George Manville Fenn (continued 5)

Chapter Thirty One.

Fox and Wolf.

The days went by slowly and sadly. Letters came regularly enough, but they were not hopeful, for Clive told how he was hemmed in by difficulties which prevented his stirring: and, as he said, it would be madness to do anything which would involve legal proceedings and injure the prospects of the mine. There was nothing for it but to wait: for Wrigley had laid his plans only too well, and he and Jessop had everything in their own hands.

To the Major he said emphatically that as far as money matters were concerned there was nothing to mind, for the new management was bound for their own sake to do their best, as any lapse and falling off of the returns would be fatal to their position.

To Dinah there were tender breathings of devotion, and the assurance that though absent he was with her always in spirit; and at the first opportunity he would run down.

Ten days had passed, and one afternoon the Major had encountered Robson, whom he was passing with a short nod; but, after glancing round to see whether they were observed, the young man followed the Major and said quickly—

“I’m kept on at the mine, sir, because I know so much of the books, and they can’t very well get along without me; but you looked at me so differently to what you used, sir, that I thought I’d speak.”

“Yes, sir: you belong to the enemy’s camp,” said the Major sharply.

“No, I don’t, sir, though I’m there, and I wish to goodness Mr Clive Reed was back, for Sturgess is unbearable with his bullying ways; and as for Mr Jessop, he’s no more like his brother than chalk’s like cheese. Think there’s any chance of Mr Clive coming back?”

“Yes, my lad, every chance, if we’re true to him,” cried the Major; “and I beg your pardon, Mr Robson, I thought you were one of the scoundrels. I’m very glad to find you are not.”

“I thank you, sir,” cried the young man; “and if you write to Mr Clive Reed, please tell him so long as I’m in the mine office the books shall be kept just as he wished, so that any one can see at a glance how matters stand.”

“And I thank you too, Mr Robson. I, as a shareholder, am very glad that we have so good a man in your administrative post. But tell me, how are the returns?”

“Wonderful, sir. They increase every day. The profits will be enormous.”

“And is this man Sturgess doing his duty?”

“Oh! yes, sir, splendidly,” said Robson, laughing. “By his new agreement he is to get a percentage upon the metal smelted. I don’t like him, but there’s no mistake in his working.”

“Humph, that’s right,” growled the Major.

“And now, sir, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go, for if it was known that I talked about the mine affairs, I should be packed off; and for Mr Clive Reed’s sake I want to stay.”

“Right: good day. I daresay we shall run up against each other again.”

They parted, and none too soon, for, hammer in hand, the Major had just plunged down into a gully when Robson caught sight of a tiny cloud of smoke rising above a ridge before him.

Quick as thought he threw himself down among the heather, and lay peering between two tufts, till Jessop came into sight directly after, puffing away at a big cigar as he walked sharply along the track, passing the spot where the clerk lay, and evidently going in the direction of the cottage.

Robson looked uneasy, and his forehead began to wrinkle with the thoughts which entered his brain. He was puzzled at first; then suspicious; and at last determined.

He waited until Jessop was well out of sight, and with his mind made up, he was about to scramble to his feet, but he dropped down again, feeling sure he must have been seen, for he was conscious of a figure higher up the slope, coming slowly towards him; and soon after Sturgess, with his arm still in a sling, came close by, went down to the shelf-track, and there seated himself in a nook amongst some ferns. This forced the young clerk to slowly worm himself along among the heath and whortleberry tufts for a couple of hundred yards before the rising ground was well between them, when he went off at a sharp walk in the direction taken by the Major.

Meanwhile Jessop had gone on smoking heavily till he reached the river side, where he stopped gazing down into the sparkling water, evidently thinking deeply, and drawing hard at his cigar, till it was nearly done, when he threw it to fall with a loud hiss into the stream.

Then, with a quiet, satisfied aspect he went on for a few steps, and turned up the tiny gully hard by the Major’s garden.

Fortune favoured him, for Dinah was seated in the shady porch working; and she started up in alarm as he came close up.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said, with a smile, and holding out his hand. “Surely you have not forgotten me?”

“No,” said Dinah, recovering herself, though her heart beat heavily from apprehension. “You called here once before.”

“To be sure I did; but you will shake hands?”

“As a friend of Mr Clive Reed, under the present circumstances, surely, sir, it is better not,” she replied with dignity.

“Sir—under the present circumstances,” he cried bitterly. “The old story. Blackguard again. Ah,” he said, with a stamp of the foot, “is that man to go through the whole of his life spreading malicious slanders about his brother?”

Dinah was silent.

“Then you will not shake hands with one who spared no effort to get himself appointed to stay down here—whose sole thought has been of her whom he met once—only once—but whose impression was fixed so deeply upon his heart that ever since he has thought of her night and day.”

Dinah rose and drew back into the doorway, looking at him with contempt.

“Is this part of some melodrama, Mr Jessop Reed?” she said, “or do you imagine that you are speaking to a weak rustic girl?”

“I am speaking the truth—blunderingly, perhaps,” he cried excitedly, “but in the best way I can. I wonder that I am not dumb before you. How can you be so cruel. You must have seen how you impressed me when I was down here before. That feeling has grown into an overpowering passion. Dinah Gurdon,” he cried, catching her hand, “I came down hereto live—to love you. I cannot help it.”

“And you know that I am your brother’s betrothed,” she said wildly.

“I know that without doubt he has taken advantage of his position here to try and delude you, as he has deluded other poor girls again and again; but you must know the truth. He is not fit to touch your hand—no, not even to stand in your presence. Hush! let me speak. I know all this is cruelly sudden, but you would forgive me if you knew what I have suffered since I saw you last. Dinah, dearest Dinah, give me some little ray of hope to take away with me. You are too beautiful to be cruel—too gentle to send me away despairing. Ah, you are relenting! A word only, and I will go away patiently, and ready to wait till you know me better.”

“I never could know you better than I do at present,” said Dinah firmly, and quietly withdrawing her hand.

“Ah, then I may hope?” he cried.

“For what, sir?—an increase in my feeling of contempt? Your brother spared you, but I formed my own estimate of your nature, and it is true.”

“I—I don’t understand you,” he whispered, “only that your words give me intense pain.”

“I know, too, my father’s estimate of your character. Shall I tell you what he said?”

“If you will. It is joy to hear you speak,” he cried, as he tried to catch her hand again.

“He said, sir, that you were a scoundrel.”

“Of course,” cried Jessop, with a bitter laugh, “from my brother’s slanders.”

“Did your brother slander you when he told me that you married his betrothed?” cried Dinah indignantly, her eyes speaking her disgust. “Should I slander you, sir, if I told you that your words to me—words from a married man, to one whom you know to be his promised wife, are an insult? Have the goodness to go, sir, before my father returns, or I will not be answerable for the consequences. Ah!”

She rushed past Jessop, forcing him on one side, for the Major, warned by Robson, had hurried back, and was coming up the path with his stick quivering in his grasp.

“Don’t—don’t, father,” she panted in her excitement, “for my sake. I have said enough.”

The Major’s face was purple with anger, but he did not speak, only raised his quivering stick, and pointed down toward the pathway, while Dinah clung to his arm.

Jessop shrugged his shoulders, uttered a contemptuous laugh, and calmly took out his case, selected and lit a cigar, closed the case with a snap, pocketed it, and walked by them smoking, insultingly contriving to send a puff of tobacco into the Major’s face as he passed.

The next minute he was on the shelf path with his face convulsed with fury; and he walked on backward toward the mine, biting off pieces of the cigar, and spitting them out savagely.

“That’s it, is it?” he snarled. “Well, we can soon tame all that. He won’t come back here, and all that is vapour. Pretty indignation; but a woman is weak. She knows I want her, and she’ll dream about it, and grow softer till the siege comes to an end. For it shall come to an end, and in my way, my lady. I never fairly attacked a girl yet without winning; and my pretty, sweet darling shall go on her knees to me yet, and what do you mean by that?”

“I want to talk to you, guv’nor,” said Sturgess, who had suddenly clapped him roughly on the shoulder.

“What is it, then? And, confound you, don’t you forget your place, sir.”

“No fear. I’ve done your dirty work, and helped you to get your position here.”

“And your own,” cried Jessop, with a sneer.

“Oh yes, that’s all right; but I’m not going to have you ride roughshod over me in every way.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“That you’ve got to keep away from the cottage yonder. I’m not going to have you poaching on my preserves.”

“What do you mean?”

“That Dinah Gurdon’s mine—my lass; and that I’d break the neck of any man who came between us two.”

Jessop looked at the man in astonishment for a few minutes, and then burst into a mocking laugh.

“You!” he cried. “Oh, this is too rich.”

“What!” cried Sturgess, who was black with fury.

“You be damned!” cried Jessop; and rudely thrusting the man aside, making him wince as he touched his wounded arm, strode away.

Chapter Thirty Two.

In a Flash.

It was a curious blending of the bitter and the sweet when Clive Reed came down to the Blinkdale Moor. To a man of his temperament, it was maddening to find himself completely supplanted at the mine—where Jessop reigned supreme, when Wrigley did not come down; and in spite of the past the young engineer would have insisted upon frequent inspection of the place and statements as to the proceedings, but he dared not go, for at his next visit the Major had excitedly told him of all that had taken place with Jessop, and also of Dinah’s complaint of insult received from Sturgess.

