The mystery of the inn by the shore

PROSPERITY and the sea had deserted Stroan together. As the waves receded, leaving a bare stretch of sand where once whole fleets had ridden at anchor, the once flourishing town had dwindled and sunk, in spite of valiant struggles to revive and retain her ancient supremacy.

In the length and breadth of the land no place could be found so sleepy, so much behind the times, so tortuous of street and so moss-grown of stone, as Stroan had become, when, by a happy chance, the game of golf came down from the North and established itself as the fashion. Then somebody discovered that the bare and unproductive sands between Stroan and the sea made excellent “links;” visitors began to arrive and to put up at a brand-new hotel built expressly for their accommodation, and a little breath of active life began to stir once more in the narrow, winding streets.

[8]Among the visitors, one warm September, came down from London three friends, who tempered their devotion to golf by various other pursuits, each according to his inclination.

Otto Conybeare, the eldest of the three, was a journalist, who had aspirations to literature of a less ephemeral sort. He used his holiday by trying his hand at both prose and poetry, of which his two companions offered trenchant if not discriminating criticism. He was a tall, thin, dark-skinned man, with clean-cut, aquiline features, and was looked upon by the two others as their champion and social leader.

Willie Jordan, the youngest of the party, was short and, alas! fat, with curly, light hair and a huge, tawny mustache, which he had cultivated as the trademark of his calling, which was that of an artist.

Clifford King, the remaining member of the trio, was a barrister, to whom no one had as yet intrusted a brief. He was a dark-haired, blue-eyed, good-humored young fellow, whom everybody liked and in whom all his friends believed with an enthusiasm which was not without excuse, for Clifford had brains and was only waiting for the opportunity which comes to all who can wait in the right way.

They had been at Stroan five days, and the little[9] god, Cupid, had already spoiled the harmony of the party.

It was always Willie who could not resist a pair of handsome eyes, black, blue or gray; so that when he became attached to the society of old Colonel Bostal, and would insist upon accompanying that uninteresting old gentleman from the Links to his home three miles away, Clifford and Otto exchanged winks, and having found out that the colonel had a daughter, at once believed that they had probed successfully into the mystery of Willie’s civility.

So, justly incensed at Willie’s duplicity, for that young man had spoken slightingly of Miss Bostal’s attractions, Otto and Clifford determined upon tracking the traitor to his lair.

This they did on a sunny afternoon, when the straight road over the reclaimed marsh between Stroan and Shingle End was thick in white dust.

They knew the colonel’s house from the outside, having passed it on many a walk from Stroan to Courtstairs, the next town. It was about half a mile beyond the Blue Lion, a picturesque roadside inn which was the halfway house between Courtstairs and Stroan. Very poor the colonel was, as he took care to inform everybody, and very poverty-stricken[10] his dwelling looked, in the observant eyes of the two young men, as they rang the bell and waited a long time before any one answered it.

Shingle End was a pretty, tumbledown house, which stood at the angle formed by two roads. It had once been white, but neglect and hard weather had made it a mottled gray; while cracked and dusty windows, rickety shutters and untrimmed trees and bushes combined to give the place a dreary and unprosperous appearance.

Behind the house was a garden, with a poultry-run and a paddock; and Otto had seen, as they passed, the colonel reading his paper under an apple-tree, while the flutter of a petticoat in the background among the trees seemed to confirm their suspicions.

“We’ve unearthed the rascal,” smiled Otto, as they at last heard footsteps in the house in answer to their second ring.

But when the door was opened, their hearts sank, for there stood before them a woman of forty, at least, small, lean, dowdy, precise of manner and slow of speech, wearing a pair of gardening-gloves and a sunbonnet, who looked at them in some surprise, and asked them stiffly what they wanted.

Otto, who was acute enough to perceive that this must be the colonel’s daughter, apologized for disturbing[11] her, and said they had brought a letter for their friend Jordan, who, they understood, was spending the afternoon with Colonel Bostal. They would not have intruded but that they believed the letter was very important, as it was marked on the envelope “Please deliver immediately.”

And the plotter drew from his pocket, with ostentatious care, a missive which he and Clifford had prepared together, and which, with great ingenuity, had been made to look as if it had passed through the post.

“There is no one with my father,” she said, “and I don’t know any one of that name. But if you will come into the drawing-room I will ask him.”

“Oh, no, not for the world. We could not think of intruding. We must have made a mistake,” stammered Otto, while Clifford hurriedly passed out by the little wooden gate into the road.

In the meantime, however, Colonel Bostal, having heard the voices, had come through the narrow passage from the garden to learn the meaning of this unusual sound. The matter was explained to him by his daughter, amidst further apologies from Otto.

The colonel, a withered-looking, gray-faced man[12] of about sixty-five, in a threadbare and patched coat and a battered Panama hat, remembered the name at once.

“Jordan? Jordan? Yes, of course I know him,” said he at once. “A little fellow, with a long mustache. Yes, he often walks home with me as far as the bridge, but there he always turns back and excuses himself from coming any farther.”

Otto looked perplexed by this information; but over Miss Bostal’s thin, pinched face there came a little, pale smile.

“The Blue Lion has a good many frequenters who are not frequenters of other taverns,” said he. “Nell Claris, the niece of the man who keeps it, is a protégée of my daughter’s, and the prettiest girl in the place.”

“I shall have to speak to her very seriously,” said she, with a little frown. “She encourages half the young men of Stroan to waste their time out here.”

“It’s of no use speaking to a pretty girl,” said he, with decision. “You will only be told to mind your own business. And there’s no harm in Nell.”

“I know that,” retorted his daughter, not spitefully, but with a spinster’s stern solicitude. “I shouldn’t be so much interested in her if I didn’t know that she’s a good little thing. But she’s giddy and thoughtless. I shall really have to advise her uncle to send her back to school again.”

“She won’t go,” said the colonel. “And if she would, old Claris wouldn’t part with her. We must rely on the effect of your sermons, Theodora.”

Father and daughter had carried on this dialogue without including the visitor in the conversation, so that Otto, who prided himself upon being an acute observer, had an opportunity of peeping into the rooms on each side of the passage, as the doors were open, without moving from where he stood.

He was much struck by what he saw: by the carpets worn so threadbare that there was no trace of the pattern to be seen on them; by the carefully-darned table-covers, the worn-out furniture. All was neatly kept and spotlessly clean; all showed a pinched poverty which there was no attempt to hide.

He withdrew with more apologies as soon as the[14] short discussion between father and daughter was ended, and rejoined his friend outside.

“Well,” said Clifford, as Otto turned toward Stroan in silence, “and what kept you so long talking to the severe-looking lady?”

“I wasn’t talking. I was listening,” answered Otto, “and working out in my mind a romance, a pitiful romance, of the kind that is not showy enough for people to care to hear about.”

“What! Do you mean to say that Jordan’s fallen in love with that mature and lean spinster?” asked Clifford in astonishment.

“Oh, dear, no. He’s fallen in love; I’ve found that out; but it is with the usual maid of the inn—nobody half so interesting as Miss Bostal.”

“Yes. I have an idea that the lean spinster is a heroine. Not the sort of heroine one troubles oneself about, of course. But while they were talking about a certain ‘Nell,’ who is evidently the object of Jordan’s priceless but transient affections just now, I looked into their rooms, their poor little dining-room, their bare, long drawing-room, and I saw such a history of pinched lives and sordid struggles as made me long for pen and paper.”

“It doesn’t take much to make you do that!” he[15] grumbled. “And I don’t think your subject a very interesting one.”

“Of course you would not. It is not obvious or commonplace or highly-colored enough for you,” retorted Otto. “But to my mind there is something infinitely pathetic in the tattered old coat of this dignified and distinguished-looking old man, and in the darns which the daughter must have lost the brightness of her eyes over.”

“Decidedly, my dear boy, you must do it in poetry, not prose,” said Clifford, mockingly.

Otto would have retorted, but that they had now reached the little bridge over the river Fleet, and were within a few yards of the halfway house.

“This is the place where Jordan spends his afternoons,” said Otto, leading the way to the little inn.

The Blue Lion was a very unpretending establishment, old, but without any pretensions to historical or archæological interest, small, inconvenient, and weather-beaten. Standing as it did midway between sleepy Stroan and democratic Courtstairs, it was the house of call for all the carriers, farmers and cattle-drovers all the year round, while in the months of July and August its little bar was thronged with the denizens of the Mile-end[16] Road, who take their pleasure in brakes, with concertinas and howls and discordant songs.

A few late visitors of this sort were in the little bar when Clifford and Otto entered. But there was no sign of Jordan. Both the young men looked with curiosity at the woman who was serving behind the bar, a portly young woman with a ready tongue, who in her sturdy build and large coarse hands, as well as in the weather-beaten look of her complexion, betrayed that she was accustomed to fill up her time, when work was slack inside the house, with out-door labor of the roughest kind.

“She isn’t even young!” cried Otto. “Nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, I’ll swear!”

“And her voice! And her detestable Kentish accent!” added Clifford. “And those high cheek-bones, and that short nose! It’s a type I loathe—the type of the common shrew.”

“I shouldn’t have thought it of Jordan!” murmured Otto, in pity tempered with indignation.

“But where is the ruffian himself?” asked Clifford, stopping short. “Do you think we are on a wrong scent, after all?”

“If it were anybody but Jordan, I should say yes,” said Otto, deliberately. “But his susceptibility[17] is so colossal that I see no reason to doubt even this.”

Nevertheless he followed Clifford, when the latter turned back toward the little bridge.

“There’s a cottage,” said the more humane King, “a little cottage by the roadside. Let us see if we can discern a petticoat in the neighborhood of that. We may be doing the poor chap an injustice, after all.”

But before they reached the cottage the attention of the two young men was arrested by the sound of a girl’s voice on the left, just before they reached the bridge. It was a voice so bright, so sweet, with such a suggestion of bubbling laughter in its tones, that they both stopped short and looked at each other with faces full of remorse.

And with one accord they bent their steps in the direction of the voice; and after getting over a wooden paling by the roadside, scattering a colony of fowls on the other side, and making their way over the rough grass beside the river where the boats were drawn up which carried excursionists to Fleet Castle, they came upon a wooden shed, and a strong smell of pitch, and two human figures.[18] The one was Jordan, coatless, with his straw hat tilted to the back of his head, a tar-brush in one hand and a tin can in the other, engaged in the humble but useful task of covering the cow-shed with a new coat of pitch.

But his two friends scarcely glanced at him. It was the other figure that absorbed all their powers of vision—a slender girl in a print frock, with a white cotton blouse and an enormous straw hat. This was the Nell who wasted the time of half the young men of Stroan, and who would have wasted the time of half the young men of London if they had only once seen her. A beauty of pure Saxon type she was, with the opaque white skin which the sun does not scorch or redden, with rose-pink cheeks, a child’s pouting mouth, and big blue eyes that made a young man hold his breath. Her hair had turned since childhood from flaxen to a deeper tint, and was now a light bronze color. There was about her an air of refinement as well as modesty which could not fail to astonish a stranger who found her in these strange circumstances. She saw the newcomers long before poor Jordan did, and she watched them approach while the unfortunate artist toiled on at his inglorious task.

Perhaps the girl had seen the three young men together; perhaps it was only feminine quickness[19] of wit which made her jump to the right conclusion.

“I think there are some friends of yours coming this way, Mr. Jordan,” she said, in a voice as refined as her appearance and manner.

Poor Willie started back, stumbling over the rough ground, and presented a very red, moist face to their view.

But they took no notice of him. Stepping genially over the rough mounds, looking beautifully cool and clean and smart and well-dressed beside the besmirched and perspiring Willie, they threw back their heads, half-closed their eyes, and proceeded to criticise the work before them with as much care and conscientiousness as if it had been a painting on the walls of the New Gallery.

“I say, old chap, it really is the best thing you’ve ever done,” began Otto, with kindly admiration.

“By Jove, Jordan, I never thought you could paint before,” added Clifford. “There’s a broad touch, and at the same time a nice feeling for effect, which shows an immense advance on your previous work. You seem, so to speak, to have put all your strength into the work. It does you immense credit—it really does, old chap.”

“Some meaning in it, too. And that’s the point where you always failed before.”

[20]To the intense disgust of Willie, pretty Nell was evidently much amused by these remarks. And, although a feeling of condescending gratitude to her abject admirer made her try to control her enjoyment, Clifford saw in her blue eyes a merriment none the less keen that she subdued its outward manifestation.

“It’s easy to chaff,” grumbled Willie, hotly. “Perhaps you’d like to try the work yourselves.”

“No, old chap. We should never get that depth of color,” said Otto, calmly surveying the artist’s heated, crimson face.

“Well, you can take yourselves off if you have nothing better to do than to find fault with what you haven’t the pluck to do yourselves,” said Willie, sharply.

“And we are quite ready to try our hand ourselves,” said Clifford, as, with a sudden burst of energy, born of his desire to linger in the neighborhood of Nell, he threw off his own coat and struggled for possession of the tar-brush.

But Willie resisted, and there was danger of their both suffering severely from the nature of[21] the prize, when the object of so much singular loyalty interposed.

“If you really are so full of energy that you need some vent for it,” said she, in a voice which was full of suggestions of demure merriment, “you might help to pull up those boats.”

And she glanced at two of the small pleasure-craft in the river, both of which had evidently suffered some injury, as their water-logged condition bore witness.

Clifford set about the task with enthusiasm, and, not without difficulty, succeeded in bringing the boats up on the slimy bank.

It was warm work, and as Otto Conybeare made no offer to assist him, it was a long time before Clifford managed, first by baling the water out of the boats with an old pail and then by turning them a little on one side when he had partly dragged them out, and emptying them, to finish his task. When he at last raised his head with a great sigh of satisfaction, he saw in the river below a weather-beaten old punt, in which sat a young fisherman of the realistic, not the operatic, kind, wearing a hard felt hat, a stained jersey, and a huge pair of sea-boots, who regarded him with an air of mingled pity and contempt.

“She always gets moogs to do her dirty work, she[22] do,” he observed, with a jerk of the head in the direction of the fair Nell. “And the better dressed they are, the more she likes it. Oh, she’s a rare un, she be.”

Now, it is not in human nature to like being classed among the “moogs,” and Clifford, who could hardly flush a deeper crimson than he had already done with his exertions, tried to assume an air of philosophic indifference in vain.

“I’m afraid you are not chivalrous, my man,” said he, thrusting his arms into his coat and feeling that he would like a plunge into the river.

“I don’t care to pull the ’eart out of my body and get no thank for it,” rejoined the fisherman.

Clifford, in spite of his assumed stoicism, began to feel like a fool. He looked toward the spot where Nell had been standing beside the shed, and saw that she, as well as his two friends, had disappeared. The fisherman grinned and stuck the end of an old pipe in his mouth with an air of snug satisfaction.

“I wasn’t fashionable enough for her, I wasn’t; an’ I thank my stars for it. It’s saved my back many a good load.”

Then Clifford felt satisfied that it was pique at having his own advances rejected which caused the young fisherman to be so contemptuous. So he said, without irritation:

[23]“I should have thought no man would mind doing a man’s work to save a woman’s hands.”

The fisherman puffed away at his dirty little pipe for a few moments in silence.

“Them’s fine words,” he said, at last. “An’ maybe I’d say the same of some women. But not for a little light-fingered hussy like yon,” and he jerked his head viciously in the direction of the Blue Lion.

“Light-fingered!” exclaimed Clifford, with some indignation. “Do you know what you mean by that?”

“Sh’d just think I did! Why, you ask the folks about here what sort o’ character the Blue Lion’s had since young miss was about. Ask if it’s a honest house to stay the night in if you’ve money on yer. Just you ask that, an’ put two and two together like what I do, an’ like what everybody does as knows what the place was afore she came an’ what it is now.”

Clifford shivered under the hot sun of the September afternoon as he listened to this torrent of accusation, and saw by the passion in the young fisherman’s face that he was in earnest.

Clifford looked round, and saw pretty Nell Claris standing beside the two boats which he had pulled up on the bank by her direction.

“I’m afraid it must have given you a great deal of trouble. One of them was nearly full of water, I know.”

“Why, yes, it wasn’t too easy to get them up, because the bank slopes, and the earth is so slimy just here. But I’m very glad to have been able to do you the little service.”

“It wasn’t a little service; it was a great one,” said Nell, with a look which Clifford felt to be intoxicating.

At that moment he heard a sound like a short, mocking laugh; and turning, with a sudden flush, to look at the river, he saw the fisherman, with a face full of scornful amusement, punting away slowly up stream toward Fleet Castle. Clifford, though he felt a little uneasy, was glad the man had gone.

[25]“Your friends have gone back to Stroan,” said Nell, who had blushed a little, on her side, when she heard the fisherman’s contemptuous laugh.

“Oh, no, indeed. My uncle said, when I told him what you were doing for us, that I was to ask you to come in and have a cup of tea with us—if you would condescend to accept an invitation from an innkeeper and his niece?”

Nell smiled a little as she added these words; and the manner in which she uttered them showed so keen a perception of social distinctions that Clifford was confirmed in his belief that the girl was ridiculously out of her proper element in this wayside inn.

He followed her into a tiny sitting-room at the back of the inn, where they were joined by her uncle, a burly, jovial man with a round, red, honest face, who was evidently very fond of his niece, although every word each uttered seemed to emphasize the strange difference in manners and speech which existed between them.

“Proud to know you, sir,” said George Claris, when Clifford held out his hand. “Proud to know anybody my Nell thinks worth knowing. She’s mighty particular, is Nell. Lor’, what wouldn’t[26] your friend, Mr. Jordan there, have given for an invite to tea in here like this! Eh, Nell?”

Nell blushed, and turned her uncle’s attention to his tea, while Clifford, in some surprise, enjoyed the knowledge that he had cut Jordan out without even a struggle.

Nell herself explained this presently, when her uncle had been called away by press of business in the bar, and the two young people were left sitting together, looking through the open glass door into the garden behind the inn.

“I’m afraid you will think I didn’t treat your friend very well, after setting him to work to pitch that shed for us,” she said, with a pretty blush in her cheeks, as she looked down at the table-cloth, and thus enabled Clifford to see that her long, curled, golden-brown eyelashes were the prettiest he had ever seen.

“I’m afraid he will think so,” said Clifford, with affected solemnity. “I think myself that, after such heavy work as that, he did deserve a cup of tea.”

Nell looked up in some distress, her blue eyes brighter with excitement, and her voice quite tremulous in its earnestness.

“Ah, you don’t know!” she said, quickly. “I am not ungrateful, but I am in a very difficult[27] position, and I have to be careful how I treat people. Don’t you know yourself that a great many men, gentlemen too—or they call themselves so—think they have a right to treat a girl who lives at an inn differently from other girls? Surely you must know that?”

Clifford grew red, conscious that the girl had penetrated a weak spot in Willie’s social armor.

“Oh, you needn’t say ‘but,’” interrupted Nell. “You know it is true. Now I don’t want to say anything against your friend; he is very nice, and very good-natured; but—”

“Yes. I treat him just as I treat a lot of these young men who come out from Stroan just to idle about the place; as I treated you, to begin with.” And she gave him a pretty little shy glance and smile, which set Clifford’s heart beating faster. “I set them all to work. It does them no harm, and its does my uncle a great deal of good. Since I’ve been here,” and she raised her head triumphantly, “he’s been able to do without a man to look after things.”

[28]“Indeed, I like to think that I have brought it to Uncle George,” said the girl. “I may tell you—for everybody knows it—that just before I came back to him he was on the verge of bankruptcy, and now,” and she shot at Clifford a glance of triumph, “he has bought another piece of land, and two more cows, and enlarged the stables, and put money in the bank besides. What do you think of that?”

“Why, I think he’s a very lucky man to have such a niece,” said Clifford, more charmed every moment by the girl’s amusing mixture of shrewdness and simplicity.

“It’s very nice for your uncle,” he added, after a little pause, “but is it—” he hesitated, afraid of seeming impertinent, “is it quite as pleasant for you, to live out here, I mean, so far from—from—”

“Civilization?” asked Nell, smiling. “There are some disadvantages, certainly. Of course I know what you really mean, and what you don’t like to say. But when the choice lies between living with my old uncle and helping him, and going away to please myself, is there any doubt what I ought to do? Miss Theodora, who is the best woman in the world, says I ought to stay—I am right to stay.”

Clifford reluctantly agreed with her, and allowed[29] her to prattle on about her uncle and his goodness, and Miss Theodora and her goodness, until the light of the sunset began to fade in the sky.

When he reluctantly rose to take leave, he found that some heavy drops of rain had begun to fall, and he allowed himself to be persuaded by the landlord and his niece to wait until the rain had cleared off. As, however, instead of clearing, the weather gradually became worse, until the day ended in a steady downpour which threatened to last all night, Clifford asked whether they could put him up for the night; and being answered in the affirmative, decided to spend the night at the inn.

The room they gave him was small, but beautifully clean, and was at the front of the house, with an outlook over the marshes to the sea. Clifford, when he retired to it late that night, raised the blind and tried to peer through the mist of rain which blurred the view. He began to feel that he wanted to spend his life in this spot, digging Nell’s cabbages for her, trimming the hedges of her garden, watering her roses, doing anything, in fact, so that he might be near her.

He was in love, more seriously, too, than Willie had ever been, or than he himself had ever been before. He asked himself what sort of a spell it[30] was that this young girl had been able so quickly to cast upon him, and he told himself that it was the sweetness of her nature, the purity which shone from her young soul through her blue eyes, which had enabled her to bewitch him as no mere beauty of face and person could ever have done. He looked at his hand, and saw again in imagination the little soft, white hand, smoother and fairer than any girl’s hand he had ever touched, which had lain for a moment in his as she bade him good night. He felt again the satiny touch which had thrilled him when the little fingers met his. He sat caressing his own hand which had been so honored, intoxicated with his own thoughts.

It was late before the dying candle warned him to make haste to bed. As he turned to the door to lock it, as his custom was in a strange place, he found that it had neither lock nor bolt. And the words of the young fisherman, his warning about the character of the house, flashed with an unpleasant chill through his mind.

The next moment he was ashamed of having remembered them. Of course, there was a possibility, then whispered his common sense, that even the house which sheltered a goddess might also contain a man or a maid-servant who was a common thief. So, as he had a very handsome watch with him, and[31] nearly twenty-five pounds in his purse, he tucked these possessions well under the pillow, and went to sleep, thinking of Nell.

He was awakened out of a sound slumber by the feeling that there was some one in his room.

He felt sure of this, although for a few minutes, as he lay with his eyes closed, he heard nothing but the ticking of the watch under his pillow. After that he became conscious that in the darkness there was a shadowy something passing and repassing between his bed and the heavily-curtained window. His first impulse was to shout aloud and alarm the would-be thief, as he could not but suppose the intruder to be. The next moment, however, he decided that he would wait until the theft had been actually committed, and take the perpetrator red-handed.

Sometimes the shadowy something disappeared altogether for a few seconds, to re-appear stealthily creeping round the walls of the little room. Only one thing he could make out from the vague outline which was all he saw of the figure—the intruder was a woman. He heard a sound which he took to be the dropping of his clothes when they had been ransacked. Then, though he hardly saw it, he felt that the figure was approaching the bed.

He felt that a hand was upon the bolster, creeping softly toward his head. Then it was under the bolster, and, finally, it was under his pillow. He held himself in readiness to seize the hand at the moment when it should find his watch and his purse.

When once the stealthy fingers had touched these articles, however, they were snatched away with so much rapidity that Clifford had to spring up and fling out his arm to catch the thievish hand.

As his fingers closed upon those of the thief, however, he was struck with a sudden and awful chill on finding that the skin was smooth as satin, that the trembling fingers were slender and soft, the hand small and delicate—a hand that he knew!

But he got no answer but the answer of his own heart. His agitation was so great that the little hand wriggled out of his, still bearing his watch and his purse; and in another moment the door had opened and closed, and he was alone.

Clifford King sat up in bed when the door had closed with a flicker of dim light and a rush of cool air, shaking from head to foot with excitement and horror which made him cold and sick.

Was she a thief, then, a common thief, this blue-eyed, pink-cheeked girl who had infatuated him the evening before? This Nell of the soft voice and the bright hair, to whose pretty talk he had listened with delight, whom he had been ready to worship for her gentleness, her affectionate kindness for her rough old uncle? No, it was impossible. He had been dreaming. He would wake presently to find that the experiences of the last few minutes had been a nightmare only.

With a wish to this effect so strong that it was almost a belief, he thrust his hand under his pillow and felt about for his watch and his purse. But they were gone, without the possibility of a doubt.

He sprang out of bed, groped his way to the window and drew back the heavy curtains. The dawn was breaking, and a pale, golden light was on[34] the sea. The rain of the night before had made the air cool and fresh, and Clifford’s brain was as clear as it could be as he threw open the window and had to confess that the visit of the woman with the soft hand had been a terrible reality. He observed by the dawning light that it was nearly four o’clock. He examined his clothes, saw that they had been disarranged, and then he went to the door, turned the handle softly, and looked out.

The landing was small and narrow, and two doors opened upon it besides that of Clifford’s room. A steep and very narrow wooden staircase led up to the top of the house, and looking up, Clifford could just discern that at the top there was one door on either side.

He went back into his room, dressed himself, and sat by the open window in a state of great agitation. Far from yielding at once to the apparently inevitable conclusion, Clifford fought against it with all his might. Quickly as his passion for the girl had sprung up, it was strong enough to make him ready to accept any hypothesis, however improbable, rather than accept the evidence of his own senses when that evidence was against her. He was ready to believe that there was in the house another woman with a hand as small, as soft, as smooth-skinned as the one he had held in his hand when[35] he bade Nell good-night. And then the desperate improbability of this supposition struck him with the force of a blow. He remembered the stalwart, red-handed country wench who had been helping the landlord in the bar, and he was forced to admit that the hand which had taken his watch and purse was not hers. But mention had been made of “Old Nannie,” a personage whom he had not seen, and he told himself that this might be a nickname, and that the bearer of it might prove to be young enough and fair enough to be the owner of the thievish fingers.

Although this explanation of the theft was a very unlikely one, Clifford hugged it with desperate persistency until the dawn of another suggestion in his mind. This was a better one certainly.

Was pretty Nell a somnambulist? If so, it only wanted a good, hard stretch of Clifford’s imagination to picture the girl as continually haunted, both by day and night, with the idea of helping and enriching her uncle, until at last her wishes ran away with her and took shape in her sleep in actual thefts on his behalf. Clifford had read tales of this sort, which he had indeed looked upon as highly imaginative; but now his love made him snatch at this or at any way of escaping the dreadful[36] possibility of having to acknowledge that Nell was a thief.

The sleep-walking notion had brought him some comfort, and he felt quite hopeful about clearing up the mystery, when a faint noise outside his door made him start up and listen. He peeped out upon the landing, but there was no one to be seen. However, he kept his door ajar and watched.

In a few minutes he felt a rush of cold air from the ground floor of the house, and dashing quickly out upon the landing, he came face to face with Nell herself, as she ran up the stairs.

Now if it had not been for the strange occurrence of the night Clifford would have thought nothing of this early meeting. People rise early in the country, and Nell had the live stock to attend to, as she had herself told him, taking her turn with the servants. The fact of there being a visitor in the inn, too, would have explained satisfactorily the care she took not to make any noise.

But with his mind full of the agony of unwilling suspicion, the young man could not help noticing that Nell looked guilty and frightened, that the color suddenly left her cheeks, and that she stammered in her efforts to give him greeting.

“You—you get up very early. I—I had not[37] expected to see you down before eight o’clock,” she managed to say at last.

And there was in her eyes, as she looked shyly up at him, an unmistakable anxiety which made his manner, as he answered, short and cold.

And then she looked up quickly in his face with a glance so full of inquiry, of fear, that, against his wish and his will, Clifford’s own eyes met hers with a suspicious frown.

He hesitated. Surely this candid anxiety was a proof of innocence, not guilt! Surely a thief would have been ready with a glib speech, with a look of overdone surprise. He looked away again, absolutely unable to frame, to her, the story of his adventure.

He felt that the girl’s eyes were upon him, but he would not meet them. He must speak about his loss, of course, but it should be to her uncle, not to her.

[38]“What are you going to do with yourself till breakfast-time?” she asked, pleasantly. “We have no nice garden where you could walk about on a pleasant lawn and pick roses. Will you go out over the marsh and bathe in the sea? I could show you the way to the ferry. Or would it be too slow for you to watch us turn the cows out?”

Innocence! Surely this was innocence. Clifford only hesitated for a moment. During that moment he told himself that he would conquer his feeling for the girl, that he would not run the risk of becoming more infatuated than he was. But the next moment the girl conquered, and looking down into the fair, sweet face, he was ready to think that his own senses had lied to him, that the hand which had robbed him could not be Nell’s.

So he followed her out into the fresh morning air, helped her to turn the bolts and draw the bars to let out the cows for their day’s wanderings over the marsh, and to look for the eggs which lay warm in the nests of the fowl-house.

Long before breakfast-time the occurrence of the night had become a half-forgotten nightmare, and Clifford was enjoying Nell’s unaffected, lively chatter as much as on the previous day. Only when his hand touched hers, as she took the basket of eggs from him, did Clifford remember, with a[39] shudder, that it was the same touch which he had felt in the night, the same smooth, soft skin, the same slender little fingers; so that he was bound, before he met the landlord, to come back to his old theory that Nell was a somnambulist.

It was a disagreeable business, that of making known his loss to George Claris. But it had to be done, and as soon as he had had his breakfast Clifford followed the landlord to the front of the house, where he was taking down the shutters, and told him he had something unpleasant to relate to him.

The young man at once perceived, by a sudden change to sullen expectancy in the landlord’s manner, that he was not wholly unprepared for the sort of story to which he was listening. He heard with attention the whole story, and only looked up when Clifford described how he had actually touched the hand as it was withdrawn from under his pillow.

“You touched it, you say?” said George Claris, sharply. “Then why on earth didn’t you hold on and shout?”

And defiantly, incredulously, the man, with his red, honest face full of sullen anger, turned to face his visitor.

Clifford hesitated. He had said nothing about[40] the sort of hand it was, and he began to feel that he would rather lose all chance of ever seeing watch or money again than formulate, however euphemistically, the fearful accusation.

“It was—it was a shock, you know!” he stammered, meekly. “The hand was snatched away as soon as I felt it.”

“Well,” grumbled Claris, with apparent suspicion on his side, “it seems to me a strange thing that a man should feel a thing like that without calling out! It’s the first thing a man would do as wasn’t quite a born fool, to jump up an’ make for the feller.”

George Claris looked at him with a deepening frown. “What do you mean, sir?”

“That I am not sure—that I’m very far from sure—that the intruder was a man.”

“Who do you think it was, then? Who do you think it was as took your watch an’ your money? Speak out, sir, speak out, if you dare!”

The blood rose in Clifford’s face. The man’s surly, defiant tone seemed to show that he had either some knowledge or some fear of the truth. But again there rushed over the young man an overwhelming sense of shame, which prevented him from being more explicit.

For a few minutes the men stood silent, each afraid to say too much. Then Claris, as sullenly, as fiercely as ever, beckoned to Clifford to follow him into the inn.

“Come an’ see ’em, come an’ see ’em all. Search ’em if you like,” said he, bluntly. “And look over the house an’ see if there’s a way in it or out of it that anybody could have got in or out by. Come and see for yourself, I say.”

Clifford followed him in silence into the little bar, allowed Claris to point out to him that the window was still barred and had evidently not been tampered with. And so in turn they examined together the windows and the doors of the whole house; and Clifford saw that, unless Claris himself had been in collusion with the thief, no one could have got in from the outside during the night. But then Clifford himself had not suspected a thief from the outside.

As for the persons who had slept in the house that night, George Claris said they were five in number. Himself, his niece, Clifford, the servant whom Clifford had seen in the bar, and old Nannie, a woman between sixty and seventy years of age, who slept in a small room, which was scarcely more than a cupboard, on the ground floor, because she was too infirm to go upstairs.

[42]Clifford made the excuse of wishing to converse a little with the old woman, that he might have an opportunity of examining her hands. They were withered and lean, rendered coarse by field work, and enlarged at the joints by rheumatism. Without a doubt it was not the hand of old Nannie which had taken his watch and purse.

When he left the kitchen, where he and the landlord had thus interviewed the staff of the establishment, Clifford followed Claris again into the road in front of the inn.

“Now,” said Claris, defiantly, “you’ve seen every blessed creature as was in the house last night. Which of them was it as you think took your things?”

“I have an idea,” he said, “and I want you to listen quietly, since if it is correct, it takes away all suspicion of any one having acted dishonestly. Is there in your house a—a—woman who walks in her sleep?”

“Not into folks’ bedrooms to steal their money, anyhow,” answered Claris, surlily. “And I’ve never heard of no sort of sleep-walkin’ by either of them.”

