over the hill and come back by the west glen, and you shall tease me as much as you like.”

“I don’t want to tease you.”

Mary made a grimace as she looked sidewise at herself, but she coloured a little, and was silent for a time.

They were already some hundred yards from the great, grey granite mansion, which stood upon a bald bluff of cliff, built within the past thirty years, and by the fancy of its architect made to resemble a stronghold of the Norman times, with its battlements, towers, frowning gateway, moat and drawbridge crossing the deep channel, kept well filled by a spring far up in one of the glens at the back, while the front of the solid-looking, impregnable edifice frowned down upon the glittering sea.

“See how grand Castle Dangerous looks from here,” said Mary Dillon, as they were about to turn up the glen. “Don’t you often feel as if we were two forlorn maidens—I mean,” she cried merrily, “a forlorn maiden and a half—shut up in that terrible place waiting for a gallant knight and a half to come and rescue us from the clutches of ogre-like Uncle Gartram?”

“Mary, darling,” said Claude affectionately, “if you knew how you hurt me, you would cease these mocking allusions to your affliction.”

“Then I will not hurt you any more, pet. But I am such a sight.”

“No, you are not. You have, when in repose, the sweetest, cleverest face I ever saw.”

“Let’s be in repose, then.”

“And you know you are brilliant in intellect, where I am stupid.”

“Oh! if I could be as stupid!”

“And you have the sweetest voice possible. See what gifts these are.”

“Oh, yes, I suppose so, Claudie, but I don’t care for them a bit—not a millionth part as much as having your love. There, don’t let’s talk nonsense. Come along.”

She hurried her companion over a bridge and towards a path roughly made beside the babbling stream which supplied the moat at the Fort, and then in and out among the rocks, and beneath the pensile birches which shed a dappled shade over the path, while every here and there in gardens great clumps of fuchsias and hydrangeas showed the moist warmth of the sheltered nook.

They walked quickly, Claude urged on by her companion, who climbed the steep path with the agility of a goat, till they reached a fall, where the water came tumbling over the hoary, weather-stained rocks, and the path forked, one track going over the stream behind the fall, and the other becoming a rough stairway right up the side of the glen.

“Hadn’t we better go this way?” said Claude timidly, indicating the route to the left.

“No; too far round,” said Mary peremptorily. “Come along,” and she began to skip from rock to rock and rough step to step, up the side of the glen, Claude following her with more effort till they reached the rugged top of the cliff, and continued their walk onward among heather bloom and patches of beautifully fine grass, with here and there broken banks, where the wild thyme made the air fragrant with its scent.

“This is ten times as nice as going through the woods,” cried Mary. “You seem to get such delicious puffs of the sea breeze. Vorwarts!”

She hurried her companion on for about a mile, when the track turned sharply off to the right, and a steep descent led them to the banks of another stream which was gradually converging towards the one they had left, so that the two nearly joined where they swept down their rocky channels into the sea.

“This is ten times as good a way, Claudie. I always think it is the prettiest walk we have. Look what a colour the fir trees are turning, with those pale green tassels at the tips; and how beautiful those patches of gorse are. I wish one could get such a colour in paintings.”

She chatted on merrily as they descended the stream, with its many turns and zigzags, through the deep chasm along which it ran; and whenever Claude appeared disposed to speak, Mary always had some familiar object to which she could draw her companion’s attention. In fact, it seemed as if she would not give her time to think, as she noted that a quick, nervous look was directed at the stream from time to time.

A stranger might have thought Claude was nervous about the risks of the path as it went round some pool, with the rocks coming down perpendicularly to the deep, dark water. Or that she was in dread of encountering graver difficulties in the lonely ravine, whose almost perpendicular sides were clothed with growth of a hundred tints. Far beneath them, flashing, foaming, and hurrying on with a deep, murmuring sound, ran the little river, from rapid to fall, and from fall to deep, dark, sluggish-looking hole; while in places the trees, which had contrived to get a footing in some crevice of the rock, overhung the river, and threw the water beneath into the deepest shade.

They reached, at length, a more open part, where the sun shone down brightly, and their way lay through a patch of moss-grown hazel stubbs, which after a few steps made a complete screen from the sun’s rays, and they walked over a verdant carpet which silenced every footfall.

“We shall have plenty of time,” said Mary, as they reached the farther edge of the hazel clump, “and we may as well sit down on the rocks and read.”

“No, not now,” said Claude hastily. Then in an agitated whisper, as a peculiar whizzing noise was heard: “Oh, Mary, this is too cruel. Why have you brought me here?”

“Because it was not considered good for Adam to live alone in Paradise. There’s poor Adam alone and disconsolate, fishing to pass time away. Paradise in the glen is very pretty, but dull. Enter Eve. Now, Claude, dear, show yourself worthy of the name of woman. Go on!”

Volume One—Chapter Two.

Things go Crooked.

Norman Gartram returned to his seat, looking rigid and scowling as he gazed fiercely at the workman.

“Well?” he said sharply.

“Don’t believe she can be his bairn,” said the workman to himself, as he returned his employers angry stare.

“I said Well!”

“I heard you, master. Needn’t shout.”

“What do you want?”

“Come about the big block at the corner. Time it was blasted down.”

“Then blast it down; and how many more times am I to tell you to say sir to me?”

“You’re my master, and pay me my wage, and I earn it honest. That’s all there is between us, for the Lord made all men equal, and—”

“Look here, Isaac Woodham, once for all I will not have any of your Little Bethel cant in my presence. Now about this block; let it be deeply tamped, and the powder put well home.”

“I’m going to blast it down with dinnymite.”

The elder man flushed up scarlet, and the veins in his forehead swelled up into knotted network.

“Once for all—” he thundered.

“There, don’t get in a way, master,” said the man coolly. “If you go on like that you’ll be having another fit, and I’m sure you oughtn’t to cut short such a life as yours.”

“Isaac Woodham, one of these days you’ll tempt me to knock you down. Insolent brute! And now, look here; I’ve told you before that I would not have dynamite used in my quarry. I’ll have my work done as it always has been done—with powder. The first man who uses a charge of that cursed stuff I’ll discharge.”

“It’s better, and does its work cleaner,” grumbled the man sullenly; and he gave his superior a morose look from under his shaggy brows.

“I don’t care if it’s a hundred times better. Go and blast the block down with powder, as it always has been done, I tell you again. I want my men; and there’s no trusting that other stuff, or they’re not fit to be trusted with it. Now go, and don’t come here again without being summoned.”

“Too grand for the likes o’ me, eh, Master Gartram?”

“Will you have the goodness to recollect that you are speaking to a gentleman, sir?”

“I’m speaking to another man, I being a man,” said Woodham sturdily. “I don’t know nothing about no gentlemen. I’m speaking to Norman Gartram, quarry-owner, who lives here in riches and idleness upon what we poor slaves have made for him by the sweat of our brows.”

“What does this mean?” cried the old man. “Have you turned Socialist?”

“I’ve turned nowt. But as a Christian man I warn you, Norman Gartram, that for all your fine house and your bags of money, and company and purple and fine linen, ‘the Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away.’”

“You—”

“There, I’m going to do my work honest, master, and earn my wages.”

“And blast that granite down with powder, sir.”

“I know my work,” grumbled the man, and he backed out of the room without another word.

Norman Gartram—the King of the Castle, as he was called at Danmouth—stood listening to the man’s footsteps, at first heavy and dull as they passed over the carpet, and then loud and echoing as he reached the granite paving outside, till they died away, and then, with his face still flushed, he laid his hand gently on his temples.

“A little hot,” he muttered. “A fit? Enough to give any man a fit to be spoken to like that by the canting scum. They’re spoiled, that’s what it is—spoiled. Claude is always fooling and petting them, and the more there is done for them the worse they work, and the more exacting they grow. I believe they think one’s capital is to be sunk solely to benefit them. What the deuce do you want now?”

This to the servant, who had timidly opened the door.

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“If it’s some one from the quarry, tell him I’m engaged.”

“Mr Glyddyr, sir.”

“Why didn’t you say so before? Where is he?”

“In the drawing-room, sir.”

Norman Gartram sprung at once from his chair, hurriedly crossed the room, stepped out of the window on to the granite paving, which did duty in his garden for a gravel walk, carefully closed the French casement, and locked it with a small pass-key he carried in his pocket, and walked round to the verandah in front of the house, entering by the French window of the drawing-room, where a tall, handsome man of about thirty was leaning against a table, apparently admiring the brown leather shoes which formed part of his yachting costume.

“Ah, Mr Glyddyr, glad to see you. Kept your word, then?”

“Oh, yes; I always do that,” said the visitor, shaking hands warmly. “Not come at an inconvenient time, have I—not too busy?”

“Never too busy to receive friends,” said Gartram. “Sit down, sit down.”

“Miss Gartram none the worse for her visit to the yacht?”

“Oh, by no means; enjoyed it thoroughly.”

“I could see that little Miss Dillon did, but I thought Miss Gartram seemed rather bored.”

“Oh dear, no; nothing of the kind; but you’ll have something?”

“Eh? No, thanks. Too early.”

“A cigar?”

“Cigar? Oh, come, I can’t refuse that.”