“I promised her that I would leave it to her to tell, my dear boy, but it’s like going into action—one does not care to begin, but the moment one’s blood is up, one doesn’t know where to stop.”

“No,” said Clive, with his brow contracting. “The scoundrel, the scoundrel!”

“And that brother of yours is the worst. Why, good heavens, is he mad with conceit as well as brazen wickedness? What does he take my darling for—some silly country wench to whom he has only to throw the handkerchief for her to fall on her knees at his feet?”

“Don’t talk about it, please, sir!” cried Clive huskily. “I find that my bad passions are stronger than I thought, for I dare not go over to the mine for fear of the scene which would be sure to follow.”

“No: you mustn’t go, Clive, or you’d half kill him—though he’s your own brother. If I had known all when I came back that day, thanks to that young fellow, Robson, I’d have thrashed him till he couldn’t stand. Thirty years older, my boy, but I’m a better man than he is: a miserable, flushed-faced sot! He drinks. I know he does, and he must have been half drunk when he came here that day.”

“He will not dare to come again.”

“No. Let him take the consequences if he does—him or that black-haired scoundrel, I’ll give either of them a charge of shot, I swear.”

Still there was the sweet as well as the bitter, during his stays at the cottage; and Clive often asked himself why he, with the large property left to him by his father, should trouble about the mine, when there was a dreamy life of simple, idyllic happiness and joy. No allusion was made to Jessop or Sturgess by either Dinah or her lover, for it was enough that they could be together in that little paradise the Major had in the course of years contrived, wandering hand in hand beside the clear sparkling river which ran on laughing in the sunshine, so stern and calm in the deep shades beneath the rocks. They said little save in the language of the eye, and though Dinah had again and again determined to speak and tell Clive everything—some day when he was seated at her feet holding her hand in his, and say to him, “I dared not tell you lest you should despise me,” those words never passed her lips. “I cannot tell him now,” she sighed to herself. “I am so happy—he looks at me so full of joy and trust. Some day I will, some day when he is holding me tightly in his arms, and I feel so safe. I will tell him then. How can I make him unhappy now?”

So she went on dreaming; happy in the present. The little river valley had never looked so beautiful before, nor her father so restful and content. It was life’s summer, a golden time with nothing to wish for more. The storms were hushed to sleep, and like the beautiful streamlet, they two were gliding onward in that mystic peace that softens down the passion of a strong first genuine love.

“Bah! I wish there was no London, my boy. No work, no worry, no struggle,” cried the Major, one evening, when he was alone with Clive, who had been looking curiously at Martha, and recalling that night when he had first slept at the cottage. He was wondering how it all was. Whether the sturdy elderly woman had some love affair. Then he had, in spite of himself, thought of Sturgess, whom he had that day seen crossing one of the hills at a distance. He recalled the Major’s words and asked himself whether he, as a man, ought not in his resentment to have taken some step to punish the scoundrel. But with the idea within his mental grasp, he had let it slide again. For why, he asked himself, should he strike and jar the gentle, harmonious life of her who was so happy.

Though the mine was so near, he had only seen his brother and the new deputy manager from time to time, at a distance, and his knowledge of the progress there came either from London or from Robson, who wrote occasionally, always to say that things were miserable, for Jessop and Sturgess were at daggers drawn, but the profits of the mine still rose.

And now a letter had come down from the old lawyer—Mr Belton—endorsing the clerk’s announcements, and saying that an extraordinary meeting was to be held through a movement on the part of Wrigley, and in connection with the advance of the mine under the new management.

“I don’t know what plans the man is going to propose, but you had better come up, my dear boy, and be present. I daresay you will do more good here than by staying down there watching and keeping those people up to their work.”

So wrote the old family solicitor, and Clive’s conscience smote him, as he recalled how little he had done, and how very small was the credit he deserved. For his days had been spent in that dreamy pleasure at the cottage, and for the most part the mine was forgotten.

But this letter had roused him to a sense of his duties, and, commending Dinah to her father’s care, Clive departed once more for town, in happy unconsciousness of the fact that his every step was watched; while as his figure grew less and less as she watched him along the moorland track, Dinah’s heart sank, and the old dread crept back at first like a faint mist, then growing more and more dense, until it was a black shadow between her and the sunshine of her life.

“But it will not be long—he will not be long, he said,” she whispered to herself. “He will come back to-day.”

That was on the following morning. But there was no Clive, and on the second morning she rose hopeful, saying the same words—“He will come to-day;” and she waited eagerly till toward evening, when the Major said suddenly—

“No message from Clive, pet. I thought we should have a telegram.”

Dinah looked at him wistfully, and then her face brightened up.

“That means,” said the Major, “that he is coming back to-night. Look here, my dear, I’ll take the rod and get a brace or two of trout for his supper. There are four or five fine fellows in the lower pool, where I haven’t been for months. You had better stop in case Clive comes.”

Dinah’s face clouded over again.

“Nothing to mind, my dear. I saw Robson this morning, and he told me that Jessop and that black scoundrel went up to town to the meeting the same day as Clive. I suppose they didn’t meet in the train. If they did, I hope my dear boy turned them both out in the first tunnel they went through. There, I’m off.”

The autumn evenings were upon them, and the sun dipped behind the crags of the millstone grit earlier now; and that evening, to prove the truth of the Major’s prophecy, Clive Reed trudged over the hill track leading from Blinkdale past the ‘White Virgin’ mine, where the roadway had been widened and fresh tram-lines laid, to meet the necessities of the vastly increased traffic. He frowned when he saw all this, for it jarred upon him that so much advance should have been made under other management; but the cloud passed away, for he met a group of men returning from their work, to the cottages down in the valley—men for whom there was not room in the new buildings, or who preferred their old homes. These were for the most part known to him, and they greeted him with a friendly smile or touch of the cap as they passed.

Clive longed to stop them and ask questions, but he felt that he could not stoop to a meanness, and he went on in the soft evening glow watching the golden-edged purple clouds in the west, across which the boldly marked rays of the sun struck up, growing fainter till they died away high up towards the zenith. There was a pleasant scent of dry thyme from the banks, and the familiar odour of the bracken as he crushed it beneath his feet, or brushed through it and the heather and gorse. Only a couple of miles farther and he would be passing the spoil bank, and going along the rock shelf in the tunnel-like cutting, along by the perpendicular buttress which stood out from the lead hills like a bold fortification. Then half a mile down and down to the river, where the lights from the cottage would strike out suddenly from the ravine garden, and he could steal up, and announce his coming.

He knew he would see the light, for it would be dark before he passed the spoil bank, almost before he reached the entrance to the gap—the natural gateway to the ‘White Virgin’ mine.

And how prosperous the place had proved! How correct the dear old dad had been! But how bitterly he would have resented Jessop’s interference!

Clive laughed almost mockingly, as he thought of the vote of thanks to Mr Jessop Reed, carried at the meeting with acclaim, for the vast improvements he had made, and the increasing prosperity, all of which were, of course, the natural growth of his own beginnings.

“Never mind,” he said directly after; “let the poor wretch enjoy the satisfaction of having tricked me. Better be Esau than Jacob, after all. But I knew that lode must prove of enormous value, and I get my share of the prosperity.”

He walked on more rapidly, but with a free, easy swing, enjoying the fresh mountain air, so bracing after the stuffy heat of the sun-baked London streets. The heavens had grown grey in the west, and it was as if a soft dark veil were being drawn over the sky, where from time to time a pale star twinkled, disappeared, and came into sight again.

Then the gap was reached, and a strong desire came over him to go down and look about to see how the place appeared, for the chances were that he would not be heeded. But no: he resisted the desire. His brother and Sturgess might be back, and staying late at the office, when a meeting would probably lead to a fierce quarrel.

“Just when I want to be calm and happy, ready to take my darling in my arms,” he said softly. “Poor Janet! I thought I loved you very dearly, but I did not know then that my fancy for the poor, weak, unhappy girl was not love.”

He walked faster, for it was as if there was a magnet at the cottage, and its attractive power was growing stronger as he went along the shelf path, round by the spoil bank, and on in the darkness to the path notched in the perpendicular side of the rugged hill.

“Just the time for a cigarette,” he said; and he took one, replaced his case, and then taking advantage of the sheltered tunnel close by the cavernous part where Sturgess had watched and waited for his return, he prepared to light up in the still calm air away from the brisk breeze outside.

The box was in his hand; he had taken out a little wax match to strike, when he stopped short as if turned to stone, for there, close by him, he heard in a low murmur—

“Yes, I knew that you would come.”

Dinah’s voice; and as he struck the match and it flashed out into a vivid glare, there, within two yards, she stood clasped tightly in his brother Jessop’s arms.

Chapter Thirty Three.

Divided.

Jessop started aside in abject fear, and made a rush to escape by passing his brother in the narrow path, but, with a cry of rage, Clive struck at him.

The blow was ineffective to a certain extent, but was sufficient to make Jessop stumble and fall forward heavily. Before, however, his brother could seize him, he had scrambled up and ran along that shelf-like path as if for his life, while, as Clive started in pursuit, mad almost with despair and rage, a low, piteous, sobbing cry arrested him, and he turned back into the dark tunnel with his temples throbbing, his eyes feeling as if on fire, and a strange mad desire to kill thrilling every nerve.