[43]“Yes, of course. Why, man alive! You wouldn’t sure dare to say as my niece, my lovely Nell, was a thief to take your dirty money!” shouted the landlord, with sudden fury, all the more fierce that, as Clifford could see, he had heard whispers of the same sort before. “Here, Nell, Nell! Where are you?”

And, not heeding Clifford’s angry protests, Claris rushed into the house, and almost into the arms of his niece, who, apparently suspecting nothing, came running quickly in from the garden at the sound of her name.

She still wore her hat, but it was pushed back; and her pink and white face, glowing with the wholesome sting of the fresh morning air, smiled at the hot and agitated faces of the two men.

“This man, this gentleman, says you’re a thief, my girl! Says you went into his room last night and stole his watch and his money and that he caught your hand in the very act. There, my girl, answer him yourself. Tell him what you think of a cur that tells such lies as them of my bonny Nell!”

The man was genuinely agitated, indeed almost sobbing with rage and disgust. As for Clifford, he was inarticulate; he could only look at the girl, as she grew deadly white, and seemed to lose the bloom of her beauty in horror and amazement as she listened.

In spite of his own indignation and remorse on hearing Claris make this coarse and cruel speech, Clifford watched the girl narrowly, and was shocked and surprised to observe that while he and her uncle were at a white heat of excitement, she showed remarkable self-control. After a moment’s silence on her part, she interrupted Clifford’s protests and excuses with a little pettish movement of her hand.

“Never mind apologizing,” said she, curtly. “Let us hear what you have to say. Now I know what you meant by your being ‘disturbed.’”

She cast down her glance upon the shabby carpet of the little sitting-room, and stood, leaning with one hand upon the table, her head half turned away, in the attitude of close attention.

It was evident that she did not suffer half so keenly as did Clifford, whose voice was hoarse and tremulous as he spoke in answer.

“You don’t suppose, you can’t suppose, that I accuse you of anything,” said he, trying in vain to[45] meet her eyes, and betraying even to the prejudiced eyes of George Claris the genuineness of his feeling. “I was disturbed in the night. I found a hand under my pillow. I caught the hand with my purse and my watch in it. The hand was a woman’s, small and soft and slender. There, that’s all I know.”

“But you think it’s enough to go upon when you accuse my niece of being a thief!” shouted George Claris, as he brought his heavy fist down with a sounding thump upon the table.

“Hush, uncle!” said the girl, with perfect calmness. “Mr. King never meant that. I am sure of it.”

And to the young man’s intense relief and gratitude, she looked straight in his face with a faint smile.

Nell was still very pale, but she was quite calm and composed; and after a short pause, during which the two men had watched her, wondering what she was going to propose, she suddenly sat down upon a chair and leaned upon the table, in the endeavor to hide the fact that her limbs were not as much under her control as her mind was.

[46]“Let us think it out,” said she. And then, before either of the others had spoken, there passed suddenly over her face a sort of spasm of horror-struck remembrance, as if a half-forgotten incident had suddenly flashed into her mind with a new significance. Clifford saw that a light had broken in upon her. But instead of communicating to her companions the idea, whatever it was, which had flashed through her own brain, she raised her head very suddenly, and meeting Clifford’s eyes with a piercing look, asked:

It was strange how the man had blustered, and the woman prepared herself to reason. Clifford sat down on the other side of the table, feeling that here was a person with whom he could discuss the matter with all reasonableness.

“I was wondering,” he said, gently, “whether you ever walked in your sleep. I know it seems an infamous thing to have dared to connect you with the matter at all—”

“That will do,” she said, gravely. “I don’t want any apologies about that. I can see, Mr. King, that the very notion makes you much more unhappy than it does me.”

The tears sprang to Clifford’s eyes. Every trace[47] of suspicion of her honesty had melted away long since under the influence of her perfect straightforwardness.

“It’s awfully good of you,” he said, gratefully. “As I was saying, somnambulism is the only explanation possible. You must have read of such things. You must have heard that it is possible for a person to take things in his sleep and hide them away without ever being conscious of what he’s done.”

Again there passed over the ingenuous face of the young girl that look which betrayed some vague but horrible memory. It perplexed Clifford and worried him. It was the one circumstance which marred his perfect belief in her, for it showed what all her words denied—that she had a little more knowledge than she confessed to.

“And what made you think the hand was mine?” asked she, in a troubled tone. And instinctively, as she spoke, she tried to hide her hands under the rim of the broad hat which she had taken off.

“Well, the hand was small and soft, like yours,” said Clifford in a low voice. “So small that it was almost like a child’s hand in mine. It seemed to me that I had only touched one hand in my life at all like it.”

Nell shot a frightened glance at him, and in the[48] pause which followed Clifford saw a tear fall on to the table-cloth. He started up.

But the girl sprang up in her turn, and turning to her uncle, cried, in a voice full of energy:

“Uncle George, you must give to Mr. King the money he has lost, whatever it is. Of course,” she went on quickly, turning to Clifford with eyes now bright with excitement, “we cannot give you back your watch, but we can give you the value of it, if you will tell us what it is—the mere money value, I mean. For, of course, that is all we can do.”

But even before Clifford could protest against this suggestion, which he had, indeed, never contemplated for a moment, the innkeeper burst out into a torrent of indignant remonstrance.

“Me give him twenty-five pound! That’s what he said he had on him, an’ who’s to credit it? Who’s to prove it, I say? An’ the vally he likes to set on his watch besides? No, that I won’t. It’s my belief it’s a trumped-up story altogether, an’ I dare him to fetch the police in! I dare him to, I say!”

Avarice as well as anger gleamed in the man’s eyes as he spoke, the avarice of the man who has had to work hard for small gains.

Clifford looked from the niece to the uncle, and[49] suspicion of the latter began to grow keen. Nell retained her presence of mind. She went up to the excited man and put a coaxing hand upon his shoulder.

“Uncle,” she said, almost in a whisper, “you remember there have been other robberies here.”

George Claris started violently, and shook his fist in the air in a tumult of rage.

“I know there has! I know there has!” said he, between his teeth. “An’ I’d like to catch the rascal as did ’em. But nobody before ’as dared to say you or me was at the bottom of it, Nell. Nobody before has dared to say we wasn’t honest. Why, man, I’ve been settled here these twenty-five years, and I’m known to every man, woman and child between Stroan and Courtstairs. Me take a man’s watch or purse—me or my niece! It’s a plant, my girl, a plant of this fine London gentleman. Twenty-five pounds! You bet it’s more than he’s worth, every rag and stick of him. He’s heard of my misfortunes lately, an’ he’s come an’ trumped up this story, thinking it’ll be better worth my while to pay him the money than have another scandal about the place. But I won’t! I won’t! I’ll do time rather.”

[50]Clifford was torn with battling emotions as he listened to this speech, which was indeed like that of a broken-hearted man. He had not been able to stem the torrent of the poor fellow’s fierce wrath, and it was only when Claris sank down with his head upon the table that he was able to say, very quietly:

“I never thought of asking for compensation, Mr. Claris. I should not think of doing so. All I want is to clear up this detestable puzzle, much more in your interests than in mine. I am not a rich man, but neither am I a beggar, as you have rather unkindly suggested. I can afford the loss of my watch and money, but I cannot afford to leave you and poor Miss Nell here without doing my best to find out the cause of these unfortunate occurrences.”

Then Nell looked again in his face with a smile which made him ready to go on his knees and worship her for her sweet forbearance.

“Thank you,” said she. Then turning to her uncle: “It will all come right,” she said; “or, at least,” she added, hurriedly, “we will hope it may. You go back to your work, uncle, and I will see if I can’t set my wits to work and have something to tell you when I next meet you.”

Claris allowed himself to be coaxed into compliance with her wishes, and presently disappeared[51] into the bar. Then, when they were alone together, Clifford noticed a sudden alteration in her manner toward himself. It was no longer the confiding, childish behavior of a light-hearted girl; it was the responsible gravity of an older and thoughtful woman.

“You are not to distress yourself, Mr. King,” she said, quietly. “Although it is a terrible thing for us, we are, in a way, used to it, for, as you heard me say, there have been two or three cases of theft here before. I hope you are not in a hurry to get back to Stroan, for I should like, before you go, to have a search made of the house and a few more inquiries.”

She would not listen to his protests, his objections, but left him and went upstairs. Clifford, miserable and perplexed, went out into the garden and strolled among the cabbages and carrots, torn by doubts which he tried in vain to suppress.

In about ten minutes he saw, from the corner of the garden where he was smoking his pipe under an apple-tree, Nell coming quickly out of the house by the back way, and flying like an arrow down to the river’s bank. From the glimpse he caught of her face, he saw that she looked scared and guilty, and that she cast around her the glance of a person who does not wish to be observed.

[52]Hastily unmooring one of the boats which lay by the bank, she got in, sculled across the stream, made the boat fast to the opposite shore, and began to run across the open fields as fast as her feet could carry her.

It occurred at once to Clifford that she must be going to take counsel with her friend, Miss Bostal, and he started in the direction of Shingle End himself, thinking that it would be a good idea for him to open his heart to that lady, and re-assure Nell as to his own trust in her through the unimpeachable lips of her elderly friend.

He went by the road, and sauntering along at a very sedate pace, reached the little tumbledown residence of Colonel Bostal just as Nell, emerging from it by a back-gate into the fields, started on her journey back home. She did not see him, but he, looking through the hedge at her, was able to discern that her face was, if anything, more sad than it had been when she left home, and that her eyes were swollen with recent tears.

The prim old maid had been unsympathetic and harsh to her poor little protégée, that was evident, and Clifford felt that he hated the starchy spinster for it.

He could not, however, help feeling that he should like to hear the opinion on the whole matter[53] of people who, like the Bostals, were acquainted with the family at the Blue Lion, and who were at the same time on friendly terms with them.

Miss Bostal herself opened the door as before, and from this and other signs it was easy for Clifford to discover that she and her father kept no servants. She seemed not to be at all surprised by his visit, and when he began to apologize for intruding upon her again, and at such an early hour of the day, she only smiled and asked him to come in.

“I must own that I was engaged in the homely pursuit of peeling potatoes for our early dinner,” said she, as she showed him the old worn table-knife which she held in her carefully gloved hands.

Very careful she was, this dried-up little elderly lady, about the care of her person; she never went into the garden without a sunbonnet to preserve her complexion, nor did any sort of rough work without an old pair of gloves on her hands.

She led Clifford into the drawing-room, a long, pleasant apartment with a low ceiling, with an old-fashioned bow-window that looked to the west and another that looked to the south. The sunshine showed up the shabbiness of which Clifford had noted some traces the day before. The faded cushions, the rickety chairs, the bare fireplace, with[54] nothing but a small sheet of brown paper in the grate to replace the winter’s fire, all spoke of desperate shifts, of the meanest straits of genteel poverty. But Miss Bostal gave him very little time to look about him.

“I can guess what you have come about,” she began, as she put down her old knife upon the side-table in the passage before entering the room. “It is about this dreadful thing that has happened at the Claris’s. But I must tell you frankly that if you have any suspicions of old Claris or his niece, it is of no use your talking to me, for you will get no sympathy. I have known old George Claris for nearly twelve years; and as for Nell, I don’t think I could care more for the girl if she were my own sister. She is as incapable of theft as an angel.”

The lady’s thin, pale face grew quite pink under the energy of this protest, which Clifford hastened to assure her was not needed.

“I believe that just as heartily as you do,” he said, earnestly. “I only want the mystery cleared up for their own sake; and I thought that you, who live so near, might, perhaps, have a notion which would help us to arrive at the truth.”

“I have,” she said, emphatically. “I have a very[55] strong notion, indeed. I will tell you in confidence whom I suspect, and I shall try my hardest to find out the truth.”

“A young fisherman who owes Nell a grudge because she would not listen to the fellow’s impudent advances. He is always hanging about the place, though, and he doesn’t scruple to threaten the girl to do her some harm, and he is always prattling to people who come this way about the robberies which have been committed at the Blue Lion.”

Clifford listened doubtfully. He remembered the young fisherman in the punt, with his unprepossessing manner and low type of face; and if it had been possible to connect him with the robbery, he would have jumped at the idea as a plausible one. But then the hand he had touched was certainly not that of Jem Stickels, and, moreover, he could not conceive how the young fisherman could have got into the house and out of it unless by collusion with some one within. Rather disappointed, therefore, with the lady’s fantastic idea, as[56] it seemed to be, Clifford, upon finding that she had no better suggestion to make, soon took leave of her, begging her to impress upon Nell his own unwavering belief in her innocence.

In the hope that he might overtake Nell on her way home, or perhaps only with the lover’s wish to tread in the loved one’s footsteps, Clifford obtained Miss Bostal’s permission to go through the little gate at the bottom of her garden, so that he could return to the Blue Lion by the fields. Nell was out of sight, however, by the time he started, and whatever pleasure he extracted from the walk was due only to the knowledge that she had passed this way.

There was a faint track over the fields, not defined enough to be called a footpath, but just clear enough for him to discern by the trodden look of the short grass.

He was within a couple of hundred yards of the little river, and was looking out for any sign of Nell’s presence in the little kitchen garden on the other side, when he became aware that the questionable Jem Stickels was in sight, punting slowly down the stream, as he had done the day before. Catching sight of the gentleman, Jem drew his punt to the shore, and with his black felt hat on the back of his head, his short clay pipe in his[57] mouth, his hands in his pockets, he landed, and slouched along toward Clifford.

“Well, sir, I warned you as how it were not a wise thing to put up at the Blue Lion,” said Jem, with a swaggering insolence which made Clifford want to kick him. “I ’eard of it up at Fleet yonder,” and he jerked his head back in the direction of the old ruined castle up the river. “I s’pose there’s been a grand pretense o’ huntin’ about the place, and how they’ve found nothin’. They’re gettin’ used to these little scenes by this time.”

After one glance at Clifford’s face, the man let his eyes wander elsewhere. Looking shiftily and idly about as he spoke, his attention was suddenly arrested, just as he finished his speech, by something on the ground, apparently a few feet from where Clifford was standing. The latter noticed the rapid change which came over the man’s face, the eager look of interest and astonishment with which he stood gazing open-mouthed at the one particular spot on the ground.

There, on the grass behind him, not three feet from the track he had followed, was his own watch, with the chain still attached to it, lying half-hidden in the stubbly growth of the field.

[58]For the first moment Clifford stared without speaking or moving, dumb with confusion, with astonishment.

“Why, that this is the way Miss Nell Claris goes to see Miss Bostal at Shingle End, and that nobody but her ever uses it. That is what I should make so bold as to mean, if I could speak my mind. And I’ll wager Miss has been along here this morning. Oh, she don’t get round the swells for nothing, she don’t.”

“You lying cur!” he hissed out, savagely. “You deserve a thrashing for this!”

But even as he flung the fellow sprawling in the mud of the river-bank, Clifford felt a chill at his heart when he saw the evidence closing round pretty Nell.

To bring a woman into focus, by means even of a scandal, has always been a sure way to bring upon her more than her fair share of the admiration of the other sex. When, therefore, the object of public attention is gifted with unusual attractions of person and manner, the havoc she makes in susceptible masculine hearts is proportionately great.

Clifford was not a particularly weak man, and he would have scorned, a week ago, the idea that he could love a woman the more for being under suspicion of theft. But it is incontestable, for all that, that the stronger the suspicious circumstances grew which hedged her round, the stronger also became his own feelings of tender interest.

If she were not the thief, then who could it have been? And if it were indeed she who had taken his watch and money, and dropped or thrown away the former on her way between Shingle End and the Blue Lion, what was the cause which had prompted the act?

[60]The case for somnambulism still seemed strong to Clifford, for this would have accounted for the frightened look of half-remembrance which he had seen more than once in her face, when the theft was being discussed.

On the other hand, she had certainly been wide awake when he saw her start for Shingle End across the fields that morning, at the very time when she must have been carrying the watch.

And if not somnambulism, then what other motive could there be for this yielding to a horrible temptation on the part of a beautiful, amiable and apparently candid and good girl? Was she the victim to that doubtful disease invented to afford magistrates an excuse for discharging well-connected thieves “of superior education?” Was she, in fact, a “kleptomaniac?”

Or, again: Were the difficulties of her uncle not over, as she had represented them to be, and was she the victim of a misguided determination to clear them away, even at the sacrifice of her honesty?

Each supposition seemed to Clifford more improbable than the last; and when, after compensating Jem Stickels for his roll in the mud by throwing him a half-crown which had been left in his pocket untouched by the midnight thief, he caught sight of Nell on the opposite bank of the[61] river, he was again ready to throw his doubts to the winds.

There was always a boat moored to each side of the river at this point, so Clifford ran down to the water’s edge, and punted himself across.

Jem Stickels burst into a mocking, insulting laugh, but Clifford did not care. As his friends, Jordan and Otto Conybeare would have said, he was by this time “too far gone.”

Nell had disappeared again by the time he got back into the garden, and he had to look about for some minutes before he perceived her, crossing the fields, this time in the direction of Fleet, at a great rate. She had a basket on her arm, and she was walking so quickly that Clifford could at first scarcely believe that the figure which had got over so much ground in so few minutes could really be that of the girl he had seen in her uncle’s garden a few minutes before.

He was determined to show her his recovered watch, always hoping against hope that a fresh development of the mystery would bring about the longed-for explanation. But before he could overtake her, she disappeared from his sight over the crest of the rising ground at Fleet, and when he got upon the hill, in his turn, she was nowhere to be seen.

[62]It was not for some time, after exploring right and left, that he saw Nell, with an old broom in her hand, emerge from a poor little cottage which stood by itself on the marsh below. She set to work very vigorously to sweep out the dust of the cottage floor, the doorstep and the bit of paved ground outside; and Clifford had stood for some seconds at a little distance, warned by the expression of her face that she was in no mood for conversation, when she at last raised her eyes and met his.

A shock of pain convulsed the young man when he saw what a change the past few hours had made in the girl. Instead of the placid sweetness of the day before, there was in her eyes such a world of sadness, of terror, that Clifford’s heart smote him, and he wished that he had suffered his loss quietly without a word to anybody at the inn.

She stopped in her work when she saw him and stood erect, waiting, in an attitude which had something of defiance in it.

Clifford did not immediately answer, but his hand went involuntarily up to the chain of his watch, which he was now wearing.

And she trembled so violently that the broom slipped out of her hand and fell to the ground.

“I found it on the grass, on the other side of the river,” answered Clifford, who was quite as much agitated as she.

The blood rushed suddenly back to her cheeks, and she began to breathe so heavily that Clifford thought she was in danger of a fit of some sort.

“What—what are you going to do?” she stammered out, waving him back with a gesture which was almost fierce, as he moved forward as if to support her.

“You are not going to prosecute me for theft?” asked she, in a tone which she meant to be hard and scoffing, but which was only a pitiful little make-believe, after all.

“Nell, oh, Nell, how can you say such a thing to me?” cried Clifford, hoarsely.

He did not even know that he had called her by her Christian name. But she knew, and in the midst of her agitation she cast at him a shy glance, in which there was a gleam of something that was neither displeasure nor annoyance. He saw it, and his heart went out to the girl; he was ready to[64] kneel at her feet. But she recalled him to his senses with a very unromantic remark:

And with great vigor and energy she resumed her task, leaving Clifford afraid to come within the range of her operations, yet unwilling to retire.

“It is very good of you to come and do the old woman’s sweeping for her,” he remarked presently.

“It isn’t for an old woman, but for a young woman. And I ought to have warned you not to come so near, for she’s got scarlet fever, and you know that’s catching,” answered Nell, with a warning gesture to him to keep away.

“Well, I have to risk it, or there would be nobody to look after her. And I wouldn’t run the risk just for nothing, as you are doing now.”

“It isn’t for nothing,” said Clifford, hotly. Then, with what seemed to him an inspiration, he added: “I want to talk to you. I want to know whom you are shielding.”

[65]If Clifford had been as suspicious of her as he was, on the contrary, sure of her innocence, he would have had all his doubts swept away by the burst of superb pride with which she flung these words at him. It was the very tone he had wished to hear in her, the very scornful utterance of the pure soul, capable of no wrong. It made the whole matter more mysterious, but it soothed him. He heaved a great sigh, and, in spite of her warning gestures, came nearer.

“Nell,” he said, “I had been waiting to hear you speak like that. Those are the very words I have been longing for you to say.”

“Well, now they are said, you had better go back to Stroan to your friends,” said she, coolly. “And try to persuade them to take your view of the story. For certainly it will be all over the place by this time that Nell Claris is a thief, or the accomplice of a thief.”

And the girl, having flung this speech at him with all the dignity of outraged pride and innocence, suddenly broke down at the end, and burst into such bitter sobs that Clifford’s heart was wrung. But as he sprang toward her, she sprang back and made a rush for the door of the cottage. Clifford, however, was too quick for her, and placing himself between the girl and the refuge she wished to[66] reach, he spoke to her in imploring, passionate tones:

“One moment. You must listen to me. All the world will be against you, you say? Not all, Nell, not all. I will take your part. I will show them what to believe. Take me for your husband, Nell, and then who can dare to think of you except as I think? Who can dare to say a word when you are my wife?”

The girl stood transfixed. He was pleading as eloquently, as earnestly, as if it had been for his own life. When he paused, letting his burning eyes speak his love, as he watched her startled, blushing face, and fancied he could trace the feelings of amazement, incredulity, pleasure and doubt as they struggled in her heart, she presently shook her head, and turned away so that she should not again meet his eyes.

“Do you know what you are saying?” she asked in a matter-of-fact tone, after a short silence. “And do you really expect me to listen to such nonsense?”

“Ah, but it’s my firm intention to be nothing of the kind. I am very much obliged to you for your good intentions, and I quite see that you think you[67] are doing rather a fine thing in offering to marry me. But,” and she drew herself up, and flashed at him a defiant look, “I am not going to be married like that, and out of pity, too, to a man I never saw till yesterday!”

These last words came upon Clifford with a shock of surprise. He had forgotten what a short time it was that his acquaintance with Nell had lasted; it seemed to him that he had known her for months—years. He was ready with his answer to this objection.

“As to that, I have known you for a very long time, Nell,” he said, gravely. “I have known you just as long as I have looked forward to meeting a girl exactly like you. And I have always intended, when I did meet her, to take no rest until I had persuaded her to become my wife. I think you may take that as an answer to the suggestion that there is any ‘pity’ in the case. The ‘pity’ will be for me if you won’t have me.”

Now this was rather prettily put, and Nell looked mollified. She took her broom in hand again, and affected to go on with her sweeping, although the pretense was not a very effectual one.

“Unfortunately,” she said, in a low voice, which was not so flippant as she could have wished, “I haven’t such a vivid imagination myself, and I[68] can’t pretend that I have known you long enough to be sure that I should like you for a husband.”

Her tone was not so discouraging as her words. Clifford, who, much to his own surprise, was quite in earnest, pressed his suit with proper eagerness.

“I don’t want to rush you into marrying me,” he said. “Take me on probation. Let it be known that I have asked you to be my wife; give way so far as to become engaged to me; and if, before I go back to town next month, I have bored you so much that you have to break the engagement in disgust, you send me about my business and refuse to receive any letters from me. At any rate, people won’t be able to say unkind things when they know I wanted you to be my wife.”

Although her manner betrayed that she did, Nell stoutly denied it. She wanted to go on with her work, she said, and he had better go back to his friends at Stroan. And he must please consider, as she meant to do, that he had not said any of the silly things to which she had tried not to listen. She should forget them at once, and she hoped he would do the same. And it amused her to think how disgusted his relations and friends would have[69] been if she had really been so silly as to listen to his idle talk, if he had returned to town engaged to an innkeeper’s niece.

“And my own friends,” added the girl, with spirit, “would have been just as disgusted with me for taking advantage of the passing fancy of a man in your position to marry above my own rank in life.”

“You will marry above your own rank, that is certain, whether you marry me or not. Beauty like yours has a rank of its own, to begin with. And as for these wild hordes of relations of mine, they only exist in your imagination. There is no one to prevent me doing as I like; and even if there were, they might try, but they wouldn’t succeed.”

“Well, I’m going. I shall come again to-morrow, if not this evening, to pay my bill and—”

“You will not pay it,” she said, quickly. “Do you think, when you have lost so much money in the house, that we would allow you to?”

[70]Again the mysterious trouble, that suggested at least a guilty half-knowledge, appeared in the girl’s eyes. Clifford turned away his head that he might not see it.

“But I do not. Why should people who are absolutely good suffer for the faults of the absolutely bad?”

“Absolutely good! We are not that. At least I can answer for myself as to that.”

“Who could contest the goodness of a girl who can risk her own health, perhaps even her life, to minister to a sick woman?”

“I don’t do this because I am good, but because I am angry and worried,” she said, glancing at the broom in her hand. “I could have sent some one to sweep out Mrs. Corbett’s cottage; there are plenty of people about here poor enough to be glad to do it for a few pence. I do it because I am miserable and want to make a martyr of myself!”

Now Clifford liked her even better for this show of spirit than he had done for her courage. It removed her, he felt, out of the gray-faced ranks[71] of sour women who go through rounds of district-visiting as a duty oppressive to themselves and still more oppressive to the unfortunate people they visit.

“There,” ended Nell, with one last defiant, flourishing sweep of the broom as she returned to the door, “now you do really know me better than you thought!”

“And like you better too!” cried Clifford in a louder voice, as she disappeared through the doorway.

For some distance on the road to Stroan the delicious glow cast upon him by this stimulating conversation lasted and made Clifford as happy as a bird.

But when the irregular outline of the old-fashioned town grew more defined under the September sky, and the meeting with Jordan and Conybeare grew nearer, he had to concern himself with the manner in which he should get out of the difficulties which his stay under the roof of the Blue Lion had brought upon him.

He had not to ask himself these questions long, for before he reached the town he came upon Jordan with an easel, a sketch-book and a pipe, and Conybeare with a strapful of books and a white umbrella.

Their demeanor was not kindly toward the errant Clifford. A garbled version of the story of the robbery had, indeed, reached them already, and[73] they had both made up their minds that Nell was the thief. Willie Jordan, of course, was the more inclined to this view from his resentment at having been “cut out” by Clifford, who, on his side, was reticent and entirely silent on the subject of the sudden infatuation which had led him to propose marriage to the girl.

Very soon the subject of the Blue Lion and its inhabitants was tacitly tabooed among the friends, and it was not until ten days later that any of them found their way to the little inn by the shore.

When they did so, however, they were disappointed in the object of their visit. Nell was never to be seen, and not one of the three young men ever dared to ask for her, as George Claris, looking upon them apparently as fellow-conspirators against the fair fame of his house, was curt to the verge of rudeness to them all.

Now this invisibility on the part of Nell, far from cooling Clifford’s quickly sprung-up passion, served only to inflame it further. But it was in vain he wrote—in vain he hung about the neighborhood. Although on two or three occasions he caught sight of her, she always disappeared before he could come near.

The last day of the stay of the three friends arrived, and they made one despairing attempt to[74] bid her good-by. Clifford had preserved his reticence concerning the girl, but the other two more than suspected him. Willie had softened in his views of the mysterious affair, and it was now only Conybeare who persisted in a harsh judgment of the innkeeper’s niece.

She was just the sort of girl, he said, to attract young fools and make them lose their wits and their money. He, however, was as anxious for a farewell peep at the mysterious beauty as his companions.

This time they were fortunate. When they had gone past the inn, they caught sight of the pretty figure whom they all had in their thoughts, and they all pretended to view it with indifference. Willie was the first to break down in this assumption.

“There she is!” he said, in quite a tremulous voice. “It’s no use pretending we don’t see her. Do you think she’ll run away if we get over the fence?”

To the great relief of the whole party, Nell turned slowly and waited for their approach without a smile, with, indeed, a sort of quiet defiance.

“I suppose,” she said to Clifford, as soon as he came up, “you have come to say good-by, you and your friends, before you go back to town?”

[75]She had remembered the date he had given her for that event, then. This was a ray of consolation, but she gave him no other. She was cold, reserved, almost hard. He felt so angry with her for her contemptuous disregard of his feelings that he thought for the moment that his passion was extinguished by it. However, she unbent so far as to invite them all in to tea, and the three young men were much puzzled as to which of them it was who had procured them this favor. Conybeare seemed to be, on the whole, the one to whom she talked the most; Clifford was, without any doubt, the one of whom she took the least notice.

The meal, on the whole, was a pleasant one, although Claris himself was more taciturn than he had been on that unlucky day when he and Nell and Clifford had spent such a merry hour in the little sitting-room.

Now the weather had changed; the autumn winds were whistling about the little inn, and the blue sea had become a dark-gray line, flecked with white crests. There was a fire in the little grate, and it was when Otto Conybeare moved quickly forward to poke it for Nell that the incident occurred which was to throw a shadow over the meeting.

In passing a side-table upon which stood a wicker[76] work-basket, Otto dragged the cloth off, and brought the basket and all the rest of the things on the table with a crash to the floor. Willie, who was near him, went down on his knees with apologies for Otto’s clumsiness.

“He thinks it’s manly, you know, to show a contemptuous indifference to such feminine trifles. A sure sign of genius, you know, Miss Claris, and you must excuse it, as it’s the only sign he’s got. Oh, and just look at the pretty things he’s been trampling under his great intellectual feet!”

And Willie held up to the astonished gaze of the rest a glittering jewel which sparkled in the fire-light.

For a moment there was an oppressive silence. Then Nell, pale and agitated, snatched it from him with fingers so unsteady that the trinket fell to the floor again. It was Clifford who picked it up this time and gave it to the girl without a word. Nell would have put it back into her basket, but George Claris, on whom the appalled silence of the young men had not been lost, told his niece in a rough tone to give it to him.

“Only one of a pair of old-fashioned earrings, uncle,” answered Nell, with emotion, which no efforts on her part could hide.

[77]“Earrings! I didn’t know you had any! Where did you get them? Who gave them to you?”

For one moment the girl fenced with him, trying to treat the matter lightly, as she got upon a chair and placed the work-basket at the top of the high cupboard by the fireplace. But George Claris was not a man to be trifled with. Seizing the girl by the shoulder so roughly that he almost dragged her to the ground, he tore the work-basket out of her hands, flung back the lid, and turned out the contents upon the table, the chairs, anywhere, until he had found both the earrings.

Then he held them up to the light critically; then he looked at Nell with a puzzled frown.

The young men, trying to hide their interest in her answer by talking among themselves, yet listened eagerly. She blushed, stammered, then turned white as she said:

“The colonel gave them to me—Colonel Bostal. At least, he and Miss Theodora.”

George Claris rubbed one of the earrings on his sleeve, and then rather quickly thrust them both out of sight under a little pile of old papers and magazines which had been replaced upon the side-table.

“Well, I don’t know what folks want spending[78] money on jew’lry for, when you can get just as good to look at for next to nothing. And next to nothing must be the vally of anything as Miss Theodora gives away,” he added, with a rather forced attempt at jocularity.

Clifford, who was much perturbed by this incident, on account of the construction his two friends were sure to put upon it, made haste to turn the talk into another channel. He knew that he had not heard the last of it. And he was not surprised to see Otto, at a later period of the evening, when the rest were in the garden, draw the earrings from the place where they had been put, and examine them carefully by the light of the lamp.

While Clifford lingered behind for a few last words with Nell, the other two, having taken their leave, walked on together.

“My opinion is that she is a thief, and a very daring, if not a very skillful, one. Those earrings were pearls and rubies, real ones, very old-fashioned, but worth something.”

[79]“My dear fellow, look at the story. Is there anything to blush about in the fact of receiving a present from an old man and his old daughter? Yet, undoubtedly, she did blush. Then look at the improbability of the thing. The Bostals are as poor as church mice. Would they have such a thing as these earrings? Well, perhaps they might have. But would they give them away? The old man might, infatuated with her pretty face, but not the starchy, elderly-young lady.”

“I don’t mean to. But I mean to try to save him from this entanglement; and in order to carry out my plan, he must not suspect that I have one. He won’t say much about her, you bet; he will be afraid of our raillery. And we shall say no more than he does. And, of course, if he asks me my opinion about the earrings, I shall say they were worthless. See?”

Willie nodded. He no longer bore Clifford malice for cutting him out; he was only too thankful that he had been himself saved from a deep tumble into the same pitfall.

It was about a fortnight after the return to town of the three friends that there drove up to the Blue Lion, one bitter evening, a hired dog-cart from Stroan, in which sat a gentleman who told[80] the landlord that he was on the way to Courtstairs, but that he found the weather too severe, and should be glad to put up at the inn until the following morning. He was a pleasant, talkative young fellow, and George Claris, who had been growing rather moody and reserved of late, thawed under the influence of the stranger’s genial manners, and passed the evening smoking and talking by the fire in the little bar-parlor. Only once in the course of the evening did he catch sight of Nell.

She was passing through the passage on her way upstairs, and she appeared at the door of the room for an instant only, to give a message to her uncle. As she stood there, the young man took occasion to mention that he must try to push on to-morrow, as he was carrying property of some value for a firm in whose employment he was, which was expected by another firm to whom he was commissioned.

And he noticed that, as he said this, the girl’s bright color left her cheeks.