“Come into my room, then. Obliged to obey the female tyranny of my household, Mr Glyddyr. I’m supposed to be master, but woman rules, sir, woman rules. My daughter does what she pleases with me.”

“Happy man!”

“Eh?”

“I say happy man, sir, to be ruled by such a queen.”

Norman Gartram gave him a keen look.

“Don’t pay compliments, sir—society compliments. We are out of all society. I’ve kept my daughter out of it. Only a tradesman.”

“Lord Gartram’s brother a tradesman, sir?”

“Yes; why not? Why shouldn’t he be? My father left my brother and me with a few hundred pounds a-piece, and the prestige of being nobleman’s sons, sir. I had to consider what I should do—loaf about through drawing-rooms as a beggarly aristocrat, always in debt till I could cajole a rich girl into making me her poodle; or take off my coat and go to work like a man. Be a contemptible hanger-on, too poor to dress well, or a sturdy, hardworking human being.”

“And your choice, sir?” said the visitor, inquiring for what he knew by heart.

“The latter, sir. I bit my nails down to the quick till I had an idea—sitting out on this very coast. I was yonder smoking a bad cigar which my brother had given me. I couldn’t afford to buy cigars, neither could he, but he bought them all the same. I sat smoking that cigar and thought out what I was sitting upon—granite—and went back to the hotel where we were staying, and told my brother what I had thought out. He called me a fool, and went his way. I, being a fool, went mine.”

“Yes, sir?”

“My brother,” said Gartram, “married a shrewish, elderly woman with some money. I spent all I had in buying a few acres of the cliff land by the side of this coast. Brother Fred said I must be mad. Perhaps I am; but my cliff quarry has supplied granite for some of the finest buildings in England. It has made me a rich man, while my Lord Gartram has to ask his wife for every shilling he wants to spend—when he does not ask me. But here, come along; I never know when to stop if I begin talking about myself. This way.”

He led the visitor into his study, unlocked an oaken door in the wall with a bright key, and it swung open heavily, showing that the oak covered a slab of granite, and that the closet was formed of the same glittering stone.

“Curious place to keep cigars, eh? All granite, sir. I believe in granite. Take one of these,” he continued, as he carelessly placed a couple of cedar boxes on the table. “Light up. I’ll have one too. Bad habit at this time in the morning, but one can’t be always at work, eh?”

“No, sir; and you work too hard, if report is correct.”

“Hang report!” said the old man, taking a cigar, throwing himself back in a chair, and gazing at his visitor through his half-closed eyes. “That a good one?”

“Delicious!” said the visitor laconically, and there was silence.

“What do you think of my place, eh?”

“Solid. Quite stand a siege.”

“I meant it to, sir. There isn’t a spot where I could use granite instead of wood that it is not used. Granite arches instead of beams everywhere. When I have my gate locked at night, I can laugh at all the burglars in Christendom.”

“Yes; I should think you are pretty safe here.”

There was another pause, broken by Gartram saying suddenly, in a loud, sharp voice,—

“Well?”

The visitor was a cool man about town, but the query was so sudden and unexpected that he started.

“Well, Mr Gartram?”

“Why did you come this morning?”

“You asked me to look in—a friendly call.”

“Won’t do. If you had meant a friendly call you would have come in the afternoon. You don’t want to borrow money?”

“Good heavens, sir! No.”

“Then out with it, lad. You are not a boy now. I am an old man of the world; speak out frankly, and let’s get it done.”

“You guess the object of my visit, then, sir?”

“No; I can feel it. Besides, I’m not blind.”

Parry Glyddyr looked at his host with a half-amused, half-vexed expression of countenance.

“No,” he said thoughtfully, in reference to Gartram’s last remark; “I suppose not, sir. Well, it is an awkward thing to do, and I may as well get it over. I will be frank.”

“Best way, sir, if you wish to get on with me.”

Glyddyr cleared his throat, became deeply interested in the ash of his cigar, and lolled back in his easy chair, quite conscious of the fact that his host was scanning him intently.

“I can sail my yacht as well as the master, Mr Gartram; I have a good seat in the hunting field, and I don’t funk my hedges; I am a dead shot; you know I can throw a fly; and I am not a bad judge of a horse; but over a talk like this I am a mere faltering boy.”

“Glad to hear it, sir, and hope it is your first essay. Go on.”

“Well, I came here nine months ago to repair damages after a storm, and you did me several pleasant little services.”

“Never mind them.”

“I came again at the end of another three months in fine weather.”

“And you have been here several times since. Go on.”

“Yes, sir,” said Glyddyr, smiling; “but are all fathers like you?”

“No,” said Gartram, with a hoarse laugh; “I am the only one of my kind. There, we have had enough preamble, Parry Glyddyr. Out with it.”

“I will, sir. You say you are not blind. You know, then, that I was deeply impressed by Miss Gartram the first time we met. I treated it as a temporary fancy, but the feeling has grown upon me, till I can only think of doing one thing—coming to you as a gentleman, telling you frankly I love Miss Gartram, and asking your permission to visit here regularly as her accepted suitor.”

“What does Claude say to this?”

“Miss Gartram?” said Glyddyr, raising his eyebrows, and removing the grey ash from the end of his cigar; “nothing, sir. How could I be other than the ordinary acquaintance without your sanction?”

“Quite right,” said Gartram, looking at him searchingly, “how, indeed?” and he remained gazing at the unshrinking countenance before him, full of candour and surprise at his ignorance of etiquette till he covered his own eyes. “Then Claude knows nothing of this?”

“I hope and believe, sir, that she knows a great deal, but not from my lips. Women, I believe, are very quick in knowing when they are admired.”

“Humph! And you like my daughter, Mr Glyddyr?” said Gartram, exhaling a huge cloud of smoke.

“I love Miss Gartram very dearly, sir,” said the visitor frankly; “so well that I dare not even think of the consequence of a refusal.”

“Broken heart, suicide and that sort of thing, eh?”

“I hope I should never make a fool of myself, Mr Gartram,” said Glyddyr coldly.

“So do I. Now look here, sir. I gave up society to become a business man—slave driver some people politely call me; but as a tradesman I have been so tricked and swindled by everybody, even my banker, that I have grown suspicious.”

“I don’t wonder, sir. Without going into trade, a man has to keep his eyes open to the rascality of the world.”

“Yes,” said Gartram, scanning the speaker keenly still. “Then now, sir, let me ask you a question.”

“By all means; as many as you like.”

“Then pray, sir, if my daughter had been a penniless girl, would you have felt this deep admiration for her?”

“Mr Gartram!” said Glyddyr haughtily, as he flushed deeply and rose from his chair. “Bah!” he added, after a pause, and he let himself sink back, and smoked heavily for a few moments. “Stupid to be so put out. Quite a natural question. Really, sir,” he said, smiling, and looking ingenuously in the old man’s face, “fate has been so kind to me over money matters that fortune-hunting has not been one of my pursuits. In round numbers, my father left me three hundred thousand pounds. Golden armour, sir, against the arrows of poverty, and such as turns aside so fierce a stab as that of yours. Has Miss Gartram any money?”

“Humph! I have,” said the old man roughly.

“If she has, so much the better,” continued Glyddyr, smoking calmly, and evidently thoroughly enjoying his cigar. “A lady with a private purse of her own no doubt occupies a more happy and independent position than one who appeals to her husband for all she wants. I am sorry that our conversation has taken this turn, Mr Gartram,” he added stiffly.

“I’m not, Glyddyr. It has shown you up in another light. Well, what do you want me to say?”

“To say, sir?” cried the young man eagerly.

“Yes. There, I don’t think I need say anything. Yes, I do. I don’t like the idea of Claude marrying any one, but nature is nature. I shall be carried off some day by a fit, I suppose, and when I am, I believe—slave driver as I am, and oppressor of the poor, as they call me, for making Danmouth a prosperous place, and paying thousands a year in wages—I should rest more comfortably if I knew my child was married to the man she loved.”

“Mr Gartram.”

“I haven’t done, Glyddyr.”

There was a pause, during which the old man seemed to look his visitor through and through. Then he held out his hand with a quick, sharp movement.

“Yes,” he said; “I like you, my lad: I always did. You think too much of sport; but you’ll weary of that, and your whole thoughts will be of the best and truest girl that ever lived.”

“Then you consent, Mr Gartram?” cried Glyddyr with animation.

“No: I consent to nothing. You’ve got to win her first. I give you my leave, though, to win if you can; and if you do marry her—well, I daresay I can afford to buy her outfit—trousseau—what you may call it.”

“Mr Gartram—”

“That will do. Be cool. You haven’t won her yet, my lad.”

“I may speak to her at once?”

“If you like; but my advice is—don’t. Lead up to it gently—make sure of her before you speak. There, I’m a busy man, and I’ve got to go up the east river to look at a vein of stone which crops up there. Take another cigar, and walk with me—if you like.”

“I will, sir. Try one of mine.”

“Yes,” said Gartram laconically; and as they went out into the hall, he purposely picked out his worst hat from the stand, and put it on.

“Old chap wants to make me shy at him, and show that I don’t like walking through the town with that hat. Got hold of the wrong pig by the ear,” said Glyddyr to himself.