“Clive, Clive! what have I done!” came out of the darkness; and quick as lightning his arms went out, and he caught the speaker savagely by the shoulders, his hands closing violently upon the soft yielding muscles, and then falling helplessly to his sides, as if that touch had discharged every particle of force with which he was throbbing.

“Clive,” she cried; “I thought—your message—oh, speak to me.”

“Silence!” he cried, in a low harsh voice, which made her tremble. But the next moment, wild with excitement—and as they stood there in the darkness, face to face, but invisible one to the other—she stepped towards him, and caught his arm in turn.

“Clive, dear,” she cried wildly. “Oh, for God’s sake, speak to me! You don’t think—”

“Think!” he cried, with a furious, mocking laugh. “Yes, I think all women are alike—a curse to the man who is idiot enough to believe.”

She drew a long, sobbing breath as she shrank from him now, the words of explanation which had leaped to her lips checked on the instant by the shame and indignation with which she was filled; and the next moment she was like stone in her despair.

“I am sorry that I returned so soon,” he said, in a bitter, sneering tone; “but I have some respect for the poor old Major—even now. Come back.”

She did not speak, but he could hear her breath come in a short, quick, catching way.

“You hear me?” he said harshly. “Come back to your father now; but don’t speak to me, or the mad feeling may rise again. I cannot answer for myself.”

“Take me home,” she said, in tones that he did not recognise as hers, and once more the furious rage within him flashed up like fire, as in his wild, jealous indignation he cried—

“And him of all men. Quick! Back to the cottage first.”

He caught her wrist now so fiercely that the pain was almost unbearable, but she did not shrink. The suffering seemed to clear her brain, and in a flash she saw a horror that made her tremble.

“Clive,” she cried excitedly, “what are you going to do?”

He laughed bitterly.

“Perhaps what you think,” he said. “Likely enough. What should the man do to one who robs him twice. Why not? There is not room for two such brothers upon earth.”

She panted to speak, but no words came for a time, as with her wrist prisoned with a grasp of iron, she let him lead her back toward the cottage half a mile away—out now from the rock cutting, to where the stars shone down upon them with their calm, peaceful glimmer, as if there were no such thing as human passion upon earth.

At last she spoke.

“Clive, you will not hear me,” she pleaded now, as her womanly indignation was swept away by the great horror she saw looming up before her.

“No,” he said, “I will not hear you. I know enough. Are you trembling for your lover’s life?”

“Oh!” she ejaculated, and she made an effort to snatch away her wrist; but the ring around it grew tighter as they walked on now in silence, till in her dread, as the icy perspiration gathered upon her forehead, she stopped short and faced him.

“I would not speak,” she said, in a low hurried voice. “You should go on thinking me everything that was false and bad. I would not say a word to show how you are misjudging me.”

He laughed scornfully.

“But I will not have you go in your mad anger and ignorance to commit some act for which you would repent to your dying day.”

“Only a short time of suffering, perhaps,” he said mockingly.

“Oh, Clive! you of all men to misjudge me so,” she moaned. “Let me tell you all.”

“Hah!” he ejaculated, as he fiercely swung her round and continued his walk, half dragging her beside him as if she were a prisoner.

“You do not know, dear—there: I call you dear,” she whispered, in her sweet, soft, caressing voice. “You are hurting me terribly with your cruel grasp, but it is nothing to the agony you make me suffer by believing I could be so deceitful and base.”

He laughed mockingly again, and she drew in her breath with a low sigh, as a wave of hot indignation mastered her once more, and closed her lips.

But love prevailed once more. She stopped, and tried to fling herself upon his breast, clinging wildly to him with the arm that was free.

“No, no; Clive, my own love, my hero, I would rather that you killed me than believed all this.”

He repulsed her with a cry of disgust, and again there was the low sighing sound of her breath, but she went on again—

“I forgive you, dear,” she said hurriedly. “You are my own; I am yours. I gave myself heart and soul to you, Clive, and you shall hear me.”

He tried to drag her onward along the path, but she would not stir, and nothing but the most cruel violence would have moved her then, as she went on.

“Something tries to make me say ‘Go on in your disbelief, for you are cruel, and do not deserve my love!’ but I must, I will speak. Kill me, then, if you will not believe. It would be so easy. There,” she cried; and she took a step before him right to the edge of the path where the precipice went perpendicularly down to the rough stones among which the river gurgled three hundred feet below.

He made a snatch to drag her back, but she resisted him and stood firm.

“I was sitting at home—alone,” she said hurriedly, “when the man brought your message.”

“My message!” he cried, with a mocking laugh.

“Yes; your telegram with its few words which sent joy to my weary heart, as I waited for news of him I loved.”

“My telegram!” he said, with the same low, harsh laugh. “There, back home to your father, woman. I believed, but I am awake now, and can be fooled no more.”

She struggled with herself again, and panted wildly.

“You must, you shall believe me, dear. I forgive you all this because I know it is your great love for me, and you think I have deceived you. Yes; I know what you must feel, dear, and so I beat down all my cruel anger, and humble myself like this in my pity for you and despair. I read your dear words.”

“My words! I sent no telegram. I came down hurrying to be once more at the side of the woman who in my folly I believed to be a saint. I come and I find her clasped in the arms of my greatest enemy—my own brother—and you talk to me like this.”

She uttered a low, piteous wail, and the struggle within her was intense.

“Yes, it is true; you sent me that message—‘Coming down by the three six train to Blinkdale. Meet me along the high path.’”

“It is false,” he cried hastily.

“No, no,” she cried, as her hand went to the bosom of her dress, and she snatched out a crumpled-up piece of paper. “Take it and read.”

He made a fierce clutch at the paper she held out in the darkness, half to take it, half to strike it from her hand, as only part of some miserable deceit, and the latter act was successful, for it fell down the side of the precipice—down toward the river surging on its way.

She muttered a wild cry, and then went on quickly.

“It was late—my father had gone out, but I would not disappoint you, Clive; and I came on, shivering as I found it would soon be dark; but I knew that your strong arms would soon be round me to protect me, and I hurried on, till there in the darkest part I felt that you were waiting for me, and—that is all.”

Her hurried, passionate words ceased, and she ended her explanation with those three feeble, lame, to him inconclusive, words. Then yielding herself to his pressure, she walked on by his side, broken, exhausted by her emotion, dumb now, as she waited for him to speak. She waited in vain till the river side was reached, and from lower down in the darkness there came a cheery whistle as the Major was returning from the long walk into which he had been drawn by his ill success.

Clive Reed’s nerves twitched, but he turned rapidly through the garden with Dinah half fainting, and ready to cling to one of the supports of the porch as he at last set her free.

“What—Clive—dearest,” she whispered faintly—“tell me—what are you going to do?”

He bent down with his lips close to her ear, and whispered sharply—

“Kill him—or he shall me.”

Then, with a hurried step he sprang up through the higher part of the garden in and out among the shrubs and bushes, climbed on to the very top, and struck out over the mountain slopes.

Dinah listened till the rustling sounds he made died away, and then, hot and trembling, she went up slowly to her room, and sat down with her face buried in her hands; but there was no relief—the source of her tears was dry.

Clive took a short cut across the rugged moorland, and twice over he narrowly escaped death. The first time he was pulled up short by coming violently in the darkness against the rough, unmortared wall built up round an ancient shaft on the mine land; and as he checked himself by grasping the loose stones, one of them fell over and went down and down, striking once against the side, and sending a chill through him as a reverberating roar came up, followed at a short interval by a dull echoing splash, after which he could hear the water hiss and suck against the sides, sending up strange whisperings, which sounded to his disturbed imagination like demoniacal confidences about Dinah Gurdon and his brother.

He hurried away, as another stone was dislodged, and the sullen plunge came to his ear when he was yards distant, tearing along in the most reckless way, to trip at last over a stone and fall headlong down one of the deep gully-like ravines with which the mountain land was scored.

He caught at a rough projection, against which he struck, and held on while a little avalanche of stones continued falling; then half-stunned and trembling from the shock, crept back again to proceed more cautiously along the edge of the gully, making for the path once more, fully awake now to the fact that it was utter madness to attempt to cross that region in the darkness.

“Not yet,” he muttered, with a savage laugh, “I must square accounts with brother Jessop first.”

Then he laughed as he wiped away the blood which had trickled down like perspiration from a cut in the forehead, and which came like a blessing in disguise, relieving, as it bled freely, the tension upon his overcharged brain; for if ever man was on the border-line which stretches between sanity and utter madness, Clive Reed was then.

“Of course,” he said, “I am a fool, a pitiful, childlike fool, ever to imagine that a light-hearted girl would care for such a dreamy student as I—a man whose whole conversation is about mines and shares, and money. I had my lesson with Janet, who tolerated me, as long as she could, for her father’s sake; but I would not take it, and went on in my folly once more. Jessop again! Of course: the good-looking, well-dressed, plausible scoundrel. They always said he was a ladies’ man, and the more infidelities proved against such a one, the more attractive he becomes, I suppose.”

“Ah!” he ejaculated savagely, “what is it to me? It shall not be for that, but for the money. If I want an idol, it shall be gold, and he is trying to rob me of it.”