“Why don’t you push on to-night, then?” she said, brusquely, advancing a step into the room and fixing her eyes earnestly upon him. “The weather may be worse to-morrow, and if you are afraid of a little wind, you should have gone by rail, and not by road.”

[81]The young man rose politely, and looked at her curiously as she spoke. But before he had had time to utter a word in answer, her uncle dismissed her from the room with a by no means gentle reminder that it was no business of hers.

The visitor, in spite of the importance of his commission, seemed to be in no great hurry to push on with his journey; for on the following day, as the wind was still cold, and the sky still gloomy, he remained at the Blue Lion.

George Claris had a shrewd suspicion that it was the blue eyes of his pretty niece which made the stranger so dilatory, and he took care that the girl should be invisible throughout the whole of the day. As he had expected, the young man grew evidently uneasy, and presently found occasion to ask if the young lady had left the house.

“No,” answered George, shortly, “she’s in the house right enough, but you won’t see no more of her. My niece is a lady, sir, for all she is my niece, and she don’t ’ave nothin’ to do with my business.”

The young man, rather to the landlord’s surprise, appeared entirely satisfied with this explanation.

Indeed, he had every reason to be so, for he was a friend of Otto Conybeare’s, whom that young gentleman had sent down to do a little amateur detective[82] work in the supposed interest of Clifford King, but without, of course, informing Clifford of his benevolent intention.

The young man had been much disappointed that the first night of his stay under the roof of the Blue Lion had passed off uneventfully. The second, however, fully made up for this lack of excitement. So fearful was he of missing a possible visitor by oversleeping himself, that he never closed his eyes at all; and he was rewarded for his vigilance when, between two and three o’clock, he heard a slight noise at his door, and a moment later saw dimly that there was a figure moving in his room.

He held his breath while the intruder went softly toward the head of the bed, making no noise, feeling about, stooping, searching. At last, when the figure, which could now be discerned as that of a woman, reached his clothes, and began hunting in them, the amateur detective, allowing his excitement to get the better of him, sat up in bed, making, in doing so, just enough noise to arouse the attention of the watchful thief. The next moment she had darted across the room, and out at the door. But the young man, being prepared for such a contingency as this, sprang out of bed half-dressed, and dashed out on to the landing[83] in pursuit. The woman had got the start of him, and was by this time halfway up the attic staircase. He followed, saw her open the door of the room on the right and close it. He heard the key turn in the lock. Without a second’s hesitation, he flung himself with all his strength against the door. It shook, it creaked; another such blow and the rickety old frame-work would give way. Just as he hurled all his weight against the door for the second time, however, he heard the unmistakable sound of the throwing open of the window of the room.

The next instant, the door gave way under the force of his blows, and he dashed into the room just in time to see a head disappear behind the sill of the open window.

Dashing through the room without a moment’s hesitation, the young fellow reached the window, and looked out. There was the sloping roof of an outhouse underneath, and although he could see no one, he flung himself out, slid down the tiles and found himself precipitated quickly if not very gently to the ground. Then he saw a dim something moving in front of him, under the trees, and he followed.

The shadowy something paused. A cry escaped him, a low cry of triumph, as he found that he was[84] gaining on the creature he was pursuing. But the next moment he uttered a cry of a different sort, and a much louder one, as he found himself precipitated with great suddenness into a bath of ice-cold water.

Not being acquainted with the geography of the place, he had walked straight into the little river. Cries and shouts quickly brought him assistance, for the landlord, who had been already awakened by the hammering in of the upstairs door, came out in his night-shirt and rescued him with a boat-hook.

“The thief!” sputtered the amateur detective with chattering teeth. “The thief! I’ve found her out! I’ve found her!”

“What thief?” said Claris, surlily, as he dragged the shivering man towards the back door of the inn with no gentle hand. “Who do you mean by thief, you addle-pated rascal?”

“You’ll see, you’ll see to-morrow,” replied the other, undaunted, not heeding his own pitiful plight in his excitement. “Whose is the bedroom upstairs at the back on the right?”

“That’s my niece’s room,” said Claris, sullenly, “and if you dare to say that she had anything to do with your fool’s outing to-night, I’ll shake such brains as you’ve got out of yer!”

[85]“Well, you may, and welcome, if you don’t find that she’s left her room and got away by the window. Ah!” he stopped short suddenly in the middle of the cabbage-garden, through which they were walking, and pointed to a white figure which was stealing its way into the house: “Is that your niece, or is it not?” roared the young man excitedly, as he pointed with a shaking finger in the direction of the disappearing woman.

For answer George Claris sprang forward, and seized the girl’s wrist just as she reached the shelter of the doorway.

“Nell!” cried the man, in tones so hoarse, so terrible that they sounded like those of a stranger. “Tell me, lass, what were you doing out there?”

If ever guilt was written on a human face, surely it was written on that of Nell Claris when, seized roughly by her uncle, she stood shaking and stammering in his grasp, just inside the back door of the inn.

So thought Jack Lowndes, the friend whom Otto Conybeare had sent down in the capacity of amateur detective, as he stood shivering, dripping, with chattering teeth and starting eyes, before her.

“What were you doing out there, lass? What were you doing out there at this time o’ night?” roared her uncle, with an earnestness which convinced Lowndes of his innocence of the attempt at theft.

“I—came out—to see—what was the matter!” stammered the girl, whose voice was weak and tremulous. “I—I—”

Her uncle stared fixedly at her, as if a doubt of her had begun to darken even his mind. It was in a different tone, almost apologetically, that he turned to the stranger. “Well, and that’s a reasonable[87] answer enough, surely! For I’m sure by the noise you made, it might ha’ been the parish church afire!”

But the shivering man was beginning to feel that dry clothes and a fire outweighed everything else in his mind.

“Let me get inside,” stammered he, “and when I’m dry again, I’ll talk to you.”

But this speech caused Claris to look at him with more attention, and he then perceived that Lowndes was dressed.

“There’s something to be explained here!” he exclaimed, with sudden suspicion. “You haven’t been to bed. Who are you?” he asked, in a different tone, barring the entrance to the house with his burly person. “Who are you? And what did you come here for? Now, out with it! Were you sent here to lay traps for honest folks? Speak out, man, or back you shall go into the river again!”

And Claris seized the unfortunate Lowndes in his powerful grasp, and forced him a couple of steps backward in the direction of the little river.

By this time Nell had partly recovered her composure. She now spoke to her uncle in a calmer voice.

“Let him come in, Uncle George,” she said. “Let him come in and change his wet clothes.[88] And then make him give an account of himself, if he can.”

With apparent reluctance the innkeeper took his niece’s advice, led Lowndes up to his room as if he had been a prisoner, locked him in, and kept watch outside the door until he was ready.

Jack Lowndes could hear the uncle and niece in whispered conversation on the landing, and murmured some imprecations against the “artful little hussy,” as he detected by the rising anger in George Claris’s tones the fact that the girl was “working him up.”

A thundering knock at his door, which threatened to bring it down as easily as Lowndes himself had brought down the door of the upstairs room, warned him that it was time for him to come out and face the indignant pair.

“Now, sir,” roared Claris, barely leaving Lowndes the time to get downstairs before beginning his attack, “what have you got to say for yourself? It seems you had the —— impudence to batter in the door of my niece’s room, and that you went flying out through the window like a madman. Now, what have you got to say for yourself? Do you remember anything about it, or not?”

And George Claris, who had lit a candle, the pale rays of which looked sickly in the struggling[89] light of the dawn, peered curiously into the haggard face of Jack Lowndes.

“Remember? Of course I remember. How should I know it was your niece’s room? I only came into the house last night for the first time. I followed the woman, and she went in there. She turned the key in the lock, so I had to burst it open.”

As he mentioned the word “woman,” a cry burst from Nell’s lips, a cry so piteous that Lowndes turned to look at her, and was struck with bewilderment. Believing thoroughly in her guilt as he did, having come down as he had come to unmask her, he was at that moment converted to an absolute belief in her innocence. And yet he could not have explained how it was that the sight of her face, the sound of her voice as she uttered the cry, had this instantaneous and decided effect upon him. So deeply absorbed was he in contemplation of this new aspect of the matter, that at first he did not hear, or did not heed, the innkeeper’s next words.

“I don’t know myself what woman it was,” answered Lowndes, in a tone in which a change to doubt and hesitancy could be detected. “But[90] some woman came into my room in the night”—George Claris moved impatiently. “I don’t say I was unprepared for this, but I can swear that she came; and when she took up my clothes and I heard the chink of the loose money in my pockets, I started up, and she ran out of the room. I was not unprepared, as I say, and I ran after her, saw her go into the back room at the top, heard her lock it, burst it in, and saw her getting out of the window just as I got into the room. I got out after her, saw her once more when I got to the ground, and the next thing I knew was that I was in the water.”

“Well, it sobered you, at any rate,” said George Claris, shortly. “And now there’s nothing left to do but to tell us how much money she took. Don’t be bashful; make it a hundred, or say two. We’ve been bled before; no doubt we can stand bleeding again.”

There seemed to Lowndes to be something pathetic in the rough irony of the man’s tone; he began to feel heartily sorry and ashamed that he had allowed himself to be persuaded into this adventure. The pretty, pale girl, standing mute behind her uncle; the uncle himself with the dull perplexity in his eyes, seemed to him in the ghostly light of the early morning so utterly broken down, so[91] bewildered, so miserable, that he wanted to slink away without exchanging a further word with them. But this, of course, was out of the question.

“You think the woman was maybe only taking a look round by way of passing the time?” suggested Claris, still in the same grim tone.

“And, pray, if I may make so bold,” went on the innkeeper, in a threatening tone, after a few minutes’ pause, “what was she like, this woman?”

“Yes,” answered Lowndes, with a little more decision, “I am sure of that. She moved like a woman, and had a woman’s head, and a woman’s skirts. I saw her head as she got out of the window. I saw her skirts moving about before me when I got down to the ground.”

Nell was standing opposite the window, and the[92] gray light of the morning came over the top of the shutters full on her face. It was white, weary, and there were dark lines under the eyes, which were heavy and lusterless. Every word she uttered bore—so the young man thought—an odd stamp as of truth and sincerity.

“I woke up suddenly, hearing a loud noise. I saw the door fall in and some one rush through and get out of the window. I sprang up and looked out, and saw this gentleman sliding down from the roof of the outhouse on to the ground.”

“You did not look up,” replied the girl, with composure. “You ran away through the garden to the right. I dressed quickly, and ran downstairs and out by the back door to see what was the matter. When I got out you had scrambled up the bank and were talking to my uncle.”

Lowndes said nothing; there was nothing to say. But, although it is true that he had not given much attention, when he burst into the upper room, to anything but the window and the escaping figure, he felt convinced that if there had been a person in bed in the room, he should have seen her, or heard some cry, some word, to indicate her presence.

“Now you’ve heard another story. And, begging[93] your pardon, I’d sooner take her word than yours.”

“But,” suggested Lowndes in a conciliatory tone, “do the two stories contradict each other? All this young lady says is that she did not see the woman pass through her room.”

“No, nor any one else, either,” burst out George Claris, as if his patience was at last exhausted. “An’ look here—I won’t stand no man coming down here to spy about, and taking fancies into his head, and breaking into the rooms of my house—not for nobody; and so, sir, you can just go upstairs and pack your portmanteau and clear out between this and breakfast-time. Not another bit nor drop will you be served with under my roof. And you may just tell the three young scoundrels that sent you that whatever they likes to call themselves, they’re no gentlemen. I—I know them, you see. I know you were put up to this by Jordan, King and Co.”

And Nell’s face became suddenly crimson with a blush which betrayed her secret.

“You’re right,” he said to her, very simply. “Mr. King knew nothing about my coming.” He[94] turned to Claris. “Let me have my bill,” he said, “I will go at once.”

And the young man, ashamed of his own action, but more perplexed every moment, as he considered, from every point of view, his singular adventure, left the Blue Lion within the next twenty minutes, and returned to town to relate his experience to Otto Conybeare and Willie Jordan.

Now the intention of the two conspirators, who were conspiring, without Clifford’s knowledge, to cure him of his infatuation, was to keep this luckless adventure from coming to his ears. But it leaked out in spite of them; and one evening, when they were enjoying their pipes in the rooms they shared together, they found themselves confronted with King himself, in a state of boiling indignation.

It was in vain they tried to prove to him how laudable their intentions had been, how much for the good of the young lady herself it would have been if they could have cleared up the ugly mystery.

“If you could have cleared it up, no one would have been more thankful, more grateful than I,” retorted Clifford, whose face had grown haggard with anxiety, with unhappiness on Nell’s account. “But to send a young fool, without tact, without delicacy, like Lowndes, spying about, and making a thundering idiot of himself—why, it was more[96] what you would expect of a couple of schoolboys than of two full-grown men out of Hanwell!”

“As to that,” replied Conybeare, mildly, “I don’t know that Lowndes has less tact than anybody else. I must say that, in the circumstances, I should have acted very much as he did; at least as far as following the woman to the room and through the window was concerned. One doesn’t stand upon strict ceremony with a thief, even a female one.”

“Nell Claris is not a thief!” cried Clifford, with excitement. “I would not believe it if all the judges and magistrates in England told me so!”

“Ah, that’s it! You will not believe. But, my dear fellow, do you think Lowndes had anything to gain by telling a story which showed him in such a ridiculous and undignified light?”

“I think that if he had been a man of more judgment and tact, he would have found out something worth finding out, and not have made an ass of himself during the proceedings.”

“Now, my dear Clifford, you are unreasonable, as all persons suffering from your ailment are,” said Conybeare, rising, and standing in a judicial attitude in front of the fire. “Because you admire this young woman, you think she is incapable of a crime which has, in my opinion, been traced[97] clearly home to her. If the woman whom Lowndes saw and followed was not Miss Claris, how was it that she made, when pursued, straight for Miss Claris’s room? Could Miss Claris have a bedfellow—there was only one bed in the room—without knowing it? If she had a bedfellow, would not some person in the house have been acquainted with the fact, and would not the sudden disappearance of this person arouse suspicion even in the innocent mind of Miss Claris?”

“But I don’t believe a word of the whole story. Lowndes had too much whisky before going to bed, and having his mind full of the tales you had told him, he dreamed that he saw a woman in the room, and started in pursuit of a wholly imaginary figure. You know he admits he had nothing stolen. The only part of the story which I do believe is his own idiotic flight through a door and a window, and the bath in the river which sobered him.”

“All right,” said Conybeare. “It’s no business of mine whether you believe Lowndes or not. Let us drop the subject.”

But to Clifford there was only one subject in the world, and as he could not talk about that, he would not talk about anything. He sat moodily silent for ten minutes, paying no heed to the conversation[98] of the other two, and then abruptly took his leave.

“Look here,” said he, with determination, “that fellow’s being ruined by his infatuation for this little jade. If we don’t manage to bring matters to a climax, he’ll be beforehand with us by going down and marrying her, or some such folly. We’ve tried sending down an amateur detective, and it’s been a failure. Let’s try a professional one.”

“I don’t quite like to do that,” objected he. “Supposing the girl didn’t do it, after all, you know? It would make us feel rather small, wouldn’t it? And then, of course, Clifford would be more madly infatuated than ever. He would rush down with a license in one pocket and a ring in the other, and she’d come back ‘Mrs. King’ in the twinkling of an eye.”

“Well, and why on earth shouldn’t he, if the girl’s all right?” said Conybeare, composedly. “I should have nothing to say against that.”

“But I should,” persisted Willie. “If you hadn’t persuaded me to think her a thief, I should have liked her to be ‘Mrs. Jordan.’ And if she does turn out to be innocent—”

[99]“She won’t,” replied Conybeare, placidly. “I am not in love with the girl, and I can see with clear eyes. But she’s so preciously artful that it would take a clever chap to bring her to book. I shall call round at a Detective Agent’s to-morrow.”

Now although both the friends were careful to keep the fact of this determination from Clifford’s ears, the young barrister was shrewd enough to guess that, having gone so far unsuccessfully, they would feel bound to take some steps to vindicate their sagacity.

So fully convinced was he that they would make some fresh attempt to fix the guilt of the robberies on Nell, that he went down to Courtstairs at the end of the week, and on the Sunday morning walked over to the Blue Lion, with the intention of warning her that she and her uncle would probably be subjected to more annoyance of the kind from which they had recently suffered.

His road lay past Shingle End, and as he approached Colonel Bostal’s house he overtook the old gentleman and his daughter on their way back from church.

The colonel, recognizing Clifford, as the latter merely raised his hat and would have passed, called him to stop.

“No, no,” said he, good-humoredly, “we don’t[100] get so many visitors down from London at this time of year, that we can afford to let you go by like that.”

Miss Bostal, however, was less cordial. She did not offer to shake hands with him, and she eyed his tweed suit and low-crowned hat with open disfavor.

“I am afraid,” said Clifford, “that Miss Bostal thinks I haven’t brought enough of London down with me.”

The colonel laughed, and said they would overlook that. But the prim little lady said icily:

“I know that young men take things easily, nowadays. It is the fashion. But it used to be thought rather shocking to see a gentleman on Sundays without a frock coat and a tall hat. I am old-fashioned and prejudiced, I suppose, but—”

“Good gracious, Theodora, if you are old-fashioned, what ought I to be? And I should think Mr. King very foolish to walk along a country road in his Bond Street get-up on Sunday or any other day.”

“Oh, it is I who am foolish!” retorted Miss Theodora. “I suppose the clergyman didn’t mind; he gets too much used to that sort of thing nowadays. But in my young days, a vicar would have felt[101] himself insulted if any member of the upper classes had appeared at service in such a costume.”

Even the colonel, who was presumably accustomed to his daughter’s vagaries, was astonished at her acrimonious tones. Clifford, who was hardly prepared with an answer, was much relieved when she made an excuse of preparing dinner to leave him with her father.

As the spare figure, with its curiously old-fashioned dress of fifteen years back, lifted up its skirts with both hands, in the ancient manner, and disappeared into the house, the colonel laughed silently.

“I need not apologize for my daughter, I suppose,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “Women fossilize more quickly than we do, you know.”

“I really began to feel rather frightened,” said Clifford. “I was speculating as to what would happen if I should let slip the fact that I hadn’t been to church at all this morning.”

“She knew that as well as we did, I imagine,” said the colonel. “The vicar gave us an hour and ten minutes of it this morning, so I suppose she felt bitter.”

“I don’t see why she should have vented her feelings on me,” murmured Clifford.

[102]But the old gentleman suddenly stopped short. He had been walking on with Clifford in the direction of the Blue Lion.

“I have it!” he exclaimed with conviction. “It’s on account of Nell Claris, her little protégée. My daughter is very indignant about the way in which the girl has been persecuted lately, and I suppose she thinks that you have had something to do with it.”

“Then indeed she is wrong!” cried Clifford, hotly. “Nobody is more angry than I am about it. And you will believe me when I tell you that I have come down to-day on purpose to ask Nell, and for the second time, to be my wife.”

“Come back with me; do come inside the house with me for one minute,” he said, with as much excitement as the young man himself had shown. “Theodora will be ready to embrace you when she hears.”

But Clifford, who was in no hurry to be embraced by Theodora, excused himself. He had so little time, he said; he was afraid he should hardly be able to get back to Courtstairs before dark.

“Tell Miss Theodora,” said he, “that I am very grateful to her for believing in my darling girl. I call her mine, although she won’t give me the right[103] to do so. But I haven’t given up hope, and I shall not do so, even if she refuses me again.”

Still it was with very little confidence in his immediate chances of success that Clifford, after taking leave of the colonel, walked briskly on to the little inn. He had written to Nell three or four times, without receiving a single line in answer. She had not returned his letters; she must have received and had probably read them. If there was anything to hope for in that fact, he might hug the thought to his heart; but, considering the terms in which he had written, the warmth with which he had begged her to let him come down and see her, there was very little encouragement in that.

He was luckier than he had ventured to expect. For as he came over the little bridge which spanned the river, he saw Nell herself approaching the house from the opposite direction. She had her prayer-book in her hand, and was evidently returning from Stroan, where she had been to church.

She saw him as soon as he saw her, stopped, turned pale, and ran a few steps to the left, evidently with the hope of escaping into the fields behind a group of cottages which stood between her and the inn. But Clifford was too quick for her. She saw by the pace by which he approached that[104] it was useless to try to avoid him, so she gave up the attempt, and came steadily on with her eyes on the ground.

She raised her eyes to his face for a moment only, and he saw that a great change had taken place in the girl since he had last seen her. There was in her face a sullen expression, as different as possible from the child-like openness of face and manner which had seemed to him her greatest charm. And his heart smote him as he thought that this change had been brought about, though unintentionally indeed, by him.

“You are not glad to see me, I can see that,” he went on, hurriedly, as he turned and kept pace with her. “Of course, I had no right to expect that you would be, but still I had hoped.”

“Yes,” answered Nell, in a tone in which he was surprised to detect a tremor.

“Well, I did wait as long as I could, but, Nell, I[105] was too miserable to wait any longer. And now that I see you, and see that you look changed, and think that it is my fault, I feel as if I could hang myself.”

He hoped she would say something, but she did not. After a few moments’ silence, he saw that a tear was falling down her cheek.

“Oh, my darling!” broke out Clifford, unable to restrain himself any longer, “won’t you let me marry you and take you away? You have known me long enough now, haven’t you?”

“I would never marry any one till this affair of the robberies was cleared up,” answered she, firmly.

At this her face changed. She looked up at him with an expression of angry defiance.

“That is what you came down for, then—to see whether I could tell you anything, and satisfy your curiosity without your having the trouble of sending any more detectives down!” she cried, uttering the words with breathless rapidity, while her frame shook from head to foot. “No, Mr. King, I don’t know anything, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You have begun by prying into this business your own way; you may finish it your own way, too!”

“Nell, surely you don’t think I had anything to[106] do with that wretched business! You can’t think so—you can’t! Why, it is to warn you that I have come—to warn you that some one else may be sent. Mind, I don’t know this; I only guess it; but I thought it right that you should know.”

But instead of seeming grateful for the information, Nell evidently took it as a fresh offense.

“Why should you warn me?” she asked; and the pallor of her face gave place suddenly to a red blush of anger. “Is it that I may put a check to my larcenous propensities until he has gone away again?”

“Nell, Nell, how can you? You would not if you knew how horribly it makes me suffer!”

“Suffer! Ah, it does matter when you suffer, doesn’t it? But when it is only a country innkeeper’s niece who suffers, who cares? And yet one would have thought—one would have thought—”

She broke down completely and burst into tears. Clifford was at least as unhappy as she, and there was moisture in his own eyes as he tried in vain to comfort her. He did succeed at last, however, in making her confess that she had never believed that he had any share in the sending from town of the amateur detective, Jack Lowndes. As for the fresh arrival which Clifford told her to expect[107] she shrugged her shoulders about it when she had grown a little calmer.

“Let them send him,” she said, recklessly. “I shall not even advise my uncle to refuse to let him stay, even if I guessed who he is. It must all be found out some day, and the harder they try, the sooner it will all be over.”

As she was now quite calm and dry-eyed, Clifford made one more attempt to get at her own real views of the mystery. She had grown kinder to him, and had acquitted him of all blame. For her own sake he must make use of the opportunity.

And again when he put his question, there came into the girl’s face that curious look, as if a vague, haunting memory had disturbed her mind.

“I tell you solemnly, I have no more idea than you have yourself,” said she. “I will confess now that I had a sort of horrible sort of half-idea before—”

“And you will not tell me what that sort of half-idea was?” interrupted Clifford, eagerly.

“Now I have no more idea who did it than you have yourself. At first I tried to think that this Mr. Lowndes went to sleep with his head full of thoughts of robbery, and that he dreamed all that[108] long story that he told us. But the more I thought about his manner of telling us, the more I could not help believing that it was not a dream, after all. And yet—”

“Could it have been—the—the servant, the woman I saw in the bar?” suggested Clifford, with lowered voice.

“Poor Meg? No. She has been with my uncle for fifteen years; and, you know, they say it is only lately, since I have been here, in fact,” and again she grew crimson, “that the thefts have been committed. I am ashamed to say that that night, when Mr. Lowndes had told his story, I did go into poor Meg’s room, just to—just to see if she was there. And she was fast asleep; really fast asleep, not shamming. I tried her with a lighted candle before her eyes; you see I was desperate,” she added, in apology. “And then I even went downstairs and had a look at old Nannie!”

But Clifford, who had naturally less delicacy on the subject of Nannie and Meg, secretly cherished[109] a hope that, in some inexplicable way, one or the other of these estimable persons might get them all out of their difficulty by eventually confessing to the thefts. But he was careful to give no hint of this hope to Nell.

Clifford did not want to see George Claris, but he felt bound to do so. The innkeeper was, as he had anticipated, very surly in manner toward him; and he frustrated Clifford’s intention of opening his heart to him on the subject of Nell by abruptly disappearing from the bar almost as soon as the young man entered it.

Clifford did not see Nell again; she had entered the house at the back, and he came in by the front, and although he lingered about until it was almost dark in the hope that she would relent and come out and bid him farewell, he was obliged to return to Courtstairs and thence to town without that consolation. Nell, on the alert for the expected visitor, was not long before she discovered him. He came, only a few days after Clifford’s visit, in the guise of a mild-looking man with sandy hair and pale eyes, one of those men whose age it is difficult to guess until you perceive by a close inspection of the wrinkles under the eyes that the apparent lad is well over forty.

George Claris had no suspicion of his visitor’s[110] profession. In spite of the rumors about the house, there were travellers staying there about five nights in the seven. But then these were usually of a humble class, whose pockets might be considered not worth the picking.

The detective himself, for such he was, called himself a commercial traveller, and professed, during the four nights he spent under the roof of the Blue Lion, to do a round of business calls in the neighboring towns, returning to the inn toward evening, now from one direction, now from another, in a perfectly unostentatious and business-like manner. On the second day he announced that he should have money to receive on the fourth, and he made this announcement in the presence of as many people as he could. Jem Stickels, who still hung about the Blue Lion with malicious eyes on Nell, two or three other fishermen and a couple of farm laborers were in the bar at the time.

Jem nudged one of his companions, and winked knowingly. The detective, without appearing to do so, saw the wink and took note of Jem.

When the last lingerer had been turned out, and the Blue Lion had closed its doors for the night, the detective made a few notes in his own room before he went to bed.

[111]On the fourth night, when he was supposed to be in possession of the collected money, the detective went upstairs as usual, but not to sleep. He had avoided such an accident by a nap in the afternoon. Fully dressed, he lay down under the bed coverings, and for three hours, listening intently to the slightest sound in the house, he waited.

Very softly, with the rapid, light movements of an expert, the figure crept round by the wall, groping, searching. The man in bed sprang up, leaped out, and planted his back against the door.

Then for five minutes he waited in vain. Not a sound betrayed the presence of another person in the room. He took a box of matches from his pocket, and struck a light. He could see the greater part of the small room, but no trace of a human being besides himself.

After the lapse of a few minutes, it occurred to him that the intruder might have concealed himself in a cupboard which filled the recess between the wall and the fireplace on the other side of the bed. Trusting to his own nimbleness to prevent the escape of the thief, he climbed quickly over the bed, and had his hand on the cupboard door, when[112] a sound behind him caused him to turn his head just in time to see the door of the room flung open by the shadowy figure, who must have been in hiding under the bed.

The detective sprang to the door, and caught the disappearing figure by the arm. Instantly it was as still as a statue.

“Now I have got you!” cried the detective, between his teeth. “Let’s have a look at you.”

Still holding the arm in a firm grip, he struck a fusee from a case he found in his handiest pocket. Before he could distinguish anything, however, the light was promptly blown out by his prisoner, who began to struggle violently. Still holding the glowing fusee, he tried, while holding his captive, to distinguish her features by the red glow. In her frantic efforts to free herself, she flung the back of one imprisoned hand right upon the fusee, and uttered a short cry of pain. The next moment, by a dexterous twist, she had wrenched herself away.

The next thing of which the detective was conscious was that there was a sound like a fall at the bottom of the stairs, and then the back door was opened and shut again with a bang.

Cursing his own ill-luck and the deftness and fleetness of foot of his antagonist, the detective hurried down the stairs and dashed out by the back door, just as he heard the voice of George Claris from above calling out to know what was the matter.

Now, there was by this time enough daylight for the detective to flatter himself that the chase would be a short one when once he got out of doors. He was surprised to find, therefore, that the mysterious creature he was pursuing had vanished altogether, leaving no trace. Dashing out among the cabbage-stumps he had a wide view over the fields and across the little river. But there was not a sound, not the flutter of a skirt, to help him in his search. He went carefully around the house, in the first place, trying the doors of the outhouses and peering about for nooks and corners in which the thief might lie hidden. As for the house itself, the lower windows were secured by shutters and bore no sign of having been tampered with, while the[114] front door was securely fastened from the inside. He then made his way to the group of cottages which stood near, and questioned a laborer, who was just leaving one of them to go to his work, as to whether he had seen any person about within the last few minutes. The man answered in the negative.

Returning to the back of the inn, the detective was struck by the circumstance that a punt which had been moored at the inn side of the river before he made his tour of the house, was now fastened to a post by the opposite bank. He had just noted this circumstance, when the innkeeper came out. He looked very surly, and he went up to the sham commercial traveller in a threatening manner.

“So it’s you that’s been turnin’ the place upside down, is it? An’ all for what? That’s what I’d like to know. All for what?”

“You’ll know all in good time,” said the detective, dryly. “I want to see the women folk in your house, if you please, ladies and all. I dare say you know what I’ve come about. I don’t want to be of any more trouble than I can help, but I’ve got to clear this business up.”

“Well, you may ferret it out your own way, then,” said Claris, sullenly. “I’m not going to have nobody disturbed by you.”

[115]“Well,” returned the other, in a conciliatory tone, “I don’t want to put the ladies to any inconvenience, I’m sure. But if they’ll answer a few questions, they’ll help me, and you, too. For I’m sure, sir, it’s by no wish of yours that these tales have got about, and that you’ll be very glad to hear the last of them.”

“That’s as it may be,” said George. “But I’ll not stand any inquisitor’s work to set them all in hysterics. And anyhow, by this time they’re all out an’ about, and if you want to talk to them, you may find ’em.”

The detective took Claris’s insolence very quietly. Remembering the incident of the fusee, he was able to chuckle to himself with the thought that he held the clue of which George Claris knew nothing.

“There’ll be a burn on her hand,” he thought to himself, “for many a day.”

Returning to the house by the door through which he had left it, he noticed, now in the broader daylight, that there was a large cupboard immediately opposite, under the stairs. Opening the door of this cupboard, which he found unfastened, he saw that the contents were in some disorder, and he waited about until Meg, the servant, came to it to fetch her brooms.

“There is nothing for you to be frightened about,” said he, quietly. “I only want you to tell me whether that is exactly the state in which you left the cupboard when you went to it last.”

It had needed only a very few moments for him to decide that this was not the woman of whom he was in search. Stout, broad, clumsy of movement and heavy of tread, the robust figure before him had certainly none of the nimbleness of the thief of whom he was in search. He had had experience enough to know how to assume an entirely reassuring manner with persons of her stamp, and it took her only a few minutes to recover her self-possession and to answer him intelligently.

“Why, no, it ain’t,” she said, with robust surprise and vehemence. “The things ’as been knocked down an’ trampled on, an’ all my cloths mixed up. Why do you think, sir,” she went on with round eyes, “that the thief ’isself has been in here?”

And she looked back at her brooms, her pails and her cloths with a mixture of amazement, fear and respect.

“Well, somebody’s been in there, that’s evident, isn’t it?” said he, good-humoredly.

And he decided in his own mind that the clever[117] thief had opened and shut the back door loudly as a blind, and had secreted herself in this cupboard until he was safely out of the house.

“I suppose you don’t happen to have seen him about this morning?” he went on, in a jocular tone.

“Seen the thief! Lor, no, sir. If he’s been in the house, he must have got out again pretty quick, for I got down pretty near as soon as the master himself; an’ there was nobody about then, for sure, but ’im and me and Miss Nell.”

“Oh, well, we’re used to these set-outs by this time,” replied Meg, philosophically. “Miss Nell did look very white an’ faint-like, an’ she was all of a tremble, poor thing, when she heard about the fuss. So master packed her off to the colonel’s, and told her as she was to stop there till he sent for her.”

“Oh, an old gentleman as lives a little way from here along the Courtstairs road. Miss Nell takes them their milk there fresh from the cow every morning and evening.”

“Oh,” remarked the detective, highly satisfied at having tapped the fount of Meg’s loquacity, “I should have thought she was too much of a fine lady for that, your Miss Nell.”

[118]“Ah, but she wouldn’t do it for anybody else,” replied Meg, anxious to defend her mistress. “You see, the colonel an’ his daughter are real gentlefolks, only they’re poor—very poor. An’ they don’t keep no servant, an’ Miss Theodora does all the work herself. So, you see, as she’s been kind to Miss Nell, an’ got the master to give Miss Nell her fine eddication, and French an’ the pianner, why, Miss Nell don’t seem to know how to do enough for her. That’s how it is, sir. I’d be glad to take the milk myself, or we could easy get the boy to do it, only Miss Nell likes to do it herself like.”