They walked along the granite terrace, with its crenellated parapet and row of imitation guns, laboriously chipped out of the granite; and then out through the gateway and over the moat, and descended to the village, reaching the path leading to the east glen, and were soon walking beside the rushing salmon river, with Gartram pointing out great veins of good granite as it cropped out of the side of the deep ravine.

“Hang his confounded stone!” said Glyddyr to himself, after he had made several attempts to change the drift of the conversation.

“Fine bit of stuff that, sir,” said his companion, pointing across the river with his heavy stick. “I believe I could cut a monolith twenty feet long out of that rock, but the brutes won’t let me have it. My solicitor has fought for it hard, but they stick to it, and money won’t tempt them. I believe that was the beginning of my sleeplessness—insomnia, as Asher calls it.”

“Asher?”

“Yes; our doctor. You must know him. Pleasant, smooth-spoken fellow in black.”

“Oh, yes; of course.”

“Worried me a deal, that did.”

“And you suffer from insomnia?”

“Horribly. Keep something to exorcise the demon, though,” he said laughingly, taking a small bottle from his pocket. “Chloral.”

“Dangerous stuff, sir. Take it cautiously.”

“I take it as my medical man advises.”

“That is right. Of course I remember Doctor Asher, and that other young friend of yours—the naturalist and salmon fisherman, and—”

“Oh, Lisle. Yes; sort of ward of mine. I am his trustee.”

“Quite an old friend, then, sir?”

“Yes; and—eh?” said the old man laughingly. “Why, Glyddyr, I can read you like a book. Is there, or has there ever been, anything between Claude and Christopher Lisle? I should think not, indeed. Rubbish, man, rubbish! and—”

They had just turned one of the rugged corners of the glen, and there before them in the distance was Chris Lisle helping Claude to catch a fish—his words, of course, inaudible, but his actions sufficiently demonstrative to make Parry Glyddyr press his teeth hardly together, and the owner of the granite castle grip his stick and swear.

Volume One—Chapter Three.

Lesson the First.

Things that seem far-fetched are sometimes simple matters of fact. Just as Claude was glancing back, and feeling as if she would give anything to be back home, a dove among the trees in the fern-clad glen began to coo, and Mary laughed.

“There,” she said, “only listen. You can’t go back now. It would be absurd.”

“But you are so imprudent,” whispered Claude, whose cheeks were growing hotter. “How could you?”

“I wanted to see you happy, my darling coz,” was whispered back. “I saw him coming here with his fishing-rod, and—”

“But, Mary, what will Chris Lisle think?”

“Think he’s in luck, and bless poor little humpy, fairy godmother me, and—no, no, too late to retreat. We have been seen.”

For as they had passed out into an open part of the glen where the river widened into a pool, there, only a short distance from them, and with his bright, sun-browned face directed toward the river, was a sturdy, well-built young fellow, dressed in a dark tweed Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, busily throwing a fly across the pool till, as if intuitively becoming aware that he was watched, he looked sharply round.

The next moment there was again the peculiar buzzing sound made by a rapidly-wound-up multiplying winch, the rod was thrown over the young man’s shoulder, and he turned to meet them.

“Ah, little Mary!” he cried merrily; and then, with a voice full of tender reverence, he turned, straw hat in hand, to Claude.

“I did not expect to see you here.”

“And I am as much surprised,” she said hastily. “Mary and I were having a walk.”

“And now we are here, Mr Lisle, you may as well show us all your salmon,” said Mary seriously.

“My salmon! I haven’t had a rise.”

“And we have interrupted you, perhaps, just as the fish are biting. Come, Mary. Good-morning, Mr Lisle.”

“Oh!”

Only a little interjection, but so full of reproach that Claude coloured here deeply, and more deeply still as, upon looking round for her companion, she found her comfortably seated upon a mossy stone, and with her head turned away to hide the mischievous delight which flashed from her eyes.

“I’m beginning to be afraid that I have offended you, Miss Gartram—Claude.”

“Oh, no; what nonsense. Come, Mary.”

The stone upon which she sat was not more deaf.

“Don’t hurry away. I thought I was some day to give you a lesson in salmon fishing.”

“I should never learn, Mr Lisle; and, besides, it is not a very ladylike accomplishment.”

“Anything you did, Claude, would be ladylike. Come, I know there are two or three salmon in this pool. They will not rise for me; they might for you.”

“I should scare them away.”

“No,” said the young man meaningly; “you would attract anything to stay.”

“Mr Lisle!”

“Well, what have I said? There, forgive me, and take the rod. You promised I should show you how to throw a fly.”

“Yes, yes; but some other time—perhaps to-morrow.”

“To-morrow comes never,” said the young man laughingly. “No; I have my chance now. Miss Dillon, did not your cousin promise to let me show her how to catch a salmon?”

“Yes; and I am so tired. I’ll wait till you have caught one, Claude.”

“There,” cried the young man hurriedly; and the stronger will prevailing over the weaker, Claude allowed her instructor to thrust the lithe rod he held into her hands, and, trembling and blushing, she suffered herself to be led to the side of the pool.

“I shall never learn,” she said.

“Not learn! I shall be able to come up to the Fort carrying your first salmon, and to say to Mr Gartram: ‘there, sir; salmon fishing taught in one lesson,’ What do you say to that?”

“How can she be so foolish?—Of what am I talking?—Mr Lisle, pray let me go.”

All silent sentences, but as the last was thought Claude raised her eyes to her companion, to meet his fixed upon hers, so full of tender, reverent love that she dropped her own, and fell a-trembling with a joy she tried vainly to crush down, while her heart beat heavily the old, old theme,—

“He loves me well—he loves me well.”

They had known each other since they were boy and girl, and the affection had slowly and steadily grown stronger and stronger, but Chris Lisle had said to himself time after time that it was too soon to tell her his love, and ask for the guardianship of her heart; and he had waited, feeling satisfied that some day Claude Gartram would be his.

“There,” he said playfully, “now for lesson the first. Let me draw out some more line. That’s the way. Now, you know as well as I do how to throw. Try to let your fly fall amongst that foam below where the water rushes into the pool. That’s the way. Bravo!”

“There, Mr Lisle,” cried Claude, after making a very fair cast, “now take the rod, for I must go. Mary, dear, come along.”

“Sha’n’t,” said Mary to herself, as she grew more deaf than ever. “Gather your rosebuds while you may, dear. He’s a nice, good fellow. Ah! how I could have loved a man like that.”

“Mary Dillon is too much interested in her book,” said Chris. “There, that’s plenty of line for a good cast. You must go on now. It isn’t so very wicked, Claude.”

“There, then, this one throw and I must go,” said the girl, her cheeks burning, and her head seeming to swim, for she was conscious of nothing—running river, the foam and swirl, the glorious landscape of rugged glen side, and the bright sun gilding the heathery earth upon which she stood—conscious of nothing save the fact that Chris Lisle was by her, and that his words seemed to thrill her to the heart, while in spite of herself he seemed to have acquired a mastery over her which it was sweet to obey.

“Well back,” he cried; “now then, a good one.”

It was not a good cast, being a very clumsy one, for the fly fell with a splash right out in a smooth, oily looking patch of water behind some stones. But, as is often the case, the tyro is more successful than the tried fisherman. The fly had no sooner touched the water than there was a rise, a singing whirr from the winch, and Chris shouted aloud with joy.

“There!” he cried. “You have him. First lesson.”

“Have I caught it?”

“Yes, yes; hold up the point of your rod.”

Claude immediately held it down, and the line went singing out, till Chris darted close behind his pupil and seized the rod, just over her hands, raising the top till it bent nearly double.

“A beauty!” he cried excitedly. “You lucky girl!”

“Thank you. That’s right. Now, take the rod and pull it out.”

“No, no,” he said, with his lips close to her ear, and she trembled more and more as she felt his crisp beard tickle the back of her neck, and his strong arms tightly press hers to her sides; “you must land him now.”

Away darted the salmon wildly about the pool, but Claude could not tell whether it was the excitement caused by the electric messages sent through the line, or by the pressure of Chris Lisle’s hands as he held hers to the rod.

“Mary, come and see Mr Lisle catch this salmon,” she cried huskily; but Mary only turned over a leaf, and seemed more deaf than ever, while the fish tugged and strained.

“Mr Lisle, loose my hands now. This is absurd. What are you doing?”

“Telling you I love you,” he whispered, in spite of himself, for the time had come, “Claude, dearest, better than my life.”

“No, no; you must not tell me that,” she said, half tearfully, for the declaration seemed to give her pain.

“I must. The words have come at last.”

“And you have lost your fish,” cried Claude for the line had suddenly become slack.

“But have I won you?”

“No, no. And pray let me go now.”

“No?”

There was so much anguish in the tone in which that one little word was spoken, that it went right to Claude’s heart, and as if involuntarily, she added quickly,—

“I don’t know.”

“Claude, dearest,” he whispered, and his voice trembled as the words were breathed in her ear, “for pity’s sake don’t trifle with me.”

“I am not trifling with you. I told you the truth. I don’t know.”

“Ah, that’s not catching salmon,” came sharply from behind them. “Claude, dear, don’t listen to him. He’s a wicked fortune-hunter.”

Chris started away from Claude as if some one had struck him a violent blow.