He struggled on, stumbling in the darkness over stones and tufts of heather, till he reached a rift which led sloping to the pathway close by the tunnel-like notch, and as he let himself down on to the firm, level way, he ran through the dark part with his hands holding his head as if to keep it from bursting with the agonising memories of what he had witnessed that night, a scene photographed upon his brain by that sharp flash of light before all was black darkness—a darkness which now enshrouded his soul.

“But I must be cool and strong,” he muttered, as he subsided into a walk once more, and went steadily on toward the entrance to the mine gap with a confused idea in his head that he would hunt down his brother, bring him to bay, and then—

Yes—and then? His brain carried him no farther. Something was to happen then to one of them; and he only muttered an insane, mocking laugh, and either could not or would not try to plunge into the future.

Chapter Thirty Four.

Another Stroke.

“Where’s your mistress, Martha?” said the Major, as he entered the cottage, and handed the old servant the creel. “What—has Mr Reed come?”

“No, sir,” said the old woman, shaking her head, as she opened the basket, and looked at the three brace of handsome trout lying in a bed of freshly-plucked heather. “Poor girl! she has been wandering about in the garden and in the path this hour past, and only came in when it was quite dark. I heard her go up into her bedroom and lock the door, and I could hear her sobbing as if her heart would break.”

“Tut—tut—tut!” ejaculated the Major, as he glanced at his watch. “Humph, too late for him to get here this evening.”

“Shall I cook the trout, sir?” asked Martha.

“Cook them? Yes, two, woman, of course. I’m starving. I’ve been miles and miles to get them. I want some supper as soon as you can. Dear, dear!” he said softly, as the servant went out, “what a nuisance this love is! I shall be glad when they’re married.”

“No, I shall not,” he said to himself after a pause. “Poor child! She was reckoning so on seeing him to-night.”

He took a turn up and down his little room, and then sought for and filled his pipe.

“Finest lot of trout I’ve caught for months. I should have liked the boy to be here.—Poor little lassie!” he sighed, “how she loves him. Well, he’s a fine fellow and worthy of her.”

He struck the match, raised it to his pipe, and threw it down again, placed his newly-filled pipe on the chimneypiece, and went softly into the passage and upstairs to the door of Dinah’s room, where he tapped, and again before his child answered.

“Coming down, my darling? Supper will be ready directly.”

“Don’t ask me, dear,” she said. “I am so unwell to-night.”

“Her voice is quite changed,” thought the Major. “She must have been crying bitterly.” Then aloud—

“But, Dinah, my dear, don’t, pray don’t take on like this. Come, come, be a dear, strong-minded little woman. Business has stopped him. He’ll be here to-morrow I daresay. Come, I say. I shall be so lonely without your dear face at the table.”

The door was opened softly, a little white hand stole out through the narrow crack, and played about his face for a few minutes caressingly before it was withdrawn.

“I cannot—indeed I cannot come down,” she whispered tenderly; and the hand stole out again, and its back was laid against his lips, for him to kiss it lovingly. “Indeed I am unwell and must lie down again. My head is unbearable.”

“Very well, my dear,” said the Major sadly. “But, Dinah, my little one, don’t—try not to give way like this. Silly girl,” he continued, as he kissed the little white cold hand he held, and laughed. “I’ve a good mind to tell him what a love-sick little goose it is.”

The Major did not hear the piteous, broken-hearted sob which followed his words, for the door was closed, but went down and ate his supper alone: nor did he know of the sleepless night his child passed as she went over the events of the evening again and again till her head grew confused, her brain wild, and as she sank upon her knees with uplifted hands it was in a rebellious spirit, to ask what had she done that the love time of her young life should be turned to one of misery and despair.

Dinah’s pale drawn face and the dark rings about her eyes when she appeared at breakfast the next morning raised a feeling akin to resentment in the Major’s heart; but he said nothing, only kissed her tenderly, and making an effort to rouse her from her state of despondency, chatted pleasantly about his fishing adventures on the previous evening, and the cunning displayed by trout at that time of the year.

“I declare, my dear, that I was ready to give up over and over again. Their eyes are as sharp as a needle, and it was not until it was almost dark that I could get them to look at a fly, and then it was only at the very smallest gnat I could put on. Come,” he cried, as he tapped the plate upon which he had placed one of the broiled trout, “don’t let my poor fish spoil. They’re good for nervous headache, puss, and Master Clive has missed a treat.”

It was hard work to preserve her composure and gratify the old man by eating a little, but Dinah tried, and succeeded, saying to herself the while—“He will come soon and ask me to forgive him for all his cruel thoughts and words, and I ought to hold back and refuse, but I cannot. For, poor love, what he must have suffered. I should have been as mad and cruel had I seen him holding another to his heart. I could not bear it—I should die.”

She brightened up a little then, as the Major chatted on, but she did not hear a word, for she was fighting a feeling of resentment against her betrothed and beating it down, her eyes losing their dull, filmy look as she thought of that meeting to come when he would be asking her to forgive him, and she told him that she had never had a thought of love that was not his, never could have one that was not loyal and true to the man who had first increased the beating of her pulses.

Then, all at once, she gave a violent start, and dropped the cup she held into its saucer.

“Why, what is the matter now, darling?” cried the Major, as he saw her eyes half close and her pale face flush to the very temples.

She made a quick gesture toward the open window.

“Well, what does that mean?” cried the Major. “You are as nervous as an old woman. There is nothing there. By George, there is. What ears you have! How has he managed it? Here, quick! Ring and tell Martha to bring a cup and saucer, and to broil another trout. He’ll be as hungry as a hunter after his morning’s walk.”

For steps were perfectly audible now coming along the stony path; but Dinah did not spring from her chair to hurry out and meet their visitor, but sank back, with the flush dying out once more, leaving her face almost ghastly, as her heart told her that Clive was not coming to ask her forgiveness. It was not his quick, impatient step; and the endorsement of her thoughts came directly from just outside the window, through which the Major had hurriedly stepped.

“Morning, Mr Robson,” he cried. “I thought it was Mr Reed. Good heavens, man, what’s wrong?”

“I hardly know, sir,” said the young man hastily. “Two of our men coming to work this morning found him in a cleft, bruised and bleeding from a cut on the head.”

“A fall?” cried the Major.

“No, sir. Been set upon and half murdered, I’m afraid. Ah, Miss Gurdon! I’m very sorry, I didn’t know you were there.”

For Dinah had just made her appearance at the window, having heard every word.

Chapter Thirty Five.

With their own Petard.

“Go on,” cried the Major excitedly; “she must hear it now. Hold up, my child, only an accident—a slip: trying to make some short cut in the dark. Now, then,” he continued, with military promptitude, “when did they find him?”

Dinah listened with her head held forward, lips white and trembling, and her nostrils dilated, hearing her father’s words, and all the time picturing, in imagination, a desperate encounter between two brothers on the dark hillside. Then the one misjudging, bitter, and mad about her, struck down, to lie through the night half dead, with upbraidings against her upon his lips.

It was like a flash: she saw the whole scene while the young clerk went on in answer to the Major.

“Just off the path, sir.”

“And what have you done?”

“Had him carried directly to my rooms at the office, sir.”

“Where his brother is seeing to him?”

“No, sir; Mr Jessop Reed has gone off in haste to London on business. Left a letter for Mr Sturgess. He’s ill too, sir. Half delirious with his bad shoulder, which has broken out again.”

“Tut—tut—tut!” ejaculated the Major. “Well? You did something more?”

“Yes, sir, sent off directly to Blinkdale for the doctor, bathed and bound up Mr Reed’s head, and then came on to you.”

“Good!” cried the Major sharply, clapping the young man on the shoulder, and drawing him into the room. “Sit down and swallow a cup of coffee, my lad. You’ve had no breakfast. Dinah, my child, be a woman. We’ll go over at once. No. You and Martha make a bed for him in my study. I’ll have him carried here. He cannot stay at that noisy mine.”

“Yes—yes,” said Dinah, in a whisper, as with trembling hands she hurriedly placed the coffee before the messenger. “Martha will get that ready, father. I must come too.”

“No, no, my child!—well, yes, you may be of use. Be quick, then. In a minute we must be off.” Then, as Dinah ran up to her room, he went to the study and returned hastily, placing something in his breast.

“Old soldiers know a little about surgery, Mr Robson,” he said. “It will be a couple of hours before the doctor can get to the mine.”

“Three, sir.”

“Perhaps, and I may be of use.”

“I thought you would come, sir,” said Robson, as he hurriedly appeased his hunger. “There’s something wrong, too, at the mine, so one of the principal men says, but I didn’t stop to hear what it was, for I was coming on here.”

“Curse the mine!” roared the Major; “let’s think of poor Mr Reed. Ah, that’s right, my dear,” he cried sharply, as Dinah came into the room, looking very white, but firm and determined. “Ready, Mr Robson?”

“Quite, sir,” said the messenger, starting up.

“Tell Martha, my dear?”

Dinah nodded. She could not speak, and the next minute they were down by the river, and then ascended the mountain path, walking quickly along the narrow shelf, with thrill after thrill passing through the girl, as she went by the spot where Clive had struck the paper she had offered him from her hand; and this was supplemented by a suffocating feeling of despair as they reached the cool, dark, shady cutting, tunnelled out in the precipitous cliff. Here she glanced wildly at the spot where she had flown, as she believed, to her lover’s arms, and rested in them for a moment, murmuring her delight that he had come.

There was a heavy dull pulsation in her brain, as she passed on with her father out into the sunshine once again, deafening her to the words he spoke from time to time, while the mountain side seemed to swim around before her and the purple heather to rise and fall in waves till the gap was reached. That pathway to the mine chasm with all its host of terrible recollections brought her back to the present with a shock, and she walked down it clinging to her father’s arm.

She shivered and felt cold now as she gazed wildly before her. It was wonderfully changed, but the salient points were the same, and she hardly noted the many buildings which had sprung up, but gazed excitedly round, expecting moment by moment that her eyes would light upon the fierce mocking face of Sturgess; while by a strange confusion of ideas, the beating of her heart seemed to form itself into the heavy steps of the man from whom she fled panting with horror, coming in rapid pursuit.

She started nervously again and again, as the figure of some sturdy workman passed before them, coming or going from different portions of the busy hive, where a steam-engine was panting heavily, or a huge pump toiled on tossing out the water from the depths of the mine to run gurgling along by the side of the path they followed.

At last the new-looking offices were reached, and a group of workmen drew away to let them pass, while Dinah gazed round nervously, clinging more tightly now to her father’s arm, feeling sure that in another moment or two she must face the man she feared.

A spasm shot through her, as Robson exclaimed sharply—

“How is he?”

And she strained her ears for the answer from a man in the doorway.

“Just the same, sir. He hasn’t moved.”

The next question turned her giddy.

“Where is Sturgess—in his room?”

“No, sir. He got up when they told him, and went down the mine.”

“Why, he wasn’t fit to stir! This way, sir.”

Robson led them into his room; and there Dinah fell upon her knees beside a mattress, upon which, pale and stern, with his head enveloped in a broad bandage, lay Clive Reed, his eyes half-closed, and his lips moving as he went on muttering incoherently; while as Dinah bent down over him, she heard her name faintly whispered.

For a moment she believed that it was in recognition of her presence, and her heart gave one great leap of joy. But it sank down directly into a slow, feeble beat, as she grasped only too truly that the speaker was delirious, and there was a look in his face which sent a terrible foreboding to her heart.

“Let him not die, O God, without knowing that I was his very own,” she moaned to herself, as an intense longing came over her to clasp him tightly to her heart.

Then she gave way, and rose with a low sigh, as her father said sternly—

“Let me come, my child. Minutes are precious. At all costs we will get him away from here.”

What followed was like a dream, but she heard the Major’s sharp military voice as he gave decisive commands. She saw him remove the bandage and replace it with another well saturated with water, and then as she stood back, she saw four sturdy, willing men stoop down at her father’s order, each take a corner of the thin, narrow mattress upon which Clive lay, and keeping step, bear him out of the place and along the path toward the entrance of the gap. Then she was conscious that she was walking behind in the little procession, with the Major grasping her arm, and carrying a large bottle of water.

“It is the best way,” he said, “and he will see the doctor all the sooner, for he must pass us on his way from Blinkdale.”

The little procession went steadily on, Robson leaving them now, and Dinah’s breath came more freely as they reached the mouth of the gap, and turned round on to the path without Sturgess having been seen. In this fashion they made their way steadily on to the cottage, the Major calling a halt, so that he could saturate the bandage from time to time. But the little ambulance party had hardly passed out of sight of the mine entrance, when in answer to the signal the engine gear began to work, the wire rope ran over the wheel as it revolved rapidly, till with a sudden clang the ascending cage reached the platform and Sturgess stepped out, with his arm and shoulder roughly bound up, and with a wild look in his eyes as they burned feverishly above his hollow, pallid cheeks.

The captain of one of the underground gangs stepped out after him, and laying a hand upon his arm, said quietly—

“You take my advice, Mr Sturgess; that place is turning ugly. You go and lie down again, and let the doctor see it when he comes.”

“You hold your tongue for a fool,” said Sturgess savagely; and then he made a lurch as if he had turned giddy, but he recovered himself directly. “Here, some of you: where’s Mr Jessop Reed?”

“I told you,” said Robson, who came up just then, “he has gone to town.”

“It’s a lie!” said Sturgess. “He wouldn’t have gone without telling me.”

“Then he told it himself on paper,” said Robson coolly. “I read you what he said.”

“And it’s a lie, and so is what Smithers says like a fool.”

“Ah! you told me there was something wrong below just as I was off this morning,” said Robson eagerly. “Nobody hurt, Smithers?”

“Nobody hurt?” said the man, with a coarse laugh; “well, I suppose everybody concerned. It’s a general burst up, Mr Robson.”

“A lie. All a lie,” said Sturgess, stretching out his hands and groping as if to save himself from falling. “All a big flam.”

“Is it? you’ll see,” muttered the captain.

“A lie, I say!” growled Sturgess, half-deliriously, as he looked round from one to the other, pressing his hand to his heated shoulder all the while. “A lie, I say, to frighten the people into selling their shares, and they did, the fools. Bah! The ‘White Virgin’s’ the richest mine in England, and I’ll break the neck of any one who says it arn’t!”

“No, you won’t break anybody’s neck,” said the man gravely, “unless it’s your own, Mr Sturgess, and unless you take care you’re going to be very badly. It’s all true, Mr Sturgess. I thought that lode couldn’t go on yielding like it did.”

“In Heaven’s name, man, what do you mean?” cried Robson.

“Only this, sir: we’ve come upon a blind lead.”

“What?”

“The lode has stopped dead in the rock, and we can’t find any more trace of it. Nothing but the stone, and I don’t believe there’ll be another scrap of ore ever found.”

“A blind lead,” cried Robson, astounded.

“Yes, sir, that’s it; and if Mr Clive Reed holds any shares still it’s a cruel bit of news for him. As for the other chaps—well, they can take their chance.—Ah, I thought so!”

For Sturgess had reeled and nearly fell, to be lowered down by the man, breathing stertorously, evidently insensible to all that passed around.

The news was true. The rumour Wrigley and Jessop Reed had set afloat for their own nefarious ends had proved prophetic. Hoist with their own petard, they had yet to learn that they were ruined men.

Chapter Thirty Six.

The Days of Peril.

“Live, my own dearest, live,” murmured Dinah, as she knelt beside Clive’s couch, listening to his never-ending mutterings, as the fever ran its course, and mingled with the incessant babblings about the mine, his brother’s trickery and deceit, she heard him burst into torrents of reproaches against him who was slandering his character. Then would come appeals and declarations of his innocency, and Dinah’s tears fell softly as he rambled on about Lyddy.

“Shame on you, Janet!” he would cry. “How could you think it of me? That I came telling you of my love fresh from the embraces of that weak creature. Poor Lyddy! A cruel betrayal of a weak, easily flattered girl. I swear it was all false. To save himself. Yes: false as hell! But I pity you, dear. You are my sister now; and I pity you.”

He would calm down for a while, and then begin again, mingling his troubles in so confused a fashion, that Dinah would grow puzzled. But she could not tear herself away, and listened eagerly as the sick man rambled on, and laid bare the whole of his troubled life.

Then she would writhe in her agony, as from out of the tangle her own name would come, and he grew excited as he wandered on, going back to hearing her sobbing in the next room, the shots pattering on the window, and on and on to the surprise in the tunnelled pathway.

“All, all the same. So gentle and loving, but all so weak. Poor little sweet: so beautiful. Her words would ring like music, and yet she could throw herself into his arms. Forgive her? Yes, I must forgive her. So weak, so hard to trust.”

And then, sobbing gently, Dinah would bend over, and lay her cheek against his aching forehead, and whisper to him to believe in her. That there was nothing to forgive—that she was his own, and that he must live to learn the truth or she would die.

But her tender appeals were to one who could not understand. Still they were a solace to her, as she hung about his bed. She had him with her, the man who loved her so tenderly, and in those secret moments, when they were alone, often enough in the silent watches of the night, she could fall into an ecstasy of joy, as in the abandonment of her love, with none to know, she could draw the dear head upon her throbbing breast, and cover his face with her kisses.

“My own, my loving husband!” she would coo softly in the midst of her caresses, at first with burning cheeks, later on with her pulses undisturbed, her heart suffused by a sweet placid joy which made her beam upon him as a mother over her babe.

“Some day he will know all, and I can wait till then,” she sighed, as even in the midst of her agony of doubt as to his recovery, she revelled in the joy of having him there insensible, ignorant of her caresses, but still all her own.

The doctor had reached them soon after they arrived at the cottage, two of the bearers having been stationed upon high points to intercept him should he take any other track, and after his examination he had removed one horror from Dinah’s breast. For he declared the injury to be the result of a fall, and hence it was not through some furious encounter between brothers—a fratricidal strife.

But the fall, he declared, was not the sole trouble. There was fever, brain fever, and when pressed as to the result, he only shook his head, wisely, and said—

“We shall see—we shall see.”

Then in obedience to a letter from the Major, Doctor Praed had come down, to enter the cottage fussy, tired, and irritable.

“Most unreasonable, Major Gurdon, to bring me down to this out-of-the-way desert to see Clive Reed. Hang him, and his brother too. They’ve been the curse of my life. Dozens of important patients waiting for me, and I leave them to come down here to see this boy. Hang him, and his father too, sir. I wish I had never seen them. Ruined me—almost, and I’m very glad the mine has turned out a failure, after all.”

“I am afraid you are a little tired with your journey, sir!” said the Major stiffly.

“Tired, sir! I don’t seem to have a bone left. Of course, I’m tired. How a sane man could ever come and live in such an out-of-the-way spot, I don’t know.”

“A very peaceful spot, sir, for a heart-sore man,” said the Major coldly. “I will ask you to come and see the patient as soon as you feel refreshed.”

At that moment the door opened, and Dinah, looking pale, subdued, and anxious, appeared.

The Doctor started from his seat.

“Dinah, my child,” said the Major, “Clive Reed’s godfather, Doctor Praed. Can he come up now?”

The Doctor advanced, and took her hands, raised them one by one to his lips, and then letting them fall, he took her in his arms and kissed her forehead reverently.

“God bless you, my dear!” he said, in a softened voice. “So you are his tender nurse. It is you whom he spoke of as her who had made him think the world was not all bad. Hah, yes,” he continued, looking at her curiously, “the face of an angel. Major Gurdon, forgive my petulance. Getting old, sir. Tired and worried. I’m very glad you sent for me. Clive is my own dear boy. I always looked upon him as a son. There, I’m only an ignorant man, my dear,” he continued, turning to Dinah with a pitiful smile on his face, “but with God’s help and yours, he shall ask me to his wedding yet. I’ll come and claim the first kiss from her who is going to help me try and save his life. Hah! now I feel ready to go to work. As for the other patients, Major, there are plenty of doctors in town. I’m going to stop here with my boy Clive.”

The tears coursed rapidly down Dinah’s cheeks as she listened, while Doctor Praed patted the hand he held, and smiled.

“Ah,” he said, “you have no faith in me. You think I am a prattling old man, who talks instead of acts. Come along, and let’s see my patient, only really, according to etiquette, I ought to be meeting your regular attendant in consultation.”

“He is twelve miles away, sir,” said the Major rather coldly, “and unable to get over here much. He said it was a case for nursing.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said the Doctor; and he followed Dinah to the patient’s couch, and then drew up the blind and sat down by the pillow.

“Poor boy!” he said tenderly, as he took Clive’s hand and noted his hollow cheeks, large burning eyes, and the restless muttering he kept up. “No doubt about it, my dear. That injury is nothing. Bled a good deal, you say?”

“Terribly,” whispered Dinah, with a suppressed sob.

“Weakened him, but on the whole I should say it was favourable. This is all brain, my child. Overwork and anxiety. He must have had some mental shock. He must have known that his fathers pet scheme had failed before any one else had suspected the fact.”

Dinah looked at him piteously, as she felt that it was her doing, as much so as if her acts had been intentional instead of the work of others.

“Well, this will not do,” said the Doctor, replacing a tiny clinical thermometer in its case. “His head is far too hot, and I suppose you have no ice here. All this must come off.”

He pointed to the sufferer’s hair, and Dinah’s face contracted with horror.

“I can’t help it, my child. Come; we must save his life. Where are your scissors? It will be a task for you. Pooh! don’t look like that, my dear. It will all grow again.”

A few minutes later, with the tears slowly trickling down her cheeks, Dinah sat, carefully cutting off lock after lock, the Doctor looking on impatiently.

“There,” he cried at last, “you must let me do it, child. You are snipping little bits off as if they were more precious than gold. I tell you it must all come off at once. His head ought, to be shaved.—Scissors.”

“No, no, please. Let me,” pleaded Dinah, hurriedly placing the scissors behind her.

“Very well, then, will you cut close?”

“But must it all be cut off?”

“Every scrap, and at once. It will relieve his poor burning head. You can save a nice curly bit. Save it all if you like.”

Dinah coloured, and darted at him a resentful look, then the sound of the scissors went on—snip, snip, as they closely sheared away the thick hair, the fall of every lock giving the operator a sharp pang.

“Ah, that’s better. Closer by the temples. The doctor you had ought to have insisted upon all that coming off at once.”

“He did,” sighed Dinah; “but I pleaded so hard for it to be left that he gave way.”

“And you nearly killed the poor fellow—because you were so proud of him, eh? But I will not reproach you. Ah, no evasion, please. Once for all I want that hair all removed, and possibly then I may think it necessary to operate with your father’s razor—that is, if you do not do your work well.”

Dinah sighed, and went on, shivering slightly as she saw how she was disfiguring the poor fellow, but steeling herself now to her task, till it was thoroughly done. Then she stood back full of remorse, and feeling that at last she had really done something which would make Clive hate her.

“Now, we can give him a chance. The cold bandages to his head will be of some service. The wind can blow upon them, and the evaporation will take away a great deal of heat from the poor fellow’s brain.”

To Dinah’s great delight their patient soon grew calmer, and the low mutterings and tossing of the head from side to side partially subsided.

“Well, sir,” said the Major that evening, after patiently waiting for the Doctor to give him some report, “can you tell us that we may hope?”

“I will not say that,” replied the Doctor. “Give me another twenty-four hours. A fever like this is slow. I must own that he is in a very critical condition; but do not tell your daughter that.”

The Major groaned.

“If he dies it will kill her.”

“He shall not die if medical knowledge can save him,” said the Doctor firmly.

“And you will stay, sir?”

“Stay? Great heavens, man, his father and I were school-fellows. His mother was like a dear sister to me; and as for this boy, I could not have thought more of him if he had been my own son. Stay? I sent a message back from the station to say that the date of my return was indefinite, and to place an old friend in charge of my practice. I presume that you will find me an easy-chair and a crust of bread while I am here, and I shall not go till I feel that I can leave him safely to his nurse, or it has pleased God to take him into His rest.”

The Major’s breast heaved, and he held out his hand, which was firmly grasped.

“God bless you for those words,” he said, with emotion. “We must save him for her sake.”

Doctor Praed’s forehead grew more wrinkled day by day; and there was a hard, stern look in his eyes as the time slowly glided on, and the fever fought stoutly against all the medical skill which could be brought to bear.

And all the time he was haunted by the piteous, almost upbraiding, look of Dinah, which wistfully followed every movement, paining the old man so that at last he avoided it when he spoke to her; and in his ignorance inflicted stab after stab.

“It is the great trouble which is killing him. I never could have thought that he would care so much for money, my child. But I suppose he felt that his honour was at stake after all that he said to his friends who took shares in the mine. I wish you were not here.”

“Why, Doctor Praed?” said Dinah faintly, as she recalled her last parting from Clive, and thought how little the visitor knew.

“Because I should like to let my tongue run loose and say all manner of evil things concerning that wretched mine. But I suppose I must not.” Dinah rose and laid her hand upon his arm.

“You do not talk to me about Clive,” she whispered. “You cannot think of the agony I suffer.”

“I do not speak because to one like you it would be cruel to talk in the slow, hopeful twaddle used by some of my weak brethren. My dear child, there is nothing to say. His life is not in my hands. We can only wait.”

“But, Doctor, think, for pity’s sake, think—is there nothing that can be done? It is maddening to stand here helpless and see him gliding slowly away from us. For he is weaker. I did hope that the quiet which has come over him was a change for the better. I know now that it is all increasing weakness.”

“May I come in?” said the Major at the door.

The Doctor hurriedly moved to him, glad of an excuse to escape from those pleading eyes, and followed the Major into the adjoining room.

Chapter Thirty Seven.

The Turning-Point.

“There is a messenger from the mine,” the Major whispered.

“Don’t talk of it,” said the Doctor angrily. “Who is down there now?”

“Mr Jessop Reed and that Mr Wrigley. They are trying everything to discover a continuation of the lost lode.”

“Bah! let them. Well, what do they want? Do they expect me to operate on the vein and make it bleed again?”

“No, no. There is a man there, one Sturgess, the foreman, grievously ill, and this Mr Wrigley, knowing that you are here, has sent their clerk Robson over with a message begging you to see him.”

“I? No: impossible. Let him see the local man. I am engaged solely to watch my old friend’s son.”

This was said so decisively that the Major walked away, but stopped by the door and returned.

“I don’t like this man, Doctor,” he said; “he once insulted my child.”

“What? insulted Dinah—the girl my poor boy worshipped!” cried the Doctor angrily; “then let him die.”

He added something respecting Michael Sturgess’s future, as he angrily turned away.

“Think again, Doctor,” said the Major. “They say the man is in a dangerous state. He has been bad for some time. It was from a fall, I believe, down one of the shafts.”

“That mine again. Why, Major Gurdon, it has been a curse to every one who has had dealings with it. Well, it’s of no use to profess to be a Christian if one does not act up to it. I’ll just go in and see how Clive seems, and whether he can be left.”

“And then you will go?”

“Oh yes, I suppose I must. That’s the worst of being a Christian. One cannot hate or curse a man conscientiously. Yes; I’ll go and see the fellow, and I hope I shall not be tempted to give him too strong a dose.”

He went into the next room, bent over Clive for a few minutes, and rose as if satisfied.

“You will not leave him,” he said.

“You think there is fresh danger?”

“No, my child, the danger has always been great enough. They want me to go and see a man at the mine—one Sturgess.”

Dinah started and shuddered. The Doctor noticed it, and thought of her father’s words.

“You would rather I did not go.”

“I don’t like you leaving me, but if it is urgent—”

“They fear the man is dying.”

“As we forgive them that trespass against us,” rose to Dinah’s brain. “Yes, Doctor, you must go,” she said softly; and he nodded his head.

“Good girl,” he said, and he left her.—“Ah, Janet, my child, why were you not like that? My training, I suppose.—Now, sir, I am ready.”

Robson started from his seat in the porch, and led the way toward the mine, relating all he knew of the case to the Doctor as they went.

“He was alone in the mine one morning, sir, and had a nasty fall. He injured his shoulder a good deal, and refused to have any medical advice till it had all gone bad. He said the doctors were fools, and that a bandage and cold water were all that was necessary.”

“And found out that some one was a bigger fool than the doctors, eh?” said the old man drily.

“Yes, sir, I suppose so,” replied the clerk, smiling. “This way, please.”

He led the Doctor down to the little house apportioned to the foreman; and as they approached it, Jessop and Wrigley came out, the former, who looked haggard and careworn, seeming disposed to hurry away, but he mastered his shrinking and stood firm.

“How do?” said the Doctor, with a short nod. “Janet quite well?”

“Yes, Doctor,” cried Jessop eagerly, “and—”

“Stand aside, please,” said the old man testily. “I want to talk to this gentleman. Are you Mr Wrigley?”

“I am, and I am very grateful to you for coming, sir. I am very anxious about our man.”

“Where is he?”

“This way, please.”

The Doctor followed into a bedroom where the man lay, hollow of cheek and half delirious, while one of the miners’ wives was playing the part of nurse.

“Mr Jessop Reed, I can dispense with your company, sir. I want to be alone. You can go too, my good woman, and you, Mr What’s your name? Robson. No, you stay, Mr Wrigley. I may want to ask some questions.”

Jessop went out scowling.

“A brute!” muttered the Doctor. “Knows his brother is, perhaps, on his deathbed, and has never sent to ask how he is.”

The next minute he was examining the patient, who lay perfectly still, while a hideous wound in the shoulder, which was evidently of long standing, was bared.

“Curious kind of hurt!” said the Doctor. “Here’s something within which irritates it.”

“Piece of rock splinter, perhaps,” suggested Wrigley.

“Very likely; but he will never get well with that in his flesh.—Don’t groan, man. It’s to do you good. Humph, look here. I thought it was a singular injury.”

He held out a piece of green metal with some fine-looking letters upon it, and Wrigley examined them.

“Eley!” he said. “Why, it is a piece of a brass cartridge.”

“That’s right. The man has been shot. Hallo! That makes him wince. Why, he is hurt here, too, in this leg. No doubt about this. The bite of some animal. Dog, I suppose. Are you sure that our friend here is not a poacher?”

“I never heard of anything of the kind,” replied Wrigley.

“Humph!” ejaculated the Doctor, “just the sort of case I should expect to meet with where men went out after game, and then lay in hiding after a fight with the keepers.”

“I can do no more now,” he said, after a busy pause. “I’ll come and see him to-morrow, and dress the places again. They will not kill him. I daresay the wound in the shoulder will heal now; the bite, too, for a time—may break out again, though.”

Just then Wrigley’s hand went to his pocket, and the Doctor frowned.

“Never mind that, sir,” he said. “This was done out of charity. If all I hear is right, we are fellow-sufferers.”

“You lost, then, by the mine,” said Wrigley eagerly.

“Yes, sir, heavily, when some confounded scoundrel put about that report, and made me join in the panic. But the fellow who bought up the shares has been nicely trapped—and—why, hang it all, are you the Mr Wrigley?”

“At your service, sir,” said the solicitor coldly, but looking rather white.

“Then, Mr Wrigley, I have the pleasure of telling you that you are a confounded scoundrel, and I’m glad you’ve lost by your scheme. Stop! one word! what about Jessop Reed?”

“He is outside, sir; you can speak to him.”

“Not I. The pair of you hatched the swindle, I’ll be bound. Take care of this man, and he is to have no spirits or meat yet, but I’ll come in and see him again.”

Wrigley said no more, and the Doctor marched out with his head up, gave Jessop a short nod, and strode back to continue his watching by Clive Reed’s couch; but, on entering the room, he gave a start, for his patient’s eyes turned to him directly.

Dinah suppressed a cry, and the Doctor made her a sign to be silent, while he quickly sat down and took his patient’s hand, which closed softly upon his fingers. Then, as the eyes still gazed in his in a dreamy way, there was a faint smile of recognition. Soon after the lids dropped softly, like those of a weary infant; and as the Doctor bent lower, there was a sigh, and the regular rise and fall of his breath.

Dinah stood back with her hands clasped, her pupils widely dilated, and a beseeching look of agony in her eyes, as the Doctor slowly rose. Then, seeing the dread and horror painted in her face, he smiled, took her hand, and led her, trembling with hope and apprehension, out of the room.

“Dying?” she cried, in a low, piteous, wailing tone.

“Yes: we’ve killed the fever, and he is sleeping as peacefully as a child.”

“Ah!”

One low, piteous sigh, and Dinah would have fallen to the floor had not the Doctor caught her in his arms, for she fainted dead away.

The Major, who was, in his dread, always upon the qui vive, joined them on the instant, and helped to bear his child to a couch.

“Overcome?” he whispered.

“With joy. Yes: our poor boy will live.”

Chapter Thirty Eight.

The Ruptured Vein.

“He’s my father-in-law, Wrigley, but he’s an old beast,” said Jessop, in a low snarling tone, as the Doctor’s steps died away in the distance.

“I daresay he is,” replied Wrigley; “but this is no time for pouring your domestic troubles on my head. What did you mean by telling me that this man, Sturgess, fell down a shaft?”

“That’s what he told me—a brute! I’ve no sympathy with him whatever, but I don’t, want it to be said that we neglected him, in case he dies. We’ve got troubles enough.”

“Rather. It’s about as near utter ruin as a man can get. Stockbroker? You’re lucky if you don’t turn stone-broker.”

“Mind what you’re talking about. You’ll have that fellow Robson hear you.”

“Doesn’t seem to matter to me who hears me now. The game’s up.”

“No, no, wait till that fellow comes and makes his examination.”

“Oh yes. I’ll wait. Here by twelve, won’t he? But I’m not going to pin my faith to his coming. To me as good an idea as ever man put upon the market has gone dead.”

“Yes, curse you, and ruined me,” growled Jessop. “You always were so cursed clever.”

“Come, I like that; ruined you, eh? Ruin the ruined. Why, for years past you’ve never been worth a rap, and have had to come to me to keep you going.”

“And pretty dearly I’ve had to pay for it.”

“Yes; a man who wants his bills discounted, and who is known to be stone broke, does have to pay pretty smartly for the risk that is run. But never mind, Jessop, we must try something else. I say, though, that father-in-law of yours is a tartar. You don’t expect to get anything out of him, do you?”

“He must leave his daughter his money.”

“No, he mustn’t. There are plenty of hospitals and charities about. He’ll never let you have a sou.”

“Can’t you find some other cursedly nasty thing to tell me, Wrig,” snarled Jessop. “It’s infernally cowardly of you, that’s what it is. Thank goodness, here’s the engineer.”

“Then now we shall get out of our difficulties or plunge deeper in. Why couldn’t you know something about mining engineering, and so have saved this expense?”

“Mr Wrigley?” said a quiet, solid-looking man, riding up to the office door.

“My name is Wrigley, sir. Are you Mr Benson?”

“Yes; and I came as soon as I could, after I heard from the Woden Mine Company’s secretary. What is the question, gentlemen. Deeper sinking? Troubled with water?”

“No,” said Jessop eagerly. “The lode we have been working has suddenly come to an end in the solid stone.”

“I see. A blind lead,” said the newcomer, dismounting.

“And we want advice as to what is best to do so as to hit again upon the ore,” said Wrigley. “I hear that you stand at the top of the tree in such matters.”

“Very kind of people to say so, sir,” replied the mining engineer. “I do my best. But you used to have a first-class man here—Mr Clive Reed.”

“Yes; but he is dangerously ill, or I should have called him in,” said Wrigley; and Jessop’s countenance cleared. “Well, sir, shall we go down the mine?”

“Better let me go alone, sir,” said the engineer. “I cannot tell you what you want to know in a minute. Perhaps it will take me a week.”

“Take your time, only get to work, and let’s have the full truth, as soon as you can,” said Wrigley, and the engineer nodded, had himself put into communication with the underground foreman, and passed the whole of the following week in the mine. At the end of that time he announced that he was ready with his report, and an adjournment was made to the little office, where Wrigley threw himself into a chair, and Jessop lit a cigar which kept going out, and had to be re-lit again and again, as the expert began to read his carefully written report of his work from day to day.

“My dear sir,” said Wrigley at last, impatiently, “we do not want to hear what time you went into the mine each day, or when you came out, nor yet about how you tested the surroundings of the great lode in different places. Let’s have your final decision, and the position.”

“Very good, gentlemen. I’ll give you both together. The lode ends dead against the barren rock.”

“Which we had already discovered,” said Wrigley sarcastically.

“Through a geological fault,” continued the engineer; “and I have tried hard to make out whether the vein of silver lead, where it was snapped off in some convulsion, or gradual sinking, went down or up.”

“Down or up,” said Jessop, who was listening eagerly, trying with nervous fingers to re-light his cigar from time to time.

“If it went downward, by constant search and sinking—”

“Money?” interrupted Wrigley.

“I mean shafts, sir,” said the engineer, smiling; “but you may include money; you might perhaps hit upon the lode again; but I am inclined to think, from the conformation of the strata, that the vein was snapped in two and thrust upward.”

“What!” cried Jessop, “then it must be close to the surface?”

“I should say, sir, it was on the surface, and all cleared away hundreds upon hundreds of years ago.”

“But you would sink shafts to try if it had gone down?” said Wrigley, eyeing the engineer keenly.

“No, sir; if it were my case I would be content with the money I had got out of the mine.”

“General burst up, Jessop, my lad,” said Wrigley coolly. “The ‘White Virgin’s’ reputation is smirched, and she is not immaculate after all. Thank you, Mr Benson, I am quite satisfied with your judgment. There, you must have your cheque. There will not be many more for any one.”

Just about the same time, after a week’s trembling in the balance, Clive Reed had taken a turn which filled all at the cottage with hope. His senses returned upon that day a week earlier; but after some hours’ calm sleep, he woke in so enfeebled a state that it required all the efforts of nurse and doctor to keep him from sinking calmly away into the great sleep of all.

Now he was undoubtedly amending, and getting better hour after hour, though still so weak that he was unconscious of who it was who tended him night and day. Nothing seemed to trouble him. Nature had prescribed utter rest so that she might have time to rebuild the waste, and the Doctor’s chief efforts were directed towards keeping him free from the slightest trouble which might ripple the placid lake of his existence.

“There now,” he said, “let him sleep all he can. That is the best.”

He walked over to the mine, arriving there soon after the engineer had gone, and avoiding Jessop, went straight into the room occupied by Sturgess, who lay waiting for him eagerly.

“Better, arn’t I, Doctor?”

“Yes; getting stronger fast. The festering wound looks healthy now.”

“What festering wound?” said the man, with a stare.

“The one in your shoulder, which you said was caused by a fall.”

Sturgess scowled.

“Lucky for you I was fetched to you in time, and then dressed the wound in your leg. Your flesh was in a bad way, my man. You should never neglect the bite of a dog.”

“Fear he should go mad?” said Sturgess grimly. “No fear o’ that one going mad now.”

“Shot him, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said Sturgess, smiling. “I shot him, Doctor. When may I get about again?”

“Oh, not for a week or two yet—perhaps three. You mustn’t hurry.”

“Can’t you get me up in a week, sir?” said the man anxiously. “I have got a good deal to do.”

“Not in the mine. That’s at an end.”

“Yes, I heard that. But no, it arn’t that. It’s business I want to settle about some one I know.”

“Ah, well, we shall see,” said the Doctor. “Be patient.”

He walked back to the cottage, and not seeing either the Major or his child, hung up his hat, and went to Clive’s chamber, where he stopped short at the door, startled by the scene within. For Dinah was in the act of advancing to the bed just as Clive lay half dozing.

The sharp crack of a floor board roused him into wakefulness, and he opened his eyes wonderingly, so that they fell upon Dinah’s sweet, sad face.

The result was startling to the Doctor, and filled Dinah with agonising despair. For as the light of recognition came into the suffering man’s countenance, his features contracted, his brow wrinkled and twitched, and he turned his eyes away with a look of disgust and horror, while Dinah uttered a low moan, covered her face with her hands, and fled from the room, her whole attitude and every movement suggesting utter despair.

Chapter Thirty Nine.

After a Lapse.

“Why, my dear child, it is one of the commonest of things. I’ve known plenty of cases of this kind, and I daresay your father has.”

Dinah looked at the Doctor wistfully, with her face growing old and careworn; but she said nothing, only turned to her father, as he took and held her hand.

“Come, come, this will not do,” continued the Doctor. “I don’t want to have you upon my hands as a patient. Now, look here; I promise you that all will come right, and it is not the physic-monger speaking now, but your father’s friend.”

The Major darted a grateful look at the speaker, while Dinah did not stir, but sat hardly hearing him, alone with her despair.

“They do not know all,” she said to herself; “they do not know all.”

“You see, my dear,” continued the Doctor, “he is rapidly mending, and he knows us all, and speaks sensibly; but he is not quite compos mentis yet his brain had a nasty shock, from which it is recovering, but it must have time. You feel it bitterly, of course, but it is a natural, though only temporary, outcome of this ailment. Over and over again we doctors find that the one the invalid loves best—wife, mother, betrothed—is the one against whom he takes an unaccountable dislike, and in endless cases this is the one who has devoted herself to constant nursing. Ah, they re an ungrateful lot, patients, when they are a bit off their heads. I had one to whom I was administering nothing but beef tea, and water just flavoured with syrup of aurantia—orange and sugar, you know. Well, that ruffian swore that I was slowly poisoning him.”

“But Reed has quite recovered his senses,” said the Major uneasily; “it is six weeks to-day since he turned like this.”

“He has not quite recovered his senses, or he would be upon his knees, asking pardon of an angel, sir. No, my dear, I’m not flattering you, for if ever woman displayed devotion and love for sinful man, you have done so for my boy Clive. Come, promise me that you will try and hold up, for your father’s sake. Yes, and Clive’s. He is rapidly growing stronger, but he wants your help to console him for his losses. That is what we want to get off his brain. Once he can bear that philosophically all will be well.”

The Doctor’s long speeches were cut short by a visitor in the shape of Wrigley, who was shown in by Martha, Dinah at the same moment escaping to her room, where, on approaching the window, she became aware of the fact that Jessop had accompanied the visitor. He was waiting at the bottom of the garden down by the river, and she shrank away in horror and dread as she trembled lest Clive should see him and it might bring on a fresh attack.

For a few moments she thought of going to Clive’s room and telling him. But the dread of meeting his cruel searching eyes, and experiencing another of those shrinking looks of horror and disgust, kept her away, and she sank wearily into a chair, shivering, and with the feeling of utter despair growing upon her more and more.

Meanwhile a scene was taking place in the little dining-room below, where the Major had made a sign toward a chair.

“Thank you,” said Wrigley. “I will not detain you long.”

“What is it, sir? Sturgess worse?” said the Doctor.

“Oh, no! The fellow is, thanks to you, Doctor, growing stronger and more impudent every day. The fact is, gentlemen, I have come over to see Mr Clive Reed. His brother is waiting down by the river. He would not come in, as they are not on good terms.”

The Major frowned.

“As I am Mr Clive Reed’s doctor, sir, I have a right to ask you what you want with him.”

“Simple matter of business, sir. I want him to come over and inspect the mine.”

“Not fit, sir. Too weak,” said the Doctor sternly. “Bless my soul! my dear boy, are you mad?”

“I hope not, Doctor,” said Clive, as he entered the room, looking very white, but quite able to dispense with the stick he held in his hand.

“Glad to see you about again, Mr Reed,” said Wrigley at once, and he held out his hand; but it was not taken. “Mr Reed, I have come on behalf of the shareholders in the ‘White Virgin’ mine.”

“Including yourself, sir, and Mr Jessop Reed?” said Clive coldly.

“Of course,” said Wrigley, with an assumption of frankness. “We stand to be heavy losers over the mine if the lost lode is not discovered. But perhaps you don’t know that the rich vein has ended suddenly?”

“I know everything in connection with the mine, sir,” said Clive, as the Doctor watched him anxiously; but to his intense gratification saw nothing to cause him uneasiness.

“That’s well, sir. Then I will be quite plain with you, and ask you to let bygones be bygones, for I am sure that you, as an English gentleman, and one of our principal shareholders, wish for nothing but what is fair and right by all concerned.”

He ceased and waited for Clive to speak, but the engineer remained silent, and Wrigley went on—

“I should tell you, sir, that our foreman, Sturgess, has made the most careful investigations, both before his illness and since. He is hardly fit to be about.”

“Not fit,” said the Doctor.

“Exactly, sir; but he has insisted upon going down the mine during the past four days, and testing in different directions. Then, too, we have had the advice of an eminent mining engineer, Mr Benson, and unfortunately both give a decidedly adverse report. Well, sir, this is bad, but for my part I have great faith in your knowledge.”

“Which you showed, sir, by scheming with my brother to get me ousted from the post!”

“An error in judgment, Mr Reed, due to an eager desire to make money. I made the mistake of choosing the wrong brother. I apologise, and you know that I have suffered for my blunder. But let us repair all the past for the sake of everybody concerned. Mr Clive Reed, in perfect faith that you will restore the ‘White Virgin’ to her former prosperity, I, as a very large holder of shares, ask you to resume your position as manager and engineer. Tell me that you will do this, and I will at once go back to town, call an extraordinary meeting, and get your reappointment endorsed.”

A slight flush came into Clive’s pale cheeks as he sat listening to Wrigley’s words, and the latter took hope therefrom.

“I see that you feel that there is hope for the mine, sir,” he said eagerly; “and that you will sink the past and join us in working heart and soul for every one’s benefit.”

The Major looked curiously at Clive, whom the excitement of the interview seemed to be rousing from his despondent state, but drawing himself up, the latter said quietly—

“I am sorry, of course, sir, for the innocent shareholders in the mine, but the interim dividends that they have received prevent them from being heavy losers. As to the speculators, they must thank fate that their losses are not greater.”

“Yes, yes, of course, Mr Reed, but you will soon set all that right. Take a month at sea, sir, at the company’s expense, and come back strong as a lion, ready to go to work again, and make the ‘White Virgin’ richer than ever.”