The detective was about to interrogate Meg further, when the voice of the innkeeper, shouting to her to know why breakfast was not ready, prevented his hearing any more. And, much to his regret, he found, on his next meeting with her, that the poison of suspicion had been instilled into her mind by her master, and that she was communicative no longer.

Finding this source of information dry, therefore, the detective, who shrewdly concluded that Nell would not return until he had taken his departure, sent a boy off toward Stroan with his luggage on a barrow, and paid his bill and went away.

But he did not go very far. Overtaking the boy, he made him leave his luggage at Stroan station,[119] and as soon as the lad was out of sight, he had it taken to one of the inns of the place.

He did not want to put in an appearance until he knew whether Miss Nell had returned from her visit to her friend. But it was a slack time of day at the inn, and there was nobody about of whom he could ask a question. He managed to get a peep into the bar as he walked past the house, but there was no one there, either in front or behind. When he had hung about the place some time, keeping as much out of view of possible watchers as he could, he saw the robust figure of Meg at the side-door. She was shaking out a cloth. She started and uttered a little gasp at sight of him.

“Why,” said he, getting, by a dexterous movement, between her and the door, “what’s the matter? You look scared at the sight of me.”

“Well, I don’t want to have any more to say to you, and that’s the fact,” replied stalwart Meg, with her hands on her hips. “It seems you’re nothing better than a detective chap, what’s come ferreting about the place, asking questions and trying to get us all into trouble. Ugh! I’m ashamed to be seen talking to you!”

“Well, now, can’t you see that it is for the good[120] of all of you that this affair should be cleared up, and that it should be known who it is that has brought the bad name on the house?” said the detective, persuasively. “I’m very sure you ladies must be frightened out of your lives to hear the things that are said. It’ll end by your all going away from the place like Miss Nell has done.”

“Oh, but she’s come back!” replied Meg, quickly, with the idea that there was reproach to her young mistress implied in the suggestion that she had been frightened away. “She didn’t wait long after the master sent for her, I can tell you!”

“Yes, but not for you to see,” retorted Meg, rudely. “You can worry me with your questions, if you like, but you don’t get at her, if I can help it!”

At that moment, a window was opened above their heads, and the detective, without answering the servant, looked quickly up. He saw Nell standing at the casement, crumbling a piece of bread which she put on the ledge for the birds. Noticing something with a quick eye, he stared up silently, until Nell, whose head was turned away, moved and perceived him. She blushed crimson, and was about to shut the window hastily, when he stopped her by an imperious gesture.

For an instant she seemed to hesitate; and in that instant he could see that she grew deadly pale. At last, however, she made a movement to signify assent, closed the window, and disappeared.

The detective, who thought he had reason to fear that she would again attempt to escape him, pushed brusquely past Meg, and opened the side-door.

“What are you going in like that for, without so much as ‘with your leave, or by your leave’?” asked she promptly.

“You heard the young lady say she’d see me,” replied the detective, as, without further ceremony, he passed into the house.

It was now so dark in the passage that they could hardly see each other’s face.

“Well, in the first place, Miss, I should like to speak to you in a better light,” replied the man.

“In here, then,” said she, leading the way, after another moment of apparent hesitation, into the little sitting-room at the back of the house.

“You’ll excuse me, Miss, but I want very particularly to see you while I speak.”

She had gone round the little table, and was standing at the other side of it. With a sudden movement, the detective swooped round upon her, and seizing her by the wrist in a firm grip, pointed to the back of her right hand.

On the soft, white skin there was a little blister freshly made, with a pink line of inflammation round the base.

The girl was white, and she trembled from head to foot. Her white forehead grew damp, and glistened in the lamplight. Her lips seemed scarcely able to form the answer which she uttered in a mechanical fashion.

She seemed to the detective to be turning something over in her mind, and he at once assumed that she was trying to invent a plausible story to account for the mark on her hand.

“I’m sure you may guess, Miss, that it is not my business to put you to inconvenience by asking unnecessary questions; but, of course, if you refuse to answer, I can’t make you. Do you refuse?”

[124]“Oh, no, certainly not,” she replied, quickly. “I was doing some ironing, and the iron touched my hand, and burned it.”

Again the girl hesitated. The detective took note of this fact also. He repeated his question.

“I would rather not.” Then, at once perceiving that he noted this fact against her, she added: “My only reason is that I was in the house of a friend, and I don’t want her to be disturbed by your making inquiries of her about—about—me.”

“I’m afraid, Miss, it’s too late to trouble ourselves about that. As I want really to save you all the trouble and annoyance I can, perhaps you’ll let me suggest where you were. Wasn’t it at Colonel Bostal’s, Miss, at the house they call ‘Shingle End?’”

“Yes. But she doesn’t know anything about this; I didn’t tell her why I came.”

[125]“All right, Miss. Don’t you worry yourself about that. I shan’t put her to much trouble, I can promise you that. At this stage of the business it’s only asking questions. But, of course, you understand that we have to make sure we get truthful answers.”

“Nothing more at present, Miss. And I’m much obliged to you for the few minutes’ talk you’ve given me.”

He did not hide—perhaps he could not—the fact that his spirits had risen considerably. Not only was there the mark of the burn on her hand, but there were a dozen signs—in her lightness of foot, her height, her slenderness of figure, the softness of her hand, her hesitation in answering him, by which he began to feel absolutely sure that he was at last on the right tack. Therefore he had to persuade her that he was on the wrong one.

“Of course, Miss,” said he, “it doesn’t do to say too much when one is only investigating like. But I may tell you that you’ve helped me considerably, and in a way you wouldn’t think, to find out the thief who’s given all the bother.”

[126]Again the girl’s face, with its delicate, tell-tale skin, blanched with a spasm of terror. But he did not appear to notice it.

“And now I may just add, in strict confidence, mind, as it’s a thing I don’t want to get known till I’ve actually nabbed the chap, that he’s one of the best-known thieves from the East End of London and has done time more than once.”

As he said these words, with an expression of great cunning, Nell’s face, as easily read as a book, exhibited first astonishment, then relief, and finally a joy which she tried in vain to hide. He could see, even though her eyes were downcast and her mouth tightly drawn, that she could scarcely contain herself for the wild impulse of delight which had succeeded to the torments of his interrogatory.

There was a moment’s pause before she could collect herself to reply in tranquil tones:

“Well, I’m sure, my uncle, and all of us, will be very glad when you’ve caught him. Will you go through this way?”

And opening the inner door of the sitting-room, she directed him to go out through the bar.

The detective smiled to himself when, after having refreshed himself at the bar, and apologized to George Claris, to whom he gave a similar hint to[127] that which he had given to Nell, he found himself once more on the road to Stroan.

He had been so far eminently successful, but there was many a link still wanting in the chain of evidence which was to connect pretty Nell Claris with the robberies at the inn. As he had no intention of returning to his hotel until he had made further investigations at Shingle End, he doubled back by way of the fields when he had gone a short distance along the road, and hung about between the Blue Lion and Colonel Bostal’s house, taking advantage of every bit of hedge and tree to keep out of the range of chance observers.

And it was not very long before he found that some one else was on the watch also. The figure of a man, in a jersey and seaman’s boots, with a felt hat on the back of his head, and a pipe in his mouth, soon attracted his attention. He recognized the man as Jem Stickels, a frequent customer at the Blue Lion, and a person of whom report spoke ill as a confirmed “loafer” and idler, who only worked when he could not help it. He could not be quite certain whether Stickels saw him, but the fisherman was on the lookout for another person, and the detective had little difficulty in guessing that that person was Nell Claris.

For indeed Jem Stickels made no secret of his[128] admiration for the young lady, nor of his determination to “bring down the hussy’s pride some fine day.”

It was the intention of the detective to go to Shingle End, to interrogate Miss Bostal on the subject of the burn on Miss Claris’s hand. But as he felt sure that Nell would try to outwit him by seeing the lady and preparing her for his questions, he wanted to wait until she had started on her journey, so that he might be with Miss Bostal when the girl arrived.

His expectations were realized to the letter. He was waiting behind a clump of bushes not far from the garden gate of Shingle End, when he caught the first sight of the girl coming across the fields at a rapid pace. As she drew near, he could hear her panting breath, could see, even in the waning light of the December day, that she cast anxious glances round her as she went.

When she was within a couple of hundred yards of him, she stopped, with a little scream, as Jem Stickels suddenly appeared at her side, springing up from the shelter of one of the numerous dikes with which the marsh was intersected in all directions.

The detective heard the fisherman’s hoarse, jeering laugh. Then he saw the girl dart forward, [129]with the evident intention of escaping her unwelcome admirer by fleetness of foot.

“That’s the very movement by which she got away from me!” thought the detective, as he saw the slight figure bend suddenly to the right, avoiding the rough touch with which she was threatened.

But Jem Stickels knew with whom he had to deal. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he contented himself with barring her passage with his person, skillfully baffling each attempt she made to pass him. These attempts on her side, and the successful movements by which Jem frustrated them, brought both the young people near enough to the detective in his place of concealment for him to hear the words which the fisherman addressed to the girl.

“Look here,” he said, roughly, and in no very subdued voice, “you had better listen to what I’ve got to say, and so I tell you. For if you don’t, I’ll just take myself off and say it to somebody else instead.”

“Indeed, that is just what I want you to do,” answered Nell, indignantly. “You know very well that I don’t wish to talk to you now or at any other time, but especially now.”

“What do you mean by ‘especially now,’ eh, Miss[130] Fine-lady-peacock?” asked Jem, who had evidently been drinking, although he knew what he was doing.

But for answer the girl turned suddenly and started to run back to the inn. Jem, however, being prepared for some such attempt, soon caught her, and this time they were too far away from the detective to hear what they said, although he could distinguish the tones of their respective voices.

It was evident that the very next words uttered by Jem made a great and terrible impression upon Nell. Her face, which had at first expressed nothing but loathing and disgust, became in a moment rigid with horror, as the young man, standing quite close to her, and speaking in a hoarse whisper, said something to her in an excited and earnest manner.

So anxious was the detective to learn what it was which produced so strong an effect upon the girl, that he crawled from his hiding-place to the ditch which ran alongside the road, and crept along, sometimes in the water and sometimes only in the mud, until he was close enough to the two speakers to catch most of their words. When he stopped, the girl was refusing some request of the man’s, with all the energy of loathing and detestation.

“Of course I will not,” she was saying vehemently. “Of course, nobody would believe your[131] stories for a moment. And I don’t suppose you would dare to tell them to anybody else, for fear of being taken for a lunatic.”

“Don’t you? Oh, all right, then,” sneered Jem. “I may tell that Hemming then, that’s been spying round here lately, and that’s put your uncle’s back up so by the questions he’s been asking. I may tell him, eh, Miss?”

The detective could not see the girl’s face as she answered, after a little pause:

“You may come up with me to Shingle End, and tell your story to the colonel and Miss Theodora; that’s what you may do—if you dare.”

There was another pause, and the detective knew, from the way in which she had uttered these words, as well as from the attitude in which she waited for the fisherman’s answer, that she was less defiant than her words. At last the fisherman spoke again. And it was clear that the proposal was not to his taste.

“Look here, Miss Nell!” said he, in argumentative tone, “do you really dare me to do that? Come, you know as I shouldn’t have dared to have spoken to you so open if I hadn’t got proof positive. Now, come, should I? Why, your face told as how you knowed I knowed, and so what’s the good of braving me? And knowing what I know, isn’t it plain I[132] mean no harm, when I could easy earn a pound or two out of peachin’ to the detective chap? Come, now, you must see it, eh?”

“Come and say it out, then, before witnesses—I dare you to do it!” retorted Nell, with a little more assurance as she noted the man’s reluctance to take this step.

“No, I shan’t!” he replied, sullenly. “I shall go to work my own way. And I say this: if you choose to speak civil to me, I don’t ask for much more, and to ask me in to tea with you and your uncle just how you asked the young swells as were down here three months back, why, I hold my tongue, and it’ll go no farther than you and me. But if you don’t choose to do this—”

“I don’t choose!” retorted Nell, quite fiercely. “I tell you the whole story you tell is absurd, and that nobody would believe you for a moment, and you can tell it to whom you please.”

And she suddenly sprang away from Jem, and gaining the road with rapid steps, walked quickly in the direction of Shingle End.

“All right!” shouted Jem, threateningly, in stentorian tones, as he kept pace with her, walking towards the colonel’s house by the fields, as she went by the road. “But if you’ll take my advice, you’ll make a clean breast of it to your grand[133] friends, and see if they don’t say you’d best keep in with me!”

As he shouted the last words, Jem Stickels passed the spot where the detective was in hiding. Within a few moments the latter took the opportunity of issuing from his uncomfortable shelter, and, following Jem at a quick pace, came up with him before he reached the fence which surrounded the colonel’s garden.

“Is that you, Stickels?” asked he, as if he were not quite certain of his man. “Here, I want to have a word with you!”

He spoke in a low voice, not wishing to be heard by Nell, who had now got some little way ahead, still walking along the high road. But Jem, who did wish to be heard, bawled out his answer at the very top of his voice:

“Yes, Mr. Hemming, it’s me right enough. And maybe I’ve got as much to tell you as you’ve got to ask me, sir!”

The detective saw that Nell, who was now at the corner of the road, and about to turn to go up to the front door of the house, stopped, hesitated, and seemed half-inclined to return to where Jem stood.

Perceiving this, Jem drew back a step, and appeared to wait for her. But Nell did not come back. After a few moments of indecision, she disappeared[134] round the corner of the white house. Jem Stickels, however, seemed either to have changed his mind about telling the detective what he knew or to have only meant to frighten the girl by pretending that he was going to do so; for instead of speaking again to Hemming, he jumped over the fence into the garden, and, running at full speed across the now bare flower-beds, flattened his nose against the window of the kitchen, where a light was burning.

By moving a few paces to the left, the detective, from where he stood outside the fence, could see that there were figures moving inside the kitchen, and could presently distinguish the two figures within as those of Nell and Miss Bostal respectively. He could see, also, although he could hear nothing, that Nell was pouring out some narrative in an excited manner, and that the elder lady was quietly listening.

The hoarse sound of Jem Stickels’s derisive laughter suddenly startled the two ladies, who sprang apart and glanced at the window.

The detective was on the point of leaping the fence, with the intention of addressing Jem, when[135] the back door of the house was suddenly opened, and Miss Bostal, well muffled up in a thick woolen shawl, so that only her little, thin pinched nose and gentle light eyes could be seen, addressed the fisherman in kindly tones from out of the woolly depths of her covering.

“Jem Stickels, is that you? What are you doing out there, frightening us out of our lives? If you have anything to say to us, come inside.”

But the lady’s voice, kindly yet imperious, seemed to render the surly young fellow somewhat abashed. He would have slunk away and got back over the fence into the field again, but that there was a tone of command in the prim little lady’s voice which made him pause.

“I haven’t got nothin’ to say to neither of you,” grumbled he, sullenly. “Who said as I had? I haven’t said nothin’ to nobody, barrin’ just this: That I don’t see why Miss in there should treat me as if I was dirt, and that if she goes on treatin’ me that way, I’ve got the means of being even with her.”

The little prim lady could be heard to sigh. She seemed genuinely concerned about this matter.

“But haven’t you heard,” said she, with a prim little affectation of sprightliness, “‘that faint heart never won fair lady?’ How is it that you are[136] so sure that Miss Claris means to treat you badly?”

“How am I sure?” bellowed Jem, flaming up into wrath. “Why, I’m sure of it because she does it—because she never meets me but what she turns her head away as if I was beneath my lady’s notice. That’s why I am sure, an’ that’s why,” went on Jem, casting a glance at the kitchen window, and raising his voice still higher, in the hope of being heard by Nell, “that’s why I say I’ll be even with her.”

“Dear, dear!” bleated Miss Bostal, as she drew her shawl more closely about her. “I shouldn’t have expected a brave fellow like you to threaten a lady.”

“I should have expected you to have more patience. Come, now, shall I speak to her for you? I don’t know, mind, that I can do any good; but if any word of mine can help the path of true love run smooth, why, I’ll say it with pleasure.”

“I mean it,” chirped the lady. “I’ll speak to her myself. And now will you come into the kitchen and hear me speak to her? Perhaps that will satisfy you.”

After a few minutes’ hesitation Jem slouched[137] into the passage; and Miss Bostal was about to close the door, when the detective, who had taken care to hear every word of this colloquy, appeared suddenly before her, and put his hand upon the door.

“Beg pardon, ma’am, but I should like a few words with you, if you’ll be so good as to see me for a few minutes privately. My name’s Hemming, ma’am; and I dare say it’s got to your ears that I’m here about this robbery business at the Blue Lion.”

Miss Bostal, who had uttered a little shrill scream of fright on the first appearance of the stranger, now recovered herself and gave a little gasp of acquiescence.

He entered, waited while she shut the door, and then followed, by her direction, not into the kitchen, but to a cold, dark room on the right, which smelt as if it were little used. Miss Bostal wisely kept her shawl wrapped tightly round her, and politely begged him to take a seat, while she lit one of the two candles which stood on the mantelpiece. The detective gave one comprehensive look around the room, and quite understood why the lady preferred to spend her time in the kitchen, where it was, at least, warm.

[138]“And now,” asked the lady, as she seated herself on a prim, stiff-backed chair covered with faded needle-work, “what is it you want to ask me?”

“Well, ma’am,” said the detective, who sat on the edge of his chair, and felt surprise at the amount of dignity there was about the little prim, shabby lady, “it’s just this: I want to know if any little accident happened to a young lady who spent the morning with you—Miss Claris?”

He saw his breath and hers on the cold air of the little room, and thought it was much warmer in the fields outside. The lady was evidently astonished at the question.

“Was she doing any sort of work for you, ma’am? She said something about ironing, I think.”

“She didn’t do any ironing,” answered the lady, promptly, “but I did.”

But then the detective noticed that the lady gave him a quick look, and that she then, as if recollecting herself, altered her tone. He instantly[139] decided that she was making up a story for the benefit of her protégée.

“I recollect, now I think of it,” said she, “that I did come very near her with the iron, and that I was afraid I had burned her, though she said it was nothing, and, indeed, I could see nothing.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said the detective, rising at once. “And now would you be so good as to let me see her and the man Jem Stickels together, at once, before they leave this house?”

“If they are here, you can, certainly,” said Miss Bostal, as she at once left the room and went down the passage toward the kitchen.

“I’m sorry to say,” said she, “that they have both left the house. Whether together or no,” she added, with a demure and pinched little smile, “I can’t say.”

Jem Stickels was the person to be “got at,” that was certain. But Hemming’s fear was that he had been “got at” already.

Miss Bostal shut the door when the detective had gone, drew a shivering sigh as she folded the shawl more tightly about her thin person, and went into the dining-room.

Sitting on one of the horsehair-covered chairs in the darkness, was Nell. Miss Bostal sighed again as she placed carefully upon the table the lighted candle she had brought with her from the drawing-room.

“I feel very guilty and ashamed of myself,” she murmured, rather peevishly, “for having told the man you were gone when I knew you had gone no farther than this. But I had to choose the less of two evils, for I was afraid, my dear, that you could not bear another long, worrying cross-examination from him just now.”

“You were quite right, Miss Theodora, and as kind as you always are,” said Nell, affectionately.

The poor girl looked indeed worn out, and the words she uttered seemed to come mechanically from weary lips.

[141]“Come into the kitchen, child, where it is warm,” said Miss Bostal, briskly. “I will make you a nice, hot cup of tea, and then you will feel better.”

“Do you—” Nell faltered and began to blush and to tremble—“do you think he told the—the detective—anything?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, dear. These men are so exceedingly reticent, it is impossible to tell what they do know,” answered the elder lady.

Nell watched her and gathered from her manner that Hemming had told her nothing disquieting. For Miss Bostal’s whole attention was devoted, at that moment, to measuring out the smallest possible quantity of tea which could be made to supply two persons.

“And besides,” went on Miss Bostal, when she had shut up the tea-caddy, “what could Stickels have to tell him? And what trust could be put in Stickels’s stories?”

“Didn’t I tell you,” she said, in a husky whisper, “that Jem told me he had seen—the thief—with[142] his own eyes? He told me he could give proofs—proofs!”

“Well, well, my dear,” returned the elder lady, composedly, as she put her little brown teapot tenderly on the stove to draw, “what if he did? My own idea is that Stickels made up a story in order to get you to talk to him; for it’s evident the poor lad is crazy about you.”

“Miss Theodora,” she whispered, with a face full of fear, “it was not to get an excuse to talk to me that Jem said—what he did. He told me—he advised me to confide in you—to tell you what he told me, and—everything!”

“Well, my dear, tell me if you like,” said Miss Bostal, putting a kind hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“Why, my child, yes, tell me, of course. Come, come, what is there to get so miserable about? If you really think Jem Stickels did see the thief, and can prove who it is, you ought to be glad, and[143] certainly not let your kindness of heart prevent you from telling him to speak out.”

“Ah, you mustn’t trouble your head about that! A thief is a thief, and should be punished. And if it is a person you know, you may be sorry; but you must not shrink from your duty, which is to bring the criminal to justice.”

Nell withdrew herself with a sad smile from the lady’s caressing hand, and shuddered.

“Supposing it were—it were some one you knew—and loved. What would you say?”

“My dear,” she said, “I can see what it is: Stickels has been threatening to tell the detective that he can prove you to be the thief. And you let yourself be frightened like that! Why, child, you forget that everybody in the place knows he would give the world for a kind word from you; and they will know that he has made up this tale out of revenge for your taking no notice of him! You are a goose, child, a little goose, to let yourself be worried by such a thing as that!”

“You have taken a great load off my mind,” said[144] she, in a low, thankful voice. “I shall tell him when I see him. What shall I tell him?” she asked, with a sudden change to a little fear again.

“I should tell him, if I were you, that what he has seen—if he has seen anything—is not your affair, but that of the police. But at the same time, Nell, I wouldn’t be so unkind to the poor young fellow, if I were you. I was quite touched this evening by the way he spoke of you. I believe he would give his right hand for you, I do really. And although it is no business of mine, dear, I really think you are neglecting your opportunities of doing good in a true sense by not urging him to better things. Your influence might turn him into a good man, my dear, I do, indeed, believe.”

“You are so good yourself, Miss Theodora, that you don’t know anything about people who are not like you. Jem has had plenty of opportunities to reform. It is by his own choice that he idles about instead of going to sea.”

“But it is to be near you, dear,” suggested the sentimental old maid. “I don’t mean to say the young man is, in any sense, your equal. But I think if you really cared for him—”

“But I don’t!” protested Nell, indignantly. “I[145] have never thought about the creature, for a moment, except to wish he would go away from the place altogether. And if he has dared to say that I ever gave him the slightest encouragement—”

“He has not, he has not,” said the old maid, hastily. “He has never been anything but most humble and submissive.”

“In your presence,” added Nell, significantly. “But when he isn’t with you, he presumes to be rude, and even jealous. As if he had the slightest right to be jealous,” she added, angrily.

“I see how it is,” she said. “Poor Jem is right. He complains that you have had your head turned by the young men who were here in the autumn. He says you have never had a good word for him since the coming of that particularly worldly and frivolous young man who calls himself Clifford King.”

“Miss Theodora,” she said, very quietly, “I know you will not say anything more about Mr. King, when I tell you that I—I—that if it were not for the misfortune which hangs over us now, I should be his wife some day.”

But poor Miss Bostal was horror-struck at this[146] disclosure, and she proceeded to read the girl such a lecture on the evils of marrying above one’s station, and, above all, of marrying a man of the exact type of Clifford King, that, although she did not succeed in convincing Nell, she sent her home very unhappy and on the verge of tears.

The worst of it was that the sentimental little old maid, under the pretext of curing her protégée of her unfortunate attachment, by diverting her thoughts to a more appropriate channel, took Jem Stickels in hand herself, promised him every assistance with Nell if he would promise to reform, and encouraged the fisherman to persecute Nell more than ever. It was she who persuaded Jem to woo with a less arrogant air, with offers to “turn over a new leaf” for her sake, and other similar blandishments.

And although Nell guessed who it was that had inspired this alteration, the girl was obliged to take a different attitude to her unwelcome wooer in consequence. It is easy to be haughty and studiously frigid to a presumptuous person; but when that person becomes meek and almost servile in his endeavors to make himself useful, even in the humblest capacity, when he insists upon chopping your wood and carrying your water, then it is difficult to maintain a properly freezing attitude.

[147]The climax came one afternoon when Nell was invited to tea by Miss Bostal, and was let in on her arrival by the detested Jem.

Nell looked quite shocked when, on entering the house, she learned from the young man’s lips that he had been invited, too.

The young girl turned to the door of the dining-room, where a small fire burned in honor of the occasion, to go in search of her hostess. Jem, who was in his Sunday clothes, in which he presented a stronger contrast than ever to the refined, delicate-handed girl, said awkwardly that Miss Bostal would be down directly. As Nell, taking no notice of this intimation, was about to leave the room, he suddenly found courage to place himself before the door.

“It’s done a-purpose; she done it a-purpose,” he explained, growing more rustic than usual in his speech under pressure of his excitement, “so I might have a chance of speaking to you.”

Nell looked angry and anxious; but she looked him in the face with an expression which daunted him a little.

“She don’t know what I want to say to you,” he went on in a hoarse whisper. “She thinks I want to ask you to marry me, as if I should be such a precious fool! No, what I want to say is, that the chap Hemming is still hanging about; he’s staying[148] at the Bell at Stroan, and he’s offered me a five-pound note if I’ll tell him what I told you, and I’ve refused. There!”

And, fairly overwhelmed by the contemplation of his own greatness of soul, Jem slapped his chest and made his eyes round.

Nell listened, with fear and repulsion struggling in her breast. Should she brave the man, with the knowledge which she knew that he possessed, or should she conquer her own loathing and temporize? Miss Bostal had advised her to brave him; but then, Miss Bostal did not know what she knew. Nell shivered as the man came a step toward her.

“I want you to give me a kiss.” The girl started and made a gesture of abhorrence. “Come,” persisted Jem; “it isn’t much, considering, ’specially as I could take one myself if I had a mind.”

And as he spoke, he took another step, threatening to fulfill this menace. But Nell was too quick for him; she was at the other side of the table before the words were well out of his mouth.

“Miss Bostal,” she said, quietly, as if his proposition had been unworthy of remark, “advises me to let you make what use of your information you please. She says no one would believe you.”

The sudden anxiety which overspread her face at the question showed him his opportunity.

“Look here,” he went on, in a tone which was meant to be persuasive, but which was to Nell repellant in its coarse assumption of familiarity, “I don’t want to rush you into anything. You know what I have to sell, and you know what the price is. If you don’t care to pay it, well, you know how I can pay myself in coin of the realm. Now I’ll give you till to-morrow night. If you’ll see me to-morrow, down at your own garden fence, where you’ll be quite safe, mind, for I mean quite fair and above board, and if you’ll speak me fair and be civil, I’ll hold my tongue, and wild horses nor all the tecs in Lon’on shouldn’t make me peach; but if you don’t choose to do this, and it’s a precious small thing to make such a fuss about, why, then, I’ll go off to Hemming and get the five pounds, and you can guess what’ll happen, if you don’t know.”

As the man looked at her, with bloodshot, inflamed eyes, enjoying in anticipation the kiss which he felt she was bound to give him, Nell’s heart sank. He would not surely speak in this tone to her, if the proofs of which he had spoken were not very strong ones.

[150]“You must give me time to think,” she faltered, turning her head away to escape the gaze of the lustful eyes, but keeping a sharp eye on his movements all the time.

She felt keen resentment against Miss Theodora, who, in her amiable folly, had exposed her to this persecution. Luckily that lady herself appeared a few seconds later, and then Nell at once made the excuse of going to fetch the tea-things to get out of the room.

Once outside the door, however, she ran through the passage to the back of the house, slipped out into the garden, and ran home across the fields as fast as her fleet little feet could carry her.

“Since she likes his society so much, she may enjoy a tête-à-tête with him!” she said to herself, not without a bitter feeling that her old friend and protectress had betrayed her in her eagerness to reclaim the prodigal.

Before she reached the Blue Lion, Nell had made up her mind what to do. She felt that she must have some advice of a more solid, more worldly kind than that of kindly, sentimental, narrow-minded Miss Theodora. So she wrote a little note, the first she had ever sent him, to Clifford King, and sent it by a safe hand to Stroan to catch the night mail.

Then she passed a sleepless night, torturing herself by wondering what Jem Stickels would do, and whether Clifford would come—this she did not greatly doubt—and how she should tell him if he came.

And on the following evening, just when she had given up all hope of seeing him, and just when the time appointed by Jem Stickels for her to meet him was approaching, she saw Clifford, from her seat by the open door of the sitting-room, walk into the bar.

Nell sprang up with a little cry, and Clifford, catching sight of her, flushed a deeper red than his walk had given him, and going quickly through the bar and along the passage, pushed open the door of the little sitting-room, and stood before her.

The girl had been so anxious for his coming[152] that all her little maidenly arts of affected surprise, of indifference, of reserve, were in abeyance; and he saw before him the girl he loved, with love confessed in her blue eyes. For one moment he stood looking at her, a little awe-struck, as a lover ought to be, at discovering how much more beautiful she was than he remembered her. Then, not unnaturally taking her summons for just a little more than it was intended to be, he caught her in his arms, and pressing her against his breast, covered her face with kisses.

Nell uttered a little cry; she thought it expressed consternation, alarm; but Clifford read the sound differently, and kissed her again.

“Oh, Mr. King!” panted the girl, as soon as she could draw back her head enough to speak, “you don’t understand. I sent for you to advise me, that’s all. I—”

“I quite understood,” replied Clifford, calmly, not letting her go very far. “And I am longing to put my professional knowledge at your service. But first—”

He stopped short, arrested in the middle of his speech by a violent start on the part of Nell, who was looking with eyes full of alarm at the door which led into the garden.

The upper part of this door was of glass, and she[153] had suddenly perceived that a face was pressed close to the outer side.

“Who is it?” asked Clifford, as soon as he saw what had arrested her attention.

And without waiting for an answer, he sprang across the little room, toward the glass door. Nell sprang after him, and clutched at his sleeve.

“Never mind. Don’t go,” she whispered apprehensively. “It is only Jem Stickels. Don’t open the door.”

But as Clifford stopped, under the pressure of her earnest entreaty, the sound of a hoarsely uttered curse reached their ears; the face was quickly withdrawn, and the next moment, with a loud crash of broken glass, Jem’s fist came through the upper part of the door, and struck Clifford full in chest.

Nell saw, even before the blow was dealt, that there was an open knife in the fisherman’s hand. But, although she threw herself upon her lover, trying to drag him back from the danger, she was not in time. With a howl of savage delight, Jem drew back his knife, covered with blood.

Clifford was so entirely taken by surprise that he hardly realized, in the first moment, that he was hurt. The next, he dashed open the door at one blow, and finding Jem outside coolly wiping his knife on the ivy which grew on this side of the house, he seized the fisherman by the throat with one hand, snatched his knife from him and flung it away with the other, and then hurled the man from him with such violence that the latter fell, and, striking his head upon the stone-ledge of a window, lay motionless on the ground.

Then, suddenly overcome by a feeling of dizziness, the first result of his wound, Clifford staggered back against the broken door, and into Nell’s arms.

“Oh, it is my fault—my fault! I ought not to have asked you to come!” moaned she, not attempting now to hide her affectionate concern from the people who, startled by the noise of the affray, now pressed into the room.

George Claris was among the first to enter, and[155] he frowned angrily on seeing Clifford, of whose arrival he had not yet heard.

“So it’s you, is it, Mr. King!” he exclaimed surlily, on recognizing the man whom he looked upon as the origin of all his trouble. “And what have you been up to now, eh?”

“Oh, uncle, uncle, can’t you see that he’s hurt, badly hurt?” implored Nell. “Send for a doctor—oh, some one pray go for a doctor, or he will bleed to death!”

But George Claris hardly concealed the fact that that event would give him satisfaction rather than annoyance; he did not dare to interfere, however, when Nell gave orders to one of the men who had crowded in, to go to Stroan for a doctor.

Clifford was by this time hardly conscious. He had been laid upon the sofa, while Nell herself, keeping enough presence of mind to be of use and to see what the danger was, held her own fingers to the wound to check the flow of blood.

This reply led to further investigations, and Jem was quickly discovered and brought into the room[156] where his victim lay. Unconscious though he was, having been stunned severely, Jem, of course, got no pity from Nell. And when some of the men suggested carrying him to the cottage where he lodged, which was within a stone’s throw of the inn, Nell made no suggestion that he should remain where he was, being unaffectedly glad to have him taken out of her sight.

Buxom Meg exchanged many a nod and wink and grin with the customers from the bar, inspired by the utter absorption Nell showed in her lover and his danger.