“Mary!” cried Claude.

“Oh, I beg your pardon. What did I say?”

Whizz!

“Mr Lisle! Help!” cried Claude, for the line had suddenly tightened, the top of the rod bent over in a curve, and the winch sang out as it rapidly revolved.

“Take the rod, please, Mr Lisle,” continued Claude, in a voice full of emotion; and, as he took it without a word, she saw that he was deadly pale, and that his white teeth were pressing hard upon his nether lip.

He played the fish mechanically, and with Claude steadily looking on, and feeling as if she would like to run home to shut herself in her own room and throw herself upon her knees and sob. But the face before her held her as by a chain, and she turned with a bitter look of reproach upon her cousin, as she saw the way in which Chris was stung.

“Don’t look at me like that, dear,” cried Mary, “the words slipped out. I did not mean them, indeed. It’s a big fish, isn’t it, Mr Lisle? Shall I gaff it for you?”

“Thank you,” he said drearily; and Mary picked up the bamboo staff with the glistening hook at the end.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Mr Lisle.”

“Granted,” was the laconic reply.

“Don’t, pray, don’t punish me for saying those words,” cried Mary. “There, finish your lesson in love and fishing. Claude,” she whispered, as the young man had to follow the fish a few yards down the stream, “you’ve caught him tightly; shall I gaff him as well?”

“Yes; you had better finish your lesson, Miss Gartram,” said Chris, walking back slowly winding in the line, and speaking in a hard, cold tone.

“No; you had better finish,” she replied hastily; and then, as she saw the cloud deepening on his brow, she stepped forward quickly, and laid her hand on the rod. “Yes, let me finish, Chris,” she said, and she gazed at him with her eyes full of faith and trust.

“Claude,” he whispered, as he gave her the rod, “you couldn’t think—”

“Hallo! What’s this?” cried a harsh voice, and all started, so suddenly had Norman Gartram—followed closely by his visitor—stepped up to where they stood.

“Mr Lisle giving Claude and me a lesson in fishing,” said Mary sharply. “Now, Claude, dear, wind in and I’ll hook him out.”

“Most interesting group,” said Parry Glyddyr, with rather a contemptuous look at the teacher of the art.

“Very,” said Norman Gartram, frowning. “Here, Claude, stop that fooling and come home.”

“Mary, Mary, what have you done?” whispered Claude, as they walked away.

“Made a mess of it, darling, I’m afraid.”

As they turned a corner of the glen, with her father’s guest talking about what she did not know, Claude stole a glance back, to see Christopher Lisle standing with his hands resting upon the rod he held, and a bright, silvery fish lying at his feet.

The girl’s heart went on beating heavily with pulsations that seemed as full of pleasure as of pain.

Volume One—Chapter Four.

“All to Bits!”

Mary Dillon did the greater part of the talking on the way home, Gartram saying scarcely a word, but making great use of his eyes, to see how Glyddyr took the unpleasant contretemps.

“And just after what I had said to him,” muttered Gartram. “The insolent young scoundrel! The miserable, contemptible pauper! How dare he?”

But Glyddyr’s behaviour was perfect, and excited Gartram’s wonder.

“He can’t have seen what I did,” he thought, “or he would never talk to her so coolly.”

For, ignoring everything, and as if he was blind to what had passed, Glyddyr dashed at once into a series of inquiries about Danmouth, and the weather in the winter.

“Do the storms affect the place much?” he said, looking at Claude.

“Knock the pots off sometimes, and always wash the slates clean,” said Mary, before Claude could reply.

“Not pleasant for the inhabitants,” said Glyddyr, after giving Mary a quick, amused glance before turning again to Claude. “But at the Fort, of course, you are too high up for the waves to reach?”

“Salt spray coats all the windows, and makes the walls shine,” interposed Mary.

“What will he think of me?” thought Claude; and then she wondered that she did not feel sorry, but that all the time, in spite of her father’s fiercely sullen looks, a peculiar kind of joy seemed to pervade her breast.

Glyddyr talked on, but he was completely talked down by Mary, who felt that the kindest thing she could do was to draw every one’s attention from her cousin, till they had passed through the little town, and nearly reached the Fort, where they were met by a rough-looking workman, who ran unceremoniously towards them, caught hold of Gartram roughly, and cried out, in wild excitement,—

“Come on to the quarry at once.”

“What’s the matter—fall of rock?” cried Gartram.

“Blasting—Woodham—blown all to bits,” panted the man.

“Then he has been using dynamite.”

“Nay; soon as we picked him up, he said it was the cursed bad powder.”

“Bah! Where is he?”

“We took him home, and I fetched the doctor, and then come on here.”

“Run home, girls. No, Mr Glyddyr, see them in. I’m going on to my workmen’s cottages.”

He hurried off, and Glyddyr turned to Claude.

“I’m sorry there is such terrible news,” he began; but Claude did not seem to hear him.

“Make haste, Mary,” she said hurriedly. “Bring brandy and wine, and join me there.”

“My dear Miss Gartram, are you going to the scene of the accident?”

Claude looked at him in an absent way.

“I am going to the Woodhams’ cottage,” she said hurriedly. “Sarah Woodham was our old servant. Don’t stop me, please.”

She hurried along the narrow road leading west, and it was not until she had gone some hundred yards following the messenger, who was trotting heavily at Gartram’s heels, that she realised that she was not alone.

“Mr Glyddyr!” she exclaimed.

“Pray pardon me,” he said, in a low, earnest voice. “As a friend, I cannot let you go alone at a time like this.”

Claude looked up at him wildly, but there was so much respectful deference in his manner that she could say nothing. In fact, her thoughts were all with the suffering man and woman—the victims of this deplorable mishap.

It was nearly half-a-mile along the rough cliff road; and it was traversed in silence, Claude being too much agitated to say more.

The scene was easy enough to find when they were approaching the place, for a knot of rough quarry workmen were gathered round a clean-looking, white-washed cottage, from out of whose open door came the harsh tones of a man’s voice, while the crowd parted left and right, and several placed the short black pipes they were smoking hurriedly in their pockets.

Claude had nearly reached the door when the words which were being uttered within the cottage seemed to act like a spell, arresting her steps and making her half turn shuddering away, as they seemed to lash her, so keenly and cuttingly they fell.

“Curse you! curse you! It’s all your doing. You’ve murdered me. Sarah, my girl, he has done for me at last.”

Gartram’s voice was heard in low, deep, muttering tones, as if in reproof; but the injured man’s voice overbore it directly, sounding shrill and harsh from agony as he cried,—

“Let every one outside hear it. Hark ye, lads, I wanted to use the dinnymite, but he made me use the cursed old powder again, and he has murdered me.”

“My good man,” said a fresh voice, which sounded clear in the silence, “you must be calm. It was a terrible accident.”

“Nay, doctor, it’s his doing; it’s his meanness. I wanted him to use the dinnymite, and he would keep to powder. He has murdered me.”

There was a low groan, and then a terrible cry; and as Glyddyr mentally pictured the scene within, of the doctor dressing the injuries, he turned to the trembling girl beside him.

“Miss Gartram,” he whispered, “this is no place for you. There is plenty of help. Let me see you home.”

She shook her head as she looked at him wildly, and, making a deprecating gesture, Glyddyr turned to one of the men.

“Is he very bad?” he whispered.

“Blowed a’most to bits,” said the man in a hoarse whisper.

“Did the powder go off too soon?”

“It warn’t powder at all,” said the man, as Gartram stepped quickly out of the cottage. “It were the dinnymite. He would use it, and he warn’t used to its ways.”

It was evident from the peculiar tightening of Gartram’s lips that he had heard the man’s words; and he turned back and re-entered the cottage, for his name was sharply pronounced within.

Then there was another groan, and the injured man cried,—

“Don’t, don’t; you’re killing me.”

At that moment a thin, keen-looking woman of about thirty rushed out of the cottage, her eyes wild and staring, and her face blanched, while her hands and apron were horribly stained.

“I can’t bear it,” she cried; “I can’t bear it!” and she flung herself upon her knees in the stony road, and covered her face with her hands, sobbing hysterically.

The sight of the suffering woman roused Claude to action; and as she took a couple of steps forward, and with the tears falling fast, laid her hand upon the woman’s shoulder, a low murmur arose among the men, and Glyddyr saw that they drew back respectfully, several turning right away.

“Sarah, my poor Sarah,” said Claude, bending low.

At the tender words of sympathy and the touch of the gentle hands, the woman let her own fall from her face, and stared up appealingly at the speaker.

Claude involuntarily shrank away from the ghastly face, for the hands had printed hideous traces upon the woman’s brow.

The shrinking away was momentary, for, recovering herself. Claude drew her handkerchief from her pocket, to turn in surprise as it was drawn from her hand, but she directly gave Glyddyr a grateful look, as she saw him step to a rough granite trough into which a jet of pure water was pouring from the cliff, and saturating it quickly, he returned the handkerchief to its owner.

But before the blood stains could be removed, the voice of the injured man was heard calling.

“Sarah! Don’t leave me, my girl. He has murdered me.”

The woman gave Claude a wild look, rose from her knees, and tottered back to the cottage as the voice of Gartram was heard in angry retort.