“All my fault—my fault!” the girl kept murmuring, as she hung over Clifford, watching his face, which had grown pale, with straining eyes, and listening anxiously to the breathing, which told her that he was alive.

Then Meg became abruptly conscious that there was something in this simple grief, this maidenly affection, too sacred for the gaze of the rough, though sympathetic, group. And she bundled them all, with large, wide-sweeping gestures as of a gigantic hen, back into the bar. And Nell and her lover and her uncle were left together.

“What was he doing down here?” he began, inquisitorially,[157] when they were left alone. “And what was he up to that made Jem Stickels knife him? No good, I’ll be bound,” grumbled he.

Nell, without raising her eyes from her lover’s face, answered, mechanically, with white lips:

“He loves me, uncle. He has asked me, weeks ago, to be his wife, but I hadn’t even promised; no, not a word; but when he came to-day—”

“And what made Jem Stickels knife him? Come, now, I should have thought you were above having anything to do with a chap like him. But I’ve seen him loafing about more’n usual lately.”

“It was not my fault, of course,” said Nell, simply. “And of course he had no right to—to—”

“Well, lass, it’s no use talking to women, ’cause they’ve got their own way o’ doing things, whatever you say to ’em. But you’ve brew’d yourself a peck o’ trouble between them two chaps, and neither[158] me nor anybody but yourself can help you out of it. An’ mind, I won’t say I’ll have this chap turned out of the house, though I’ve a good mind to. But if the doctor says he’s to be laid up here, I’ll not have you hangin’ ’round. You’ll just go away sharp to my sister in London. Do you hear? I’ll have him properly nursed, that I’ll promise; but it’ll not be by you. Do you hear?”

Nell assented meekly. As long as Clifford was not made to suffer, she felt that there was nothing for it but to submit.

Uncle and niece exchanged no more words until the arrival of the doctor, when George Claris told his niece to put on her hat and to go to Miss Bostal’s, where she was to remain until he sent her luggage to her there, when she was to start without delay for London.

Now, there was no place to which Nell would not rather have gone than to Shingle End. For was not sentimental Miss Theodora the very cause of the outrage which had put Clifford’s life in danger? If it had not been for Miss Bostal’s well-meaning but ill-judged encouragement, Jem Stickels would never have dared to think he could have a chance with a girl who was so far removed from him in every way as Nell. Now, with natural feminine obstinacy, Miss Bostal would be sure to take Jem’s[159] part against Clifford, especially when it reached her ears that the latter had come down by Nell’s own request. So that it was with slow, unwilling feet that Nell made her way to the colonel’s house.

Everything turned out as she expected, with this exception, that Miss Bostal was so much more concerned about Jem than about Clifford that she insisted on marching off that very moment to inquire as to Jem’s condition, and insisted on dragging the unwilling girl with her on the expedition.

At first Nell absolutely refused to go. But she had to give way, being touched by the self-reproach of the prim little elderly lady, who blamed herself as much for Jem’s misfortune as Nell blamed herself for Clifford’s.

“It was all my fault. I feel that I have brought it upon the poor fellow myself,” was the burden of Miss Bostal’s lament, just as it had previously been of Nell’s.

She even shed tears at the thought of facing the young man upon whom she had brought more than one misfortune. For she persisted in regarding his assault upon Clifford as another grievance of Jem’s rather than of the hated rival’s.

Nell said little as they went along. She was on the one hand deeply anxious about her lover; while on the other she hardly knew whether to laugh at[160] Miss Bostal’s extravagances or to cry sympathetically over her grief.

The little cottage where Jem lodged was soon reached. Miss Bostal’s knock was answered, unexpectedly enough, by Jem in person. There seemed to be little the matter with him, except for a cut on his lower lip, the result of the blow with which Clifford had felled him. If his bodily state was sound, however, this was all that could be said for him. A more forbidding expression of sullen ferocity than that which his face wore as he recognized his visitors it would be impossible to imagine.

“Oh, so it’s you, is it?” was his surly greeting, as with a scowl he made a movement to shut the door in the lady’s face.

But his patroness was ready with the soft answer that turned away wrath. Pressing forward quickly, and keeping Nell’s hand in hers with a tight grip, she edged her way into the cottage, and, regardless of the fact that the man and woman with whom Jem lodged were present, addressed the young boor in the gentlest of voices:

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! don’t send us away like that! We are so very sorry for what has happened to you. We want to know if we can do anything—”

Nell was frowning, and trying to get away, indignant[161] at the lowly tone her companion was taking. And it was upon Nell that Jem’s eyes were fixed as he interrupted the other lady.

“No!” roared he. “You can’t do nothin’—as yet. But,” and he raised his voice, and lifted his fist against an imaginery foe, as he stared harder at Nell than ever, “I’m blest if you won’t find more’n enough to do to answer the questions as’ll be put to you folks—some of you—to-morrow morning!”

Nell suddenly ceased struggling, and fixed her eyes upon Jem’s swollen and excited face, in which the veins were rising like knotted cords.

“What do you mean, my dear young man?” piped Miss Bostal, in the gentlest accents, her mild efforts to calm the excited monster appearing every moment more futile and inadequate.

“Oh, you know very well what I mean, or, leastways, Miss Claris does!” pursued Jem, in the same key, and with a swaggering confidence, which caused little Miss Bostal to recoil a few steps, as if before a physical attack. “And if you don’t, why you’ll know soon enough. I’m just a-goin’,” proceeded Jem, with sullen emphasis, “to have my pipe and my ’alf pint,” and he took his beloved clay out of his pocket as he spoke, “and then I’m just a-goin’ to walk over to The Bell, at Stroan,[162] to ask if a certain gen’leman from Lon’on is in.”

And, without more ceremony, Jem turned his back on the ladies, and marching out of the room by the opposite end, through the back door, left them no alternative but to retire.

Nell was utterly disgusted, not only by the part she had been made to play in this unpleasant scene, but by her companion’s humble demeanor and Jem’s own rudeness. As for his threat of speaking to the detective, she seemed to be past caring whether he carried it into effect or not. She said nothing as they walked back to Shingle End; and Miss Bostal, perhaps conscious that she had humbled herself before this young ruffian a little more than was meet, was silent also.

When they reached the house, the elder lady gave a little sigh, and fell back upon her usual solace in times of anxiety.

“I think we shall both feel better,” she chirped, as she carefully opened the front door with her latch-key, “when we’ve had a cup of tea.”

It was about a couple of hours after the termination of the scene between Jem Stickels and the two ladies, and the clock of the tower of St. Martin’s at Stroan had just chimed a quarter past eight, when a small boy burst into the bar-parlor[163] of the Bell Inn, and startled the company by the scared expression of his face. He had been running fast, and it was some moments before he could articulate. In the meantime the questions put to him were so many that the confusion of tongues delayed the lad’s announcement still further.

It was Hemming, the London detective, who finally drew the boy out of the curious group, and made them wait for him to speak.

“There’s a man lyin’ out there on the road—the Courtstairs road, a little way past the big house. An’ I see him layin’—an’ I speaks to ’im—an’ he didn’t answer, an’ he didn’t move. An’—an’—an’ so I run right away, an’ come here to tell you.”

It seemed pretty evident that the boy had not said all he knew, or guessed. There was a rush for the door by the occupants of the bar-parlor, and in a few moments there was a stream of people trickling out in the darkness along the little quay by the little river, past the barges waiting to be unloaded, past the ancient stone gateway of Stroan’s prosperous days. Over the brand-new bridge they went, in twos and threes, and out upon the flat road over the marshes, taking as their rightful leader the detective Hemming, who, being afraid that the frightened boy might give him the slip, held[164] his arm as if in kindly comradeship. The night was dark, and one of Hemming’s nearest followers held a lantern, which threw a ray of dancing light to right and left upon the white road, the ditch on either side, the wide stretch of marsh to the left, and the dull line of the sea far away on the right.

Just past the “big house,” a lonely mansion standing in flat, wind-swept grounds between Stroan and the sea, they came upon the man, lying, as the boy had described, by the side of the road, with his head hanging over on the grassy bank that sloped into the ditch.

Hemming beckoned to the man behind to bring up the lantern. Kneeling down beside the man on the ground, he lifted his head and threw the light upon his face.

“It’s Stickels! It’s Jem Stickels!” exclaimed more than one voice, recognizing the heavy, sullen face of the fisherman, who was well known in the neighborhood.

“Here! Give him some of this; it’s brandy,” said one man, handing a flask to Hemming.

In the little dining-room at Shingle End Miss Bostal and Nell were sitting by the fire, the latter still absorbed in thoughts of Clifford, while the former tried to divert her companion’s gloomy reverie by gossip about the doings of the vicar’s wife and the high price of vegetables.

Miss Bostal looked anxiously from time to time into the coal-scuttle, divided between a wish to be economical with the fuel, on the one hand, and to have a good fire ready for her father’s return on the other.

“How late he is to-night!” she presently exclaimed, with an astonished glance at the clock.

It was nearly ten o’clock, and the colonel, who spent most of the day, on all week-days, either at his club at Stroan or at the golf-links, was in the habit of returning home punctually at nine.

[166]And Miss Bostal took up the tongs, and picking out from the grate the little bits of cinder which had fallen from the fire, she arranged them judiciously on the top to prevent a wasteful blaze.

“Do I?” said Nell, trying to smile, but shivering as she did so. “Well, I think I have had enough to scare me to-day, haven’t I?”

“Oh, my dear, I shouldn’t worry myself too much if I were you. It was a very terrible thing, and I felt bound to scold you at the time for bringing this young man down here at all. But it will be a lesson to you to be careful, and I have no doubt that both the young men will have time to think the matter over, and will make up their minds to control their passions better in future.”

“But Clifford—Mr. King! I am afraid he is seriously hurt!” whimpered Nell, with the tears, at last released, running down her cheeks.

“And Jem—he will certainly keep his word and give information to the police this time!”

“Why, of—the robbery; of what he says he[167] saw!” said Nell, fixing anxious eyes on her friend, and dropping her voice.

“Haven’t you got over your dread of that yet? For my part, I shall be very glad when something is known. My father has been to the expense of an extra bolt on our back door since this scare has been about; and I myself can never sleep more than an hour without jumping up with the fancy that I hear a burglar in the dining-room underneath.”

But Nell said nothing. She remained sitting in a constrained, almost awkward attitude, crouching over the fire, and throwing at her companion, from time to time, glances full of shy inquiry and of unmistakable alarm.

Miss Bostal began to regard her protégée with looks, if not of suspicion, at least of perplexity.

It was plain that the old difficulty of a maid and her lovers had begun to cast the shadow of estrangement between the friends.

There had been silence on both sides for some minutes, when, at last, the colonel’s knock was heard at the front door. It had been his habit, until the news of the robberies at the Blue Lion was whispered about, to let himself into his house by simply turning the handle. But now, in common[168] prudence, they deemed it necessary to keep the doors fastened from the inside.

With a sigh of relief Miss Bostal sprang up and hurried out to admit her father.

“Why, papa, what makes you so late? Nell has been with me, or I should have felt quite nervous.”

The colonel came in with much quicker steps than usual, but he stopped short on hearing the girl’s name mentioned.

“Nell!” exclaimed he. And by his manner Miss Theodora saw that something unusual had occurred. Before, however, she had time to ask any questions, he added, with a slight toss of the head: “Oh, well, the girl must hear it. Where is she?”

Nell had not moved from her seat by the fire; but she held up her head, listening. It was in this attitude that Colonel Bostal discovered her when he threw open the dining-room door and entered, followed by his daughter.

“Well, papa, what is this wonderful news of yours?” chirped Miss Theodora, quite anxious for a little bit of gossip.

“Well, it’s something very serious, very dreadful, indeed. A man was found lying by the side of the road this evening, just outside Stroan, and it seems it is Jem Stickels.”

[169]“Dear, dear, not intoxicated again, I hope, after all his promises?” said Miss Theodora, anxiously.

“But it’s not possible! They must have made a mistake,” urged Miss Bostal. “Why, Nell and I were talking to him a little before seven o’clock! And he was then quite well, perfectly recovered.”

“At Mrs. Mann’s cottage, where he lodges. He came to the door and spoke to us himself. He was very disagreeable and rude to us, poor fellow,” said Miss Theodora, who seemed unable to grasp the fact that the man who had been so very full of life and its passions three hours before should now be lying dead.

“Ah, well, then you will both have to make your appearances as witnesses, that’s certain. For there will be an inquest held to-morrow.”

“As witnesses? How dreadful! Besides, what can we prove? He was quite well then.”

“That’s what you will have to prove. And I hope you may succeed,” said the colonel, dubiously.[170] “For if you don’t, the young fellow that knocked him down and stunned him—” Nell looked up, pallid with fear—“this King, will certainly be had up for manslaughter.”

“Oh, no, oh, no! How can that be possible? He had quite recovered when we saw him; Miss Theodora tells you so; Mr. and Mrs. Mann can prove it, too. He spoke just as you do. He looked just the same as ever. He must have got tipsy afterward; everybody knows he was always getting tipsy. And he must have quarreled with some man and been thrown down, or else he must have fallen into the ditch and been suffocated, or—or—”

“I don’t think you ought to try to throw fresh obloquy upon the dead,” said Miss Bostal, gravely. “He was quite sober when we saw him, and it must have been very little later when he died.”

“It would have killed him at once,” protested Nell. “You can’t be stunned and recover entirely, and then die of the blow that stunned you an hour afterward. Is that possible, colonel?”

“I have never heard of such a case that I know of,” said he, with reserve. “But I should not like[171] to give an opinion until we have heard the doctors’ evidence.”

“But didn’t you hear what the doctor said? Didn’t you wait to hear it?” persisted Nell.

“I waited to hear it, but I didn’t succeed,” said the colonel, in an offended tone.

The fact was that he and a number of other nobodies, who on one account or other considered themselves persons of great importance in the neighborhood, had been cruelly snubbed by the two medical men who had made an examination of the body when it had been brought into the town. For, after making their examination, they had both passed out of the building and through the throng which awaited them as quickly as possible, and had both declined at that stage to give a definite opinion as to the cause of death. So all the little-great men felt grossly insulted, and departed to their respective homes at a white heat of indignation.

“For all I know, they may bring it in ‘Murder’ against this fellow, King,” said the colonel, irritably, not with any feeling of animosity against the person in question, but in order to get Nell to sympathize with his own grievance.

“Murder! Against Clifford!” cried she, springing[172] to the door and gasping for breath. “Oh, you don’t mean that! You can’t!”

She burst into a violent fit of weeping, which made the colonel rather ashamed of himself. He tried to calm her, assuring her that nobody but the doctors, who were pompous asses without an idea how to treat men of powers and position vastly superior to their own, would ever entertain such a monstrous opinion. But she could not find enough comfort in his words; and at last, in spite of his and his daughter’s efforts to detain her, she set off to walk to the Blue Lion, that she might at least have the assurance she longed for that nobody there shared the colonel’s rashly expressed opinion.

“Mind, Nell, you are to come back here to sleep,” commanded Miss Bostal, who objected to the girl’s remaining in the vicinity of her highly undesirable lover.

But Nell would give no promise. She was deeply anxious, not only to hear how Clifford was and what people thought of Jem Stickels’s death, but, also, to know how soon she would be able to speak to Clifford, whose advice had become more necessary than ever.

Refusing, therefore, a rather perfunctory offer on the colonel’s part to escort her along the lonely[173] road, she bade her friends good-by and started on her way to the Blue Lion.

But she got little reward for her pains. The house was shut up when she reached it; and Meg, who let her in, started at the sight of her, and hurried her up to her room, with scant information. Of course, the servant had heard of the finding of Jem Stickels’s body; but she either would not or could not offer any opinions, either her own or anybody else’s, as to the manner in which it came about; and Nell, fearing to rouse suspicion, was fain to go to bed unsatisfied. Only one piece of comfort was given her: Mr. King, who had a professional nurse in attendance on him, was getting on as well as they could hope.

On the following morning, George Claris, who looked worried and anxious, told his niece, as soon as breakfast was over, to pack her trunk for her journey to London. Nell did not dare to make any protest, nor even to ask any questions of her uncle, whose mood was clearly one to be respected. She had to content herself with Meg’s report, obtained from the nurse, that Clifford had passed a good night.

Before ten o’clock Nell and her uncle were driving toward Stroan in the dog-cart, with her trunk behind them.

[174]They had not gone far when they noticed that something unusual was going on along the road. A party of men, among whom were two or three of the Stroan police, were busily engaged in examining the road itself and the ditch on either side. Nell, with feminine quickness of perception, guessed that this search was in some way connected with the discovery of Jem Stickels’s body on the previous evening; but her uncle, being less acute, pulled up his horse, and made inquiries.

“Nothing as would interest you,” added another of the searchers, and he, too, looked in an odd manner at the young girl who sat with pale face and silent lips beside George Claris.

“Well, you might give a civil answer to a civil question, I should think!” said the innkeeper, angrily.

His niece, more by gestures and coaxing little touches of his sleeve than by words, tried to induce him to drive on. But he was obstinate. As an old inhabitant, and one, moreover, who had always been on good terms with every one, he thought he had a right to the information he had innocently asked for.

[175]“Come now,” he persisted, leaning out of the dog-cart and speaking in a confidential tone: “If it’s a secret, you know as I can keep it. I’ve kept secrets enough before, haven’t I?”

But to his great indignation, he saw on some of the faces of the men at work what he took for a pitying smile.

The policeman to whom he had first spoken repressed the smile on his own face, and answered seriously enough:

“We’re not at liberty to say any more at present. But you’ll know as much as we do very soon—this afternoon, most likely.”

Then the policeman glanced from George Claris to the trunk behind; and, as the dog-cart drove off, he whispered some words to the man nearest to him, which sent him running at a good pace in the direction of Stroan.

Uncle and niece had scarcely got on the platform of the little station when the local police superintendent dashed through the doorway after them.

“Ah, Mr. Claris, I’m just in time, I see,” he sang[176] out cheerily, as he touched his hat politely to Nell. “Going up to London for a holiday?”

“Not me. Can’t afford holidays,” replied Claris, rather surlily. “I’m seeing my niece off, that’s all.”

“Well, I’m sorry to have to stop the lady’s trip, but we shall want her as a witness at the inquest that’s to be held this afternoon. Very sorry, Miss,” he went on to Nell, “but it’s only putting off the pleasure for a few days.”

But Nell looked as much overwhelmed as if the summons of the superintendent had been a death-warrant. She made no answer, but stood silently, tearless but terror-struck, in front of the two men staring at the approaching train, with her lips parted and a wild look in her eyes.

“What’s come to the girl? Don’t look like that!” said he in her ear. “Folks’ll think you had a hand in it yourself if you go into court with that face!”

“Will they say that, uncle? Will they dare to say that?” she asked, with such breathless earnestness that he stepped back with a frown on his honest red face.

[177]“Bless the girl! You give me quite a turn with your whisperings and your scared face,” said he, testily. “Come along back home, and for goodness’ sake don’t let them think as you wanted to get away. The Lord only knows what people say at these times if you don’t keep your wits about you, and answer questions like a reasonable creature.”

Nell said nothing. But the innkeeper’s heart sank within him as he drove her home, and perceived that his once light-hearted and merry little niece was trembling like a leaf the whole way.

The inquest was held in the little town-hall in the market-place, and the ugly whispers which were afloat concerning Jem Stickels’s death brought together such a gathering that the meager accommodation provided by the old building was taxed to the utmost.

It was evident from the outset that this was no ordinary case of a drunken man found dead in a ditch, with nothing about him to tell how he came by his death. From the very first moment when the doors were opened, and the crowd rushed in and filled in a moment the space allotted to the public, there were murmurs and whispers flying from mouth to mouth, indicative of the general belief that some person or persons of a higher social position than the dead fisherman, and more generally interesting than he, would be implicated in the course of the proceedings. The questions: “Where’s the young lady?” And “Won’t the gentleman be well enough to come?” were often but never satisfactorily[179] answered. The witnesses in the case were in the magistrate’s room, so rumor said, and were to be brought out one by one as they were wanted.

That part of the court usually occupied by the officials alone held on this occasion a good many curious ones drawn thither by the open secret of the romantic interest attached to the case. A few portly wives of local tradesmen, sandwiched in among the members of the sterner sex, lent their presence to the scene. There was a hum and a buzz from end to end of the tightly-packed court as the jurymen filed in, and taking their places on the oaken seats, black with age, which were already old when Charles the First was king, were sworn one by one, duly charged by the coroner.

After the lull in the court caused by these proceedings, there was a loud buzz of talk when the jury filed out again to view the body. The policemen, little used to such a scene of excitement in their quiet, little town, roared themselves hoarse in their endeavor to maintain silence on the part of everybody but themselves.

When the jurymen returned the interesting part of the proceedings began. The first witness called was the boy, Charles Wallett, who had found the body. His evidence did not take many minutes,[180] and consisted merely of the information he had given at the Bell Inn the evening before. He had seen the body lying by the roadside, had called to the man, had touched him; and being unable to detect a movement or to obtain an answer, he had concluded that the man was dead, and had run with all speed to give information of his discovery.

The second witness was the detective, Hemming. He admitted the open secret that he was a private inquiry agent, and that he was staying at Stroan on business. He had been the first to reach the body after Wallett’s discovery of it, and he had been one of those to identify the deceased as Jem Stickels, the fisherman. The man was quite dead when he found him, but the body was still quite warm.

“I heard it chime the half-hour past eight by St. Martin’s Church clock when I was about halfway between Stroan bridge and the place where we discovered the body.”

“Was there anything about the position in which the body lay, or anything else, in fact, to enable you to form an opinion as to the cause of death?”

“Nothing whatever, sir,” answered Hemming, who gave his evidence in the clear voice and confident manner of the old policeman, who feels that[181] the court is his own theatre, where he is bound to get a hearing and deserve it.

“Was the body lying face downward, in such a position that the man may have been too drunk to rise, and have been suffocated in the grass and mud?”

“He was lying face downward, as I have said, sir. But his mouth was not close to the ground. I don’t think it is possible that he could have been suffocated. His clothes were quite loose about his neck also.”

“Well, sir, I had heard something; and it made me jump to a conclusion as I should not otherwise have done. With your permission, sir, I would rather not say at the present stage what that conclusion was. It was formed from nothing I saw about the body.”

There were whispers in the court. The people in the crowd looked at one another, and intimated that there wasn’t much worth knowing that the London chap didn’t know. They all felt kindly toward Hemming for speaking out so that they could hear him, an accomplishment in which the non-professional witness is so lamentably deficient.

This was the gist of Hemming’s evidence, the[182] few further questions which he was asked producing unimportant answers. Each witness had to put up with a trivial question or two from the members of the jury, who all wished to make the evidence given bear more weight than the giver intended.

The third witness called was Lucas Mann, in whose house the deceased man had been a lodger at the time of his death.

Mann deposed that Stickels was brought home by two men at a time which he fixed as between a quarter and half-past six. Stickels, who was in a half-dazed condition when he arrived, came to himself entirely within a few minutes and told him a story as to how he came to be stunned. Stickels had then seemed quite well, had had a cup of tea by the fire, and had expressed his intention of walking to Stroan that night. Then there had been a knock at the door. Stickels himself had opened it, and after a conversation with two ladies who had come to see him, he had gone out by the back door abruptly. The next thing Mann had heard of him was that he had been found dead on the road.

The next two witnesses were the men who had picked Jem Stickels up from the ground, at the back of the Blue Lion, after his encounter with Clifford. These both deposed that the man was unconscious when they picked him up, that he began[183] to recover almost immediately, and that they did not have to carry him to the cottage where he lodged, but only to support him a little, as he complained of feeling “a bit giddy-like.” They said that he seemed to be quite himself before they left him at the cottage.

There was a buzz of excitement in court when Miss Bostal was called. With the feminine witnesses began the real interest of the case. Enough had leaked out by this time for every gossip in Stroan to be aware that the quarrel between the gentleman, Clifford King, and the fisherman, Jem Stickels, had been on Nell Claris’s account; and everybody knew, also, that Miss Bostal had espoused the cause of Jem Stickels, and so had brought herself prominently forward into the romantic story. Although Jem Stickels had not borne the best of characters, it was natural that after his sudden and mysterious death there should be a strong revulsion of popular feeling in his favor.

“Poor chap!” they said to one another. “It was clear he was awful fond of the girl, and, to be sure, she must have given him some encouragement for him to have made bold to go for her fine gentleman lover.”

The feminine portion of the population was[184] strongly antagonistic to Nell on account of her undoubted claims to beauty; and the strong feeling against her was undoubtedly the result of simple jealousy rather than a solid opinion founded upon her own conduct. The male portion of the populace, on the other hand, while less virulent than the women, were not inclined to warm partisanship on behalf of the girl, who had always displayed a marked indifference to their attentions. There was many a young man in the crowded court that day who found a secret salve for his wounded vanity in the thought that the girl who would not vouchsafe him so much as a look had come to grief between two admirers, one of whom was not a lover to be proud of, while the other had brought himself into a dangerous position.

On the whole, therefore, it was Miss Bostal rather than Nell who carried the sympathy of the ordeal. When the little, thin lady, with the pinched face and the faded hair, stepped into the witness-box and kissed the book with grave and dignified reverence, there was little or no laughter at her odd costume of fifteen years before, at the “girl-of-the-period” short jacket, bunched-up gown and Tyrolese hat, which, once so “smart” and up-to-date, had now become such a quaint relic of the past. People pardoned her eccentric dress, her[185] prim little manners, in consideration of the goodness of heart which had caused the little lady to hold out a helping hand to the poor scapegrace and to champion the cause of the man of the people against the gentleman.

Every ear in the court was strained to catch her words, but the little woman spoke out well, in a thin, almost shrill voice, indeed, but with a distinct utterance which made every word carry from end to end of the hall.

“I understand, madam, that you were the last person who is known to have spoken to Jem Stickels before his death?” said the coroner.

“Yes, sir,” answered Miss Theodora. “I went to the cottage where he lodged as soon as I heard of his accident, to learn how he was.”

“Yes, sir, he was rather. He was much excited, and said that we should have to answer some questions to-morrow morning.”

At these words every man and woman in the court felt stirred to a deeper interest. They were touching the edge of the mystery at last.

“He said you would be asked some questions? What did you suppose him to mean by that?”

[186]“I hardly thought about it. He spoke in a wild way. He was very angry and excited. All I thought about was trying to pacify him.”

“Did it occur to you at all that he had any idea of making away with himself?”

This question evidently took the witness by surprise. Miss Bostal stared at the coroner in frank perplexity. It was clear that the notion was new to her.

“Well, sir, I thought he meant to refer to the story that has been about—the story of some robberies not far from where he lived. He often used to say he knew who the thief was.”

At this ingenuous reply, which slipped out of the witness’s mouth without her having any idea of the bombshell she was throwing down, a great sensation shook the listening crowd, and called forth cries of silence from the police.

“He was much excited, you say? Did he seem otherwise in his usual state? I mean, did he speak as a man speaks who is in perfect health, in perfect command of himself?” asked the coroner, much to the disappointment of the listeners, who were more interested in the mystery lying underneath the story than in the death of Jem Stickels.

[187]“Oh, yes! He seemed quite himself. We were surprised to find him like that.”

“Did he say anything about the blow he had received? Did he make any complaint?”

“And now, madam, I must ask you another question. How far is it from your house to the spot where the deceased was found?”

“If you go by the fields, it must be about a mile and a half. By the road, I should think nearly two miles.”

At this point the superintendent of police nodded to the coroner, to express his assent to this calculation.

“And now tell me, if you please, what time it was when you left the cottage, when you saw the last of the deceased, that is to say?”

“I looked at my watch when we got back home again, to see if it was time to light the fire in the dining-room for my father’s return home. And it was then five-and-twenty minutes past seven.”

“Yes. It is about three-quarters of a mile, by the way we came over the fields.”

There was a short pause, and the listening crowd, now more on the alert than ever, waited breathlessly for the coroner’s next question. It came in a rather surprising form.

“Can you tell me, Miss Bostal, whether you and Miss Claris remained in each other’s company from the moment you returned home until your father’s return?”

“Not quite all the time,” she answered, after a moment’s thought. “I tore my dress on a nail as I came through the back door, and I asked Miss Claris to make the tea while I ran up to my room and mended it.”

“I had no reason to take particular note of the time; but I think I remember seeing that it was between twenty minutes and a quarter to eight when I went down into the dining-room and lit the fire.”

“And during that time that you were in the dining-room by yourself, did you hear her moving about in the kitchen?”

“I don’t remember noticing. I was thinking of the fire. It would not burn up.”

“Altogether, then, I gather from what you have said, quite three-quarters of an hour elapsed between the time you left Miss Claris at the back door and the time she brought in the tea?”

“When you did see her next—when she brought in the tea, that is to say—did she seem agitated, or was she calm?”

“She was very much agitated. She had been crying all the time, I think she told me.”

“I must thank you for the clear way in which[190] you have given your evidence. Only one more question. Would it be possible, do you think, for a person to get, say, to the place where the body was discovered and back again in three-quarters of an hour or a little more?”

The crowd in the court seemed to draw a deep breath of unanimous consternation. Only the witness seemed to ignore the drift of the question.

“As sure as I can be, considering that I took no particular note of the time.”

“Thank you. That is all I have to ask you at present, though it is possible we may have to recall you. Gentlemen,” he went on, turning to the jury, who were already springing up with their questions, “I think it will be better for you to hear the evidence of the doctors before you ask this witness any further questions.”

They sat down again, and again there was a buzz and a hum of excitement in the court, and people looked at one another and began to ask one another whether it was true that Nell Claris had been brought from the station, and whether she would[191] be called as a witness. The story was growing more mysterious.

The buzz subsided as the doctor who saw the body before it was moved took the oath and gave his evidence.

He had noticed nothing to give him a clue as to the cause of death in the first cursory examination he was able to make out of doors.

“You afterward, with the assistance of Doctor Clarges, made a thorough examination of the body?”

“I was. In the right side of the head I found a small wound, and, after probing for some time, I found a bullet imbedded in the cerebellum.”

To say that you could have heard a pin drop in the crowded court at Stroan, when the doctor announced that he had found a bullet in the brain of poor Jem Stickels, is to understate the deathlike silence which fell upon the dense mass of listeners.

Not one man in twenty among the crowd had been prepared for this sensational disclosure, which had, indeed, been communicated to no one but the police. This new fact threw such a sudden light upon the case, thrusting out, as it did, all possibility of his having come by his death through accident, that every man and woman present needed a moment’s breathing space to grasp the new view of the situation thus abruptly presented.

In the meantime the doctor went quietly on with his evidence, much of which was technical and uninteresting to the majority. But the crowd was able to fasten on to the important facts; that the shot had been fired from behind the man, and from the right side of the road, supposing[193] the victim to have been coming toward Stroan; that the injury could not have been self-inflicted; and the crime had been committed within a very short time of the discovery of the body.

“Can you give us any opinion, doctor, as to the length of time which must have elapsed between the firing of the shot and your inspection of the body?”

“My opinion is that death had taken place within an hour, certainly, and probably within a much shorter period.”

“The body was still quite warm. As it was a cold night, and the body was lying in a very open situation, the cooling process would be very rapid.”

“Can you tell us the time exactly when you made this first examination of the body, and came to this opinion?”

“It was sixteen minutes past eight when I was sent for, and I arrived at the spot where the body lay at between twenty and five-and-twenty minutes past.”

“You would suppose, then, that death had taken place at about what time? Or is it impossible to get a closer estimate than that?”

“It is difficult to say exactly, of course. But I[194] should be strongly inclined to put the time of death at eight o’clock, or even later.”

“At, in fact, a few minutes before the body was first discovered by the boy?”

“I should even have expected,” went on the doctor, “to hear that the boy had heard the report of a firearm.”

Every one looked towards the unhappy boy, Charles Wallett, who, having given his evidence, was now sitting in court. On the suggestion of one of the jurymen, he was called and questioned again. But he maintained, with hot blushes of confusion at the notice thus directed to him, that he had noticed no noise; that he had seen or heard nothing to attract his attention until he came upon the man lying on his face at the side of the road.

Then he heard a murmur in the court behind, and he began to look scared and to tremble.

“That’s right, my boy,” said the coroner, encouragingly, “think well before you answer; and then tell us everything, even the slightest thing that came under your notice.”

[195]“Sir,” said the boy, turning red and white alternately, “I did hear something. It was just before I turned the bend and saw the man; but I never thought of it before this minute.”

“It was what I took for Mr. Wells shooting at the birds, sir. He’s always about there with his gun, and so I never give it a thought.”

There was truth on the face of this statement, drawn forth so tardily and so unwillingly. Hearing, as he said, the firing at the birds so often, the sound had no significance for him, and it had not even struck him as singular that the farmer should have been out shooting so late.

There was a shade of disappointment in the court at the idea that Jem Stickels might have been shot by accident, after all, in mistake for a sparrow. But this notion was quickly put to flight by the calling of Mr. Wells himself, who was in court, as a witness. He was never out shooting after dark, and on the previous day he had been at Canterbury, and had not returned home until past nine o’clock.

This new link in the chain of evidence, forming as it did an important clue to the exact time of Jem’s death, resulted in a little conversation between the coroner and the superintendent of[196] police, and in the calling of Mrs. Mann as a witness.

“Your husband has told us, Mrs. Mann, that the deceased passed you on his way to the back door. And we have heard that he said he was going to have his pipe and his glass of beer. Now did you notice in which direction he went?”

“Yes, sir, I did,” answered Mrs. Mann, a nervous woman, who could not be persuaded to give her evidence except in a whisper.

“He went into the wash-house and had a wash, and then he went up to his room, which he went up by the wooden steps as is in the wash-house. And I watched him for fear he should leave his candle a-burnin’. Which he did, and so I goes up and puts it out, so as it shouldn’t burn to waste like.”

But to this the witness could not undertake to give a straight answer. “She couldn’t ’ardly say;” “she didn’t rightly know.” “It might be a ’alf-hour;” it might be more. She eventually admitted that it could scarcely be less.

[197]So that it seemed now possible to fix the time of Jem’s death at a time between ten minutes to eight, which was about the earliest moment by which he could have reached the spot where he was found, and ten minutes past, which was the time at which the boy, Charles Wallett, had discovered the body.

There was an adjournment for luncheon at this point, and afterward came the supreme sensation of the day—the appearance of Nell Claris as a witness.

Tongues had been busy with her name since the crowd filed out of the court. No one could doubt the import of the questions the coroner had put to Miss Bostal. It was plain that Nell, the only person, except Clifford, who was known to have had any cause of ill-will toward the deceased man, now lay under the suspicion of being concerned in his death.

Perhaps the girl herself, when she came from the magistrate’s room into the court, was the only person present who did not realize the position in which she stood. For she alone had been absent when the searching questions were being put to her friend.

Nell made a bad impression from the very first. She was wrapped up to the eyes in a long, squirrel-lined cloak and a boa of brown fur, and she wore a large hat, which helped to hide even the outline of[198] her face from the crowd in the court behind her. But from the glimpse which could be caught of her features as she moved hurriedly into the place pointed out to her, it was evident that her far-famed beauty was for a time under eclipse, for her complexion was blurred with crying and her blue eyes looked sunken and colorless.

All that seemed to concern her was to hide as much of her face as she could, and to give her answers so that they should be heard by as few persons as possible. Throughout the whole of her evidence she had to be admonished to “speak up,” and to answer at once and straightforwardly, instead of taking time to think out her replies, as she showed a strong disposition to do.

Altogether she was a bad witness, decidedly the worst of them all. Not even nervous Mrs. Mann gave so much trouble. If there had been no breath of suspicion of the girl before she stood in the witness’s place, her manner and her answers would have been sufficient to arouse the feeling in all those who heard and saw her give her evidence.

“You are the niece of Mr. George Claris, I believe? And you were present when the quarrel took place between the deceased and Mr. Clifford King?”

“There was no quarrel. Jem Stickels attacked[199] him. He struck Mr. King with his knife through the window. He stabbed him.”

“But, as a matter of fact, the deceased did fall to the ground, and lay there, stunned.”

“I am sorry to have to press for an answer. Remember, there is nothing whatever discreditable to a lady in being the object of jealousy between two hot-blooded young men. I believe it is an undoubted fact that Jem Stickels, the deceased, was jealous of Mr. King, and that it was the sight of Mr. King and you together which provoked him to attack a rival whom he regarded, rightly or wrongly, as more favored than himself.”

“No. It was not that. He didn’t. He couldn’t. It was not that he was jealous. He had no right to be jealous. I always hated Jem Stickels, and he[200] knew it. How could he be jealous when I detested him?”

And for the first and last time in the course of her evidence Nell’s voice was loud enough to be heard throughout the court, as she uttered this terribly damaging speech.

When she had spoken, and stood staring at the coroner with wide-open blue eyes, a great wave of horror passed over the court, and the jury to a man felt sorry for her. They had all known this dissipated fisherman, they all felt the gulf of repugnance that must have existed between this refined young girl and him. And, while the conclusion was forced in upon their minds that she had taken violent means to rid herself of him and his persecution, they felt that they would have given a great deal to have been able to hush the matter up.

For while the loathing she so frankly expressed gave a reason and almost an excuse for her crime, on the other hand her fearless avowal of feeling now, when it was so greatly to her interest to hide it, seemed to show that she was in a state of mind in which she could hardly be considered responsible for her actions.

“Well, then,” pursued the coroner, getting away from the fatal subject and speaking with extra dryness[201] to hide his own sympathy, “you went to Colonel Bostal’s house, and you and Miss Bostal went together to see Jem Stickels at his lodging to ask how he was?”

But here again Nell blundered past the opportunity thus given her for clearing her own character.

Here a frightened look passed suddenly across the girl’s face, causing the jurymen, one and all, to look at her more attentively than before.

“And, of course, you didn’t notice whether he seemed in his usual health or not?”

“Of course not. Then you went back to Colonel Bostal’s house with Miss Bostal?”

[202]“Did you notice the time at all? Can you tell us what time it was when you reached the house?”

“Miss Bostal left you to go upstairs and mend her dress. Do you remember that?”

“Now I don’t want to worry you, but I want you to think before you answer me. When Miss Bostal left you to go upstairs, what did you do?”

[203]“Try to recollect. It only happened last night, you know. Miss Bostal says you brought in the tea, brought it into the dining-room. Don’t you remember doing that?”

“Yes. And you—had you been in the kitchen all the time after she left you, until you took the tea into the dining-room?”

“Have you, gentlemen, any questions to ask this witness?” went on the coroner, turning to the jury.

“I should just like to ask Miss Claris,” he said,[204] “whether the deceased had not used certain threats towards her? He is known to have said that he had used threats.”

The coroner looked as if he was uncertain whether he should allow this question; but Nell answered by a movement of her head in assent.

“He threatened to tell the police who it was that committed the robberies at your uncle’s house?”

Nell turned very white, and threw up at the persistent juryman a frightened glance.

“I don’t think,” interrupted the coroner, “that you ought to put it like that. Threaten is hardly the word. He said he would give information, did he not?”

The juryman, offended at what he considered a snub, sat back and looked at the ceiling. Another of the jury leaned forward:

“Really, gentlemen, we must keep to the point,” protested the coroner. But Nell answered this question in a louder voice.

“That will do, I think,” said the coroner, who saw that there was a strong tendency on the part of the jury to satisfy their curiosity on points quite outside the subject of inquiry.

And Nell was allowed to retire from her prominent position. Miss Bostal was waiting for her, and, with a gentle hand, she dragged the girl into a seat beside her, where little could be seen of her now flushed and frightened face.

“There is now only one more witness,” went on the coroner, addressing the jury. “It is the second medical man who helped at the post-mortem.”

“He is unable to attend. I have a doctor’s certificate to that effect. But after the evidence which has been given, I think his presence was hardly material.”

“Now, I think it very material,” objected a juryman. “He was known to have quarreled with the deceased—”

“It can be proved that he was in bed at the time of his death,” answered the coroner. “He was so much injured that he was watched from the moment he fell down, fainting, after flinging the deceased off.”

[206]“Well, but I submit that we ought to have proof of this in evidence. When a man is found dead, with a bullet in his head—”

He stopped short, his attention arrested, like that of every other person in the court, by a cry, a movement, on the part of Nell Claris. Springing upon her feet she gave a moan, a gasp, and then looking round her with one quick, frightened stare, sank down into her seat.

There was a buzz of whispering, which was checked by the loud cry of “Silence!” as the second doctor was called and sworn. His evidence was only an echo of that of his colleague, and was hardly listened to by the crowd in the court, who were occupied with a stronger situation.

The coroner’s address to the jury was a very short one, and indicated more doubt in the mind of the coroner than existed in the minds of his hearers.

When the jury had retired, the murmurs rose higher and higher, and the excited discussion of the probable verdict, although repressed a little by the presence of Nell, who sat like a statue by Miss Bostal’s side, had grown into a loud roar long before the jury returned into court.

When they took their seats, the roar of the crowd had suddenly given place to a hush, in which the[207] voice of the coroner asking if they had agreed upon a verdict was distinctly heard.

In a few minutes the news had spread from the court to the crowd in the market-place outside, that the verdict was: “Willful murder by some person or persons unknown.”

When Miss Bostal, at the end of the proceedings, turned to Nell and told her to get up and come home, she found that the girl had fainted.

George Claris, who had not been near his niece during the inquest, but had stood in a corner by himself with folded arms watching the proceedings with a heavy frown, came forward sullenly at Miss Bostal’s imperious gesture.

“Look, look, Mr. Claris, don’t you see the poor child has fainted?” cried she, astonished at his apathy.

“Poor little thing! The horror has been too much for her! Poor little thing!” went on the lady, as she quickly unfastened Nell’s cloak and loosened the front of her gown. “A glass of water,[208] some one, please. And don’t crowd round her; let her have all the air we can.”

When the girl came to herself, as she did in a very few minutes, thanks to the ministrations of Miss Bostal, she was led away to the dog-cart, which was waiting outside.

“Take great care of her,” said Miss Bostal, solicitously, as Nell was hoisted in, very pale and lifeless and miserable. “And if you will take my advice, you will send her off to her aunt in London by the first train to-morrow morning.”

George Claris, who had remained taciturn, sullen, and on the whole rather neglectful of his niece, frowned as he threw a quick glance at her.

“Oh, she’s all right,” he said, with gruffness most unusual with him in speaking of his darling Nell. “She only wants the fresh air to bring her to. How are you going to get back, Miss Bostal? Can’t I give you a lift? We’ll make room for you.”

He looked up at Nell, expecting her to echo his words, and to make room for her friend; but the girl never moved.

“Leave her alone,” she whispered. “She’s not herself yet. This wretched business has been too much for her.”

[209]“Why should it be too much for her more than for anybody else?” asked the innkeeper, fiercely.

Nell turned with a start, and her eyes were full of horror as she met those of her uncle. Miss Theodora pulled him impatiently by the arm.

“Men have no sympathy,” she said reproachfully. “My father is just the same. You don’t make any allowance for a woman’s nerves. And yet, if we don’t have nerves, you complain that we are mannish and unlovable. Oh, Mr. Claris, I didn’t think it of you! I didn’t, indeed. I’ve often thought that your gentleness to Nell was a pattern to be copied by other men in their treatment of ladies.”

The excitement of the day had rendered Miss Bostal much more loquacious and condescending than was usual with her. Her father, who had not been in court, came up at this moment, and, with a nod to George Claris and a cold salutation to Nell, drew Miss Theodora away.

“Come away! Come along!” said he. “Mrs. Lansdowne will give us a lift on her way home. I don’t know what you want to go hanging about the place for a minute longer than you need. I should think you were glad to get this gruesome affair done with. Come along!”

The cold drive home of George Claris and his niece began in silence. They were already in sight of the little group of buildings of which the Blue Lion was the principal, when the girl, turning suddenly to her uncle, asked:

There was a pause. A struggle was going on in the man’s breast, a struggle pitifully keen, between the love he had always borne toward his Nell and the attacks of doubt and suspicion. It was in a husky, unnatural voice that he presently replied, parrying the question:

George Claris looked at her. And for a minute the old trust came back into his heart, and he told himself that he was a fool, a miserable old fool, to allow a doubt of her absolute goodness and truth to enter his mind. And then again the ugly thoughts which had begun to darken his mind, subtly instilled by the doubt and suspicion in all the minds around him, clouded over him once more. He could not give her an open answer, although he felt that it would have been better if[211] he could have done so. He heaved a big sigh, and answered without looking.

“Ah, well, my girl, it’s not so easy to be lively and cheerful with such things as them,” and he vaguely indicated the recent occurrence, jerking his whip back in the direction of Stroan, “happening under one’s very windows, almost.”

And then they both were silent, both conscious at the same moment that they were close to the spot where the body of Jem Stickels had been found on the previous night. Both uncle and niece looked furtively at the spot, easily discernible by the trodden-down condition of the wayside grass. And then, quite suddenly, their furtive glances sought each other’s face, and for a moment their eyes met.

“Uncle,” asked Nell, in a whisper, “was the gun that fired the bullet found?”

This, indeed, was the chief difficulty with which the local police, put on their mettle by the presence in their midst of Hemming, the London detective, had to contend.

The bullet found in the head of Jem Stickels had evidently been fired from an old-fashioned weapon, being of large size and of obsolete pattern. And no weapon had been found in the neighborhood, after a diligent and exhaustive search. The theory[212] of the doctors was that the bullet had been discharged from a pistol at a distance of at least some yards; but at present this theory had borne no fruit except in the brain of the detective, Hemming.

That astute person had been revolving in his mind an idea, which he took care to keep to himself, and which led him, within an hour of the conclusion of the inquest, in the direction of Shingle End.

Where would Nell be so likely to find a weapon with which to commit the crime which freed her from her fear of Jem Stickels as at the house of an old soldier? Somewhere about the house, and probably in a place with which she, an habitué of the house, was well acquainted, the old colonel would be sure to keep some mementos of his soldiering days, an inspection of which Hemming felt was very likely to give him the clue he wanted.

It was, as usual, Miss Bostal who opened the door to him. Her prim face seemed to light up on seeing who it was.

“Come in, do come in,” said she, throwing the door wide open, and inviting him to enter the drawing-room. “I do hope you have got some more news for us. Do you know I hope more from what you will find out than from all these country policemen! If they were to sit and talk till mid-summer,[213] I don’t believe they would be any nearer to finding out who did it than they are now.”

“I think you’re too hard upon them, ma’am,” said he. “They think they’ve got a pretty good clue already. And they quite expect to make an arrest before many days are over.”

Miss Bostal, who had followed him into the drawing-room, and was proceeding to light a solitary candle, after her hospitable custom, shrugged her little, thin shoulders impatiently.

The detective did not answer at once. And when she turned to inquire the reason of this, she perceived by the expression of his face something had startled him.

“I suppose these doings have made me nervous, like the rest of them, ma’am,” answered he, looking down at his hat, and brushing it carefully with his hand. “For I fancied I saw somebody looking in at the window.”

Miss Bostal looked at him curiously. It seemed to her that from where he stood he could see neither of the windows, nor even the reflection of one of them in the glass over the mantelpiece. However,[214] she knew better than to argue with a detective. She walked to the windows, one after the other, and looked out.

“I don’t see anybody,” said she. “It may have been one of the urchins of the place, peeping in out of curiosity. This room is not much used, and the light may have attracted him.”

“And now what is there we can do for you, for, of course, you have come on business?”

“Why, yes, ma’am. Things look very black against your young lady friend yonder.”

“Now, Mr. Hemming, I will not hear a word against that girl,” said Miss Bostal, with sudden warmth. “I tell you the notion is absurd that the child should have had anything to do with it. And I am surprised to hear such a preposterous suggestion from a man of your discernment.”

“It does you credit, ma’am, to take her part,” he said, rather dryly. “Still, there are some questions I must ask the colonel, if he will give me five minutes. And I’m sure I shall be glad enough if he can help to clear her.”

“My father will see you, I am sure,” said Miss Bostal, promptly, going to the door. “Because he[215] is as sure as I am that all light on this matter is in Miss Claris’s interest.”

And, rather resentfully glancing at him as she went out, she crossed the stone-flagged passage, and told her father that the London detective wished to see him.

“Show him in here,” Hemming heard the colonel answer, in tones much more disturbed than his daughter’s.

Miss Theodora ushered Hemming into the dining-room, which looked snug and warm after the cold bareness of the state apartment; and then she left the two men together.

“I’ve come to ask you, sir,” said Hemming, when he had apologized for intruding, “whether you have any firearms stored away about the house?”

“Firearms? No, certainly not,” answered the colonel, in a tone of indignation which showed that he scented Hemming’s desire to connect his property with the outrage.

“No offense, sir,” said Hemming, persuasively. “But I am bound to make inquiries, as you know. I see you’ve got a trophy on the wall outside, with spears, a long Afghan gun, and—”

“Why, that gun would do more harm to the man who fired it than it would to anything he fired at!”

The detective availed himself of the permission, and brought into the room from the place where they had hung on the wall of the passage, the Afghan gun, a short and heavy camel-gun, and the pistol in question. It was an old cavalry pistol, of obsolete pattern.

“Take care,” said the colonel, suddenly ducking his head as the detective held it up and put his hand on the trigger. “It’s loaded.”

And he pulled the trigger three or four times without effect. The colonel jumped up.

“Why,” cried he, “I loaded it myself the other day! I was showing the ladies how it was used, and I know I loaded it before I put it back in its place.”

“Ah,” said Hemming, more dryly than ever, “it’s been used since then, sir. Will you show me the bullets you have by you? I want to compare them with one at the Stroan police station.”

As soon as Nell and her uncle returned to the Blue Lion, they were met by the nurse who was attending Clifford. She said her patient was so anxious to see Miss Claris that she had been obliged reluctantly to give him permission to do so, fearing that he would worry himself into a fever if she refused.

But, much to the nurse’s surprise, Nell was even more reluctant to see him than she herself had been to give her permission to do so. It needed half a dozen earnest messages to persuade her to go to the sick man’s room.

Clifford, who was lying in the little sitting-room, which had been given up to him, gave a long sigh of relief when he saw Nell. She was very pale, and the expression of her face was full of sadness and terror.

“Sit down here, Nell, beside me,” said he in a weak voice, “and tell me why you look like that. I am not going to die. Is that what you are afraid of, dear?”

Nell shook her head, and tried to smile, as she[218] took his hand. A hoarse, rattling sound came from her lips, but no articulate word. Then, meeting his loving eyes, she broke down and burst into a passion of tears. Clifford did just the very best thing possible in the circumstances: he let her cry. Without a word, he sought and found her second hand, placed it with the other in his own left hand, while with his right he gently caressed her golden head. So she cried bitterly for a time, and then less bitterly, until, the pressure of her acute misery relieved, she suddenly sprang back, snatched her hands away, and dried her eyes.

“Now, Nell, do you feel better?” asked Clifford, as a faint smile began to hover on the girl’s face.

“Yes, I do, much better,” answered she in a more self-possessed tone. “Now I can tell you something. My uncle thinks I—I—did it.”

“Well, what on earth is he to think? It is just what I should have thought myself if—”

“Yes, but I do, though. Look here; I got the nurse to pay some one to go to the inquest and report[219] to me. He did, when the jury adjourned for luncheon. And now I’ve just heard of your evidence and the verdict, and I don’t see how anybody, except me, could fail to suspect you. Yes, you.”

“No, child, of course not. But I think you gave your evidence very badly, and that you therefore can’t expect to be pitied. Now tell me why you didn’t want to come and see me?”

“What was it you wanted to see me about, when you sent for me to come down from town to see you?”

“Ah, that’s it,” she whispered hurriedly. “That is why I didn’t want to see you. I knew you would want to know that. And now—I cannot tell you!”

“Yesterday,” went on Nell, her voice getting lower, “I was going to ask your advice; for it was only a case of theft. To-day I dare not, for it is now a question of—murder!”

“I don’t. I wish I did. But—I suspect. And I dare not whisper my suspicion even to you, until I have felt my way to a little more knowledge. Now will you be content with that, and not want to make me speak when I would rather be silent?”

Nell began to look perplexed and miserable, drawn this way and that by conflicting feelings of love and duty. Clifford saw how keen the struggle was, and like a generous fellow, cut it short for her.

“All right, Nell, you shall keep your secret. Only mind this: I must be the first to know it. Will you promise me that?”

The weight of care sprang up from off the girl’s heart at one bound. The entire trust which Clifford showed in her was just the balm her wounded soul needed; and the hour the nurse allowed her to spend by her lover’s bedside, although it was passed[221] almost in silence after this explanation, was one of happiness and relief so deep that she went out to face the world and her uncle’s suspicion with fresh courage.

Clifford’s wound had proved more serious than was at first supposed. There was risk of inflammation, and the doctors ordered that he was to be kept very quiet. When, therefore, that same evening, Hemming called at the inn, and asked to see Mr. King, he would have been denied altogether if Clifford himself had not heard the inquiry, and recognizing the voice, insisted on seeing the detective.

“Well, and what do you want with me?” asked Clifford, with interest, as Hemming was shown into his tiny room.

“Well, sir, I hear you’ve seen Miss Claris since the inquest,” was the detective’s rather abrupt opening.

And he gave the young man a shrewd look as he pronounced this statement. Clifford said nothing, and Hemming went on:

“Knowing how you were—were a friend of the young lady, sir, I thought it only right you should know as I am downright certain who was at the bottom[222] both of the murder and the robbery; and I’m only waiting to make the chain of proof a little stronger before making an arrest.”

“I leave you to guess, sir. I may tell you I’ve found the pistol”—Clifford started—“and the bullet fits it exactly.”

“Do you want to put any more questions to Miss Claris?” asked Clifford, imperturbably.

“Well, the young lady seemed so unwilling—But, of course, if you think she wouldn’t mind—after all, it’s only a rehearsal like, and I dare say she knows that.”

Now these words, taken with the tone in which they were spoken, were strong tests of the lover’s trust. But Clifford did not flinch. He told Hemming to call the nurse, who was waiting outside the door, and at once sent a message to Nell to ask her to come and see him.

“And don’t tell her,” he went on, with a defiant glance at the detective, “who it is that wishes to see her.”

When Nell came in, therefore, she was taken by surprise. It worried Clifford to note that she turned very white and began to tremble violently when she found who it was that wanted to speak to her. Hemming came to the point at once.

[223]“Do you remember, Miss,” said he, in a very deferential tone, “Colonel Bostal’s taking down an old pistol from a nail in the wall of his house, about a week ago, and showing it to you and some other ladies?”

Yes, Nell remembered. She threw a frightened glance at Clifford as she made this admission.

“You fired it off two or three times, I believe, Miss? And you hit a mark that you fired at?”

Clifford started up, leaning on his arm. In an instant Nell recovered enough of her self-possession[224] to tell him to lie down again. But her voice shook. Hemming spoke in a very gentle and apologetic tone as he went on with his interrogatory:

He produced from one of his pockets the old cavalry pistol which he had brought from Shingle End.

“Yes,” replied Nell, not heeding Clifford’s attempts to bring the examination to an end, “that is the one.”

“Do you remember what happened when you had all seen it, and it was done with?”

“Well, I can’t tell you yet, sir. But the colonel says—and the young lady and Miss Bostal all say the same—that he put the pistol back on its nail, loaded, a week ago; and when I took it down from[225] its nail to-night, it had been discharged. That’s all at present, sir.”

For one minute Hemming waited, expecting to have something said to him by Clifford King or Nell. As they remained silent, he took his leave, with more apologies for his intrusion.

“Nell,” asked Clifford in a whisper, when they had been alone and silent for some moments, “is it true that you fired it off?”

“No. I swear I don’t. But, Nell, my darling, I begin to tremble for you all the same.”

“If I knew anything, I would tell it, whatever happened,” she cried, suddenly. “It is not fair that I should have to suffer like this!”

Now this speech was perplexing to her listener, but she would give no explanation of it. She only told him that she wanted time to think, to consider. And on the following morning, soon after breakfast, she called the nurse out of the room to ask if she could go in and say good-by to Mr. King.

Clifford stared at her in astonishment. She had on her hat and cloak, and was evidently ready for a journey.

[226]“Didn’t you know that I was going to London yesterday, to my aunt’s?” she asked. “They stopped me, to give evidence at the inquest. So I am going to-day, instead.”

“You think it looks bad for me to go away?” said she impatiently. “Well, people must think what they like. If the police want me, I dare say they will be able to find me out,” she added bitterly.

“Don’t, child, don’t speak like that,” cried he. “I only thought you would be too much interested in this business to go away until they had found out the truth.”

“When will that be?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders. “I might stay here forever if I waited for that!”

“Never mind, Nell. Whatever you tell me, or whatever you choose not to tell, I love you and I trust you just the same.”

“Now,” she whispered, with a sudden change from her rather hard, defiant tone to one full of gentleness and gratitude, “I don’t care what they believe, or what they do to me.”

“You will write to me, Nell? You will let me write to you?” whispered Clifford, as he clung to her.

“You may write to me,” she said, “when all this mystery is cleared up. But not before.”

“Then you may never write to me,” answered the girl, half suffocated by her sobs, as she tore herself away from him, and ran out of the room.

Her uncle was waiting outside. He was deeply moved, and it was with difficulty that he repressed all outward signs of the struggle between love and suspicion of his niece, as he helped her into the dog-cart. Their drive to the station was as silent as their drive from the town-hall on the preceding day had been. It was not until they had driven up to[228] the door of the railway station that Nell addressed her uncle.

“Uncle George,” she said, in a low, troubled voice, “why can’t you trust me?”

The innkeeper was touched; he was about to answer her with words which would have convinced her that, whatever his suspicions might be, his love for her was as strong as ever, when the sight of a policeman watching them intently froze the words on his lips.

“There’s the reason why I can’t,” answered George Claris, hoarsely. “Look how you are watched, wherever you go. They won’t let you go away, I expect.”

Nell said nothing, but got out of the dog-cart with compressed lips and anxious eyes. Contrary not only to her uncle’s expectations but to her own, however, she was allowed to start on her journey without hindrance. When the train had steamed out of the little station, the innkeeper turned abruptly and defiantly to the policeman.

“Nothing at present, Mr. Claris,” answered the man. “When we do want anything, you know, we can always find it.”

Whatever he thought of the truth of this statement, George Claris was prudent enough not to question it.

In the weeks which followed Nell’s departure for London the spirits of her uncle declined day by day until the red-faced, genial innkeeper had become little more than the shadow of his former self.

He missed his niece more than he would admit even to himself. And although it is true that his mind had become tainted with suspicion of her truth and honesty, he would have been ready and willing to receive her back and to forget the doubts which he could not wholly stifle. But Nell was sharpsighted enough to understand this state of feeling, as revealed to her unconsciously by her uncle in his letters. So she made excuses for remaining in London, and George Claris was left lonely.

The innkeeper, although he did not share Clifford’s entire confidence in Nell, was grateful to the young barrister for it. But he said that Nell had forbidden him to divulge her address, and Mr. King must wait for the girl’s own time for making it known to him.

[230]Just before Clifford left reluctantly for London, he had another interview with the detective Hemming, who, after having disappeared for a fortnight, had returned to the scene of his investigations.

Hemming was reticent, but gave the impression that he was more strongly convinced than ever that he was on the right track as to the perpetrator of the murder and of the robberies.

“Well, what are you going to do?” asked Clifford impatiently. “Are you going to set another decoy to work?”

Clifford controlled the anger he felt, since an exhibition of it would only have closed the detective’s lips more tightly.

“I should like you to make the experiment, though,” said he. “Will you make it on my account? I want it very well done, no matter what it costs.”

“You’re throwing your money away, sir,” replied Hemming, civilly. “Still, if you wish it, and choose to pay for it, of course it can be done.”

Before they parted, Clifford and the detective had arranged between them the details of a little plot which Clifford thought would certainly suffice to excite the appetite of the astute but daring thief who was at the bottom of all the mischief.

In the week following Clifford’s departure, therefore, there arrived at the Blue Lion a rough-looking person who gave himself out as a successful emigrant, who had returned to his native land with his pockets full of money. The man stayed at the inn for several days, boasted openly in the bar of his luck, showed the results of it in lavish “treating” and in the apparently careless exhibition of handfuls of gold.

But it was all in vain. Hemming had to report to Clifford, not without secret triumph, that the “wealthy emigrant” had been allowed, after a prolonged stay, to leave the inn without having received a visit from the midnight thief. Clifford was much chagrined, although he affected to think[232] that it was only in common prudence that the thief, on whom at least the suspicion of murder now hung, had grown more careful.

But when Hemming had left him, Clifford began to think out a new problem which this last occurrence had presented to him. Was Jem Stickels the thief?

But then it was certainly not Jem Stickels whose hand he had caught under his pillow. And a shiver passed through the young fellow’s frame as he remembered the touch of the smooth skin, of the little slender fingers.

It was not until the first days of March, on a blustering, stormy morning, that Nell Claris, her resolution broken down by a pathetic appeal from her uncle, came back to Stroan.

George Claris met his niece at the station, and each was shocked at the changed appearance of the other. Nell seemed to have lost half her beauty; her cheeks had lost their roundness, and her eyes the look of child-like happiness which had been one of her greatest charms.

“Oh, uncle!” she cried softly, when she had received his silent kiss on her forehead, “you don’t look the same uncle! What have you been doing to yourself?”

“Oh, we’ve been pottering along much in the[233] same old way,” answered the innkeeper, affecting an indifference which he was far from feeling. “Nothing’s happened in particular, since Mr. King went back to London. He wanted your address, as I told you in my letters. Why wouldn’t you let me give it to him?”

“Uncle, I like him too much,” answered the girl, steadily. “If it had been in the old time, now, he should have had it quickly enough. But until this miserable business, that’s been the ruin of everything to us all, is cleared up, I’ll not let any man I care about involve himself in my disgrace.”

“Disgrace, Nell!” echoed George Claris in a low voice. “Don’t say that, child, don’t say that.”

In his tone the girl detected all the emotions which the story and the rumors about it had set stirring in her uncle’s simple mind. She felt keenly the affection, the doubt, the anger, which had tortured him during the long weeks of the winter. She gave a little sigh, and tucking her hand under his arm, whispered:

At that moment they emerged from the shelter afforded by the trees of Stroan Court, the mansion which stood just outside of the walls of the old[234] town. They were within sight of the spot where the body of Jem Stickels had been discovered; but any emotions they might have felt at the recollection were overpowered by a sense of actual physical danger. For the wind, which had been boisterous all the morning, was now so strong that they were afraid that the dog-cart would be blown over; while at the same time a blinding snow-fall made it almost impossible for them to discern the road a yard in front of the horse’s head.

“It blows straight on the shore,” said George Claris. “It’ll be a lucky thing if none of the ships in the channel get drove out of their course to-night.”

Nell shuddered. Living as she did by the sea-shore, she was accustomed to storms and the horrors attendant upon them to the ships at sea. Every gale brought disaster; and although, the inn being on the shore of a bay, most of the accidents of which Nell heard happened some few miles away, yet she and her uncle were always among the first to hear of them, from the lips of the frequenters of the inn.

Both Nell and her uncle thought it prudent to finish their short journey on foot, leading the horse, and finding their way with some difficulty through the snow storm.

[235]It was about eight o’clock that night when they learned that a schooner had gone ashore in the bay itself, within a mile of the inn. She had lost her steering-gear in the storm, and the force of the wind had driven her upon the sands at the edge of the marsh. It was high tide when the disaster happened, but it was thought that the ship was in no danger of breaking up, and that her crew would all be got off in safety as the tide went down. The life-boat from Courtstairs was already on its way to the wrecked vessel when the news came to the inn.

Through the snow, which the wind blew straight into their faces, Nell and half a dozen of her neighbors made their way across the marsh, the men carrying ropes and lanterns and the women restoratives for the half-frozen crew. It was a long and weary mile. The ground was hard with frost, the snow-drifts were already getting deep; the flares set burning from time to time by the crew of the wrecked ship flickered uncannily in the darkness whenever the snow ceased for a short time.

But the journey was not a fruitless one. The men of the party, seafarers themselves for the most part, and all used to the sea, succeeded, up to their waists in water, in launching a boat and bringing the crew safely to land.

The men were so benumbed by the cold that they[236] had to be helped along as they limped and stumbled over the snow to the inn. There, however, they were soon restored through the kindly offices of a host of willing hands.

Every creature in the neighborhood had heard by this time of the unusual event of a ship wrecked in their own bay, and it was through quite a large crowd that the sailors made their way into the little Blue Lion.

Even Mrs. Lansdowne, the wife of the most prominent country gentleman of the neighborhood, had heard of the new excitement, and had driven over, having picked up the colonel and Miss Bostal on her way. On hearing that there was little hope of saving the schooner, and that in any case the sailors would lose their kit, Mrs. Lansdowne put into George Claris’s hands, for the benefit of the men, a sum of money which at once became the starting point of a collection, to which most of the crowd contributed something. Even the colonel, whose poverty was proverbial, gave a shilling, although his daughter watched his hand with anxious eyes as he volunteered the coin. Altogether between five and six pounds was collected; and George Claris tied the money up in a canvas bag, and locked it up in the till behind the bar. There were whispers in the crowd that George Claris’s house was not the safest[237] place in the world to keep money in, but even the whisperers had no doubt of the honesty of Claris himself, while many were even glad of the opportunity of showing their confidence in a man who had undoubtedly been for some time under a cloud.

It was Nell, however, who watched this proceeding with the deepest anxiety. Her agitation was so evident, as she stood just within the doorway which led from the bar to the back of the inn, staring at her uncle, that one or two of the crowd looked at each other significantly. Suddenly the girl took a few rapid steps forward and touched the innkeeper’s arm.