“Its like talking to a madman, Ike Woodham,” came clear and loud; “but you’ve got hurt by your own wilful obstinacy, and you want to throw the blame on me.”

As he spoke, Gartram strode out of the cottage, and then whispered to his child,—

“Come home, my dear. You can do no good.”

“No, no; not yet, papa,” she whispered. “I must try if I can help poor Sarah in her terrible trouble.”

A low murmur arose from the little crowd, and this seemed to excite Gartram.

“Well,” he cried fiercely, “what does that mean? It was his own fault—in direct opposition to my orders; and this is not the first accident through your own folly.”

The low, angry muttering continued.

“Here, come away, Claude,” cried Gartram fiercely, as he looked round at the lowering faces.

“He has murdered me, I tell you!” came from the open cottage door.

“Bah!” ejaculated Gartram angrily, and he strode away, but returned directly.

“Are you coming, my girl?”

“Yes, papa, soon. Let me see if I can be of use.”

“Look here, Mr Glyddyr,” said Gartram, speaking in a low, excited voice, “I can’t stop. I shall be saying things that will make them mad. See after Claude, and bring her home. The senseless idiots! If a man bruises himself with his own hammer, it is blamed on me.”

He strode away, and ignoring Glyddyr’s presence, Claude was moving softly toward the door, when the man who had brought the message held out his hand to arrest her.

“Don’t go in, dear bairn,” he said in a husky whisper; “it isn’t for the likes of you to see.”

“Thank you, Wolfe,” she said calmly, “I am not afraid.”

But at that moment, as Glyddyr was about to make a protest, a quiet-looking, gentlemanly man appeared at the door turning down his cuffs, the perspiration glistening upon his high white forehead as he came out into the sun.

“No, no, my dear child,” he said in a whisper, as a low moaning came from within and seemed to be followed by the low soft washing of the waves below. “You can do no good.”

“Is—is he very bad, Doctor Asher?” asked Claude.

He looked at her for an instant or two without replying, and then bent his head.

“Oh!” ejaculated Claude, with a low cry of pain.

“Terribly crushed, my dear; better leave them together alone.”

“But—you do not think—oh, Doctor Asher, you can save him?”

“Is it so bad as that, sir?” whispered Glyddyr, as he saw the peculiar look in the doctor’s face. “Couldn’t you—with more help—shall I send?”

“My dear sir,” said the doctor in a low voice, “half a dozen of the crack London surgeons couldn’t save him.”

“Oh!” sighed Claude again. “But a clergyman. Mr Glyddyr, would you go into Danmouth?”

“Better not, my dear child,” said the doctor quietly. “You know their peculiar tenets. His wife was praying with him when I came out.”

As if to endorse the doctor’s words, the low, constant murmur of a voice was heard from within, and from time to time a gasping utterance was heard, and then twice over the word “Amen.”

Just then Claude stepped softly toward the open doorway, and sank upon her knees with her hands clasped, and her face turned up appealingly toward the sunny sky, while all around seemed full of life, and hope, though the black shadow of death was closing in upon the humble roof. And as Glyddyr saw the sweet, pure, upturned face, with its closed eyes, he involuntarily took off his hat, and gazed wistfully, with something very near akin to love seeming to swell within his breast.

The silence was very deep, though the murmur from the cottage continued, till, in the midst of what seemed to be a painful pause, a loud and bitter wail came upon the stillness, and the doctor hurriedly stepped within.

“Poor Ike’s cottage is to let, mates,” said a rough, low voice; “who wants to make a change?”

“Dead?” asked Claude, with a motion of her lips, as after a short space the doctor returned.

“No; the draught I have given him to dull the pain has had effect: he is asleep.”

“And when he awakes, Doctor Asher?” whispered Claude, as she clung to his arm.

The doctor shook his head.

“Can you do nothing?”

“Only try to lull the pain,” was the reply. And then quickly, “Wanted somewhere else?”

This last was to himself as a man was seen running toward them, and Claude turned if possible paler as she recognised one of the servants from the Fort.

He ran up breathlessly.

“Miss Claude—Doctor Asher,” he panted. “Come at once. Master’s got another of his fits.”

Volume One—Chapter Five.

The Doctor is King.

“Don’t be flurried, my dear,” said Doctor Asher, as, in a calm, business-like way, he saw to Gartram being laid easily on the floor, where he had fallen in the study.

“But he looks so ghastly. You do not think—”

“Yes, I do, my child,” said the doctor cheerfully. “Not what you think, because I know. He has another fit precisely the same as the last, and it was evidently a sudden seizure, just as he had risen from his chair, after writing that letter.”

“Then there is no danger?”

“Oh, dear, no. That’s right, you see. We’ll have this mattress on the floor; and he can lie here. Don’t be alarmed.”

“But I am horribly alarmed.”

“Then you must not be, my child. I will not conceal the fact from you that he will probably be subject to more fits, and may have one at any time.”

“But I feel so helpless.”

“So does a doctor, my dear. We try all we can, but time has to perform the greater part of the cure, after we have done all we can to avoid suffocation, and the patient injuring himself in his struggles. There, there; he’s going on all right, and you’ve been a very good, brave girl. I quite admire your behaviour all through; and another time, if I am not here, you will know exactly how to act.”

“Oh, don’t talk of another time, Doctor Asher.”

“Well, I will not,” he said, smiling. “Now, don’t be alarmed, but keep perfectly cool, for I must go back and see to that poor fellow at the quarry.”

“Yes, of course. But, doctor, if my poor father should be taken worse?”

“He will not be taken worse, but gradually mend. I shall not be very long away.”

“No, no; pray don’t be long.”

“No; and mind you are my assistant. So you must be cool and self-possessed. Shall I send Miss Dillon to sit with you?”

“Yes, please, do,” said the agitated girl, as she gazed wildly at her father’s altered face.

Doctor Asher seemed rather to resemble a very smooth, black tom cat, and, as he drew down his cuffs, and passed his white hands over his glossy coat, an imaginative person would not have been much surprised to see him begin to lick himself, to remove a few specks caused by the business in which he had been engaged.

As he left the study and crossed the hall, with its polished granite flooring, his delicate manner of proceeding toward the drawing-room, and stepping from one to another of the oases of Eastern rugs, was still like the progress of the cat who believed the polished granite to be water, and tried to avoid wetting his paws.

When he laid his hand upon the drawing-room door, a murmur of voices came from within, and, as he entered, Mary Dillon jumped up from the low ottoman upon which she had been seated, talking to Glyddyr, and ran quickly to the doctor’s side.

“How is he?” she said excitedly.

“Better, certainly. Miss Gartram wants you to go and stay with her.”

“Yes, of course. Good-bye, Mr Glyddyr, and thank you for being so kind.”

She spoke as she ran to the door, jerked the last words back over her shoulder, and was gone, leaving the doctor face to face with the visitor.

“How is he?” said the latter. “You can speak plainly to me.”

“To be sure I can, my dear sir. Ah, what a world this is. Yesterday we were taking our champagne in the saloon of your charming yacht, to-day—”

“You are keeping me waiting for an answer,” said Glyddyr, rather stiffly.

“So I am,” said the doctor, smiling. “Well, how is he? Rather bad. Nasty fit of his usual sort.”

“Then he is subject to these fits?”

“Most decidedly.”

“But what caused it?”

“Worry. From what I can gather, he must have some upset when out walking. Our friend has a temper.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Glyddyr.

“Then he has had some quarrel with this poor fellow who is hurt. The terrible accident followed, and, with the customary crass obstinacy of rustic, ignorant workmen, the poor fellow and his comrades lay the blame of a trouble, caused by their own stupidity, upon their employer.”

“Yes, I see. Caused great mental disturbance?”

“Exactly, my dear sir. He being a man who, in the labour of making money, has nearly worried himself to death.”

“Yes.”

“And who now worries himself far more to keep it.”

“Ah, money is hard to keep,” said Glyddyr, with a smile.

“He has found it so, sir. When the old bank broke years ago, it hit him to the tune of many thousands.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes; and that set him building this place for his protection. I shouldn’t wonder if he has quite a bank here.”

“Indeed! The the old man is rich?”

“Rich! I thought every one knew that. Better be poor and happy.”

“As we are, eh, doctor? Well, it’s a terrible worry—money.”

This was accompanied by a peculiar look which the doctor interpreted, and replied to with one as suggestive.

“No danger, I hope, to the old gentleman?”

“No, no. Fits are not favourable to health, though.”

“Well, no danger this time, I hope?”

“Not a bit. He’ll feel the shock for a few days. That’s all.”

“And the other patient?”

“Hah, yes; I’m just going over there.”

“He is very bad, you say?”

“Bad! I expect to find him gone.”

The doctor nodded, and left the room.

“Bah! how I do hate them,” said Glyddyr. “I’d have walked down with him, but I always feel as if I were smelling physic.”

Glyddyr stood tapping the bottom of his watch, which he had just taken from his pocket, as he talked in a low tone, just as if he were conversing with the little round face before him.

“How wild the old boy was—just after he had been talking to me as he had. Pshaw! I don’t mind. Rustic bit of courtship. Half-bumpkin sort of fellow, and poor as Job. Old man wouldn’t have him at any price. The gipsy! Been carrying on with him, then, eh? Well, it’s always the way with your smooth, drooping little violets. Regular flirtation. I don’t mind. I wouldn’t give a dump for a girl without a bit of spirit in her. It’s all right. Friends at court—a big friend at court. But no more fits for friends—at present, I hope. I’ll get him to come on a cruise, and bring her. Tell the old boy it will do him good. Get the doctor on my side, and make him prescribe a trip round the islands, with him to come as medical attendant. Nothing to do, and unlimited champagne. Real diplomacy. By Jupiter, Parry, you are a clever one, though you do get most awfully done on the turf!”

“Yes,” he said, after another look at the watch, for the purpose now of seeing the time, “that’s the plan—a long sea trip round the islands, with sentiment, sighs and sunsets; and, as they said in the old melodramas, ‘Once aboard the lugger, she is mine.’ For, lugger read steam yacht, schooner-rigged Fair Star, of Cowes; Parry Glyddyr, owner.”

He laughed in a low, self-satisfied way, and then moved toward the door.

“Well, it’s of no use to wait here,” he said. “They will not show up again. I can call, though, as often as I like. Come again this evening, and see her then. She can’t refuse. I’ll go now and see how the salmon fisher is getting on.”

Volume One—Chapter Six.

In Charge.

“Mary, dear, don’t deceive me for the sake of trying to give me comfort,” said Claude, as she knelt in the study, beside the mattress upon which her father lay breathing stertorously.

“Claude, darling, I tease you and say spiteful things sometimes, but you know you can trust me.”

“Yes, yes, dear, I know; but you don’t answer me.”

“I have told you again and again that your father is just like he was last time, and the best proof of there being no danger is Doctor Asher staying away so long.”

“It’s that which worries me so. He promised to come back soon.”

“Don’t be unreasonable, dear. You know he went to the quarry where that man is dangerously hurt.”

“Yes. Poor Sarah! How she must suffer! It is very terrible. But look now, Mary—that dark mark beneath papa’s eyes.”

“Yes, I can see it,” said Mary, rising quickly, and going to the table, where she changed the position of the lamp, with the result that the dark shadow lay now across the sleeper’s lips. “There, that is not a dangerous symptom, Claudie.”

“Don’t laugh at me, Mary. You can’t think how I alarmed I am. These fits seem to come more frequently than they used. Ought not papa to have more advice?”

“It would be of no use, dear. I could cure him.”

“You?”

“Yes; or he could cure himself.”

“Mary!”

“Yes,” said the little, keen-looking body, kneeling down by her cousin’s side; “uncle has only to leave off worrying about making more money and piling up riches that he will never enjoy, and he would soon be well again.”

Claude sighed.

“See what a life he leads, always in such a hurry that he cannot finish a meal properly; and as to taking a bit of pleasure in any form, he would think it wicked. I haven’t patience with him. Yes, I have, poor old fellow—plenty. He has been very good to miserable little me.”

“Of course he has, dear,” said Claude, throwing her arms about her cousin’s neck and kissing her, with the result that the sharp-looking, self-contained little body uttered an hysterical cry, clung to her, and burst out sobbing wildly, as if all control was gone.

“Mary, darling, don’t, pray don’t. You distress me. What is the matter?”

“I’m miserable, wretched,” sobbed the poor girl, with her face hidden in her cousin’s breast. “I always seem to be doing something wrong. It’s just as if, when I tried to make people happy, I was a kind of imp of mischief, and caused trouble.”

“No, no, no! What folly.”

“It isn’t folly; it’s quite true. See what I did this morning.”

Claude felt her cheeks begin to burn, and she tried to speak, but the words would not come.

“I knew that Chris Lisle had gone up the east river fishing, and I was sure he longed to see you, and I was quite certain you wanted to see him.”

“Mary, be silent,” cried Claude, in an excited whisper; “it is not true.”

“Yes, it is, dear. You know it is, and I could see that he was miserable, and had been since you went on board Mr Glyddyr’s yacht, so I felt that it would be quite right to take you round there, so that you might meet and make it up. And see what mischief I seem to have made.”

“Yes,” said Claude gravely, as she metaphorically put on her maiden mask of prudery; “and you know now that it was very, very thoughtless of you.”

“Thoughtless!” said Mary, looking up with a quick look, half-troubled, half-amused; “didn’t I think too much?”

“Don’t talk, Mary,” said Claude primly. “You may disturb poor papa. It was very wicked and meddlesome and weak, and you don’t know what harm you have done.”

Mary Dillon’s face was flushed and tear-stained, and her eyes looked red and troubled; but she darted a glance at her cousin so full of mischievous drollery, that Claude’s colour deepened, and she turned away troubled, and totally unable to continue the strain of reproof.

She was spared further trouble by a cough heard in the hall.

“Wipe your eyes quickly, Mary,” she whispered; “here is Doctor Asher at last.”

Mary jumped up, and stepped to the window, where she was half hidden by the curtains, as there was a gentle tap at the door, the handle was turned, and the doctor, looking darker and more stern than ever, entered the room.

He whisperingly asked how his patient had been, as he went down on one knee by the mattress, made a short examination, and turned to Claude, who, with parted lips, was watching him anxiously.

“You think him worse?” she whispered.

“Indeed I do not,” he said quickly. “Nothing could be better. He will sleep heavily for a long time.”

“But did you notice his heavy breathing?”

“Of course I did,” said the doctor rising, “and you have no cause for alarm. Ah, Miss Mary, I did not see you at first.”

“Don’t deceive me, Doctor Asher,” said Claude, in agonised tones; “tell me the worst.”

“There is no worse to tell you, my dear child. I dare say your father will be well enough to sit up to-morrow.”

“Thank heaven!” said Claude to herself. Then, turning to the doctor: “How is poor Isaac Woodham?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“How dreadful!”

“Yes; it was a terrible accident.”

“But is there no hope?”

“You asked me not to deceive you,” said the doctor gravely. “None at all.”

Just then the sick man moaned slightly in his sleep, and made an uneasy movement which took his daughter back to his side.

“Don’t be alarmed, my child,” said the doctor encouragingly; “there is nothing to fear.”

“But I am alarmed,” said Claude; “and I look forward with horror to the long night when I am alone with him.”

“You are going to sit up with him?”

“Of course.”

“Divide the night with your cousin.”

“Yes—but—”

“Well—what is it?”

“Oh, Doctor Asher, don’t leave him. Pray, pray, stay here.”

“But I have to go and see that poor fellow twice during the night.”

“I had forgotten him,” sighed Claude. “Couldn’t you stop here, and go and see him in the night?”

“Well, I might do that,” said the doctor thoughtfully; “but really, my child, there is no necessity.”

“If you could stop, Doctor Asher,” interposed Mary, “it would be a great relief to poor Claude, who is nervous and hysterical about my uncle’s state.”

“Very well,” was the cheerful reply. “I’ll tell you what; I’ll sit with you till about nine, and then go and see poor Woodham. Then I’ll come back and stay up with Mr Gartram till about three, when you shall be called to relieve me.”

“But I shall not go to bed,” said Claude decidedly.

“I am your medical man, and I prescribe rest,” said the doctor, smiling. “I don’t want any more patients at present. You and your cousin will go and lie down early, and then come and relieve me, so that I can go and see poor Woodham again. After that I shall return here, and you can let me have a sofa ready, to be called if wanted. There, I am the doctor, and a doctor rules in a sick house.”

“Must I do as you say?” asked Claude pleadingly.

“Yes; you must,” he replied; and so matters were settled.

Doctor Asher walked down to the quarry cottage to see his patient there, and did what he could to alleviate the poor fellow’s pain, always avoiding the inquiring look in the wife’s eyes, and then he returned to the Fort.

“How is he now?” asked Claude anxiously.

“Very bad,” was the reply.

“You will find coffee all ready on the side-table, doctor,” said Claude; “and there is a spirit lamp and the stand and glasses. There are cigars on the shelf; but you will let me sit up too?”

“To show that you have no confidence in your medical man.”

“Oh, no, no; but Mary and I might be of some use.”

“And of none at all to-morrow, my dears. You must both go to bed, and be ready to relieve me.”

“But is there anything else I can do to help you?”

“Yes; what I say—go to bed at once.”

Claude hesitated a few moments, and then walked quickly to the side of the mattress, knelt down, kissed her father lovingly, and then rose.

“Come, Mary,” she said. “And you will ring the upstairs bell if there’s the slightest need?”

“Of course, of course. There, good-night; I shall ring punctually at two.”

He shook hands, and the two girls left the room unwillingly, and proceeded slowly upstairs.

“Well lie down in your room, Mary,” said Claude; “it is so much nearer the bell. Do you know, I feel so dreadfully low-spirited? It is as if a terrible shadow had come over the place, and—don’t laugh at me—it seemed to grow darker when Doctor Asher came into the room.”

“What nonsense! Because he is all in black.”

“Do you think he is to be trusted, Mary?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like him, and I never did. He is so sleek and smooth, and I hate him to call us ‘my dear’ in that nasty, patronising, paternal sort of way.”

“Then let’s sit up.”

“No, no. It would be absurd. I daresay we should feel the same about any other doctor.”

“I do hope he will take great care of poor papa,” sighed Claude; and the door closed after them as they entered their room.

If Doctor Asher was not going to take great care of Norman Gartram, it was very evident that he was going to take very great care of himself, for as soon as he was alone he struck a match, lit the spirit lamp, lifted the lid of the coffee pot, and found that it was still very hot, and then, removing a stopper in the spirit stand, he poured out into a cup a goodly portion of pale brandy.

He had just restored the stopper to the spirit decanter, saying to himself, “Nice, thoughtful little girl!” when Gartram moaned and moved uneasily.

The doctor crossed to him directly, went down on one knee, and felt to see that his patient’s neck was well opened.

“Almost a pity not to have had him undressed,” he said to himself. “What’s the matter with you—uncomfortable? Why, poor old boy,” he continued, with a half laugh, as his hands busily felt round the sick man, “how absurd!”

He had passed a hand through the opening in Gartram’s shirt front, and after a little effort succeeded in unbuckling a cash belt which was round his patient’s waist, drawing the whole out, and noting that on one side there was a pocket stuffed full and hard as he threw the belt carelessly on the table.

“Nice wadge that for a man to lie on. There, old fellow, you’ll be more comfortable now.”

As if to endorse his words, Gartram uttered a deep sigh, and seemed to settle off to sleep.

“Breeches pockets full too, I daresay,” muttered the doctor; “and shouldn’t be surprised if there’s a good, hard bunch of keys somewhere in his coat. Doesn’t trouble him, though.”

He rose, and went back to the tray at the side, filled the already primed coffee cup and carried it to the table, wheeled forward an easy chair, selected a cigar, which he lit, and then threw himself back and sipped his coffee and smoked.

“Yes, sweet little girl Claude,” he thought; “make a man a good wife—good rich wife, and if—no, no, not the slightest chance for me, and I’ll go on as I am, and make the best of it.”

He had another sip.

“Delicious coffee, fine cigar. Worse things than being a doctor. We get as much insight of family matters as the parsons, and are trusted with more secrets.”

He laughed to himself as he lay back.

“Yes, nice little heiress, Claude,” he said again. “Wonder who’ll get her—Christopher the salmon fisher, or our new yachting friend? I think I should back Glyddyr.”

He smoked on, and thought seriously for some time about his other patient, and after a time he emitted a cloud of smoke which he had retained in his mouth, as he turned himself with a jerk from one side of his great easy chair to the other.

“No,” he said, “impossible to have done more. The Royal College of Surgeons couldn’t save him.”

He smoked on in silence, sipping his coffee from time to time, gazing the while at Gartram, upon whom the light shone faintly, just sufficient to show his stern-looking, deeply-marked face.

“Yours is a good head, my dear patient,” he mused. “Well-cut features, and a look of firm determination in your aspect, even when your eyes are closed. You miss something there, for you have keen, piercing eyes, but for all that you look like what you are, a stubborn, determined Englishman, who will have his own way over everything so long as his works will make him go. When they run down, he comes to me for help, and I am helping him. Yes, you were sure to get on and heap up money, and build grand houses, and slap your pocket-book and say: ‘I am a rich man,’ and ‘I laugh at and deride the whole world,’ and so you do, my dear sir, all but the doctor, who, once he has you, has you all his life, and can do what he likes with you. I have you hard, Norman Gartram, and I am licenced; I have you completely under me, and so greatly am I in possession of you, that I could this night say to you die, and you would die; or I could bid you live, and you would live. A simple giving or a simple taking. A movement with the tactus eruditus of a physician, and then the flag would be down, the King of the Castle would be gone, and a new king would reign in the stead—or queen,” he added, with a laugh.

“Ah, you people trust us a great deal, and we in return trust you—a very long time often before we can get paid. Not you, my dear Gartram, you always were a hard cash man. But you people trust us a great deal, and our power is great.

“And ought not to be abused,” he said hastily. “No, of course not. No one ought to abuse those who trust. Capital coffee this,” he added, as he partook of more. “Grand thing to keep a man awake.

“Humph! Tired. Ours is weary work,” and he yawned.

“I believe I should have been a clever fellow,” mused the doctor, “if I had not been so confoundedly lazy. There’s something very interesting in these cases. In yours, for instance, my fine old fellow, it sets one thinking whether I could have treated you differently, and whether I could do anything to prevent the recurrence of these fits.”

He smoked on in silence, and then shook his head.

“No,” he said, half aloud; “if there is a fire burning, and that is kept burning, all that we can do is to keep on smothering it for a time. It is sure to keep on eating its way out. He has a fire in his brain which he insists upon keeping burning, so until he quenches it himself, all I can do is to stop the flames by smothering it over by my medical sods. You must cure yourself, Norman Gartram; I cannot cure you. No, and you cannot cure yourself, for you will go on struggling to make more money that you have no use for, till you die. Poor devil!”

He said the last two words aloud, in a voice full of pitying contempt. Then, after another sip of his coffee, he looked round for a book, drew the lamp close to his right shoulder, and picked up one or two volumes, but only to throw them down again; and he was reaching over for another when his eye fell upon the cash belt with its bulging contents.

“Humph,” he ejaculated, as he turned it over and over, and noted that it had been in service a long time. “Stuffed very full. Notes, I suppose. Old boy hates banking. Wonder how much there is in? Very dishonourable,” he muttered; “extremely so, but he has placed himself in my hands.”

He drew out a pocket-book.

“Wants a new elastic band, my dear Gartram. Out of order. I must prescribe a new band. Let me see; what have we here? Notes—fivers—tens—two fifties. Droll thing that these flimsy looking scraps of paper should represent so much money. More here too—tens, all of them.”

He drew forth from the pockets of the book dirty doubled-up packets of Bank of England notes, and carelessly examined them, refolding them, and returning them to their places.

“What a capital fee I might pay myself,” he said, with an unpleasant little laugh; “and I don’t suppose, old fellow, that you would miss it. Certainly, my dear Gartram, you would be none the worse. Extremely one-sided sometimes,” he said, “to have had the education of a gentleman and run short. Yes, very.”

He returned the last notes to the pocket, and raised a little flap in the inner part.

“Humph! what’s this? An old love letter. No: man’s handwriting:—‘instructions to my executors.’”

He gave vent to a low whistle, glanced at the sleeping man, then at the door, and back at his patient before laying down the pocket-book, and turning the soiled little envelope over and over.

“Not fastened down,” he muttered. “I wonder what—Oh, no: one can’t do that.”

He hastily picked up the pocket-book, and thrust the note back into its receptacle, but snatched it out again, opened it quickly, and read half aloud certain of the sentences which caught his attention—“‘Granite closet behind book cases—vault under centre of study—big granite chest’.”

“Good heavens!” he said, after a pause, during which he read through the memorandum again; then refolding it and returning it to the envelope, he hastily placed the writing in its receptacle, and in turn this was put in the pocket-book. Lastly, the book was returned to the pouch in the belt, which latter was thrust hastily into one of the drawers of the writing-table, the key turned and taken out.

“Give it to Mademoiselle Claude,” he said, with a half laugh. “What an awkward thing if I had been tempted to behave as some would have done under the circumstances.”

He took out a delicate lawn handkerchief, unfolded it, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and then proceeded to do the same to his hands, which were cold and damp.

“That coffee is strong,” he said, “or it is my fancy; perhaps the place is too warm.”

He walked up and down the room two or three times, gazing anxiously at the bookshelves, and then at the table, where the floor was covered with a thick Turkey carpet; but he turned away and refilled his cup with coffee and brandy, found that his cigar was out, and threw the stump away before helping himself to a fresh one, and smoking heavily for some time, evidently thinking deeply.

Then, apparently unable to resist the temptation, he rose and walked to the door, opened it and listened, found that all was silent, closed it again, and after glancing at his patient, who was sleeping heavily, he hastily drew out the key, opened the drawer, and, after a momentary hesitation, took out the belt.

In another minute, the yellow looking memorandum was in his hands, being studied carefully before it was restored to its resting-place, and again locked up.

“I did not know I had so much curiosity in my nature,” he said, with a half laugh. “Well, the study of mankind is man, doesn’t some one say, and I’m none the worse for a little extra knowledge of a friend’s affairs. I might be called upon to give advice some day.”

Oddly enough, the knowledge again affected the doctor so that he wiped his brow and hands carefully, and then sat gazing thoughtfully before him as he sipped and smoked and seemed to settle down into a calm, restful state, which at times approached drowsiness.

Upon these occasions he rose and softly paced the room, stopping to listen to his patient’s breathing, and twice over feeling his pulse.

“Could not be going on better,” he muttered.

Finally, during one of his turns up and down, he heard a step outside the door, followed by a light tap, and Claude entered.

The doctor started, and looked at her wildly.

“Why have you come down?” he said.

“Come down? How is he? I overslept myself, and it is half-past two.”

“Is it so late as that?”

“Doctor Asher!” cried Claude excitedly, as she caught him by the arm, “you are keeping something back.”

Her words seemed to smite him, and he tried vainly to speak. It was as if he had suddenly been startled by some terrible shock, and he stared at Claude with his jaw slightly fallen.

“Why don’t you speak?”

“Keeping something back,” he said hoarsely. “No!”