“Uncle,” said she, in a low voice, “Uncle George, wouldn’t it be better to send the money into Stroan by—” She glanced at the men who were crowding in, and noticed one of the tradesmen of the town, “by Mr. Paramor?”

Her uncle frowned and Mr. Paramor shook his head, with the kindly intention of showing George Claris that his friends were on his side.

“No, no, Miss Claris, leave it where it is, where it’ll be ready to hand,” said he.

As Nell drew back, without a word, but with a curious look of constraint and trouble on her face, a little figure appeared at the door, and in her prim tones Miss Bostal, whom no emergency could[238] induce to step over the threshold of an inn, called to her:

Nell looked at her, hesitated, and was on the point of disappearing into the interior of the house, when Meg, who was passing towards the bar-parlor, with a tray full of hot drinks, officiously dragged her forward with one strong hand, while she carefully balanced the glasses on the tray with the other.

“It’s Miss Theodora, don’t you see, Miss Nell?” said she in a loud whisper.

And Nell, unable now to pretend that she never heard nor saw, went out into the road.

“Why, Nell, how is this? Is this the way you treat your old friend? I didn’t even know you were back again, and I haven’t heard a word from you for all these weeks and weeks. What does it mean, my dear? Now tell me what it means? I am afraid you are not happy. I am afraid you bear me malice about—Mr. King.”

Nell was cold, shy, awkward, a different creature altogether from the girl Miss Bostal had known and loved.

“Oh, that is all over,” she answered quickly. “I don’t suppose I shall ever see Mr. King again.”

Miss Theodora seemed rather distressed to hear[239] this. Now that her protégée, Jem Stickels was dead, she could afford to withdraw her objection to his rival.

“But why not, but why not, my dear?” she urged earnestly. “I thought you were so fond of him!”

And the little woman, who had got out of the carriage to go in search of her neglectful friend, drew round her more closely the woollen shawl which was hardly sufficient protection against the falling snow.

“You had better get into the carriage, Miss Theodora,” suggested Nell, coldly, ignoring the lady’s question.

“But I want an answer first, my dear. Never mind the snow. I only shiver because I am not used to the night air. You know I never go out after sundown, and not often before.”

But Nell would give her no answer. And Miss Theodora, when she was at last constrained to get into the carriage then, regretted to Mrs. Lansdowne that London had spoiled her dear little girl.

It was now past closing time at the inn, and George Claris, with great difficulty, was clearing his house of its crowd of customers. Those three of the sailors who had suffered most from cold and exposure were to spend the night under his roof, while the rest were taken to Stroan by new-found[240] friends who offered them hospitality. George Claris locked up his house, having already sent his niece and Meg to bed; and, thoroughly tired out, went up to his own room.

He had had a very hard day, and he had finished up with an extra glass of rum and water. The consequence was that he fell off to sleep as soon as he sat down on the edge of his bed to take his boots off, and did not wake up until some hours later, when he sat up suddenly, and remembered, at the moment of waking, that he had forgotten to take the money, both his own takings, and the collection for the sailors, out of the till in the bar.

Opening the door of his room softly, in order not to disturb the sleepers, he went downstairs.

It was half-past five on the following morning when the nearest neighbors were startled by a loud knocking at their door, followed by the abrupt in-rush of Meg, the inn servant, in a state of frantic excitement.

“Oh, come, some of ye; do come! There’s been awful doings in our house!” she cried, scarcely articulate between her fright and want of breath. “There’s somebody hiding in the bar, and I can’t get him out; and Mr. Claris is nowhere to be found; and Miss Nell’s fainted when I told her; and, oh, dear, do come!”

[241]The woman whom she was addressing was at first too much alarmed to come; but two men, who were not far off, hearing the commotion, offered to go back with Meg, and in a few minutes the whole party were at the inn.

There was somebody behind the bar, certainly—somebody down on the floor. The men stood hesitating at the door. The sounds which came to their ears from behind the bar were more like the gruntings and growlings of a beast than the voice of a man.

“It’s not a man you’ve got there. It’s an animal,” said one of the men.

And shouldering the pitchfork he was carrying, he made a dash into the building.

But as he entered, a wild figure sprang up from behind the bar and faced the intruder, glaring and raging. It seized one of the earthenware jugs which stood on a shelf against the wall, and brandishing it above his head, gave forth an unearthly howl.

“Stand back! stand back!” roared the creature, stamping and whirling its arms about. “Stand back! I won’t be robbed! I’ll serve you as I’ve served it—as I’ve served the devil! the devil! the devil!”

And with more stamping, more shouting, the[242] creature hurled the jug, aiming at the head of the intruder.

It was dashed into a thousand pieces against the door, which shook and rattled under the blow.

“Why, it’s—it’s George Claris himself!” faltered the second man, who kept outside, too much alarmed to go beyond the door.

“Master?” cried Meg, indignantly. “Why, he don’t drink! He’s as sober a man as there is in the place!”

“He ain’t drunk,” replied the man shortly. “He’s gone mad, my girl. Look at his eyes.”

And as the girl looked fearfully through the window at her unhappy master, she could not doubt the truth of the man’s words.

At eleven o’clock on the previous night George Claris had been as sane a man as any in the county. At six o’clock in the morning he was a raving madman.

It was about a month after the shipwreck which brought such strange consequences to the Blue Lion and its inmates that Clifford King, much against his will, found himself, for the first time that winter, at a dance. He detested dancing, never accepted an invitation to a ball if he could help it, and never turned up if he found himself compelled to accept.

But this entertainment was an exceptional one, being given in honor of the “coming out” of Otto Conybeare’s youngest sister, and the mines laid for him had proved successful.

When he got to the house, however, he found the sight such a pretty one that he could not tell even himself that he was a martyr in having to come. The rooms were large and beautifully decorated with ferns and daffodils, “just like a church on Easter Sunday,” as Otto said.

Clifford’s attention was attracted early in the evening by the sight of a girl whose face he knew, who looked at him again and again, as if she expected[244] him to recognize her, but whose name he could not remember. In fact, the more often he met her eyes, the more sure he felt he did not even know it.

Before long Clifford saw her speak to Otto and glance in the direction of himself.

“Now,” thought he, “I shall get to the bottom of the mystery.” For he had had no opportunity of getting hold of Otto, or of any one who could tell him who she was. Otto came straight toward him.

Lansdowne! The name was quite unfamiliar to Clifford. But as soon as he was introduced the puzzle came to pieces.

“I wanted so much to know you, Mr. King,” said the girl, who was pleasant, unaffected and amiable-looking. “I can see you don’t know me, and yet I know you very well.”

“That is not quite fair,” said Clifford. “I do remember your face perfectly well; it is your name only which is unfamiliar to me. I am certain I have never spoken to you in my life; you may be sure I should not have forgotten if I had.”

“I have often seen you about there,” went on the[245] girl, “and I know intimately more than one of your friends there.”

“I have no friends there now,” said Clifford, with a sudden change to grave bitterness in his voice and manner.

“Well, you had friends there at one time, I think. Miss Bostal and her father, the Colonel, would, I am sure, be rather hurt to know that you no longer reckoned them as your friends.”

“The Bostals! Oh, yes,” answered Clifford, indifferently. “I know them, but Miss Bostal would hardly reckon me as a friend. I lost my place in her esteem, if I ever had any, by walking from Courtstairs to Stroan on a Sunday in a tourist’s suit.”

“She is an odd little creature,” she said, “but she has a very good heart. To hear her deplore the disappearance of a young girl whom she was fond of and kind to,” and Miss Lansdowne looked steadily away from Clifford as she spoke, “no one could doubt the depth of her feelings.”

Clifford was silent for a few moments. Then he glanced at the face of the girl beside him, saw that it invited confidence, and guessed that her last words had been carefully chosen.

[246]“Yes. You had heard about it, I suppose?” she asked, with a pretense of indifference.

“And that nobody knows more than this—that she and her uncle have gone away?”

Clifford answered, with scarcely a pretense on his side of concealing the emotion he felt:

“I went down to the place myself, saw the house shut up, deserted, and found that nobody could tell me more than this—that George Claris had gone mad, and that he was in an asylum; and that his niece had gone away at the same time. If you can tell me anything more, I shall be very grateful to you.”

“I don’t know any more than you do. One can only guess—or repeat the guesses of others.”

[247]“Do you know what happened on that morning when George Claris was found mad?” asked Miss Lansdowne, abruptly.

“Did she tell you—” Miss Lansdowne hesitated—“that Miss Claris fainted when they told her what had happened to her uncle, and that they found under her pillow—a canvas bag containing the money collected for some shipwrecked sailors the night before?”

“No,” said he at once, in the tone of a man who has made up his mind on some weighty point, “they did not tell me that.”

“And one other person—Miss Bostal. And you are both equally unreasonable.”

“Miss Bostal takes her part? I didn’t think the dried-up little creature had it in her!” said Clifford, with admiration. “I shall go and see her.”

“That is just what she wants you to do,” replied Miss Lansdowne. “She has said so to me so often that I thought, when I saw I had a chance of speaking to you, I would not let it slip.”

[248]“It is very good of you,” said Clifford. “Which was the dance you said I might have?”

It was a bright day, and there was only just enough wind to stir the air pleasantly on his way across the marsh road. The sun shone on the white, chalky soil, and the place where the body of Jem Stickels had been found was now no longer distinguishable by any outward sign from the rest of the grass-grown border to the road. People had begun to forget the tragedy, and even the fresh interest excited by the more recent events at the Blue Lion had by this time faded in their minds, relegated to the background by the pressure of some less stirring but newer occurrence.

The Blue Lion itself looked melancholy enough, having been uninhabited for a month. With its doors closed, its shutters barred, with broken panes in its upper windows, it was a dreary contrast to the little inn he had known. No market-carts now drew up before the door; the ducks and the chickens no longer wandered about the road; the shed where the cart had stood was empty and already out of repair. Clifford, after one walk round into the little garden and down to the shed where he had first met Nell, hurried away from[249] the desolate spot and made haste to reach Shingle End.

But a change had come over this place also. To begin with, the storms of the winter had dealt harshly with the old house. Some slates had been carried away and had not been replaced, and a tree, blown down by a southwesterly gale, now blocked the little bit of ground which formed the front garden. It had injured the corner of the house in its fall, had carried away one of the outside shutters of the drawing-room front window and smashed half a dozen of the small panes of glass, which had been left broken. Sheets of brown paper had been pasted on the inner side of the window, completing the desolate appearance of the old house. Clifford, as he approached the gate, found that the tree had fallen in such a manner that it was impossible to get in. Looking up doubtfully at the windows, he caught sight of a little, withered face, gray, haunting, peeping out at him from behind the meager muslin curtain.

Was it or was it not Miss Bostal’s? For a moment he stood undecided with his hand upon the gate. Had some terrible calamity—the death of the Colonel, the illness of his daughter—fallen upon the place like a blight? Should he go back and make inquiries at the nearest cottage before he ventured[250] to intrude upon what might be some great grief?

There was an ancient cottage close by which had once been a toll-house. He thought he would knock at the door and try to find out something, and was retreating for that purpose, when a hurried tapping on the glass of the upper window made him look round again. Miss Bostal—if it was indeed she—made a sign to him to go round to the back of the house.

Obeying her mute direction, he found his way back to the little side-gate in the paling, passed through into the garden and presented himself at the back door. He noticed with surprise, as he passed the two lower windows, the one at the side and the other at the back of the house, that the blinds were drawn down. Surely, then, the Colonel was dead, he thought. He had not time to speculate as to why, in that case, the upper front rooms had had their blinds up, when he heard the sound of some one within drawing back a bolt and then another and another.

Then the door was opened by Miss Bostal, who put out her head to throw one frightened glance round the garden, and then, seizing his proffered hand, drew him hastily inside, and began immediately to replace the bolts.

[251]Clifford could not help feeling amused, although he took care not to show it. It seemed to him clear that the recent occurrences in the neighborhood had got on the poor little woman’s brain, and made her absurdly nervous about the safety of her own little person and not very valuable property.

“You are well secured against burglars, I see,” said he, as he insisted upon doing the work of bolting the door for her, and was surprised to find how solid and strong the protection was.

“Oh, Mr. King!” gasped she, in a tone of acute terror. “Don’t make jokes about it. It’s too dreadful! I never feel safe! Last night—Oh!” she paused, closing her eyes as if on the point of fainting. And Clifford saw, by the light that came through the dusty panes above the front and the back door, that her little, pinched face had grown livid at some terrible thought.

“Well, what happened last night—Oh?” said Clifford, speaking in as cheerful a tone as he could, in the hope of soothing her nerves. But instead of answering at once, little Miss Bostal, suddenly opening again her faded light eyes and staring at him with solemn intentness, led him to the door of the drawing-room, which she unlocked and threw open with a tragic gesture.

Clifford obeyed, and saw nothing whatever; for it was dark. When, after a few minutes spent in rather uncanny silence on the part of the lady, his eyes got used to the gloom, he saw that the windows had been barricaded from the inside in the most thorough and ingenious manner with furniture and with planks nailed across from side to side.

“Why,” said he, in astonishment, “you seem to be preparing to stand a siege.”

He had already made up his mind that the eccentric little lady had gone out of her mind.

“We are besieged,” she whispered, with a look which confirmed Clifford’s hypothesis. “I can see that you don’t believe me, that you think it is only my fancy. But ask my father.”

And before Clifford could make any answer, she had quickly crossed the stone-flagged passage, had thrown open the door of the dining-room, and with a gesture invited Clifford to enter.

As the young man did so, rather fearing what sort of conversation he should have to hold with her, he was much relieved to find that the Colonel was there, sitting by the fire, with his spectacles on, reading a weekly paper. But to Clifford’s astonishment and alarm, the change in the old man was as great as in his daughter.

[253]Colonel Bostal, although his clothes were always shabby and old-fashioned, had always retained an air of soldierly trimness, had always kept his hair closely cut and his snow-white mustache well trimmed, so that he had borne a certain air of smartness and distinction. Now he had lost every trace of it. His shoulders were bent. His hair had been allowed to grow long. His mustache hung ragged and untrimmed over a rough and straggling beard. More than this, there was in his eyes a look as pitiful in its restlessness as the haunting expression which Clifford had noticed in Miss Theodora’s.

The old man started when he saw the visitor, rose and held out his hand with mechanical, old-fashioned courtesy; but it was doubtful whether he recognized him.

Miss Bostal went softly round his chair with her quick, bird-like little steps, and put her hand gently on his shoulder.

“Dear papa,” she said in a whisper, “don’t you remember Mr. King? He was here in the summer. You do remember, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, certainly I do; of course I do, Theodora,” responded the Colonel, with a slight frown at the implication that he was losing his memory. “Sit down, Mr. King, and tell us what the great world is doing.”

[254]Then Clifford saw that in a moment the old man had become quite himself, and it was the weight of some care which had given him his changed appearance. The young man was sorry when Miss Theodora at once recalled her father to the anxiety which was pressing upon both of them.

“I want you to tell Mr. King, papa,” she said, as Clifford took the chair offered him, “about the terrible persecution we have been subjected to lately since the Blue Lion has been shut up.”

“It’s not a very lively subject,” objected her father, whose face fell at his daughter’s words. “However, I will tell you, if the story is worth telling.”

Clifford, although he was indeed curious to hear the narrative, protested that he did not wish to do so, as he saw that his host was by no means anxious to relate it. But Miss Theodora insisted.

“Well, then,” said the old gentleman, “it is simply this: At least half a dozen times since the Blue Lion has been deserted we have been annoyed by knocks and blows on our doors and windows at night. And although we have done our best to find out who it is that annoys us in this manner, we have been unable to do so.”

The Colonel shook his head in a troubled and[255] anxious manner, but Miss Theodora pursed her lips and looked shrewd.

“I have a theory,” she said. And she waited to be asked what the theory was.

“I believe,” she went on, with conviction, “that it is the person who was at the bottom of the mysteries we have been suffering from here lately.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” interrupted her father, quickly, and not without nervousness. “What on earth should such a person want with us? We have nothing in the house worth stealing; and if we had, do you suppose that the person who was so very skillful in getting away and in evading justice, would try to batter our doors in? You are talking nonsense, Theodora.”

“If you think that, why don’t you inform the police? They would lay an ambush for this person, and would certainly free you from the annoyance of his visits, in any case.”

To the young man’s surprise, Colonel Bostal’s face assumed an expression of alarm which he tried in vain to hide; but Miss Theodora broke in triumphantly:

“That is just what I tell him, Mr. King, but he[256] won’t hear of it. Perhaps you will be better able to persuade him than I.”

The Colonel, for answer, leaned back in his chair and drew his daughter’s little thin hands round his shoulders.

“I always think,” he said, after a long silence, during which strange suspicions rushed through Clifford’s mind, “that it is better not to stir up scandals that are past and done with. I may have my own suspicions that the annoyance we suffer from is connected with the uncanny stories we have heard so much about. But still I will not interfere, and I refuse to call in the aid of the police. We must not forget that in delivering up this unknown person who annoys us, we might be exposing others to danger.”

But the Colonel would not answer. He turned the conversation to another subject, and the interesting topic was not again touched upon until Clifford, having taken leave of the Colonel, stood in the hall with Miss Theodora.

“Not to see us?” asked Miss Theodora. “We could hardly have hoped for that.”

[257]“It was to see you and to thank you for your trust in Nell. I met Miss Lansdowne in town one evening, and she told me you were the one person who still believed in her innocence.”

“I did hold out as long as I could against the thought of her guilt, Mr. King; but I must confess that I, too, have had to give way to overwhelming evidence. In face of some fresh circumstances which have now come to my knowledge, I don’t see how I can escape the conclusion that she did commit these crimes.”

Clifford drew himself up with a great shock of disappointment. Here, where he expected a fortress, he found a quagmire.

“In fact, it is because my father feels sure that the person who comes here to annoy us is the very same creature who instigated the girl to commit these crimes, that he refuses to give information to the police.”

“A young man who has obtained a great influence over her, and who has probably by this time become her husband,” replied Miss Bostal.

Clifford could not repress a movement of anxiety at these words. Miss Bostal tried to persuade him[258] to come back into the dining-room with her and to stay to tea. But he excused himself and, with a rather colder leave-taking than he had expected, he left the house by the back door, and heard Miss Theodora draw the bolts before he reached the end of the garden.

There had flashed through his mind, as he noted the effect which Theodora’s prattle made upon her father, an uneasy suspicion whether the Colonel himself was not in some way implicated in the murder of Jem Stickels and the robberies at the Blue Lion. It was quite clear that poor Miss Theodora had no inkling of this, for she had chattered away without even noticing her father’s uneasiness. It was in vain, however, that Clifford tried to imagine any series of circumstances by which the old Colonel could have been implicated in the crimes. On the other hand, they remained just as inexplicable at the hands of any other person.

It was with a great sinking of the heart that Clifford began to feel his own belief in Nell’s complete innocence giving way. He was forced again to take refuge in the belief that, if she had been an agent in these criminal acts, she had been an unconscious one. And the thought which was uppermost in his[259] mind was: What steps should he take to find her? The feeling which was strongest in his heart was the desire to shelter her from the consequences of those acts.

But the question was: How to find her? Clifford had been down to Stroan already to make inquiries, but had been unable to obtain any tidings of the uncle or the niece more definite than the vague rumor that George Claris was “shut up somewhere.”

Clifford paused for a few moments outside the garden gate of Shingle End, wondering whether he would apply for information to the police at Stroan. It was a step he dreaded to take, although he began to think it was the only one likely to lead to his obtaining the details he wanted.

As he stood looking vaguely along the road, he suddenly perceived that an old woman, who was standing at the door of the ancient turnpike cottage, was blinking and nodding at him in a mysterious manner. He took a few steps in her direction, and she came out in the road to meet him.

“So, you’ve been a-visiting, have you, sir?” she said, in a deep, gruff whisper, glancing up at the gloomy windows of Shingle End. “Aye, they want a few lively folk to come and see ’em and cheer ’em up, for sure!”

[260]And she gave him a series of nods and shakes of the head, all of which were meant to carry weighty meaning.

“Well, this isn’t the best place in the world for people who are fond of ‘company,’ is it?” said Clifford. “I dare say you feel lonely yourself sometimes, don’t you?”

“Well, I get some I don’t expect sometimes, sir,” she answered, with mystery. “Two nights ago, now, I had a young lady in ’ere—a young lady you may know, sir, who was very much talked about last year, poor dear—”

Clifford’s sudden start into vivid interest made her break off and look at him attentively. She smiled knowingly.

“Aye, sir. She was in my cottage over an hour, and sorry enough I felt for her, I must say, whatever people think.”

And the old woman, who probably knew more than she affected to do about Clifford and his feeling toward Miss Claris, gave a sigh, and again found relief in her feelings in a shake of the head.

“Where is she now? Do you know?” asked Clifford, no longer disguising his interest. “If it’s a[261] secret,” he went on, as the old lady said nothing, “I think you will not do wrong in confiding it to me, as I wish her all the good in the world.”

“It’s well there’s some as do, sir,” said she, with a suddenly lowered voice. “And I don’t know as I’m doing harm in telling you she is staying at Courtstairs, up Paradise Hill, Number 45, sir. And you can tell her if you see her as I wouldn’t have told nobody but you.”

Clifford was overwhelmed with joy at this unexpected piece of good fortune, and he promised at once to give her message.

“By the bye,” he said, just as he was about to start off in the direction of Courtstairs, “are you at liberty to tell me what she was doing here? Was she visiting the Bostals?”

“You mustn’t ask me any more,” she said. “There’s things one mustn’t so much as guess at,” she added, enigmatically, as she retreated to her own doorway.

Clifford did not trouble his head about these hints. It was enough for him that Nell was now within his reach. And he set off for Courtstairs with a set purpose in his mind.

The walk along the straight marsh road, with the wind in his face, and the sea a misty blue line on his right hand, seemed never-ending. Clifford had[262] no eyes for the effect of sunset on the chalk cliff to his right, for the picturesque little farm perched up high above the water’s edge, as he drew near to Beach Bay.

Past the Shooter’s Arms, the wayside inn which happily forms the limit of the explorations of the devastating hordes from the East End of London with which benevolent railway companies have ruined one of the pleasantest spots in England. Past the tiny village of Beach, with its picturesque, steep miniature street, and its hideous new Convalescent Home and waste of brand-new tea-garden. Up on the Beach road, in full sight of the sea and of the fishing fleet coming in upon the breast of the tide. Clifford saw nothing, thought of nothing but how to save a yard, a minute, so that he might lose no time in reaching his darling.

He had to inquire for Paradise Hill, which proved to be one of the innumerable back streets of mean houses of which the town chiefly consists. He found No. 45 easily enough. It was one of a row of small, yellow brick houses, with bay-windows on the ground floor, which would formerly have been called cottages, but which, since the School Board brought in pretension, have become “villas.”

Clifford’s heart sank a little as he asked for “Miss Claris.” This stuffy little dwelling, after the fresh[263] air of the rambling inn by the shore, must be a torture to the girl.

“I’ll see if she’s in,” she said, as if the proffered service was a great condescension.

And then she disappeared into the front room. When she came out again she was followed by Nell herself.

Or was it Nell? This thin-faced, white girl, with the dull, frightened eyes? For the first moment Clifford was hardly sure.

But she started violently, and the expression of her face changed. The look of alarm gave place to one of such joy, such comfort and radiant delight that Clifford was too much moved to speak.

They both stood silent until the woman had reluctantly disappeared into the back room of the house. Then Nell went into the front room, inviting him, still without a word, to follow her.

He did so, shut the door, and seized her in his arms. He could scarcely see her face for the mist before his eyes.

She spoke hopelessly, her first impulse of joy at the sight of him seeming to have died within her already.

[264]“No, of course it doesn’t matter, for I mean you to look your own self again immediately. Do you know why I have come here, Nell?”

“I like to hear you say so. It is good of you,” she said, in a gentle, timid voice, “although it is impossible.”

“Oh, you don’t want me to go over the old ground again. Can’t you be satisfied that it is impossible?”

“No, I can’t, unfortunately. My darling, you can’t hold out any longer. It was dignified to refuse before; now it would only be foolish. Who is going to take care of you now, Nell, if you won’t have me?”

“Poor uncle!” sobbed she. “It nearly broke my heart when he did not know even me. And then when they took him away—”

“Yes; he was quite harmless, and would let me[265] manage him always. And the police came and—and took him away.”

“Yes. They have haunted us both ever since we left the Blue Lion,” whispered she, earnestly. “And I know they are trying to find out the mystery—you know what—through him. Isn’t it dreadful!”

Clifford did not answer at once. It seemed to him that the chances of his being able to save the girl were growing small indeed. Her own utter hopelessness, her nervous dread, had affected him during the short silences between their questions and answers to each other; she seemed to be always listening, straining her ears for any sound outside. The cry of a street urchin made her start, a cart passing quickly at the corner of the street sent the blood to her forehead. Her nerves, poor child, were altogether shaken.

Clifford looked at her in dismay. Even the strong love which had stood every test was apparently powerless to give her more than momentary comfort.

“My darling,” he whispered, “let me take you up to town to-night. I will take you straight to your aunt’s, and in the shortest time possible I will marry you, and take you out of England altogether.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “This case is really coming on now. The police don’t disguise that they know enough to go upon now. I have the strongest reason, the very strongest, for believing that they will come for me to-day.”

“To arrest you?” cried Clifford, hoarsely. She began to tremble and to look at him askance.

“No, not to arrest me,” and she shuddered. Then a look of terror, more acute than ever, came into her eyes. “Perhaps that is it. Perhaps that is really what they mean to do,” she whispered doubtfully. “They said it was only my evidence they wanted, but—but—”

She hesitated—stopped. Clifford’s heart was wrung. Surely no jury that ever sat could convict this poor, helpless, gentle girl of anything but unconscious crime. He would have staked his life that she was as innocent of these mysterious crimes in intent as he was himself of them in deed.

But his own voice shook and his eyes were dim. He tried to cheer her, to encourage her, to say words which he could hardly feel, but the girl scarcely seemed to hear him. Suddenly, in the midst of his vain efforts at consolation, she stood up.

Clifford started up. He had heard nothing. But Nell’s patient ears were keener than his. In another moment there was a knock at the outer door. And then a knock at the door of the room. He looked round wildly, and, seizing her arm, would have had her hide herself behind the little sofa, but she smiled sadly and shook her head.

And as the girl had foretold with uncannily correct prophecy, a sergeant of police from Stroan, very civil, very apologetic and humane, presented himself.

“Very sorry, Miss, to have to intrude,” said he. “But I must ask you to come along with me as far as Stroan, just to tell the magistrate something that will help us on a bit.”

There was just one ray of consolation for Clifford King in the misfortune which had befallen Nell. She seemed to him, in spite of the trembling of her limbs and the pallor of her face, to be more relieved than depressed by the arrival of the police.

“Certainly, Miss. Perhaps you would like to walk as far as Beach with Mr. King, and we will have a cab waiting there to take you on to Stroan.”

This course was agreed upon, and Nell and Clifford left the house together. They walked in perfect silence until they had passed through the unlovely back streets of the town, and had reached the contiguous village of St. Mary’s, with its gray old church on the high ground. They stopped for a moment in the shadow of the tall tower. Clifford looked at the girl by his side, and was amazed to see that the gloom which had hung over her on his arrival had melted away.

[269]“Why, Nell,” said he, with a puzzled smile on his own face, “I told you that you would soon be your own self again, but I didn’t guess how quickly the transformation would take place.”

Her face clouded a little, but the sigh she gave was one of more relief than pain.

“Can you imagine what it would be like,” she asked, gravely, as they turned and continued their walk down the crooked village street, “to live for months in perplexity and dread of you didn’t quite know what? And then to find yourself groping your way to a dreadful, shameful secret, which was bound to bring misery and disgrace upon yourself and everybody you cared about? Supposing that you were presently forced to confess everything—forced to do it, mind—wouldn’t it be a relief to you, even if you brought upon yourself a dreadful punishment?”

Clifford was silent. He was alarmed by her words, indicating as they did that she was involved in the horrible story; yet he did not wish to acquiesce in the idea of her guilt, or even in the notion of her having been a passive agent in the tragedy.

“I think, darling,” he then said, very tenderly, “that you have been troubling yourself a great deal[270] more than you need have done. And that you will find plenty of other people as ready as I am to say that Nell Claris would never merit a dreadful punishment, even if she tried.”

These words were not said merely to satisfy her. He began to feel, as she did, that the thrashing out of the whole matter, horrible as the process must be, was better for her in every way than the suspense from which she had been so long suffering. Whatever her share in the affair might have been, it had certainly been a passive and an unwilling, if not an altogether unconscious one. His answer seemed to content the girl, for she walked on by his side without any further remark, while a more placid expression began to appear in her wan face.

It was almost in silence that they went on walking briskly in the direction of the bay, which they reached by the short way over the fields. A cab was waiting, as the police-sergeant had promised, on the road outside the village. As soon as Nell saw it she stopped short and said:

“I was forgetting what I wanted to say to you. I want you to go to Shingle End. And I want you to tell them there—to tell the Colonel—that the police have come for me.”

“To tell the Colonel?” echoed Clifford, stupidly, struck with a remembrance of the vague suspicions[271] he had had on his recent visit to that gentleman’s house.

He wanted to ask her more questions. But she saw his intention, and walked briskly on. A few paces farther she was met by the police-sergeant, who saluted her respectfully, and held open the door of the cab. Nell turned and gave her hand in silence to Clifford. But as he pressed it for a brief moment in his, she again looked up in his face with the flicker of a smile on her lips and in her eyes.

“Surely,” thought he to himself, “it is hope, and not despair, which I see in her eyes!”

The cab door was shut, and Clifford, who had a long walk before him, walked briskly past it, in the direction of the Stroan road. But before he had gone many steps he heard the voice of the police-sergeant behind him.

“Might I suggest, sir, that you shouldn’t say anything about Miss Claris to the old gentleman and his daughter for the present? The poor lady and gentleman have been in a fearful state of nervousness[272] lately; and if this news was to come on them quite sudden, it might bring on a stroke, perhaps, or something of that sort.”

Clifford hesitated. He had promised Nell to take her message, but, on the other hand, he quite agreed with the sergeant. He temporized.

“Well, I shall be as careful as I can, and I shan’t be in any great hurry.”

“That’ll do, sir,” said the sergeant, as, with a shrewd look, he saluted and went back to the cab.

Clifford walked on, therefore, at no very rapid pace. Indeed, as the cab passed him, with the sergeant on the box beside the driver, he saw Nell’s face at the window, with a little surprise and reproach in her eyes at the slow progress he was making in carrying out her behest.

She, poor girl, sat upright and listened to the sound of the horse’s hoofs and to the wheels upon the road like a person incapable of steady thought. She had known that this blow was coming. She had passed hour after hour of many a weary night in trying to devise means of escape from it. But every plan had ended in failure even before she could put it in practice; for day after day she had found that she was watched by the police, and it had become clear to her that wherever she went she would be shadowed, and that at the time they[273] chose she would find herself in the grip of the police.

It was to the house of one of the local justices of the peace that she was being taken. The cab soon took a turning to the right, and presently arrived at the lodge-gates of Horne Park.

Horne Court was a large building, brand-new and many-gabled, built of brilliant red brick. It had so many little turrets and towers and steeples springing out from the main edifice in all directions, that it looked like a puzzle, and set the onlooker wondering whether one could get from one portion of the building to the other without the aid of a plan.

It was in the study—an oddly shaped apartment, with an imposing gallery filled with books—that Nell was brought before the local magistrate.

Sir Neville Bax was a bland and imperious gentleman, with a loud voice and a dominant manner, who, having married the ugliest woman in the county, sought to palliate this misdeed by posing as a great admirer of the rest of the sex. He stared at Nell with an approving eye.

“Well, Miss Claris, and so I hear you have a statement to make to me?” he began in a benevolent tone which made Nell wince.

[274]“Well, don’t be afraid. Only speak out and speak the truth. It’s the best way—in fact, it’s the only way—when, as I understand, the police know so much already.”

“I understand,” continued he, “that you have some important information to give concerning the robbery at your uncle’s inn, the Blue Lion?”

“Ah, but little things sometimes lead to great results,” retorted Sir Neville, buoyantly. “You know that there was sleeping on the premises at the Blue Lion, on the occasion of the first robbery committed there, a person whose presence there was known to you only?”

In the meantime Clifford was proceeding slowly on his way to Shingle End. It was dark by this time, and the way seemed even longer than it had done when he was on his way to Courtstairs that afternoon. There was a faint light over the gray sea, but on the right, over the marsh, and away as far as the ridge of hill on which old Fleet Castle stood, there was inky blackness. It was a lonely road at night, this long, dreary stretch of straight, hedgeless highway, with only an occasional bit of ragged bush or a still more infrequent wayside cottage, to break up its wearisome monotony.

Even the cry of the sea-birds was startling, as it came to Clifford’s ears on the clear air. An ugly fancy took possession of him, too, as he drew near to Shingle End at last, that the cries he heard were not all those of the sea-birds; that it was a human cry, shrill and weird, which came to him over the flat meadow land by the sea.