“No? Why do you say that? You seem so confused and changed. Tell me, for heaven’s sake; my father—”

“Better—better,” he said, recovering himself, and speaking loudly, but in a husky voice. “I—I have been a little drowsy, I suppose, with the long watching. Not correct, but natural.”

She looked at him wonderingly, he seemed so strange, and unable to contain herself, she turned to where her father lay, with her heart throbbing wildly, and something seemed to whisper to her the words, “He is dead.”

Volume One—Chapter Seven.

Sarah Woodham’s Vow.

It was after many hours of stupor, and when Doctor Asher, the physician of Danmouth, had gone back to the Fort, from a hurried visit to his injured patient, that Isaac Woodham unclosed his eyes, and lay gazing at the pale, agony-drawn face of his wife, upon which the light of the solitary candle fell.

“What’s the matter?” he said hoarsely.

“Ike, husband,” whispered the suffering woman.

“Oh, yes; I remember now,” he said, with a piteous groan. “I always knew it would come.”

“Ike, dear, can I do anything?” said his wife tenderly.

“Yes.”

“Tell me what, dear?”

“I’ll tell you soon,” groaned the man. “I knew it would come; I always felt it. Ah, my girl, my girl, I’ve preached to them often, and talked about the end of a good Christian man, but it’s very, very hard to die.”

“Die! oh, Isaac, don’t say that.”

“Yes; and to die through him—through that tyrant, and all to make him rich.”

“No, no; you’ll get better, dear, as Roberts did, and Jackson, who were worse than you.”

“Hah!” he cried, making a gesticulation, as if to cast aside his wife’s vain words; and then, with a sudden access of force that was startling, he caught at her hand.

“Sally, my lass,” he whispered harshly, “Gartram has murdered me.”

“Isaac, my poor husband, don’t say that.”

“It was all his doing. He always thwarted me, and interfered when I had to blast.”

“Pray, pray be still, dear. You are so bad and weak. The doctor said you were to be kept quiet, and not to talk.”

“Doctor knew it was all over. I am a dying man.”

“No, no, my darling.”

“Yes, I’ll say it, and more too while I have time. But for Gartram, I should be well and strong now. Oh, how I hate him! Curse him for a dog!”

“Isaac!—darling husband.”

“Yes; I always hated him, the oppressor and tyrant. He made me mad about blasting that bit of rock, and I felt I must do it—my way; but he bullied me till my hands were all of a tremble, and I was thinking about what he said till I wasn’t myself, and the stuff went off too soon. But it was his doing. He murdered me; and if it hadn’t been for him, I should have been right.”

“Oh, my darling!”

“Hush, don’t cry, my lass. It’s all over now, but I can’t die peaceful like yet.”

“Let me put your poor hands together, Ike, and I’ll pray for you.”

“Yes, my lass, but not yet. I’m dying, Sally—fast.”

“No, no, Ike. There, let me give you a drop of the stuff the doctor left. It’ll do you good.”

“Nothing’ll do me good but you.”

“Ike, dear, be still and I’ll run and fetch the doctor; he’s at the Fort. Gartram has had a bad fit.”

“Curse him!”

“No, no, dear, don’t curse. You make me shiver.”

There was a terrible silence in the gloomy cottage room, where the ghastly face of the injured man seemed to loom out of the darkness, and looked weird and strange. The woman tried to quit his side, but he held her tightly as he lay gazing straight up at her, his breath coming in a laboured way, as if he had to force each inspiration, suffering agony the while; and if ever the stamp of death was set-plainly upon human countenance, it was upon his.

“Sally,” he gasped, and his voice was changing rapidly. “Sally!”

“Yes, dear.”

“Don’t leave me. Where are you?”

“Here, darling; holding your hands.”

“Why did you put out the light?”

“Isaac, my own dear man!”

“Listen. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, dear, yes.”

“I’m dying fast, and I shall never rest without—without you do what I say.”

“Yes, dear, I’ll do anything you tell me—you know I will.”

“That’s right. Quick, before it’s too late.”

“Oh, if help would only come,” moaned the woman.

“No help can come, my lass. Now, put your hand under me and lift my head on your shoulder. That’s right. Ah!”

He uttered a groan of agony, and lay speechless as she raised him; and the wife turned cold with horror, as it seemed to her that he was dead, but his lips moved again.

“Now,” he said, “I can talk without feeling strangled. Gartram has made an end of me, and it’s a dying man speaking to you. It’s almost a voice from the dead telling you what to do.”

“Yes, dear, tell me. What shall I do?”

“You’ll swear to do what I tell you?”

“Yes, Isaac, anything.”

“You’re in the presence of death, wife, with the good and evil all about us, and what you say is registered against you.”

“Yes, dear,” said the woman, shuddering.

“You swear, so help you God, to obey my last words?”

“Yes, dear,” cried the woman, with her eyes lighting up, and a look of exultation in every feature; “I’ll swear to obey you.”

“Then you will measure out to Norman Gartram, and pay back to him all he has paid to me.”

“Isaac!”

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as it says in the Holy Book.”

“Husband!”

“You have sworn to do it, woman, and there is no drawing back. As he murdered me, so you shall cut short his cursed life.”

“Isaac, I cannot.”

“Woman, you have sworn to the dying; you are the instrument, the chosen vessel to execute God’s wrath upon this man. For he shall not live to do more wrong to the suffering people he has been grinding under his heel.”

“No, no: I could not do this thing, Isaac, it is too terrible.”

“She has sworn to do it. She has heard the message, and his days will come to an end as mine have come, and he will go on no longer in his wickedness, piling up riches. Ha! ha! ha! Thou fool—this night shall thy—wife—are you there?”

“Isaac! Husband!”

“Ah, yes. Good wife, my last words. Words from the other world. You will not rest till you have fulfilled your sacred task. I shall not rest till then—you—the chosen vessel—His wrath against the oppressor—as I have been—cut off—so shall Gartram be—cut off—yours the chosen hand, wife—quick—your hand—upon my head—you swear—that you will do my bidding—the bidding of—”

He paused, and she saw his eyes gazing wildly in hers, and it seemed as if the words she whispered were dragged from her—a voice within her seeming to utter them, and the belief that she was but the instrument of a great punishment upon a sinful man appeared to strengthen within her breast.

“Quick,” gasped the dying man; “your hand upon my head, wife—your lips close to me—let me hear you speak.”

“Isaac! Husband!” she groaned; “must I do this dreadful thing?”

“It is a message from—”

There was a terrible silence in the narrow chamber, and the dying man’s eyes were fixed upon hers as she laid her hand upon his brow and spoke firmly,—

“I swear.”

“Hah!”

A low, rattling expiration of the breath, and as Sarah Woodham gazed in her husband’s eyes, the wild, fiery look died slowly out, to become grave and tender. Then it seemed to her that the look was fixed and strange. She had been prepared, but not for so sudden a shock as this.

“Ike!” she cried, lowering him upon the pillow. “Ike! Why don’t you speak? Do you hear me?” and her voice sounded peremptory and harsh; “do you hear me?”

She had seized him by the shoulders as she bent over him, and her voice grew more excited and strange.

“You are doing this to frighten me—to keep that oath—but I will do it. Ike, dear, do you hear me? Don’t play with me. It hurts my poor heart—to see you—so fixed and strange—Ike! Husband! Speak!”

In her horror and agony she gripped his shoulders more tightly and shook him.

Then the horrible truth refused to be kept longer at bay, and, starting back from the couch where the fixed, grave eyes seemed to follow her, reminding her of her oath, she stood with her hands raised, staring wildly for a few moments before an exceeding bitter cry escaped her lips.

“No,” she cried; “it can’t be. My darling, don’t leave me here alone in the weary world. Isaac, my own! My God! he’s dead.”

She reeled, caught at the table to save herself, the ill-supported candle dropped from the stick, and she fell with a thud upon the floor, as the candle rolled from the table close to her face, flickered for a few moments to display its ghastly lineaments, and then died out.

But it was not quite dark.

A faint light stole in beside the drawn-down blind, the chill air of morning sighed round the house, and a low murmur came from the waves fretting among the broken granite far below; and it was as if the night, too, were dead, and the low sigh died away in a hushed silence.

Then pink, pink, pink, pink came the sharp cry of the blackbird from the tangle of bramble and whortleberry high up the cliff slope, and from the grassy level above, the clear loud song of the lark, as it rose high in the pale morning sky, telling that come sorrow come joy, the world still goes round, and that Nature will have her way, even though murder be on the wing.

Volume One—Chapter Eight.

Claude Opens the Awful Door.

Sarah Woodham sat in her little parlour, sallow of cheek, and with a hard, stern look in her eyes as she gazed straight before her at the drawn-down blind, and listened to the mournful wash of the waves which came with a slow, regular pulsation through the open door.

Hers had been no romantic life. Hard working servant for years at the Fort, till, in a dry, matter-of-fact way, Isaac Woodham, quarryman, and local preacher at the little chapel, and one of the most narrow-minded and bigoted of his sect, had cast his eyes upon her in the chapel and preached to her. He had selected his texts from various parts of the Bible, where it was related that certain men took unto themselves wives, and when he was at work he told himself that Sarah was comely to look upon, and that one of these days he would marry her.