He stopped. He heard the sound again. And, forgetting his promise not to hurry, he went on toward[276] Colonel Bostal’s house as fast as his tired feet could carry him. He was sure now that the cries had not been those of the birds; sure, too, that they had proceeded from the direction of the spot to which he was hastening.

There was a ragged plantation of untrimmed trees and thorn-bushes on the right side of the road before he came to Shingle End. Just as he approached this, the darkest part of the whole road, a man sprang out upon him from the shade of the overhanging trees, and seized him from behind. Clifford shouted, struggled, trying in vain to turn, so that he might see the man’s face. But his assailant, who did not utter a word, frustrated all his efforts, and held him fast.

From out of the darkness there appeared a figure which Clifford thought he knew; and a voice which he recognized called out, in authoritative tones:

Clifford’s assailant obeyed this rough command without a moment’s hesitation; and when Clifford, feeling himself suddenly released, turned round, he only saw a glimpse of a man’s figure as it plunged into the darkness again.

“Who was that?” asked the young man in astonishment,[277] as he perceived that his rescuer made no attempt to follow him.

It was Hemming, the London detective, who stood before him, and he only shrugged his shoulders.

“Only a man I’ve got to help me in this business,” answered he, with a gesture in the direction of the Colonel’s house. “He made a mistake, that was all.”

“Well, sir, I think you ought to know by this time,” replied Hemming, evasively.

Clifford looked at the little weather-beaten dwelling, which had lights in two of the upper windows. He fancied he could detect a watching figure behind the narrow curtain of one of them.

“I suppose it was your man,” he said suddenly, “who has alarmed the poor lady so much by his knocks and thumps at the doors and windows?”

Hemming’s face could not be seen distinctly in the darkness; but Clifford had a fancy that he was smiling as he answered:

Clifford, who was growing more puzzled, more curious, every minute, turned abruptly away and walked round to the back door of the house, by which he had been admitted that morning.

He knocked two or three times with his stick against the door before he heard a window above his head softly opened. Looking up, he heard a whisper in Miss Theodora’s voice:

As he had expected, this answer brought the little lady down in the twinkling of an eye. He heard the bolts drawn, and a minute later he found himself dragged inside the door, while Miss Theodora, panting with her exertions, hurriedly fastened the door again.

“I have seen your bogy,” said Clifford, “the man who torments you at night. He attacked me just before I came to the corner.”

“Ah!” cried Miss Bostal, with a shake of her head. “I have found out who he is now. He is the man who is at the bottom of all these robberies and of the murder of poor Jem.”

For he rather looked down upon the little lady’s intelligence, which he thought was by no means so strong as her kindness of heart.

“Yes,” she said, “he is the man who got such a hold upon poor Nell that he got her to do whatever he pleased.”

The notion was so shocking that, improbable as it appeared, it made Clifford shudder.

“But why,” he asked, impulsively, “should Hemming let him come here and worry you?”

Then she was silent. They remained in the little stone passage for a few seconds, unable to see each other’s face. Then she passed him, and running quickly to the dining-room door, threw it open and entered, beckoning to Clifford to follow.

“Papa,” said she, breathlessly, and in a little flutter of excitement, patting her little hands softly and rapidly the one against the other, “it is the detective Hemming who is sending this wretch to annoy us. Mr. King says so.”

The Colonel, who, as it seemed to Clifford, had aged since the morning, got up slowly from his chair and stared at Clifford with haggard eyes.

[280]“Hemming!” said he in a broken voice. “The detective! Wha-a-t is he here for?”

“You don’t understand, papa,” piped Miss Theodora’s bright, shrill voice. “I didn’t say he was here. But Mr. King tells me it is he who sends the man to knock at our doors and windows at night. Didn’t you, Mr. King?”

Clifford did not immediately answer. He saw that he was upon the threshold of a mystery, to which the staring eyes and trembling limbs of the unhappy old man before him seemed already to give him the clue. Without waiting for Clifford’s answer to her question, Miss Theodora suddenly went on again:

He hesitated. He was overwhelmed with a feeling of pity for these two forlorn people, shut up and barricaded within their poor tumbledown house. So that, although he certainly had a vague belief that the old Colonel was in some unknown way involved in the crimes which had made so great a stir, yet he longed for his escape as much, or almost as much, as he longed for Nell’s. So he answered in a troubled voice:

There was the warning, if the Colonel needed it.[281] The old man shook so much, as he heard the announcement, that Clifford began to fear the “stroke” which the police-sergeant had predicted.

“The police!” she exclaimed, as if scarcely able to grasp the dreadful fact. And she twirled round, as if moved by a spring, to her father: “Papa!” she almost screamed, “if the police have arrested Nell, I shall be called to give evidence against her! I will never do it—never! I would die first!”

Clifford was touched. It was only of Nell the poor little lady thought. Then surely Miss Theodora could not have the slightest suspicion that her own father had anything to do with the crimes!

“Calm yourself, my dear,” he said to his daughter, but in such a hard tone of despair that Clifford began to feel that he was an intruder upon grief so deep. “If Nell is arrested—”

For in the middle of his speech there was a knock at the front door. Miss Theodora, Clifford noticed, drew herself up in an attitude of rigid attention. There was dead silence in the little dining-room, until the knock was repeated louder than before.

[282]“I shall go upstairs,” said Miss Theodora, softly, “and see from the window who it is. But if it is the police, come for my evidence, I will be put in prison rather than give it.”

She had scarcely uttered the words when a third knock was heard at the front door. Miss Bostal glided out of the room and ran upstairs without another word.

Then again there was a pause. The two men looked at each other by the light of the lamp, which gave but a dim illumination through its smoky glass. In the old Colonel’s face Clifford became conscious that there was written a most pitiful history, the history of a life-long shame, of an indelible disgrace. Still only groping towards the truth as he was, the young man stood silent, reverent, wondering what awful thing he was next to learn.

For the fourth time the knock, louder and more imperative than before, echoed through the house. Then the Colonel drew a deep sigh and went slowly towards the door.

“I am sorry you are here,” he said with calm courtesy. “Whatever errand brings these people, and whoever they are, you, being here, will be subjected to some annoying interrogatories. Perhaps there may still be time for you to get out by the garden way before I have to let them in.”

[283]The old man was talking, it suddenly occurred to Clifford, to fill up the time, for he made no movement in the direction of the garden way of which he spoke, but stood in an attitude which showed that he was listening intently.

Clifford had heard nothing. A doubt, born of hope rather than fear, of the Colonel’s complete sanity crossed his mind.

“Upstairs—upstairs!” went on the old man, impatiently, as he at last moved, in a shuffling step, toward the door. “I think I heard a window open.”

“Shall I go upstairs and see?” asked Clifford. “What are you afraid of?”

“My daughter—is very determined. She has made up her mind—that she will not—give evidence,” answered Colonel Bostal, in a shaking voice. “Yes, you can go up and see.”

No answer. But he heard some one moving about softly in the room on his right. He went close to the door, and said, with his mouth so near to the keyhole that she could not fail to hear him:

[284]Then he heard something—a little, weak cry, followed by silence. He drew back a step, and he saw the Colonel standing at the bottom of the stairs.

At that moment there was a thundering knock at the front door, which threatened to split the old wood into fragments. The Colonel walked slowly along the passage, and, with as much delay as possible, drew the bolts and opened the door.

Clifford, still on the upper floor, knew that the voices were those of the police-sergeant and of another constable belonging to Stroan.

“You’ve been a long time opening the door, sir,” began the sergeant, dryly.

But the master of the house had not waited to inquire his visitor’s business; he had already retreated into the dining-room.

The two policemen held a short and hurried consultation, in very low tones. Then the sergeant entered the dining-room, and reappeared quickly.

[285]The other man had already looked into the kitchen, and they now proceeded to search the shut-up drawing-room. Clifford heard them as they moved about—heard the noise of the piled-up furniture being displaced. And then, a moment later, one of the policemen ran up the stairs and passed Clifford as the latter hastily came down.

As he reached the foot of the staircase, Clifford, whom the man had saluted in silence, heard a sharp rap at the door of the closed room. Then the policeman who was upstairs called quickly to his companion downstairs:

“Bill, go outside and wait under the window. This side of the house—quick!”

The police-sergeant dashed out by the front door without a second’s delay, while the man who had given the direction burst open the bedroom door with a couple of blows of his truncheon. Clifford, in perplexity and alarm, rushed out after the sergeant. He arrived nearly as soon as the man he was following, whom he found groping among the evergreen bushes which grew thickly under the wall of the old house.

A succession of feeble moans, as of a weak creature in great agony, broke upon his ear as he turned the corner of the house.

And at the same moment he saw the constable[286] who had burst open the bedroom door leaning out of the window of Miss Theodora’s room.

But even as he spoke, the sergeant parted the bushes with his arms, and turning the full light of the lantern he carried upon the ground beneath them, showed the little figure of poor Miss Theodora lying in a shapeless heap.

“Oh, don’t! Don’t touch me!” she whispered, faintly, as she felt the strong light thrown on her face. “Don’t touch me! My leg is broken and—something here.”

“She’s fainted,” said Clifford. “Poor little woman! What shall we do? Shall I fetch a doctor?”

“No, sir; leave me to do that,” replied the police-sergeant, promptly. “You stay here while I send for help. There’s some one close by will go for me.”

He went away quickly, leaving his lantern. Clifford looked down at the little withered face, and he fancied he detected a flicker of the eyelids. As he bent his head to look closer, he was surprised by her faint whisper in his ear.

“I am glad, oh, so glad,” she murmured, still[287] without opening her eyes, “that this has happened. For now they cannot make me give evidence against poor Nell.”

“My dear lady,” said Clifford, in the same low voice, “pray don’t trouble your head about that now. Nell will be all right. I am sure of it.”

For again she lay with immovable lips. But as he spoke an expression of intense agony came over the pinched, thin feature, and he saw that with the return of full consciousness had come also the full sensitiveness to pain.

But the constable did not seem to hear. He still stood at the window, looking down.

Clifford repeated his words, and the man, with evident reluctance, moved from the window. Miss Bostal glanced up and turned her head with a quick, bird-like motion to Clifford.

Clifford was about to answer in the negative, when the constable whom he had sent for the brandy,[288] having delivered his message with astonishing celerity, appeared at the corner of the house.

“Brandy!” she exclaimed. “I wouldn’t touch it on any account. I have been a teetotaller all my life.”

Her sudden burst of energy rather disconcerted Clifford, who was much relieved when he saw that the Colonel was close behind the constable. The old man came very slowly to the place where his daughter lay, and peered over the bushes at her.

“Theodora! Are you hurt? Really hurt?” he asked, in a dull tone, as if still too much overwhelmed by threatening misfortune to be greatly troubled about anything else.

“Hurt!” she exclaimed, pettishly. “Of course I am hurt. I overbalanced myself while leaning out of the window, and I fell out, and have broken my leg and one of my ribs, too, I think.”

“No. Oh, no!” with energy. “You would hurt me too much. Leave me here till the doctor comes.”

The Colonel turned, and so did Clifford and the constable. For they all heard sounds as of an altercation[289] in two men’s voices, and they presently caught sight of two men, the one apparently struggling to get away from the other, and the second endeavoring to hold his companion back. In the darkness, little more than this was visible to the three men in the garden; but the newcomers were near enough for their voices to be recognized.

Before he had heard more than this, Clifford was straining his eyes to pierce the gloom, full of interest, full of excitement.

The two men were now near enough for Clifford to distinguish the man who was holding his companion back, and to recognize him as Hemming. The second constable went forward, as the struggling pair came within the garden gate, to the assistance of his fellow. At the same moment Colonel Bostal thrust his hand through Clifford’s arm, as if for support. The young man hardly noticed his action, so deeply absorbed was he in the problem presented by the sight of the struggling men. For the man whom both the policemen now held was, indeed, no other than George Claris, wild-eyed, fierce, crazy-looking, with straggling beard and unkempt hair.

“Why, the poor fellow thinks you’ve got his niece here!” cried Clifford, who seemed to understand in a moment the mystery of the nocturnal knockings and disturbances of which the Colonel and his daughter had complained.

Colonel Bostal made no answer, but he threw one rapid glance behind him. Clifford followed his example instinctively, and an involuntary exclamation escaped his lips.

Sir Neville Bax had no idea of letting his admiration of Nell Claris’s pretty face save her from the terrors of a most rigorous examination.

When she had made the admission upon which the whole matter hinged, and had broken down into tears as a consequence, he gave her very little time to recover her composure, before he went on in a loud, pompous voice:

“Well, and so you admit there was a person in the house, at the time Mr. King was robbed, of whose presence there nobody but yourself knew anything. Now, what was the name of that person?”

Nell looked at him reproachfully. He knew who it was, and he might have spared her the pain of having to state it herself. But as he waited, she said in a whisper which was a strong contrast to the magistrate’s tones:

Nell, seeing there was no hope for it, dried her eyes and gave the following account with composure:

Miss Bostal had for some months been in the habit of asking Nell, from time to time, to let her sleep with Nell for the night, on the plea that the Colonel had stayed at Stroan, and that she was afraid of sleeping at Shingle End all by herself. She had begged Nell not to mention the fact even to her uncle, alleging that if it were to become known that her father’s house was sometimes left unprotected, it would certainly be broken into. Nell had seen nothing extraordinary in this, and had readily given shelter to her friend on half a dozen different occasions.

“I believe you were in the habit of going to Shingle End every morning and evening; that you were on intimate terms with her father and herself, and that you would chat with her about everything that happened at the inn?”

“And is it a fact that the robberies at the Blue Lion always took place when Miss Bostal was sleeping under the roof?”

[293]“Only at first,” said Nell, earnestly. “The last time she slept there was the night Mr. King was robbed.”

“How was it that you did not, on that occasion, mention to your uncle that she had been sleeping with you?”

“How could I? But indeed I did think of mentioning it, and refrained because it would have looked like throwing suspicion upon my best friend.”

“Yes, sir. She had been very kind to me; and it was she who got my uncle to send me to such a good school.”

“Oh, oh! I see. Artful all round. Doesn’t look much like insanity,” muttered Sir Neville to himself. And he continued his interrogatories: “And did not the fact that the robberies always took place when she was there excite your suspicion?”

“No, oh, no! I never thought of such a thing!” protested the young girl, earnestly.

“You say Miss Bostal was not in the house, to your knowledge, on the occasion of the subsequent robberies?”

With a sigh Nell obeyed. She admitted that on the morning when her uncle was found in a state of insanity, she had made a careful search of the house and had found out a circumstance which had escaped her notice, that a spare key of the back door, which had formerly hung on a nail in the passage, had disappeared.

“How was it you had not found that out before?” asked Sir Neville, rather dryly.

“I had forgotten all about the key, which was never used, until we had to leave the house on account of my poor uncle. Then I went over the keys to the different doors by an old list we had left by the man who had the place before my uncle; and it was then I missed the key, and remembered that I had not seen it for a long time.”

“You need not think,” said the magistrate, sharply, “that your making a frank admission of your suspicions can do the lady any harm. We should get at the truth somehow, you may be quite sure.”

[295]She herself saw that no concealment was possible any longer. And surely if Miss Bostal were really found guilty of such unlikely crimes, she must have been mad when she committed them.

“When did the idea that Miss Bostal committed the thefts come into your mind for the first time?”

Even now the remembrance of the terrible sensation she had experienced on that memorable occasion caused a frown of pain and distress to contract Nell’s pretty features.

“He told me that the thief was Miss Bostal; that he had seen her come out of the inn on the night that an attempt was made to rob Mr. Hemming.”

“Why did you not say this at the inquest? Why did you let it be thought he meant that he had seen you?”

“I was in a great difficulty. I didn’t know what to think, even then. I had always thought Miss Theodora so good, and besides she had been so kind[296] to me, that I didn’t know what to believe myself. It was all so dreadful, and I asked myself what she could do such things for. Besides, her manner when I told her Jem Stickels had threatened to tell the police was so cool. She didn’t seem to be in the least concerned about it. How could I suppose it was because she meant to get him out of the way? Oh! I can’t believe it even now, I can’t, I can’t. Why should she do it, unless she was mad? And there never seemed to be a trace of madness about her. I always thought she was very clever.”

Sir Neville smiled a little at her ingenuousness. Nell herself might not be very clever, but assuredly she was a loyal-hearted friend, to bear the obloquy which the affair had cast upon her, without a thought of clearing herself by betraying her friend.

But this was not, of course, the official view, which was the view he was bound to take. He coughed severely, and gave her a keen look.

“Don’t you think,” he said, “that you were bound, in the interests of justice, to be more frank?”

“And then, too, nobody asked me any questions implying any doubts of her. They took it for[297] granted that I was the thief, the jury did, and everybody. You remember that, don’t you?”

Yes, Sir Neville did remember that. And looking at the candid and sweet face in front of him, he wondered how his brother magistrates had been such asses, and he forgot that he had been one of those asses himself.

“Well,” he said, in a more pompous manner than ever, “you really gave your evidence so very badly, with such an apparent absence of straightforwardness, that there was some excuse for their mistake.”

“It was because I was so miserable, sir, more miserable than anybody, because in a sort of way I knew the truth.”

“Sir, if it had been only the thefts I would have done so,” answered she, earnestly. “I was in so much trouble with my suspicions that I had asked one of my friends”—her blush betrayed her—“to come and see me, that I might ask his advice about it. But before I had time to tell him what I was afraid of, the murder happened. And then I didn’t dare.”

“Well, well, it was a great pity,” said Sir Neville. “You would have saved yourself a lot of misery, and it would have done the lady no harm, as you see. And now I want some information, if you[298] please, as to the night of the murder. Did you, or did you not, hear any one go out of the house or come in, when you had come back with Miss Bostal from your visit to Jem Stickels at his lodgings?”

“Almost as soon as Miss Bostal left me in the kitchen, I heard the back door open and shut.”

“I thought it was Miss Theodora. She was always running in and out of the garden, feeding the chickens or looking for eggs or fetching wood from the stack at the side of the house or water from the well.”

“So that you just thought it was she, and then troubled yourself no more about it?”

[299]“It was—a long while after, just before I took the tea into the dining-room.”

Sir Neville laid down the pen which he had been holding, clasped his hands and looked over his writing-table at her, with an air of exasperation.

“I couldn’t have told them that in my answers to their questions,” answered Nell, earnestly. “Don’t you remember that all they asked me was whether I had been outside the house, not whether I had heard anybody else go in or out?”

“I have heard a report that a canvas bag containing the money collected for the shipwrecked sailors, on the night before your uncle went out of his mind, was found in your room. Is that true?”

“No, sir. Meg, my uncle’s servant, and I found it on the mat at the foot of the stairs. And that is really all I have to tell, sir,” said Nell, with an air of relief at having finished the odious recital.

“Well, that is enough for our purpose, fortunately,” said Sir Neville, as he rose to ring the bell. “And now you must come into the drawing-room and let Lady Neville give you a glass of wine. You are a little bit of a heroine, although you have certainly[300] not done much to facilitate the course of justice,” he wound up, with a dignified shake of the head.

But Nell refused to go to be shown off in the drawing-room, refused even to have a glass of wine or a cup of tea brought to her in the study before she went. She was white, trembling, miserable. But she felt that she wanted to be alone, to cry her eyes out at the terrible fact that she had been forced at last to assist the justice which she would have diverted from the criminal if she could. One question, however, she had to put in her turn before she left the presence of the magistrate.

“They will bring it in that she was mad, of course, will they not?” she asked, anxiously, but with an attempt to appear quite sure of his answer.

Sir Neville’s answer was not reassuring, and the look which accompanied it was still less so.

Nell walked to the door with staggering feet. Miss Theodora a murderess! In danger of penal servitude, if not of hanging! The thought was too overwhelmingly horrible.

Nell tottered to the cab and was driven back to her lodging at Courtstairs in an almost fainting condition, a few minutes before the police-sergeant who had been her escort to Sir Neville’s started for Shingle End with a warrant for Miss Bostal’s apprehension.

It was the police-sergeant who had taken Nell Claris to Sir Neville Bax who had brought to Shingle End the warrant for Miss Bostal’s arrest. This warrant he had not, so far, had an opportunity of showing to the Colonel. Now, however, that the lady had disappeared, and it had become necessary to search the place, and more thoroughly, the sergeant respectfully turned to the old gentleman, to inform the latter of the authority by which he acted.

Colonel Bostal, divining the man’s intention, made a gesture of horror, and without staying either to hear the man’s explanation or to look at the warrant, retreated hastily into the house.

Clifford, however, caught sight of the paper in the officer’s hands, and something of the truth was suddenly revealed to him. It flashed upon him so abruptly, this knowledge, that the shock turned him sick and giddy. It was some minutes before he could ask, in a hoarse and tremulous voice:

And the policeman continued his search about the garden and the house for the lady who had so mysteriously disappeared.

The innkeeper, who had now subsided into a stolid silence and tranquility, was watching the front door of the house. It was Hemming who answered:

“Yes, sir. He’s not quite himself yet, but he’s not too far off it to have been of use to us. We’ve had him under our eye these last few days, and whenever he gets the chance he makes straight for this house, and clamors to see the woman who robbed him. So we brought him with us to-night to confront her. She wouldn’t give us the chance till we got the warrant.”

Hemming affected to think that her capture was only a matter of minutes, as he kept to his post, watching the front of the house, while the other men searched the premises at the back. But he hardly looked so confident as might have been expected from his words.

[303]Indeed, he had cause for uneasiness. It was he who had first conceived suspicions of Miss Theodora, and it had taken all the ingenuity of which he was master to get together enough evidence against her to justify him in asking for a warrant. The sight of an old scar on one of her little hands, on the occasion of one of his visits to Shingle End, had suggested to him that she might have been the woman whose hand he had burned with the fuse at the inn.

But it had been a long time before he could make out a case—not, indeed, until he had thought of using the now half-witted George Claris, whom he had got out of the hands of simple Nell under a promise, which had been faithfully kept, that he should be well taken care of, and that he should return to her very shortly. Even then the difficulties in the way of the police had been great. At first Claris was sullen and taciturn. No questions would obtain from him a clear answer as to the events of the night which had turned his brain. It was not until that very afternoon that he had accused Miss Bostal by name of the thefts, and thus furnished the police with enough data for further proceedings.

“Doesn’t look much like madness to have shot the man who was going to inform against her,” said he, dryly.

It was hardly conceivable to him even yet that the prim, rigorous little old maid, who had been so much shocked at his walking along a country road on Sunday in a light suit, could have been guilty of the systematic crimes now laid to her charge. In the silence which followed his words one of the two Stroan policemen came up.

“She’s got away,” said he, in a low voice. “We’ve hunted all over the place. There’s no way by which she could have got back into the house.”

“How could she have got far with that short start of you?” asked Hemming, incredulously.

“I don’t know, but she’s done it. I’m going to search the house, so you keep your eyes open.”

The front door had been left open by the Colonel, whom the sergeant found in the dining-room, sitting with head bent over the dying embers of the fire. The man felt sorry for him and spoke in a subdued voice.

The old man acquiesced by a nod, and the officer[305] withdrew. From the ground floor to the first floor, from the first floor to the attics, he hunted in every corner. Hardly in vain. For although he did not find Miss Bostal, he found evidence enough of her predatory habits to convince any jury of her guilt of the minor crime of theft at least.

Under the boards of the attics, sewn up in the mattress of the lady’s own bed, hidden away in holes in the disused chimneys, the officer found a hoard as varied as it was incriminating. Money, in notes and silver and gold; jewelry, of little value for the most part and apparently taken new from shops; half a dozen men’s watches, pencil-cases, purses, pieces of stuff, scraps of lace, card-cases, silver spoons and forks. These were a part only of what he found.

Covered with the dust of years most of them were; the gold and silver tarnished and discolored with age and damp. On the whole a fine collection, and amounting in value to some hundreds of pounds.

Nothing less than a sheet was of any use to hold the collection; and even when the sergeant made his way down the stairs with a huge bundle on his back he felt by no means certain that there was not more behind.

The policeman, by the dim light of the lamp in the passage, displayed his find in silence. In silence, also, the Colonel looked, and immediately withdrew into the room. The sergeant left the house and met Clifford on the little path leading to the gate. He jerked his head back in the direction of the house.

“Sorry for the old gentleman!” said he, in a low voice. “It’s about broke him up, has this. He’s moping there, all by himself.”

“I’ll go and sit with him, if he’ll have me,” said Clifford, who was remorseful, knowing that he had had suspicions of the father, and not of the daughter.

“Do, sir,” said the sergeant, who wanted a watch kept upon Miss Bostal’s father, and was quite willing that it should be a friendly one.

So Clifford, not without diffidence, entered the house, as the sergeant carried his bundle to the gig which was waiting for him at the old turnpike.

The Colonel heard the slow footsteps outside the dining-room door, and called out:

The old man raised his head quickly, and gave him a little wan smile, as he held out his hand.

Then, having held the young man’s warm hand in his own cold one for a few moments, he let it fall, and, inviting him, with a gesture, to be seated, relapsed into silence. Clifford asked him if he should make up the fire. It was a cold evening, and the draughts had been allowed to sweep through the house from open window to open door.

“Yes, yes, my lad; warm yourself if you can. It would take more fire than there is on earth to warm my old bones to-night.”

The stern sadness of his tone sent a shiver through Clifford, who, indeed, had little comfort to give him. He had some difficulty in getting the fire to burn up, and when at last he succeeded, he found that the coal-scuttle was empty.

“I will fetch you some coal,” said the Colonel, who was proceeding to rise from his chair, when Clifford stopped him.

“Oh, well, if you will, you will find the lid of the water-butt on the ground outside, at the back. If[308] you lift it—but really I don’t like to trouble you—you will find the entrance to the cellar underneath.”

Following this rather curious direction, Clifford went out by the back door of the house, lifted the lid, admiring the ingenuity by which the cellar was concealed, and began to descend the wooden steps into the darkness below. The Colonel had provided him with a candle, but this was suddenly extinguished as he reached the bottom step, and at the same moment he became aware that he was not alone.

Involuntarily he uttered a little cry. A hand, the little, soft and slender hand which he remembered so vividly, but which he had never before identified, was placed quickly on his mouth.

“Hello!” they heard a rough man’s voice cry, muffled as it came down into the earth from the garden above.

“The policeman! Send him away on some pretext. I only want a moment, just one moment!”

The young man shuddered. Although he had no fear that Miss Bostal would do him any harm, there was something uncanny about the idea of being left alone with a murderess, deep down in the bowels of[309] the earth, in the grasp of the little hands that had done such deadly work.

The policeman’s voice startled them both. He flashed his lantern down into the cellar, but already Miss Bostal had released Clifford and hidden herself in the corner behind the steps.

“Yes,” said Clifford. “I’m getting some coal. Would you ask the Colonel for a scoop, or a shovel, or something to get it up by?”

He drew back, and the moment he did so, Miss Bostal, with amazing boldness and celerity, crept up the steps and out behind his back, as he called to Colonel Bostal from the back doorway.

Clifford stood still, with his heart in his mouth. He was intensely excited; he was listening with all his power. But he did not know whether he wanted the woman to escape or whether he wanted her to pay the penalty she so well deserved. All he knew was that the few moments of suspense seemed never-ending. Then the voice of the policeman, measured and calm, was heard again:

[310]She had got away, then! After all, it was no more than was to be expected of her superhuman cunning. And, in spite of himself, he felt an immense relief that he had helped her to escape. He could meet, if not the policeman, at least the Colonel, with a lighter heart. He took the shovel which was handed to him, and reappeared in the dining-room with the coal.

“I knew, when you got the policeman to call me, that it was some ruse of hers,” he said. “You see, Mr. King,” he went on, as the young man reddened with surprise, “I know her tricks. I—I have waited—for some such end as this—for twenty-five years.”

An exclamation, in which astonishment and sympathy were blended, escaped from Clifford’s lips. Colonel Bostal rose from his chair, and unlocking a cupboard in the corner of the room, took from it an old desk, which he unlocked; and taking from it a bundle of cuttings from old newspapers, put them into Clifford’s hands.

They all referred to cases of “kleptomania” which had come before the West End magistrates[311] from twenty-three to twenty-five years before, in which a “ladylike young woman, of superior manner and address,” had been charged with shoplifting.

“They all refer to my daughter,” said the Colonel, quietly. “And in all we managed to get her off, on the plea that she had suffered from hysteria. And that was true.”

“Then she is not responsible for her actions?” suggested Clifford in a tone of relief.

“Frankly, my own belief is that she is fully responsible. She is a highly intelligent woman, and her astuteness and cunning are unsurpassable. There is some moral twist in her nature which causes her to love the excitement of crime. That is my own opinion. I took her away from London, but wherever we went, she threatened to get herself and me into trouble, and at last I brought her here, where it seemed that she must be honest for want of opportunity to be anything else. And I thought, until a few weeks ago, that I had succeeded. I swear to you I never had a suspicion that she was mixed up with the thefts at the Blue Lion, until the inquest on young Stickels. Then, when I saw that it lay between her and poor little Nell Claris, I knew who was the—the culprit. But how could I confess[312] it? My heart bled for the poor girl, but I knew the truth must come out, and I had not the courage to hasten its coming.”

For a long time there was silence in the little room. Then Clifford ventured to ask:

“All I know is that whatever she has done is the best possible thing for her own safety. I can trust her for that.”

Clifford was shocked. That the little, faded woman was a monster, an unnatural and depraved creature without moral sense, was clear. The Colonel rose again, locked up his desk and held out his hand to the young man.

“Go,” said he, gravely, but kindly. “You have done all you could for me, for us, and I thank you. Now you must leave us to take our chance. And remember what I have said: There is very little cause to fear on my daughter’s account.”

Thus dismissed, Clifford took leave of the old man reluctantly and started for Courtstairs, where he easily found a lodging for the night.

On the following morning, at daybreak, there arrived at the County Lunatic Asylum, sixteen miles from Stroan, a weird, wan object, shoeless, wild-eyed, voiceless with cold and with terror.

No lunatic who had ever been admitted within the walls of the asylum had looked half so mad as she did. The doctors saw her, and advised her detention. And when the storm broke over her, and the hue and cry reached the asylum, there was no doubt expressed by any of the doctors as to her insanity. She was duly brought up before the magistrates, remanded, brought up again; always with the same result. She smiled, she chatted; she appeared wholly unconscious of her position, wholly irresponsible. And at the last her trial for murder was avoided, the doctors all certifying that she was unfit to plead.

And when it was announced that Miss Theodora would be confined during Her Majesty’s pleasure, every one concurred in the justice of the decision except Colonel Bostal, who said to Clifford, when they were alone:

Clifford himself did not know what to think. But then he had something so much pleasanter to think about. For Nell Claris was no longer able to[314] say “No” to him. Instead of being a suspected criminal, she was now a heroine. It was honor and not disgrace that she could now bring to her husband.

One thing only Clifford had to wait for. Nell would not leave her uncle until his mind was quite restored. For months she watched the reawakening of his reason, tending him with loving care.

And when he was able to return to the Blue Lion, in full possession of his reason, when the autumn tints were on the trees, Clifford took his pretty and gentle bride away from the inn by the shore.

A Woman’s Book.

The House by the River.

BY
Barbara Kent.

With Illustrations by Warren B. Davis.

12mo. 328 Pages. Handsomely Bound in Cloth. Price, $1.00.
Paper Cover, 50 Cents.

“The House by the River” is a woman’s book from beginning to end. It is an interesting novel, with the principal scenes in the city of New York and in familiar localities. In the opening of the story there is a strong dramatic recital of events upon which the plot hinges, and which give a deep and thrilling interest to the development of the romance of two young lives. The vindictiveness of a man who has been compelled to do right under humiliating circumstances gives a strong motive to the whole action of the story. Every reader will be gratified by the way in which the conclusion is reached.

For sale by all booksellers and newsdealers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers,

ROBERT BONNER’S SONS,
Cor. William and Spruce Streets, New York.

A Novel of Strange Adventures.

A Treasure Found—A Bride Won

BY
George E. Gardner.

With illustrations by Warren B. Davis.

12mo. 407 Pages. Handsomely Bound in Cloth. Price, $1.00.
Paper Cover, 50 Cents.

This novel is a record of adventure in the Eastern seas, full of strange incidents and dangers, exciting profound interest. There is good descriptive work in the story, and it well repays perusal for the pictures of the life and scenery of the ocean. There is a story in it which grips attention at the start, and never relaxes its hold upon the reader until the end. The author has made good in this work his right to be numbered among the popular authors who introduce us to new and captivating fields of action. The world is becoming so narrow and well-travelled that our best writers enlarge its borders by the aid of imagination, and this faculty is the secret of their charm.

For sale by all booksellers and newsdealers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers,

ROBERT BONNER’S SONS,
Cor. William and Spruce Streets, New York.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mystery of the inn by the shore

THE MYSTERY OF THE INN
BY THE SHORE.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE