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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of At Large, by E. W. Hornung
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: At Large
+
+Author: E. W. Hornung
+
+Release Date: March 26, 2011 [EBook #35684]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT LARGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ernest Schaal, Beginners Projects and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OTHER BOOKS BY MR. HORNUNG
+
+    THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN. $1.25.
+
+    RAFFLES. MORE ADVENTURES OF THE
+      AMATEUR CRACKSMAN. Illustrated by
+      F. C. YOHN. $1.50.
+
+    PECCAVI. A NOVEL. $1.50.
+
+    THE SHADOW OF A MAN. $1.25.
+
+    DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES. A
+      NOVEL. $1.25.
+
+    SOME PERSONS UNKNOWN. $1.25.
+
+    YOUNG BLOOD. $1.25.
+
+    MY LORD DUKE. $1.25.
+
+    THE ROGUE'S MARCH. A ROMANCE.
+      $1.50.
+
+    THE BOSS OF TAROOMBA. [_Ivory
+      Series._] 16mo. $0.75.
+
+    A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH. [_Ivory
+      Series._] 16mo. $0.75.
+
+    IRRALIE'S BUSHRANGER. A STORY
+      OF AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURE. [_Ivory
+      Series._] 16mo. $0.75.
+
+
+
+
+                                AT LARGE
+
+
+
+
+                                AT LARGE
+
+
+                               _A NOVEL_
+
+                                   BY
+                             E. W. HORNUNG
+
+
+                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+                     NEW YORK::::::::::::::::: 1902
+
+
+
+
+                          COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY
+                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                         _All rights reserved_
+
+
+                        PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1902
+
+
+                             TROW DIRECTORY
+                    PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
+                                NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                             Page
+
+        I. A Nucleus of Fortune                                 1
+
+       II. Sundown                                             11
+
+      III. After Four Years                                    20
+
+       IV. How Dick Came Home                                  28
+
+        V. The First Evening at Graysbrooke                    41
+
+       VI. Sisyphus                                            53
+
+      VII. South Kensington                                    64
+
+     VIII. The Admirable Miles                                 72
+
+       IX. A Dancing Lesson and its Consequences               86
+
+        X. An Old Friend and an Old Memory                     98
+
+       XI. Dressing, Dancing, Looking on                      109
+
+      XII. "To-Morrow, and To-Morrow, and To-Morrow"          123
+
+     XIII. In Bushey Park                                     132
+
+      XIV. Quits                                              152
+
+       XV. The Morning After                                  163
+
+      XVI. Military Manoeuvres                                174
+
+     XVII. "Miles's Beggars"                                  185
+
+    XVIII. Alice Speaks for Herself                           196
+
+      XIX. Conterminous Courses                               206
+
+       XX. Strange Humility                                   216
+
+      XXI. An Altered Man                                     227
+
+     XXII. Extremities                                        234
+
+    XXIII. The Effect of a Photograph                         244
+
+     XXIV. The Effect of a Song                               256
+
+      XXV. Melmerbridge Church                                271
+
+     XXVI. At Bay                                             286
+
+    XXVII. The Fatal Tress                                    296
+
+   XXVIII. The Effort                                         307
+
+     XXIX. Elizabeth Ryan                                     313
+
+      XXX. Sweet Revenge                                      325
+
+     XXXI. The Charity of Silence                             333
+
+    XXXII. Suspense: Reaction                                 343
+
+   XXXIII. How Dick Said Good-Bye                             353
+
+
+
+
+                                AT LARGE
+
+
+
+
+                                At Large
+
+                                   I
+
+                          A NUCLEUS OF FORTUNE
+
+
+A hooded wagon was creeping across a depressing desert in the middle of
+Australia; layers of boxes under the hood, and of brass-handled,
+mahogany drawers below the boxes, revealed the licensed hawker of the
+bush. Now, the hawker out there is a very extensive development of his
+prototype here at home; he is Westbourne Grove on wheels, with the
+prices of Piccadilly, W. But these particular providers were neither so
+universal nor so exorbitant as the generality of their class. There were
+but two of them; they drove but two horses; and sat shoulder to shoulder
+on the box.
+
+The afternoon was late; all day the horses had been crawling, for the
+track was unusually heavy. There had been recent rains; red mud clogged
+the wheels at every yard, and clung to them in sticky tires. Little
+pools had formed all over the plain; and westward, on the off-side of
+the wagon, these pools caught the glow of the setting sun, and filled
+with flame. Far over the horses' ears a long low line of trees was
+visible; otherwise the plain was unbroken; you might ride all day on
+these plains and descry no other horse nor man.
+
+The pair upon the box were partners. Their names were Flint and
+Edmonstone. Flint was enjoying a senior partner's prerogative, and
+lolling back wreathed in smoke. His thick bare arms were idly folded. He
+was a stout, brown, bearded man, who at thirty looked many years older;
+indolence, contentment, and goodwill were written upon his face.
+
+The junior partner was driving, and taking some pains about it--keeping
+clear of the deep ruts, and pushing the pace only where the track was
+good. He looked twenty years Flint's junior, and was, in fact, just of
+age. He was strongly built and five-feet-ten, with honest gray eyes,
+fair hair, and an inelastic mouth.
+
+Both of these men wore flannel shirts, buff cord trousers, gray felt
+wideawakes; both were public-school men, drawn together in the first
+instance by that mutually surprising fact, and for the rest as different
+as friends could be. Flint had been ten years in the Colonies,
+Edmonstone not quite ten weeks. Flint had tried everything, and failed;
+Edmonstone had everything before him, and did not mean to fail. Flint
+was experienced, Edmonstone sanguine; things surprised Edmonstone,
+nothing surprised Flint. Edmonstone had dreams of the future, and golden
+dreams; Flint troubled only about the present, and that very little. In
+fine, while Edmonstone saw licensed hawking leading them both by a short
+cut to fortune, and earnestly intended that it should, Flint said they
+would be lucky if their second trip was as successful as their first,
+now all but come to an end.
+
+The shadow of horses and wagon wavered upon the undulating plain as
+they drove. The shadows grew longer and longer; there was a noticeable
+change in them whenever young Edmonstone bent forward to gaze at the sun
+away to the right, and then across at the eastern sky already tinged
+with purple; and that was every five minutes.
+
+"It will be dark in less than an hour," the lad exclaimed at last, in
+his quick, anxious way; "dark just as we reach the scrub; we shall have
+no moon until eleven or so, and very likely not strike the river
+to-night."
+
+The sentences were punctuated with sharp cracks of the whip. An answer
+came from Edmonstone's left, in the mild falsetto that contrasted so
+queerly with the bodily bulk of Mr. John Flint, and startled all who
+heard him speak for the first time.
+
+"My good fellow, I implore you again to spare the horseflesh and the
+whipcord--both important items--and take it easy like me."
+
+"Jack," replied Edmonstone warmly, "you know well enough why I want to
+get to the Murrumbidgee to-night. No? Well, at all events, you own that
+we should lose no time about getting to some bank or other?"
+
+"Yes, on the whole. But I don't see the good of hurrying on now to reach
+the township at an unearthly hour, when all the time we might camp in
+comfort anywhere here. To my mind, a few hours, or even a night or two,
+more or less----"
+
+"Are neither here nor there? Exactly!" broke in Edmonstone, with
+increasing warmth. "Jack, Jack! the days those very words cost us! Add
+them up--subtract them from the time we've been on the roads--and we'd
+have been back a week ago at least. I shall have no peace of mind until
+I step out of the bank, and that's the truth of it." As he spoke, the
+fingers of Edmonstone's right hand rested for a moment, with a curious,
+involuntary movement, upon his right breast.
+
+"I can see that," returned Flint, serenely. "The burden of riches, you
+see--and young blood! When you've been out here as long as I have,
+you'll take things easier, my son."
+
+"You don't understand my position," said Edmonstone. "You laugh when I
+tell you I came out here to make money: all the same, I mean to do it. I
+own I had rotten ideas about Australia--all new chums have. But if I
+can't peg out my claim and pick up nuggets, I'm going to do the next
+best thing. It may be hawking and it may not. I mean to see. But we must
+give the thing a chance, and not run unnecessary risks with the gross
+proceeds of our very first trip. A hundred and thirty pounds isn't a
+fortune; but it may be the nucleus of one; and it's all we've got
+between us in this world meanwhile."
+
+"My dear old boy, I'm fully alive to it. I only don't see the point of
+finishing the trip at a gallop."
+
+"The point is that our little all is concealed about my person," said
+Edmonstone, grimly.
+
+"And my point is that it and we are absolutely safe. How many more times
+am I to tell you so?" And there was a squeak of impatience in the absurd
+falsetto voice, followed by clouds of smoke from the bearded lips.
+
+Edmonstone drove some distance without a word.
+
+"Yet only last week," he remarked at length, "a store was stuck up on
+the Darling!"
+
+"What of that?"
+
+"The storekeeper was robbed of every cent he had."
+
+"I know."
+
+"Yet they shot him dead in the end."
+
+"And they'll swing for it."
+
+"Meanwhile they've shown clean heels, and nobody knows where they
+are--or are not."
+
+"Consequently you expect to find them waiting for us in the next clump,
+eh?"
+
+"No, I don't. I only deny that we are absolutely safe."
+
+Flint knocked out his pipe with sudden energy.
+
+"My dear boy," cried he, "have I or have I not been as many years out
+here as you've been weeks? I tell you I was in the mounted police, down
+in Vic, all through the Kelly business; joined in the hunt myself; and
+back myself to know a real bushranger when I see him or read about him.
+This fellow who has the cheek to call himself Sundown is not a
+bushranger at all; he and his mates are mere robbers and murderers. Ned
+Kelly didn't go shooting miserable storekeepers; and he was the last of
+the bushrangers, and is likely to remain the last. Besides, these chaps
+will streak up-country, not down; but, if it's any comfort to you, see
+here," and Flint pocketed his pipe, made a long arm overhead and reached
+a Colt's revolver from a hook just inside the hood of the wagon, "let
+this little plaything reassure you. What, didn't you know I was a dead
+shot with this? My dear chap, I wasn't in the mounted police for
+nothing. Why, I could pick out your front teeth at thirty yards and
+paint my name on your waistcoat at twenty!"
+
+Flint stroked the glittering barrel caressingly, and restored the pistol
+to its hook: there was a cartridge in every chamber.
+
+The other said nothing for a time, but was more in earnest than ever
+when he did speak.
+
+"Jack," said he, "I can only tell you this: if we were to lose our money
+straight away at the outset I should be a lost man. How could we go on
+without it--hawking with an empty wagon? How could I push, push,
+push--as I've got to--after losing all to start with? A hundred pounds!
+It isn't much, but it is everything to me--everything. Let me only keep
+it a bit and it shall grow under my eyes. Take it away from me and I am
+done for--completely done for."
+
+He forgot that he was using the first person singular instead of plural;
+it had become natural to him to think out the business and its
+possibilities in this way, and it was no less in Flint's nature to see
+no selfishness in his friend's speech. Flint only said solemnly:
+
+"You shouldn't think so much about money, old chap."
+
+"Money and home!" exclaimed Dick Edmonstone in a low, excited tone.
+"Home and money! It's almost all I do think about."
+
+Jack Flint leaned forward, and narrowly scanned the face of his friend;
+then lay back again, with a light laugh of forced cheerfulness.
+
+"Why, Dick, you speak as though you had been exiled for years, and it's
+not three months since you landed."
+
+Dick started. It already seemed years to him.
+
+"Besides," continued the elder man, "I protest against any man growing
+morbid who can show a balance-sheet like ours. As to home-sickness, wait
+until you have been out here ten years; wait until you have tried
+digging, selecting, farming, droving; wait until you have worn a
+trooper's uniform and a counter jumper's apron, and ridden the
+boundaries at a pound a week, and tutored Young Australia for your
+rations. When you have tried all these things--and done no good at any
+of 'em, mark you--then, if you like, turn home-sick."
+
+The other did not answer. Leaning forward, he whipped up the horses, and
+gazed once more towards the setting sun. His companion could not see his
+face; but trouble and anxiety were in that long, steady, westward gaze.
+He was very young, this lad Edmonstone--young even for his years. Unlike
+his mate, his thoughts were all of the past and of the future; both
+presented happy pictures; so happy that his mind would fly from the one
+to the other without touching the present. And so he thought now, gazing
+westward, of home, and of something sweeter than home itself; and he
+blended that which had gone before with that which was yet to come; and
+so wonderful was the harmony between these two that to-day was entirely
+forgotten. Then the sun swung half-way below the dark line of the
+horizon; a golden pathway shone across the sandy track right to the
+wheels of the wagon; the dark line of scrub, now close at hand, looked
+shadowy and mysterious; the sunset colours declared themselves finally
+in orange and pink and gray, before the spreading purple caught and
+swallowed them. The dreamer's face grew indistinct, but his golden
+dreams were more vivid than before.
+
+A deadly stillness enveloped the plain, making all sounds staccato: the
+rhythmical footfall of the horses, the hoarse notes of crows wheeling
+through the twilight like uncanny heralds of night, the croaking of
+crickets in the scrub ahead.
+
+Dick was recalled to the antipodes by a mild query from his mate.
+
+"Are you asleep, driver?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You haven't noticed any one ahead of us this afternoon on horseback?"
+
+"No; why?"
+
+"Because here are some one's tracks," said Flint, pointing to a fresh
+horse-trail on the side of the road.
+
+Edmonstone stretched across to look. It was difficult in the dusk to
+distinguish the trail, which was the simple one of a horse walking.
+
+"I saw no one," he said; "but during the last hour it would have been
+impossible to see any one, as close to the scrub as we are now. Whoever
+it is, he must have struck the track hereabouts somewhere, or we should
+have seen his trail before sundown."
+
+"Whoever it is," said Flint, "we shall see him in a minute. Don't you
+hear him? He is still at a walk."
+
+Edmonstone listened, and the measured beat of hoofs grew upon his ear;
+another moment and a horseman's back was looming through the dusk--very
+broad and round, with only the crown of a wideawake showing above the
+shoulders. As the wagon drew abreast his horse was wheeled to one side,
+and a hearty voice hailed the hawkers:
+
+"Got a match, mateys? I've used my last, and I'm just weakening for a
+smoke."
+
+"Here's my box," said Dick, pulling up. "Take as many as you like."
+
+And he dropped his match-box into a great fat hand with a wrist like a
+ship's cable, and strong stumpy fingers: it was not returned until a
+loaded pipe was satisfactorily alight; and as the tobacco glowed in the
+bowl the man's face glowed in company. It was huge like himself, and
+bearded to the eyes, which were singularly small and bright, and set
+very close together.
+
+"I don't like that face," said Dick when the fellow had thanked him with
+redoubled heartiness, and ridden on.
+
+"It looked good-natured."
+
+"It was and it wasn't. I don't want to see it again; but I shall know it
+if ever I do. I had as good a look at him as he had at us."
+
+Flint made no reply; they entered the forest of low-sized malee and pine
+in silence.
+
+"Jack," gasped Edmonstone, very suddenly, after half-an-hour, "there's
+some one galloping in the scrub somewhere--can't you hear?"
+
+"Eh?" said Flint, waking from a doze.
+
+"Some one's galloping in the scrub--can't you hear the branches
+breaking? Listen."
+
+"I hear nothing."
+
+"Listen again."
+
+Flint listened intently.
+
+"Yes--no. I thought for an instant--but no, there is no sound now."
+
+He was right: there was no sound then, and he was somewhat ruffled.
+
+"What are you giving us, Dick? If you will push on, why, let's do it;
+only we do one thing or the other."
+
+Dick whipped up the horses without a word. For five minutes they trotted
+on gamely; then, without warning, they leaped to one side with a shy
+that half-overturned the wagon.
+
+Side by side, and motionless in the starlight, sat two shadowy forms on
+horseback, armed with rifles, and masked to the chin.
+
+"Hands up," cried one of them, "or we plug."
+
+
+
+
+                                   II
+
+                                SUNDOWN
+
+
+There was no time for thought, much less for action, beyond that taken
+promptly by Flint, who shot his own hands above his head without a
+moment's hesitation, and whispered to Dick to do the same. Any other
+movement would have been tantamount to suicide. Yet it was with his eyes
+open and his head cool that Flint gave the sign of submission.
+
+The horsemen sat dark and motionless as the trees of the sleeping forest
+around them. They were contemplating the completeness of their triumph,
+grinning behind their masks.
+
+Flint saw his chance. Slowly, very slowly, his left arm, reared rigidly
+above his head, swayed backward; his body moved gently with his arm; his
+eyes never left the two mysterious mounted men.
+
+He felt his middle finger crowned by a cool ring. It was the muzzle of
+his precious Colt. One grasp, and at least he would be armed.
+
+He turned his wrist for the snatch, gazing steadily all the while at the
+two vague shadows of men. Another second--and a barrel winked in the
+starlight, to gleam steadily as it covered Flint's broad chest. He who
+had called upon them to throw up their hands spoke again; his voice
+seemed to come from the muzzle of the levelled rifle.
+
+"Stretch an inch more, you on the near-side, and you're the last dead
+man."
+
+Flint shrugged his shoulders. The game was lost. There was no more need
+to lose his head than if the game had been won. There was no need at all
+to lose his life.
+
+"I give you best," said he, without the least emotion in his
+extraordinary voice.
+
+"Fold your arms and come down," said the man with the rifle, his finger
+on the trigger.
+
+Flint did as he was ordered.
+
+"The same--you with the reins."
+
+Edmonstone's only answer was a stupefied stare.
+
+"Jump down, my friend, unless you want helping with this."
+
+Dick obeyed apathetically; he was literally dazed. At a sign from the
+man with the rifle he took his stand beside Flint; three paces in front
+of the luckless pair shone the short barrel of the Winchester repeater.
+The other robber had dismounted, and was standing at the horses' heads.
+
+In this position, a moment's silence fell upon the four men, to be
+broken by the coarse, grating laughter of a fifth. Edmonstone turned his
+head, saw another horseman issuing from the trees, and at once
+recognised the burly figure of the traveller who had borrowed his
+match-box less than an hour before. At that moment, and not until then,
+Dick Edmonstone realised the situation. It was desperate; all was lost!
+The lad's brain spun like a top: reason fled from it; his hand clutched
+nervously at the pocket where the money was, and he swore in his heart
+that if that went, his life might go with it.
+
+In another instant the hairy ruffian had ridden his horse close up to
+Edmonstone, whipped his foot from the stirrup, and kicked the youngster
+playfully in the chest--on that very spot which his thoughtless gesture
+had betrayed.
+
+At this the other bushrangers set up a laugh--a short one.
+
+With a spring like a young leopard, Dick Edmonstone had the big horseman
+by the beard, and down they came to the ground together. There, in the
+sand, they rolled over each other, locked in mortal combat--writhing,
+leaping, twisting, shifting--so that the leader of the band, though he
+pointed his rifle at the struggling men, dared not fire, for fear of
+hitting the wrong one. But there came a moment when the struggling
+ceased, when Flint sprang forward with a hoarse cry on his lips and
+Sundown took careless aim with the Winchester.
+
+Dick Edmonstone was lying on his back with white, upturned face. Two
+crushing weights pinned down each arm below the shoulder; his adversary
+was kneeling on him with grinding teeth and a frightful face, and one
+hand busy at his belt. His hand flew up with a gleam. It was at that
+moment that the man with the rifle raised it and fired.
+
+The bearded ruffian shook his hand as though hit, and the haft of a
+knife slipped from it; the bullet had carried away the blade. With a
+curse he felt for his revolver.
+
+"Don't be a fool, Jem Pound," said the marksman quietly, lowering his
+smoking piece. "Before you bring the lot of us to the gallows, I'll put
+a bullet through your own fat head. Get up, you big fool! Cut the mokes
+adrift, and turn everything out of the wagon."
+
+The man Pound rose sulkily, with a curious last look at the young
+Englishman's throat, and hell-fire in his little eyes.
+
+"Ben, watch this cove," the chief went on, pointing to Flint, "and watch
+him with the shooter. I'll see to the youngster myself. Come here, my
+friend."
+
+The speaker was plainly no other than the rascal who called himself
+Sundown; the hawkers heard the sobriquet on the lips of the other masked
+man, and their glances met. He was wrapped in a cloak that hid him from
+head to heels, stooped as he walked, and was amply masked. What struck
+Flint--who was sufficiently cool to remain an attentive observer--was
+the absence of vulgar bluster about this fellow; he addressed
+confederates and captives alike in the same quiet, decisive tones,
+without either raising his voice to a shout or filling the air with
+oaths. It appeared that Ned Kelly had not been the last of the real
+bushrangers, after all.
+
+"You come along with me," said he, quietly; and drew Dick aside,
+pointing at him the rifle, which he grasped across the breech, with a
+finger still upon the trigger.
+
+"Now," continued Sundown, when they had withdrawn a few yards into the
+scrub, "turn out that pocket." He tapped Edmonstone on the chest with
+the muzzle of the rifle.
+
+Dick folded his arms and took a short step backward.
+
+"Shoot me!" he exclaimed, looking the robber full in the face. "Why did
+you save me a minute ago? I prefer to die. Shoot me, and have done with
+it."
+
+"Open your coat," said the bushranger.
+
+Edmonstone tore open not only his coat, but his shirt as well, thus
+baring his chest.
+
+"There. Shoot!" he repeated hoarsely.
+
+Sundown stared at the boy with a moment's curiosity, but paid no heed to
+his words.
+
+"Empty that pocket."
+
+Dick took out the pocket-book that contained all the funds of the firm.
+
+"Open it."
+
+Dick obeyed.
+
+"How much is in it?"
+
+"A hundred and thirty pounds."
+
+"Good! Cheques!"
+
+"More notes."
+
+The robber laughed consumedly.
+
+"Take them, if you are going to," said Dick, drawing a deep breath.
+
+Sundown did take them--pocket-book and all--still covering his man with
+the rifle. The moon was rising. In the pale light the young fellow's
+face was ghastly to look upon; it had the damp pallor of death itself.
+The bushranger eyed it closely, and half-dropped the bushranger's
+manner.
+
+"New chum, I take it!"
+
+"What of that?" returned Dick bitterly.
+
+"And not long set up shop?"
+
+Dick made no answer. Sundown stepped forward and gripped his shoulder.
+
+"Say, mate, is this hundred and odd quid so very much to you?"
+
+Still no answer.
+
+"On oath, now: is it so very much?"
+
+Dick looked up wildly.
+
+"Much? It is everything. You have robbed me of all I have! You have
+saved my life when I'd as soon lose it with my money. Yes, it's all I
+have in the world, since you want to know! Do you want to madden me, you
+cur? Shoot me--shoot, I tell you. If you don't I'll make you!" And the
+young madman clenched his fist as he spoke.
+
+That instant he felt himself seized by the neck and pushed forward, with
+a ring of cold steel pressing below his ear.
+
+"Here you--Jem Pound--have your revenge and bind this cub. Bind tight,
+but fair, for I'm watching you."
+
+In five minutes the blood would scarcely circulate in a dozen different
+parts of Edmonstone's body; he was bound as tightly as vindictive
+villain could bind him, to the off hind-wheel of his own wagon. Sundown
+stood by with the rifle, and saw it done.
+
+Flint had already been bound to the near hind-wheel, so that the
+partners were lashed back to back--both able to watch their property
+looted at the rear of the wagon, but unable to exchange glances.
+
+Sundown strolled about during the operation, which his subordinates
+conducted with deepening disgust, till he returned and asked what they
+had got.
+
+"Precious little," was the answer. "Stock sold out--boxes mostly empty."
+
+Nevertheless some few varieties of bush merchandise strewed the ground,
+and hats, boots, and pipes were quickly selected by Jem Pound and the
+man addressed as Ben; though as for Sundown, he seemed content with a
+supply of smoking materials, and, indeed, to be more or less preoccupied
+while the plunder went forward. At length, at a word from him, the other
+men mounted their horses, while their leader walked round to where Flint
+was spread-eagled against the wheel.
+
+"Is there anything you want before we go?" the bushranger inquired, as
+civilly as you please.
+
+"Yes," said Flint; "I want you to fill my pipe, stick it in my mouth,
+and put a match to it, if you will be so good."
+
+The other laughed, but complied with the full request before turning his
+attention to young Edmonstone.
+
+"As for you," he said, "here's your pocket-book. I couldn't take such a
+treasure from you. Better keep it in memory of the fortune (the immense
+fortune of a hundred and thirty pounds) it once contained. Not that I
+have quite emptied it, though; I may be a devil, but I never clean a man
+out quite; so you'll find enough left to get you a night's lodging and
+some tucker. And--and don't forget old Sundown altogether; you may be
+able to put in a good word for him some day!"
+
+These last words, though spoken after a pause, were thrown off lightly
+enough; yet somehow they were unlike the rest that had gone before.
+Before their sound had died away Sundown was in his saddle, and the
+sound of horses galloping through the scrub was growing faint and far
+away.
+
+Flint was the first to free himself. It took him hours. His teeth ached,
+his fingers bled, before the last knot that bound his hands was undone.
+His knife quickly did the rest.
+
+He went straight to Edmonstone, who had not spoken since the gang
+decamped. Flint found him pale and cold, with a very hard expression
+upon his face. Dick allowed himself to be set free without a
+word--without so much as an intelligent glance.
+
+The horses could be heard munching bits of bushes close at hand. They
+were easily caught. Nor was it a difficult task to a ready-handed fellow
+like Flint to splice the traces, which the bushrangers had cut.
+
+The crestfallen partners were on the point of reentering the wagon, when
+Flint saw the pocket-book lying where it had been dropped.
+
+"Better take it," said Flint sorrowfully.
+
+In utter apathy Dick picked it up.
+
+"Wouldn't you see if they've cleaned it entirely?" suggested Flint.
+
+With listless fingers Edmonstone withdrew the elastic and opened the
+pocket-book.
+
+By this time the moon had mounted high in the clear southern sky; by her
+pure white rays they might have read small print. Flint's heart smote
+him; it was by his doing they had carried so many notes, through a fad
+of his about opening their banking account with hard cash; at cheques
+the bushrangers might easily have turned up their noses, as bushrangers
+had done before. But now, as it was--poor, poor young devil!
+
+A cry broke the silence, and rang out loud and wild upon the still night
+air. It came from Flint's side. He turned to find his companion
+tottering and trembling.
+
+Dick Edmonstone had dropped the pocket-book, and was nervously counting
+a roll of crisp, crackling papers.
+
+"They are all here!--all! all!" he whispered in a strange, broken voice.
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Yes, all--all! Only think of it; our fortune is not lost, after
+all--it's made--the key to it is in my hand again! Jack, the fellow had
+pity on me. No, I mean on us. I don't mean to be selfish, Jack; it's
+share and share alike, between you and me, and always will be. But if
+you knew--if you knew! Jack, I'll put in that good word for him--I'll
+make it more than words, if ever I get the chance! For I do owe him
+something," said the poor fellow, carried away by reaction and
+excitement, so that his breaking voice trembled between sobs and
+laughter. "I do owe that Sundown something. God bless him--that's all
+_I_ say."
+
+But Flint said nothing at all; he was much too amazed for words.
+
+
+
+
+                                  III
+
+                            AFTER FOUR YEARS
+
+
+One chilly night in June, 1886, the ship _Hesper_, bound from Melbourne
+to London, sailed into the Channel. She carried the usual wool cargo and
+twenty saloon passengers besides. When the Lizard light was sighted, the
+excitement--which had increased hourly since the Western Islands were
+left astern--knew no reasonable bounds. For the _Hesper_ was a hundred
+and eight days out; and among her passengers were grizzled Colonists, to
+whom this light was the first glimmer of England for thirty years; men
+who had found in the Colonial Exhibition at South Kensington an excuse
+to intrust vast flocks and herds to the hands of overseers, and to
+consummate that darling scheme of every prosperous Colonial, which they
+render by their phrase "a trip home." Sweepstakes on the date of
+sighting England, got up in the tropics, were now promptly settled;
+quarrels begun in the Southern Ocean were made up in the magic element
+of British waters; discontent was in irons, and joy held the ship. Far
+into the middle-watch festive souls perambulated the quarter-deck with
+noisy expressions of mirth, though with the conviction that the vessel
+was behaving badly; whereas the vessel was a good deal more innocent of
+that charge than the gentlemen who preferred it. But even when the last
+of these roysterers retired there was still one passenger left on the
+poop.
+
+A young man leaned with folded arms upon the port rail, staring out into
+the night. It seemed as though his eye penetrated the darkness, and
+found something bright beyond, so wistful was its gaze. One bell rang
+out from the forecastle, two bells followed half an hour later at one
+o'clock, but the figure of this dreamer remained motionless. For an hour
+he did not stir; but, as his imagination became more vivid, the
+expression of his eyes grew softer, until their yearning melted into a
+thin, thin film, and the firm lines of the mouth relaxed, and facial
+creases carved by a few hard years were smoothed away. He was only a few
+hours ahead of the _Hesper_ after all: she was off the Cornish coast,
+and he (in fancy) far up the Thames.
+
+Three-bells aroused the dreamer. He stood upright with a start. He
+passed his hand quickly across his forehead, as if to rid his brain of
+weak thoughts. He began tramping the deck rapidly. Now the whole man was
+changed: his step was brisk, his frame instinct with nervous animation,
+his chest swelled proudly, his eyes sparkled with triumph. He had hung
+over the rail like any sentimental home-comer; he marched the deck like
+a conquering hero.
+
+Yet this was one of the youngest men on board, and his years of absence
+from England were but a tithe of some of his fellow-passengers. During a
+long voyage the best and the worst of a man's character come out; but
+this man's display had been less complete than any one else's, and he
+was probably the better liked on board in consequence. Though reserved
+and quiet, he had, indeed without being conscious of it, become very
+popular. Perhaps one factor in this was the accidental discovery,
+half-way through the voyage, that he could draw uncommonly well; for it
+opened up a source of unexpected entertainment at a time when the stock
+amusements of the high seas had begun to flag. But there was one thing
+about him which, had his fellow-passengers suspected it, in all
+probability would have interfered considerably with his popularity: this
+was the astounding fact that at the age of twenty-five he had already
+made his fortune.
+
+One scene from the bush life of this exceedingly lucky young gentleman
+has already been set forth. It will be sufficient to briefly glance at
+the remainder of his Colonial career, since details of unbroken success
+are voted a bore by common consent.
+
+The firm of Flint and Edmonstone did well out of licensed hawking.
+Perhaps their honesty--which was as transparent as it was original in
+that line of business--had much to do with their success; for although
+squatters were at first sceptical of the new firm, their eyes were at
+once opened to the iniquitous prices of the Jews, who had hitherto
+enjoyed a monopoly of their custom. The newcomers thus gained
+experimental patronage, which they retained on their merits. After a
+year they advanced a step in the mercantile scale of the Colony: they
+set up a general store at a rising settlement on the Darling. The store
+had not been opened six months when the senior partner's chequered life
+in the Colonies was terminated in a manner utterly unforeseen. Word came
+that he had inherited, through an accommodating series of deaths, money
+and property in Ireland. It was no brilliant heritage, but it held out
+advantages greater on the whole than back-block storekeeping could be
+expected to afford. Withdrawing a temperate share of the profits, Mr.
+John Flint kicked the dust of the Riverina from his long boots, and
+finally disappeared from the face of the desert, and Edmonstone was left
+sole proprietor of a most promising "concern."
+
+The luck that had hitherto attended him was soon to be enhanced; for,
+gold being discovered close to the little township on the Darling, a
+"rush" from all parts of Australia followed. As in most similar cases of
+late years, expectations were by no means realised on the new diggings.
+Still, people came, and the storekeeper was a made man.
+
+A colonist of less than three years' standing, he joined three congenial
+spirits in the enterprise of stocking a station in the new Kimberley
+district of Western Australia. Here a huge success seemed certain in
+process of time; when, in the full tide of prosperity, with all he
+touched turning to gold beneath his fingers, with the lust of wealth
+upon him, there came a sudden revulsion of feeling. He realised that he
+had already amassed a fortune--small enough as fortunes go, but beyond
+his wildest hopes when quitting England. He saw that to go farther was
+to pursue wealth for wealth's sake--which was a rather lofty view of it;
+and that luck might not last for ever--which was shrewd; and that, with
+the sufficiency he had won, a rather better kind of existence was within
+reach. In short, he sickened of money-grubbing in a single night, and
+turned desperately home-sick instead; and, as it was not a game of
+cards, he was able, without incurring anything worse than compassion, to
+rise a winner. He determined to go home, invest his "pile," live on the
+interest, and--devote himself to art! He journeyed forthwith to
+Melbourne, and there succeeded in disposing of his share in the
+Kimberley station for a sum little short of five figures.
+
+Dick Edmonstone was opposed to sensational methods, or he would have
+taken the first mail-steamer and dropped like a thunderbolt among his
+people in England, with his money in his pocket. Besides, an exceptional
+amount of experience crammed into four years had robbed him, among other
+things, of nearly (though not quite) all his boyish impetuosity. So he
+merely wrote two letters by the first mail to his mother and to a
+certain Colonel Bristo. Thereafter he took his passage by the clipper
+_Hesper_, then loading at Williamstown, and prepared for a period of
+reflection, anticipation, and well-earned rest.
+
+Dick Edmonstone had altered a good deal during his four years in
+Australia. In the first place, the big boy had become a man, and a man
+who held up his head among other men; a man who had made his way by his
+own indomitable perseverance, and who thereby commanded your respect; a
+man of all-round ability in the opinion of his friends (and they were
+right); a man of the world in his own (and he was wrong). And all at
+twenty-five! The old tremendous enthusiasm had given place to a
+thoroughly sanguine temperament of lusty, reliant manhood. He was cooler
+now, no doubt, but his heart was still warm and his head still hot.
+Strangers took him for thirty. His manner was always independent, could
+be authoritative, and was in danger of becoming arrogant. This much,
+successful money-hunting had naturally brought about. But a generous
+disposition had saved him from downright selfishness through it all, and
+the talisman of a loyal, honest, ardent love had led him blameless
+through a wild and worldly life. And he was still young--young in many
+ways. His hopes and beliefs were still boundless; they had all come true
+so far. He had not found the world a fraud yet. On the contrary, he
+liked the world, which was natural; and thought he knew it, which did
+not follow because he happened to know some rough corners of it.
+
+One curious characteristic of young Edmonstone as a public schoolman and
+a modern young Englishman was the entire absence in him of false pride.
+Though transported pretty directly from Cambridge to Australia, he had
+taken to retail trade (of a humble kind at that) with philosophical
+sang-froid. On leaving England he had asked himself, What was his chief
+object in going out? And he had answered, To make money and return. Did
+it matter how he made it, once out there? No. No manual toil need
+degrade him, no honest business put him to shame. In England it is
+different; but in her democratic Colonies her younger sons--whether from
+Poplar or from Eton--must take the work that offers, as they covet
+success. Dick Edmonstone jumped at his first opening; that it chanced to
+be in the licensed hawking line cost him hardly a pang.
+
+Indeed, he looked back lovingly in his success on those early days,
+when all he possessed in the world was invested in that daring venture.
+He thought of the anxiety that consumed him at the time, and of Jack
+Flint's cooling influence; and whenever he thought of those days one
+episode rose paramount in his brain, obliterating other memories. That
+episode was the "sticking-up" of the wagon on the first trip by Sundown
+and his men, which must have meant his ruin but for the extraordinary
+behaviour of the bushranger with regard to the pocket-book and its
+contents. He did not forget that the bushranger had preserved his life
+as well as restored his money. And that hundred pounds actually turned
+out to be the nucleus of a fortune! Sundown--poor fellow--was captured;
+perhaps by this time hanged, or imprisoned for life. Just before the
+_Hesper_ sailed, word of the outlaw's arrest in a remote district of
+Queensland was telegraphed from Brisbane. He had been heard of from time
+to time during the preceding years, but on the whole his gang had done
+less mischief and shed less blood than some of their predecessors. As
+for Dick, when he read of the capture he was downright sorry. It may be
+a passive order of kindness that refrains from robbing a man; yet Dick
+was so peculiarly constituted as to feel in secret more than a passing
+regret at the news.
+
+But as the _Hesper_ drew towards the Channel he thought less and less of
+the life he had left behind, and more and more of the life before him.
+He longed all day to feel the springy turf of England under foot once
+more; to have the scent of English flowers in his nostrils; to listen to
+English larks carolling out of sight in the fleecy clouds of an English
+sky. How green the fields would seem! How solid the houses, how
+venerable the villages, how historic the rivers of the Old World! And
+then how he longed to plunge into the trio he styled "his people"--his
+mother the widow, his brother the City clerk, his sister the saint! Yet
+what were these yearnings beside one other! What the dearest kin beside
+her who must yet be nearer and dearer still!--the young girl from whom
+he had fled to seek his fortune--for whom he had found it. In her his
+honest yearning centred, in her his high hopes culminated. Of her he
+thought all day, gazing out over the sun-spangled waves, and all night,
+tossing in his berth. A thousand times he cursed his folly in choosing
+canvas before steam; the time was so long--and seemed longer; the
+brightest days were interminable ages; favouring gales were lighter than
+zephyrs.
+
+He allowed no doubts to interfere with the pleasures of anticipation; no
+fears, no anxieties. If he thought of what might have happened at home
+during the last four or five months since he had received news, the
+catalogue of calamities was endless. He did not believe disappointment
+possible through any sort of a calamity. If those he loved still
+lived--as he knew they did five or six months ago--then he was sure of
+his reception; he was sure of hearts and hands; he was sure of his
+reception from every one--yes, from every one.
+
+The future seemed so splendid and so near! Yet it was giving the future
+hardly a fair chance to expect as much of it as young Edmonstone
+expected during the last days of his homeward voyage.
+
+
+
+
+                                   IV
+
+                           HOW DICK CAME HOME
+
+
+A crowd of the usual dock order had gathered on the quay at Blackwall by
+the time the _Hesper_ made her appearance, towed by two Channel tugs.
+Some time, however, passed before the vessel swung near enough to the
+quay for recognitions to begin; and by then the dingy line of dock
+loafers and watermen was enhanced by a second rank of silk hats and a
+slight leaven of bonnets. With intolerable sloth the big ship swung
+closer and closer, broadside on; greetings were excitedly exchanged, and
+at length the gangway was thrown across and held by a dozen eager hands.
+
+Dick Edmonstone, at the break of the poop, bent forward to search among
+the faces on the quay, apparently without finding any he knew. But
+presently, as his eye glanced rapidly up and down the line, he became
+conscious of one gaze fixed steadily upon him; twice he overlooked this
+face; the third time, a mutual stare, a quick smile of delight, a bound
+across the gangway, and Dick was grasping his brother's hand.
+
+"Dick!"
+
+"Maurice!"
+
+Then they seemed to gasp in the same breath:
+
+"Never should have known you!" "Nor I you--from Adam!"
+
+And then they were silent for a whole minute, scrutinising one another
+from head to heels; until Maurice said simply that he had got away from
+the bank and needn't go back, and fell to asking about the voyage, and
+the weather, and the passengers, and had the cabin been comfortable? and
+what a stunning ship! To all of which Dick replied coherently; and for
+five minutes they talked as though they had parted last week. Only for
+such trifles could they find ready words; so much was inexpressible just
+at first.
+
+They went into Dick's cabin; and there their tongues loosened a little.
+All were well at home, and happy, and comfortable; the news was good all
+round, as Dick phrased it, with thankfulness in his heart. That was the
+first delicious fact to be realised. After that, words flew with
+marvellous rapidity; the brothers were soon like two competitive human
+looms, turning them out one against the other. Fortunately the pace was
+too quick to last; in ten minutes both were breathless. Then they
+fastened upon stewards and Customs officials, and, by dint of some
+bullying and a little bribing, managed finally to get clear of the ship
+with Dick's luggage.
+
+Dick was in tremendous spirits. He was back in old England at last, and
+testified his appreciation of the fact every minute.
+
+Between Blackwall and Fenchurch Street he made odious comparisons
+touching Colonial travelling; in the four-wheeler across to Waterloo he
+revelled in the rattle and roar of the traffic; along the loop-line his
+eyes feasted on the verdant fields that had haunted his dreams in the
+wilderness.
+
+The Edmonstones lived in a plain little house in a road at Teddington,
+in which all the houses were little, plain, and uniformly alike. They
+called their house "The Pill Box"; but that was a mere nickname, since
+all the houses in that plain little road were fearfully and wonderfully
+christened, and theirs no exception to the rule. Its name--blazoned on
+the little wooden gate--was Iris Lodge; and being sane people, and
+sufficiently familiar with suburban ideas, the Edmonstones had never
+attempted to discover the putative point of the appellation. They were
+satisfied to dub the house "The Pill Box," with malicious candour, among
+themselves. For the Edmonstones did not take kindly (much less at first)
+to road or house. And naturally, since five years ago, before Mr.
+Edmonstone's death, they had lived in a great, square, charming villa,
+with a garden-wall running a quarter of a mile along the towing-path,
+within sight of Kingston Bridge. But then Richard Edmonstone senior had
+dropped dead, at the height of his reputed success on the Stock Exchange
+and of his undoubted popularity in the clubs. To the surprise of all but
+those who knew him most intimately, he had left next to nothing behind
+him; the house by the river had been hurriedly sold, young Richard had
+as promptly emigrated, and the rest of them had bundled into as small a
+house as they could find in the neighbourhood.
+
+But squat, snug, bourgeois as it was, Dick felt that the plain little
+house was nevertheless home, as the cab rattled over the railway bridge
+and along the road to the left, and so on towards "The Pill Box." It was
+raining (that June was not an ideal month), and the vehicle was the
+detestable kind of victoria so much affected by the honest cabmen of the
+Thames valley; still, Dick insisted on having the hood down to sniff the
+air of his native heath. Yet, though in sufficiently good spirits, his
+heart was beating quickly within him. These homecomings are no small
+things, unless the rover be old or loveless, and Dick was neither.
+
+After all, the meeting was got over, as such meetings have been got over
+before, with a few tears and fewer words and melting looks and warm
+embraces. And so Dick Edmonstone was given back to the bosom of his
+family.
+
+When the first and worst of it was over, he could not rest in a chair
+and talk to them, but must needs roam about the room, examining
+everybody and everything as he answered their questions. How well his
+mother was looking! and how her dark eyes beamed upon him!--the more
+brightly, perhaps, from their slight moisture. Her hand was as smooth
+and white as ever, and her hair whiter; how well it suited her to wear
+no cap, and have the silver mass pushed back like that! He had declared
+to himself he had never seen so pretty a woman over five-and-thirty--and
+his mother was fifty, and looking every year of it. And Fanny--well,
+she, perhaps, was as far from beauty as ever; but her wavy chestnut hair
+was matchless still, and as for expression, had there ever been one so
+sweet and gentle in the world before? It was Maurice who had all the
+good looks, though. But Maurice was pale and slim and rather
+round-shouldered; and instantly the image of the lad bending all day
+over the desk rose in Dick's mind and made him sad. What a different
+man the bush would make of Maurice! Then he looked round at the old
+familiar objects; the Landseer engravings and Fanny's water-colour
+sketches; the cottage piano, the writing-table, old pieces of odd ware
+which he remembered from his cradle, the fancy ormolu clock, which he
+had hated from his earliest days of discernment. He looked no further--a
+telegram was stuck up in front of the clock, and flaunted in his face:
+
+"Edmonstone, Iris Lodge, Teddington,--Ship _Hesper_ signalled Start
+Point ten this morning.--Bone and Phillips."
+
+He read it curiously.
+
+"Why, that's three days old!" he said, laughing. "Do you mean to say you
+have been staring at that bit of paper ever since--a sort of deputy-me,
+eh?"
+
+"It was the first we heard," said the mother simply; and a subtle
+something brought back her tears. "I half think I'll frame it!" she
+added, smiling at her own weakness.
+
+"I found out your other signallings," said Maurice. "I was in Bone's
+office half-a-dozen times yesterday."
+
+Dick continued his survey of the room.
+
+"Well, I think I recognise everything," he said presently; "but, I say,
+Fanny, I've got a thing or two for you to arrange in your high-art
+fashion; some odds and ends you haven't seen the like of before, I
+expect."
+
+"No!" said Fanny.
+
+"Oh, but I have, though; and some of 'em expressly for you."
+
+"No!--really?--then what?"
+
+"Aha, you'll see," said Dick. "Maurice, we'll unpack them now--if that
+brute of a Customs functionary has left a whole thing in the box." And
+the two left the room.
+
+"To think," said Fanny musingly, "that our Dick is back! Really back,
+and never going out again; and been through all kinds of fearful
+adventures; and sailed round the world, and been away four years and a
+half--one can scarcely realise any of it. But above all, to think that
+he has made his fortune!"
+
+Mrs. Edmonstone started.
+
+"Oh, Fanny," cried she, "I had forgotten that! He never once spoke of
+it, and I didn't think of it. Oh, my boy, my boy!" She burst fairly into
+sobs. Her joy had been too great to bear before she was reminded of this
+overwhelming fact; it had brought the tears again and again to her eyes;
+now it became akin to pain.
+
+Yet she did nothing but smile after her sons returned, laden with
+treasures and curios which they laid out all over the room. There was a
+famous rug of Tasmanian opossum skins, a dozen emu eggs, the tail of a
+lyre-bird, the skin of an immense carpet-snake, a deadly collection of
+boomerangs and spears, and a necklace of quandong stones mounted with
+silver. Mrs. Edmonstone beheld in silent wonder. As for Fanny, she was
+in ecstasies ("It is as good as the Exhibition," she said). So the time
+slipped away, and before half the quaint things had been examined and
+described it was dinner-time. They were all so happy together that first
+afternoon!
+
+Few and simple were the courses at Iris Lodge, but at dessert Maurice
+produced some particular old Benedictine (which had been in the family
+as long as he had), and Dick's health was drunk with unspeakable
+enthusiasm. Dick blushed; for it made what he burned to say more
+awkward; but at last he blurted out, apparently appealing to the
+mildewed Benedictine bottle:
+
+"I say--will you all think me an awful brute if I clear out for an hour
+or two? Mother, will you? You know what I have still to do--whom to
+see--to complete my first day in old England."
+
+"Why, of course!" from the younger ones; and Mrs. Edmonstone simply
+pronounced the question: "Graysbrooke?"
+
+"Yes," said Dick. "I must go and see them, you know. You know why, too,"
+he added simply.
+
+No one said anything. There was a rather awkward pause, which it fell to
+Fanny to break.
+
+"By the bye," she said tentatively, "they have a visitor there."
+
+She was prepared to add further information, but Dick looked at her
+blankly, and clearly was not listening. They rose from the table, and
+almost directly the three who went into the drawing-room heard the front
+door open and shut.
+
+Dick was thankful to be out in the cool and the twilight, and alone. The
+day had been showery and dull, but late in the afternoon the clouds had
+broken up, and now they floated serenely in the still air, just touched
+with a pale pink rim to westward. The gravelly ground was wet enough to
+sound crisply underfoot--nothing more. Drip-drip fell the drops from the
+laburnums in the gardens all down the road; drip-drip all round, from
+tree, shrub, and flower; every leaf distilling perfume every minute.
+Dick appreciated the evidence of his nostrils with the relish of a man
+who has smelt nothing but brine for four months, nothing like this for
+four years. Nevertheless, he walked on briskly, down into the London
+road, that here lies parallel with the river, then down a curve to the
+left, as the highroad bends away from the river to form the High Street
+of Teddington; then to a full stop at a corner opposite the old
+churchyard. He had intended to walk along the lower road towards
+Kingston, straight to the gates of Graysbrooke, which fronted the river.
+But now the thought occurred to him (prompted by the sweetness of the
+evening, and backed up by the fact that it was as yet rather early to
+drop in casually for the evening anywhere--even at the house of one's
+sweetheart whom one hadn't seen for over four years). How about hiring a
+boat and rowing to Graysbrooke? It was no distance; and then, only to be
+afloat again on the dear old Thames! Dick did not hesitate at the corner
+long, but turned sharp down to the left, and hired his shallop at the
+ferry landing.
+
+Down with the stream a hundred yards, and he was level with the lock; a
+few strong strokes against the stream, and the way already on the boat,
+and her nose grounded on the rollers; a minute's exertion, a minute's
+fumbling for coppers, and he floated out into the narrow reach beyond
+the lock. He paddled slowly along, bestowing friendly glances on the
+banks. The cottages on the left, close to the lock, he remembered just
+as he saw them; but the poplars on the island, inverted in the glassy
+water--he felt convinced they had grown. With each stroke of the oars
+the voice of the weir grew louder; it seemed to be roaring its rough
+welcome to him, just as yonder alders, right across the stream, through
+the danger-posts, were bowing theirs. How glorious it was, this first
+row on the Thames!
+
+But now the house was almost in sight, and he could think no longer of
+the river. Slowly, as he sculled on, Graysbrooke discovered itself: a
+gray, stone, turreted building, set in leafy trees. There were
+battlements along the coping, which might have looked venerable but for
+the slates that peeped between them; yet the stone was mellowed by time;
+and altogether there was nothing either offensively new or unwholesomely
+ancient in the appearance of the house. Dick saw it all in his mind even
+before he stopped rowing to satisfy the cravings of his hungry eyes.
+Still twilight, and the river here a mirror without flaw, every stone
+had its duplicate in the clear depths below; that parallelogram of ruddy
+light that fastened Dick's attention showed with especial sharpness in
+the reflection. The light was in the drawing-room. They had finished
+dinner. He could storm them now--at once.
+
+A little inlet entered one end of the lawn; in here he sculled and
+moored his boat. Then he sprang upon the close-cropped grass and stood
+transfixed.
+
+The light in the dining-room was turned low; but that in the room to the
+right of the hall-door--the room with the French window--was shining
+brightly. And through the open window there burst, as Dick's feet
+touched the grass, the sound of a girl's song. The voice was low and
+clear, and full of youth and tenderness; it rose, and fell, and
+trembled, for the singer possessed feeling; it hastened here and
+lingered there, and abused none of these tricks, for she sang with what
+is rarer than feeling--taste. Dick trembled violently; he wanted to rush
+into the room then and there, but he was thrilled, and rooted to the
+ground; and after a bar or two the voice soothed him and set his spirit
+at rest, like the touch of a true friend's hand in the hour of pain.
+Then he stood quite humbly, hoping it would never, never end. What the
+song was he didn't know, and never thought of finding out afterwards; he
+might have heard it a hundred times or never before; he knew nothing
+during these few transported minutes--nothing, except that he was
+listening to her voice.
+
+As the last low note was borne out upon the air, and voices within the
+room murmured the conventional grace after song, Dick stepped forward,
+meaning to boldly enter. Two yards from the window, however, he silently
+halted; it was so dark that he could see into the room without himself
+being seen from within. The temptation to avail himself of so obvious an
+advantage was too strong to be resisted.
+
+There were three persons in the room, but for the eyes of Dick only
+one--the two men made no immediate impression on his physical
+perception. It was a supreme moment in his life. He had left England for
+the sake of a young girl, to make his way in the world so that he might
+return and proudly claim her: for he had won her heart. And now he had
+made his way through toil and privation to a small fortune, and had
+come back to woo her hand. She was here--this girl for whom he had given
+his early manhood's strength, his brain's essence, the best drops of his
+life's blood; this girl whose image had beckoned him onward when he grew
+faint, and urged him still further in the hour of success; whose name
+had risen to his lips in despair and in peril, inspiring new
+courage--here, within ten feet of him; he striving to realise it, and to
+grow cool before going into her presence, yet yearning to fling himself
+at her feet.
+
+It was good that she was ignorant of his approach, for it showed her to
+him in a fair light straight away--completely natural and unconscious of
+herself. She had seated herself after her song at a low table, and was
+making an indolent attack on some trifling work with her scissors. The
+lamplight, from under its crimson shade, fell upon her hair and face and
+neck with marvellous results, for it made her beautiful. She was not at
+all beautiful. She had a peerless complexion, a good nose, matchless
+teeth; otherwise her features were of no account. But she was
+exceedingly pretty; and as she sat there with the warm lamplight
+changing her ordinary light-coloured hair into a ruddy gold fit for any
+goddess, a much less prejudiced person than Dick Edmonstone might have
+been pardoned the notion that she was lovely, though she was not.
+
+When at last he managed to raise his eyes from her they rested upon a
+face that was entirely strange. A tall, massive man, in evening dress,
+leaned with an elbow on the chimneypiece, his head lightly resting on
+his hand, one foot on the edge of the fender. There could be no two
+opinions as to the beauty of this face--it was handsome and striking to
+the last degree. Burnt, like Dick's, to the colour of brick-dust, it was
+framed in dark curly hair, with beard and whiskers of a fairer hue,
+while the mouth was hidden by a still fairer, almost golden, moustache.
+The effect was leonine. Dick caught his profile, and saw that the
+steady, downward gaze was bent upon the dainty little head that glowed
+in the lamplight. From his vantage-post outside the window he glanced
+from observer to observed. They were a sufficiently good-looking pair,
+yet he overrated the one and underrated the other. He was by no means
+attracted to this unknown exquisite; there was an ease about his pose
+which bespoke freedom also; and his scrutiny of the unconscious girl was
+of a kind that would at least have irritated any man in Dick's position.
+
+Dick allowed his attention to rest but briefly upon the third occupant
+of the room--a man with snowy hair and whiskers, who was apparently
+dropping off to sleep in a big armchair. Somehow or other, the sight of
+the men--but particularly of the stranger--acted on his heart like a
+shower-bath on a man's head; his pulse slackened, he regained with
+interest the self-possession with which he had first approached the
+window. He took three steps forward, and stood in the middle of the
+room.
+
+A startled cry escaped the old man and the girl. The man by the
+fireplace dropped his forearm and turned his head three inches.
+
+Dick strode forward and grasped an outstretched hand.
+
+"Colonel Bristo!"
+
+"Dick Edmonstone!--is it really Dick?" a well-remembered voice repeated
+a dozen times. "We knew you were on your way home, but--bless my soul!
+bless my soul!"
+
+The old soldier could think of nothing else to say; nor did it matter,
+for Dick's salute was over and his back turned; he was already clasping
+the hand of the fair young girl, who had risen, flushed and breathless,
+to greet him.
+
+He was speechless. He tried to say "Alice," but the sound was
+inarticulate. Their eyes met.
+
+A clatter in the fender. The tall man's heel had come down heavily among
+the fire-irons.
+
+"Let me introduce you," said Colonel Bristo to this man and Dick. "You
+will like to know each other, since you both come from the same country:
+Mr. Edmonstone, from Australia; Mr. Miles, from Australia! Mr. Miles was
+born and bred there, Dick, and has never been in England before. So you
+will be able to compare notes."
+
+The two men stared at each other and shook hands.
+
+
+
+
+                                   V
+
+                    THE FIRST EVENING AT GRAYSBROOKE
+
+
+"Sit down, boy, sit down," said Colonel Bristo, "and let us have a look
+at you. Mind, we don't know yet that you're not an impostor. You should
+have brought proofs."
+
+"Here are five-foot-ten of them," said Dick, laughing.
+
+"To believe that, we must put you through examination--and
+cross-examination," the Colonel added with a glance at his daughter;
+"although I half believe you really are the man you profess to be. What
+do you say, Alice?"
+
+"I have a strong case--" Dick was beginning, but he was cut short.
+
+"It is Dick," said the oracle sweetly.
+
+"You take his word for it?" asked her father.
+
+"No, I identify him," Alice answered with a quiet smile; "and he hasn't
+altered so very much, when one looks at him."
+
+Dick turned his head and met her eyes; they were serene and friendly.
+"Thank you," he said to her, with gratitude in his voice. And, indeed,
+he felt grateful to them all; to the Colonel for his ponderous
+pleasantry, to Alice for her unembarrassed manner, to Mr. Miles for the
+good taste he showed in minding his own business. (He had strolled over
+to the window.)
+
+"And when did you land?" inquired the Colonel.
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Only this morning!" exclaimed Alice; "then I think it was too good of
+you to come and see us so soon; don't you, papa?"
+
+Very kind of him indeed, papa thought. Dick was pleased; but he thought
+they might have understood his eagerness. Alice, at any rate, should not
+have been surprised--and probably was not. "I couldn't put it off," he
+said, frankly.
+
+There was a slight pause; then the Colonel spoke:
+
+"That's kindly said, my boy; and if your mother knew how it does us good
+to see you here, she would scarcely grudge us an hour or two this
+evening--though grudge it you may depend she does. As for ourselves,
+Dick, we can hardly realise that you are back among us."
+
+"I can't realise it at all," murmured Dick, aloud but to himself.
+
+"I won't worry you by asking point-blank how you like Australia," the
+Colonel went on, "for that's a daily nuisance in store for you for the
+next six months. But I may tell you we expect some tough yarns of you;
+our taste has been tickled by Miles, who has some miraculous--why, where
+is Miles?"
+
+Miles had vanished.
+
+"What made him go, I wonder?" asked Alice, with the slightest
+perceptible annoyance. Dick did not perceive it, but he thought the
+question odd. To disappear seemed to him the only thing a stranger, who
+was also a gentleman, could have done; he was scarcely impartial on the
+point, however.
+
+Alice took up the theme which her father had dropped.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Miles has some wonderful stories," said she; "he has had some
+tremendous adventures."
+
+"The deuce he has!" thought Dick, but he only said: "You should take
+travellers' tales with a grain of salt."
+
+"Thanks," Alice instantly retorted; "I shall remember that when you tell
+yours."
+
+They laughed over the retort. All three began to feel quite at ease.
+
+"So you kept up your sketching out there, and drew bush scenes for our
+illustrated papers?" said the Colonel.
+
+"Two or three times; more often for the Colonial papers."
+
+"We saw them all," said Alice, graciously--"I mean the English ones. We
+cut them out and kept them." (She should have said that she did.)
+
+"Did you, though?" said Dick, delighted.
+
+"Yes," said Alice, "and I have a crow to pick with you about them. That
+'Week in the Sandwich Islands'--it was yours, wasn't it?"
+
+Dick admitted that it was.
+
+"Oh, and pray when were you in the Sandwich Islands?"
+
+He confessed that he had never seen them.
+
+"So you not only cheated a popular journal--a nice thing to do!--but
+deceived the British public, which is a far more serious matter. What
+explanation have you to offer? What apology to 'One who was
+Deceived'--as I shall sign my 'Times' letter, when I write it?"
+
+"Alice, you are an inquisitor," said Colonel Bristo. But Alice replied
+with such a mischievous, interested smile that Dick immediately ceased
+to feel ashamed of himself.
+
+"The fact is," he owned, "your popular journal doesn't care a fig
+whether one has been to a place so long as one's sketches of it are
+attractive. I did them a thing once of a bullock-dray stuck up in the
+mud; and how did it appear? 'The War at the Cape: Difficulties in
+Reaching the Front.' And they had altered the horns of my bullocks, if
+you please, to make 'em into South African cattle! You see, just then
+Africa was of more interest to your British public than Australia.
+Surely you won't be so hard on me now? You see you have made me divulge
+professional secrets by your calumnies."
+
+Alice said she forgave him, if all that was true; but she added, slyly:
+"One must take travellers' tales with a pinch of salt, you know!"
+
+"Come, Alice," said her father, "if you insist on pitching into our
+artist, he shall have his fling at our photographer. Dick, she's taken
+to photography--it's lately become the fashion. Look on that table,
+under the lamp; you'll find some there that she was trimming, or
+something, when you dropped in our midst."
+
+"May I look at them?" Dick asked, moving over to Alice.
+
+"Certainly; but they're very bad, I'm afraid; and since you artists
+scorn photography--as so inartistic, you know--I suppose you will be a
+severe critic."
+
+"Not when this is the subject," said Dick, in a low voice, picking up a
+print; "how did you manage to take yourself?"
+
+He was sitting beside her at the little table, with the lamp between
+them and the Colonel; he instinctively lowered his voice, and a grain of
+the feeling he had so far successfully repressed escaped into his tone.
+
+"Someone took off the cap for me."
+
+"Oh. Who?"
+
+"Who? Oh, I get anybody to take the cap off when I am so vain as to take
+myself--anybody who is handy."
+
+"Mr. Miles, for instance?" It was a stray question, suggested by no
+particular train of thought, and spoken carelessly; there was no trace
+of jealousy in the tone--it was too early for that; but Alice looked up,
+quick to suspect, and answered shortly:
+
+"Yes, if you like."
+
+Dick was genuinely interested, and noticed in her tone nothing amiss.
+Several of the photographs turned out to be of Alice, and they charmed
+him.
+
+"Did Mr. Miles take all these?" he asked, lightly; he was forced to
+speak so before her father: the restraint was natural, though he
+marvelled afterwards that he had been able to maintain it so long.
+
+Alice, however, read him wrong. She was prepared for pique in her old
+lover, and imagined it before it existed. She answered with marked
+coldness:
+
+"A good many of them."
+
+This time Dick detected the unpleasant ring in her words--he could not
+help but detect it. A pang shot to his heart. His first (and only)
+impression of Miles, which had fled from his mind (with all other
+impressions) while talking to her, swiftly returned. He had used the
+man's name, a minute ago, without its conveying anything to his mind; he
+used it now with a bitterness at heart which crept into his voice.
+
+"And don't you return the compliment? I see no photographs of Mr. Miles
+here; and he would look so well in one."
+
+"He has never been taken in his life--and never means to be. Now, Dick,
+you have seen them all," she added quite softly, her heart smiting her;
+and with that she rolled all the prints into one little cylinder. Dick
+was in that nervous state in which a kind word wipes out unkindness the
+moment it is spoken, and the cloud lifted at once from his face. They
+were silent for more than a minute. Colonel Bristo quietly left the
+room.
+
+Then a strange change came over Dick. While others had been in the room,
+composure had sat naturally upon him; but now that they were alone
+together, and the dream of his exile so far realised, that armour fell
+from him, and left his heart bare. He gazed at his darling with
+unutterable emotion; he yearned to clasp her in his arms, yet dared not
+to profane her with his touch. There had been vows between them when
+they parted--vows out of number, and kisses and tears; but no betrothal,
+and never a letter. He could but gaze at her now--his soul in that
+gaze--and tremble; his lips moved, but until he had conquered his
+weakness no words came. As for Alice, her eyes were downcast, and
+neither did she speak. At length, and timidly, he took her hand. She
+suffered this, but drew ever so slightly away from him.
+
+"Alice," he faltered, "this is the sweetest moment of my life. It is
+what I have dreamt of, Alice, but feared it might never come. I cannot
+speak; forgive me, dear."
+
+She answered him cunningly:
+
+"It is very nice to have you back again, Dick."
+
+He continued without seeming to hear her, and his voice shook with
+tenderness: "Here--this moment--I can't believe these years have been; I
+think we have never been separated----"
+
+"It certainly doesn't seem four years," said Alice sympathetically, but
+coolly.
+
+Dick said nothing for a minute; his eyes hung on her downcast lids,
+waiting for an answering beam of love, but one never came.
+
+"You remember," he said at last, in a calmer voice, "you remember the
+old days? and our promises? and how we parted?" He was going on, but
+Alice interrupted him by withdrawing her hand from his and rising from
+her chair.
+
+"Dick," said she, kindly enough, "don't speak of them, especially not
+now--but don't speak of them at all. We can't have childhood over again;
+and I was a child then--of seventeen. I am grown up now, and altered;
+and you--of course you have altered too."
+
+"Oh Alice!"--the turning of the door handle made him break off short,
+and add in a quick whisper, "I may speak to you to-morrow?"
+
+"Very well," she answered indifferently, as there entered upon them a
+little old lady in rustling silk and jingling beads--an old lady with a
+sallow face and a piercing black eye, who welcomed Dick with a degree of
+fussy effusiveness, combined with a look and tone which discounted her
+words.
+
+"Delighted to see you back, Mr. Richard--a pleasure I have often looked
+forward to. We don't welcome conquering heroes every day," were in
+themselves sufficiently kindly words, but they were accompanied by a
+flash of the beady eyes from Dick to Alice, and a scrutiny of the young
+fellow's appearance as searching as it was unsympathetic; and when a
+smile followed, overspreading her loose, leathery, wrinkled skin, the
+effect was full of uncanny suggestion.
+
+"Yes, it is jolly to be back, and thanks very much," said Dick civilly;
+"and it is charming to find you still here, Mrs. Parish."
+
+"Of course I am still here," said the leathery little lady brusquely: as
+if Colonel Bristo could live without his faithful domestic despot, as if
+Graysbrooke could stand without its immemorial housekeeper! This Mrs.
+Parish was ugly, vain, and old, and had appeared as old and as vain and
+as ugly when, more than twenty years ago, she first entered the
+Colonel's service. She had her good points, however, and a sense of duty
+according to her lights. Though it be no extravagant praise, she was a
+better person at heart than on the surface.
+
+She now inquired with some condescension about Dick's Australian life,
+and how he liked it, and where he had been, and how he should like
+living altogether out there. She congratulated him on his success (she
+called it "luck"), which she declared was in the mouths of everybody. On
+that he felt annoyed, and wondered if she knew any details, and what
+figure she would bid for some--of, say, his first year--in the local
+gossip market.
+
+"Of course you will go back," said the old woman with conviction; "all
+lucky Colonists do. You will find England far too dull and slow for
+you." At this point Colonel Bristo and Mr. Miles came back, chatting. "I
+was saying," Mrs. Parish repeated for their benefit, "that of course Mr.
+Richard will soon return to Australia; he will tire of England in six
+weeks; it is always the way. Mr. Miles is the happy exception!" with a
+smile upon that gentleman which strove to be arch--with doubtful
+success.
+
+"I never said I meant to make 'Home' my home," said the Australian, with
+the drawl of his race, but in tones mellow and musical. His long frame
+sank with graceful freedom into a chair beside Mrs. Parish, and his
+clear blue eyes beamed upon them all--all except Dick, whom he forgot to
+notice just then.
+
+"I don't think Dick means to go back," said the Colonel cheerily. "That
+would be treating us all abominably; in fact, we could never allow
+it--eh, Dick?"
+
+Dick looked gravely at the carpet.
+
+"I mean to settle down in England now," said he; and he could not
+refrain from a sly glance at Alice. Her eyes, bent thoughtfully upon
+him, instantly filled with mischief.
+
+"You mean to stay at home, yet sketch the ends of the earth; is that
+it?" Her tone changed swiftly to one of extreme kindness. "Well, it
+would be dreadful if you didn't stop at home now. Whatever you do" (he
+changed colour; she added calmly), "think of Mrs. Edmonstone and Fanny!"
+
+A little later, Alice and her father told Dick all the news of
+themselves that they could think of--how they had been in Italy last
+year, and in Scotland the year before, and how they had taken a
+shooting-box in Yorkshire for this year. And Alice's manner was very
+courteous and kindly, for she was beginning to reproach herself for
+having been cruel to him on this his first evening, and to wonder how
+she could have had the heart. She asked him if he had forgotten how to
+dance, and said he must begin learning over again at once, in order to
+dance at her ball--her very own party--on the second of July.
+
+Poor Dick's spirits once more rose high, though this time an uneasy
+sediment remained deep in his heart. Without the least intention in the
+world, Alice was beginning a very pretty game of coquetry with her
+sweetheart--alas! her quondam sweetheart. While they talked, Mr. Miles,
+at the other side of the room, kept up an entertaining conversation with
+Mrs. Parish. At the same time he observed Dick Edmonstone very
+narrowly--perhaps more anxiously than he need have regarded an old
+friend of his friends'; though perhaps with no more than a social lion's
+innate suspicion of his kind. At last Dick rose to go.
+
+Colonel Bristo went out with him, and thrust his arm affectionately
+through the young man's as they crossed the lawn.
+
+"Dick," said he, very kindly, "I thought I would wait till I saw you
+alone to congratulate you most heartily on having made your way so
+splendidly. Nay, don't interrupt me; your way in the world is already
+made, and nobly made. I think you showed your sense--and more--in
+stopping short, and coming home to follow up the career you love. That
+was the intention expressed in your letter, I think?"
+
+"Yes, sir. And that letter?" said Dick anxiously. He had felt misgivings
+about it ever since the heat of triumph in which it was written and
+posted in Melbourne.
+
+"I liked it," said the Colonel simply; "it was manly and frank, and to
+the point. You shall have my answer now; and I, too, will be frank. Four
+years ago, more or less, I was forced to answer in a certain way a
+certain question--there was no alternative. Dick, think seriously--you
+are both four years older; are you, for one, still of the same mind?"
+
+"I am; indeed I am," said Dick, earnestly.
+
+"Then take your chance!" said Colonel Bristo. "I cannot say more; I
+don't understand women; I find it bitter to say this much, I that am to
+lose her. But you deserve her; come here as often as you will; you will
+be very welcome. And if you both wish now--both, mind!--what you both
+wished then, when for obvious reasons I could not hear of it----"
+
+"You were right enough, sir," Dick murmured sadly.
+
+"Then," continued the Colonel, "I frankly tell you, I shall like it.
+That's all; good-night!"
+
+Dick looked up from the dewy grass, and his lips formed a grateful
+sentence, though no words could express his feeling just then. He looked
+up, but the honest, simple-hearted soldier was gone. He who had faced
+the Russian shot and shell had retreated cowardly before honest English
+thanks!
+
+The young man stepped into his boat, undid the painter, and floated out
+upon the broad moonlit river. Ah, how kind of Colonel Bristo! But only
+to think what those words would have been to them four years ago! Yes,
+to them; for then Alice besought the consent that had just been given;
+besought it as wildly as himself. And now did she even desire it? He had
+found her so passionless, so different from all he had fancied, or
+hoped, or feared. Once she had been cruel, but anon so kind; and then
+she had ridiculed him in pure friendliness. Alas, fatal friendliness!
+Had she but been awkward or shown him downright coldness--anything but
+that. As to this Miles, no need to think about him yet. The question was
+whether Alice Bristo still loved Dick Edmonstone, not whether there was
+another man in the case; time enough for that afterwards. Yet a few
+short hours ago the question--faced so calmly now--would have stunned or
+maddened this ardent lover.
+
+Down with the stream came peace and hope, with the soft, soothing touch
+of the moonbeams; they stole into the heart of Dick Edmonstone; they
+held it for one brief moment. For a sound broke on his ears which made
+him stare and tremble, and drove out the sweet influences almost before
+their presence was felt. Yet the sound of itself was sweet; the very
+same sound had thrilled poor Dick as he leapt ashore; it was the voice
+of Alice--singing to Mr. Miles!
+
+
+
+
+                                   VI
+
+                                SISYPHUS
+
+
+Dick Edmonstone slept badly, his first night in England; and no wonder,
+since already a sense of grievous disappointment weighed him down. When
+he reached home and his own room, this feeling grew upon him; it
+distracted him, it denied him rest. Where his faith had been surest,
+disillusion came slowly home to him; in the purest spot of the vision
+the reality was dim and blurred. What a fool he had been to make sure of
+anything! Above all, to build his peace of mind on the shifting sand of
+a woman's love; to imagine--simply because his love for Alice had never
+wavered--that Alice's love for him must perforce remain equally
+unchanged. And all that night her voice, as he had last heard it, rang
+cruelly in his ear, and a light remark, about what she had called her
+"childhood," lay like lead at his heart.
+
+At breakfast he could not quite conceal his trouble; he looked somewhat
+haggard. He knew that he was expected to be in high spirits, and did his
+best to feign them, but his mirth was perfunctory. This was obvious to
+his sister, and not unnoticed by Mrs. Edmonstone. They spoke about it
+afterwards, for they knew something of the circumstances at Graysbrooke,
+and had their own opinion of the guest there.
+
+Dick fidgeted all the morning, and passed some of the time in unpacking
+his belongings. In the afternoon he left the house full of conflicting
+emotions. As he walked up the drive, Dick could not tell how he had
+waited until the afternoon, such a wild elation took possession of him
+at the thought of again seeing his beloved. Miss Bristo was in the
+garden, the butler told him--yes, alone; and Dick walked through the
+house and on to the top of the shaven lawn that sloped to the river.
+
+He found her deep in a magazine and in the stern sheets of the boat,
+which was moored in the inlet. She was all in white, for the day was
+sunny; and she smiled sweetly from under the broad brim of her straw hat
+as Dick stepped gravely into the boat, and sat down on the thwart facing
+her.
+
+She looked so careless and so bright that he could not find it in his
+heart to vex her straight away; so they talked lightly of this and that
+for a full quarter of an hour, while Dick basked recklessly in her
+smiles, and almost persuaded himself that this was happiness. But at
+last came a pause; and then he nerved himself to speak.
+
+"Alice," he began gravely, "you know our few words last night? You said
+I might speak to you today."
+
+"Well," said Alice, carelessly.
+
+"You know very well what I want to speak about," rather warmly.
+
+Alice turned down her leaf, shut up her magazine, leant back, and
+surveyed him calmly.
+
+"I wish I didn't, Dick," she answered, half in annoyance, half in pity.
+But her look added: "Say on; let us have it out--and over."
+
+"Last night," said Dick smoothly, "I asked you if you remembered old
+days, and what there was between us, and so on. You said you didn't want
+to remember them, and talked about your 'childhood.' You said you were
+altered, and that, of course, I must be altered." He paused.
+
+So far he had been cool and fluent; but he had rehearsed all this. His
+next words came hot from the heart, and fell unsteadily from the lips.
+
+"Oh, Alice," cried he, "did you mean that? Say that you didn't! I have
+never changed, never can. Oh, say that you are the same. Say that you
+only meant to tease me, or try me, or anything you like--anything but
+that you meant all that about our being altered, and forgetting the
+past--" his voice was piteous in its appeal; "say that you didn't mean
+it!" he repeated in a whisper.
+
+"I did mean it," Alice replied; not harshly or coldly, but with due
+deliberation.
+
+Dick turned pale. He grasped the gunwale nervously with each hand, and
+leaned forward.
+
+"Then I--no longer--have your love?" he asked in a hollow voice.
+
+Alice looked at him reproachfully; there was even indignation in her
+glance.
+
+"How can you force such things from me? Have you no pride?" He winced.
+"But, since you press for an explanation, you shall have one. Before you
+went away I knew no one. I was a child; I had always been fond of you;
+my head was full of nonsense; and, when you asked me, I said I loved
+you. It was true, too, in a childish way."
+
+"Go on," said Dick, in a low voice.
+
+Alice was flushed, and her eyes sparkled, but her self-possession was
+complete.
+
+"Well, you come back after four years, and, it seems, expect to find me
+still a child. Instead of that, I am a woman--a sensible woman," with a
+good humoured twinkle of the eyes, "disinclined to go on with the old
+nonsense just where it left off--you must admit that that would be
+absurd? But for the rest, I am as fond of you, Dick, as I was then--only
+without the childish nonsense. No one is more delighted to see you back,
+and welcome you, than I am; no one is more your friend. Dear Dick," she
+added in a tone of earnest entreaty, "cannot we be friends still?"
+
+"No!" exclaimed Dick, hoarsely.
+
+The flush died away from the girl's face, to return two-fold.
+
+"No!" he repeated. "You give me your love, and then, after years of
+separation, you offer me your friendship instead. What is that to me?
+How can I make that do--a lamp instead of the sun? It is too much to ask
+of any man: you know it. Who has taught you to play with men's hearts
+like this?"
+
+"I have been too kind," said Alice, coldly. She had stifled her
+humiliation, and was preparing to leave the boat.
+
+"Say rather too cruel!" returned Dick very bitterly. "Nay, not on my
+account. I will save you the trouble of going."
+
+He sprang from the boat as he spoke. One moment he stood on the bank
+with a blight on his brave eyes; the next, he raised his hat proudly,
+turned on his heel and was gone.
+
+No sooner had he disappeared than the young lady produced a little lace
+handkerchief, and rained her tears upon its wholly inadequate area. She
+sobbed for nearly five minutes; and, after that, dipped her pink fingers
+in the water, and made assiduous efforts to expunge the most tell-tale
+symptoms. Then she took up the magazine and tried to revive her interest
+in the story she had been reading, but she could remember nothing about
+it. Finally she was about to quit the boat in despair, when, looking up,
+whom should she see but Dick Edmonstone towering above her on the bank,
+hat in hand.
+
+"I want you to forgive me," he said very humbly. She affected not to
+understand him, and intimated as much by raising her eyebrows.
+
+"For what I said just now" (rapidly)--"for everything I have said since
+I saw you first, last night. And I want to say--if you will still have
+it--let us be--friends."
+
+Her face instantly brightened; every trace of affectation vanished; she
+smiled gratefully upon him.
+
+"Ah, that is sense!" said she.
+
+"But," said Dick, still more earnestly, "there are two questions I do
+think I may ask, though whether you will answer them--"
+
+"I will," the girl exclaimed rashly.
+
+"Well, then, the first is, have you taken a dislike to me--a new one?
+Don't laugh," he said, colouring; "I mean it. It is so possible, you
+know. I have led a rough life; you might easily be ashamed of the
+things I had to do, to make my way at first; you might easily think me
+less polished, less gentlemanly: if it is that, I implore you to say
+so."
+
+She could scarcely keep grave; even he might have smiled, but for the
+question he had still to ask.
+
+"No, it is not that; to my mind you are just the same."
+
+Dick drew a deep breath of relief.
+
+"The second question may offend you; if it does--well, it can't be
+helped. I think my old footing--even though you were a child then--is
+sufficient excuse for it. It is, then--and, indeed, you must grant me an
+honest answer--do you love another man?"
+
+"And it is not that," said Alice shortly, nevertheless looking him full
+in the face.
+
+A great load was removed from his heart.
+
+"Then it is only," he said eagerly--"only that you wish to cancel the
+past? really only that?"
+
+"Really only that," she repeated with a smile.
+
+"Then," added Dick, hope rekindling in his heart, "may I never--that is,
+won't you hold out to me the least faint spark?"
+
+"I think you had better leave well alone," said Alice; and she stepped
+lightly from the boat as she spoke. "Now I must go in. Will you come,
+too?"
+
+"No; I must say good-bye."
+
+"Really? Then good-bye, Dick." Another sweet smile as she stretched out
+her hand. "And come as often as ever you can; you will always be
+welcome."
+
+He watched her slim form tripping daintily across the grass.
+
+"Ay, I will come!" he muttered between his teeth; "and I shall win you
+yet, Miss Caprice, though I have to begin all over again. To start
+afresh! How could I have borne the thought yesterday? Yet to-day it must
+be faced. This minute I give up looking back, and begin to look forward.
+And it may be better so; for when I win you, as win you I shall, you
+will be all the dearer to me. I might not have valued you as I
+ought--who knows? You do not deny me hope; I shan't deny it to myself.
+You shall be mine, never fear. For the present, have your wish--we are
+only friends."
+
+His resolution taken, Dick Edmonstone threw up vain regrets; "friendly
+relations" with Alice were duly established, and at first the plan
+worked tolerably well. They had one or two common interests,
+fortunately. Alice dabbled in water-colours; in which Dick could help
+her, and did. In return, Alice took a lively interest in his sketches;
+and they would sometimes talk of the career to which he was to devote
+himself. Then there was the river; they were both good oars, and, with
+Alice, rowing was a passion.
+
+Beyond these things there was little enough to bring them together. In
+everything else Mr. Miles either stepped in or enjoyed a previous
+pre-eminence. At first Dick tried hard to hate this man for his own
+sake, without being jealous of him; but under the circumstances it was
+impossible for jealousy not to creep in. He certainly distrusted Miles;
+the man struck him from the first as an adventurer, who had wormed
+himself by mysterious means into the friendship of the guileless,
+single-hearted Colonel Bristo; and observation deepened this
+impression. On the other hand, the pair saw very little of each other.
+Dick naturally avoided Miles, and Miles--for some good reason of his
+own--shunned Dick. In fact, the jealous feeling did not arise from
+anything he saw or heard: the flame was promoted and fed, as it were, at
+second-hand.
+
+Deep in his heart, poor Dick had counted on being something of a lion
+(it was only human) on his return from Australia, at least on one hearth
+besides his own; and lo! a lion occupied that hearth before him--a lion,
+moreover, of the very same type. The Bristos didn't want to hear
+Australian experiences, because they had already heard such as could
+never be surpassed, from the lips of Miles; their palate for bush yarns
+was destroyed. Dick found himself cut out, in his own line, by Miles.
+His friends were very hospitable and very kind, but they had no wish to
+learn his adventures. And those adventures! How he had hoarded them in
+his mind! how he had dreamed in his vanity of enthralling the Colonel
+and thrilling Alice! He had hoped at least to interest them; and even in
+that he failed. Each little reminiscence yawned over, each comparison or
+allusion ignored--these were slight things with sharp edges. With Alice,
+it more than once happened that when he touched on his strange
+experiences she forgot to listen, which wounded him; or if she made him
+repeat it, it was to cite some far more wonderful story of Mr.
+Miles--which sowed salt in the wound. Of course vanity was its own cure,
+and he dropped the subject of Australia altogether; but he was very full
+of his romantic life, and this took him a day or two, and cost him some
+moments of bitterness.
+
+So Dick's first fortnight in England passed, and on the whole he
+believed he had made some sort of progress with Alice. Moreover, he
+began rather to like wooing her on his merits. On consideration, it was
+more satisfactory, perhaps, than reviving the old boy-and-girl sentiment
+as if there had been no four years' hiatus; more satisfactory, because
+he never doubted that he would win her in the end. It is to be noted
+that his ideas about one or two things changed in a remarkable degree
+during those first days.
+
+One morning, when they chanced to be particularly confidential together,
+Dick said suddenly:
+
+"By the bye, how did you come to know this--Mr. Miles?" He had almost
+said "this fellow Miles."
+
+"Has papa never told you?" Alice asked in surprise.
+
+"No, never."
+
+"Nor Mr. Miles himself? Ah, no: he would be the last person to speak of
+it. But I will tell you. Well, then, it was when we were down in Sussex.
+Papa was bathing (though I had forbidden it), when he was seized with
+cramp, out of his depth. He must certainly have been drowned; but a
+great handsome fellow, dressed like a fisherman, saw his distress,
+rushed into the sea, swam out, and rescued him with the help of a boat.
+Poor papa, when he came to himself, at once offered the man money; and
+here came the surprise. The man laughed, refused the money, dived his
+hand into his own pocket, and threw a sovereign to the boatman who had
+helped!"
+
+Dick's interest was thoroughly aroused, and he showed it; but he thought
+to himself: "That was unnecessary. Why couldn't the fellow keep to the
+part he was playing?"
+
+And Alice continued: "Then papa found out that he was a gentleman in
+disguise--a Mr. Miles, from Sydney! He had been over some months, and
+was seeing England in thorough fashion. Indeed, he seemed a regular
+boatman, with his hands all hard and seamed with tar."
+
+"And your father made friends with him?"
+
+"Naturally; he brought him up to the hotel, where I heard all about the
+affair. You may imagine the state I was in! After that we saw a good
+deal of him down there, and papa got to like him very much, and asked
+him to come and stay with us when he grew tired of that kind of life and
+returned to London. And that's all."
+
+"How long did you say it is since he saved your father's life?" Dick
+asked, after a short pause.
+
+"Let me see, it's--yes, not quite a month ago."
+
+Dick gave vent to a scarcely audible whistle.
+
+"And he has no other friends in England?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"And writes no letters nor receives any?" (He was speaking from his own
+observation.)
+
+"Not that I know of. But how should I know? or what does it matter?"
+
+"In fact, he is a friendless adventurer, whom you don't know a thing
+about beyond what you have told me?"
+
+Alice suddenly recoiled, and a dangerous light gleamed in her eyes.
+
+"What do you mean? I don't understand you. Why all these questions?"
+
+Dick regarded her unflinchingly. He knew what an honest answer would
+cost him, yet he was resolved to speak out.
+
+"Because," said he, impressively and slowly, "because I don't believe
+Mr. Miles is what he makes himself out to be."
+
+He knew that he had made some advance in her esteem, he knew that these
+words would lose him all that he had gained, and he was right. A flash
+of contempt lit up the girl's eyes and pierced to his soul. "Noble
+rival!" said she; and without another word swept haughtily past
+him--from the garden where they had been walking--into the house.
+
+
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+                          SOUTH KENSINGTON
+
+
+The first act of every Australian who landed in England that summer was,
+very naturally, to visit the Exhibition--their Exhibition--at South
+Kensington.
+
+Dick was not an Australian, and it therefore did not consume him to put
+off South Kensington until he had been a week or so quietly at home.
+Nevertheless he was sufficiently eager to inspect the choice products of
+a land that he regarded with gratitude as indeed his alma mater; and
+still more eager to expatiate on all that was to be seen to insular
+friends, who believed that New Zealand was an inland colony, and who
+asked if Victoria was not the capital of Sydney. On that very first
+evening he had made a sort of offer to escort Colonel Bristo and Alice;
+but there he was too late; and he experienced the first of a series of
+petty mortifications--already mentioned--which originated from a common
+cause. Mr. Miles had already been with the Bristos to the Exhibition,
+and had proved a most entertaining showman. He had promised to accompany
+them again in a week or two; would not Dick join the party? For three
+visits would be more than impartial persons, such as the Colonel and his
+daughter, were likely to care about--even with so splendid a cicerone as
+Mr. Miles.
+
+Of course, Dick was not going to play second fiddle to the Australian
+deliberately and with his eyes open. He made his excuses, and never
+alluded to the matter again. But one day, after a morning's business in
+the City, he went alone.
+
+When he was once in the vast place, and had found his way to the
+Australian section, his interest speedily rose to a high pitch. It is
+one thing to go to an exhibition to be instructed, or to wonder what on
+earth half the things are; it is something quite different to find
+yourself among familiar objects and signs which are not Greek to you, to
+thread corridors lined with curios which you hail as the household gods
+of your exile. Instead of the bored outsider, with his shallow
+appreciation of everything, you become at once a discriminate observer
+and intelligent critic, and sightseeing for once loses its tedium. Dick
+wandered from aisle to aisle, from stand to stand, in rapt attention. At
+every turn he found something of peculiar interest to him: here it was a
+view of some township whose every stick he knew by heart; there a sample
+of wood bearing on the printed label under the glass the name of a sheep
+station where he had stayed time out of number.
+
+The golden arch at the entrance to the Victorian Court arrested him, as
+it arrested all the world; but even more fascinating in his eyes was the
+case of model nuggets close at hand. He heard a small boy asking his
+mamma if they were all real, and he heard mamma reply with bated breath
+that she supposed so; then the small boy smacked his lips, and uttered
+awed (though slangy) ejaculations, and the enlightened parent led him
+on to wonders new. But Dick still gazed at the nuggets; he was
+wondering--if he could have it all over again--whether he would rather
+pick up one of these fellows than win again their equivalent through
+toil and enterprise, step by step, when a smart slap on the back caused
+him to turn sharp round with an exclamation.
+
+A short, stout, red-faced man stood at his elbow with arms akimbo, and
+grinned familiarly in his face. Dick looked him up and down with a stare
+of indignation; he could not for the life of him recognise the fellow;
+yet there he stood, his red-stubbled chin thrust forward, and a broad,
+good-humoured grin on his apish face, and dressed gorgeously. He wore a
+high white hat tilted backward, a snowy waistcoat, a dazzling tie, and a
+black frock-coat, with an enormous red rose in the button hole. His
+legs, which now formed two sides of an equilateral triangle with the
+floor for its base, were encased in startling checks, and his feet,
+which were small, in the glossiest patent leather. His left hand rested
+gloved upon his hip, and four fingers of his ungloved right hand were
+thrust into his waistcoat pocket, leaving the little one in the cold
+with a diamond of magnitude flashing from its lowest joint.
+
+"Euchred?" this gentleman simply asked, in a nasal tone of immense
+mirth.
+
+"If you mean do I know you, I don't," said Dick, only a degree less
+haughtily than if he had come straight from Oxford instead of from the
+bush.
+
+"What! you don't remember me?" exclaimed the man more explicitly, his
+fingers itching to leap from the waistcoat-pocket.
+
+Dick stared an uncompromising denial.
+
+The diamond flashed in his eyes, and a small piece of pasteboard was
+held in front of him, on which were engraved these words:
+
+"The Hon. Stephen Biggs."
+
+Dick repressed an insane impulse to explode with laughter.
+
+"What! of Marshall's Creek?"
+
+"The same."
+
+Dick stretched out his hand.
+
+"A thousand pardons, my dear fellow; but how could I expect to see you
+here? And--the Honourable?"
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Biggs, with legitimate pride, "that knocks you, old man!
+It was only the Legislative Assembly when you and me was mates; it's the
+Legislative Council now. I'm in the Upper 'Ouse, my son!"
+
+"I'm sure I congratulate you," said Dick.
+
+"But 'ang the 'andle," continued the senator magnanimously; "call me
+Steve just the same."
+
+"Well, it's like the whiff of the gum leaves to see you again, Steve.
+When did you arrive?"
+
+"Last week. You see," confidentially, "I'm in my noo rig out--the best
+your London can do; though, after all, this Colony'll do as good any day
+in the week. I can't see where it is you do things better than we do.
+However, come and have a drink, old man."
+
+In vain Dick protested that he was not thirsty; Mr. Biggs was. Besides,
+bushmen are not to be denied or trifled with on such points. The little
+man seized Dick's arm, marched him to the nearest bar, and called for
+beer.
+
+"Ah!" sighed Mr. Biggs, setting down his tankard, "this is the one point
+where the Old Country licks us. This Colony can't come within a cooee of
+you with the beer, and I'm the first to own it! We kep' nothing like
+this at my place on the Murray, now did we?"
+
+Dick was forced to shake his head, for, in fact, the Honourable Stephen
+had formerly kept a flourishing "hotel" on the Murray, where the
+Colonial beer had been no better than--other Colonial beer--a brew with
+a bad name. Dick observed an odd habit Mr. Biggs had of referring to his
+native heath as though he were still on it, speaking of his country as
+he would have spoken of it out there--as "this Colony."
+
+The Honourable Steve now insisted on tacking himself on to Dick, and
+they roamed the Exhibition together. Biggs talked volubly of his
+impressions of England and the English (he had crowded a great deal into
+his first few days, and had already "done" half London), of the
+Exhibition, of being feted by the flower of Britain and fed on the fat
+of the land; and though his English was scarcely impeccable a vein of
+shrewd common sense ran through his observations which was as admirable
+in the man (he had risen very rapidly even for Australia) as it was
+characteristic of his class.
+
+"By-the-bye," said Mr. Biggs, after they had freely criticised the
+romantic group of blacks and fauna in the South Australian Court, "have
+you seen the Hut?"
+
+"No," said Dick.
+
+"Then come on; it's the best thing in the whole show; and," dropping
+his voice mysteriously, "there's the rummest go there you ever saw in
+your life."
+
+Everybody remembers the Settler's Hut. It was a most realistic property,
+with its strips of bark and its bench and wash-basin, though some
+bushmen were heard to deny below their breath the existence of any hut
+so spick and span "where they come from."
+
+"Good!" said Dick, as soon as he saw the Hut. "That's the real thing, if
+you like."
+
+"Half a shake," said Mr. Biggs, "and I'll show you something realler."
+He drew Dick to the window of the hut. "Look there!" he whispered,
+pointing within.
+
+Three or four persons were inspecting the interior, and debating aloud
+as to how they personally should care to live in such a place; and each,
+as he surveyed the rude walls, the huge fireplace, the primitive cooking
+utensils, reserved his most inquisitive scrutiny for an oddly-dressed
+man who sat motionless and silent on the low bank, as though the Hut
+belonged to him. A more colourable inference would have been that the
+man belonged to the Hut; and in that case he must have been admitted the
+most picturesque exhibit in the Colonial Courts, as he looked the most
+genuine; for the man was dressed in the simple mode of an Australian
+stockman, and looked the part from the thin soles of his plain
+side-spring boots to the crown of his cabbage-tree hat. From under the
+broad brim of the latter a pair of quick, dark eyes played restlessly
+among the people who passed in and out, or thronged the door of the hut.
+His shoulders were bent, and his head habitually thrust forward, so that
+it was impossible, in the half-light, to clearly make out the features;
+but long, iron-gray locks fell over the collar of his coarse tweed coat,
+and a bushy, pepper-and-salt beard hid the throat and the upper portion
+of the chest. Old though the man undoubtedly was, his massive frame
+suggested muscularity that must once have been enormous, and must still
+be considerable.
+
+"Now, what do you think of that cove?" inquired the Hon. Stephen Biggs
+in a stage whisper.
+
+"Why," said Dick, who was frowning in a puzzled manner, "he looks the
+real thing too. I suppose that's what he's there for. Now, I wonder
+where----"
+
+"Ah, but it ain't that," broke in Biggs, "I've been here every day,
+almost, and when I see him here every day, too, I soon found out he
+don't belong to the place. No; he's an ordinary customer, who pays his
+bob every morning when the show opens, and stays till closing-time. He's
+to be seen all over the Exhibition, but generally at the Hut--most
+always about the Hut."
+
+"Well, if he isn't paid for it, what on earth is his object?" said Dick,
+as they moved away.
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Biggs darkly, "I have a notion of my own about that,
+though some of the people that belong to this here place share it with
+me."
+
+"And?" said Dick.
+
+"And," said Mr. Biggs with emphasis, "in my opinion the fellow's the
+dead spit of a detective; what's more, you may take your Colonial oath
+he is one!"
+
+"Well," said Dick coolly, "I've seen him before, though I can't tell
+where. I remember his bulk and shape better than his face."
+
+"Yes? By Jove, my boy, you may be the very man he's after!"
+
+Mr. Biggs burst into a loud guffaw; then turned grave in a moment, and
+repeated impressively: "A detective--my oath!"
+
+"But he looks a genuine Australian, if ever I saw one," objected Dick.
+
+"Well, maybe he's what he looks."
+
+"Then do you think he's come over on purpose? It must be a big job."
+
+"I think he has. It must."
+
+"Ah," said Dick, "then I have seen him out there somewhere; probably in
+Melbourne."
+
+"Quite likely," said Mr. Biggs. "There are plenty of his sort in this
+Colony, and as sharp as you'll find anywhere else, my word!"
+
+A little later they left the Exhibition, and spent the evening
+together.
+
+
+
+
+                                  VIII
+
+                          THE ADMIRABLE MILES
+
+
+If Mr. Miles was systematically "spoilt" by the Bristos, he was more or
+less entitled to the treatment, since it is not every guest who has had
+the privilege of saving his host from drowning. But Mr. Miles was in
+other ways an exceptional visitor. He contrived to create entertainment
+instead of requiring it. He was no anxiety to anybody; he upset no
+household routine; he might have remained for months, and not outstayed
+his welcome; from the first he made himself at home in the most
+agreeable fashion. In a word, he was a very charming man.
+
+Moreover, he was unlike other men: he was far more independent, and far
+less conventional. It was impossible to measure him by a commonplace
+standard. He had little peculiarities which would not have recommended
+other men, but which in his case were considered virtues: he was quite
+artless in matters of etiquette. Indeed, he was a splendid specimen of
+free, ingenuous manhood--an ideal Australian, according to the notions
+of the old country.
+
+The least breath against their guest on conventional grounds would have
+been indignantly resented by the Graysbrooke people. They put upon his
+peculiarities an interpretation which in Mrs. Parish's case resolved
+itself into a formula:
+
+"They are so free-and-easy out there; they despise conventionality; they
+are natural. Oh that we were all Australians!" (Mr. Miles was the one
+Australian of her acquaintance.)
+
+Thus when he swore unmistakably at a clumsy oarsman while piloting the
+ladies through a crowded lock, the offence was hushed up with a formula;
+and so were other offences, since formulas will cover anything.
+
+One day Mrs. Parish, going into the drawing-room, paused on the
+threshold with an angry sniff.
+
+"Smoke--in here! It is the very first time in all these years," severely
+to Alice, "that I have ever known your papa--"
+
+"It was not papa, it was Mr. Miles," said Alice quietly. "He walked in
+with his pipe, and I really did not like to tell him. I believe he has
+gone for more tobacco."
+
+"Why, how stupid of me! Of course, with Mr. Miles it is quite
+different." (Mrs. Parish assumed an indulgent tone.) "He is not used to
+such restraints. You were quite right to say nothing about it. He shall
+smoke where he likes."
+
+Again the little old lady came to Alice, and said very gravely:
+
+"My dear, did you notice the way our visitor refused the hock this
+evening? Of course they do not drink such stuff in the bush, and he must
+have what he is accustomed to. I will arrange with Tomlin to have the
+whisky decanter placed quietly in front of him for the future."
+
+Alice, for her part, not only permitted but abetted this system of
+indulgence; for she agreed with Mrs. Parish that the guest was a noble
+creature, for whose personal comfort it was impossible to show too much
+solicitude--which, indeed, was the least they could do. He had saved her
+father's life.
+
+That incident--which she had related to Dick with a wonderful absence of
+feminine exaggeration--had been in itself enough to plant in her heart a
+very real regard for Mr. Miles. That was but natural; but one or two
+other things which came to her knowledge furthered this regard.
+
+One Saturday morning in Kingston market-place Alice met a bosom friend,
+who informed her that she had seen the Graysbrooke pleasure-boat being
+towed up-stream by a tall gentleman--("So handsome, my dear; who is
+he?")--while a miserable, half-starved wretch sat luxuriously in the
+stern-sheets. Rallied with this, the Australian's brick-dust complexion
+became a shade deeper. Then he made a clean breast of the affair, in his
+usual quiet tone, but with a nearer approach to diffidence than he had
+yet shown them. He had gone out for a solitary pull, and had no sooner
+started than a cadaverous creature with a tow-rope pestered him for a
+job. Miles had refused the man; doubted his strength to tow a flea with
+a silk thread; and observed that he, Miles, was more fit to tow the
+other, if it came to that. At this, Miles, being sworn at for making
+game of a starving man, had promptly landed, forced the man, speechless
+with amazement, into the boat, towed him to Kingston, and left him to a
+good dinner, with some wholesome advice touching immediate emigration.
+
+A few days later, at dusk on a wet afternoon, Mrs. Parish, from her
+bedroom window, saw Mr. Miles walk quickly up the drive in his
+shirt-sleeves. It transpired that he had given his coat to a ragged,
+shivering tramp on the London road--plus the address of the Emigration
+Office.
+
+"You see," he said, on both these occasions, "I never saw anything half
+so bad in my own country. If you aren't used to it, it knocks a man's
+heart to see a poor devil so far gone as all that."
+
+In short, Mr. Miles exhibited to the Bristos, on several occasions, a
+propensity to odd and impulsive generosity; and the point told
+considerably in their general regard for the man, which day by day grew
+more profound.
+
+Among other peculiarities, so excellently appreciated, Mr. Miles had a
+singular manner of speaking. It was an eminently calm manner; but for
+the ring of quiet audacity in every tone, it might have been called a
+subdued manner. He never raised his voice; he never spoke with heat.
+When he said to Colonel Bristo, clinging to him in the sea, "If you hang
+on like that I must fell you," his tone was as smooth as when he
+afterwards apologised for the threat. When he paid Alice his first
+compliment he did so without the smallest hesitation, and in his
+ordinary tone; and his compliments were of the most direct order. They
+once heard him threaten to thrash a bargee for ill-treating a horse, and
+they were amazed when the man sulkily desisted; the threat was so gently
+and dispassionately uttered. As for his adventures, they were told with
+so much of detail and gravity that the manner carried conviction where
+the matter was most fantastic. Miles was the best of "good company."
+Apart from the supreme service rendered to him, Colonel Bristo was fully
+persuaded that he was entertaining the best fellow in the world. Add to
+this that Mrs. Parish adored the handsome Australian, while Alice meekly
+revered him, and it will be easily seen that a hostile opinion of their
+hero was well calculated to recoil on its advocate.
+
+During the short period in which the hero was also the stranger, he
+spent all his time in the Colonel's society. Apparently the two men
+found many subjects of mutual interest. Once, when Alice interrupted
+them in the study, Mr. Miles seemed to be eloquently enumerating the
+resources and capabilities of some remote district of the Antipodes; for
+though she spent some minutes getting a book, he took no notice of her
+presence in the room. On another occasion Alice saw her father examining
+a kind of map or plan, while Mr. Miles bent over him in explanation. She
+afterwards learnt that this was a plan of the Queensland station of
+which Mr. Miles was part owner.
+
+After the first day or two it seemed evident that Mr. Miles disliked the
+society of ladies.
+
+On the third evening, however, the men patronised the drawing-room for
+half-an-hour, and the Colonel asked Alice to sing something. She sang,
+and Mr. Miles listened. When she had finished, Mr. Miles coolly asked
+her to sing again. The following night he extracted three songs from
+her. Then Mr. Miles began to spend less time in his host's sanctum. He
+cultivated Alice; he interested himself in her amusements--photography
+for one; he got her to sing to him in the daytime. He was civil to Mrs.
+Parish.
+
+When the young lady sat down to the piano, this sun-burned Apollo did
+not hang over her, as other men did (when they got the chance); nor did
+he turn over a bar too soon or too late--like the others. He made no
+pretence of polite assistance, not he. But he flung himself in a chair,
+threw back his head, and drank in every note. At first it was generally
+with his back to the piano, and always with closed eyes. Then he found
+another chair--one a little further away, but so placed that the girl's
+profile was stamped like a silhouette on the sunlit window, directly in
+his line of vision. And he no longer listened with closed eyelids.
+
+Mrs. Parish, a keen observer, hovered about during these performances,
+and noted these things. She had perceived at the time the impression
+Alice's first song made upon Mr. Miles: she saw that he had regarded the
+girl from that moment with a newly awakened interest. Thenceforth he had
+made himself agreeable to both ladies, whereas before he had ignored
+them both. Now, although she knew well enough that Miles's attentions,
+so far as she was concerned, could be but politic, yet such was the
+inveterate vanity of this elderly duenna that she derived therefrom no
+small personal gratification. An impudent compliment thrilled her as it
+might have thrilled a schoolgirl. But this did not prevent her seeing
+what was really going on, nor secretly rejoicing at what she saw.
+
+She watched the pair together from the first. She watched the girl
+innocently betray her veneration for the man who had saved her father's
+life. She knew that it is perilous for a man to see that a girl thinks
+him a hero, and she awaited results. She soon fancied that she saw some.
+She thought that Miles's habitual insouciance was a trifle less apparent
+when he conversed with Alice; certainly his eyes began to follow her and
+rest upon her; for Mr. Miles did such things openly. But she detected no
+corresponding symptoms in Alice; so one day she told her bluntly: "Mr.
+Miles is falling in love with you, child."
+
+Alice was startled, and coloured with simple annoyance.
+
+"What nonsense!" she said indignantly.
+
+Immediately she thought of the absent Dick, and her blush
+deepened--because she thought of him so seldom. Mrs. Parish replied that
+it was not nonsense, but, instead of urging proofs in support of her
+statement, contented herself with cataloguing Mr. Miles's kingly
+attributes. Here Alice could not contradict her. The old lady even spoke
+of the station in Queensland and the house at Sydney. Encouraged by the
+girl's silence, however, she overshot the mark with a parallel
+reference--and not a kind one--to Dick Edmonstone. She saw her mistake
+at once, but too late; without a word Alice turned coldly from her, and
+they barely exchanged civilities during the rest of that day.
+
+From that moment Miss Bristo's manner towards Mr. Miles was changed.
+Mrs. Parish had put into her head a thought that had never once occurred
+to her. An innocent pleasure was poisoned for her. She did not quite
+give up the songs, and the rest, but she became self-conscious, and
+developed a sudden preference for that society which is said to be no
+company at all.
+
+At this juncture the ship _Hesper_ entered the Channel, and was duly
+reported in the newspapers. Alice saw the announcement, and knew that in
+two or three days she should see her lover. These days she spent in
+thought.
+
+At seventeen she had been madly in love with young Edmonstone--what is
+called a "romantic" or "school-girl" affair--chiefly sentimental on her
+side, terribly earnest on his. At eighteen--parted many months from a
+sweetheart from whom she never heard, and beginning to think of him
+daily instead of hourly--she asked herself whether this was really love.
+At nineteen, it was possible to get through a day--days, even--without
+devoting sentimental minutes to the absent one. Alice was at least madly
+in love no longer. There remained a very real regard for Dick, a
+constant prayer for his welfare, a doubt as to whether he would ever
+come home again, a wondering (if he did) whether she could ever be the
+same to him again, or he to her; nothing more.
+
+Mrs. Parish was in a great measure responsible for all this. That
+excellent woman had predicted from the first that Dick would never make
+his fortune (it was not done nowadays), and that he would never come
+back. Another factor was the ripening of her understanding, aided by a
+modicum of worldly experience which came to her at first-hand. Alice was
+honoured with two proposals of marriage, and in each case the rejected
+(both were wife-hunting) consoled himself elsewhere within three
+months. To this groundwork Mrs. Parish added some judicious facts from
+her own experience; and this old lady happened to be the girl's only
+confidante and adviser. Alice gathered that, though man's honour might
+be a steadfast rock, his love was but a shifting sand. Thus there were
+such things as men marrying where they had ceased to love; thus Dick
+might return and profess love for her which was no longer sincere.
+
+In the end Miss Bristo was left, like many other young ladies, with an
+imperfect knowledge of her own mind, and attempted, unlike most young
+ladies, to mould her doubts into a definite and logical form. She did
+arrive at a conclusion--when she learned that Dick was nearly home. This
+conclusion was, that, whatever happened, there must be no immediate
+engagement: she did not know whether Dick loved her still--she was not
+absolutely sure that she still loved him.
+
+We have seen how she communicated her decision to Dick. His manifest
+agony when he heard it sent a thrill through her heart--a thrill that
+recalled the old romance. The manly way in which he afterwards accepted
+his fate touched her still more. She began to think that she might after
+all have mistaken herself of late; and this notion would probably have
+become a conviction but for one circumstance--the presence of Mr. Miles.
+
+Dick was jealous: she saw it, or thought she saw it, from the first.
+This vexed her, and she had not bargained to be vexed by Dick. It made
+her more than half-inclined to give him something to be jealous of.
+Accordingly she was once or twice so malicious as to throw Mr. Miles in
+his teeth in their conversations, and watch the effect. And the effect
+did not please her.
+
+On the other hand, about Mr. Miles there was no particle of jealousy
+(one thing more to his credit). Why, he had asked with the greatest
+interest all about Dick, after he had gone that first evening; and her
+answers had been most circumspect: she had let him suppose that Dick was
+a squatter during his whole term in Australia. After that Mr. Miles had
+asked no more. But Dick had never asked one word about Mr. Miles until
+he had been in England a fortnight, and then he offended her deeply. Up
+to that point her interest in Dick had been gradually growing more
+tender; she felt him to be true and brave, and honoured him; and
+contrasted her own fickleness with his honest worth. Once or twice she
+felt a longing to make him happy. Even as she felt herself irresistibly
+bowed down before him her idol fell. From this man, whom she was
+learning to truly love, came a mean, unmanly suggestion. To further his
+progress with her he stooped to slander the man whom he was pleased to
+consider his rival, and that rival the noblest, the most generous of
+men.
+
+She could not easily forgive this; she could never forget it, and never
+think quite the same of Dick afterwards. And then the conduct of the
+other one was so different! Her manner instinctively warmed towards Mr.
+Miles: she should be his champion through thick and thin. As for Dick,
+after that little scene, he did not come near Graysbrooke for a week.
+
+Now, during that week, the words that had offended her recurred many
+times to Alice. The pale, earnest, honest face with which Dick had
+uttered them also rose in her mind. Was it possible that his suspicion
+could be absolutely groundless? Was it not credible that he might have
+reasons for speaking--mistaken ones, of course--which he could not
+reveal to her? In any case, his words rankled; and so much sting is
+seldom left by words which we have already dismissed, once and for all,
+as utterly and entirely false.
+
+During that week, moreover, there occurred a frivolous incident, of
+which Alice would have thought nothing before the expression of Dick's
+suspicions but which now puzzled her sorely. One brilliant afternoon she
+found herself completely indolent. She wandered idly into the garden,
+and presently came upon a rather droll sight: her father and Mr. Miles,
+sound asleep, side by side, in a couple of basket-chairs under the shade
+of a weeping willow. The girl conceived a happy roguery: what a subject
+for a photograph! She stole into the house for her camera. When she
+returned, her father was gone. She was disappointed, hesitated a few
+moments, and then coolly photographed the still unconscious Mr. Miles.
+An hour later she greeted him with the negative--an excellent one.
+
+"You said you had never been taken," said she mischievously. "Well, here
+is your first portrait. It will be capital."
+
+He asked to look at it, in his quiet way. Alice handed him the dripping
+glass. He had no sooner held it up to the light than it slipped through
+his fingers, and broke into a dozen fragments upon the gravel path.
+
+Mr. Miles apologised coldly, and proceeded to pick up the pieces with a
+provoking smile. Alice was irate, and accused him of breaking her
+negative purposely. Mr. Miles replied with charming candour that he had
+never been photographed in his life, and never meant to be. Already
+blaming herself for having yielded to a silly impulse, and one which was
+even open to wrong construction, Alice said no more; and presently, when
+the Australian gravely begged her forgiveness, it was granted with equal
+gravity. Nevertheless she was puzzled. Why should Mr. Miles so dread a
+photograph of himself? What had he to fear? Would Dick add this to his
+little list of suspicious circumstances? If he did, it would be the
+first item not utterly absurd. What if she were to tell him, and see!
+
+As it happened, Dick called the very next day, a Wednesday, and the last
+day in June. Alice received him coldly. There was a natural restraint on
+both sides, but she thawed before he went. As he was saying good-bye,
+she asked him (casually) if he would come on Friday afternoon--the day
+of her dance--and help with the floor and things. She really wished him
+to come very much, for she foresaw an opportunity for explanation,
+without which the evening would be a misery to her; besides, they could
+talk over Mr. Miles fairly and confidentially. Dick jumped at it, poor
+fellow, brightened up at once, and walked home a happier man.
+
+The following day Alice accompanied her father to town, on pleasure
+bent. The little jaunt had been long arranged, and Mr. Miles was their
+efficient escort.
+
+That was on Thursday, July 1st.
+
+Unfortunately for Mr. Biggs, M.L.C., he could not spend all his days at
+the Exhibition, so that a certain little drama, not widely differing
+from that astute legislator's preconception, was at last played to an
+altogether unappreciative house. The facts are these:
+
+About four in the afternoon, an old gentleman, with snowy whiskers and
+hair, and with a very charming girl upon his arm, looked into the
+Settler's Hut. They did not remain within above ten seconds; but during
+those ten seconds the genus loci--who was in his customary place on the
+bunk--heard a voice without which caused him to start, pull the brim of
+his cabbage-tree hat further over his eyes, and draw a long breath
+through his teeth.
+
+"I won't come in," said this voice, which was low and unconcerned; "I've
+seen it before; besides, I know the kind of thing rather too well."
+
+The shadows of the old gentleman and the girl had hardly disappeared
+from the threshold when the man in the cabbage-tree hat and side-spring
+boots rose swiftly, and peered stealthily after them. What he saw caused
+him to smile with malignant triumph. A tall, well-dressed man walked
+beside the old gentleman and his daughter.
+
+The watcher allowed them to pass almost out of sight, then followed
+warily. He followed them all the afternoon, keeping so far behind, and
+dodging so cleverly, that they never saw him. When the trio at length
+quitted the building and took a cab, this man followed through the
+streets at a double. He followed them to Waterloo. He got into the same
+train with them. They got out at a station on the loop line; he got out
+also, paid his fare to the ticket collector, and once more dogged his
+quarry. An hour later the cabbage-tree hat was attracting attention on
+that same suburban platform; later still the occupants of a third-class
+smoking carriage in an up train thought that they had never before seen
+such an evil expression as that which the broad brim of the cabbage-tree
+hat only partially concealed.
+
+This also was on the 1st of July.
+
+
+
+
+                                   IX
+
+                 A DANCING LESSON AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
+
+
+To enter a cricket-field in mid-winter and a ballroom at midday are
+analogous trials, and serious ones to enthusiasts in either arena; but
+the former is a less depressing sight in January than in December, while
+there is something even inspiriting about a ballroom the day before the
+dance.
+
+When, quite early in the afternoon, Alice slipped unobserved into the
+cool and empty dining-room, her cheeks glowed, her eyes sparkled, and
+the hard boards yielded like air beneath her airy feet. She shut the
+door quietly, though with an elbow; her hands were full. She carried two
+long wax candles that knew no flame, two gleaming dinner-knives, and a
+pair of scissors. These were deposited on a chair--provisionally--while
+the young lady inspected the floor with critical gaze.
+
+She frowned--the floor was far from perfect. She slid out one small
+foot, as if trying dubious ice--yes, most imperfect. The other foot
+followed; it would be impossible to dance on a floor like this. Next
+instant the lie was given to this verdict by the judge herself, for Miss
+Bristo was skimming like a swallow round the room.
+
+Would you see a graceful maiden at her best? Then watch her dancing.
+Would you behold her most sweet? Then catch her unawares--if you can.
+Most graceful and most sweet, then--I admit that the combination is a
+rare one, but she should be dancing all alone; for, alas! the ballroom
+has its mask, and the dual dance its trammels.
+
+In this instance it was only that Alice desired to try the floor, and to
+assure herself that her feet had lost none of their cunning; and only
+once round. No, twice; for, after all, the floor was not so very bad,
+while the practice was very good, and--the sensation was delicious. Yet
+a third round--a last one--with quickened breath and heightened colour,
+and supple curves and feet more nimble, and a summer gown like a silver
+cloud, now floating in the wake of the pliant form, now clinging
+tenderly as she swiftly turned. And none to see her!
+
+What, none?
+
+As Alice came to an abrupt pause in front of her cutlery and candles, a
+deep soft voice said, "Bravo!"
+
+She looked quickly up, and the base of a narrow open window at the end
+of the room was filled by a pair of broad shoulders; and well set up on
+the shoulders was a handsome, leonine face, with a blond beard and a
+pair of bold, smiling eyes.
+
+"Bravo, Miss Bristo!"
+
+"Well, really, Mr. Miles--"
+
+"Now don't be angry--you can't be so unreasonable. I was out here; I saw
+something white and dazzling pass the window twice; and the third time I
+thought I'd see what it was. I came and looked, and thought it was an
+angel turned deserter, and dancing for joy to be on earth again! There
+was no harm in that, was there?"
+
+"There is a great deal of harm in compliments," said Alice severely;
+"especially when they are wicked as well as rude."
+
+Mr. Miles smiled up at her through the window, completely unabashed.
+
+"I forgot. Of course it was rude to liken you to gods I never saw, and
+never hope to see. Forgive me!"
+
+But Alice was thinking that her freak required a word of explanation.
+
+"I was only just trying the floor," she said. "I never dreamt that
+anyone would be so mean as to watch me."
+
+"Unfortunately one can't learn from merely watching," Mr. Miles replied,
+quietly raising himself upon the sill. "You surely haven't forgotten the
+lesson you promised to give me?"--swinging his legs into the room--"I
+claim that lesson now." He towered above her, a column of gray tweed,
+his arms folded lightly across his massive chest.
+
+The window by which Miles entered was five feet above the river lawn,
+and one of three at that end of the room--the other walls had none.
+Standing with one's back to these windows, the door was on the right
+hand side, and, facing it, a double door communicating with the
+conservatory. Before this double door, which was ajar, hung a heavy
+curtain, awaiting adjustment for the evening.
+
+"I did not ask you in," remarked Alice with some indignation. It was
+just like Mr. Miles, this; and for once he really was not wanted.
+
+"Unfortunately, no; you forced me to ask myself. But about the lesson?
+You know I never danced in my life; am I to disgrace my country
+to-night?"
+
+"You should have come to me this morning."
+
+"You were--cooking, I believe."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Miles! Then yesterday."
+
+"We were all in town. Now do be the angel you looked a minute since,
+Miss Bristo, and show me the ropes. It won't take you ten minutes; I
+assure you I'm a quick learner. Why, if it's time you grudge, we have
+wasted ten minutes already, talking about it."
+
+Impudence could no higher climb; but Mr. Miles was not as other men
+are--at least, not in this house. There was nothing for it but to give
+in, show him the rudiments, and get rid of them as quickly as possible;
+for Dick might arrive at any moment.
+
+"Ten minutes is all I shall give you, then. Attention! One, two, three;
+one, two, three; so! Can you do it?"
+
+Of course he could not, after a niggardly example of half-a-dozen steps:
+he did not try; he insisted on her waltzing once right round the room
+very slowly.
+
+"Then it is your last chance," exclaimed Alice. "Now watch: you begin
+so: one--a long one, remember--then two, three--little quick ones. Now
+try. No, you needn't lift your feet; you are not stamping for an encore,
+Mr. Miles. It is all done by sliding, like this. Now, try again."
+
+Miles bent his six feet three into five feet nothing, and slid gravely
+round with an anxious watch upon his feet.
+
+"Why, you are bent double," cried Miss Bristo, sharply; "and, let me
+tell you, you will never learn while you look at your feet."
+
+Miles stopped short.
+
+"Then how am I to learn?" he asked, gazing helplessly at his
+instructress.
+
+Alice burst out laughing.
+
+"You had better lock yourself in your room and practise hard until
+evening. The ten minutes are up; but you have exactly six hours and
+twenty-nine minutes before you, if you make haste."
+
+"Well, you shall suffer if I cut a poor figure to-night, Miss Bristo,
+and it will serve you right, for I intend to have my share of your
+dances."
+
+"That remains to be seen," said Alice tritely.
+
+"Stay, though," said Miles, drawing himself up to the last of his
+seventy-five inches, and speaking in that smooth, matter-of-fact tone
+that ushered in his most astounding audacities, "suppose we two try--in
+double harness--now?"
+
+"Mr. Miles!"
+
+"Miss Bristo, I am sure I should get on a thousand times better. Is it
+so very much to ask?" he added humbly--for him.
+
+The inner Alice echoed the question: Was it so very much to ask--or to
+grant? The answer came at once: To anyone else, yes; to Mr. Miles, no;
+grave, heroic, middle-aged Mr. Miles! With a mighty show of
+condescension, Miss Bristo agreed to one round, and not a step more. She
+would not have been called prude for the world; but unluckily, prudery
+and prudence so often go hand in hand.
+
+The two went whirling round the empty room. Before they were half-way
+round, Alice exclaimed:
+
+"You have cheated; never danced, indeed!"
+
+He murmured that it was so many years ago, he thought he had forgotten.
+Having thus discovered that she could teach her pupil nothing, it was
+Alice's plain duty to stop; but this she forgot to do. Mr. Miles, for
+his part, said not a word, but held her firmly. He, in fact, waltzed
+better than any man she had ever danced with. Two
+rounds--three--six--without a word.
+
+Even if they had not been dancing they might have failed to hear a
+buoyant footstep that entered the conservatory at this time; for the
+worst of an india-rubber sole is the catlike tread that it gives the
+most artless wearer. But it was an unfortunate circumstance that they
+did just then happen to be dancing.
+
+There is no excuse for Miss Bristo, that I know of. Pleas of faulty
+training or simplicity within her years would, one feels, be futile.
+Without doubt she behaved as the girl of this period is not intended to
+behave; let her be blamed accordingly. She did not go unpunished.
+
+After waltzing for no less a space than five minutes--in a ballroom bare
+as a crypt, in broad daylight, and in silence--Alice, happening to look
+up, saw a look on her partner's face which made her tremble. She had
+never seen a similar expression.
+
+It was pale and resolute--stern, terrible. She disengaged herself with
+little ado, and sank quietly into a chair by the window.
+
+"A fine 'one round'!" she said demurely; "but it shall be deducted from
+your allowance this evening."
+
+She could not see him; he was behind her. His eyes were devouring the
+shapely little head dipped in the gold of the afternoon sun. Her face he
+could not see--only the tips of two dainty ears and they were pink. But
+a single lock of hair--a wilful lock that had got astray in the dance,
+and lay on her shoulder like a wisp of sunlit hay--attracted his
+attention, and held it. When he managed to release his eyes, they roved
+swiftly round the room, and finally rested upon another chair within his
+reach, on which lay two wax-candles, two dinner-knives, and a pair of
+scissors.
+
+A click of steel an inch from her ear caused Alice to start from her
+chair and turn round. Mr. Miles--pale, but otherwise undisturbed--stood
+holding the scissors in his right hand, and in his left was a lock of
+her hair. For one moment Miss Bristo was dumb with indignation. Then her
+lips parted; but before she could say a word the door-handle turned, Mr.
+Miles dropped the scissors upon the chair and put his left hand in his
+pocket, and the head and shoulders of Colonel Bristo were thrust into
+the room.
+
+"Ah, I have found you at last!" the old gentleman cried with an
+indulgent smile. "If you are at liberty, and Alice don't mind, we will
+speak of--that matter--in my study."
+
+"My lesson is just over," said Miles, bowing to Alice. He moved towards
+the door; with his fingers upon the handle, he turned, and for an
+instant regarded Alice with a calm, insolent, yet tender gaze; then the
+door closed, and Alice was alone.
+
+She heard the footsteps echo down the passage; she heard another door
+open and shut. The next sound that reached her ears was at the other
+side of the room in which she sat. She glanced quickly toward the
+curtained door: a man stood between it and her. It was Dick.
+
+Alice recoiled in her chair. She saw before her a face pale with
+passion; for the first time in her life she encountered the eyes of an
+angry man. She quailed; a strange thrill crept through her frame; she
+could only look and listen. It seemed an age before Dick spoke. When he
+did speak, it was in a voice far calmer than she expected. She did not
+know that the calm was forced, and therefore the more ominous.
+
+"I have only one thing to ask," he began hurriedly, in a low tone: "was
+this a plot? If it was, do say so, and so far as I am concerned its
+effect shall be quick enough: I will go at once. Only I want to know the
+worst, to begin with."
+
+Alice sat like a stone. She gave no sign that she had so much as heard
+him. Poor girl, the irony of Fate seemed directed against her! She had
+invited Dick on purpose to consult him about Mr. Miles, and now--and
+now--
+
+"You don't speak," pursued Dick, less steadily; "but you must. I mean to
+have my answer before either of us leaves this room. I mean to know all
+there is to know. There shall be an end to this fooling between us
+two!"
+
+"What right have you to speak to me like this?"
+
+"The right of a true lover--hopeless of late, yet still that! Answer me:
+had you planned this?"
+
+"You know that is absurd."
+
+How coldly, how evenly she spoke! Was her heart of ice? But Dick--there
+was little of the "true lover" in his looks, and much of the true hater.
+Yet even now, one gentle word, one tender look from him, and tears of
+pity and penitence might still have flowed. His next words froze them.
+
+"No conspiracy, then! Merely artless, honest, downright love-making;
+dancing--alone--and giving locks of hair and (though only by
+coincidence!) the man you loved once and enslaved for ever--this man of
+all others asked by you to come at this very hour, and, in fact, turning
+up in the middle of it! And this was chance. I am glad to hear it!"
+
+Men have been called hard names for speaking to women less harshly than
+this--even on greater provocation; but let it be remembered that he had
+loved her long years better than his life; that he had wrenched himself
+from England and from her--for her sake; that during all that time her
+image had been graven on his soul. And, further, that he had led a rough
+life in rough places, where men lose their shallower refinements, and
+whence only the stout spirits emerge at all.
+
+When recrimination becomes insult a woman is no longer defenceless;
+right or wrong in the beginning, she is right now; she needs no more
+than the consciousness of this to quicken her wit and whet her tongue.
+
+"I do not understand you," exclaimed Alice, looking him splendidly in
+the face. "Have the goodness to explain yourself before I say the last
+word that shall ever pass between you and me."
+
+"Yes, I will explain," cried Dick, beside himself--"I will explain your
+treatment of me! While you knew I was on my way to you--while I was on
+the very sea--you took away your love from me, and gave it to another
+man. Since then see how you have treated me! Well, that man--the man you
+flatter, and pet, and coquette with; the man who kennels here like a
+tame dog--is a rogue: a rogue and a villain, mark my words!"
+
+In the midst of passion that gathered before his eyes a marble statue,
+pure and cold, seemed to rise out of the ground in front of him.
+
+"One word," said Alice Bristo, in the kind of voice that might come from
+marble: "the last one. You spoke of putting an end to something existing
+between us--'fooling' was the word you used. Well, there was something
+between us long ago, though you might have found a prettier word for it;
+but it also ended long ago; and you have known that some weeks. There
+has since been friendship; yes, you shall have an end put to that too,
+though you might have asked it differently. Stay, I have not finished.
+You spoke of Mr. Miles; most of what you said was beneath notice;
+indeed, you have so far lost self-control that I think you cannot know
+now what you said a minute ago. But you spoke of Mr. Miles in a cruel,
+wicked way. You have said behind his back what you dare not say to his
+face. He at least is generous and good; he at least never forgets that
+he is a gentleman; but then, you see, he is so infinitely nobler, and
+truer, and greater than you--this man you dare to call a villain!"
+
+"You love him!" cried Dick fiercely.
+
+Instead of answering, Alice lowered her eyes. Stung to the quick--sick
+and sore at heart--revenge came within her reach in too sweet a form to
+be resisted.
+
+Never was lie better acted. Dick was staggered. He approached her
+unsteadily.
+
+"It is a villain that you love!" he gasped. "I know it--a villain and an
+impostor! But I will unmask him with my own hands--so help me God!"
+
+He raised his pale face upward as he spoke, smiting his palms together
+with a dull dead thud. Next moment he had vaulted through the open
+window by which Miles had entered so short a time before--and was gone.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile an interview of a very different character took place in
+Colonel Bristo's sanctum. It ended thus:
+
+"Then you are quite sure that this hundred will be enough for you to go
+on with?"
+
+"More than enough; fifty would have done. Another Queensland mail is due
+a month hence; and they can never fail me twice running."
+
+"But you say you are so far up country that you do not send down to meet
+every mail. Your partner may not have thought you likely to run short."
+
+"I wired him some weeks ago that I had miscalculated damages. I should
+have had my draft by this mail but for the floods. I feel confident they
+have prevented him sending down in time; there has been mention of these
+floods several times in the papers."
+
+"Well, my dear Miles, if you want more, there is more where this came
+from. I cashed the cheque myself this morning, by the way; I happened to
+be in the bank, and I thought you would like it better. Here they
+are--ten tens."
+
+"Colonel Bristo, I can never express--"
+
+"Don't try, sir. You saved my life."
+
+
+
+
+                                   X
+
+                    AN OLD FRIEND AND AN OLD MEMORY
+
+
+When Dick Edmonstone opened the garden gate of Iris Lodge he was no
+longer excited. The storm that had so lately shaken his frame and lashed
+his spirit had spent its frenzy; no such traces as heaving breast or
+quickened pulse remained to tell of it. The man was calm--despair had
+calmed him; the stillness of settled gloom had entered his soul. His
+step was firm but heavy; the eye was vacant; lips like blanched iron;
+the whole face pale and rigid.
+
+These are hall-marks graven by misery on the face of man; they are
+universal and obvious enough, though not always at the first glance. For
+instance, if prepared with a pleasant surprise for another, one is
+naturally slow to detect his dismal mood. Thus, no sooner had Dick set
+foot upon the garden path than the front door was flung open, and there
+stood Fanny, beaming with good-humour, good news on the tip of her
+tongue. It was like sunrise facing a leaden bank of western clouds.
+
+"Oh, Dick, there is someone waiting to see you! You will never guess; it
+is a bush friend of yours. Such an amusing creature!" she added sotto
+voce.
+
+Dick stood still on the path and groaned. "Biggs!" he muttered in
+despair.
+
+Nothing directs attention to the face so surely as the voice. There was
+such utter weariness in this one word that Fanny glanced keenly at her
+brother, saw the dulness of his eyes, read for apathy agony, and knew
+that instant that there had been a cruel crisis in his affair with Alice
+Bristo.
+
+Instead of betraying her insight, she went quickly to him with a bright
+smile, laid her hand on his arm, and said:
+
+"His name is not Biggs, Dick dear. It is--but you will be very glad to
+see him! Come in at once."
+
+A flash of interest lit up Dick's clouded face; he followed Fanny into
+the hall, and there, darkening the nearest doorway, stood a burly
+figure. The light of the room being behind this man, Dick could not at
+once distinguish his features. While he hesitated, a well-remembered
+falsetto asked if he had forgotten his old mate. Then Dick sprang
+forward with outstretched hand.
+
+"Dear old Jack, as I live!"
+
+"Dear old humbug! Let me tell you you've done your level best to miss
+me. An hour and a half have I been here, a nuisance to these ladies--"
+
+"No, no, Dick; Mr. Flint has done nothing but entertain us," put in Mrs.
+Edmonstone.
+
+"A charitable version," said Flint, bowing clumsily. "But I tell you, my
+boy, in half-an-hour my train goes."
+
+"Don't delude yourself," said Dick; "you won't get off so easily
+to-night, let alone half-an-hour."
+
+"Must, sir," Jack Flint replied. "Leave Dover by to-night's
+boat--holiday. If you'd only come in sooner! I wonder now where he's
+been?" Flint added, with a comic expression on his good-natured face.
+
+"No place that I wouldn't have left for an hour or two with you, old
+chap," said Dick in a strange tone; "nowhere very pleasant."
+
+Nothing better could have happened to Dick just then than seeing the
+chum from whom he had parted nearly three years ago. It was as though
+his good angel had stored up for him a sovereign simple, and
+administered it at the moment it was most needed. In the presence of
+Flint he had escaped for a few minutes from the full sense of his
+anguish. But now, by an unlucky remark, Jack had undone his good work as
+unconsciously as he had effected it. Dick remembered bitterly that long
+ago he had told his friend all about his love--as it then stood.
+
+"Mr. Flint has been telling us some of your adventures, which it seems
+we should never have heard from you," observed Fanny, reproachfully.
+
+This was quite true. Once snubbed at Graysbrooke, his system of silence
+on that subject had been extended to Iris Lodge. One set of people had
+voted his experiences tiresome; that was enough for him. This was
+doubtless unfair to his family, but it was not unnatural in Dick. He was
+almost morbid on the point.
+
+"Indeed!" he replied; "but suppose he gives us some of his Irish
+adventures instead? How many times have they tried to pot you, my unjust
+landlord? You must know, mother, that this is not only my ex-partner in
+an honourable commercial enterprise--not only 'our Mr. Flint' that used
+to be--but John Flint, Esq., J.P., of Castle Flint, county Kerry;
+certainly a landholder, and of course--it goes without saying--a
+tyrant."
+
+"Really?" said Mrs. Edmonstone. "He did not tell us that."
+
+"It's the unhappy fact," said Flint, gloomily. "A few hundred acres of
+hills and heather, and a barn called by courtesy 'Castle'; those are my
+feudal possessions. The scenery is gorgeous, but the land--is a
+caution!"
+
+"Barren?" asked Dick.
+
+"As Riverina in a drought."
+
+"And the tenants?"
+
+"Oh, as to the tenants, we hit it off pretty well. It's in North Kerry
+they're lively. I'm in the south, you see, and there they're peaceable
+enough. Laziness is their worst crime. I do all I can for 'em, but I
+don't see how I can hold on much longer."
+
+"Evict?"
+
+"No," said Flint, warmly; "I'd rather emigrate, and take the whole
+boiling of them with me; take up new country, and let them select on it.
+Dick, you savage, don't laugh; I'm not joking. I've thought about it
+often."
+
+"Would you really like to go back to Australia, Mr. Flint?" Mrs.
+Edmonstone asked, glancing at the same time rather anxiously at her son.
+
+"Shouldn't mind, madam," returned Flint.
+
+"No more should I!" broke in Dick, in a harsh voice.
+
+Flint looked anxiously at his friend, and made a mental note that Dick
+had not found all things quite as he expected. For a minute no one
+spoke; then Fanny took the opportunity of returning to her former
+charge.
+
+"We have heard some of your adventures which you seemed determined to
+keep to yourself. I think it was very mean of you, and so does mamma.
+Oh, Dick, why--why did you never tell us about the bush-ranger?"
+
+Mrs. Edmonstone gazed fondly at her son--and shivered.
+
+"Has he told you that?" Dick asked quickly. "Jack, old chap"--rather
+reproachfully--"it was a thing I never spoke of."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear fellow!"
+
+"No, it's a fact. I never cared to talk about it, I felt it so
+strongly."
+
+"Too strongly," said Flint; "I said so at the time."
+
+For a little while Dick was silent; then he said:
+
+"Since he has told you, it doesn't matter. I can only say it nearly
+drove me out of my mind; it was the bitterest hour of my life!"
+
+A little earlier that day this would have been true.
+
+His mother's eyes filled with tears. "I can understand your feeling,
+dear Dick," she murmured; "yet I wish you had told us--though, indeed,
+it would have made me miserable if you had written it. But now Mr. Flint
+has given us a graphic account of the whole incident. Thank Heaven you
+were spared, my boy!"
+
+"Thank Sundown," said Dick dryly.
+
+"Oh, yes!" cried Fanny. "Noble fellow! Poor, wicked, generous man! I
+didn't think such robbers existed; I thought they went out with wigs and
+patches, a hundred years ago."
+
+"So they did," muttered Flint. "They're extinct as the dodo. I never
+could make this one out--a deep dog."
+
+"Oh, sir," exclaimed Mrs. Edmonstone, "do you think there is no spark of
+goodness in the worst natures? of truth in the falsest? of generosity in
+the most selfish?"
+
+Jack Flint looked quaintly solemn; his face was in shadow, luckily.
+
+"Yes," said Dick, gravely, "my mother is right; there was a good impulse
+left in that poor fellow, and if you find gold in an outlaw and a thief,
+you may look for it anywhere. But in my opinion there was more than a
+remnant of good in that man. Think of it. He saved me from being knifed,
+to begin with; well, it was to his own interest to do that. But after
+that he took pity, and left us our money. That needed more than a good
+impulse; it needed a force of character which few honest men have. Try
+and realise his position--a price upon him, his hand against the world
+and the world's hand against him, a villain by profession, not credited
+with a single virtue except courage, not bound by a single law of God or
+man; a man you would have thought incapable of compassion; and
+yet--well, you know what he did."
+
+There was a manly fervour in his voice which went straight to the hearts
+of his mother and sister. They could not speak. Even Flint forgot to
+look sceptical.
+
+"If it had not meant so much to me, that hundred pounds," Dick
+continued, as though arguing with himself, "it is possible that I might
+think less of the fellow. I don't know, but I doubt it, for we had no
+notion then what that hundred would turn to. As it is, I have thought of
+it very often. You remember, Jack, how much more that hundred seemed to
+me at that time than it really was, and how much less to you?"
+
+"It was a hundred and thirty," said Flint; "I remember that you didn't
+forget the odd thirty then."
+
+"Dick," Fanny presently exclaimed, out of a brown study, "what do you
+think you would do if--you ever met that bushranger again. I mean, if he
+was at your mercy, you know?"
+
+Flint sighed, and prepared his spirit for heroics.
+
+"No use thinking," Dick answered. "By this time he's a life--if they
+didn't hang him."
+
+Flint became suddenly animated.
+
+"What?" he cried, sharply.
+
+"Why, the last I heard of him--the day I sailed from Melbourne--was,
+that he was captured somewhere up in Queensland."
+
+"If you had sailed a day later you would have heard more."
+
+"What?" asked Dick, in his turn.
+
+"He escaped."
+
+"Escaped?"
+
+"The same night. He got clean away from the police-barracks at Mount
+Clarence--that was the little Queensland township. They never caught
+him. They believe he managed to clear out of the country--to America,
+probably."
+
+"By Jove, I'm not sorry!" exclaimed Dick.
+
+"Here are some newspaper cuttings about him," continued Flint, taking
+the scraps from his pocketbook and handing them to Dick. "Read them
+afterwards; they will interest you. He was taken along with another
+fellow, but the other fellow was taken dead--shot through the heart.
+That must have been the one he called Ben; for the big brute who tried
+to knife you had disappeared some time before. When they were taken they
+were known to have a lot of gold somewhere--I mean, Sundown was--for
+they had just stuck up the Mount Clarence bank."
+
+"Yes, I heard that when I heard of the capture."
+
+"Well, it was believed that Sundown feared an attack from the police,
+and planted the swag, went back to it after his escape, and got clear
+away with the lot. But nothing is known; for neither Sundown nor the
+gold was ever seen again."
+
+"Mamma, aren't you glad he escaped," cried Fanny, with glowing cheeks.
+"It may be wicked, but I know I am! Now, what would you do, Dick?"
+
+"What's the good of talking about it?" said Dick.
+
+"Then I'll tell you what I'd do; I'd hide this poor Sundown from
+justice; I'd give him a chance of trying honesty, for a change--that's
+what I should do! And if I were you, I should long and long and long to
+do it!"
+
+Flint could not help smiling. Dick's sentiment on the subject was
+sufficiently exaggerated; but this young lady! Did this absurd
+romanticism run in the family? If so, was it the father, or the
+grandfather, or the great-grandfather that died in a madhouse?
+
+But Dick gazed earnestly at his sister. Her eyes shone like living coals
+in the twilight of the shaded room. She was imaginative; and the story
+of Dick and the bushranger appealed at once to her sensibilities and her
+sympathy. She could see the night attack in the silent forest, and a
+face of wild, picturesque beauty--the ideal highwayman--was painted in
+vivid colour on the canvas of her brain.
+
+"Fanny, I half think I might be tempted to do something like that," said
+Dick gently. "I have precious few maxims, but one is that he who does me
+a good turn gets paid with interest--though I have a parallel one for
+the man who works me a mischief."
+
+"So it is a good turn not to rob a man whom you've already assaulted!"
+observed Flint ironically.
+
+"It is a good turn to save a man's life."
+
+"True; but you seem to think more of your money than your life!"
+
+"I believe I did four years ago," said Dick, smiling, but he checked his
+smile when Flint looked at his watch and hastily rose.
+
+Dick expostulated, almost to the extent of bluster, but quite in vain;
+Flint was already shaking hands with the ladies.
+
+"My dear fellow," said he, "I leave these shores to-night; it's my
+annual holiday. I'm going to forget my peasants for a few weeks in Paris
+and Italy. If I lose this train I lose to-night's boat--I found out that
+before I came; so good-bye, my--"
+
+"No, I'm coming to the station," said Dick; "at least I stickle for that
+last office."
+
+Mrs. Edmonstone hoped that Mr. Flint--her boy's best friend, as she was
+assured--would see his way to calling on his way home and staying a day
+or two. Mr. Flint promised; then he and Dick left the house.
+
+They were scarcely in the road before Flint stopped, turned, laid a hand
+on each of Dick's shoulders, and quickly delivered his mind:
+
+"There's something wrong. I saw it at once. Tell me."
+
+Dick lowered his eyes before his friend's searching gaze.
+
+"Oh, Jack," he answered, sadly, "it is all wrong!"
+
+And before they reached the station Flint knew all that there was to
+know--an abridged but unvarnished version--of the withering and dying of
+Dick's high hopes.
+
+They talked softly together until the train steamed into the station;
+and then it was Dick who at the last moment returned to a matter just
+touched in passing:
+
+"As to this dance to-night--you say I must go?"
+
+"Of course you must go. It would never do to stay away. For one thing,
+your friend, the Colonel might be hurt and bothered, and he is now your
+best friend, mind. Then you must put a plucky face on it; she mustn't
+see you cave in after the first facer. I half think it isn't all up yet;
+you can't tell."
+
+Dick shook his head.
+
+"I would rather not go; it will be wormwood to me; you know what it will
+be: the two together. And I know it's all up. You don't understand
+women, Jack."
+
+"Do you?" asked the other, keenly.
+
+"She couldn't deny that--that--I can't say it, Jack."
+
+"Ah, but you enraged her first! Anyway, you ought to go to-night for
+your people's sake. Your sister's looking forward to it tremendously;
+never been to a ball with you before; she told me so. By Jove! I wished
+I was going myself."
+
+"I wish you were, instead of me."
+
+"Nonsense! I say, stand clear. Good-bye!"
+
+Away went the train and Jack Flint. And Dick stood alone on the
+platform--all the more alone because his hand still tingled from the
+pressure of that honest grip; because cheering tones still rang in his
+ears, while his heart turned sick, and very lonely.
+
+
+
+
+                                   XI
+
+                     DRESSING, DANCING, LOOKING ON
+
+
+The Bristos dined early that evening, and dressed afterwards; but only
+the Colonel and Miles sat down. Mrs. Parish was far too busy, adding
+everywhere finishing touches from her own deft hand; while as for Alice,
+she took tea only, in her room.
+
+When Mr. Miles went up-stairs to dress, the red sunlight still streamed
+in slanting rays through the open window. His room was large and
+pleasant, and faced the drive.
+
+Mr. Miles appeared to be in excellent spirits. He whistled softly to
+himself--one of Alice's songs; a quiet smile lurked about the corners of
+his mouth; but since his yellow moustache was long and heavy, this smile
+was more apparent in the expression of the eyes. He moved about very
+softly for such a heavy man--almost noiselessly, in fact; but this
+practice was habitual with him.
+
+His dress-clothes were already laid out on the bed; they seemed never to
+have been worn. His portmanteau, which stood in one corner, also
+appeared to have seen little service: it would have been hard to find a
+scratch on the leather, and the glossy surface bore but one porter's
+label. But, naturally enough, Miles's belongings were new: a fresh
+outfit from head to heel is no slight temptation to the Australian in
+London.
+
+The first step towards dressing for a ball is to undress; the first step
+towards undressing is to empty one's pockets. With Miles this evening
+this was rather an interesting operation. It necessitated several
+niceties of manipulation, and occupied some little time. Miles carefully
+drew down the blinds as a preliminary, and bolted the door.
+
+He then crossed to the mantel-piece, lit the gas, and felt in his
+breast-pocket.
+
+The first thing to be removed from this pocket was an envelope--an
+envelope considerably thickened by its contents, which crackled between
+the fingers. Miles dropped the envelope into the fender after
+withdrawing the contents. These he smoothed out upon the mantel-piece;
+he fairly beamed upon them; they were ten Bank of England ten-pound
+notes. Then he counted them, folded them into small compass, and
+transferred them to the trousers-pocket of his evening dress. In doing
+this his smile became so broad that his whistling ended rather abruptly.
+It was a pleasant smile.
+
+The next incumbrance of which he relieved himself came from that same
+breast-pocket; but it was less easily placed elsewhere--so much less
+that the whistling was dropped altogether, and, instead of smiling, Mr.
+Miles frowned. Nay, a discovery that his dress-coat had no breast-pocket
+was followed by quite a volley of oaths. Swearing, however, is a common
+failing of the most estimable bushmen; so that, coming from a man like
+Miles, the words meant simply nothing. Miles then tried the
+trousers-pocket which did not contain the bank-notes; but though the
+article was--of its kind--remarkably small, it was obviously too large
+for such a pocket, and for the tail-pockets it was too heavy. Mr. Miles
+looked seriously put out. His face wore just that expression which might
+be produced by the rupture of a habit or rule of life that has become
+second nature. In despair and disgust he dropped the thing into his
+travelling bag, which he was careful to lock at once, and placed the key
+in the pocket with the notes: the thing was a small revolver.
+
+There followed, from the waistcoat, penknife, pencilcase, watch and
+chain, and, lastly, something that created a strange and instant change
+in the expression of Mr. Miles; and this, though it was the veriest
+trifle, lying in a twisted scrap of printed paper. He spread and
+smoothed out the paper just as he had done with the notes, and something
+was displayed on its surface: something--to judge by the greedy gaze
+that devoured it--of greater value than the bank-notes, and to be parted
+with less willingly than the revolver. It was a lock of light-coloured
+hair.
+
+Mr. Miles again unlocked his travelling bag, and took from it a packet
+of oiled-silk, a pair of scissors, tape, a needle and thread. It is a
+habit of many travellers to have such things always about them. Miles,
+for one, was very handy in the use of them, so that in about ten minutes
+he produced a very neat little bag, shaped like an arc, and hung upon a
+piece of tape with ends sewn to the ends of the chord. Holding this bag
+in his left hand, he now took very carefully, between the thumb and
+finger of his right hand, the lock of light-coloured hair. He let it
+roll in his palm, he placed his finger tips in the mouth of the little
+bag, then paused, as if unwilling to let the hair escape his hand, and,
+as he paused, his face bent down until his beard touched his wrist. Had
+not the notion been wildly absurd, one who witnessed the action might
+have expected Mr. Miles to press his lips to the soft tress that nestled
+in his palm; but, indeed, he did nothing of the kind. He jerked up his
+head suddenly, slipped the tress into its little case, and began at once
+to stitch up the opening. As he did this, however, he might have been
+closing the tomb upon all he loved--his face was so sad. When the thread
+was secured and broken, he loosed his collar and shirt-band and hung the
+oiled-silk bag around his neck.
+
+At that moment a clock on the landing, chiming the three-quarters after
+eight, bade him make haste. There was good reason, it seemed, why he
+should be downstairs before the guests began to arrive.
+
+In the drawing-room he found Colonel Bristo and Mrs. Parish. In face
+benevolent rather than strong, there was little in Colonel Bristo to
+suggest at any time the Crimean hero; he might have been mistaken for a
+prosperous stockbroker, but for a certain shyness of manner incompatible
+with the part. To-night, indeed, the military aspect belonged rather to
+the lady housekeeper; for rustling impatiently in her handsome black
+silk gown, springing up repeatedly at the sound of imaginary wheels,
+Mrs. Parish resembled nothing so much as an old war horse scenting
+battle. She welcomed the entrance of Miles with effusion, but Miles paid
+her little attention, and as little to his host. He glanced quickly
+round the room, and bit his lip with vexation; Miss Bristo was as yet
+invisible. He crossed the hall by a kind of instinct, and looked into
+the ballroom, and there he found her. She had flitted down that moment.
+
+Her dress was partly like a crystal fall, and partly like its silver
+spray; it was all creamy satin and tulle. Or so, at least, it seemed to
+her partners whose knowledge, of course, was not technical. One of them,
+who did not catch her name on introduction--being a stranger, brought
+under the wing of a lady with many daughters--described her on his card
+simply as "elbow sleeves;" and this must have been a young gentleman of
+observation, since the sleeves--an artful compromise between long and
+short--were rather a striking feature to those who knew. Others
+remembered her by her fan; but the callow ones saw nothing but her face,
+and that haunted them--until the next ball.
+
+Mr. Miles, however, was the favoured man who was granted the first
+glimpse of this lovely apparition. He also looked only at her face. Was
+she so very indignant with him? Would she speak to him? Would she refuse
+him the dances he had set his heart on? If these questions were decided
+against him he was prepared to humble himself at her feet; but he soon
+found there was no necessity for that.
+
+For, though Alice was deeply angry with Mr. Miles, she was ten times
+angrier with herself, and ten times ten with Dick. Her manner was
+certainly cold, but she seemed to have forgotten the gross liberty Miles
+had taken in the afternoon; at any rate, she made no allusion to it.
+She gave him dances--then and there--since he brought her a programme,
+but in doing so her thoughts were not of Miles. She gave him literal
+carte blanche, but not to gratify herself or him. There were too few
+ways open to her to punish the insults she had received that day; but
+here was one way--unless the object of her thoughts stayed away.
+
+She hurried from the ballroom at the sound of wheels. In a few minutes
+she was standing at her father's side shaking hands with the people. She
+seemed jubilant. She had a sunny smile and a word or two for all. She
+was like a tinkling brook at summer noon. Everyone spoke of her
+prettiness, and her dress (the ladies whispered of this), and above all,
+her splendid spirits. She found out, when it was over, that she had
+shaken hands with the Edmonstones among the rest. She had done so
+unconsciously, and Dick, like everybody else, had probably received a
+charming welcome from her lips.
+
+If that was the case he must have taken the greeting for what it was
+worth, for he seized the first opportunity to escape from Fanny and
+Maurice, who were bent upon enjoying themselves thoroughly in
+unsentimental fashion. He saw one or two men whom he had known before he
+went to Australia, staring hard at him, but he avoided them; he shrank
+into a corner and called himself a fool for coming.
+
+He wanted to be alone, yet was painfully conscious of the wretched
+figure cut by a companionless man in a room full of people. If he talked
+to nobody people would point at him. Thus perhaps: "The man who made a
+fool of himself about Miss Bristo, don't you know; went to Australia,
+made his fortune, and all the rest of it, and now she won't look at him,
+poor dog!" He was growing morbid. He made a pretence of studying the
+water-colours on the wall, and wished in his soul that he could make
+himself invisible.
+
+A slight rustle behind him caused him to turn round. His heart rose in
+his throat; it was Alice.
+
+"You must dance with me," she said coldly; and her voice was the voice
+of command.
+
+Dick was electrified; he gazed at her without speaking. Then a scornful
+light waxed in his eyes, and his lips formed themselves into a sneer.
+
+"You can hardly refuse," she continued cuttingly. "I do not wish to be
+questioned about you; there has been a little too much of that.
+Therefore, please to give me your arm. They have already begun."
+
+That was so; the room in which they stood was almost empty. Without a
+word Dick gave her his arm.
+
+The crowd about the doorway of the ballroom made way for them to pass,
+and a grim conceit which suggested itself to Dick nearly made him laugh
+aloud.
+
+As they began to waltz Alice looked up at him with flashing eyes.
+
+"If you hate this," she whispered between her teeth, "imagine my
+feelings!"
+
+He knew that his touch must be like heated irons to her; he wanted her
+to stop, but she would not let him. As the couples thinned after the
+first few rounds she seemed the more eager to dance on. One moment,
+indeed, they had the floor entirely to themselves. Thus everyone in the
+room had an opportunity of noticing that Alice Bristo had given her
+first dance to Dick Edmonstone.
+
+The Colonel saw it, and was glad; but he said to himself, "The boy
+doesn't look happy enough; and as for Alice--that's a strange expression
+of hers; I'll tell her I don't admire it. Well, well, if they only get
+their quarrels over first, it's all right, I suppose."
+
+Fanny noted it with delight. The one bar to her complete happiness for
+the rest of the evening was now removed. The best of dancers herself,
+she was sought out by the best. To her a ball was a thing of intrinsic
+delight, in no way connected with sentiment or nonsense.
+
+Mrs. Parish also saw it, but from a very different point of view. She
+bustled over to Mr. Miles, who was standing near the piano, and asked
+him confidentially if he had not secured some dances with Alice? He
+showed her his card, and the old schemer returned triumphant to her
+niche among the dowagers.
+
+He followed her, and wrote his name on her empty card opposite the first
+square dance; a subtle man, this Mr. Miles.
+
+At the end of the waltz Miss Bristo thanked her partner coldly, observed
+below her breath that she should not trouble him again, bowed--and left
+him.
+
+Dick was done with dancing; he had not wished to dance at all; but this
+one waltz was more than enough for him--being with her. Love is
+responsible for strange paradoxes.
+
+He found two men to talk to: men who gloried in dancing, without greater
+aptitude for the art (for it is one) than elephants shod with lead.
+Being notorious, these men never got partners, save occasional ladies
+from remote districts, spending seasons with suburban relatives. These
+men now greeted Dick more than civilly, though they were accustomed to
+cut his brother, the bank-clerk, every morning of their lives. They
+remembered him from his infancy; they heard he had done awfully well
+abroad, and congratulated him floridly. They were anxious to hear all
+about Australia. Dick corrected one or two notions entertained by them
+respecting that country. He assured them that the natives were
+frequently as white as they were. He informed them, in reply to a
+question, that lions and tigers did not prowl around people's premises
+in the majority of Australian towns; nor, indeed, were those animals to
+be found in the Colonies, except in cages. He set them right on the
+usual points of elementary geography. He explained the comprehensive
+meaning of the term, "the bush."
+
+As Dick could at a pinch be fluent--when Australia was the subject--and
+as his mood to-night was sufficiently bitter, his intelligent
+questioners shortly sheered off. They left him at least better-informed
+men. Thereupon Dick returned to the ballroom with some slight access of
+briskness, and buried himself in a little knot of wall-flowers of both
+sexes.
+
+A dance had just begun--scarcely necessary to add, a waltz. Every man
+blessed with a partner hastened to fling his unit and hers into the
+whirling throng. After a round or two, half the couples would pause, and
+probably look on for the rest of the time; but it seems to be a point of
+honour to begin with the music. As Dick stood watching, his sister
+passed quite close to him; she happened to be dancing with Maurice, her
+very creditable pupil, but neither of them saw Dick. Close behind them
+came a pair of even better dancers, who threaded the moving maze without
+a pause or a jar or a single false step; they steered so faultlessly
+that a little path seemed always to open before them; human teetotums,
+obstacles to every one else, seemed mysteriously to melt at the graceful
+approach of these two. But, in fact, it was impossible to follow any
+other pair at the same time, so great were the ease, and beauty, and
+harmony of this pair. They seemed to need no rest; they seemed to yield
+themselves completely--no, not to each other--but to the sweet influence
+of the dreamy waltz.
+
+Dick watched the pair whose exquisite dancing attracted so much
+attention; his face was blank, but the iron was in his soul. The other
+wallflowers also watched them, and commented in whispers. Dick overheard
+part of a conversation between a young lady whose hair was red (but
+elaborately arranged), and a still younger lady with hair (of the same
+warm tint) hanging in a plait, who was presumably a sister, not yet
+thoroughly "out." Here is as much of it as he listened to:
+
+"Oh, how beautifully they dance!"
+
+"Nonsense, child! No better than many others."
+
+"Well, of course, I don't know much about it. But I thought they danced
+better than anyone in the room. Who are they?"
+
+"Don't speak so loud. You know very well that is Miss Bristo herself;
+the man is--must be--Mr. Edmonstone."
+
+"Are they engaged?"
+
+"Well, I believe they used to be. He went out to Australia because he
+couldn't afford to marry (his family were left as poor as mice!), but
+now he has come back with a fortune, and of course it will be on again
+now. I used to know him--to bow to--when they lived on the river; I
+never saw anyone so much altered, but still, that must be he."
+
+"Oh, it must! See how sweet they----"
+
+"Hush, child! You will be heard. But you are quite right; didn't you see
+how----"
+
+That was as much as Dick could stand. He walked away with a pale face
+and twitching fingers. He escaped into the conservatory, and found a
+solitary chair in the darkest corner. In three minutes the waltz ended,
+and the move to the conservatory was so general that for some minutes
+the double doors were all too narrow. Before Dick could get away, a
+yellow-haired youth with a pretty partner, less young than himself,
+invaded the dark corner, and by their pretty arrangement of two chairs
+effectually blocked Dick's egress. They were somewhat breathless, having
+evidently outstripped competitors for this nook only after considerable
+exertion. The yellow-haired youth proceeded to enter into a desperate
+flirtation--according to his lights--with the pretty girl his senior:
+that is to say, he breathed hard, sought and received permission to
+manipulate the lady's fan, wielded it execrably, and uttered
+commonplaces in tones of ingenuous pathos. The conservatory, the
+plashing fountain, and the Chinese lantern are indeed the accepted
+concomitants of this kind of business, to judge by that class of modern
+drawing-room songs which is its expositor. At length, on being snubbed
+by the lady (he had hinted that she should cut her remaining partners in
+his favour), the young gentleman relapsed with many sighs into personal
+history, which may have been cunningly intended as an attack on her
+sympathy, but more probably arose from the egotism of eighteen. He
+inveighed against the barbarous system of superannuation that had
+removed him from his public school; inquired repeatedly, Wasn't it
+awfully hard lines? but finally extolled the freedom of his present
+asylum, a neighbouring Army crammer's, where (he declared) a fellow was
+treated like a gentleman, not like a baby. He was plainly in the
+confidential stage.
+
+All this mildly amused Dick, if anything; but presently the victim of an
+evil system abruptly asked his partner if she knew Miss Bristo very
+well.
+
+"Not so very well," was the reply; "but why do you ask?"
+
+"Because--between you and me, you know--I don't like her. She doesn't
+treat a fellow half civilly. You ask for a waltz, and she gives you a
+square. Now I know she'd waltzes to spare, 'cause I heard her give
+one----"
+
+"Oh, so she snubbed you, eh?"
+
+"Well, I suppose it does almost amount to that. By the bye, is she
+engaged to that long chap who's been dancing with her all the evening?"
+
+"I believe she is; but----"
+
+It was a promising "but;" a "but" that would become entre nous with very
+little pressing.
+
+"But what?"
+
+"It is a strange affair."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Oh, I ought not to say; but of course you would never repeat----"
+
+"Rather not; surely you can trust a fel----"
+
+"Well, then, she used to be engaged--or perhaps it wasn't an absolute
+engagement--to someone else: he went out to Australia, and made money,
+and now that he has come back she's thrown him over for this Mr. Miles,
+who also comes from Australia. I know it for a fact, because Mrs. Parish
+told mamma as much."
+
+"Poor chap! Who is he?"
+
+"Mr. Edmonstone; one of the Edmonstones who lived in that big house
+across the river--surely you remember?"
+
+"Oh, ah!"
+
+"I believe he is here to-night--moping somewhere, I suppose."
+
+"Poor chap! Hallo, there's the music! By Jove! I say, this is awful; we
+shall have to part!"
+
+They went; and Dick rose up with a bitter smile. He would have given
+much, very much, for the privilege of wringing that young
+whippersnapper's neck. Yet it was not the boy's fault; some fate pursued
+him: there was no place for him--no peace for him--but in the open air.
+
+A soft midsummer's night, and an evening breeze that cooled his heated
+temples with its first sweet breath. Oh, why had he not thought of
+coming out long ago! He walked up and down the drive, slowly at first,
+then at speed, as his misery grew upon him, and more times than he
+could count. The music stopped, began again, and again ceased; it came
+to him in gusts as he passed close to the front of the conservatory on
+his beat. At last, when near the house, he fancied he saw a dark
+motionless figure crouching in the shrubbery that edged the lawn at the
+eastern angle of the house.
+
+Dick stopped short in his walk until fancy became certainty; then he
+crept cautiously towards the figure.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+               "TO-MORROW, AND TO-MORROW, AND TO-MORROW"
+
+
+Mr. Miles had written his name no fewer than six times on Alice's card.
+On finding this out Alice had resolved to recognise perhaps half these
+engagements--in any case, no more than should suit her convenience.
+After her dance with Dick she found it would suit her admirably to
+recognise them all.
+
+For Dick had no word of apology or regret; in fact, he did not speak at
+all. He did not even look sorry; but only hard and cold and bitter. It
+was not in the power of woman to treat such a man too harshly.
+
+Alice therefore threw herself into these dances with Miles with a zest
+which brought about one good result: the mere physical effort gradually
+allayed the fever of her spirit; with the even, rhythmical motion
+sufficient peace stole into the heart of the girl to subdue the
+passionate tumult of many hours. To this tranquillity there presently
+succeeded the animation inseparable from ardent exercise.
+
+While the music lasted Alice could scarcely bring herself to pause; she
+seemed never to tire. Between the dances she spoke little to her
+partner, but filled her lungs with new breath, and waited impatiently
+for the striking of a new note; and when the new note sounded she turned
+to that partner with eyes that may have meant to fill with gratitude,
+yet seemed to him to glow with something else.
+
+Once, when he led her from the heated room, she fancied many eyes were
+upon her. She heard whispers; a murmur scarcely audible; a hum of
+wonder, of admiration, perhaps of envy. Well, was she not to be admired
+and envied? Could she not at least compare with the fairest there in
+looks? Was there one with a foot more light and nimble? And was not
+this, her partner, the manliest yet most godlike man that ever stooped
+to grace a ballroom?--and the best dancer into the bargain?--and the
+most admirable altogether? These questions were asked and answered in
+one proud upward glance as she swept on his arm through the throng.
+
+"She never looked so well before," exclaimed Mrs. Parish, in an ecstatic
+aside to Colonel Bristo; "so brilliant, so animated, so happy!"
+
+"I don't agree with you," the Colonel answered shortly; and he added,
+with strange insight in one usually so unobservant: "Alice is not
+herself to-night."
+
+That seemed absurd on the face of it. Who that watched her dancing could
+have admitted it for a moment? Well, last of all, probably her partner.
+
+The music burst forth again. The dancers flocked back to the room, Alice
+and Mr. Miles among them. It was the sixth dance, and their third
+together.
+
+Again they were dancing together, the glassy floor seeming to pass
+beneath their feet without effort of theirs, the music beating like a
+pulse in the brain. As for Alice, she forgot her partner, she forgot
+Dick, she forgot the faces that fled before her eyes as she glided, and
+turned, and skimmed, and circled; she only knew that she was whirling,
+whirling, and that for awhile her heart was at rest.
+
+Before the dance was fairly over, Miles led his partner into the
+conservatory, but said to her: "We will go right through into the open
+air; it will be so much pleasanter." And he did not wait her consent
+either--which was characteristic.
+
+The smooth lawn leading down to the river was illuminated, and now that
+it was quite dark it had a very effective appearance, and was a charming
+resort between the dances. The lawn was bounded on the right by the
+little inlet which has been mentioned. A rustic bridge crossed this
+inlet, leading into a meadow, where seven tall poplars, in rigid rank,
+fronted the river. Without a protest from the girl, Miles led her over
+the bridge, and across the meadow, and down to the river's brim, under
+the shadow of the stately poplars. Most likely she did not heed where
+they were going; at any rate, they had been there often enough together
+before--in daylight.
+
+It was a heavenly night; the pale blue stars were reflected in the black
+still mirror of the Thames, the endless song of the weir was the only
+sound that broke the absolute stillness of the meadow. No voices reached
+them from the house, no strains of music. As though influenced by the
+night, the two were silent for some minutes; then Alice said lightly:
+
+"I am glad you brought me out; I was beginning to stifle. What a lovely
+night! But I thought there would be a moon. When is there a moon, Mr.
+Miles?"
+
+No answer but a deep breath, that was half a groan Alice thought.
+Perhaps she was mistaken. She could not see his face, unless she moved
+away from him, he was so tall. She repeated the question:
+
+"I want to know when there will be a moon. It would be so delicious now,
+if it shot up right over there, to be reflected right down there--but
+why don't you speak, Mr. Miles?"
+
+Still no answer. She drew back a step. He was standing like a monument,
+tall and rigid, with his hands clasped tightly in front of him and his
+face turned slightly upward. He seemed unconscious of her presence at
+his side. Something in his motionless attitude, and the ghastly pallor
+of his face in the starlight, sent a thrill of vague fear to the heart
+of Alice. She drew yet a little farther from him, and asked timidly if
+anything was the matter.
+
+Slowly he turned and faced her. His head drooped, his shoulders sank
+forward. She could see little beads glistening on his forehead. His
+hands loosed each other, and his arms were lifted towards her, only to
+be snatched back, and folded with a thud upon the breast. There they
+seemed to sink and fall like logs upon a swollen sea.
+
+"Matter?" he cried in a low, tremulous voice; then, pausing, "nothing is
+the matter!" Then in a whisper, "Nothing to tell you--now."
+
+A strange coldness overcame Alice--the sense of an injury wrought in her
+carelessness on the man before her. She tried to speak to him, but could
+find no words. With a single glance of pity, she turned and fled to the
+house. He did not follow her.
+
+So Mrs. Parish had been right, after all; and she, Alice--a dozen names
+occurred to her which she had heard fastened upon women who sport with
+men's hearts to while away an idle month.
+
+She reached the conservatory, but paused on the stone steps, with a hand
+lightly laid on the iron balustrade--for the floor-level was some feet
+above that of the garden-path. The music was in full swing once more,
+but Alice's attention was directed to another sound--even, rapid,
+restless footsteps on the drive. She peered in that direction; for it
+was possible, from her position on these steps, to see both the river to
+the left and the lodge-gates far off on the right--in daylight. She had
+not long to wait. A figure crossed quickly before her, coming from the
+front of the house: a man--by his dress, one of the guests--and
+bare-headed. When he first appeared, his back was half-turned to her; as
+he followed the bend of the drive she saw nothing but his back! then she
+lost sight of him in the darkness and the shadows of the drive.
+Presently she heard his steps returning; he was perambulating a beat.
+Not to be seen by him as he neared the house, Alice softly opened the
+door and entered the conservatory. It was at that moment quite deserted.
+She moved noiselessly to the southern angle, hid herself among the
+plants, and peered through the glass. It was very dark in this corner,
+and the foliage so thick that there was small chance of her being seen
+from without. The solitary figure passed below her, on the other side of
+the glass; it was Dick: she had been sure of it.
+
+She watched him cross and recross twice--thrice; then she trembled
+violently, and the next time she could not see him distinctly, because
+tears--tears of pity--had started to her eyes. If a face--haggard,
+drawn, white as death, hopeless as the grave--if such a face is a sight
+for tears, then no wonder Alice wept. Was it possible that this was he
+who landed in England less than a month ago--so gay, so successful, so
+boyish? He looked years older. The eager light had gone out of his eyes.
+His step, so buoyant then, was heavy now, though swift with the fever of
+unrest. He bent forward as he walked, as though under a burden: a month
+ago he had borne no burden. Was this the man she had loved so wildly
+long ago--this wreck? Was this the result of trying to rule her heart by
+her head? Was this, then, her handiwork?
+
+Her cup to-night was to be filled to overflowing. Even now her heart had
+gone out in pity to another whom also she had wronged--in pity, but not
+in love. For here, at last--at this moment--she could see before her but
+one: the man who had loved her so long and so well; the man who had once
+held her perfect sun of love--Heaven help her, who held it still!
+
+A faintness overcame this frail girl. Her frame shook with sobs. She
+could not see. She leant heavily against the framework of the glass. She
+must have fallen, but a gentle hand at that moment was thrust under her
+arm.
+
+"Oh, fancy finding you here! Your father sent me--" the pleasant voice
+broke off suddenly, and Alice felt herself caught in strong and tender
+arms. She looked up and saw Dick's sister. Her poor beating heart gave
+one bound, and then her head sank on Fanny's shoulder.
+
+Presently she was able to whisper:
+
+"Take me up-stairs; I am ill. It has been a terrible day for me!"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Miles still stood by the river, erect, motionless; his powerful
+hands joined in front of him in an iron knot, his fine head thrown
+slightly backward, as though in defiance. At first the thoughts in his
+mind were vague. Then, very slowly, they began to take shape. A little
+later his expression was soft and full of hope, and his lips kept
+repeating inaudibly one word: the word "to-morrow."
+
+Then in a moment his mind was chaos.
+
+There is nothing more confusing to the brain than memory. Often there is
+nothing so agonising and unsparing in its torture, when memory preys
+upon the present, consuming all its peace and promise like some foul
+vampire. Miles was now in the clutch of memory in its form of monster.
+His teeth were clenched, his face livid, the veins on his forehead
+standing out like the spreading roots of an oak. Spots of blood stood
+under the nails of his clenched fingers.
+
+The stars blinked high overhead, and the stars deep down in the tranquil
+water answered them. The voice of the weir seemed nearer and louder. A
+gentle breeze stirred the line of poplars by the river's brink in the
+meadow, and fanned the temples of the motionless man at their feet. A
+bat passed close over him, lightly touching his hair with its wing.
+Miles did not stir.
+
+Slowly--as it were, limb by limb--he was freeing himself from the grip
+of the hideous past. At last, with a sudden gesture, he flung back his
+head, and his eyes gazed upward to the zenith. It was an awful gaze: a
+vision of honour and happiness beyond a narrow neck of crime--a glimpse
+of heaven across the gulf of hell.
+
+His tongue articulated the word that had trembled on his lips before:
+now it embodied a fixed resolve--"To-morrow! to-morrow!"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Miles became suddenly aware that his name was being spoken somewhere
+in the distance by a voice he knew--young Edmonstone's. A moment later
+the speaker was with him, and had added:
+
+"There is someone who wants to speak to you, standing outside the gate."
+
+There was a gleam of triumph in the younger man's eyes that shot out
+from the misery of his face like lightning from a cloud, throwing that
+misery into stronger relief. Miles noted this swift gleam, and it struck
+terror into his heart--at this moment, more than terror. He was as a
+general who, on the eve of the brilliant stroke that is to leave him
+conqueror, hears the alarm sounded in his own rearguard. He stared Dick
+up and down for some moments. When he spoke, it was--to the ear--with
+perfect coolness:
+
+"Thanks. I half-expected something of the kind; but it is an infernal
+nuisance to-night. I must get a coat and hat, for I may have to go up to
+town at once." And he strode away.
+
+Dick watched him out of sight, admiring more than anything he had seen
+in this man his readiness and resource at this moment. He would have
+liked to follow Miles, and keep him within reach or sight; but those
+were not his directions. Instead, he crossed the bridge, at once bore to
+the left, and crept into the shrubbery. Keeping close to the wall,
+without stirring a single leaf, he gained a spot within ten paces of the
+gate, whence he could command most of the drive and a fair slice of the
+road. In a minute Miles approached at a swinging walk. He passed close
+to Dick, and so through the gate. At that moment a man emerged from the
+shadows at the other side of the road; it was the man Dick had
+discovered in the shrubbery, though he had seen him before--in the
+Settler's Hut!
+
+The two men were now but a few paces apart; with little more than a yard
+between them, they stopped. A low chuckle escaped one of them; but
+without another sound they turned--passed slowly down the road, side by
+side, and so out of sight.
+
+Dick gasped: it was so very unlike his preconceived notions of arrest!
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIII
+
+                             IN BUSHEY PARK
+
+
+"So boss, you know me?"
+
+"I have not forgotten you, you scoundrel!"
+
+Such was the interchange of greetings between the man from the
+Exhibition and Mr. Miles, the Australian. They had halted at a lamp-post
+some distance down the road, and stood facing each other in the
+gaslight.
+
+"That's right. I'm glad you don't forget old mates," said the stout,
+round-shouldered man. "That's one good thing, anyway; but it's a bad'un
+to go calling them names first set-off, especially when----"
+
+"Look here," interrupted Miles, with an admirable imitation of his
+ordinary tone; "I haven't much time to give you, my man. How the deuce
+did you get here? And what the deuce do you want with me?"
+
+"Oh, so you're in a hurry, are you?" sneered the man. "And you want to
+get back to the music, and the wine, and the women, do you?"
+
+"Listen!" said Miles smoothly; "do you hear that step in the distance?
+It's coming nearer; it's the policeman, for certain; and if you don't
+get your business stated and done with before he reaches us, I'll give
+you in charge. Nothing simpler: I know the men on this beat, and they
+know me."
+
+"Not so well as I do, I reckon!" returned the other dryly, and with the
+quiet insolence of confident security. "And so you're the fine gentleman
+now, are you?"
+
+"If you like--and for all you can prove to the contrary."
+
+"The Australian gentleman on a trip home, eh? Good; very good! And your
+name is Miles!"
+
+"It's worth your neck to make it anything else?"
+
+The other thrust forward his face, and the beady eyes glittered with a
+malignant fire. "You don't lose much time about coming to threats,
+mate," he snarled. "P'r'aps it'ud be better if you waited a bit; p'r'aps
+I'm harder to funk than you think! Because I dare prove to the contrary,
+and I dare give you your right name. Have you forgotten it? Then I'll
+remind you; and your friend the bobby shall hear too, now he's come so
+close. How's this, then?--Edward Ryan, otherwise Ned the Ranger;
+otherwise--and known all over the world, this is--otherwise--"
+
+Miles stopped him with a rapid, fierce gesture, at the same time quietly
+sliding his left hand within his overcoat. He felt for his revolver. It
+was not there. He recalled the circumstance which had compelled him to
+lay it aside. It seemed like Fate: for months that weapon had never been
+beyond the reach of his hand; now, for the first time, he required it,
+and was crippled for want of it. He recovered his composure in a moment,
+but not before his discomfiture had been noticed, and its cause shrewdly
+guessed. Laying a heavy hand on the other's broad, rounded shoulder, he
+said simply and impressively:
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"Then let's move on."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Where we can talk."
+
+The man pointed across the road to a broad opening directly opposite the
+lamp-post. It was the beginning of another road; the spot where they
+stood was indeed the junction of the cross and down-stroke of a capital
+letter T, of which the cross was the road that ran parallel with the
+river.
+
+"Very well," said Miles, with suspicious alacrity; "but I must go back
+first to make some excuse, or they will be sending after me."
+
+"Then, while you are gone, I shall confide in your friend the
+policeman."
+
+Miles uttered a curse, and led the way across the road and straight on.
+There were no lamps in the road they entered now--no houses, no lights
+of any kind--but on the right a tall hedge, and on the left trim posts
+and rails, with fields beyond. They walked on for some minutes in
+silence, which was at length broken by Miles's unwelcome visitor.
+
+"It's no sort o' use you being in a hurry," said he. "I've found you
+out; why not make the best of it?"
+
+"What am I to do for you?" asked Miles, as smoothly as though the man by
+his side were an ordinary highway beggar.
+
+"You'll see in good time. Sorry I've put you to inconvenience, but if
+you weren't passing for what you ain't you wouldn't feel it so; so you
+see, Ned Ryan, playing the gent has its drawbacks. Now, after me having
+crossed the whole blessed world to speak to you, it would be roughish if
+you refused me your best ear; now wouldn't it?"
+
+"You have just landed, then?" said Miles; and added, after a pause, "I
+hoped you were dead."
+
+"Thanks," returned the other, in the tone of coarse irony that he had
+employed from the beginning. "Being one as returns good for evil, I
+don't mind saying I was never so glad as when I clapped eyes on you
+yesterday--alive and safe."
+
+"Yesterday! Where?"
+
+"Never mind where. But I ain't just landed--Oh, no!"
+
+Suddenly Miles stopped short in his walk. They had entered again the
+region of lights and houses; the road was no longer dark and lonely; it
+had intersected the highroad that leads to Kingston, and afterwards bent
+in curves to the right; now its left boundary was the white picket-fence
+of the railway, and, a hundred yards beyond, a cluster of bright lights
+indicated Teddington station.
+
+"Not a step further," said Miles.
+
+"What! not to the station? How can we talk--"
+
+"You are a greater fool than I took you for," said Miles scornfully.
+
+"Yes? Well, anyway, I mean to say what I've got to say, wherever it is,"
+was the dogged reply. "If you came to town to my lodging, not a soul
+could disturb us. We can't talk here."
+
+Miles hesitated.
+
+"There is a place, five minutes' walk from here, that I would trust
+before any room," he said presently. "Only be reasonable, my good
+fellow, and I'll hear what you have to say there."
+
+The man turned his head and glanced sharply in the direction whence they
+had come. Then he assented.
+
+Miles led the way over the wooden footbridge that spans the line a
+little way above the station. In three minutes they walked in the shadow
+of great trees. The high wall in front of them bent inwards, opening a
+wide mouth. Here were iron gates and lamps; and beyond, black forms and
+deep shadows, and the silence of sleeping trees. Without a word they
+passed through the gates into Bushey Park.
+
+Miles chose the left side of the avenue, and led on under the spreading
+branches of the horse-chestnuts. Perhaps a furlong from the gates he
+stopped short, and confronted his companion.
+
+"Here I will settle with you," he said, sternly. "Tell me what you want;
+or first, if you like, how you found me. For the last thing I remember
+of you, Jem Pound, is that I sacked you from our little concern--for
+murder."
+
+The man took a short step forward, and hissed back his retort:
+
+"And the last thing I heard of you--was your sticking up the Mount
+Clarence bank, and taking five hundred ounces of gold! You were taken;
+but escaped the same night--with the swag. That's the last I heard of
+you--Ned Ryan--Ned the Ranger--Sundown!"
+
+"I can hang you for that murder," pursued Miles, as though he had not
+heard a word of this retort.
+
+"Not without dragging yourself in after me, for life; which you'd find
+the worse half of the bargain! Now listen, Ned Ryan; I'll be plain with
+you. I can, and mean to, bleed you for that gold--for my fair share of
+it."
+
+"And this is what you want with me?" asked Miles, in a tone so low and
+yet so fierce that the confidence of Jem Pound was for an instant
+shaken.
+
+"I want money; I'm desperate--starving!" he answered, his tone sinking
+for once into a whine.
+
+"Starvation doesn't carry a man half round the world."
+
+"I was helped," said Pound darkly.
+
+"Who helped you?"
+
+"All in good time, Sundown, old mate! Come, show me the colour of it
+first."
+
+Miles spread out his arms with a gesture that was candour itself.
+
+"I have none to give you. I am cleaned out myself."
+
+"That's a lie!" cried Pound, with a savage oath.
+
+Miles answered with cool contempt:
+
+"Do you think a man clears out with five hundred ounces in his pockets?
+Do you think he could carry it ten miles, let alone two hundred?"
+
+Jem Pound looked hard at the man who had been his captain in a life of
+crime. A trace of the old admiration and crude respect for a brilliant
+fearless leader, succeeded though this had been by years of bitter
+hatred, crept into his voice as he replied:
+
+"You could! No one else! No other man could have escaped at all as you
+did. I don't know the thing you couldn't do!"
+
+"Fool!" muttered Miles, half to himself.
+
+"That's fool number two," answered Pound angrily. "Well, maybe I am one,
+maybe I'm not; anyhow I've done what a dozen traps have tried and
+failed, and I'll go on failing--until I help them: I've run you to
+earth, Ned Ryan!"
+
+"Ah! Well, tell me how."
+
+"No, I heard a footstep just then; people are about."
+
+"A chance passer," said Miles.
+
+"You should have come with me. Walls are safe if you whisper; here there
+are no walls."
+
+"You are right. We have stuck to the most public part, though; follow me
+through here."
+
+They had been standing between two noble trees of the main avenue. This
+avenue, as all the world knows, is composed of nothing but horse
+chestnuts; but behind the front rank on either side are four lines of
+limes, forming to right and left of the great artery four minor parallel
+channels. Miles and his companion, turning inwards, crossed the soft
+sward of the minor avenues, and emerged on the more or less broken
+ground that expands southward to Hampton Wick. This tract is patched in
+places with low bracken, and dotted in others with young trees. It is
+streaked with converging paths--some worn by the heavy tread of men,
+others by the light feet of the deer, but all soft and grassy, and no
+more conspicuous than the delicate veins of a woman's hand.
+
+They left the trees behind, and strode on heedlessly into the darkness.
+Their shins split the dew from the ferns; startled fawns rose in front
+of them and scampered swiftly out of sight, a momentary patch of grey
+upon the purple night.
+
+"This will suit you," said Miles, still striding aimlessly on. "It is a
+good deal safer than houses here. Now for your story."
+
+He was careful as they walked to keep a few inches in the rear of Pound,
+who, for his part, never let his right hand stray from a certain sheath
+that hung from the belt under his coat: the two men had preserved these
+counter-precautions from the moment they quitted the lighted roads.
+
+"It is soon told, though it makes me sweat to think of it--all but the
+end, and that was so mighty neat the rest's of no account," Pound began,
+with a low laugh. "Well, you turned me adrift, and I lived like a hunted
+dingo for very near a year. If I'd dared to risk it, I'd have blabbed on
+you quick enough; but there was no bait about Queen's evidence, and I
+daren't let on a word else--you may thank the devil for that, not me!
+Well, I had no money, but I got some work at the stations, though in
+such mortal terror that I daren't stay long in one place, until at last
+I got a shepherd's billet, with a hut where no one saw me from week's
+end to week's end. There I was safe, but in hell! I daren't lay down o'
+nights; when I did I couldn't sleep. I looked out o' the door twenty
+times a night to see if they were coming for me. I saw frightful things,
+and heard hellish sounds; I got the horrors without a drop o' liquor!
+You did all this, Ned Ryan--you did it all!"
+
+Inflamed by the memory of his torments, Pound raised his voice in rage
+and hate that a single day had exalted from impotency to might. But rage
+red-hot only aggravates the composure of a cool antagonist, and the
+reply was cold as death:
+
+"Blame yourself. If you had kept clean hands, you might have stuck to us
+to the end; as it was, you would have swung the lot of us in another
+month. No man can accuse me of spilling blood--nor poor Hickey either,
+for that matter; but you--I could dangle you to-morrow! Remember that,
+Jem Pound; and go on."
+
+"I'll remember a bit more--you'll see!" returned Pound with a stifled
+gasp. He was silent for the next minute; then added in the tone of one
+who bides his time to laugh last and loudest: "Go on? Right! Well, then,
+after a long time I showed my nose in a town, and no harm came of it."
+
+"What town?"
+
+"Townsville."
+
+"Why Townsville?" Miles asked quickly.
+
+"Your good lady was there; I knew she would give me--well, call it
+assistance."
+
+"That was clever of you," said Miles after a moment's silence, but his
+calm utterance was less natural than before.
+
+"I wanted a ship," Pound continued; "and could have got one too, through
+being at sea before at odd times, if I'd dared loaf about the quay by
+day. Well, one dark night I was casting my eyes over the Torres Straits
+mail boat, when a big man rushed by me and crept on board like a cat. I
+knew it was you that moment; I'd heard of your escape. You'd your swag
+with you; the gold was in it--I knew it! What's the use of shaking your
+head? Of course it was. Well, first I pushed forward to speak to you,
+then I drew back. Why? Because just then you'd have thought no more of
+knocking me on the head and watching me drown before your eyes than I'd
+think of----"
+
+"Committing another murder! By heaven, I wish I had had the chance!"
+muttered Miles.
+
+"Then, if I'd started the hue and cry, it would have meant killing the
+golden goose--and most likely me with it. I thought of something better:
+I saw you drop down into the hold--there was too much risk in showing
+your money for a passage or trying for a fo'c'stle berth; the boat was
+to sail at daylight. I rushed to your wife and told her; but her cottage
+was three miles out of the town, worse luck to it! and when I got her to
+the quay, you were under way and nearly out of sight--half-an-hour late
+in sailing, and you'd have had a friend among the passengers!"
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Why, then your wife was mad! I soothed her: she told me that she had
+some money, and I told her if she gave me some of it I might still catch
+you for her. I showed her how the mail from Sydney, by changing at
+Brindisi, would land one in England before the Queensland boat. I knew
+it was an off-chance whether you ever meant to reach England at all, or
+whether you'd succeed if you tried; but," said Pound, lowering his voice
+unaccountably, "I was keen to be quit of the country myself. Here was my
+chance, and I took it; your wife shelled out, and I lost no time."
+
+The man ceased speaking, and looked sharply about him. His eyes were
+become thoroughly used to the darkness, so that he could see some
+distance all round with accuracy and ease; but they were eyes no less
+keen than quick; and so sure-sighted that one glance was at all times
+enough for them, and corroboration by a second a thing unthought of.
+
+They were walking, more slowly now, on a soft mossy path, and nearing a
+small plantation, chiefly of pines and firs, half-a-mile from the
+avenues. This path, as it approaches the trees, has beside it several
+saplings shielded by tall triangular fences, which even in daylight
+would afford very fair cover for a man's body. Miles and Pound had
+passed close to half-a-dozen or more of these triangles.
+
+"Well?" said Miles; for Pound remained silent.
+
+"I am looking to see where you have brought me."
+
+"I have brought you to the best place of all, this plantation," Miles
+answered, leaving the path and picking his way over the uneven ground
+until there were trees all round them. "Here we should be neither seen
+nor heard if we stayed till daybreak. Are you going on?"
+
+But Pound was not to be hurried until he had picked out a spot to his
+liking still deeper in the plantation; far from shaking his sense of
+security, the trees seemed to afford him unexpected satisfaction. The
+place was dark and silent as the tomb, though the eastern wall of the
+park was but three hundred yards distant. Looking towards this wall in
+winter, a long, unbroken row of gaslights marks the road beyond; but in
+summer the foliage of the lining trees only reveals a casual glimmer,
+which adds by contrast to the solitude of this sombre, isolated,
+apparently uncared-for coppice.
+
+"I reached London just before you," resumed Pound, narrowly watching the
+effect of every word. "I waited for your boat at the docks. There were
+others waiting. I had to take care--they were detectives."
+
+Miles uttered an ejaculation.
+
+"I watched them go on board; I watched them come back--without you. They
+were white with disappointment. Ned Ryan, those men would sell their
+souls to lay hands on you now!"
+
+"Go on!" said Miles between his teeth.
+
+"Well, I got drinking with the crew, and found you'd fallen overboard
+coming up Channel--so they thought; it happened in the night. But you've
+swum swollen rivers, before my eyes, stronger than I ever see man swim
+before or since, and I was suspicious. Ships get so near the land coming
+up Channel. I went away and made sure you were alive, if I could find
+you. At last, by good luck, I did find you."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"At the Exhibition. I took to loafing about the places you were sure to
+go to, sooner or later, as a swell, thinking yourself safe as the Bank.
+And that's where I found you--the swell all over, sure enough. You
+stopped till the end, and that's how I lost you in the crowd going out;
+but before that I got so close I heard what you were saying to your
+swell friends: how you'd bring 'em again, if they liked; what you'd
+missed that day, but must see then. So I knew where to wait about for
+you. But you took your time about coming again. Every day I was waiting
+and watching--and starving. A shilling a day to let me into the place;
+a quid in reserve for when the time came; and pence for my meals. Do you
+think a trifle'll pay for all that? When you did turn up again
+yesterday, you may lay your life I never lost sight of you."
+
+"I should have known you any time; why you went about in that rig----"
+
+"I had no others. I heard fools whisper that I was a detective,
+moreover, and that made me feel safe."
+
+"You followed me down here yesterday, did you? Then why do nothing till
+to-night?"
+
+The fellow hesitated, and again peered rapidly into every corner of the
+night.
+
+"Why did you wait?" repeated Miles impatiently.
+
+An evil grin overspread the countenance of Jem Pound. He seemed to be
+dallying with his answer--rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue--as
+though loth to part with the source of so much private satisfaction.
+Miles perceived something of this, and, for the first time that night,
+felt powerless to measure the extent of his danger. Up to this point he
+had realised and calculated to a nicety the strength of the hold of this
+man over him, and he had flattered himself that it was weak in
+comparison with his own counter-grip; but now he suspected, nay felt,
+the nearness of another and a stronger hand.
+
+"Answer, man," he cried, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in his
+voice, "before I force you! Why did you wait?"
+
+"I went back," said Pound slowly, slipping his hand beneath his coat,
+and comfortably grasping the haft of his sheath-knife, "to report
+progress."
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"To--your wife!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Your wife!"
+
+"You are lying, my man," said Miles, with a forced laugh. "She never
+came to England."
+
+"She didn't, didn't she? Why, of course you ought to know best, even if
+you don't; but if you asked me, I should say maybe she isn't a hundred
+miles from you at this very instant!"
+
+"Speak that lie again," cried Miles, his low voice now fairly quivering
+with passion and terror, "and I strike you dead where you stand! She is
+in Australia, and you know it!"
+
+Jem Pound stepped two paces backward, and answered in a loud, harsh
+tone:
+
+"You fool! she is here!"
+
+Miles stepped forward as if to carry out his threat; but even as he
+moved he heard a rustle at his side, and felt a light hand laid on
+his arm. He started, turned, and looked round. There, by his
+side--poverty-stricken almost to rags, yet dark and comely as the
+summer's night--stood the woman whom years ago he had made his wife!
+
+A low voice full of tears whispered his name: "Ned, Ned!" and "Ned,
+Ned!" again and again.
+
+He made no answer, but stood like a granite pillar, staring at her. She
+pressed his arm with one hand, and laid the other caressingly on his
+breast; and as she stood thus, gazing up through a mist into his stern,
+cold face, this topmost hand rested heavily upon him. To him it seemed
+like lead; until suddenly--did it press a bruise or a wound, that such a
+hideous spasm should cross his face? that he should shake off the woman
+so savagely?
+
+By the merest accident, the touch of one woman had conjured the vision
+of another; he saw before him two, not one; two as opposite in their
+impressions on the senses as the flower and the weed; as separate in
+their associations as the angels of light and darkness.
+
+Yet this poor woman, the wife, could only creep near him
+again--forgetting her repulse, since he was calm the next moment--and
+press his hand to her lips, so humbly that now he stood and bore it, and
+repeat brokenly:
+
+"I have found him! Oh, thank God! Now at last I have found him!"
+
+While husband and wife stood thus, silenced--one by love, the other by
+sensations of a very different kind--the third person watched them with
+an expression which slowly changed from blank surprise to mortification
+and dumb rage. At last he seemed unable to stand it any longer, for he
+sprang forward and whispered hoarsely in the woman's ear:
+
+"What are you doing? Are you mad? What are we here for? What have we
+crossed the sea for? Get to work, you fool, or----"
+
+"To work to bleed me, between you!" cried Ned Ryan, shaking himself
+again clear of the woman. "By heaven, you shall find me a stone!"
+
+Elizabeth Ryan turned and faced her ally, and waved him back with a
+commanding gesture.
+
+"No, Jem Pound," said she, in a voice as clear and true as a clarion,
+"it is time to tell the truth: I did not come to England for that! O
+Ned, Ned! I have used this man as my tool--can't you see?--to bring me
+to you. Ned, my husband, I am by your side; have you no word of
+welcome?"
+
+She clung to him, with supplication in her white face and drooping,
+nerveless figure; and Pound looked on speechless. So he had been fooled
+by this smooth-tongued, fair-faced trash; and all his plans and schemes,
+and hungry longings and golden expectations, were to crumble into dust
+before treachery such as this! So, after all, he had been but a dupe--a
+ladder to be used and kicked aside! A burning desire came over him to
+plunge his knife into this false demon's heart, and end all.
+
+But Ryan pushed back his wife a third time, gently but very firmly.
+
+"Come, Liz," said he, coldly enough, yet with the edge off his voice and
+manner, "don't give us any of this. This was all over between us long
+ago. If it's money you want, name a sum; though I have little enough,
+you shall have what I can spare, for I swear to you I got away with my
+life and little else. But if it's sentiment, why, it's nonsense; and you
+know that well enough."
+
+Elizabeth Ryan stood as one stabbed, who must fall the moment the blade
+is withdrawn from the wound; which office was promptly performed by one
+who missed few opportunities.
+
+"Why, of course!" exclaimed Pound, with affected sympathy with the wife
+and indignation against the husband. "To be sure you see how the wind
+lies, missis?"
+
+"What do you mean?" cried Elizabeth Ryan fiercely.
+
+"Can't you see?" pursued Pound in the same tone, adding a strong dash of
+vulgar familiarity; "can't you see that you're out of the running, Liz,
+my lass? You may be Mrs. Ryan, but Mrs. Ryan is a widow; there's no Ned
+Ryan now. There's a Mr. Miles, an Australian gentleman, in his skin,
+and, mark me, there'll be a Mrs.--"
+
+He stopped, for Liz Ryan turned on him so fiercely that it looked as
+though she was gathering herself to spring at his throat.
+
+"You liar!" she shrieked. "Tell him, Ned! Give him the lie yourself!
+Quickly--speak, or I shall go mad!"
+
+Her husband uttered no sound.
+
+"He can't, you see," sneered Pound. "Why, if you'd only come in with me
+into the garden, you'd have seen the two together sweethearting in the
+starlight!"
+
+"If I had," said Mrs. Ryan, trembling violently, "I pity both. But no, I
+don't believe it! O Ned! Ned! answer, unless you want to break my
+heart!"
+
+"Well, well, what does it matter?" put in Pound hastily, speaking to her
+in a fatherly, protective tone, which hit the mark aimed at. "Liz, my
+dear, you and I have been good friends all this time; then why not let
+him go his ways?--after we've got our rights, I mean."
+
+Ned Ryan glanced sharply from his wife to the man who had brought her
+from Australia; and then he spoke:
+
+"My good woman, why not be frank? What's the use of acting a part to
+me? Anyway, it's a bit too thin this time. Only let me alone, and you
+two can go on--as you are. Come now, I don't think I'm hard on you;
+considering everything I might be a deal harder."
+
+His wife sprang before him, her black eyes flashing, her whole frame
+quivering.
+
+"Edward Ryan, you shall answer for these foul, cruel words before Him
+who knows them to be false. What do you think me, I wonder? That vile
+thing there--can't you see how I have used him?--he has been the bridge
+between me and you, yet you make him the barrier! Oh, you know me better
+than that, Ned Ryan! You know me for the woman who sacrificed all for
+you--who stood by you through thick and thin, and good and bad, while
+you would let her--who would not have forsaken you for twenty
+murders!--who loved you better than life--God help me!" cried the poor
+woman, wildly, "for I love you still!"
+
+She rose the next moment, and continued in a low, hard, changed voice:
+
+"But love and hate lie close together; take care, and do not make me
+hate you, for if you do I shall be pitiless as I have been pitiful,
+cruel as I have been fond. I, who have been ready all these years to
+shield you with my life--I shall be the first to betray you to the laws
+you have cheated, if you turn my love to hate. Ned! Ned! stop and think
+before it is too late!"
+
+She pressed both hands upon her heart, as if to stay by main force its
+tumultuous beating. Her limbs tottered beneath her. Her face was like
+death. Her life's blood might have mingled with the torrent of her
+eloquence!
+
+"You are beside yourself," said her husband, who had listened like a
+stone; "otherwise you would remember that tall talk never yet answered
+with me. And yet--yet I am sorry for you--so poor, so ragged, so thin--"
+His voice suddenly softened, and he felt with his hand in his pocket.
+"See here! take these twenty pounds. It's a big lump of all I have; but
+'twill buy you a new dress and some good food, and make you decent for a
+bit, and if I had more to spare, upon my soul you should have it!"
+
+Elizabeth Ryan snatched the notes from her husband's hand, crumpled them
+savagely, and flung them at his feet; with a wild sweep of her arm she
+tore off her bonnet, as though it nursed the fire within her brain, and
+coils of dark, disordered hair fell down about her shoulders. For one
+moment she stood glaring fixedly at her husband, and then fell heavily
+to the ground.
+
+"She has fainted," said Miles, not without pity, and bending over her.
+"Bring her to, then lead her away. Take her back; she must not see me
+again."
+
+Pound knelt down, and quietly pocketed the crumpled notes; then he
+raised the senseless head and fanned the ashy face, looking up meanwhile
+and saying:
+
+"Meet me here to-morrow night at ten; I will come alone."
+
+"For the last time, then."
+
+"I am agreeable; but it will rest with you."
+
+Miles drew away into the shadows. He waited, and presently he heard a
+faint, hollow, passionate voice calling his name:
+
+"Ned Ryan! I will come back, Ned Ryan! Come back, never fear, and see
+you--see you alone! And if you are as hard then--as hard and
+cruel--Heaven help us both!--Heaven help us both!"
+
+When Ned Ryan, alias Sundown, alias Miles, heard the footsteps fail in
+the distance and die on the still night air, a rapid change came over
+his face and bearing. Throughout the night he had lost his self-command
+seldom; his nerve never. But now the pallor of a corpse made his
+features ghastly, and a cold sweat burst forth in great beads upon his
+forehead. His limbs trembled, and he staggered.
+
+By a violent effort he steadied his brain and straightened his body. In
+a few minutes he had well-nigh regained his normal calm. Then gradually
+his chest expanded, and his air became that of one who has climbed
+through desperate peril to the lofty heights and sweet breath of
+freedom. Nay, as he stood there, gazing hopefully skyward, with the dim
+light upon his strong handsome face, he might very well have been
+mistaken for a good man filled with dauntless ambition, borne aloft on
+the wings of noble yearning.
+
+"After all, I am not lost!" The thoughts escaped in words from the
+fulness of his soul. "No, I am safe; he dares not betray me; she will
+not--because she loves me. Not another soul need ever know."
+
+A new voice broke upon his ear:
+
+"You are wrong; I know!"
+
+His lowered gaze fell upon the motionless figure of Dick Edmonstone, who
+was standing quietly in front of him.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIV
+
+                                 QUITS
+
+
+For the second time that night Miles felt instinctively for his
+revolver, and for the second time in vain.
+
+The younger man understood the movement.
+
+"A shot would be heard in the road and at the lodge," said he quietly.
+"You'll only hasten matters by shooting me."
+
+At once Miles perceived his advantage; his adversary believed him to be
+armed. Withdrawing his hand from the breast of his overcoat slowly, as
+though relinquishing a weapon in the act of drawing it, he answered:
+
+"I believe you are right. But you are a cool hand!"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"I have only seen one other as cool--under fire."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"A fact. But I'll tell you where you come out even stronger."
+
+"Do."
+
+"In playing the spy. There you shine!"
+
+"Hardly," said Dick dryly, and this time he added a word or two: "or I
+should have shown you up some time since."
+
+The two men faced one another, fair and square, but their attitudes were
+not aggressive. Miles leant back against a tree with folded arms, and
+Dick stood with feet planted firmly and hands in his pockets. A combat
+of coolness was beginning. The combatants were a man in whom this
+quality was innate, and one who rose to it but rarely. In these
+circumstances it is strange that the self-possession of Dick was real to
+the core, whilst that of the imperturbable Miles was for once affected
+and skin-deep.
+
+"Will you tell me," said Miles, "what you have heard? You may very
+possibly have drawn wrong inferences."
+
+"I heard all," Dick answered.
+
+"All is vague; why not be specific?"
+
+"I heard that--well, that that woman was your wife."
+
+Miles felt new hope within him. Suppose he had heard no more than that!
+And he had not heard anything more--the thing was self-evident--or he
+would not have spoken first of this--this circumstance which must be
+confessed "unpleasant," but should be explained away in five minutes;
+this--what more natural?--this consequence of an ancient peccadillo,
+this bagatelle in comparison with what he might have learned.
+
+"My dear sir, it is nothing but an infernal lie!" he cried with eager
+confidence; "she never was anything of the kind. It is the old story: an
+anthill of boyish folly, a mountain of blackguardly extortion. Can't you
+see?"
+
+"No, I can't," said Dick stolidly.
+
+"Why, my good fellow, they have come over on purpose to bleed me--they
+said so. It's as plain as a pikestaff."
+
+"That may be true, so far as the man is concerned."
+
+"Don't you see that the woman is his accomplice? But now a word with
+you, my friend. These are my private affairs that you have had the
+impudence----"
+
+"That was not all I heard," said Dick coldly.
+
+Danger again--in the moment of apparent security.
+
+"What else did you hear, then?" asked Miles, in a voice that was deep
+and faint at the same time.
+
+"Who you are," replied Dick shortly. "Sundown the bushranger."
+
+The words were pronounced with no particular emphasis; in fact, very
+much as though both sobriquet and calling were household words, and
+sufficiently familiar in all men's mouths. The bushranger heard them
+without sign or sound. Dick waited patiently for him to speak; but he
+waited long.
+
+It was a strange interview between these two men, in the dead of this
+summer's night, in the heart of this public park. They were rivals in
+love; one had discovered the other to be not only an impostor, but a
+notorious felon; and they had met before under circumstances the most
+peculiar--a fact, however, of which only one of them was now aware. The
+night was at the zenith of its soft and delicate sweetness. A gentle
+breeze had arisen, and the tops of the slender firs were making circles
+against the sky, like the mastheads of a ship becalmed; and the stars
+were shining like a million pin-pricks in the purple cloak of light. At
+last Miles spoke, asking with assumed indifference what Dick intended to
+do.
+
+"But let it pass; of course you will inform at once!"
+
+"What else can I do?" demanded Dick, sternly.
+
+Miles scrutinised his adversary attentively and speculated whether
+there was the least chance of frightening such a man. Then he again
+thrust his hand into the breast of his overcoat, and answered
+reflectively:
+
+"You can die--this minute--if I choose."
+
+Dick stood his ground without moving a muscle.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said scornfully. "I have shown you that you can gain
+nothing by that."
+
+Miles muttered a curse, and scowled at the ground, without, however,
+withdrawing his hand.
+
+"The case stands thus," said Dick: "you have imposed on friends of mine,
+and I have found you--not a common humbug, as I thought all along--but
+quite a famous villain. Plainly speaking, a price is on your head."
+
+Miles did not speak.
+
+"And your life is in my hands."
+
+Miles made no reply.
+
+"The natural thing," Dick continued, "would have been to crawl away,
+when I heard who you were, and call the police. You see I have not done
+that."
+
+Still not a word.
+
+"Another, and perhaps fairer, way would be to give you a fair start from
+this spot and this minute, and not say a word for an hour or two, until
+people are about; the hare-and-hounds principle, in fact. But I don't
+mean to do that either."
+
+Miles raised his eyes, and at last broke his silence.
+
+"You are arbitrary," he sneered. "May I ask what is the special quality
+of torture you have reserved for me? I am interested to know."
+
+"I shall name a condition," replied Dick firmly--"a single
+condition--on which, so far as I am concerned, you may impose on the
+public until some one else unmasks you."
+
+"I don't believe you!"
+
+"You have not heard my condition. I am in earnest."
+
+"I wouldn't believe you on oath!"
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Because you owe me a grudge," said Miles, speaking rapidly--"because it
+is in your interest to see me go under."
+
+"My condition provides for all that."
+
+"Let me hear it, then."
+
+"First tell me how you came to know the Bristos."
+
+Miles gave Dick substantially the same story that he had already learned
+from Alice.
+
+"Now listen to me," said Dick. "Instead of squatter you were bushranger.
+You had been in England a day or two instead of a month or two, and you
+had set foot in Sussex only; instead of masquerading as a fisherman you
+wore your own sailor's clothes, in which you swam ashore from your
+ship."
+
+"Well guessed!" said Miles ironically.
+
+"A cleverer thing was never done," Dick went on, his tone, for the
+moment, not wholly free from a trace of admiration. "Well, apart from
+that first set of lies, your first action in England was a good one.
+That is one claim on leniency. The account you have given me of it is
+quite true, for I heard the same thing from one whose lips, at least,
+are true!"
+
+These last words forced their way out without his knowledge until he
+heard them.
+
+"Ah!" said Miles.
+
+An involuntary subdual of both voices might have been noticed here; it
+was but momentary, and it did not recur.
+
+Dick Edmonstone took his hands from his pockets, drew nearer to Miles,
+slowly beat his left palm with his right fist, and said:
+
+"My condition is simply this: you are to go near the Bristos no more."
+
+If this touched any delicate springs in the heart of Miles, their
+workings did not appear in his face. He made no immediate reply; when it
+came, there was a half-amused ring in his speech:
+
+"You mean to drive a hard bargain."
+
+"I don't call it hard."
+
+"All I possess is in that house. I cannot go far, as I stand; you might
+as well give me up at once."
+
+"I see," said Dick musingly. "No; you are to have an excellent chance. I
+have no watch on me: have you? No? Well, it can't be more than one now,
+or two at the latest, and they keep up these dances till dawn--or they
+used to. Then perhaps you had better go back to the house now.
+Button-hole the Colonel; tell him you have had a messenger down from
+town--from your agent. You can surely add a London agent to your
+Queensland station and your house in Sydney! Well, affairs have gone
+wrong on this station of yours--drought, floods--anything you like; you
+have received an important wire; you are advised, in fact, to start back
+to Queensland at once. At any rate, you must pack up your traps and
+leave Graysbrooke first thing in the morning. You are very sorry to be
+called back so suddenly--they are sorrier still to lose you; but
+Australia and England are so close now, you are sure to be over again
+some day--and all the rest of it; but you are never to go near them
+again. Do you agree?"
+
+"What is the alternative?"
+
+"Escape from here dressed like that if you can! You will breakfast in
+gaol. At best you will be hunted for a week or two, and then taken
+miserably--there is no bush in England; whereas I offer you freedom with
+one restriction."
+
+"I agree," said Miles, hoarsely.
+
+"Very good. If you keep your word, Sundown the bushranger is at the
+bottom of the sea, for all I know; if you break it, Sundown the
+bushranger is a lost man. Now let us leave this place."
+
+Dick led the way from the plantation, with his hands again deep in his
+pockets.
+
+Miles followed, marvelling. Marvelling that he, who had terrorised half
+Australia, should be dictated to by this English whelp, and bear it
+meekly; wondering what it all meant. What, to begin with, was the
+meaning of this masterly plan for an honourable exit? which was, in
+fact, a continuation of his own falsehood. Why had not this young
+fellow--who had every reason to hate him, independently of to-night's
+discovery--quietly brought the police and watched him taken in cold
+blood? There would have been nothing underhand in that; it was, in fact,
+the only treatment that any criminal at large would expect at the hands
+of the average member of society--if he fell into those hands. Then why
+had not this been done? What tie or obligation could possibly exist
+between this young Edmonstone and Sundown the Australian bushranger?
+
+The night was at its darkest when they reached the avenue; so dark that
+they crossed into the middle of the broad straight road, where the way
+was clearest. Straight in front of them burned the lamps of the gateway,
+like two yellow eyes staring through a monstrous crape mask. They seemed
+to be walking in a valley between two long, regular ranges of black
+mountains with curved and undulating tops--only that the mountains
+wavered in outline, and murmured from their midst under the light touch
+of the sweet mild breeze.
+
+They walked on in silence, and watched the deep purple fading slowly but
+surely before their eyes, and the lights ahead growing pale and sickly.
+
+Miles gave expression to the thought that puzzled him most:
+
+"For the life of me, I can't make out why you are doing this" (he
+resented the bare notion of mercy, and showed it in his tone). "With you
+in my place and I in yours----"
+
+Dick stopped in his walk, and stopped Miles also.
+
+"Is it possible you do not know me?"
+
+"I have known you nearly a month," Miles answered.
+
+"Do you mean to say you don't remember seeing me before--before this
+last month?"
+
+"Certainly, when first I met you, I seemed to remember your voice; but
+from what I was told about you I made sure I was mistaken."
+
+"Didn't they tell you that at one time, out there I was hawking?"
+
+"No. Why, now--"
+
+"Stop a bit," said Dick, raising his hand. "Forget that you are here;
+forget you are in England. Instead of these chestnuts, you're in the
+mallee scrub. The night is far darker than this night has ever been: the
+place is a wilderness. You are lying in wait for a hawker's wagon. The
+hawkers drive up; you take them by surprise, and you're three to two.
+They are at your mercy. The younger one is a new chum from England--a
+mere boy. He has all the money of the concern in his pocket, and nothing
+to defend it with. He flings himself unarmed upon one of your gang, and,
+but for you, would be knifed for his pains. You save him by an inch; but
+you see what maddens him--you see he has the money. You take it from
+him. The money is all the world to him: he is mad: he wants to be killed
+outright. You only bind him to the wheel, taking from him all he has. So
+he thinks, and death is at his heart. But he finds that, instead of
+taking it all, you have left it all; you have been moved by compassion
+for the poor devil of a new chum! Well, first he cannot believe his
+eyes; then he is grateful; then senseless."
+
+Miles scanned the young man's face in the breaking light. Yes, he
+remembered it now; it had worn this same passionate expression then. His
+own face reflected the aspect of the eastern sky; a ray was breaking in
+upon him, and shedding a new light on an old action, hidden away in a
+dark corner of his mind. A thing that had been a little thing until now
+seemed to expand in the sudden warmth of this new light. Miles felt an
+odd, unaccountable sensation, which, however, was not altogether
+outside his experience: he had felt it when he pulled Colonel Bristo
+from the sea, and in the moment of parting with his coat to a
+half-perishing tramp.
+
+Dick continued:
+
+"Stop a minute--hear the end. This new chum, fresh from 'home,' was
+successful. He made a fortune--of a sort. It might have been double what
+it is had he been in less of a hurry to get back to England." Dick
+sighed. "Whatever it is, it was built on that hundred which you took and
+restored: that was its nucleus. And therefore--as well as because you
+saved his life--this new chum, when no longer one, never forgot Sundown
+the bushranger; he nursed a feeling of gratitude towards him which was
+profound if, as he had been assured, illogical. Only a few hours ago he
+said, 'If he came within my power I should be inclined to give him a
+chance,' or something like that." Dick paused; then he added: "Now you
+know why you go free this morning."
+
+Miles made no immediate remark. Bitter disappointment and hungry
+yearning were for the moment written clearly on his handsome, reckless
+face. At last he said:
+
+"You may not believe me, but when you came to me--down there on the
+lawn--that's what I was swearing to myself; to begin afresh. And see
+what has come to me since then!" he added, with a harsh laugh.
+
+"Just then," returned Dick, frankly, "I should have liked nothing better
+than to have seen you run in. I followed you out with as good a hate as
+one man can feel towards another. You never thought of my following you
+out here? Nor did I think of coming so far; by the bye, the--your wife
+made it difficult for me; she was following too. Yes, I hated you
+sufficiently; and I had suspected you from the first--but not for what
+you are; when I heard Jem Pound say your name I was staggered, my brain
+went reeling, I could scarcely keep from crying out."
+
+"Did you recognise him?"
+
+"Pound? No: I thought him a detective. He is a clever fellow."
+
+"He is the devil incarnate!"
+
+They had passed through the gates into the road.
+
+"Here we separate," said Dick. "Go back to Graysbrooke the way you came,
+and pack your things. Is there any need to repeat--"
+
+"None."
+
+"You understand that if you break it, all's up with you?"
+
+"I have accepted that."
+
+"Then we are quits!"
+
+"I like your pluck--I liked it long ago," said Miles, speaking suddenly,
+after staring at Dick for more than a minute in silence. "I was thinking
+of that new chum hawker awhile ago, before I knew you were he. You
+reminded me of him. And I ought to have known then; for I was never
+spoken to the same, before or since, except then and now. No one else
+ever bargained with Sundown! Well, a bargain it is. Here's my hand on
+it."
+
+As he spoke, he shook Edmonstone by the hand with an air of good faith.
+Next moment, the two men were walking in opposite directions.
+
+
+
+
+                                   XV
+
+                           THE MORNING AFTER
+
+
+Dick reached Iris Lodge before the other two whom he had left at the
+ball. This was fortunate, not only because he had the latchkey in his
+pocket, but since it obviated crooked answers to awkward questions: they
+would, of course, suppose that he had gone straight home from the
+Bristos'.
+
+He went quietly up to his room, changed his coat, and filled his pipe.
+In searching for matches on the dressing-table, however, he came across
+something which caused him to forget his pipe for the moment; a packet
+of letters in an elastic band, displaying immediately below the band a
+thin, folded collection of newspaper cuttings. They were the extracts
+Flint had given him, referring to the capture and subsequent escape of
+Sundown the bushranger. He had found no time to read them before going
+out, and now--well, now he would read them with added interest, that was
+all.
+
+Yet he stood still with the papers in his hand, trying to realise all
+that he had seen, and heard, and said since midnight; trying not to
+separate in his mind the vaguely suspected rogue of yesterday and the
+notorious villain unmasked this morning; trying, on the other hand, to
+reconcile the Sundown of his remembrance--still more of his
+imagination--with the Miles of his acquaintance, to fuse two
+inconsistent ideas, to weld unsympathetic metals.
+
+Standing thus, with all other sensations yielding to bewilderment, Dick
+was recalled to himself by hearing voices and footsteps below his
+window. Fanny and Maurice had returned; he must go down and let them in,
+and then--the cuttings!
+
+"Why, how long have you been in?" was Fanny's first question; she had
+too much tact to ask him why he had left.
+
+"Oh, a long time," Dick replied. "I didn't feel quite all right," he
+added, a shade nearer the truth; "but--but I thought it would only
+bother you."
+
+"How could you think that? If you had only told me," said Fanny, with
+honest trouble in her voice, "you shouldn't have come alone."
+
+"Then I'm glad I gave you the slip." Dick manufactured a laugh. "But,
+indeed, I'm all right now--right as the mail, honour bright!"
+
+"But why didn't you go to bed when you got home?" his sister pursued.
+
+"The key!" explained Maurice laconically, turning out the hall gas as he
+spoke.
+
+They stole up-stairs in the pale chill light that fell in bars through
+the blind of the landing window.
+
+Fanny laid her hand softly on Dick's shoulder.
+
+"It was wretched after you went," she whispered sympathetically. "Do you
+know that--that--" timorously--"Alice went up-stairs and never came down
+again?"
+
+"Did no one else disappear?" asked Dick, bending his head to read his
+sister's eyes.
+
+Fanny hung her head. Mr. Miles had been missed by all; but no
+one--except the Colonel--had remarked Dick's absence in her hearing.
+When she had found Alice nearly fainting, and taken her to her maid, she
+had seen, indeed, that her friend was sorely distressed about something;
+but the friendship between them was not close enough for the seeking of
+confidences on either side; and, as the cause of so many sighs and
+tears, she had thought naturally, because she wished so to think, of her
+own brother. Now it seemed that perhaps, after all, Mr. Miles--whom she
+detested--had been the object of compassion. And Fanny had nothing to
+say.
+
+"Good night," said Dick, quietly kissing her.
+
+The next moment she heard the key turn in his door.
+
+He sat down on the edge of the bed, lit his pipe, and withdrew the
+cuttings from the indiarubber band. There was not much to read, after
+all; only three paragraphs, of which two were telegraphic, and
+consequently brief. In no case was either name or date of the newspaper
+attached; but in the short paragraphs Dick seemed to recognise the type
+of the "Australasian," while there was internal evidence that the longer
+one emanated from a Queensland organ. After glancing rapidly at all
+three, he arranged them in an order that proved to be chronologically
+correct.
+
+The first paragraph (telegraphic: headed "Brisbane, Friday,") stated
+that, on the afternoon of the day before, the branch of the Australian
+Joint-Stock Bank at Mount Clarence had been entered by two bushrangers,
+one of whom declared that he was Sundown, the New South Wales outlaw.
+That after "bailing up" everybody in the establishment, and shutting up
+the bank--which, as it was then closing-time, was effected without
+raising the suspicions of the township--the bushrangers had ridden away,
+taking with them about five hundred ounces of gold and a considerable
+sum in cheques and notes. That, at two o'clock the following morning,
+the bushrangers had been captured asleep under a gunyah, twelve miles
+from Mount Clarence, "through the rare sagacity of Sergeant Dogherty,"
+and that Sundown's mate, a man named Benjamin Hickey, had been
+subsequently shot dead by the police on attempting to escape. "The
+redoubtable Ned Ryan, alias Sundown," the paragraph concluded, "gave no
+trouble on the way to Mount Clarence, whence he will be forwarded to
+Rockhampton without delay; but the gold has not yet been recovered,
+having evidently been 'planted' by the outlaws before camping for the
+night."
+
+Dick believed that he had seen this identical paragraph in the "Argus"
+of February 13th, the day on which the Hesper sailed from Hobson's Bay.
+
+The second cutting seemed to be part--perhaps the greater part--of an
+article from a Queensland pen, written in the first blush of triumph
+following the announcement of Sundown's capture. From it Dick learned so
+much concerning Ned Ryan that had never before come to his knowledge,
+that it is here reproduced word for word:
+
+"Edward Ryan, or 'Sundown,' is declared by our informant to be a man of
+pleasing countenance, about six feet three inches high and thirty-seven
+years of age. He is a native of Victoria, where his parents resided for
+many years. Some six years ago--being then a horse-dealer of
+questionable repute--he married the daughter of a well-to-do farmer in
+the Ovens district (Vic.). But for some time past--since, indeed, a
+short time after his outlawry--he is said to have ceased all
+communication with his wife. About four years and a half ago, a warrant
+was taken out against Edward Ryan for some roguery connected with a
+horse. He, however, managed to escape across the Murray into New South
+Wales. A few weeks later his career of desperate crime--which has now
+happily ended as above detailed--was commenced in the partnership of two
+kindred spirits. One of these, Benjamin Hickey, has met with a summary
+fate, but one strictly in accordance with his deserts, as already
+described. The third of the band, however, who is believed by the police
+to be a Tasmanian 'old hand,' lost sight of for many years, was turned
+adrift some time ago by Sundown, on account, it is said, of his extreme
+bloodthirstiness. This statement receives colour from the fact that
+Sundown, since his capture, has declared that neither he nor Hickey ever
+spilt blood with their own hands; so that if this is true, not only the
+murder of Youl, the storekeeper near Menindie, on the Darling--which
+crime rendered the name of Sundown infamous at the commencement--but the
+grievous wounding of Constable O'Flynn, two years later, may be freely
+ascribed to the murderous hand of the miscreant that is still at large.
+However this may be, we have, in Sundown, succeeded in running to earth
+a freebooter equal in daring, impudence, and cunning generalship to the
+most formidable of the highwaymen who were the terror of the sister
+colonies in the early days. The credit of this brilliant capture,
+however, rests entirely with this colony. Indeed, it is to be hoped that
+we shall hereafter be able to boast that it was reserved to the youngest
+colony to add the finishing touch to the extermination of the Australian
+bandit. And as the bushrangers had been but a few months in Queensland,
+whereas their depredations in the neighbouring colony extended over as
+many years, it will be seen that on the whole the exploit of our police
+compares not unfavourably with the New South Wales method of doing
+business."
+
+After this, the effect of the last extract was at least startling. The
+words in this case were few, and cruelly to the point. They simply told
+of the escape of the prisoner Ryan during a violent dust-storm that
+enveloped the township of Mount Clarence, and afterwards rendered
+tracking (when the bird was discovered to have flown) most difficult. No
+details of the escape were given, but the message ended with the
+confident assurance (which read humourously now) that the re-capture of
+Sundown, alive or dead, could be but a matter of hours.
+
+There was a curious smile upon Dick's face as he folded up the cuttings.
+"I wonder how on earth he did it?" he asked himself as he slowly knocked
+the ashes from his pipe.
+
+The sunlight was peeping in where it could through blind and curtains.
+Dick raised the first, drew back the second, and stood in the broad
+light of day. Then, throwing up the sash, he plunged head and shoulders
+into the fresh, fragrant morning air. The effect upon him was magical.
+His forehead seemed pressed by a cool, soothing hand; his throat drank
+down a deep draught of wizard's wine; he caught at his breath, as though
+actually splashing in the dewy air, and yet in a very little while the
+man's baser nature asserted itself. Dick yawned, not once or twice, but
+repeatedly; then he shivered and shut the window. Five minutes later the
+lively sparrows--if they took more than a passing interest in their
+early guest, as they should, since such very early guests were rare
+among them--the sprightly sparrows that visited the window-ledge might
+have seen for themselves that he was sound, sound asleep.
+
+For some hours this sleep was profound, until, in fact, Dick began to
+dream. Then, indeed, he was soon awake, but not before his soul had been
+poisoned by a very vivid and full vision. This dream was not strange
+under the circumstances, but it was plausible, disturbing, and less
+bizarre than most--in fact, terribly realistic. He had gone to
+Graysbrooke and found Miles--Sundown the bushranger--still there. At
+once and openly he had denounced the villain, shown him in his true
+colours, and at once he had been disbelieved--laughed at by the enemy,
+pitied by his friends, treated as the victim of a delusion. With Miles's
+mocking defiant laugh in his ears, Dick awoke.
+
+It was the dread, the chance of something like this actually happening,
+that hurried him to Graysbrooke with unbroken fast. He found Colonel
+Bristo plainly worried, yet glad to see him, eager to tell him what was
+the matter.
+
+"We have lost our guest."
+
+Dick felt the blood rushing back to his face at the words.
+
+"Miles has gone," the Colonel pursued in a tone of annoyance; "gone this
+morning--a summons to Australia, he fears--a thing he had never dreamt
+of until last night."
+
+"Dear me!" said Dick, with surprise that was partly genuine. For his
+plan had worked out better--he had been followed more strictly to the
+letter than he could have dared to hope; the misgivings of the last hour
+were turned to supreme satisfaction.
+
+"Yes," sighed the soldier, "it was most unexpected. And I need not tell
+you how disappointed we all are."
+
+Dick murmured that he was sure of it, with all the awkwardness of an
+honest tongue driven into hypocrisy.
+
+"For my own part, I feel confoundedly put out about it. I shall be as
+dull as ditch-water for days. As for the ladies, they'll miss him
+horribly."
+
+Dick's reply was monosyllabic, and its tone fell distinctly short of
+sympathy.
+
+"He was such a good fellow!"
+
+The Colonel said this regretfully, and waited for some echo. But Dick
+could have said nothing without the whole truth bursting out, so he
+merely asked:
+
+"When did he go?"
+
+"About nine--as soon as he could pack up his things, in fact. Alice was
+not down to say good-bye to him."
+
+Dick's eyes glittered.
+
+"He will be back to say it, though?" he asked suspiciously.
+
+"No, I fear not; he will probably have to start at once; at least, so
+his agent told him--the fellow who came down last night, and robbed us
+of him for half the evening. By-the-bye, we missed you too; did you go
+home?"
+
+"Yes." Dick faltered a little.
+
+"Have you and Alice been quarrelling?" asked Alice's father abruptly.
+
+Dick answered simply that they had. Colonel Bristo silently paced the
+carpet. When he spoke again it was to revert to the subject of Miles.
+
+"Yes, I am sorry enough to lose him; for we had become great friends,
+intimate friends, and we understood one another thoroughly, he and I.
+But the worst of it is, we shan't have him with us in Yorkshire. What a
+man for the moors! And how he would have enjoyed it! But there; it's no
+use talking; we're all disappointed, and there's an end of it."
+
+The Colonel laid his hand on Dick's shoulder, and added:
+
+"You won't disappoint us, my boy?"
+
+"For the moors, sir?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"I cannot go--I am very sorry"--hastily--"but----"
+
+"Nonsense, Dick!"
+
+"I really cannot--I cannot, indeed," with lame repetition.
+
+"And why?" asked Colonel Bristo, mildly. "Why--when you promised us
+weeks ago?"
+
+Dick raised his eyes from the ground, and the answer was given and
+understood without words; yet he felt impelled to speak. He began in a
+low voice, nervously:
+
+"Without disrespect, sir, I think I may beg of you not to insist on an
+explanation--either from me, or from--anyone else. It could do no good.
+It might do--I mean it might cause--additional pain. You have guessed
+the reason? Yes, you see it clearly--you understand. And--and you seem
+sorry. Don't let it trouble you, sir. There are lots better than I." He
+paused, then added uncertainly: "Colonel Bristo, you have been more, far
+more, than kind and good to me. If you treated me like a son before it
+was time--well--well, it will all be a pleasant memory to--to take away
+with me."
+
+"Away?"
+
+"Yes, away; back to Australia," said Dick, expressing his newest thought
+as though it were his oldest. "Before you get back from the north, I
+shall probably be on my way."
+
+"Don't do that, Dick--don't do that," said Colonel Bristo, with some
+feeling.
+
+Personal liking for Dick apart, it was not a pleasant reflection that
+his daughter had jilted the man who had come from Australia to marry
+her, and was sending him back there.
+
+Dick answered him sadly.
+
+"It can't be helped, sir. It is all over. It is decent that I should
+go."
+
+"I don't understand 'em--never understood 'em," muttered the old man
+vaguely, and half to himself. "Still, there is no one but Dick, I dare
+swear; who should there be but Dick?"
+
+Dick stepped forward, as though to push the scales from the eyes of this
+unseeing man; but he checked his impulse, and cried huskily, holding the
+thin hand in his own great strong one:
+
+"Good-bye, Colonel Bristo. God bless you, sir! Good-bye!"
+
+And the young man was gone.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XVI
+
+                          MILITARY MANOEUVRES
+
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Colonel Bristo, after some minutes. He leant back in
+his chair and stared sternly at his book-shelves. "It's a nice look-out
+for the moors; that's all."
+
+His reflections were dispiriting. He was thinking that the only two men
+whom he had really wanted down in Yorkshire had this morning, almost in
+the same breath, declared that they could not go. They were, in fact,
+both going back to Australia--independently, from widely different
+reasons. With Miles the necessity was pressing enough, no doubt; and
+then he had only been visiting England, and never contemplated a long
+stay. But Dick's case was very different. He had come home for good,
+with his "pile" and his prospects. Could he possibly have been made so
+miserable during these few weeks that he would be glad to bury himself
+again in the bush? Could his case be really so hopeless as he himself
+believed it?
+
+"If so," said Colonel Bristo with irritation, "then Alice has played the
+deuce with the best young fellow in England!"
+
+But how could he tell? How was he, the father, to get at the facts of
+the case? Alice was all the world to him: but for all the world he would
+not have sought her confidence in such a matter. Then what was he to
+do?
+
+He got up from his chair, and paced the floor with the stride of a
+skipper on his poop. He had liked young Edmonstone always--respected him
+as a mere stripling. Love-sick boys were, as a rule, selfish, if not
+sly, young fools--that was his experience; but this one had shown
+himself upright and fearless--had, in fact, behaved uncommonly well,
+once the mischief was done. But that liking had developed into affection
+since the night of Dick's arrival. Poor fellow! how grateful he had
+been! how hopeful! Who could have discouraged him? The Colonel, for his
+part, had no reason to do so now. What was there against him? what
+against "it"? In a word, he had soon--as he saw more of him--set his
+heart upon Dick for his son. Secretly, he had already formed certain
+projects of parental ingenuity. He had already, in his walks, held
+stealthy intercourse with house and estate agents, and otherwise dipped
+into the future of other people, further than he had any business. And
+here was the death-blow to it all! The pair had quarrelled so violently
+that the prospective son-in-law was on the point of taking himself back
+to Australia! One thing was certain: it could be no ordinary
+disagreement--she must have jilted him. But if so, for whom? She had
+seen nobody for months--nobody but Miles! And Miles--the Colonel smiled
+indulgently--with all his good points, with all his fine qualities,
+Miles was no marrying man. Then who could it be? Once more he, her
+father, was unable to tell, for the life of him.
+
+He sat down, rose again in a moment, and rang the bell. Then he sent a
+polite message to Mrs. Parish, requesting her kind attendance, if not in
+any way inconvenient.
+
+"She can at least put me right on one or two points. That is, if she
+doesn't go off at a tangent, down some blind-alley of a side issue!"
+
+The lady appeared after the regulation delay, by which she was in the
+habit of italicising the dignity of her office.
+
+By her greeting, one would have thought the appointment was of her
+making. She observed that she would have come before to inquire how the
+Colonel felt after it all, but understood that he was engaged.
+
+The Colonel explained with a sigh.
+
+"He is gone."
+
+"Ah!" There was unprecedented sympathy in the lady's look and tone.
+
+"You saw him go?" asked the Colonel, looking up in surprise.
+
+"I did," sadly; "I did."
+
+"He said good-bye to you, perhaps?"
+
+"To be sure he did! He was hardly likely to--"
+
+"He didn't ask to see Alice, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he did."
+
+"Dear me!" said the Colonel to himself.
+
+"But she could not see him, I grieve to say; it was a thousand pities,
+seeing that he's going straight back to Australia."
+
+"Oh, he told you that too, did he?"
+
+"Of course, Colonel Bristo, when he said good-bye."
+
+"Dear me! But why wouldn't Alice see him?"
+
+"It was too early."
+
+"A mere excuse," exclaimed the Colonel angrily, looking at his watch.
+"Too early! It is plain that she has thrown him over. If so, then the
+best young fellow in England has been----But perhaps you can tell me
+whether it really is so?"
+
+Mrs. Parish began to feel mystified.
+
+"A young fellow?" she began doubtfully.
+
+"Well, young in years; older than his age, I know. But that's not my
+point."
+
+"Then I really don't know, Colonel Bristo. Alice seldom honors me with
+her confidence nowadays. Indeed, for the last year--"
+
+"The point--my dear madam; the point!"
+
+"Well, then," snapped Mrs. Parish, "to judge by their dances together,
+last night, I should say you are certainly wrong!"
+
+"Ah, you thought that at the time, I know. Do you remember my
+disagreeing with you when you declared Alice had never been more
+brilliant, and so on? Why she only danced with the lad once!"
+
+Only once! "The lad!" Colonel Bristo must certainly be joking; and jokes
+at the expense of the lady who had controlled his household for twenty
+years were not to be tolerated.
+
+"Colonel Bristo, I fail to understand you. If it were not preposterous,
+I should imagine you had stooped to ridicule. Allow me, please, to state
+that your daughter danced three times, if not four, with Mr. Miles--I
+see nothing to smile at, Colonel Bristo!"
+
+"My good--my dear Mrs. Parish," said he, correcting himself hastily, and
+rising urbanely from his chair, "we are at cross purposes. I mean young
+Edmonstone; you mean, I suppose, Mr. Miles. A thousand apologies."
+
+Mrs. Parish was only partially appeased.
+
+"Oh, if you mean that young gentleman, I can assure you he has
+absolutely no chance. Has he said good-bye, too, then?"
+
+"Yes. He says he is going back to Australia."
+
+"I said he would!" exclaimed Mrs. Parish with gusto.
+
+"But--I say! You surely don't mean that it is Mr. Miles Alice cares
+for?"
+
+Mrs. Parish smiled superior.
+
+"Has it not been patent?"
+
+"Not to me, madam!" said Colonel Bristo warmly.
+
+"Love on both sides; I might say at first sight. I watched it dawn, and
+last night I thought it had reached high noon," the old lady declared
+with emotion. "But this unfortunate summons! Still, I think we shall see
+him again before he sails, and I think he will come back to England for
+good before long."
+
+"You mean you hope so, Mrs. Parish," said the Colonel dryly. He seated
+himself at his desk with unmistakable meaning. "Confound her!" he
+muttered when the door closed; "the thing is plausible enough. Yet I
+don't believe it. What's more, much as I like Miles, I don't wish it!
+No. Now what am I to do about Dick?"
+
+This question occupied his thoughts for the rest of the morning. He
+could not answer it to his satisfaction. In the afternoon he sent word
+to Iris Lodge, begging Dick to come over in the evening for an hour. The
+messenger brought back the news that Mr. Edmonstone was from home--had,
+in fact, left for abroad that afternoon.
+
+"Abroad!" thought Colonel Bristo. "He has lost no time! But 'abroad'
+only means the Continent--it is 'out' when you go farther. And yet that
+is one way out--the quickest! Is he capable of such madness at a
+moment's notice? Never; impossible. But I had better look into the
+matter myself."
+
+And this the Colonel did in the course of a few days, by himself calling
+at Iris Lodge. There was a little coldness, or it may have been merely
+self-consciousness, in his reception. But when, after a few
+preliminaries, the visitor began to speak of Dick, this soon wore off;
+for his regard was too warmly expressed, and his praise too obviously
+genuine, not to win and melt hearts half as loving as those of Mrs.
+Edmonstone and her daughter. The Colonel, for his part, was sufficiently
+rewarded when he learnt that Dick had merely joined an old Australian
+friend in Italy, and would be back at the beginning of August.
+
+"I was half afraid," he observed tentatively, "that he was tired of
+England already, and was on his way out again."
+
+The horror with which this notion was instantly demolished caused the
+old gentleman to smile with unconcealed satisfaction; for it assured him
+that Dick's intention (if it was an intention, and not merely the wild
+idea of a heated moment) had at least not yet been breathed to his
+family. He took up his hat and cane with a light heart. And he stopped
+to add a rider to his gracious adieu:
+
+"We shall be tramping the moors when your son returns, Mrs. Edmonstone,
+so I beg you will forward him on to us. And pray, Miss Fanny, use your
+influence as well, for we have lost our other Australian, and I don't
+see how we can get on without Dick."
+
+He went out in good spirits.
+
+Thereafter, as far as the Colonel was concerned, young Edmonstone might
+bake himself to his heart's content--until the Twelfth--abroad. As it
+happened, Colonel Bristo found a far more immediate cause for anxiety at
+home. This was the appearance of Alice.
+
+As July drew near its latter days, the change in her looks passed the
+perceptible stage to the noticeable. Her colouring had been called her
+best point by some, her only good one by others (possibly according to
+the sex of the critic); yet now her face was wholly void of colour. The
+flower-like complexion was, if possible, more delicate than before, but
+now it resembled the waxen lily instead of the glowing wild rose. Even
+the full, firm lips were pale and pinched. Her eyes were either dull or
+restless, and their dark setting seemed more prominent: shadows lay
+below them where no shadows should have been. For the rest, any real
+activity of mind or body seemed as impossible to her as any real repose;
+she appeared to have gained only in thoughtfulness--as indicated by
+silence. On fine days, though the river could not charm her, she would
+dress for walking, and come back tired out in twenty minutes. On wet
+ones she divided her time between the first few pages of a book, and the
+first few bars of a waltz; between the two she never got any farther in
+either. Perhaps experience had taught her that all the tune of a waltz
+is at the beginning; and I suppose she failed to "get into" her novels.
+Her ear was sensitive, attuned to her temper; common sounds startled her
+painfully; the unexpected opening or shutting of a door went far to
+unhinge both nerves and temper. The latter, indeed, was less sweet at
+this period than ever in her life before, and none knew it so well as
+she herself, who bore the brunt of it in her own heart.
+
+None of these signs escaped the watchful eyes about her. But while, on
+the one hand, Mrs. Parish noted them with incomplete sympathy and
+impartial confidence in the justice of consequences (believing that
+Alice's indecision had brought this on her own head, and that a little
+uncertainty would do her no harm), the father's heart became more and
+more distressed as each new symptom was made plain to him. He was both
+worried and perplexed. He called in a local doctor. That move made her
+ill-health no better, and her ill-temper worse. What, then, could the
+father do? Always loving and indulgent--never intimate--with his child,
+it had been his practice, when serious matters arose, to employ the
+ambassador always at hand; thus there had never, during all the years,
+been a word of contention between father and daughter; and to this
+practice the father resorted now.
+
+Late one afternoon they were all three sitting in the garden, when Alice
+rose, without breaking her long silence, and slowly walked towards the
+house. The Colonel followed her with his eyes; he held a glowing
+cigarette between his fingers; the distance was short enough, but before
+Alice reached the house the cigarette was out.
+
+"Look at her now! Is that the step of a healthy girl? See her climb
+those six steps--they might be the top flight of St. Paul's! Mrs.
+Parish"--with sudden decision--"Mrs. Parish, you must see to the root of
+this matter before it gets any worse. I must know exactly what is at the
+bottom of it. I desire you to speak to Alice, for I cannot. You
+understand me, I think? Very well, then, pray watch your opportunity."
+
+The very next morning the housekeeper came to the study. She had spoken
+to Alice. She did not require much questioning.
+
+"Oh, as to young Mr. Richard. I could elicit nothing--nothing at all. He
+seemed quite outside her thoughts."
+
+Mrs. Parish made this statement with a smack of satisfaction. Colonel
+Bristo, however, must have given it a construction of his own, for he
+did not look displeased. He simply said:
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, she was almost as reticent about Mr. Miles; though we know what
+that signifies!" (But here the Colonel shook his head.) "What she did
+say, however, is not worth repeating."
+
+"Still, I should like to hear it."
+
+"It does not affect matters in the least."
+
+"Pray go on, Mrs. Parish."
+
+"Of course, if you insist, Colonel Bristo! Well, then, Alice tells me
+that, two days after Mr. Miles went, a shabby kind of woman had the
+impudence to walk into the garden, accost her, and ask if Mr. Miles (how
+she had got his name, one cannot tell) was still here. Alice said 'No,'
+and was weak enough to give her money, because she seemed wretched, she
+says, and so got rid of her."
+
+"One of the beggars he helped," said the Colonel. "He used to have long
+conversations with them, and tell them to emigrate."
+
+"Why, to be sure!" cried Mrs. Parish, at once enlightened and relieved.
+And now she was as eager to tell the rest as before she had been slow to
+speak. "The very next day after that, Alice saw a man watching the house
+from the tow-path. He seemed to be there all day; so at last she rowed
+across and asked him if he wanted anyone. He said, 'Yes, the gentleman
+who's been staying there; where is he?' She told him he was on his way
+back to Australia. The man did not seem to believe it. In the end she
+gave money to him too, and soon she saw him go."
+
+"Another of his beggars!" laughed Colonel Bristo. "Their name is legion,
+no doubt, and we shall see more of them yet. For the credit of the
+Mother Country, we can't shut the door in their faces after a Colonial
+has given them a taste of real downright generosity. Poor Miles!"
+
+"Well, Alice, for her part, seems ready enough to carry on his works of
+charity," said Mrs. Parish, adroitly, with an emphasis ever so slight on
+the possessive pronoun.
+
+The Colonel smiled. Then he thanked her graciously for the service.
+
+"I am extremely obliged to you, Mrs. Parish, for the hundredth time. You
+have saved me yet another interview. That is, I should have made it
+awkward, but you, with your usual tact, have got at precisely what I
+wanted. I am perfectly satisfied."
+
+Mrs. Parish bowed. She was not a little pleased with the compliment to
+her tact, on which she plumed herself above everything; but her pleasure
+was less than her surprise--that the Colonel should be so easily
+satisfied! She moved with dignity to the door. As she was shutting it,
+the Colonel rubbed his hands and exclaimed aloud:
+
+"It is Dick!"
+
+The door, which was at that moment swinging to, stopped, trembled, then
+shut with a vicious little bang. The Colonel could make a near enough
+guess at the expression of the face on the other side of it. He smiled
+benevolently.
+
+"Silly lady! She thinks I have turned against my friend Miles--whom, by
+the way, she worships on her own account. Far from it, I miss him
+abominably. But when it comes to a choice between him and Dick--and
+where my girl is concerned--why, then, I confess, I'm all for the
+younger man and the older suitor."
+
+
+
+
+                                  XVII
+
+                           "MILES'S BEGGARS"
+
+
+Iris Lodge, during the first half of August, became for once gay, not to
+say festive--in a small way, as befitted a first experiment. Maurice
+managed to wrest his hard-earned annual holiday from the bank, and, on
+the very first day of the fourteen allotted him, back came Dick from
+abroad, bringing with him his friend Flint. After a remarkable display
+of obstinacy on this gentleman's part, Dick had at last prevailed upon
+him to leave his tenants to their own devices for one more week, and
+tarry by the Thames. But, though this was brought about by dint of hard
+persuading, in the end Mr. Flint somehow saw his way to doubling the
+week which at first he had grudgingly promised.
+
+In his excuse it can only be urged that he enjoyed himself beyond
+expectation. The weather was very nearly faultless, the river at its
+best, formalities few, and the ladies--charming. The lawn-tennis
+court--though several inches short--was quite of the billiard-table
+order. The music in the evenings, though it did not run in a man's head,
+possessed a certain odd, mysterious, soothing, saddening, pleasing
+quality, that silenced one at the time, and left an impression that Miss
+Edmonstone could make her piano speak, if she tried. Perhaps it was
+classical music; very likely Chopin. Lastly--and last thing--the
+spirituous nightcap, though approached in a spirit of moderation, had a
+way of imparting the proper Eucalyptian flavour to all reminiscences of
+life among the gum-trees. Could there be better conditions for a
+pleasant visit? Flint asked himself. And if the house was the smallest
+he had ever stayed in, would not Castle Flint seem cheerless, vast,
+sepulchral, by comparison?
+
+But indeed they were wonderfully bright and happy days: the ones on the
+river, when, in the bushmen's phrase, they all "camped," and Flint made
+tea in true bush fashion, and Dick a "damper" which no one but bushmen
+could eat; the afternoons at tennis, spent in wonderfully keen, if not
+deeply scientific, struggles; the morning at Hampton Court, when Flint
+owned himself completely "bushed" in the Maze, and when they were all
+photographed on the Green, bringing away with them the atrocious result
+in a gilt frame; and the day when Dick hired the four-in-hand (it
+created some sensation in the little road) and drove them all through
+Chertsey and Ascot, to Windsor, and back by Staines and Shepperton.
+
+Certainly any outsider must have voted them a jovial, light-hearted
+party, without a serious care to divide among them; and even Flint, who
+had some power of observation, and also knew his friend thoroughly--even
+Flint told himself that old Dick had got back his good spirits, and was,
+in fact, "getting over it." But Flint did not know. Ever since their
+hurried interview on the 2nd of July, Dick had been as reticent as he
+had then been communicative of all that lay nearest his heart.
+
+Yet never for one moment did Dick forget. He had no wish to forget. So
+long as he could keep his disappointment to himself, deep down within
+him, he would suffer and smile. For the sake of the others he could not
+rise in his place at the feast and declare himself the skeleton he felt.
+They must find it out sooner or later--then let it be later. Here his
+thoughts were all of his mother and Fanny; they would be heart-broken
+when he told them of his determination to go back to Australia. But a
+determination it was, growing more solid day by day, though as yet told
+only to Colonel Bristo, and that in the unguarded spontaneity of sudden
+emotion. But as for his people, better tell them just before he
+went--say the week before, or why not on the very day of sailing? Why
+make them unhappy before their time, when their happiness in having him
+back was still boundless?
+
+After all, it would only be a temporary trouble; for Dick had evolved a
+great scheme for the future, which was this: He would go out and buy a
+small station in a first-rate district--at arm's length, indeed, from
+towns and railroads, but still just in touch with civilisation. Then he
+would send home for them all. Yes, all. For Maurice would make an ideal
+book-keeper. Fanny would revel in the life, and Mrs. Edmonstone would
+certainly prefer it to the small house at Teddington. This plan was
+conceived, matured, calculated out, and found feasible, during the many
+long summer nights wherein Dick never closed his eyes, when perhaps it
+was well that there was this object of focus for his mind.
+
+As for his attitude towards Flint, Dick was well aware that his access
+of reserve, after the way in which he had unburdened his soul at their
+first meeting, must appear strangely inconsistent. He had rushed to join
+his friend on the Continent, travelled with him for nearly a month, and
+not told him another word of his affairs. It could not be helped; it
+would be impossible to tell Flint anything of what had followed their
+first talk at Teddington without making a clean breast of his discovery
+that Miles the Australian was no other than Sundown the bushranger, and
+this Dick would not tell a soul unless Miles broke faith with him. Least
+of all would he confide in Flint, for Flint would be the very first to
+turn round and call him madman.
+
+Nevertheless the days seemed to chase each other pleasantly enough for
+one and all, actually doing so for all but one; and, as always happens
+in such cases, the fortnight drew far too quickly to its close.
+
+"To-day is Thursday--the Twelfth, by-the-bye--and here we are within
+sight of Sunbury Lock; and on Monday, and ever afterwards, the bank; the
+blessed bank!"
+
+This cheerful reminder proceeded (one day up the river) from the lips
+and soul of the man in the stern, who was steering. There was a
+sympathetic groan from the man in the bows, who was smoking. The working
+half of the crew received the observation, which was thrown out
+gratuitously to all, in business-like silence, broken only by the flash
+of four sculls as one, and the swish of the feather blades through the
+air. The groan in the bows was followed by a reflection of kindred
+pathos, delivered in a high key:
+
+"We will call next Monday Black Monday; for to me it means Holyhead,
+Dublin, Kerry, and tenants! blessed tenants! But not for always," added
+Flint suddenly; "I don't say 'ever afterwards;' why should you? Why
+should I be a slave to my Castle and you to your City? Why shouldn't we
+emigrate together?"
+
+No one in the boat could see the speaker's face; it was impossible to
+tell whether he was jesting or serious.
+
+"Oh, I'm game!" cried Maurice, very much in earnest at once.
+
+"Well, then, just hold on till I give Castle Flint the sack."
+
+"Or until it is sacked about your ears," suggested stroke jerkily. "But
+what nonsense you two are talking!"
+
+"Not at all, Miss Edmonstone--if you will allow me. You can't expect a
+man to live out his life in troubled Ireland when there's a happy
+Australia to go to: there, you know, you may combine the blessings of
+liberty, equality, and Home Rule of the most advanced kind, with the
+peculiar satisfaction of calling yourself a staunch Tory, and believing
+it! But as for our friend here, station life would add a year to his
+life for every year the City is capable of shortening it. He'd make a
+first-rate jackeroo."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"What's a jackeroo? Oh, a young gentleman--for choice, the newest new
+chum to be found--who goes to a station to get Colonial experience. He
+has to work like a nigger, and revels in it, for a bit. If he is a black
+sheep, and has the antique ideas of the Colonies held by those who sent
+him out to whiten him, his illusions may last a couple of days; if he
+has read up Australia on the voyage, they will probably hold out a
+little longer, while he keeps looking for what his book told him he
+would find; the fact being that the modern bush life hasn't yet been
+done into English. Meanwhile he runs up the horses, rides round
+boundaries, mends fences, drives sheep to water--if it is a drought--and
+skins the dead ones, weighs out flour and sugar, cleans harness, camps
+anywhere, and lives on mutton and damper, and tea."
+
+"But what does he get for all that?" asked Maurice, with visions of
+money-bags.
+
+"Rations and experience," replied Flint promptly. "When he's admitted to
+be worth his salt he will be asked to make other arrangements. Then some
+still newer new chum will be selected for the post, through the
+introductions he has brought to the stock and station agents, and in his
+turn will drive his teeth into the dirty work of the station, which the
+ordinary pound-a-week hands refuse, and so get his Colonial experience!"
+
+"Thanks; I'll stop where I am," said Maurice.
+
+"He isn't fair," said Dick, speaking for the first time. "You know you
+aren't fair, old chap, raking up your own case as typical, when it was
+exceptional. Jackeroos are treated all right, and paid too, so long as
+they're smart and willing--the two things needful. Come, I've been a
+squatter myself, and can't hear my class run down."
+
+"You won't hear me defend the landlords on that ground," remarked Flint,
+who had contracted eccentric politics.
+
+"Well," said Dick, experimentally, "if I go back to it, Maurice shall be
+my jackeroo, and judge for himself whether you haven't painted us too
+black."
+
+He shipped his oars. Flint was standing up with the boat-hook to pilot
+them through the open lock-gates.
+
+"Then I'll ride the boundaries!" cried Fanny, who sat a horse like a
+leech, but had had no mount for years.
+
+"In that case," added Flint quietly, "I'll apply for overseer's billet,
+with the right of sacking slack hands."
+
+For a moment Dick looked really pleased: this jesting about a station in
+Australia was, so far, feeling the way, and might make matters a trifle
+easier when the time came. But the smile quickly faded from his face. In
+truth, on no day during these last weeks had he been so troubled in
+spirit, so tossed between the cross-currents of conflicting feelings.
+
+That morning he had received two letters, apparently of contrary
+character: for while the perusal of one gratified him so intensely that
+he could not help handing it round for them all to see, the mere sight
+of the other was sufficient to make him thrust the unopened envelope
+hurriedly into his pocket.
+
+The first letter was indeed a matter for congratulation, for it was the
+most completely satisfactory, though not the first, of several similar
+communications which Dick had received since his return from Australia.
+It was a short note from the editor of the "Illustrated British
+Monthly," accepting (for immediate use: a great point) a set of sketches
+entitled "Home from Australia," which set forth the humours and trials
+of a long sea voyage, and were, in fact, simply a finished reproduction
+of those sketches that had delighted the passengers on board the Hesper.
+But it was more than a mere formal acceptance: besides enclosing a
+cheque (in itself a charming feature) to meet the present case, the note
+contained a complimentary allusion to the quality of the "work," and a
+distinct hint for the future. This in a postscript--observing that as
+Australian subjects were somewhat in demand since the opening of the
+Colonial Exhibition--he (the editor) would be glad to see anything
+thoroughly Australian that Mr. Edmonstone might chance to have ready.
+
+Of course the precious note was read aloud, and greeted with cries of
+delight. Fancy an opening with the "Illustrated British" at this stage!
+What could be better? And it did look like a real opening. The hero of
+the moment alone sat silent; the unread letter in his pocket checked his
+speech; it was from Yorkshire.
+
+"Why did you ever leave us, when you can do so splendidly here at home?"
+Mrs. Edmonstone asked him, half in regret for the past, half in joy for
+the future.
+
+Flint saw his friend's preoccupation, and answered for him.
+
+"He didn't know it was in him till he got out there, I fancy. I remember
+him sending his first things to the Melbourne and Sydney papers; and
+before a year was out, his famous buck-jumping picture was stuck up in
+every shanty in New South Wales and Victoria."
+
+"Eh?" said Dick, looking up abruptly. "Oh, they coloured it vilely! What
+do you say, mother? No, I say, don't jump to conclusions. How do you
+know I can do any real good? I've been lucky so far, but I'm only at the
+very, very beginning. I may fail miserably after all. And then where
+should I be without my little pile?"
+
+After breakfast Dick read the letter from Yorkshire in his own room.
+
+"At the risk of being unduly persistent," wrote Colonel Bristo, "I must
+ask you to reconsider your decision." (Dick had refused a short but
+pressing invitation the week before.) "I know something of your reasons
+for refusing, and I believe them to be mistaken reasons. If you have
+really settled to return to Australia, that is all the more reason why
+you should come. If you like, I will undertake not to press you to stay
+beyond one day; only do come to bid us good-bye. Do not, however, fear
+to offend me by a second refusal. I shall be grievously disappointed,
+but nothing more. We really want you, for we shall be short of guns; two
+of the men only stay till Monday, so come on that day. But apart from
+all this, I am very sure that your coming will make the days a little
+less dull and dreary for one of us. Everything else has failed."
+
+The letter ended abruptly. Dick read it through twice, and put it back
+in his pocket with a full heart.
+
+But what was he to do? Here was the good Colonel honestly trying, in his
+own way, to set matters right between him and Alice; but it was a
+childlike, if not a childish way--a way that ignored causes and refused
+to realise effects.
+
+Dick trusted he was no such fool as to be affected by the hope that
+breathed in the Colonel's letter. The Colonel was confessedly unversed
+in women's ways--then why did he meddle? Surely it would have been more
+natural, more dignified, to send him, Dick, to the deuce, or to the
+Colonies--they were much the same thing in the Old Country--than to
+waste another thought on the man whom his own daughter (who could surely
+judge for herself) had chosen to jilt? Dick savagely wished that the
+former had been his treatment; and, rowing down from Sunbury that
+afternoon, he was so far decided that the phrases of his refusal were in
+his head. Call it rude, churlish, obstinate; he was obstinate, and was
+willing to own it; he had refused the Colonel once, and that refusal
+should be final.
+
+Nevertheless, he was absent and distrait all day, whereas the others
+were in rather higher spirits than usual, and the contrast was
+uncomfortable. Dick therefore invented an excuse for running up to town,
+promising himself a quiet corner of his club, in which to write to the
+Colonel and pull himself together. He needed pulling together: he was
+yearning to see Alice again--perhaps only to ask her forgiveness and bid
+her good-bye--yet vowing between his teeth to see her no more; he would
+not be entirely himself until his refusal was penned and posted.
+
+He walked absently to the station, forgot his change at the
+ticket-office, and jumped into the nearest compartment of the first
+train that came in. A man and a woman got into the same compartment.
+Dick did not see them, for he was attempting to interest himself in an
+evening paper; but he could not help hearing their voices as they sat
+opposite him in close conversation. And, hearing, Dick was startled. His
+pulse beat violently; his fingers tightened upon the edges of the
+newspaper.
+
+"His fine friends," the man was saying, "are gone into the country
+somewhere. We must find out where."
+
+The tones were Jem Pound's.
+
+"Why?" asked the same woman's voice that Dick had heard in Bushey Park.
+
+"Because if Ned Ryan hasn't fled the country, that's where he is!"
+
+"But he has gone back to Australia."
+
+"Not he! He daren't go out there again. He'd be a fool to do it if he
+dared. No, no. He cleared out o' this because of you and me. He cracked
+he was going out there again, because he knew we'd come asking after him
+and they'd tell us that yarn. But he's no more gone than I have. Mark
+me, missis, we'll find him at this here Colonel's country place! But we
+must find the place first."
+
+Dick did not lower his paper until the train reached Waterloo. Long
+before that his mind was filled with one absorbing idea. A swift but
+complete reaction had taken place within him; he was charged with
+nervous energy and primed with impatience. Some of the impatience he
+worked off in a rapid walk to his club, where he answered Colonel
+Bristo's note in a dozen words; but one idea continued in fierce
+possession of his mind, to the exclusion of all others.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XVIII
+
+                        ALICE SPEAKS FOR HERSELF
+
+
+Monday, August 9th.--Here we are at last, at the shooting box on the
+Yorkshire moors; or rather in the Yorkshire dales. I mean, papa and I
+are here: our faithful Mrs. Parish follows to-morrow, and the "guns" are
+expected on Wednesday. We two have been staying at a little seaside
+place on the coast--quite a charming place, with not only broad sands,
+but very presentable cliffs, and other things worth looking at besides
+the sea; delightful gardens, for instance, where the inevitable band
+played, instead of on the everlasting pier. Of course, it was all rather
+tedious; but the North Sea breezes and the delicious air did one no
+harm, I felt, while they seemed to do papa visible good. Indeed, he
+declares he feels fit for anything now--meaning, of course, in the way
+of sport, which I only hope he won't overdo. So perhaps, after all, we
+did well to leave home a week earlier than we at first intended (much as
+I hated leaving home at all), for we have come to the moorland air with
+lungs full of sea-air, and papa says there couldn't be a finer mixture
+than that for me.
+
+But it is difficult to think of the sea here in the dales, where we are
+so far from it. We are far from everything, as it seems to me. Yet I am
+told, and I suppose I must believe, that the great smoky town which we
+passed through the other day is within twenty miles of us, and we are
+assured that there is a very "canny" village--if not a small town--four
+or five miles from us. It is also true that it only took an hour and
+twenty minutes to drive from the railway station, but then there wasn't
+much of a village there. Now we expected to find one here, and papa even
+professed to point it out to me as we drove through; but as it was
+nearly dark, and I could only make out a short, huddled-up row of houses
+on one side of the road, I couldn't see where the village came in, and
+told him so. Still, it is down on the Ordnance map, Gateby by name; and,
+though it is too dark to see now, it can only be a few hundred yards
+from us.
+
+As for this house--which, by-the-bye, is nameless--I am sure it has
+never been anything but a shooting box, for it has no pretence to a
+garden, but stands behind a hedge almost in a bare field--a plain,
+gaunt, two-storied, evenly-balanced stone building. In the three rooms
+down stairs there is very little furniture, except what we sent before
+us. In one of them, the smallest, a book-case with glass doors has been
+made into a gun-rack, and this may point to the fact that the place was
+not always what it is. This room we will call "the gun-room." Whether it
+was built for better things, I don't know; but for ages the house has
+been let year after year for the shooting alone.
+
+At this moment an old man, with a pale blue eye and a bright red nose,
+who is apparently caretaker and general factotum of the establishment,
+is expatiating to papa on the birds: their probable quantity and
+unmistakable quality; but he has a barbarous tongue, and for my part I
+am too tired to listen to him any longer.
+
+Yes, tired--and sleepy too. If writing a diary has always this effect
+upon me, it will more than fulfil its original mission--which was only
+to help me to pass the intolerable time!
+
+Tuesday, 10th.--I was up and out quite early, long before breakfast, on
+a voyage of discovery. The first thing I had seen, on drawing up my
+blind, was red-tiled Gateby, straight in front of my window, across
+half-a-dozen fields. I could see a path winding through these fields,
+and coming out into the road just below our house; so on this pathway I
+settled for my first walk. I could see that it was the shortest way to
+Gateby. I would inspect Gateby.
+
+It was a perfect morning, with plenty of sunshine and blue sky, and the
+last of a soft white mist just filling up the hollows of the meadows; so
+that I knew that it would be a hot day, as, in fact, it is.
+
+When I had followed the path across the fields until I had only two left
+to cross (and these were a potato field and a meadow, from which a boy
+was driving in the cows), I stopped and perched myself on a stone
+gate-post, and surveyed Gateby. From there it looked like one long low
+irregular building, stone-built and red-tiled. Only one house, and that
+at the extreme left of the rest, was slated. More of Gateby I could not
+see from there, so I went on looking all round me. Over the village rose
+the hills, with bold but even outline. The hillsides are so evenly
+divided by the hedges into so many squares that they look as though
+great nets had been cast over them. The squares have all kinds of
+colours--greens, and yellows, and dirty browns (of ploughed fields).
+Following the bend of the valley, as the fields grew less in
+perspective, I noticed that they took a commoner tint, between pale
+green and dun, until the farthest range of all showed a uniform
+greyish-blue. I did not expect to be able to see half so far when deep
+down in a dale, and I thought the hills would be higher. In fact, with
+this particular dale of ours I am a little bit disappointed; for,
+instead of finding it a deep furrow in the face of Nature, as I had made
+up my mind it would be, it is, after all, the veriest dimple.
+
+Well, Gateby is a quaint enough little place when you attack it fairly,
+from the front, as I presently did. It has about a dozen houses all
+told, and they are all on one side of the road, and hug each other as
+though space were an object of the first importance. Several of the
+houses are, at least, demi-semi-detached. The largest of them is the
+public-house; the best the schoolhouse, the front of which is simply one
+mass of pink roses--I never saw anything like it.
+
+I walked back by the road. The pathway through the fields merely cuts
+off, I now found, the angle made by the two roads: the road in which we
+are, which leads over the moor, and the road in which Gateby is, which
+leads in one direction to the railway, six miles off, and in the
+other--I don't know where. These two roads join at right angles, and I
+believe they are the only roads in the dale.
+
+Nearing home, I met the person with the gay-coloured nose and eyes, and
+he stopped to bid me good morning. I thought his complexion looked a
+little cooler, but then it was very early morning. He inquired, with
+some pride and expectancy, what I thought of the dale. I answered,
+rather unkindly I am afraid, that I thought it pretty, but a fraud: the
+hills were too low, the valleys were too shallow.
+
+"Ah!" he observed compassionately, "waaet till thoo's been ower t' mower,
+an' seen t' view from Melmerbridge Bank; an' waaet till thoo sees
+Beckdaael!"
+
+He went on to tell me all about Melmerbridge. I almost think he offered
+to personally conduct me over to Melmerbridge, and to show me its
+church, and its beck, and the view from its bank. At any rate, before I
+could get away from him I had learnt that his name was Andy Garbutt, and
+that he had been eight and twenty years, man and boy, come next
+Michaelmas, in the service of the owner of our nameless shooting-box.
+
+I found papa ready for breakfast, and delighted to find that I had been
+out and about so early; there was no need to tell him that it was simply
+because I could not sleep or rest. And of course we both duly voted the
+real Yorkshire bacon the very best we had ever tasted in our two lives;
+though, for my part, I must own I only swallowed it to please papa,
+whose eye was upon my plate.
+
+In the afternoon we walked up to the moor together, and papa was charmed
+because we "put up" quite a number of birds. I could not stay long,
+however, as papa wished me to drive off to meet Mrs. Parish, and I am
+writing this while waiting for the trap, because, somehow, I cannot
+settle to reading--not even yellowbacks. A horrid nuisance, her coming!
+I do wish it had not been just yet. By-the-bye, papa tells me he has
+heard from Mr. Miles, who, after all, has not yet left England, his
+business having turned out different from what he expected. Then how
+strange that we have never heard from him all these weeks! I quite
+thought he would be out there by this time. However, he says he really
+does sail in a few days, and he only wishes he saw his way to running
+down to say good-bye to us--but that will be impossible. I believe papa
+has written to him, telling him all about the place, and the prospects,
+and who are coming. I am not sorry that he is not coming, I think. This
+reminds me that papa says that Dick Edmonstone has written saying that
+he cannot possibly come. I am not at all sorry to hear that. I think he
+shows his sense.
+
+Thursday, 12th.--Everybody came yesterday; and now they are all on the
+moor, and we two women are to go and have lunch with them at one. There
+are five guns, and we hear them distinctly from time to time. Besides
+papa, there are Cousin Philip (who likes to be called Doctor Robson
+now), and Laurence Pinckney, and Captain Awdry, and Mr. Oliver.
+
+Cousin Philip has been on a long voyage to New Zealand and back, as
+ship's surgeon, since we last saw him. It ought to have improved him,
+and perhaps it has; but to me he seems as dull and ponderous and
+undecided as ever. He tells me that he interested himself at sea by
+getting up prayer-meetings in the steerage, which, he says, had far more
+heart in them than the captain's perfunctory services on the
+quarter-deck; but it seems that his zeal got him disliked--most
+unrighteously--by the other officers. He is certainly a good young man.
+Captain Awdry I have met once or twice before; he is a great beauty, a
+great sportsman, and that's all; but Mr. Oliver is new to me. I fancy he
+is local--an ironmaster or something. He is old, and tall, and well
+set-up; very deferential to me, if you please, and tremendously keen
+about the grouse. As for Laurence Pinckney--one has to call him Mr.
+Pinckney now--he is nothing short of a revelation.
+
+When I knew him before, he used to go to some public school--I forget
+which, but it can't be many years ago. And now he is a "writing man,"
+fresh from Fleet-street, with all the jargon at his tongue's end--and,
+in short, quite the most amusing boy. In appearance he is just what he
+ought not to be. I have always pictured to myself the literary
+man--especially the literary young man--with long hair and eye-glasses,
+and the rest bizarre. Therefore Laurence Pinckney disappoints me; he is
+spruce, brisk, and sharp-eyed, short, dark, and unguarded.
+
+He sat next me at dinner, and talked nothing but his "shop"--which,
+however, is a kind of "shop" that rather interests one; besides, the
+egotism of a raw recruit in the noble army of authors is really
+diverting. He talks fluently about all the new books, criticising most
+of them severely, and I should say that he has read and remembered at
+least two or three reviews of each. He has told me the different
+magazines he writes for, so that I shall know where to seek his name--if
+I don't forget. He "thinks nothing of bearding literary lions in their
+editorial dens;" and this, I shouldn't wonder, has something to do with
+that drawer full of rejected MSS. of which he has already been frank
+enough to whisper--in fact, he has quite taken me into his literary
+confidence. But indeed he is rather amusing.
+
+Friday, 13th.--Mrs. Parish is really very agreeable, and easier to get
+on with than for a long while past. She tells me, among other things,
+that she saw more of Mr. Miles's beggars after we left home--caught them
+talking to the servants, and packed them off about their business. Poor
+things! From her account, I rather fancy they were the same I saw. She
+went with me to luncheon on the moor yesterday. It was really not bad
+fun. They were all in good spirits, because, on the whole, they had made
+a good start. Captain Awdry had done the most execution, and took it the
+most sadly. But old Mr. Oliver had drawn first blood, and, unlike the
+blase Captain, was not above showing his delight. Papa and Cousin Philip
+were modest about their share: it was impossible to find out exactly
+what they had done. Poor Laurence Pinckney, however, had hit nothing at
+all; and, indeed, his shooting must be execrable, to judge by what one
+hears. I heard Mr. Oliver muttering that he would not get within range
+of him, not if he knew it; while Captain Awdry's contempt lies too deep
+for smiles or sneers. But Mr. Pinckney does not care; he carries a
+notebook with him, which he whips out whenever the view strikes him as
+worth remembering, or whenever something happy occurs to him. He says it
+is extraordinary what happy thoughts do come to a man who carries a gun.
+I tell him that to-morrow he must think of nothing but his next shot.
+He answers that to-morrow he must not shoot, as Saturday is always a
+busy day with him, wherever he is:--on it he writes for his weekly
+paper. He calls it "his," as though the paper belonged to him, and I
+tell him so. He explains that he is "on the staff--practically." He
+keeps to himself the name of the paper and the nature of his
+contributions: it is best to make no inquiries, I think.
+
+Saturday, 14th.--Papa tells me that Dick has written to say he finds he
+can come after all, and is coming.
+
+Somehow it has been a wretched day. I seem to have done absolutely
+nothing all day, and, now that it is evening, my head aches, and I have
+come upstairs quite early, though I know I shall never sleep. Poor papa
+has been saying he sees I find it dull, and blaming himself because I
+have no companion. As it happens, that is, in my eyes, the most joyful
+feature of the business, but I could not tell dear papa so; and he was
+full of regrets that Cousin Maggie was prevented from coming at the last
+moment--a circumstance for which I can never be too thankful. Poor
+Maggie would have been an infliction indeed. She has all the heavy
+virtues of her brother--and imagine a feminine Philip! That creature
+himself has annoyed me sufficiently this evening: tacked himself on to
+me, talked in a low voice, looked like a sheep, and would not be
+snubbed--he never would, and never will. To escape him, and for no other
+reason, I sang a song in response to Laurence Pinckney's absurd
+pleadings. But I hate singing! I hate the sound of my voice! I would
+give worlds to be away from here, and at home again and alone. I am
+tired of the place, and to be forever saying civil things to people is
+insupportable, and replying to their civility-speeches even worse. This
+minute I hate everything and everybody, and myself the worst of all!
+
+Sunday, 15th.--I wrote some contemptible nonsense last night, when my
+head was splitting; but I will not score it out; if ever I go mad these
+gradations will be interesting, if not useful!...
+
+It is, by-the-bye, to-morrow, papa tells me, that Dick is coming.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIX
+
+                          CONTERMINOUS COURSES
+
+
+Between five and six o'clock in the afternoon of Monday, August 16th,
+when the last train but one steamed into the small station at Inglesby,
+six miles from Gateby, one passenger left it. He was a tall man in a
+light tweed suit. His luggage consisted of a portmanteau and a gun-case.
+After looking in vain for a conveyance outside the station, he found the
+station-master and asked where he could get one to take him to Gateby;
+the station-master directed him to the inn.
+
+Between six and seven, but rather more than an hour later, the last
+train of the day came in. It also deposited a single passenger--another
+sportsman, for he too carried a gun-case; moreover, he went through the
+same performance as the last arrival: looked first for a conveyance and
+then for the station-master, to whom he put the same question about a
+trap and Gateby, and from whom he received the same direction. But the
+official was struck with the coincidence, and dropped a word or two
+about "the other gentleman;" at which this one, whose name was
+Edmonstone, started, though he walked off to the inn, a porter following
+with his baggage, without putting further questions.
+
+The inn had a great square parlour, scrupulously clean and flagged with
+red tiles, where Dick entered, and clattered on the well-scoured table.
+The person of the landlady, who presently appeared, was in the nicest
+harmony with floor and furniture, so neat and spotless, and in hand and
+face so very red. Her speech, however, as she asked what was wanted, was
+by way of being rough.
+
+"In the first place," said Edmonstone, "two glasses of beer"; and
+presently handed one to the porter, who tendered his respects, received
+sixpence, repeated his respects with emphasis, and withdrew. "In the
+next place a horse and trap."
+
+"We've no hosses an' traps here, yooung man."
+
+"Come now!" said Dick. "They told me at the station this was just the
+place where there was one."
+
+"Mebbe it is, but it's out now. Where is't ye want to be?"
+
+"Gateby."
+
+"Gaaetby! Why, that's where it's gone with t'other gentleman!"
+
+"Indeed? To Colonel Bristo's, do you know?"
+
+"That was it."
+
+"It's a pity I didn't come by the other train!" His tone puzzled the
+woman. "We might have travelled together, by Jove! What was the
+gentleman like?"
+
+"Very tall."
+
+"Taller than I am, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes--easy."
+
+"A fair beard?"
+
+"To be sure. You know him, then?"
+
+"Very well indeed. We ought to have travelled together. Has the trap
+that took him come back yet?"
+
+"Not it. It hasn't had time."
+
+"It must go back with me when it does. Don't look like that, woman;
+here's a sovereign for the job!"
+
+He flung the coin on the table. The woman stared at him and at it,
+seemed doubtful whether to take or leave the sovereign, but eventually
+overcame her scruples, honestly determining to throw in a good square
+meal for the money.
+
+"The trap won't be back yet a bit, sir. You'll be wanting----"
+
+"Nothing, except to be left alone," broke in the strange guest. "That's
+all the trouble I shall put you to--that, and to tell me when the trap's
+ready."
+
+There was no use in saying more to the gentleman. He might not be quite
+right--he might fly at a body. The good woman left him gazing
+abstractedly out of the window; yet she had scarcely closed the door
+when she heard him clattering to and fro over the tiled floor like a
+caged beast.
+
+His thoughts were in a tumult. He calmed them by a strenuous effort. He
+strove to look the matter in the face. What was the matter?
+
+Ned Ryan, the Australian outlaw, who had been screened on condition that
+he came near the Bristos no more, had broken that condition; had somehow
+heard that Edmonstone was not to be one of the shooting-party in
+Yorkshire, and was even now the Colonel's newly-arrived guest.
+
+After all, perhaps this was no more than Dick had been prepared for,
+since his journey from Teddington to Waterloo in the same compartment
+with Jem Pound and Elizabeth Ryan; he had listened to a villain's
+suspicions of a brother villain; from that moment he had shared those
+suspicions. Dick realised then, and only then, that while he was not
+near the Bristos they were not safe from the advances of "Mr. Miles," if
+he was bold enough to make them. But the sudden realisation of his fears
+took Dick's breath away; he had not bargained to find Miles already at
+Gateby--he had no definite plan for the defeat of Miles, and he was
+certain that the man described to him by the mistress of the inn was
+Miles--as certain as if he had seen him himself.
+
+Then how was he to act? Was he to show no quarter, since this villain
+had played false? That course presented difficulties--dangers as well;
+and at the least it involved a violent scene under Colonel Bristo's
+roof. Must he, then, parley a second time with the villain--let him off
+again, trust him again, go on shielding a known desperado? No. Ned Ryan
+could be trusted no further, shielded no more. There were more things
+than one to be considered--more people than one. The man must receive
+his deserts.
+
+And to accomplish this--to deliver to justice a criminal of the first
+water--this young Edmonstone went blindly forward, with thoughts of
+doing it without fuss and all but single-handed.
+
+There was little daylight left when Dick was driven out of Inglesby;
+night fell long before he saw the lights of Gateby; it was fully nine
+when they reached the little square stone house behind the hedge. The
+dogs in the kennel not far from the house barked an alarm. The front
+door opened, and Dick saw a well-known figure outlined against the light
+of the passage. It was the Colonel himself, and his greeting was most
+cordial. Yet how hard it was to put any heart into the answer! Dick
+tried, failed miserably, and knew it. Before there was time for many
+sentences, Dick found himself hustled into a room--a long, faded,
+unlovely room--in which sat two ladies, Miss Bristo and Mrs. Parish.
+
+The meeting between Alice and Dick--who had not seen each other since
+that fateful second evening of July--was perfectly careless without
+being conspicuously cold. It may be assumed that neither was wholly free
+from some sort of agitation; but it is to be suspected that each had
+prepared for the same, and masked accordingly. The mummery on both sides
+was excellently well managed.
+
+Observations the most natural in the world, as well as the most
+commonplace, were the order of the minute.
+
+"How rude," said Alice, "you must have thought us not to send to meet
+you! But we have actually only one pony, and he had gone to
+Melmerbridge, which is in the opposite direction."
+
+"We thought," said Mrs. Parish, "that as you had not telegraphed, and
+did not come by the usual train, you could not be coming to-night."
+
+"Pray don't name it," Dick answered to the one lady; and to the other:
+"I really must apologise for forgetting to wire."
+
+The window was wide open, for the night was warm: and through the window
+came the voices of men chatting, and the faint scent of cigars. Among
+the voices Dick immediately distinguished one that he was prepared for,
+and listened for--the soft, deep voice of Miles. Strangely enough, he
+only caught the well-known tones on the moment of entering the room;
+speaking himself, and being spoken to by those in the room, he could
+hear no more than a hum outside; and when he listened again, during the
+first pause, he could no longer hear Miles.
+
+Very soon the conversation outside ceased altogether, and a moment later
+the men appeared in the room. There were but two of them, and Miles was
+not one. As for Mr. Oliver and Captain Awdry, they had only come for the
+first three days, and had both gone on the Saturday evening.
+
+Dick remembered one of the two men; a heavy-jawed, squarely-built young
+man, whose eyes were of pale green, whose chin never by any chance
+appeared to have been shaved since the day before yesterday, whose
+expression in repose was too demure for a man. This was Philip Robson,
+and Dick shook hands with him. The dapper little dark man Dick had never
+seen before. Whoever he was, he seemed to know Alice pretty well, by the
+way he promptly pestered her for a song.
+
+"So you have only recently returned from Australia, I understand,"
+Robson said to Dick. "I, too, am fresh from those parts. And I am told
+you came by sailing-ship--so did I--as surgeon."
+
+The dapper young gentleman at the other side of the room here made an
+inane remark in a loud tone about both being in the same boat, which was
+ignored by the worthy doctor and Dick, who stared. If they were
+listening they must have heard this wag informing Miss Bristo that she
+ought to laugh, and vowing that he would throw away no more good things
+in mere perishable words of mouth.
+
+"No," said Alice, "write them. It is far the best. The point is so much
+more easily seen in print; and then, instead of pearls wasted on us poor
+things, the whole world roars at them."
+
+"Sixty thousand people have the chance," Laurence Pinckney answered--in
+allusion, it was believed, to the circulation of "his" weekly paper.
+
+But he seemed to have nothing smart ready just then, for he went back to
+begging for a song.
+
+"Mr. Miles was somewhat tired, I presume, Dr. Robson?" Mrs. Parish was
+saying. "You see he had a great rush to come to-day. We only knew this
+morning, when we got his telegram--so thoughtful of him to send
+one!--that he had found it possible to come at all."
+
+"Yes. He appeared to me to be considerably fatigued--indeed, when he
+left us I thought him looking pale. I offered to mix him a little
+something that would fit him for to-morrow. But he wouldn't let me."
+
+Cousin Philip became professional on the slightest provocation.
+
+Dick was asking the Colonel about the sport so far.
+
+"Forty-eight brace the first day, forty-two the second; five guns; over
+dogs. But," added the Colonel, whispering, "my young friend over there
+hits nothing at all. Philip is fair; but as for me, I don't see as I
+used to. Awdry was the crack shot. But you and Miles will be a better
+pair than Awdry and Oliver."
+
+Dick and Miles--coupled! That silenced Dick. He felt his very skin
+bristle at the thoughts that poured in upon his mind.
+
+"Do you know Mr. Miles?"
+
+The question was put in a solemn undertone by Cousin Philip. Considering
+Dick's thoughts at that moment, it was almost a startling question. He
+waited a moment before replying.
+
+"Yes," he then said slowly, "I know him."
+
+"An interesting man," said the doctor, "a profoundly interesting man;
+that I can see, and I congratulate myself on making his acquaintance. I
+shall enjoy his society, I know. And a Colonial, too."
+
+"My dear fellow, Colonials are as good as any other people."
+
+Dick had often to tell people that; but the words were scarcely spoken
+before it struck him that, in this connection, they were a little
+incongruous.
+
+"They may be; they may be. But when I travelled for an insurance company
+in New Zealand, I know I didn't think so. We went round the
+stations--the agent and I--insuring people, you know."
+
+Dick did know. He had himself met with many such professional Samaritans
+in Riverina. They were not popular there.
+
+"Well," continued the young doctor, "I don't think we were always well
+treated. In some places they actually seemed to regard us with
+suspicion. We didn't meet with the least respect, I can assure you. Once
+or twice we were downright insulted. Now in England----"
+
+"Let us listen to this song," said Dick. Robson was really too
+ponderous.
+
+Alice had at last yielded to the importunities of Laurence Pinckney, and
+was singing something in French. That young gentleman turned over the
+leaves, but he did not look entirely appreciative. When the song was
+over, he complained of the French words. He wanted something in English;
+though he could not refrain from a trenchant and sweeping criticism of
+all the words of all the ballads and songs foisted on the musical world
+during this last decade of a degenerate age.
+
+There was no more singing, however; and presently the small party broke
+up.
+
+"Early hours for the moors," the Colonel said. "Philip, will you show
+Dick his room? I'm sorry we've had to put you outside, Dick; but there
+are more of us out than in, and there's really no choice. We all rough
+it when we go a-shooting."
+
+Dick laughed, and mentioned that the last few years had not made him
+luxurious. The Colonel was on the stairs, candle in hand. Dick would
+have liked to speak to him then and there, and tell him everything--but
+Robson was there too: an inquisitive fellow, unless Dick's memory was at
+fault; a man who would prick up his ears if he heard a private interview
+asked for in his presence. So Dick merely said:
+
+"I must be up early and look round. Shall I see you, sir, then?"
+
+"See me? Why, you'll find I've been about for a good hour before you
+dream of awaking! Take it easy, boy; you've been travelling all day. I'm
+different. I never slept longer than six hours in my life. Good-night,
+Dick; good-night, Philip;" and Colonel Bristo went off to bed.
+
+Edmonstone followed Robson out into the dark, comforting himself with
+the determination to tell Colonel Bristo everything before breakfast
+next morning. They walked for some moments, then stopped before a door
+that opened upon a flight of deal stairs. A candle and matches were on
+the bottom step. The good doctor discharged his duty to the full by
+lighting the candle and handing it to Dick.
+
+"It is the room on the left," said Robson.
+
+"Anyone in the room on the right?"
+
+"No, I think not--I'm sure not. You are over the stable and that;
+Pinckney and I are a few yards away, over the laundry. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, Robson. I say, Robson!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Who is Pinckney?"
+
+"Son of a brother officer of the Colonel's. Comes from town, I fancy."
+
+"What does he do--besides making an ass of himself?"
+
+"He writes, I think."
+
+"I'm not surprised; he's got cheek enough for anything! Good-night,
+Robson."
+
+
+
+
+                                   XX
+
+                            STRANGE HUMILITY
+
+
+Dick found his room plainly and scantily furnished but delightfully
+fresh, clean, and comfortable. There was but one narrow strip of carpet
+by the bedside, but the boards were as snowy as an admiral's poop; the
+narrow bed stood out into the middle of the room, to the left as you
+came in at the door. The ceiling, and the walls, and the blind, and the
+bed, and the tall new candles, and the dressing-table on which they
+stood, were all very white indeed. At the foot of the bed Dick found his
+portmanteau and gun-case, and the first thing he did was to put together
+his gun, and stand it in one corner of the room, ready for next day. He
+happened to stand it in the corner nearest the bed head, and farthest
+from the door; but there was no design in that: the whole action was
+mechanical.
+
+He undressed slowly, or rather he was long in beginning. He stood,
+resting his elbows on the chest of drawers, and his chin in his palms,
+and watched the candle burn half-way down before he so much as wound his
+watch. It was only the wick's last throes that reminded him to put an
+end to its flickering and get into bed. But by that time Dick's mind was
+made up. When he lay down to sleep he knew precisely what he was going
+to do first thing in the morning, and more or less what he meant to
+say. He fell quickly into a dreamless slumber.
+
+After sleeping like an infant for two or three hours he experienced
+something very like a dream, and that about the very man of whom he
+would certainly have dreamt sooner or later. But this was no dream. Dick
+was awakened: he lay still for a moment, peering through the darkness,
+and listening with all his ears. Then he started up in his bed, and
+called sternly:
+
+"Who is there? Who are you?"
+
+At the foot of the bed a tall figure loomed through the darkness. The
+challenge was answered: first with a short, soft laugh, then in the
+mildest tones of the man who had passed himself off as Miles the
+squatter.
+
+"Hush! I have come to explain."
+
+"Oh, it is you!" though Dick had known who it was from the moment the
+light, stealthy step disturbed him.
+
+"Yes; it isn't a burglar, so lie down again. I tell you I come with a
+frank explanation. I suppose you will listen to a man?"
+
+"Why should I? You have broken faith with me!"
+
+"It amounts to that, I own. It must seem to you that I deserve no
+further consideration at your hands. Very well; all I ask is a hearing."
+
+The tones were so unlike anything that could have been expected from the
+lips of this man that Edmonstone was taken aback; they were so low as to
+be scarcely audible; they were humble, and they were sad. It was this
+very humility that at first excited Dick's suspicion.
+
+"I will listen to you now," said he, after a moment's thought, "but it
+is the last thing I shall do for you. You might first strike a light.
+There are matches on the dressing-table behind you, and two candles, I
+think."
+
+Miles complied unsuspectingly with this reasonable request. He was some
+time, however, in finding the matches. Yet he heard no sound (Dick's arm
+was so long, so lithe his movement) until the candles were alight; when
+two loud clicks caused him to wheel suddenly round, throwing one
+candlestick with a crash to the floor.
+
+Dick was sitting up quietly in his bed, as he had been sitting a moment
+before; but in his hands was a double-barrelled gun--cocked--the butt
+not six inches from his shoulder, the muzzle not three feet from Miles's
+breast. It could be brought to the shoulder in a small fraction of a
+second. It could be fired with sufficient deadliness without being
+brought to the shoulder at all. A finger was upon each of the triggers.
+The light of the single candle glittered upon the barrels.
+
+"Now, my friend," said Dick, "I am ready to listen to you as long as you
+like."
+
+Miles stared fixedly at the hammers of the gun. He did not speak, he did
+not draw back. He stood there, in his shirt and trousers, motionless and
+silent. This was not, as we know, his first interview under arms, but it
+was the first in which the arms had been in the hands of the other side;
+moreover, he had once pressed a pistol to the head of this Edmonstone
+whose gun covered him now. The reversal of things was complete--the
+tables were turned to the last inch. The strange part of it was that the
+outwitted bushranger's face showed no trace of cunning baffled, or the
+fury of an animal at bay, which might have been expected of him. On the
+contrary, his countenance gradually filled with quite another
+expression--one of reproach.
+
+"I am not a fool," he said, speaking at last. "I was never yet fool
+enough to tackle a forlorn hope. Therefore, even if I had come into this
+room armed to the teeth to offer you violence, I should not dream of
+competing against those double-barrels. But as I came empty-handed, and
+in peace, I, for my part, can say all I have to say comfortably into
+their muzzles--they can make no difference to me, unless you press too
+hard on those triggers in your anxiety; and if you did, perhaps it would
+be the best turn you or any man could do me! At the same time you are
+treating me like a dog. The only words that have left my lips were as
+submissive as any victor need want; I turned my back on you without the
+smallest suspicion, yet turn round again to find you pointing a gun at
+me!"
+
+"You call that bad treatment!" Edmonstone sneered. "You forget, perhaps,
+that you have no business to be loose in the world; you forget that I
+found you out and shielded you, wrongly enough, on certain terms, which
+you have broken! Well, I am reminding you; but I am not likely to give
+you a second chance of playing me false. That is why I keep the sight of
+my gun in a line with your stud--so; that is why, if you come a step
+nearer, I won't answer for consequences."
+
+"Considering," said Miles, "how I treated you a few years ago, and what
+you owe to that treatment, I should have thought you might behave rather
+differently to-night; you might have shown a little generosity, outlaw
+as I am."
+
+"You remind me," said Dick, "that in '82, in the scrub near Balranald,
+you stuck up me and my mate, and took almost everything we had--except
+our money. I didn't require to be reminded of that forbearance of yours.
+I haven't forgotten it, and I know pretty well its worth by now, though
+hitherto I have overvalued it. But that old account--supposing it to be
+one, for argument's sake--was squared last month; you have been fool
+enough to open a new one."
+
+"It is a pity," said Miles, bitterly, "that I didn't let Jem Pound knife
+you!"
+
+"On the contrary, through saving me then you found one man in England
+actually ready to screen you from justice. If you had not broken faith
+with him that man would screen you still; but as it is--Steady! don't
+move! I am pressing the trigger."
+
+"Do you mean that you are going to betray me after all?" cried Miles, in
+a quick gasp of dismay, yet drawing back--he had taken a step forward in
+his agitation.
+
+"What else would you have me do? Give you another chance? Honestly,"
+cried Dick, with honesty in his tone, "I wish that I could! But can you
+expect it?"
+
+"Listen to me!" cried Miles, in a deep faltering voice. "Listen to me!"
+
+"I am listening."
+
+"The other day, then--I mean the night you found me out, you and those
+blood-suckers--I was on the brink of a new life! You smile--but before
+Heaven it is the truth! I had lived for weeks as I never lived
+before--among good people. Bad as I was, they influenced me, at first
+without my knowing it. It was a new side of life to me. I found it was
+the best side. I grew--well, call it happy. Then I looked back and
+loathed the old days. I began to map out a better life for myself. I was
+a new man, starting afresh. I thanked God for my escape, for it seemed
+like His act."
+
+"If the fellow isn't in earnest," thought Dick, "this is the worst
+blasphemy I ever heard. I half think he means what he says, poor
+wretch."
+
+"It was you that blotted out that new existence--just as it opened out
+before me! It was you that drove me from my haven! It was you that
+turned me adrift in a city full of foes! So much for your side of the
+balance between us!"
+
+Dick was half-carried away by the man's rough eloquence, and the note of
+pathos in his deep tones. But he was only half-carried away; he was a
+man hard to shift when his stand was once taken. His answer was shrewd:
+
+"That city is the safest place in the world for such as you--safer even
+than the bush. As to your friends, did you expect to live on them
+forever?"
+
+The other's vehemence was checked.
+
+"Perhaps you intended to become one of the family!" said Edmonstone
+scornfully, pursuing his advantage.
+
+Miles pulled himself together, and dismissed this keen question with a
+smile and a wave of the hand; but the smile faded quickly; nor had it
+been anything better than a ghastly mockery.
+
+"You do not appreciate my position," said Miles presently, fetching a
+deep sigh; "you cannot put yourself in my place. No honest man could, I
+suppose! And you shut me off from all decent living; you made me bid
+good-bye to the people who had befriended me, and somehow--well, made me
+wish I was a little less the ruffian! I became an outcast! I tried to
+make new friends, but failed. I had lost my nerve somehow--that was the
+worst of it! I resolved to throw it up, and quit England. I took my
+passage for New York, and--"
+
+"Do you mean what you say? Have you actually done that?"
+
+"Yes. The ticket is in my room, which is opposite this room." He pointed
+to the door. "I can bring it to show you."
+
+"No; stay where you are; I believe you. When do you sail?"
+
+"In a week--next Tuesday."
+
+Dick breathed more freely. Here was an extenuating circumstance of the
+broken compact. On the whole, Dick was glad to find one.
+
+"Go on," said Dick, in a slightly less hostile tone: "tell me the rest,
+and what it was that induced you to come up here."
+
+"Surely you can see the rest for yourself? Surely you can put yourself
+in my place at this point? I own that hearing you were not to be of the
+party finally induced me to come--I thought you would not hear of it
+till afterwards; but I came to bid my friends good-bye! to get one more
+glimpse of a kind of life I had never seen before and shall never see
+again! for one more week in a pure atmosphere."
+
+"Oh! not to make up to Miss Bristo, then?"
+
+Blunt though the words were, each one was a self-inflicted stab to the
+heart of the man that spoke them.
+
+"No!" cried Miles, and his voice was turned suddenly hoarse; "no, before
+Heaven!"
+
+"If I believed it was that, I think I should pull this trigger on the
+spot."
+
+"It is not," cried Miles; "I swear it is not," he whispered.
+
+And Dick believed him then.
+
+"Why, man," the bushranger went on, more steadily, "you have got me
+under the whip here. Down with the lash and cut me to ribbons the first
+time you see me playing false. Keep your eye on me; watch me all day; I
+can do nothing up here without your knowledge; I cannot speak but you
+will hear what it is I say. As to Miss Bristo, I will not go near
+her--but this is a small part of the whole. In my whole conduct you will
+find me behave like--like a changed man. Only let me stay this week out.
+But one other thing--a thing I would go down on my knees to you for, if
+that would do any good: don't open their eyes when I am gone. There will
+be no need to; they will forget me as Miles the squatter if you let
+them. Then let them. They think well of me because I saved the old man
+from drowning. Edmonstone, you can let me keep their good opinions if
+you will. God help me! they are the only good opinions I ever honestly
+earned, because I got them entirely through that simple, paltry affair
+at the seaside. Do not rob me of them, now or afterwards. That is all I
+ask."
+
+Dick was beginning to waver.
+
+There was an honest ring in Ned Ryan's asseverations; and after all it
+was just possible that a villain, who had shown a soft side at least
+once before, might be softened right through by the gracious influence
+of an English home. Then Sundown, the bushranger, desperado though he
+had been, had preserved hands unstained by blood; and Sundown the
+bushranger had saved him, Edmonstone, from death and ruin in the
+Australian wilds, and Colonel Bristo from drowning. Such acts could not
+be made light of or forgotten, no matter who was their author.
+
+Dick was relenting, and the other saw it.
+
+"Stay!" said Miles, suddenly. "You have my word only so far. I can show
+you a better pledge of good faith if you will let me."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"In my room."
+
+Edmonstone nodded. Miles left the room, and returned immediately with a
+paper, which he handed to Edmonstone.
+
+"Why, this is a receipt of passage-money for two!" said Edmonstone,
+looking up. "You are not going out alone, then?"
+
+"No," said Miles. His voice was low. His back was to the window, through
+which grey dawn was now stealing. It was impossible to see the
+expression on his face--its outline was all that was visible.
+
+"Who is going with you?"
+
+"My wife!" whispered Miles.
+
+Dick was taken aback, glad, incredulous.
+
+"Your wife!" he said. "Then you admit that she is your wife? When did
+you see her?"
+
+"Yesterday."
+
+"But not until then!" Dick meant to put a question; he did not succeed
+in his excitement--his tone was affirmative.
+
+"No, not until then," said Miles quietly; "because, though I have been
+watching her as closely as I dared, it was the first chance I got of
+seeing her without seeing Pound. He thinks she has not seen me since the
+night in Bushey Park. She must not escape him until the very day of
+joining me on board the steamer. If she did, he would find her sooner or
+later; and then he would find me, which is all he is living for. That
+man would murder me if he got the chance. Do you understand now?"
+
+Dick made no reply, but it all seemed clear and intelligible to him;
+Pound's hold upon Mrs. Ryan, and the false position in which that fiend
+placed the woman at the meeting of husband and wife, which accounted for
+Ryan's misunderstanding and heartless treatment of his wife on that
+occasion; the reconciliation of husband and wife; their projected
+departure for America; the necessity of deceiving Pound meanwhile, and
+getting away without his knowledge. All these things seemed natural
+enough; and, told in the desperately earnest tones of a strong man
+humbled, they carried conviction with them. Nor were they pleaded in
+vain.
+
+The way in which Dick finally put the matter was this:--
+
+"Remember," he said, "that it is for my friends' sake as much as for
+yours; that this is our second treaty; and that if you break one
+particle of it there are always four men in the house here, and
+villagers in plenty within a cooee of us."
+
+"I know all these things," said Miles, very humbly, "and will forget
+none of them."
+
+And so the interview ended.
+
+When Miles was gone, Dick lifted his gun, which had lain long upon the
+counterpane, pressed the lever, bent down the barrels, and aimed them at
+the glimmering window-blind. The early morning light shone right through
+the gleaming bores--the gun had been empty all the time! Dick felt
+ashamed of the part that it had played in the interview.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXI
+
+                             AN ALTERED MAN
+
+
+Colonel Bristo was rambling about the place, according to habit, for a
+good hour the next morning before the early breakfast, but he saw
+nothing of Dick until the bell rang for that meal.
+
+"I thought you meant turning out early?" said the old fellow to the
+young one, with a smile. "I've been looking for you in vain; but I'm
+glad you followed my advice and took it easy. Did you sleep well,
+though? That's the main thing; and 'pon my soul, you look as though you
+had been awake all night!"
+
+"Oh, I was all right, thanks, sir; I slept pretty well," said Dick, with
+awkward haste.
+
+The Colonel felt pretty sure that Dick had been all wrong, and slept not
+at all. There was a haggard look about him that put the fact beyond the
+contradiction of words.
+
+"You didn't see Miles, I suppose?" said the Colonel after a moment's
+thought. "His room is close to yours, you know."
+
+"I did see him. We--we exchanged a few words."
+
+Dick's tone and manner were strange.
+
+"Confound them both!" thought the Colonel. "They have clashed already.
+Yes, that is it. I wonder how it came about? I didn't think they were
+such implacable foes. Mrs. Parish hinted to me long ago that they were,
+and that it would be best not to have them here together. Is it all on
+Alice's account, I wonder? Anyway, it is by no scheme of mine that they
+are here together. Why, I wrote Miles a list of our little party without
+a word about Dick. I never thought Dick was coming. Yet I am glad now he
+is come."
+
+"It was really kind of you," said Colonel Bristo aloud, "to give in and
+come after all."
+
+"No," said Dick, with sudden fire. "I'm thankful I came! I am grateful
+to you for refusing to take my first refusal. Now that I am here, I
+would not be elsewhere at this moment for the whole world!"
+
+The Colonel was pleased, if a little puzzled, by this vehement outburst.
+
+"Are you really going out again--back to the bush?" he said presently.
+
+"Yes," said Dick, the fire within him quickly quenched. "I have quite
+settled that point--though I have told no one but you, Colonel Bristo."
+
+"Well, well--I think you are making a sad mistake; but of course every
+man decides for himself."
+
+That was all Colonel Bristo said just then, for he knew that the young
+people had barely seen one another as yet. But up on the moor, an hour
+or two later, when the guns divided, he felt inclined to say something
+sharp, for the manner in which Dick avoided shooting with Miles was
+rather too pointed, and a good deal too ridiculous and childish for the
+Colonel's fancy.
+
+That evening the conversation at the Colonel's dinner, and that around
+the beer-stained board--dedicated of an evening to the engrossing
+domino--in the inn at Gateby, were principally upon the selfsame
+topic--to wit, the excellence of Miles's shooting.
+
+"I can't conceive," said the Colonel, "seeing that you have never shot
+grouse in your life before, how you do it."
+
+"If I couldn't shoot straight," said the hero of the evening (for the
+bag that day was the biggest yet, thanks to Miles), "I ought to be shot
+myself. I was reared on gunpowder. In the bush--instead of the silver
+spoon in your mouth--you are born with a fire-arm in your hand!"
+
+Dick smiled grimly to himself. And yet this was the longest speech the
+Australian had made all the evening. Miles was strangely subdued,
+compared with what he had been at Graysbrooke. The Colonel and his
+daughter had each noticed this already; and as for Mrs. Parish, she was
+resolved to "speak up" on the subject to Alice, whom she blamed for it
+entirely.
+
+"Yon yoong man--him 't coomed las' night--t' long wan, I mean," declared
+Andy Garbutt in the pot-house, banging down his fourth glass (empty)
+upon the table, which upset several dominoes and led to "language"--"yon
+yoong man's t'bes' shot I iver seed. The way he picked off t'ould cocks,
+an' let be t'yoongsters an' all, was sumthink clever. I niver seed owt
+like it. They do say 'tis his first taast o' t'mowers--but we isn't the
+lads to swaller yon! Bob Rutter, y' ould divle--fill oop t' glasses."
+
+And though perhaps, hyperbole ran riot upon the heels of intoxication,
+still in Robert Rutter's genial hostelry "t' long chap's" reputation was
+there and then established.
+
+But the marked change in Miles's manner was, to those who had known him
+best before, inexplicable. Never had a shooting-party a more modest,
+mild, and unassuming member, even among the worst of shots; and Miles
+was, if anything, better than Captain Awdry. His quiet boastfulness was
+missing. He might have passed the weeks since the beginning of July in
+some school of manners, where the Colonial angles had been effectually
+rounded off, and the old free-and-easy habits toned down. Not that he
+was shy or awkward--Miles was not the man to become either the one or
+the other; but his manner had now--towards the Colonel, for instance,
+and Alice--a certain deference-with-dignity, the lack of which had been
+its worst fault before. Dick, who scarcely spoke three words to him in
+as many days, suddenly awoke to a sense of relief and security.
+
+"Poor fellow!" he thought, "he is keeping his word this time, I must
+own. Well, I am glad I didn't make a scene; and the week is half over.
+When it is quite over, I shall be still more glad that I let him off.
+For, after all, I owe him my life. I am sorry I threatened him during
+our interview, and perhaps I need not have avoided him so studiously
+since. Yet I am watching him, and he knows it. I watch him sometimes
+when he cannot possibly know it, and for the life of me I can see
+nothing crooked. My belief is that he's only too thankful to get off on
+the terms, and that he wouldn't break them for as much as his life is
+worth; besides which, his remorse the other night was genuine."
+
+Mrs. Parish, for her part, was quite sure that it was love unrequited
+with Mr. Miles, and nothing else. She fumed secretly for two days, and
+then "spoke up" according to her intention. What she said was not well
+received, and a little assault-at-words was the result.
+
+Dr. Robson told Mr. Pinckney that he found Miles a less interesting man
+to talk to than he had been led to expect from his conversation the
+first evening. Mr. Pinckney replied that if all the Australians were as
+unsociable, he was glad he didn't live out there. Though Miles, he said,
+might be a fine sportsman and a devilish handsome dog, there was
+evidently "nothing in him;" by which it was meant that he was not
+intellectual and literary--like L. P.
+
+Colonel Bristo was fairly puzzled, but, on the whole, he liked the new
+Miles rather less than the old.
+
+As for Alice, though she did her best to exclude her personal feelings
+from the pages of her diary, she could not help just touching on this
+matter.
+
+"I never," she wrote, "saw anybody so much changed as Mr. Miles, and in
+so short a time. Though he is certainly less amusing than we used to
+think him, I can't help admitting that the change is an improvement. His
+audacity, I remember, carried him a little too far once or twice before
+he left us. But he was a hero all the time, in spite of his faults, and
+now he is one all the more. Oh, I can never forget what we owe to him!
+To me he is most polite, and not in the least (as he sometimes used to
+be) familiar, I am thankful to say. The more I think of it the less I
+can account for his strange behaviour that night of our dance--because
+it was so unlike what he had been up till then, and what he is now."
+
+Of Dick this diary contained no mention save the bald fact of his
+arrival. There was, indeed, a sentence later on that began with his
+name, but the few words that followed his name were scored out so
+carefully as to be illegible. The fact was that the estrangement between
+the pair was well-nigh hopeless. They conversed together, when they did
+converse, with mutual effort. Dick found himself longing to speak--to
+ask her forgiveness before he went--but without opportunity or
+encouragement. Alice, on the other hand, even if ready to meet an
+overture half-way, was the last person in the world to invite one. Under
+the conditions of the first few days, meeting only at breakfast and
+dinner, and for an hour or so in the drawing-room afterwards, these two
+might have been under one roof for weeks without understanding one
+another a whit the better.
+
+But meanwhile, Alice seemed to benefit very little by her change from
+the relaxing Thames valley to the bracing Yorkshire moors; and as for
+Dick--except when the Colonel was present, for whose sake he did make an
+effort to be hearty--he was poor company, and desperately moody. He was
+also short-tempered, as Philip Robson found out one morning when they
+were tramping over the moor together. For Cousin Philip was sufficiently
+ill-advised to inform his companion that he, Dr. Robson, thought him
+looking far from well--at a moment when no good sportsman would have
+opened his mouth, unless in businesslike reference to the work in hand.
+
+"I'm all right, thanks," Dick answered shortly, and with some contempt.
+
+"Ah!" said Philip, compassionately, "perhaps you are not a very good
+judge of your own health; nor can you know how you look. Now, as a
+medical man--"
+
+"Spare me, my dear fellow. Go and look at all the tongues of the
+village, if you must keep your eye in. They'll be charmed. As for me, I
+tell you I don't want--I mean, I'm all right."
+
+"As a medical man," pursued Philip, "I beg to dif--"
+
+"Hang it!" cried Dick, now fairly irritated. "We didn't come out for a
+consultation, did we? When I want your advice, Robson, you'll hear from
+me."
+
+With such men as Robson, if they don't feel the first gentle snub (and
+the chances are all against it), anything short of an insult is waste of
+breath. Yet, having driven you into being downright offensive, they at
+once turn sensitive, and out with their indignation as though they had
+said nothing to provoke you. Witness the doctor:
+
+"I thought," he cried, beginning to tremble violently, "I came out with
+a gentleman! I meant what I said for your good--it was pure kindness on
+my part, nothing else. I thought--I thought--"
+
+At that point he was cut short; for Edmonstone had lost his temper,
+turned on his heel with a short, sharp oath, and made Philip Robson his
+enemy from that minute.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXII
+
+                              EXTREMITIES
+
+
+That same evening (it was on the Thursday), on his return from shooting,
+Dick Edmonstone found, among the other letters on the table in the
+passage, one addressed to himself in a strange hand. The writing was
+bad, but characteristic in its way; Dick had certainly never seen it
+before. The envelope bore a London postmark. He took the letter into the
+little back room, the gunroom, and sat down to read it alone.
+
+Twilight was deep in this room, for the window was in an angle of the
+house, facing eastward, and was overshadowed by the foliage of a
+fair-sized oak. Some out-lying small branches of this tree beat gently
+against the upper pane; the lower sash was thrown up. The window was
+several feet above the ground. The corner below was a delightful spot,
+shaded all day from the sun; a basket-work table and chair were always
+there, for the nook was much affected by Mrs. Parish, and even by Alice,
+in the hot, long, sleepy afternoons.
+
+Edmonstone had read to the end of his letter, when the door opened and
+Miles entered the room. Dick looked up and greeted him: "This is lucky.
+I was just coming to look for you. I want to speak to you."
+
+The other's astonishment was unconcealed. Since the small hours of
+Tuesday the two had not exchanged a dozen words. Edmonstone had avoided
+Miles on the moor, and elsewhere watched him as a terrier watches a rat
+in a trap. Miles could not guess what was coming.
+
+"I have a letter here that will interest you," said Dick. "Listen to
+this:
+
+    "'Dear Edmonstone,--I thought I'd look you up yesterday, as I
+    had nothing on, but, like my luck, I found you away. Your
+    people, however, treated me handsomely, and I stayed all the
+    afternoon. We talked Australia; and this brings me to the reason
+    of my writing to you. Your people told me of a rather mysterious
+    Australian who stayed some time with the people you are with
+    now, and went out again very suddenly at the beginning of last
+    month. His name was Miles; your sister described him to me, and
+    the description struck me as uncommon like that of a well-known
+    gentleman at present wanted by the police of the Colony. The
+    fact is, I have stumbled across an old mate of mine (a sergeant
+    in the mounted police), who is over here after this very gent,
+    and who I am helping a bit in the ready-money line. As he is
+    working on the strict q.t., I must not tell you whom he's after.
+    In fact, it's all on my own account I am writing you. I haven't
+    told him anything about it. It's my own idea entirely, and I
+    want you to tell me just this: Have your friends heard anything
+    of this Miles since he left them? because I've been making
+    inquiries, and found that no such name as Miles has been booked
+    for a passage out at any of the London offices during the past
+    two months! Of course I may have got hold of a wild-goose
+    notion; but Miss Edmonstone told me that your friends made this
+    Miles's acquaintance in an offhand kind of a way, and nobody
+    else knew anything about him. Anyway, I'll wait till I hear from
+    you before telling Compton, who's down at the seaside on a fresh
+    clue.--Yours faithfully, Stephen Biggs.'"
+
+"What name was that?" asked Miles quickly. He had listened calmly to the
+end. But at the very end the colour had suddenly fled from his face.
+
+"Biggs--the Hon. Stephen, M. L. C. A warm man for a campaign, rich as
+Croesus. If he's set his heart upon having you, he'll chase you round
+and round the world----"
+
+"No. I mean the other man--the name of the sergeant."
+
+Dick referred to the letter.
+
+"Compton," he said.
+
+"Compton!" repeated Miles in a whisper. "The only 'trap' in Australia I
+ever feared--the only man in the world, bar Pound, I have still to fear!
+Compton! my bitterest enemy!"
+
+Edmonstone rose from the armchair in which he had been sitting, sat down
+at the table, opened a blotter, and found a sheet of notepaper.
+
+"Must you answer now?" cried Miles.
+
+"Yes; on the spot."
+
+"What do you mean to say?"
+
+"I have not decided. What would you say in my place? I am a poor liar."
+
+"If we changed places, and I had treated you as you have treated me
+these two days--since our compact--I should write them the worst, and
+have done with it," said Miles, in a low tone of intense bitterness.
+"You professed to trust me. Yet you won't trust yourself near me on the
+moors; you fear foul play at my hands. You watch me like a lynx here at
+the house; yet I swear man never kept promise as I am keeping mine now!
+You do things by halves, Edmonstone. You had better end the farce, and
+wire the truth to your friend."
+
+Reproach mingled with resignation in the last quiet words. Edmonstone
+experienced a twinge of compunction.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said. "I should be a fool if I didn't watch you--worse
+than a fool to trust you. But betraying you is another matter. I don't
+think of doing that, unless----"
+
+"I can keep my word, Edmonstone, bad as I may be! Besides, I am not a
+fool."
+
+"And you are going on Monday?"
+
+"Yes--to sail on Tuesday; you have seen my ticket."
+
+"Then you shall see my answer to this letter."
+
+Dick then dashed off a few lines. He handed the sheet, with the ink
+still wet, to Miles, who read these words:
+
+    "Dear Biggs,--A false scent, I am afraid. Ladies are never
+    accurate; you have been misinformed about Miles. I knew him
+    in Australia! He cannot be the man you want.--Yours
+    sincerely,
+                                                "R. Edmonstone."
+
+The sheet of writing paper fluttered in Miles's hand. For one moment an
+emotion of gratitude as fierce as that which he himself had once
+inspired in the breast of Edmonstone, swelled within his own.
+
+"You are a friend indeed," he murmured, handing back the letter. "And
+yet your friendship seems like madness!"
+
+"My old mate swears that I am mad on the subject!"
+
+Dick folded and enclosed his note in an envelope, directed it, and got
+up to go. Miles followed him to the door and wrung his hand in silence.
+
+When the door was closed upon Edmonstone, Miles sank into the armchair,
+and closed his eyes.
+
+His expression was human then; it quickly hardened, and his face
+underwent complete transformation. A moment later it was not a pleasant
+face to look upon. The ugliness of crime had disfigured it in a flash.
+The devils within him were unchained for once, and his looks were as
+ugly as his thoughts.
+
+"Curse it!"--he was thinking--"I must be losing my nerve: I get heated
+and flurried as I never did before. Yet it was not altogether put on, my
+gratitude to this young fellow: I do feel some of it. Nor were they all
+lies that I told him the other night; I am altered in some ways. I
+believe it was that spice of truth that saved me--for saved I am so far
+as he is concerned. Anyway, I have fooled him rather successfully, and
+he'll know it before he has done with me! True, I did not bargain to
+meet him here, after what the Colonel wrote; but I flatter myself I made
+the best of it--I can congratulate myself upon every step. No; one was
+a false step: I was an idiot to show him the passage-money receipt; it
+was telling him the name and line of the steamer and opening up the
+track for pursuit when we are gone. And yet, and yet--I could not have
+laid a cleverer false scent if I had tried! Instead of money flung away,
+that passage-money will turn out a glorious investment; we'll show a
+clean pair of heels in the opposite direction, while our good friends
+here think of nothing but that one steamer! And so, once more,
+everything is turning out well, if only I can keep this up three days
+longer; if only Jem Pound and Frank Compton do not trouble me; if
+only--if only I am not mistaken and misled as to the ease with which I
+may carry off--my prize!"
+
+And strange to say, as he thought of that final coup, the villainy faded
+out of his face--though the act contemplated was bad enough, in all
+conscience!
+
+All at once a creaking noise startled Miles. He rose from his chair, and
+crossed with swift noiseless steps over to the window. A man was lifting
+himself gingerly from the basket-work chair--the man was Philip Robson.
+
+Miles leant out of the window, seized him by the collar, and drew him
+backward with a thud against the wall below the window.
+
+"Eavesdropper! listener!" hissed Miles; and quick as lightning he
+changed his hold from the doctor's collar to the doctor's wrists, which
+he grabbed with each iron hand and drew upward over the sill.
+
+The sill was more than six feet from the ground. The doctor stood on
+tiptoe--helpless--in a trap. The doctor's face was white and guilty.
+The doctor's tongue was for the moment useless.
+
+"What were you doing there?" Miles demanded quietly, but with a nasty
+look about the eyes.
+
+"I--I had been asleep. I came back early from the moors because
+Edmonstone insulted me. I was just awake. Let go my hands, will you? I
+heard something--a very little--I could not help it. What do you mean by
+holding my wrists like this? Leave loose of them, I say!"
+
+"Then tell me what you heard."
+
+"Something that I could not understand. If you don't let me go this
+instant, I'll sing out!"
+
+"Will you stand and talk sensibly, and listen to what I tell you?"
+
+"Yes, I swear I will."
+
+"There, then, you're free. Now I'll just tell you, in effect, what you
+did hear," said Miles, whose inventive brain had been busy from the
+moment he had discovered Robson. "You heard Edmonstone speak to me as
+though I was a villain: well, he firmly believes I am one. You heard him
+read me a letter from some one 'wanting' me: he has read me many such
+letters. I believe you heard me asking him in effect not to tell any
+one, and thanking him: this is what I make a point of doing. The fact
+is, Edmonstone is under the delusion that I am a man who robbed him in
+Australia. This is what's the matter!"
+
+Miles tapped his forehead significantly.
+
+"You don't mean it!" cried Robson, starting back.
+
+"I do; but not so loud, man. His friends don't suspect anything; they
+needn't know; it's only on this one point. What, didn't you hear our
+last words? I said, 'It seems like madness.' He answered, 'My old
+mate'--meaning the man who was with him at the time of the robbery--'my
+old mate,' he says, 'swears that I am mad on that subject.'"
+
+"Whew!" whistled the doctor. "Yes, I heard that."
+
+"It speaks for itself, eh? But I put it to you as a medical man," said
+Miles, rising still more fully to the occasion, and remembering the
+doctor's weak point: "I put it to you as a medical man--has there not
+been something strange about his manner?"
+
+Robson thought at once of the disagreeable incident of the morning.
+
+"There has, indeed," he said, without hesitation; "I have noticed it
+myself!"
+
+Even Miles marvelled at his own adroitness; he was elated, and showed it
+by fetching a deep sigh.
+
+"Poor Edmonstone! he is quite touched on the point. Perhaps the affair
+brought on a fever at the time, for he is an excitable fellow, and that
+would account for it."
+
+"But is he safe?" asked Robson, eagerly. "He can't be!"
+
+"Oh, yes, he is; quite. I repeat, it is only on that one point, and
+nobody knows it here. And, mind, you are not to breathe a word of it to
+any single soul!"
+
+Philip was entirely taken in for the time being; but his silence was
+another matter. That could only be pardoned, even on short lease, by an
+apology from the rude Colonial. The doctor's wrists smarted yet; his
+self-esteem was still more sore.
+
+"I am so likely," said he, with fine irony, "to do your bidding after
+the manner in which you have treated me!"
+
+"Call it taking my hint," said Miles, with a nasty expression in the
+eyes again. "You will find it a hint worth acting upon."
+
+"You had no business to treat me as you did. It was a gross outrage!"
+said the doctor, haughtily.
+
+"Come, now, I apologise. It arose from my irritation on Edmonstone's
+account, at the thing getting out. For his sake, you must indeed promise
+to hold your tongue."
+
+"Very well," said Philip Robson, reluctantly; "I--I promise."
+
+And he meant at the time to keep his promise, if he could. In fact, he
+did keep it. For a little calm reflection, away from the glamour thrown
+by Miles's plausibility, and in the sober light of Philip's own
+professional knowledge, served to weaken the case of insanity against
+Dick Edmonstone. At the same time, reflection strengthened Edmonstone's
+case against Miles, though Robson had only oblique information as to the
+specific nature of that case. But at any rate there was no harm in
+opening the letter-box (which was cleared in the morning) late at night,
+and sending just one anonymous line to the same name and address as
+those upon the envelope directed in Edmonstone's hand. If Miles was
+really a forger of some kind, and Edmonstone was really shielding him,
+then there was an excellent chance of scoring off them both at once.
+And Philip Robson had contracted a pretty strong grudge against both
+these men since morning.
+
+Meanwhile Miles remained subdued and pensive, furtively attentive, but
+extremely humble, towards Miss Bristo, and talkative to one person
+only--Mrs. Parish. He was indeed, as he said, no fool. He was full of
+cunning and coolness, foresight and resource. He was biding his
+time--but for what?
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXIII
+
+                       THE EFFECT OF A PHOTOGRAPH
+
+
+Laurence Pinckney was a hopeless sportsman. When he realised this for
+himself he laid down his gun, and presently took up with Miss Bristo's
+camera as a weapon better suited to him.
+
+Alice had made no use of the apparatus for weeks and weeks; it was sent
+down with other luggage without her knowledge, and she never thought of
+unpacking it until Mr. Pinckney pleaded for instruction; when--perhaps
+because Alice felt that without an occupation this visitor would be on
+her hands all day--he did not plead in vain. He did not, however,
+require many lessons. He knew something about it already, having given
+the subject some attention (in the reading room of the British Museum)
+before writing one of his rollicking articles. Nor were the lessons she
+did give him much of a nuisance to Alice, for when he forgot to talk
+about his work, and refrained from coruscation, there was no more
+sensible and polite companion than Laurence Pinckney.
+
+When, therefore, he set out on that Friday's ramble, which produced one
+really good negative, and a number of quaint little Arcadian
+observations jotted down in his notebook, it was with the entire
+photographic impedimenta slung about his person, and some idea in his
+head of an article on "The North Yorkshire Dales," to be illustrated by
+the writer's own photographs.
+
+His destination was a certain ancient abbey, set in gorgeous scenery,
+eight long miles from Gateby. But long before he got there a hollow of
+the plain country road tempted him, and he fell.
+
+It was quite an ordinary bit of road; a tall hazel-hedge, and a pathway
+high above the road on the left; on the right, a fence with trees beyond
+it, one of them, an oak of perfect form, that stood in the foreground,
+being of far greater size than most of the trees in this district, and
+in strong contrast to its neighbours. That was really all. It never
+would have been picturesque, nor have taken our artist's fancy, but for
+the sunlight on the wet road and the fleecy pallor of the sky where it
+met the sharp line of distant dark blue hills far away over the
+hazel-hedge, to the left. But the sunlight was the thing. It came, as
+though expressly ordered, from, so to say, the left wing. It rested
+lightly on the hedge-tops. It fell in a million golden sparks on the
+shivering leaves of the old oak. But it cleared the deep-cut road at a
+bound, leaving it dark. Only a long way further on, where the bend to
+the right began, did his majesty deign to step down upon the road; and
+just there, because everything was wet from last night's rain, it was a
+road of silver.
+
+No sooner, however, was the picture focussed than the sun, which made it
+what it was, disappeared behind a cloud--a favourite and mischievous
+dodge of his for the mortification of the amateur photographer.
+
+Now, while Pinckney waited for the sun to come out again, which he saw
+was going to happen immediately, and while he held in his fingers the
+pneumatic ball connected with the instantaneous shutter, two figures
+appeared at the bend of the road that had been silver track a moment
+before. They were a man and a woman, trudging along with the width of
+the road between them. Pinckney watched them with painful interest. If
+the cloud cleared the sun at that moment they would be horribly in the
+way, for worse clouds were following on the heels of this one, and the
+opportunity must be seized. There was nothing, of course, to prevent his
+taking the tramps as they walked--no, it would spoil the picture. Stay,
+though; it would add human interest. But the cloud did not pass so
+rapidly after all, and the man and woman drew near the camera.
+
+There was something peculiar in the appearance of the man that struck
+Pinckney at once as un-English. This peculiarity was difficult to
+localise. It was not in his clothes, which indeed looked new, but it was
+partly in his heavy face, smooth-shaven and suntanned, partly in his
+slow, slouching, methodical walk, and very much in his fashion of
+carrying his belongings. Instead of the pudding-like bundle of the
+English tramp he carried across his shoulders a long, neatly-strapped
+cylinder, the outer coating of which was a blanket. About the woman, on
+the other hand, there was nothing to strike the attention. Pinckney's
+first glance took in, perhaps, the fact that her black skirt was torn
+and draggled, and her black bodice in startling contrast to her white
+face; but that could have been all.
+
+Back came the sun, in a hurry, to the hedge-top and the oak-tree, and
+the distant curve of the road. Pinckney had decided in favour of the
+tramps in his picture, but they were come too near. He requested them in
+his blandest tones to retrace a few steps. To his immense surprise he
+was interrupted by a sullen oath from the man, who at once quickened his
+steps forward, motioning to the woman to do the same.
+
+"Thankee for nothing, and be hanged to you! Wait till we pass, will
+you?"
+
+If Pinckney had wanted further assurance that the man was a foreign
+element, these sentences should have satisfied him; for your honest
+British rustic is not the man to reject the favours of the camera, be
+they never so promiscuous and his chance of beholding the result never
+so remote.
+
+Pinckney's answer, however, was a prompt pressure of the pneumatic ball
+in his hand--a snap-shot at short range, the click of which did not
+escape the sharp ears of the strange-looking, heavily-built old man.
+
+"Have you took us?" asked he fiercely.
+
+"Oh no," replied the photographer, without a blush, "I'm waiting till
+you pass; look sharp, or I'll lose the sun again!"
+
+The man scowled, but said no more. Next moment he passed by on one side
+of the camera, and the woman on the other. Pinckney looked swiftly from
+one to the other, and marked well the face of each. That of the man
+repelled him, as bull-dog jaws upon a thick, short neck and small,
+cruel-looking glittering eyes would repel most of us, even without this
+man's vile expression. The man was tall and broad, but bent, and he
+looked twenty years older at close quarters than at a distance. The
+woman, on the other hand, was young, but so worn, and pinched, and
+soured, and wearied that you had to look closely to find a trace of
+youth. She never raised her eyes from the ground as she walked; but
+Pinckney made sure they were dark eyes, for the well-formed eyebrows
+were blue-black, like a raven's feather. Her wrist-bone showed
+prominently--seeming to be covered by little more than skin--as she
+caught together the shawl at her bosom with her left hand; a plain gold
+hoop was on its third finger.
+
+Pinckney watched the pair out of sight, still walking with the whole
+road between them.
+
+"That brute," muttered Pinckney, "beats his wife!"
+
+And then he exposed another plate from the same position, packed up the
+apparatus, and went his way.
+
+Some hours later--towards evening, in fact--as Pinckney returned from
+his ruined abbey and came in sight of Gateby, the rain--which had
+gathered during the afternoon--came down from the leaden twilit sky in
+earnest. It rains violently in the dales; and the photographer, hungry
+though he was, and more than ready for dinner, saw no reason for getting
+wet to the skin when the village was within a stone's-throw, and the
+shooting-box half-a-mile further on. He burst into the inn for shelter;
+and honest Robert Rutter conducted him to the private parlour with
+peculiar satisfaction, having been intimate with Gateby rain many
+years, and knowing also a thing or two about the appetites of gentlemen
+from the south.
+
+Pinckney, left alone, examined the room. It was gaudily carpeted,
+uncomfortably furnished, stuffy for want of use and air, and crowded
+with gimcracks. Foxes and birds, in huge cases, were perilously balanced
+on absurd little tables. The walls were covered with inflamed-looking
+prints, the place of honour being occupied by portraits of mine host and
+hostess unrecognisable. The large square centre-table was laid out in
+parterres of books never opened. In fact, the parlour was not what you
+would have expected of the remote dales. For this very reason, perhaps,
+that realist Pinckney took particular pains over the description which
+was promptly set down in his note-book. The landlord coming in during
+the writing, moreover, the poor man's words were taken out of his mouth
+and set down red-hot, and on the phonetic principle, in a parenthesis.
+
+This visit of Rutter's resulted subsequently in a heavy supper of ham
+and eggs and beer, and a fire in the parlour, before which Pinckney
+contentedly smoked, listening to the rain, which was coming down indeed
+in torrents.
+
+It was while this easy-going youth was in the most comfortable
+post-prandial condition that the voices in a room, separated from the
+parlour only by a narrow passage, grew loud enough to be distinctly
+audible in it. Up to this point the conversation had been low and
+indistinct, occasional laughter alone rising above an undertone; now the
+laughter was frequent and hearty. The reasons were that the room in
+question was the tap-room, and the fourth round of beer was already
+imbibed. One voice--in which the local accents were missed--led the
+talk; the rest interjaculated.
+
+Mr. Pinckney pricked up his ears, and of course whipped out the
+insatiable note-book. Simultaneously, in the kitchen, connected with the
+tap-room on the opposite side, the landlord and his wife, with the
+schoolmaster and his, were bending forward, and solemnly listening to
+the stranger's wild stories, with the door ajar. Thus the glib-tongued
+personage had more listeners, and more sober listeners, than he was
+aware of.
+
+"Sharks?" he was saying. "Seen sharks? You bet I have! Why, when I was
+or'nary seaman--betwixt Noocastle, Noo South Wales and 'Frisco it was;
+with coals--we counted twenty-seven of 'em around the ship the morning
+we was becalmed in three south. And that afternoon young Billy
+Bunting--the darling of our crew he was--he fell overboard, and was
+took. Took, my lads, I say! Nothin' left on'y a patch of red in the blue
+water and a whole set of metal buttons when we landed Mister John Shark
+next morning." (Sensation.) "And that's gospel. But the next shark as we
+got--and we was becalmed three weeks that go--the skipper he strung him
+up to the spanker-boom, an' shot his blessed eyes out with a revolver;
+'cause little Billy had been pet of the ship, d'ye see? And then we let
+him back into the briny; and a young devil of an apprentice dived over
+and swam rings round him, 'cause he couldn't see; and it was the best
+game o' blindman's buff ever you seed in your born days." (Merriment.)
+"What! Have ye never heard tell o' the shark in Corio Bay, an' what he
+done? Oh, but I'll spin that yarn."
+
+And spin it he did; though before he had got far the landlady exchanged
+glances with the schoolmaster's lady, and both good women evinced
+premonitory symptoms of sickness, so that the worthy schoolmaster
+hastily took "his missis" home, and hurried back himself to hear the
+end.
+
+"A sailor," said Pinckney, listening in the parlour; "and even at that
+an admirable liar."
+
+He went out into the passage, and peeped through the chink of the door
+into the tap-room. In the middle of the long and narrow table, on which
+the dominoes for once lay idle, stood one solitary tallow candle, and
+all around were the shadowy forms of rustics in various attitudes of
+breathless attention--it was a snake-story they were listening to now;
+and the face of the narrator, thrust forward close to the sputtering
+wick, was the smooth, heavy, flexible face of the man whom Pinckney had
+photographed unawares on the road.
+
+Pinckney went softly back to the parlour, whistling a low note of
+surprise.
+
+"No wonder I didn't recognise the voice! That voice is put on. The surly
+growl he gave me this morning in his natural tone. He's making up to the
+natives; or else the fellow's less of a brute when he's drunk, and if
+that's so, some philanthropist ought to keep him drunk for his natural
+life. The terms might be mutual. 'I keep you in drink, in return for
+which you conduct yourself like a Christian,--though an intoxicated one,
+to me and all men.'"
+
+"Who is that customer?" Pinckney asked of Bob Rutter, as they settled up
+outside on the shining flags--shining in the starlight; for the heavy
+rain had suddenly stopped, and the sky as suddenly cleared, and the
+stars shone out, and a drip, drip, drip fell upon the ear from all
+around, and at each breath the nostril drew in a fragrance sweeter than
+flowers.
+
+"He's a sailor," said honest Rutter; "that's all I know; I don't ask no
+questions. He says his last voyage was to--Australia, I think they call
+it--and back."
+
+"I saw he was a sailor," said Pinckney.
+
+"He asked," continued Rutter, "if there was anybody from them parts
+hereabout; and I said not as I knowed on, till I remembered waddycallum,
+your crack shot, up there, and tould him; and he seemed pleased."
+
+"Has he nobody with him?" asked Pinckney, remembering the wan-faced
+woman.
+
+"Yes--a wife or sumthink."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"In t'blacksmith's shed."
+
+Rutter pointed to a low shed that might have been a cow-house, but in
+point of fact contained a forge and some broken ploughshares.
+
+"Landlord," said Pinckney, severely, "you ought to turn that low
+blackguard out, and not take another farthing of his money until he
+finds the woman a fit place to sleep in!"
+
+And with that young Pinckney splashed indignantly out into the darkness,
+and along the watery road to the shooting-box. There he found everyone
+on the point of going to bed. He was obliged, for that night, to keep to
+himself the details of his adventures; but, long after the rest of the
+premises were in darkness, a ruby-coloured light burned in Mr.
+Pinckney's room; he had actually the energy to turn his dry-plates into
+finished negatives before getting into bed, though he had tramped
+sixteen miles with accoutrements! Not only that, but he got up early,
+and had obtained a sun-print of each negative before going over to
+breakfast. His impatience came of his newness to photography; it has
+probably been experienced by every beginner in this most fascinating of
+crafts.
+
+These prints he stowed carefully in his pocket, closely buttoning his
+coat to shield them from the light. At breakfast he produced them one by
+one, and handed them round the table on the strict understanding that
+each person should glance at each print for one second only. They were
+in their raw and perishable state; but a few seconds' exposure to the
+light of the room, said the perpetrator, would not affect them. In
+truth, no one wished to look at them longer; they were poor productions:
+the light had got in here, the focus was wrong in that one. But Mr.
+Pinckney knew their faults, and he produced the last print, and the
+best, with the more satisfaction.
+
+"This one," said he, "will astonish you. It's a success, though I say
+it. Moreover, it's the one I most wanted to come out well--a couple of
+tramps taken unawares. This print you must look at only half-a-second
+each."
+
+He handed it to Alice, who pronounced it a triumph--as it was--and
+glanced curiously at the downcast face of the woman in the foreground.
+She handed it to the doctor, sitting next her. The doctor put the print
+in his uncle's hand, at the head of the table. The Colonel's comment was
+good-natured. He held out the print to Miles, who took it carelessly
+from him, and leant back in his chair.
+
+Now as Miles leant back, the sunlight fell full upon him. It streamed
+through a narrow slit of a window at the end of the room--the big
+windows faced southwest--and its rays just missed the curve of
+table-cloth between the Colonel and Miles. But on Miles the rays fell:
+on his curly light-brown hair, clear dark skin, blond beard and
+moustache; and his blue eyes twinkled pleasantly under their touch. As
+he idly raised the print, leaning back in the loose rough jacket that
+became him so well, the others there had never seen him more handsome,
+tranquil, and unconcerned.
+
+Miles raised the print with slow indifference, glanced at it, jerked it
+suddenly upward, and held it with both hands close before his eyes. They
+could not see his face. But the sunlight fell upon the print, and
+Pinckney cried out an excited protest:
+
+"Look out, I say! Hold it out of the sun, please! Give it here, you'll
+spoil the print!"
+
+But Miles did not heed, even if he heard. The square of paper was
+quivering, though held by two great strong hands. All that they could
+see of Miles's face behind it was the brow: it was deeply scored across
+and across--it was pale as ashes.
+
+A minute passed; then the print was slowly dropped upon the table. No
+print now: only a sheet of glossy reddish-brown paper.
+
+Miles burst into a low, harsh laugh.
+
+"A good likeness!" he said slowly. "But it has vanished, clean gone,
+and, I fear, through my fault. Forgive me, Pinckney, I didn't understand
+you. I thought the thing was finished. I know nothing about such
+things--I'm an ignorant bushman"--with a ghastly smile--"but I
+thought--I couldn't help thinking, when it vanished like that--that it
+was all a hoax!"
+
+He pushed back his chair, and stalked to the door. No one spoke--no one
+knew what to say--one and all, they were mystified. On the threshold
+Miles turned, and looked pleadingly towards the Colonel and Alice.
+
+"Pray forgive me, I am covered with shame; but--but it was strangely
+like some one--some one long dead," said Miles, hoarsely--and slowly,
+with the exception of the last four words, which were low and hurried.
+And with that he went from the room, and cannoned in the passage against
+Dick Edmonstone, who was late for breakfast.
+
+That day, the champion from Australia shot execrably, which was
+inexplicable; and he kept for ever casting sudden glances over his
+shoulders, and on all sides of him, which was absurd.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXIV
+
+                          THE EFFECT OF A SONG
+
+
+Late that afternoon, in Robert Rutter's meadow at the back of the inn, a
+man and a woman stood in close conversation. The man was Jem Pound, the
+woman Elizabeth Ryan.
+
+"Then you have not seen him yet?"
+
+"No, not yet; I have had no chance."
+
+"You mean that you have been drunk, Jem Pound!"
+
+"Not to say drunk, missis. But I've been over to a town called
+Melmerbridge, and I went a long way round so as not to cross the moor.
+They're shooting up there all day. It'd be no sort o' use tackling him
+there."
+
+"But surely they are back by now?" exclaimed Mrs. Ryan, impatiently. "I
+tell you he must be seen to-day--this evening--now."
+
+"Ay, ay; I'm just going. Straight along this path it is, across a few
+fields, and there you are--opposite the house; and you may trust me----"
+
+"I know; I have seen it for myself. But I am going too."
+
+This was precisely what Pound did not want. He was treating the woman
+with unwonted civility, not to say respect, with a view to the more
+easily dissuading her from dangerous projects. And this was a dangerous
+project from Pound's point of view; but Mrs. Ryan had set her soul upon
+it. Argue as Jem would, she was bent upon seeing her husband with her
+own eyes, and at once. And there, with that thin white face of hers she
+might go and get him actually to pity her, and spoil everything--for Jem
+Pound.
+
+"After finding him again, do you think I will endure this a moment
+longer?" asked Elizabeth scornfully.
+
+Pound's reply was in the reflective manner.
+
+"Well," said he, with slow deliberation, "I'm not sure but what it
+mightn't, after all, do good for you to see him."
+
+"Good--do good! To whom? What do you mean? What have you to do with it?"
+
+Pound ground his teeth; he had everything to do with it. It was the old
+story over again: this woman was using him as the guide to her own ends,
+yet would cut him adrift the very moment those ends were in sight. How
+he hated her! With his lips he cringed to her, in his heart he ground
+her to powder; but if he was not in the position to bully her to-day, he
+had lost few opportunities when he was; and he was at least forearmed
+against her.
+
+He affected a bluff kindliness of manner that would not have deceived
+her had Mrs. Ryan been a little more composed.
+
+"Look here, missis, you and me, we've been bound up in a ticklish job
+together. I don't say as I've always done by you as I should, but there
+is allowances to be made for a man that carries, as they say, his life
+in his hand, and that's staked his life on this here job. I don't say,
+either, as we're both on the exact same tack, but one thing's certain;
+we must work together now, and if you can't work my way, why, I must
+work yours. Now, missis, you ain't fit for the strain of seeing him. If
+you could see your own face you'd know it, ma'am."
+
+Her eyes had opened wide at his tone; she sighed deeply at his last
+words.
+
+"No," she said sadly, "I know I'm not fit for much. But I must go--I
+must go."
+
+"Then if you must, ma'am, take a teaspoonful of this first. It'll help
+you through, and anyway keep you from fainting, as you did last time. I
+got it in Melmerbridge this afternoon, after I see you look so sick."
+
+He uncorked a small flask and held it to her lips.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Brandy--the best."
+
+"And water?"
+
+"Half and half. Remember that other night!"
+
+"He is right," muttered the woman: "there must be no fainting this
+time."
+
+She sipped from the bottle and felt revived.
+
+"Now we will go," she said, sternly.
+
+They crossed the meadow, and so over the stile into the potato-field
+that came next. Then Pound began to lag behind and watch his companion.
+When they reached the gate she was reeling; she clung to the gate-post,
+and waited for him to come up.
+
+"You fiend!" she screamed, glaring impotently upon him. "Poisoner and
+fiend! You have--you--"
+
+She fell senseless at his feet without finishing the sentence. Pound
+surveyed the helpless heap of clothes with complete satisfaction.
+
+"Drugged you, eh? Is that what you'd say? Nay, hardly, my lass: p'r'aps
+the brandy was risky for a fool of a woman that won't eat--p'r'aps it
+was very near neat--p'r'aps there was more in it than that; anyway you
+took it beautiful--lovely, you devil in petticoats!"
+
+He raised her easily enough in his strong arms, carried her through the
+gate into the next field, and dropped her upon a late heap of hay some
+distance from the track.
+
+"Playing at triangles," said Pound, "it must be two to one, or all
+against all: one thing it sha'n't be--two to one, and Jem Pound the one!
+There you lie until you're wanted, my dear. So long to you!"
+
+And with that this wretch strolled off.
+
+The gap in the hedge dividing the last of these few fields from the
+road, and ending the path, occurred a few yards below the shooting-box.
+Pound crept along the ditch between hedge and field until he judged he
+was opposite the gate of the shooting-box. Then he stood up, parted the
+hedge where it was thinnest, and peered through. The room to the right
+of the porch was lit up within; though the blinds were drawn, the
+windows were wide open. Pound could hear a low continuous murmur of
+voices and other sounds, which informed him that the party were still
+dining. He waited patiently. At last he heard a pushing back of chairs:
+it must be over now, he thought; but no, the voices recommenced, pitched
+in a slightly louder key. The windows on the left of the porch shone
+out as brightly as their neighbours on the right of it. Light fingers
+ran nimbly over the keys of a piano--only once--no tune came of it.
+
+Pound, too, had fingers that could not long be idle: thick, knotty,
+broad-nailed, supple-jointed; fingers that showed the working of the
+mind. They were busy now. In a little while all the hedge within their
+reach was stripped of its simple charms--its bluebells, its pink
+foxgloves, its very few wild roses. Even the little leaves of the hedge
+were plucked away by the handful; and on the grass, had it been lighter,
+you might have discovered in the torn and mutilated shreds of leaf and
+petal some index to the watcher's thoughts. At last there was a general
+movement inside. Dark forms appeared on the steps. Two or three came
+down the steps, and turned the corner of the house. One sauntered to the
+gate and peered up and down the road. There was no mistaking this
+figure.
+
+Pound uttered in a low key a cry that is as common in the Australian
+bush as it is uncommon elsewhere. He expected his man to start as though
+shot, but he was disappointed. Ryan gave one sharp glance towards the
+hedge, then passed through the gate, and on to the gap.
+
+"Lord! how he takes it!" murmured Pound. "Did he expect me? Has he been
+on the look-out night and day all this while?"
+
+At the gap they met. Pound could restrain his exultation no longer.
+
+"At last!"
+
+"Yes," said the other, stepping quietly through the gap. He had given
+the whole day to preparation for this interview; but he had expected it
+to be an interview of three. Where was his wife? "Yes, and the fewer
+words the better. How you got here I neither know nor care; tell me what
+you want now that you are here."
+
+"You know very well what I want."
+
+"I may make a rough guess."
+
+"I want money!"
+
+"I thought so. It is a pity. You must go somewhere else for it: I have
+none."
+
+"What!" cried Pound, savagely, "is it all gone? All that you landed
+with? Never! You have never got through all that!"
+
+"'All that' is under a gum-tree somewhere in Queensland, unless some one
+has found it lately. I told you so before, didn't I? How could I clear
+out with the gold? How could I risk going back for it when once I got
+away? All I brought with me was what never left my body: the notes and
+some gold. It didn't come to much; the last of it went long since."
+
+"Then how have you lived--what on?"
+
+"My wits."
+
+Jem Pound was in a towering passion.
+
+"If I believed you," he hissed out, among his oaths, "I'd make a clean
+breast of everything--every blessed job--though I swung for it! No; I'd
+swing merrily, knowing they'd got you snug for the rest of your days,
+for you'd be worse off than me, Ned Ryan! But I don't believe a word of
+it; it's a lie--a lie--a lie!"
+
+The utterance was that of a choking man. Miles wondered whether the man
+had the spirit to carry out what he threatened; he seemed desperate, and
+such confessions had been made before by desperate men. That the five
+hundred ounces of gold had been abandoned by Sundown in his flight was
+the simple truth. Yet if Pound realised this, he was capable of any
+lengths of vengeance--even to putting his own neck in the noose, as he
+said. Better, perhaps, leave him his delusion, and let him still think
+that the gold had been brought over; better give a sop to Cerberus--even
+though it were only a promise to-day and a few pounds to-morrow; for the
+next day--well, the next day Cerberus might growl in vain. But a fair
+round sum for Pound, if only it could be raised and handed over
+immediately, would raise high hopes of "the share" he coveted; would
+make him believe that the stronger man had given way at last; would
+pacify him for the time being--which was all that was necessary. For in
+two days Ned Ryan meant to fly from that place--in three, the shores of
+England should fade from his sight for ever. Pound must be put off his
+guard, like the rest; a fair round sum might do it--say fifty pounds.
+Fifty pounds, then, must be raised that night.
+
+"Jem Pound," said Sundown, in tones of capitulation, "there is no
+getting over you! I throw up my hand, for the game's up. I thought I
+could get the best of you, Jem, but, Lord! I didn't know my man, and
+that's the fact. But listen to sense: you don't suppose I've got that
+money here, do you? It's in London; you shall have five hundred of it in
+hard cash, if you swear to stand by me, next week. I go up next week;
+you go before me and wait. You refuse? Stay, then; hear me out: you
+shall have fifty down, on this very spot, at this very hour, to-morrow
+night!"
+
+"Do you mean it?" asked Pound, suspiciously, his breath coming quick and
+rapid with the excitement of the moment--his moment of victory.
+
+"Every word of it."
+
+"Fifty pounds--to-morrow night?"
+
+"Every penny of it. Oh, there's no use in disguising it; you've got the
+better of me, Jem, and I must stump up."
+
+Pound looked at him doubtfully, wishing to believe, yet finding it
+difficult.
+
+"You gave us the slip before," he said; "how do we know you won't do it
+again?"
+
+"Watch me--watch me," he said.
+
+"Ay, we must and we will!"
+
+"You need not remind me of--of her!" cried Ryan, fiercely, all in a
+moment.
+
+"Ah, poor thing, poor thing!" said Pound.
+
+"Why, has anything happened?"
+
+"Poor soul!"
+
+"Speak, man, for God's sake! Is she--is she--"
+
+Ryan could not get out the word, trembling as he was with intense
+excitement. Pound broke into a brutal laugh.
+
+"No, Ned Ryan, she isn't dead, if that's what you want. I am sorry for
+you. Now that you're going to behave handsome, I should have liked to
+bring you good news. Yet, though she hangs on still, she's going down
+the hill pretty quick--her own way. But she's waiting for us three
+fields off; we'd better go to her before she comes to us. Come this
+way."
+
+Pound led the way to the hay-field. Miles followed him, filled with
+foreboding. What had happened to Elizabeth? Was the woman ill? Was she
+dying? Bad as he was--bad as she was--could he go coldly on his way and
+let her die? He thought of her as he had seen her last, two months ago;
+and then strangely enough, he figured her as he had first seen her,
+many, many years ago. Poor thing! poor Liz!
+
+"She is not here," said Pound, when he came to the gate that Elizabeth
+Ryan had clung to. "Now I wonder--stay! what is that over there? Come,
+let's look. It may be--by Heaven, it is your wife!"
+
+He had pointed to a dark object among the mounds of hay. Now the two men
+stood looking down on the insensible form of Elizabeth Ryan.
+
+"No, not death," said Pound; "only brandy!"
+
+The husband looked down upon his wretched wife without speaking or
+moving. Oh, that it were death! His muscles were rigid--repugnance and
+loathing froze him to the bone. How white her face was in the faint
+moonshine! how white that hand under the white cheek! and the other hand
+stretched helplessly out--good God! the wedding-ring he had placed
+there, she dared to wear it still! Oh, that this were death!
+
+And a minute ago he had thought of her--for some seconds together--not
+unkindly!
+
+At last Ryan spoke.
+
+"I dare swear," he murmured, as though speaking to himself, "that she
+has not got our certificate! A ring is no proof."
+
+Pound knelt down and shook some sense into the woman's head.
+
+"Eh? What is it? Where am I?"
+
+He whispered hurriedly in her ear: "He is here--your husband. He says
+something about your having no proof that you are his wife. Give me the
+certificate!"
+
+Without grasping the meaning of any but the last word, Elizabeth Ryan
+mechanically drew forth from her bosom a folded square of paper. Pound
+took it from her, and unfolded it with his back to Ryan. When he faced
+about, Pound held the certificate in his left hand and a revolver in his
+right.
+
+Ryan paid no heed to the pistol, beyond recognising it as one of his
+own--the fellow, in fact, to the one he at that moment carried in his
+own pocket; Pound's last transaction, as a member of Sundown's gang,
+having been to help himself to this and other trifles as keepsakes. The
+production of the weapon Ryan treated, or affected to treat, with
+contempt. The certificate took up his whole attention. Yet one glance,
+even in the moonlight, was sufficient to show him that the certificate
+was genuine.
+
+"You may put them both away," was all he said. "But remember: to-morrow
+night, same spot and hour. Or let us say here, at this gate: it is
+farther from the house."
+
+He turned to go, but suddenly recoiled, being face to face with his
+wife, who had struggled to her feet. With a strange wild cry the woman
+flung herself into his arms. Ryan caught her, held her one instant,
+then dashed her heavily to the ground, and fled like a murderer from
+the place.
+
+The poor thing lay groaning, yet sobered.
+
+"Ah, I remember," she moaned at last, gathering up her bruised and
+aching limbs. "I was drugged--by you!"
+
+The look of terrible hatred which she darted at Jem Pound was ineffable
+but calm. He answered her with a stout denial:
+
+"I gave you nothing but brandy, and that I gave you for the best. I
+didn't mean it to knock you over, but I'm not sorry it did. Bad as it
+was, it would have been worse if you had seen much more of him."
+
+"Why? What did he say?"
+
+"He said he wouldn't give us a farthing. No, not if you were starving.
+He said you were less than nothing to him now. He said we might do our
+worst, and the sooner hell swallowed both of us the better he'd like
+it."
+
+Mrs. Ryan gave a little cry of pain and anger. She staggered across the
+dewy grass, and confronted Pound at arm's length. She was shaking and
+shivering like a withered leaf.
+
+"Jem Pound," said she, "I will tell you what I have known for many
+weeks, but hidden from you. I will tell you where he has that money, or
+some of it."
+
+"Where?" cried Pound.
+
+She tapped him lightly on the chest.
+
+"There!" said Mrs. Ryan.
+
+"How the devil do you know?"
+
+"By woman's wit. On that night, when my hand rested there on his breast
+for one moment, he pushed me from him. I remembered afterwards that he
+started from my hand as though I touched a wound. I did the same thing
+to-night, only on purpose, and you know how he took it: he flung me to
+the ground this time. Mark my words, there is that which he values more
+than anything else hung round his neck and resting there! Whatever it
+is, take it, Jem Pound! Do you hear? You are bad enough for anything:
+then take it--even if you have to take his life with it!"
+
+Her voice was hoarse and horrible, yet so low that it could scarcely be
+heard. Without waiting for an answer, she turned swiftly away and
+disappeared in the darkness.
+
+Jem Pound drew a long deep breath.
+
+"This," said he, "is the best night's work I've done since I came back
+to the Old Country. This morning I didn't dream of anything so good. Now
+I see a better night's work not far ahead!"
+
+He proceeded to carve a cake of black tobacco slowly and deliberately,
+then filled his pipe. As he did this, leaning with his broad back
+against the gate, a sound came to his ears across the silent sleeping
+meadows--a strange sound to him--the sound, in fact, of a woman's song.
+His pipe was by this time loaded, and the mouthpiece between his teeth.
+Moreover, the match-box was in his left hand and a match in his right.
+Yet Jem Pound actually did not strike that match until the strange sound
+had died away!
+
+I know not what spirit was abroad that night to invest a simple,
+well-known drawing-room song with the sinews of Fate; yet not only in
+the fields, but far up the road, where Colonel Bristo was wandering
+alone in the faint light of the sickle moon, the low clear notes were
+borne out on the wings of the evening. The Colonel faced about at the
+first note, and walked back quite quickly. His solitary wanderings at
+all times of the day were a great weakness of the old fellow, but his
+daughter's singing was a greater; and she sang so seldom now. He walked
+on the wet grass at the roadside rather than lose a note through the
+noise of his own footsteps; and lo! when he came near the house, he
+descried a tall figure standing motionless in the very middle of the
+road.
+
+Surely some spirit was abroad that night, that all the waking world drew
+near and listened to that song of Alice's! It should have been a greater
+song--noble poetry wedded to music such as the angels make in heaven and
+have sometimes--in golden ages gone by--breathed into the souls of men,
+who have found the secret too wondrous sweet and terrible to keep. To
+touch the sensibilities of the different unknown listeners, it should
+have been a mighty song indeed! But, you see, Alice herself knew nothing
+of what was happening; she was aware of only one listener, who was
+humbly standing by her side; and out of the pitiful fulness of her heart
+she sang the sad and simple words that you have heard often enough, no
+doubt:
+
+        Falling leaf and fading tree,
+        Lines of white in a sullen sea,
+        Shadows rising on you and me;
+        The swallows are making them ready to fly,
+        Wheeling out on a windy sky.
+        Good-bye, summer! good-bye, good-bye!
+
+A thin film floated over the eyes of Colonel Bristo. The same thing had
+occasionally happened before when his daughter sang. But lately she had
+been singing so little, and the song was so sad, and the voice more
+plaintive than it had ever been formerly.
+
+As for Miles, the other listener in the road, he stood like one
+entranced. Her singing had haunted his soul now many weeks; it was many
+weeks since he had heard it last--save in his dreams; besides, the words
+put the match to a desperate train of thought.
+
+The last bars of the song, then, came as a shock to the audience of two
+outside in the road, who had not realised that the song would ever stop:
+
+        "What are we waiting for, you and I?"
+        A pleading look, a stifled cry;
+        "Good-bye for ever! good-bye, good-bye!"
+
+The last notes of all were low, and the singer's best. They were charged
+with wild grief; they seemed to end in a half-sob of anguish. But the
+voice had caught all the passion of the words, and something more
+besides. For whom was this passion?
+
+It all died away. The world outside was tamer than before; the sickle
+moon dipped down to rest below the hill beyond the village, and those
+lanes and meadows knew no such singing any more.
+
+The tall listener in the road still gazed at the holland blind that
+flapped against the sash of the open window. It was all the sound that
+came from the room now. He was repeating the last words of the song, and
+weighing them.
+
+"No, no," he was thinking, "if I may not live for her, what else is
+there to live for? God, let me die for her!"
+
+A glowing red spot approached him through the darkness that had fallen
+upon the land; it was the Colonel's cigarette. It brought him back to
+the world as it was--his world, and a vile one.
+
+"I was taking a little stroll," said Colonel Bristo. "Will you join me?
+I think Alice will sing no more to-night."
+
+Meanwhile, in the room, the singer had risen. She meant to quietly put
+away the music, but it slipped from her fingers. She turned with wet
+gentle eyes to one who was speaking to her, then fled at his words from
+the room.
+
+Yet Dick had only asked her: "Will you never, never forgive me?"
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXV
+
+                          MELMERBRIDGE CHURCH
+
+
+Dick was in the passage, brushing a week's dust from his hard felt hat;
+he was going to church this Sunday morning; half the party were going.
+From the gun-room came the sound of a pen gliding swiftly over foolscap,
+and the perfume of Mr. Pinckney's pipe; from the open air a low
+conversational murmur, kept up by Mrs. Parish and Mr. Miles on the
+steps. Dick, though not unconscious of these sounds, was listening for
+another--a certain footstep on the stairs. It came at last. Alice came
+slowly down; Alice, prayer-book in hand, in the daintiest of white
+dresses and the prettiest, simplest straw hat; Alice for whom Mrs.
+Parish and Miles and Dick were all three waiting.
+
+Her step was less light than it should have been. The slim little figure
+positively drooped. Her eyes, too, seemed large and bright, and dark
+beyond nature, though that may have been partly from the contrast with a
+face so pale. The girl's altered looks had caused anxiety at Teddington,
+but the change to Yorkshire had not visibly improved them. This morning,
+after a night made even more restless than others by a sudden influx of
+hopes and fears, this was painfully apparent.
+
+The Colonel, coming in from outside at this moment, gazed earnestly at
+his daughter. It was easily seen that he was already worried about
+something; but the annoyance in his expression changed quickly to pain.
+
+"You are not going to walk to Melmerbridge Church?" he said to her.
+
+"Oh, yes, I am," she answered.
+
+Her tone and look were saucy, in spite of her pallor; one of the old
+smiles flickered for a moment upon her lips.
+
+"My child," said her father, more in surprise than disapproval, "it is
+eight miles there and back!"
+
+"With a nice long rest in between," Alice reminded him. "I thought it
+would do one good, the walk; otherwise, papa, I am not in the least
+eager; so if you think----"
+
+"Go, my dear, of course--go, by all means," put in Colonel Bristo
+hastily; "unwonted energy like this must on no account be discouraged.
+Yes, yes, you are quite right; it will do you all the good in the
+world."
+
+As he spoke, he caught sight of Miles in the strong light outside the
+door. The worried look returned to the Colonel's eyes. Anxiety for his
+daughter seemed to fade before a feeling that for the time was
+uppermost. He watched his daughter cross over to the door, and Dick put
+on his hat to follow her. Then the Colonel stepped forward and plucked
+the young man by the arm.
+
+"Dick, I want you to stop at home with me. I want to speak with you
+particularly, about something very important indeed."
+
+Dick experienced a slight shock of disappointment, succeeded by a sense
+of foreboding. He fell back at once, and replaced his hat on the stand.
+
+As for Alice, she felt a sudden inclination to draw back, herself. But
+that was not to be thought of. Mrs. Parish and Mr. Miles were waiting
+now at the gate. Alice went out and told them that Dick was, after all,
+staying behind with the Colonel.
+
+"Not coming?" cried Mrs. Parish. "Why, I had promised myself a long chat
+with him!" which, as it happened, though Dick was no favourite of hers,
+was strictly true. "Where is Mr. Pinckney?"
+
+"Busy writing to catch the post."
+
+"And Dr. Robson?"
+
+"Cousin Philip has gone to read the lessons for the Gateby schoolmaster,
+his new friend. Had we not better start?"
+
+The three set out, walking slowly up the road, for Mrs. Parish was a
+really old lady, and it was only the truly marvellous proportion of
+sinew and bone in her composition, combined with a romantic and
+well-nigh fanatical desire to serve the most charming of men, that
+fortified her to attempt so formidable a walk.
+
+"You men are blind," she had told her idol, among other things on the
+steps. "Where a word would end all, you will not speak."
+
+"You honestly think it would end it the right way?" Miles had asked her.
+
+"I do not think, I know," the old woman had said for the fiftieth time.
+
+She had undertaken to give him his opportunity that morning. With four
+in the party, that would have been easy enough; with three, it became a
+problem soluble only by great ingenuity.
+
+For some distance beyond the shooting-box the road ascended gently, then
+dipped deep down into a hollow, with a beck at the bottom of it, and a
+bridge and a farmhouse on the other side. The hill beyond was really
+steep, and from its crest the shooting-box--with red-roofed Gateby
+beyond and to the left of it--could be seen for the last time. But when
+they had toiled to the top of this second hill, Mrs. Parish with the
+kindly assistance of the attentive Miles, it occurred to none of them to
+look round, or they might have made out the Colonel and Dick still
+standing on the steps, and the arm of the former raised and pointed
+towards them.
+
+"It is about that man there," the Colonel was saying, "that I want to
+speak to you."
+
+Dick could scarcely suppress an exclamation. He changed colour. His face
+filled with apprehension. What was coming next? What was suspected? What
+discovered? Until these words the Colonel had not spoken since the
+church-goers left, and his manner was strange.
+
+The Colonel, however, was scrutinising the young man.
+
+"What rivals they are!" he was thinking. "The one starts at the mere
+name of the other! The fact is, Dick," he said aloud, "Miles has dealt
+with me rather queerly in some money matters, and--What on earth's the
+matter?"
+
+The strong young fellow at Colonel Bristo's side was trembling like a
+child; his face was livid, his words low and hurried.
+
+"I will tell you in a moment, sir. Pray go on, Colonel Bristo."
+
+"Well, the fact is I want you to tell me if you know anything--of your
+own knowledge, mind--of this station of Miles's in Queensland."
+
+"Excuse me: I can only answer by another question. Has he been raising
+money on his station?"
+
+"Do you mean by borrowing from me?"
+
+"Yes, that is what I do mean."
+
+"Well, then, he has. At Teddington--I don't mind telling you, between
+ourselves--I lent him a hundred pounds when a remittance he expected by
+the mail did not come. After that I found out that he had an agent in
+town all the while, and it then struck me as rather odd that he should
+have borrowed of me, though even then I did not think much of it. You
+see, the man did me the greatest service one man can render another, and
+I was only too glad of the opportunity to do him a good turn of any
+sort. I can assure you, Dick, at the time I would have made it a
+thousand--on the spot--had he asked it. Besides, I have always liked
+Miles, though a little less, I must confess, since he came up here. But
+last night, as we were strolling about together outside, he suddenly
+asked me for another hundred; and the story with which he supported his
+request was rambling, if not absurd. He said that his partner evidently
+believed him to be on his way out again, and therefore still omitted to
+send him a remittance; that he was thus once more 'stuck up' for cash;
+that he had quarrelled with his agent (whom I suggested as the most
+satisfactory person to apply to), and withdrawn the agency. Well, I
+have written out the cheque, and given it him this morning. His
+gratitude was profuse, and seemed genuine. All I want you to tell me is
+this: Do you know anything yourself of his station, his partner, or his
+agent?"
+
+Dick made his answer with a pale, set face, but in a tone free alike
+from tremor or hesitancy:
+
+"The man has no station, no agent, no partner!"
+
+"What?" cried out the Colonel. "What are you saying? You must not make
+statements of this sort unless you are sure beyond the shadow of a
+doubt. I asked what you knew, not what you suspected."
+
+"And I am telling you only what I know."
+
+"That Miles is a common swindler?"
+
+"That his name is not Miles, to begin with."
+
+"Then do you mean to say," the Colonel almost shouted, "that you have
+known all this, and let me be duped by the fellow before your eyes?"
+
+"I never suspected what you have told me now," said Dick warmly. "But it
+is true that I have known for some weeks who and what this man is. I
+found him out at Graysbrooke, and got rid of him for you within a few
+hours. I was at fault not to give him in charge. You have good cause to
+blame me--and I sha'n't want for blame by and by!--but if you will
+listen to me, I will tell you all--yes, all; for I have protected a
+worse scoundrel than I thought: I owe him not another moment's silence."
+
+"Come in here, then," said Colonel Bristo, sternly; "for I confess that
+I cannot understand you."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Up hill and down dale was the walk to Melmerbridge; but the ascents
+really were a shade longer and steeper than the descents, and did not
+only seem so to the ladies. For when at last they reached the long grey
+stone wall at the edge of the moor, and passed through the gate into the
+midst of brown heather, dotted with heads of gay green bracken, they
+were greeted by a breeze--gentle and even fitful, but inexpressibly
+refreshing. Now below, in the deep lanes between the hedge-rows, there
+had been no breeze at all--for the morning was developing into hazy,
+sleepy, stifling heat, and the sun was dim--and the flies had been most
+pestilent. Accordingly they all drew breath on the moor. Mr. Miles
+uncovered his head, and let the feeble breeze make mild sport with his
+light brown locks. Then he lit a cigarette. As for the ladies, they sat
+down for a moment's rest; and, considering that one of them was well on
+in years, and the other combating with a sickness that was gradually
+tightening its hold upon her, they were walking uncommonly well. But
+conversation had flagged from the start, nor did the magic air of the
+moorland quicken it.
+
+When they had threaded the soft, rutted track that girdled the heather
+with a reddish-brown belt, when they had climbed the very last knoll,
+they found themselves on the extreme edge of that range of hills. Far
+below them, to the right, stretched mile upon mile of table-land,
+studded with villages and woods, divided by the hedges into countless
+squares. No two neighbours, among these squares, were filled in with the
+same colour; some were brown, some yellow, and the rest all shades of
+green. Far ahead, where the squares were all lost and their colours
+merged in one dirty neutral tint--far ahead--at the horizon, in
+fact--hung a low, perpetual cloud, like a sombre pall of death. And
+death indeed lay under it: death to green fields, sweet flowers, and
+honest blue skies.
+
+They viewed all this from a spot where the road had been carved round
+the rough brow of a russet cliff. This spot was the loftiest as well as
+the ruggedest of the whole walk. On the left the road was flanked by the
+ragged wall of the cliff; on the right it was provided with a low
+parapet, over which one might gaze forth upon the wide table-land, or
+drop stones upon the tops of the tallest fir-trees in the wood at the
+cliff's base.
+
+Old Mrs. Parish pointed to the long black cloud on the horizon, and
+explained that it was formed almost entirely of the smoke of
+blast-furnaces, and was the constant canopy of a great town that they
+could not see, because the town was hidden in perennial smoke. More than
+this she might have said--about the mighty metals that were disgorged
+from under their very feet--about the rich men of yonder town (old
+Oliver, for one), not forgetting the poor men, beggar-men, and
+thieves--had the old lady not perceived that Miles was gazing furtively
+at Alice, and Alice gazing thoughtfully into space, and neither of them
+listening to a word.
+
+They walked on, and the descending road became smoother, but tortuous;
+and trees arched over it, and the view was hidden until they stood at
+the top of straight, steep Melmerbridge Bank, and the good-sized
+prosperous village lay stretched at their feet.
+
+One long row of houses and shops on the left; a long straight silvery
+stream for the right-hand side of the village street; a bridge across
+this stream, leading to a church and a public-house that stood side by
+side, on apparently the best of terms, and without another near
+neighbour on that side of the beck--such was Melmerbridge from its
+bank-top.
+
+As they crossed a white wooden bridge at the foot of the bank (for the
+beck curved and twisted, like other becks, except where it did its duty
+by that straight village street), a simple, modest Sabbath peal rang out
+upon the sultry air.
+
+The old church was roomy, twilit, and consequently cool. Strong light
+never found its way inside those old stone walls, for the narrow windows
+were pictorial, one and all. Dusk lingered in these aisles throughout
+the longest days; upon them day broke last of all; they met nightfall
+half-way.
+
+After a long, hot, tiring walk there could have been no more grateful
+retreat than this church of All Saints at Melmerbridge. The senses were
+lulled in the very porch, nor were they rudely aroused when the quiet
+peal had ended and the quiet service began. Everything was subdued and
+inoffensive, even to the sermon: a vigorous discourse from the dark oak
+pulpit would have grated on the spirit, like loud voices in a
+death-chamber.
+
+As for Mrs. Parish, she was soon sleeping as soundly and reverently as
+the oldest parishioner. Alice, on the other hand, gave her whole mind to
+the service, and her mind filled with peace. Her sweet clear voice
+chimed in with every response (at which the parish clerk, with the fine
+old crusted dialect, who enjoyed a monopoly in the responses, snorted
+angrily and raised his tones), while in the first hymn it rose so high
+and clear that the young curate peered over his book through the dusk,
+and afterwards lost his place in the Litany through peering again.
+
+Miles, for his part, looked about him with a pardonable curiosity. He
+thought that he might have been christened in some church as an infant;
+he had certainly been married in one as a comparatively respectable
+blackleg--but that was not a pleasant thing to recall to-day. He had
+since been once in a little iron Bush chapel, on a professional visit
+with his merry men, the object of which visit was attained with such
+complete success that all Australia thrilled with indignation. In
+London, the Bristos had insisted on taking him to St. Paul's and the
+Abbey. This was the full extent of his previous church-going. He was
+interested for a little while in looking about him. His interest might
+have lasted to the Benediction had there been less subjective food for
+thought, or, perhaps, if he had been sitting there alone.
+
+In the hush and the dusk of this strange place, and the monotonous
+declamation of phrases that conveyed no meaning to him, Miles set
+himself deliberately to think. Wild and precarious as his whole life had
+been, he felt its crisis to be within arm's length of him now at
+last--he joined hands with it here in this peaceful Yorkshire church.
+Even the past few years of infamy and hourly risk contained no situation
+so pregnant with fate as the present. He ran over in his mind the chain
+of circumstances that had led up to this crisis.
+
+The train of thought took him back to Queensland, where, with Nemesis
+holding him by the throat at last, he had wrenched himself from her
+tightening grip, and escaped. He had tumbled upon English soil with a
+fair sum of money, a past dead and buried, a future of some sort before
+him; by chance he had tumbled upon his feet. Chance, and that genius in
+the water that had crowned his escape by drowning him in the eyes of the
+world, had combined at once, and helped him to save an unknown
+gentleman's life. Mother-wit and the laws of gratitude enabled him to
+dupe the man he had rescued, become his close friend, live upon him,
+draw upon him, extract with subtle cunning the last farthing of salvage,
+and all the while he guessed--pretty correctly--that his pursuers were
+arriving to learn his death and take ship back to Australia.
+
+Thus far everything had worked out so prettily that it seemed worth
+while turning thoroughly honest and beginning this second life on
+entirely different lines from the old one. Then he fell in love and
+believed that his love was returned, a belief that was not fostered by
+his own fancy unaided; now more than ever he desired to improve on the
+past, and to forget all ties and obligations belonging to the past.
+Edward Ryan was dead; then Edward Ryan's wife was a widow; Miles the
+Australian was a new unit in humanity; then why should not Miles the
+Australian marry?
+
+Up to this point he could look back on every step with intense
+satisfaction; but here his reflections took a bitter turn. To go on
+calmly recoiling step after step, beginning with the month of July, was
+impossible: he tried it; but to remember that night in the park--to
+remember subsequent weeks spent in scheming and plotting, in rejecting
+plot after plot and scheme after scheme, in slowly eating his heart out
+in the solitude of a London lodging, in gradually losing all taste for
+fresh enterprise and all nerve for carrying it out--to remember all this
+was to pour vitriol on the spirit. He would remember no more; he would
+shut the gate on memory; he would annihilate thought; he would make his
+mind a blank. Yet he was powerless to do any of these things.
+
+In his helplessness he looked down on the white figure at his side. The
+second hymn was being sung. He had stood, and sat, and knelt or leant
+forward with the rest, by mere mechanical impulse. He was even holding
+the book which she held without knowing it. When he realised this, his
+hand shook so much that the hymn-book was almost jerked from his
+fingers. At this she looked up, and caught his eyes bent down upon her.
+
+Now Miles was at the end of the pew, next the wall, and in shadow. Alice
+noticed nothing in his expression, and went on singing without pause or
+break. But either her face, as she raised it, came in direct line with
+the skirt of some saint, in the window above Miles, and the sun, or else
+the sun chose that moment for a farewell gleam; in any case, the girl's
+pale face was instantly flooded with a rich, warm, crimson glow. Miles
+looked down, and this warm glow caught in his heart like a tongue of
+live flame.
+
+The hymn was over; they sank down side by side: she to listen to the
+sermon, no matter its calibre--he to his thoughts, no matter their
+madness.
+
+What were his thoughts? Not reflections now. Not hesitancy, his new
+unaccountable failing; not nervous doubt, his new humiliating enemy. No,
+his thoughts were of the old kind, but worse. He was contemplating a
+crime. He was contemplating the worst crime of his whole career. The
+plain English of his thoughts was this:
+
+"I believe that she likes me. I see that she is, in the catch phrase,
+'pining.' I am told that it is for me. Very good. If that is the case
+she will believe what I tell her, and do what I ask her. I have some
+power of persuasion. I am not without invention. I shall represent to
+her all kinds of reasons for precipitancy and secrecy--temporary
+secrecy. In a word, she shall fly with me! Well, that is bad enough; but
+there my badness ends. I will live without crime for her sake; I will
+retrieve what I can of the past. Henceforth my life is of her, with
+her--above all, it is for her. She need never know how I have wronged
+her, therefore she will not be wronged."
+
+He looked at the face beside him; it was white as alabaster. Alice was
+straining her eyes towards some object that filled them with sadness and
+sympathy. He followed the direction of her gaze; and he saw an old, old
+man--a man who would soon come to church for the last time, and remain
+outside the walls, under the grass--who was gazing with pathetic
+wistfulness at the preacher, and, with wrinkled hand raised to the ear,
+making the most and the best of every well-worn epithet and perfunctory
+stock phrase. That was all. Miles brought back his glance to the white
+profile at his side, and found it changed in this instant of time: the
+long eyelashes were studded with crystal tears!
+
+How sad she looked--how thin and ill! Would she look like this
+afterwards? Would tears often fill her eyes in the time to come?
+
+Miles shut his eyes, and again exerted might and main to blot out
+thought. But he could not do it; and half his confidence was gone at the
+moment when he most needed it all. He knew it, and shuddered. A thought
+that had haunted him of late crossed his mind for the hundredth time: he
+was an altered man not only in pretence but in reality; his nerve and
+coolness had deserted him!
+
+The sermon was over, and the congregation awake. Miles stood up with the
+rest, and took between thumb and finger his side of the little hymn book
+held out to him. He heartily wished it all over. In his present
+unfortunate state of mind another hymn was another ordeal: her voice,
+when she sang, put such weak thoughts into his head. Was he not a fool
+and a madman to think at all of a woman who unmanned him so? Nay, hush!
+The hymn was begun. She was singing it with her whole heart, the little
+head thrown backward, the little white face turned upward. She was
+singing; he could hear nothing else. She was singing; would she sing
+afterwards? She was singing from the depths of her tired soul. Would she
+ever sing like this again? Would he ever hear her voice again. Hush!
+This might be the last time!
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Colonel Bristo was back on the steps, gazing under his thin, hollowed
+hand up the road. He looked anxious, and indignant, and determined--but
+old and careworn.
+
+"What a time they are!" said Dick, pointing to the crest of the second
+hill, where the brown road met the silver sky. Next moment he would have
+recalled his words, for two figures, not three, stood out black against
+the sky. They were only in sight for an instant, but during that instant
+they were hand in hand!
+
+The two men on the steps waited without a word for many minutes. Neither
+could bring himself to speak--perhaps each hoped that the other had not
+seen everything. Besides, one was the father of the girl, and the
+other--her jilted lover. More than once the father shivered, and his
+fingers twitched the whole time. Simultaneously they both started in
+surprise; for all at once Alice appeared over the brow of the nearest
+hill, coming swiftly towards them--alone.
+
+"Thank God!" murmured the Colonel, forgetting Dick's presence. "He has
+asked her to marry him, and she has refused. The villain!"
+
+"Then, if you are right," cried Dick with sudden intensity, "a million
+times blacker villain he."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Mean? I mean--but there is no need to tell you now."
+
+"You may as well tell me everything."
+
+"Then I mean that he is married already."
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXVI
+
+                                 AT BAY
+
+
+"Where is Mrs. Parish?" demanded Colonel Bristo, the moment his daughter
+reached the gate. In spite of a gallant effort to be calm before Alice,
+his voice quivered.
+
+"The walk was too much for her." The girl's face was flushed, and her
+tones faint. "She said she couldn't walk back were it ever so. She spoke
+to Mrs. Commyns--who was called here, you know--and went to the Rectory.
+She wants us to send the pony-trap if----"
+
+"Where is Mr. Miles?" Alice's father interrupted her.
+
+"He is following."
+
+She passed quickly by them into the house. Her face was full of trouble.
+Traces of tears were visible under her eyes. They heard her hurrying
+upstairs. Neither of them spoke a word. Dick had his back turned; he was
+watching the road.
+
+The figure of Miles appeared on the nearest knoll. He walked slowly down
+the bank, his head bent, his eyes fixed upon the ground. Dick turned to
+Colonel Bristo.
+
+"You had better leave me to speak to him," he said. "I will settle with
+him on the spot."
+
+"It ought to come from me," said the Colonel doubtfully; "and yet----"
+
+The old man paused. Dick looked at him with some anxiety.
+
+"You had really better leave him to me, sir," he repeated. "I am sorry
+to say I am used to treating with him. There had better be no third
+party to our last parley. And the fewer words the better, on Alice's
+account; she need know nothing. Besides, I know your intentions----"
+
+"Yes, yes; that for my part I will take no steps, not even to get back
+my money; that he may go to-day instead of to-morrow, and leave the
+country--we will not stop him. Of course, he will be only too glad to
+get off! Dick, I care nothing about the paltry pounds he has got out of
+me; he is welcome to them; I do not grudge him them, because of the
+service he did me--yet if I saw him now, I feel that I should forget to
+count that service. And you are right about Alice. Speak quietly, and
+get rid of him quickly. I will not see him unless I am obliged; at
+least, I will first hear from the dining-room what he has to say to
+you."
+
+A moment later the Colonel was at his post in the dining-room. His
+retreat from the steps, which was really characteristic of the
+man, is open to misconstruction. He feared nothing worse than an
+unpleasantness--a disagreeable scene; and he avoided unpleasantnesses
+and disagreeables systematically through life. That was the man's
+weakness. Now if Dick had led him to suppose that Miles would do
+anything but take his conge philosophically and go, the Colonel would
+have filled the breach bristling with war. But from Dick's account of
+his previous relations with the impostor, he expected that Miles would
+be sent to the right-about with ease, and Colonel Bristo shrank from
+doing this personally.
+
+The dining-room windows were wide open, but the brown holland blinds
+were drawn. Colonel Bristo did not raise them. He sat down to listen
+without looking. Almost immediately he heard a sharp click from the
+latch of the wicket-gate; then a louder click accompanied by a thud of
+timbers. Whoever had opened the gate had passed through and swung it to.
+The next sound that Colonel Bristo heard was the quiet, business-like
+voice of young Edmonstone:
+
+"Stop! I have a word for you from the Colonel. Stop where you are! He
+does not want you to come in."
+
+"What do you mean? What has happened?" The tones were apathetic--those
+of a man who has heard his doom already, to whom nothing else can matter
+much.
+
+"He simply does not want you inside his house again. He is sending your
+things down to the inn, where he hopes you will stay until you leave the
+place according to your plans. Ryan," added Edmonstone in an altered
+manner, "you understand me by this time? Then you may take my word for
+it that you are as safe as you were yesterday; though you don't deserve
+it. Only go at once."
+
+There was a pause. The Colonel fidgeted in his chair.
+
+"So, my kind, generous, merciful friend could not keep his word one day
+longer!"
+
+Miles's voice was so completely changed that the Colonel involuntarily
+grasped the blind-cord; for now it was the voice of an insolent,
+polished villain.
+
+"If I had known before," Dick answered him coolly, "what I have found
+out this morning, you might have cried for quarter until you were
+hoarse."
+
+"May I ask what you have learnt this morning?"
+
+"Your frauds on the man who befriended you."
+
+"My obligations to the man whose life I saved. Your way of putting it is
+prejudiced. Of course you gave him your version as to who I am?"
+
+"My version!" exclaimed Edmonstone scornfully. "I told him that you and
+the bushranger Sundown are one."
+
+Again Miles swiftly changed his key; but it was his words that were
+startling now.
+
+"You are mad!" he said, pityingly--"you are mad; and I have known it for
+weeks. Your last words put your delusion in a nutshell. You have not a
+proof to bless yourself with. You are a madman on one point; and here
+comes the man that knows it as well as I do!"
+
+In a whirl of surprise and amazement, not knowing for the moment whom or
+what to believe, the Colonel pulled up the blind and leant through the
+window. The Australian stood facing his accuser with an impudent smile
+of triumph. For once he stood revealed as he was--for once he looked
+every inch the finished scoundrel. If the Colonel had wavered for an
+instant before drawing up the blind, he wavered no more after the first
+glimpse of the Australian's face. He settled in his mind at that instant
+which was the liar of those two men. Yet something fascinated him. He
+was compelled to listen.
+
+Robson was coming in at the gate.
+
+"You are the very man we want," laughed Miles, turning towards him. "Now
+pull yourself together, Doctor. Do you call our friend, Mr. Edmonstone
+here, sane or not?"
+
+"You said that he was not," said Robson, looking from Edmonstone to
+Miles.
+
+"And you agreed with me?"
+
+"I said I thought----"
+
+"You said you thought! Well, never mind; I call him sane--practically;
+only under a delusion. But we will test him. You charge me with being a
+certain Australian bushranger, Mr. Edmonstone. Of course you have some
+evidence?"
+
+An awkward sensation came over Dick: a consciousness that he had
+committed a mistake, and a mistake that was giving the enemy a momentary
+advantage. He choked with rage and indignation: but for the moment he
+could find no words. Evidence? He had the evidence of his senses; but it
+was true that he had no corroborative evidence at hand.
+
+The bushranger's eyes glittered with a reckless light. He knew that the
+sides were too uneven to play this game long. He felt that he was a free
+man if he quietly accepted fate as he had accepted it before at this
+man's hands. The odds were overwhelming; but he was seized with a wild
+desire to turn and face them; to turn upon his contemptible foe and
+treat him as he should have treated him in the beginning. It might cost
+him his liberty--his life--but it was worth it! The old devilry had
+sprung back into being within him. He was desperate--more desperate,
+this half-hour, than ever in the whole course of his desperate
+existence. His life had seemed worth having during the past weeks of his
+cowardice; now it was valueless--more valueless than it had been before.
+He was at bay, and he realised it. His brain was ablaze. He had played
+the docile Miles too long. Wait a moment, and he would give them one
+taste of the old Sundown!
+
+"At least," he sneered in a low, suppressed voice, "you have someone
+behind you with a warrant? No? Nothing but your bare word and the dim
+recollection of years ago? That, my friend, seems hardly enough. Ah,
+Colonel, I'm glad you are there. Is there any truth in this message that
+has been given me, that you have had enough of me?"
+
+"I wish you to go," said Colonel Bristo, sternly. "I wash my hands of
+you. Why refuse a chance of escape?"
+
+"What! Do you mean to say you believe this maniac's cock-and-bull yarn
+about me?" He pointed jauntily at Dick with his forefinger. But the hand
+lowered, until the forefinger covered the corner of white handkerchief
+peeping from Edmonstone's breast-pocket. For a moment Miles seemed to be
+making some mental calculation; then his hand dropped, and trifled with
+his watch-chain.
+
+"I believe every word that he has told me," declared the Colonel
+solemnly. "As to warrants, they are not wanted where there is to be no
+arrest. We are not going to lay hands on you. Then go!"
+
+"Go!" echoed Edmonstone hoarsely. "And I wish to God I had done my duty
+the night I found you out! You would have been in proper hands long
+before this."
+
+"Suppose I refuse to go? Suppose I stay and insist on evidence being
+brought against me?" said Miles to the Colonel. Then turning to Dick
+with fiery, blood-shot eyes, he cried: "Suppose, since there is no
+evidence at all, I shoot the inventor of all these lies?"
+
+The hand was raised sharply from the watch-chain and dived into an inner
+pocket. That moment might have been Dick Edmonstone's last on earth, had
+not a white fluttering skirt appeared in the passage behind him.
+
+The hand of Miles dropped nervelessly.
+
+Colonel Bristo heard in the passage the light quick steps and rustling
+dress, and ran to the door. At the same instant Pinckney jumped up from
+his writing to see what was the matter. They met in the passage, and
+followed Alice to the steps. Her father seized her hand, to draw her
+back, but she snatched it from his grasp. Her hand was icy cold. Her
+face was white as death--as immovable--as passionless. She stood on the
+steps, and glanced from Edmonstone at her side to Miles on the path
+below. On Miles her calm glance rested.
+
+"You seem to forget!" she said in a hard voice that seemed to come from
+far away. "You are forgetting what you said to me a few minutes ago, on
+the road. I understand your meaning better now than I did then. Yes, it
+is true; you know it is true: you are what he says you are!"
+
+Miles watched her like one petrified.
+
+She turned to Dick at her side. And now a sudden flush suffused her
+pallid cheeks, and her eyes dilated.
+
+"It is you," she cried impetuously, "you that we have to thank for
+this! You that have brought all this upon us, you that allowed us to
+be preyed upon by a villain--screened him, helped him in his deceit,
+plotted with him! Being what he was, it was in his nature to cheat us.
+I forgive him, and pity him. But you I shall never forgive! Go, Mr.
+Miles. Whatever and whoever you are, go as you are asked. And go you
+too--true friend--brave gentleman! Go, both of you. Let us never see
+you again. Yet no! Stay--stay, all of you" (her face was changing, her
+words were growing faint)--"and hear what it was--he said--to me--and
+my answer, which is my answer still! Stay--one moment--and hear----"
+
+Her words ceased altogether. Without a cry or a moan she sank senseless
+in her father's arms.
+
+Philip Robson rushed forward. They stretched her on the cold stone. They
+tore open the collar round her neck, breaking the pretty brooch. They
+put brandy to her lips, and salts to her nostrils, and water upon her
+brow. Minutes passed, and there was no sign, no glimmer of returning
+life.
+
+When Alice fell, Miles took one step forward, but no more. He stood
+there, leaning forward, unable to remove his eyes from the white
+lifeless face, scarcely daring to breathe.
+
+There was no noise, no single word! The doctor (to his credit be it
+remembered) was trying all that he knew, quickly and quietly. The
+Colonel said not a word, but silently obeyed his nephew, and chafed the
+chill hands. Edmonstone fanned her face gently. Pinckney had disappeared
+from the group.
+
+Robson suddenly looked up and broke the silence.
+
+"Where is the nearest doctor?"
+
+"Melmerbridge," murmured someone.
+
+"He should be fetched at once. We want experience here. This is no
+ordinary faint."
+
+Before the doctor had finished speaking, Miles wheeled round and darted
+to the gate. And there he found himself confronted by a short, slight,
+resolute opponent.
+
+"You sha'n't escape," said Pinckney through his teeth, "just because the
+others can't watch you! You villain!"
+
+Pinckney had heard only the end of what had passed on the steps, but
+that was enough to assure him that Miles had been unmasked as a
+criminal. Of course he would take the opportunity of all being
+preoccupied to escape, and did; and David faced Goliath in the gateway.
+
+In lesser circumstances Miles would have laughed, and perhaps tossed
+his little enemy into the ditch. But now he whipped out his
+revolver--quicker than thought--and presented it with such swift,
+practised precision that you would have thought there had been no hiatus
+in his career as bushranger. And he looked the part at that instant!
+
+Pinckney quailed, and gave way.
+
+The next moment, Miles was rushing headlong up the hill.
+
+On the crest of the second hill, above the beck and the bridge, he
+stopped to look round. The people on the steps were moving. Their number
+had increased. He could distinguish a servant-maid holding her apron to
+her eyes. They were moving slowly; they were carrying something into the
+house--something in a white covering that hung heavily as a cerement in
+the heavy air.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXVII
+
+                            THE FATAL TRESS
+
+
+Was she dead?
+
+The question was thundered out in the sound of the runner's own steps on
+the flinty places, and echoed by the stones that rolled away from under
+his feet. The thought throbbed in his brain, the unspoken words sang in
+his ears: Was she dead?
+
+The face of Alice was before Ryan as he ran: the pale, delicate face of
+this last week, not the face of old days. The early days of summer were
+old days, though it was summer still. June by the Thames was buried
+deeper in the past than last year in Australia, though it was but August
+now. What had come over the girl in these few weeks? What had changed
+and saddened her? What made her droop like a trampled flower? What was
+the matter--was it the heart?
+
+The heart! Suppose it was the heart. Suppose the worst. Suppose this
+shock had killed her. Suppose he--the criminal, the outlaw, the wretch
+unfit to look upon good women--had murdered this sweet, cruel, wayward,
+winsome girl! Even so, he must still push on and bring her aid. If that
+aid came too late, then let his own black life come to a swift and
+miserable end. His life for hers; the scales of justice demanded it.
+
+The afternoon was dull but not dusky. The clouds were so high and
+motionless that it seemed as if there were no clouds, but one wide vault
+of tarnished silver. To point to that part of this canopy that hid the
+sun would have been guesswork.
+
+Between the tall hedges the air was heavier than in the morning; the
+flies and midges swarmed in myriads. Even on the moor there was now no
+breath of wind. The heather looked lifeless, colourless; the green
+fronds peeping between had lost their sparkle; the red-brown of the
+undulating belt of road was the brightest tint in the landscape up
+there.
+
+When Ryan was half-way across the moor, rain began to fall. He threw
+back his head as he ran, and the raindrops cooled his heated face. His
+hat had long ago been jerked off, and his hair lay plastered by
+perspiration to the scalp. The man's whole frame was on fire from his
+exertions. The breath came hard through his clenched teeth. His blue
+eyes were filled with a wild despair. Since the last backward look, that
+showed him the solemn group on the steps, he had thundered on without an
+instant's pause; and the time lost in toiling up the banks was made up
+by dashing headlong down the other side.
+
+Now he was climbing the steep ascent that culminated at the spot where
+the road was curved round the face of the cliff, and protected on the
+right by the low stone parapet. Once at the top, he would soon be in
+Melmerbridge, for the remainder of the road was down-hill.
+
+The wall of cliff on the left was jagged and perpendicular, and of the
+same russet tint as the road. Detached fragments of the rock rested in
+the angle formed by its base and the rough-hewn road. Among these
+boulders was an object that attracted Ryan's curiosity as he climbed up
+from below: it was so like a boulder in rigidity and colour, and in
+outline so like a man. Ryan saw the outline alter: of course it was a
+man, and he was crouching with his back to the rock for shelter from the
+rain. Suddenly the man rose, and staggered into the middle of the pass,
+between rocky wall and stone parapet, while Ryan was still some yards
+below. It was Pound.
+
+Ryan had seen him in the street at Melmerbridge, in coming from church.
+Pound had reeled out of a public-house and caught him by the arm. Ryan
+had shaken him off with a whispered promise to meet him in the evening
+as arranged; and had explained the occurrence to his companion by some
+ready lie.
+
+So Pound was on his way back to Gateby, drunk. This was evident from his
+attitude as he stood barring the pass, and from the hoarse peal of
+laughter that echoed round the cliff, and from the tones of blusterous
+banter with which he greeted his quondam leader.
+
+"Welcome! Glad to see ye! But who'd ha' thought you'd be better than
+your word? Better, I say--you're better than your blessed word!"
+
+"Stand clear!" shouted Ryan, twenty paces below.
+
+Pound leered down upon him like a satyr. His massive arms were tightly
+folded across his bulky chest. His smooth face became horrible as he
+stood looking down and leering. His answer to Ryan was hissed savagely
+through his teeth:
+
+"Stand clear be----! I want my money. I'll have my whack o' the swag,
+and have it now! D'ye hear? Now!"
+
+"I have nothing about me," Ryan answered. "You drunken fool, stand
+clear!"
+
+The twenty paces between them were reduced to ten.
+
+"Nothing about you!" jeered Pound, spitting upon the ground. "Ay, I
+know--you carry your nothing round your neck, old man! And I'll have my
+share of it now or never!"
+
+They were almost at arm's length now.
+
+"Never, then!" cried Ryan, half drawing his revolver.
+
+In a flash Pound's arm unfolded, and his right arm shot out straight
+from the shoulder. There followed a streak of fire and a loud report.
+Thin clouds of white smoke hung in the motionless air. From their midst
+came a deep groan and the thud of a dead weight falling. And Pound was
+left standing alone, a smoking pistol in his hand. For a minute he stood
+as still as Ryan lay.
+
+"A shake longer," he muttered at length, "and I'd have been there and
+you here. As it is--as it is, I think you're cooked at last, skipper!"
+
+He put the revolver back in his pocket, and stood contemplating his
+work. The sight completely sobered him. To a certain degree it
+frightened him as well. Of the other sensations, such as might ensue
+upon a first murder, Jem Pound experienced simply none. Even his fear
+was not acute, for it was promptly swallowed by cupidity.
+
+"Now for them notes!"
+
+He knelt down beside his victim, eyeing him cautiously. The fallen man
+lay stretched across the road, on his back. He had torn open his coat
+and waistcoat while running, and the white shirt was darkened with a
+stain that increased in area every instant. Pound wondered whether he
+had hit the heart. The upturned face, with closed eyelids and mouth
+slightly open, was slimy and wet with perspiration and the soft August
+rain. By holding the back of his hand half-an-inch above the mouth,
+Pound satisfied himself that Ryan was still breathing--"his last,"
+thought Jem Pound, without any extravagant regret. Blood was flowing
+from a scalp-wound at the back of the head, received in falling; but
+this escaped the murderer's notice. What he next observed was that the
+arms lay straight down the sides, and that the right hand grasped a
+revolver. At sight of this, Jem Pound leapt to his feet with an excited
+exclamation.
+
+He drew forth again his own revolver, to assure himself that he was not
+mistaken. No, he was not. The pistols were an original brace, and alike
+in every particular. The smooth, heavy face of the murderer lit up with
+infernal exultation. He pointed with a finger that trembled now--from
+sheer excitement--to the pistol in the lifeless hand, then tapped the
+barrel of his own significantly.
+
+"Suicide!" he whispered. "Suicide--suicide--suicide!" He reiterated the
+word until he thought that he appreciated its full import. Then he knelt
+down and leant over the prostrate Ryan, with the confident air of a
+lucky man on the point of crowning a very pyramid of good fortune.
+
+Slowly and daintily he unfastened the studs in Ryan's shirt; he was
+playing with blood now, and must avoid unnecessary stains. He would just
+take what he wanted--take it cleverly, without leaving a trace
+behind--and satisfy himself that it was what he wanted, more or less.
+Then he would fire one chamber of Ryan's revolver, and make off. But
+first--those notes! The chest was already bathed in blood; but Pound saw
+at once the object of his search, the cause of his deed, and his black
+heart leapt within him.
+
+Well, the little oiled-silk bag was small--unexpectedly
+small--incredibly small; but then there were bank notes for enormous
+sums; and one bank-note, or two, or three, would fold quite as small as
+this, and press as thin. To Pound's ignorant mind it seemed quite
+natural for Sundown, the incomparably clever Sundown, to have exchanged
+his ill-gotten gold for good, portable paper-money at some or other time
+and place. Dexterously, with the keen broad blade of his knife, he cut
+the suspending tapes and picked up the bag on its point. The oiled-silk
+bag was blood-stained; he wiped it gingerly on the flap of Ryan's coat,
+and then wiped the blood from his own fingers. He knew better than to
+allow bank-notes to become stained with blood.
+
+Yet how light it was in his palm! It would not be lighter if the
+oiled-silk contained nothing at all. By its shape, however, it did
+contain something. Pound rose to his feet to see what. His confidence
+was ebbing. His knees shook under him with misgiving. He moved
+unsteadily to the low stone parapet, sat down, and ripped open the
+little bag with such clumsy haste that he cut his finger.
+
+Jem Pound sat like a man turned to stone. The little bag was still in
+his left hand, and the knife; his right hand was empty the contents of
+the bag, a lock of light hair, had fallen from his right palm to the
+ground, where it lay all together, for there was no wind to scatter it.
+
+Jem Pound's expression was one of blank, unspeakable, illimitable
+disappointment; suddenly he looked up, and it turned to a grimace of
+speechless terror.
+
+The barrel of the other revolver covered him.
+
+Bleeding terribly from the bullet in his lungs, but stunned by the fall
+on his head, Ned Ryan had recovered consciousness in time to see Pound
+rip open the oiled-silk bag, in time to smile faintly at what
+followed--and to square accounts.
+
+Ryan did not speak. The faint smile had faded from his face. In the
+relentless glare that took its place the doomed wretch, sitting in a
+heap on the low parapet, read his death-warrant.
+
+There was a pause, a hush, of very few moments. Pound tried to use his
+tongue, but, like his lips, it was paralysed. Then the echoes of the
+cliff resounded with a second, short, sharp pistol shot, and when the
+white smoke cleared away the parapet was bare; Jem Pound had vanished;
+the account was squared.
+
+Ryan fell back. The pistol dropped from his hand. Again he became
+well-nigh senseless, but this time consciousness refused to forsake him
+utterly; he rallied. Presently he fell to piecing together, in jerky,
+delirious fashion, the events of the last few minutes--or hours, he did
+not know which--but it was all the same to him now. The circumstances
+came back to him vividly enough, if out of their proper sequence. That
+which had happened at the moment his senses fled from him was clearest
+and uppermost in his mind at first.
+
+"The cur!" he feebly moaned. "He gave me no show. He has killed me--I am
+bleeding to death and not a soul to stop it or stand by me!"
+
+Yet, very lately, he had decided that his life was valueless, and even
+thought of ending it by his own hand. Some dim reflection of this recent
+attitude of mind perhaps influenced him still, for, if an incoherent
+mind can be said to reason, his first reasoning was somewhat in this
+strain:
+
+"Why should I mind? Who am I any good to, I should like to know? What
+right have I to live any more? None! I'm ready. I've faced it night and
+day these four years, and not for nothing--not to flinch now it's
+here!... And hasn't my life been gay enough, and wild enough, and long
+enough?... I said I'd die in the bush, and so I will--here, on these
+blessed old ranges. But stop! I didn't mean to be shot by a mate--I
+didn't mean that. A mate? A traitor! What shall we do with him?"
+
+His mind had annihilated space: it had flown back to the bush.
+
+A curious smile flickered over Ryan's face in answer to his own
+question.
+
+"What have I done with him?" he muttered.
+
+He raised himself on his elbows and looked towards the spot where he had
+seen Pound last. The formation of the parapet seemed to puzzle him. It
+was unlike the ranges.
+
+"He was always the worst of us, that Jem Pound," he went rambling on;
+"the worst of a bad lot, I know. But those murders were his doing. So at
+last we chucked him overboard. And now he's come back and murdered me.
+As to that, I reckon we're about quits, with the bulge on my side. Never
+mind, Jem Pound"--with a sudden spice of grim humour--"we'll meet again
+directly. Your revenge'll keep till then, old son!"
+
+All this time Ryan's brain was in a state of twilight. He now lay still
+and quiet, and began to forget again. But he could not keep his eyes
+long from the spot whence Pound had disappeared, and presently, after a
+fruitless effort to stand upright, he crawled to the parapet, slowly
+lifted himself, and hung over it, gazing down below.
+
+Nothing to be seen; nothing but the tops of the fir-trees. Nothing to be
+heard; for the fir-trees were asleep in the still, heavy atmosphere, and
+the summer rain made no noise. He raised his head until his eyes fell
+upon the broad flat table-land. The air was not clear, as it had been in
+the morning. That pall of black smoke covering the distant town was
+invisible, for the horizon was far nearer, misty and indeterminate; and
+his eyes were dim as they never had been before. The line of white smoke
+left by an engine that crept lazily across the quiet country was what he
+saw clearest; the tinkling of a bell--for Sunday-school, most
+likely--down in one of the hamlets that he could not see, was the only
+sound that reached his ears.
+
+Yet he was struggling to recognise as much as he could see, vaguely
+feeling that it was not altogether new to him. It was the struggle of
+complete consciousness returning.
+
+He was exhausted again; he fell back into the road. Then it was that he
+noticed the parapet streaming with blood at the spot where he had hung
+over it. To think that the coward Pound should have bled so freely in so
+short a time! And how strange that he, Ned Ryan, should not have
+observed that blood before he had drenched himself in it! No! Stop! It
+was his own blood! He was shot; he was dying; he was bleeding to his
+death--alone--away from the world!
+
+A low moan--a kind of sob--escaped him. He lay still for some minutes.
+Then, with another effort, he raised himself on his elbow and looked
+about him. The first thing that he saw--close to him, within his
+reach--was that fatal tress of light-coloured hair!
+
+In a flash his mind was illumined to the innermost recesses, and clear
+from that moment.
+
+Now he remembered everything: how he had come to his senses at the very
+moment that Pound was handling this cherished tress, which alone was
+sufficient reason and justification for shooting Jem Pound on the spot;
+how he had been on his way to fetch help--help for Alice Bristo!
+
+He pressed the slender tress passionately to his lips, then twined it
+tightly in and out his fingers.
+
+Faint and bleeding as he was, he started to his feet. New power was
+given him; new life entered the failing spirit: new blood filled the
+emptying vessels. For a whole minute Ned Ryan was a Titan. During that
+minute the road reeled out like a red-brown ribbon under his stride. The
+end of that minute saw him at the top of Melmerbridge Bank. There, with
+the village lying at his feet, and the goal all but won, he staggered,
+stumbled, and fell headlong to the ground.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXVIII
+
+                               THE EFFORT
+
+
+Galloping over the moor, fresh from his corn, the pony suddenly swerved,
+and with such violence that the trap was all but overturned.
+
+"What was that?" asked Edmonstone, who was driving.
+
+"A hat," Pinckney answered.
+
+These two men were alone together, on an errand of life or death.
+
+Edmonstone glanced back over his shoulder.
+
+"I'll swear," said he, "that hat is Miles's!"
+
+"Good heavens! has he stuck to the road?"
+
+"Looks like it."
+
+"Then we're on his track?"
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"And will get him, eh?"
+
+At this question Edmonstone brought down the lash heavily on the pony's
+flank.
+
+"Who wants to get him? Who cares what becomes of him? The Melmerbridge
+doctor's the man we want to get!"
+
+Pinckney relapsed into silence. It became plain to him that his
+companion was painfully excited. Otherwise there was no excuse for his
+irritability.
+
+At the foot of the last steep ascent on the farther side of the moor,
+Pinckney had jumped out to walk. He was walking a few yards ahead of the
+pony. Suddenly he stopped, uttered a shrill exclamation, and picked up
+something he found lying in the road. He was then but a few feet from
+the top, and the low stone parapet was already on his right hand.
+
+"What is it?" cried Dick, from the pony-trap below.
+
+Pinckney threw his hand high over his head. The revolver was stamped
+black and sharp against the cold grey sky.
+
+A cold shudder passed through Edmonstone's strong frame. The wings of
+death beat in his ears and fanned his cheek with icy breath. The dread
+angel was hovering hard by. Dick felt his presence, and turned cold and
+sick to the heart.
+
+"Let me see it," cried Dick, urging on the pony.
+
+Pinckney ran down to meet him with a pale, scared face.
+
+"It was his," faltered Pinckney. "I ought to know it. He threatened me
+with it when I tried to stop him bolting."
+
+The slightest examination was enough to bespeak the worst.
+
+"One cartridge has been fired," said Dick, in a hushed voice. "God knows
+what we shall find next!"
+
+What they found next was a patch of clotting blood upon the stones of
+the parapet.
+
+They exchanged no more words, but Dick got down and ran on ahead, and
+Pinckney took the reins.
+
+Dick's searching eyes descried nothing to check the speed of his running
+till he had threaded the narrow, winding lane that led to Melmerbridge
+Bank, and had come out at the top of that broad highway; and there, at
+the roadside, stretched face downward on the damp ground, lay the
+motionless form of Sundown, the Australian outlaw.
+
+The fine rain was falling all the time. The tweed clothes of the
+prostrate man were soaked and dark with it. Here and there they bore a
+still darker, soaking stain; and a thin, thin stripe of dusky red,
+already two feet in length, was flowing slowly down the bank, as though
+in time to summon the people of Melmerbridge to the spot. Under the
+saturated clothes there was no movement that Dick could see; but neither
+was there, as yet, the rigidity of death in the long, muscular,
+outstretched limbs.
+
+Dick stole forward and knelt down, and murmured the only name that rose
+to his lips:
+
+"Miles! Miles! Miles!"
+
+No answer--no stir. Dick lowered his lips to the ear that was uppermost,
+and spoke louder:
+
+"Miles!"
+
+This time a low, faint groan came in answer. He still lived!
+
+Dick gently lifted the damp head between his two hands, and laid Ryan's
+cheek upon his knee.
+
+Ryan opened his blue eyes wide.
+
+"Where am I? Who are you? Ah!"
+
+Consciousness returned to the wounded man, complete in a flash this
+time. At once he remembered all--tearing madly down from the top, in and
+out this winding track--and all that had gone before. He was perfectly
+lucid. He looked up in Edmonstone's face, pain giving way before fierce
+anxiety in his own, and put a burning question in one short, faint,
+pregnant word:
+
+"Well?"
+
+Had health and strength uttered this vague interrogative, Dick would
+have replied on the instant from the depths of his own anxiety by
+telling the little that he knew of Alice Bristo's condition. But here
+was a man struck down--dying, as it seemed. How could one think that on
+the brink of the grave a man should ask for news from another's sick
+bed? Edmonstone was puzzled by the little word, and showed it.
+
+"You know what I mean?" exclaimed Ryan, with weary impatience. "Is
+she--is she--dead?"
+
+"God forbid!" said Dick. "She is ill--she is insensible still. But man,
+man, what about you? What have you done?"
+
+"What have I done?" cried Ryan, hoarsely. "I have come to bring help to
+her--and--I have failed her! I can get no further!"
+
+His voice rose to a wail of impotent anguish. His face was livid and
+quivering. He fell back exhausted. Dick attempted to staunch the blood
+that still trickled from the wound in the chest. But what could he do?
+He was powerless. In his helplessness he gazed down the bank; not a soul
+was to be seen. He could not leave Ryan. He could hear the sure-footed
+steps of the pony slowly approaching from above. What was he to do? Was
+this man to die in his arms without an effort to save him? He gazed
+sorrowfully upon the handsome face, disfigured by blood, and pain, and
+mire. All his relations with this man recrossed his mind in a swift
+sweeping wave, and, strange to say, left only pity behind them. Could
+nothing be done to save him?
+
+The pony-trap was coming nearer every instant. It was Dick's one hope
+and comfort, for Pinckney could leave the trap and rush down into the
+village for help. He hallooed with all his might, and there was an
+answering call from above.
+
+"Make haste, make haste!" cried Dick at the top of his voice.
+
+The shouting aroused Ryan. He opened his eyes, and suddenly started into
+a sitting posture.
+
+"Haste?" he cried, with articulation weaker yet more distinct. "Yes,
+make haste to the township! To the township, do you hear? There it is!"
+
+He pointed through the rain to the red roofs of Melmerbridge, on the
+edge of the tableland below. It was then that Dick noticed the lock of
+hair twisted about the fingers of Ryan's right hand.
+
+"There it is, quite close--don't you see it? Go! go--I can't! Fly for
+your life to the township, and fetch him--not to me--to her! For God's
+sake, fetch him quick!"
+
+For all the use of the word "township," his mind was not wandering in
+Australia now.
+
+"Why don't you go? You may be too late! Why do you watch me like that?
+Ah, you won't go! You don't care for her as I did; you want her to die!"
+
+Wildly he flung himself forward, and dug his fingers into the moist
+ground, and began feebly creeping down the bank on his hands and knees.
+Dick tried in vain to restrain him. The failing heart was set upon an
+object from which death alone could tear it. During this the last hour
+of his life this criminal, this common thief, had struggled strenuously
+towards an end unpretending enough, but one that was for once not
+selfish--had struggled and fought, and received his death-wound, and
+struggled on again. His life had been false and base. It cannot be
+expected to count for much that in his last moments he was faithful, and
+not ignoble. Yet so it was in the end. Edmonstone tried in vain to
+restrain him; but with a last extraordinary effort he flung himself
+clear, and half crawled, half rolled several yards.
+
+Suddenly Ned Ryan quivered throughout his whole frame. Dick caught him
+in his arms, and held him back by main force.
+
+The dying man's glassy gaze was fixed on the red roofs below. For an
+instant one long arm was pointed towards them, and a loud clear voice
+rang out upon the silent air:
+
+"The township! The township----!"
+
+The cry ended in a choking sob. The arm fell heavily. Edmonstone
+supported a dead weight on his breast.
+
+"Pinckney!"
+
+"Yes, yes?"
+
+"God forgive him--it's all over!"
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXIX
+
+                             ELIZABETH RYAN
+
+
+Elizabeth Ryan did not return to Gateby after leaving Pound in the
+fields between the village and the shooting-box. All that night she
+roamed the lanes and meadows like a restless shade. Whither her
+footsteps led her she cared little, and considered less.
+
+Though not unconscious of the mechanical act of walking, her sense of
+locomotion was practically suspended. A night on the treadmill would
+have left upon her an impression of environment no more monotonous than
+that which remained to her when this night was spent; and she never once
+halted the whole night through.
+
+Her seeing mind held but one image--her husband. In her heart, darting
+its poison through every vein, quivered a single passion--violent,
+ungovernable anger. The full, undivided force of this fierce passion was
+directed against Edward Ryan.
+
+Later--when the flame had gone out, and the sullen glow of stern resolve
+remained in its stead--the situation presented itself in the form of
+alternatives. Either she must betray her husband, or set him free by
+ending her own miserable life. One of these two things must be done, one
+left undone. There was no third way now. The third way had been tried;
+it should have led to compassion and justice; it had led only to
+further cruelty and wrong. One of the remaining ways must now be chosen;
+for the woman it little mattered which; they surely converged in death.
+
+At daybreak Elizabeth Ryan found herself in flat, low-lying country. She
+looked for the hills, and saw them miles away. From among those hills
+she had come. She must have been walking right through the night, she
+thought.
+
+She was by no means sure. She only knew that her brain had been terribly
+active all through the night--she could not answer for her body. Then,
+all at once, a deadly weariness overcame her, and a score of aches and
+pains declared themselves simultaneously. Prevented by sheer distraction
+from feeling fatigue as it came, by natural degrees, the moment the
+mental strain was interrupted the physical strain manifested its results
+in the aggregate; Mrs. Ryan in one moment became ready to drop.
+
+She had drifted into a narrow green lane leading to a farmhouse. She
+followed up this lane till it ended before a substantial six-barred
+gate. She opened the gate and entered the farmyard. She tried the doors
+of the outbuildings. A cowhouse was open and empty; one of its stalls
+was stacked high with hay; to the top of this hay she climbed, and crept
+far back to the wall, and covered her dress with loose handfuls of the
+hay. And there Elizabeth Ryan went near to sleeping the clock round.
+
+A hideous dream awoke her at last. She was trembling horribly. She had
+seen her husband dead at her feet--murdered at his wife's instigation!
+
+The mental picture left by the dream was so vivid that the unhappy woman
+lay long in terror and trembling, not daring to move. Instead of paling
+before consciousness and reason, the ghastly picture gained in breadth,
+colour, and conviction with each waking minute. He was lying dead at her
+feet--her husband--her Ned--the man for love of whom she had crossed the
+wide world, and endured nameless hardships, unutterable humiliation. He
+was slain by the hand of the man who had led her to him--by the ruthless
+murderer, Jem Pound!
+
+She remembered her words to Pound, and her teeth chattered: "Take it,
+even if you have to take his life with it!" Those were the very words
+she had used in her frenzy, meaning whatever it was that Ned wore upon
+his breast. He wore it, whatever it was, near to his heart; he must
+value it next to his life. What else could it be but money? Oh, why had
+she told Pound? How could passion carry her so far? If her dream was
+true--and she had heard of true dreams--then her husband was murdered,
+and the guilt was hers.
+
+A low wail of agony escaped her, and for a moment drove her fears into a
+new channel. Suppose that cry were heard! She would be discovered
+immediately, perhaps imprisoned, and prevented from learning the worst
+or the best about her dream, which she must learn at any price and at
+once! Filled with this new and tangible dread she buried herself deeper
+in the hay and held her breath. No one came. There was no sound but her
+own heart's loud beating, and the dripping and splashing of the rain
+outside in the yard, and the rising of the wind. She breathed freely
+again; more freely than before her alarm. The minutes of veritable
+suspense had robbed the superstitious terror of half its power, but not
+of the motive half, she must go back and make sure about that dream
+before carrying out any previous resolution. Until this was done,
+indeed, all antecedent resolves were cancelled.
+
+She crept down from the hay and peeped cautiously outside. She could see
+no one. It was raining in torrents and the wind was getting up. With a
+shudder she set her face to it, and crossed the yard. At the gate she
+stopped suddenly, for two unpleasant facts simultaneously revealed
+themselves: she had no idea of the way to Gateby, and she was famishing.
+Now to be clear on the first point was essential, and there was nothing
+for it but to apply boldly at the farmhouse for the information; as to
+the second, perhaps at the farmhouse she might also beg a crust.
+
+"Dear heart!" cried the good wife, answering the timid knock at the
+door. "Hast sprung from t'grave, woman?"
+
+"Nay," answered Elizabeth, sadly; "I am only on my way there."
+
+The farmer's wife, a mountain of rosy kindliness, stared curiously at
+the pale frightened face before her, and up and down the draggled dress.
+
+"Why, Lord, thou'rt wet and cold; an' I'll be bound thou's had nobbut
+hay for thy bed."
+
+With a sudden flood of tears, Elizabeth Ryan confessed where she had
+been sleeping all day.
+
+"Nay, nay, honey," said the good woman, a tear standing in her own eye,
+"it's nowt--it's nowt. Come in and get thysel' warmed an' dried. We're
+having our teas, an' you shall have some, an' all!"
+
+Thus the poor vagrant fell among warm Yorkshire hearts and generous
+Yorkshire hands. They gave her food, warmth, and welcome, and pitied her
+more than they liked to say. And when, in spite of all protests, she
+would go on her way (though the risen wind was howling in the chimney,
+and driving the heavy rain against the diamond panes), honest William,
+son of the house and soil, brought a great sack and tied it about her
+shoulders, and himself set her on the high road for Melmerbridge.
+
+"Ye'll 'ave te go there," said he, "to get te Gaatby. 'Tis six mile from
+this, an' Gaatby other fower."
+
+Six miles? That was nothing. So said the strange woman, as she tramped
+off in the teeth of the storm; and William, hurrying homeward, wondered
+what had made her eyes so bright and her step so brisk all at once. He
+asked his parents what they thought, but they only shook their puzzled
+heads: they had done nothing out of the way that they knew of; how could
+they guess that it had been their lot to show the first human kindness
+to a poor forlorn pilgrim from over the seas--the first the poor woman
+had met with in all stony-hearted England?
+
+Yet her treatment at the hands of these simple people had lightened the
+heart of Elizabeth Ryan, and the terror of her awful dream had softened
+it. Her burning rage against her husband was quenched; she thought of it
+with shuddering shame. Her wild resolves were thrown to the winds; she
+must have been mad when she entertained them. She must have been blind
+as well as mad; but now her sight was restored. Yes, now she could see
+things in their true light. Now she could see who had caused her
+husband's cruelty; who had poisoned him against her--subtly, swiftly,
+surely, at their first meeting; who had drugged her, and then shown Ned
+his drunken wife at their second meeting; whom she had to thank for all
+her misery: the fiend, Jem Pound.
+
+It was true that Ned had treated her heartlessly; but, believing what he
+believed of her, could she blame him? She blamed him for listening to
+the first whisper against her, from the lips of a monster; but his fault
+ended there. He had never heard her in her own defence. He had not so
+much as seen her alone. There lay the root of it all: she had been
+allowed no chance of explaining, of throwing herself on his compassion.
+
+But now she was going to put an end to all this. She was going to him at
+once, and alone. She was going to tell him all: how she had waited
+patiently for him at Townsville until the news of his capture drove her
+almost frantic; how, in the impulse and madness of the moment, she had
+trusted herself to Jem Pound, and followed him, her husband, to England;
+how she had followed him for his own sake, in the blindness of her love,
+which separation and his life of crime had been powerless to lessen;
+how, ever since, she had been in the power of a ruffianly bully, who had
+threatened and cajoled her by turns.
+
+And then she would throw herself at Ned's feet, and implore his mercy.
+And he, too, would see clearly, and understand, and pity her, and take
+her back into his life. Whether that life was bad or good, it alone was
+her heart's desire.
+
+A soft smile stole over the haggard face, upon which the wind and the
+rain were beating more fiercely every minute. Wind and rain were nothing
+to her now; she could not feel them; she was back in Victoria, and the
+sky above was dark blue, and the trees on either side the flint-strewn
+track were gaunt, grey, and sombre. The scent of the eucalyptus filled
+her nostrils. The strokes of two galloping horses rang out loud and
+clear on the rough hard road. She was mounted on one of these horses,
+Ned on the other. They were riding neck and neck, she and her handsome
+Ned--riding to the township where the little iron church was. It was
+their marriage morn. She had fled from home for ever.
+
+Surely he loved her then--a little? Yet he had left her, very soon,
+without a word or a cause; for weeks she could gather no tidings of him,
+until one day news came that rang through the countryside, and was
+echoed throughout the colony--news that stamped her new name with
+infamy. But had she changed her name, or sunk her identity, or disowned
+her husband, as some women might have done? No. She had employed her
+woman's wit to hunt her husband down--to watch over him--to warn him
+where danger lurked. One night--it stood out vividly in her memory--she
+had burst breathlessly into his bivouac, and warned him in the nick of
+time: half-an-hour later the armed force found the fires still burning,
+but the bushrangers flown. And he had been good to her then; for it was
+then that he had given her the money to go to his only relative--a
+sister at Townsville; and he had promised in fun to "work up" through
+Queensland, some day, and meet her there. Yes, with the hounds of
+justice on his heels he had made time to be kind to her then, after a
+fashion. It was not much, that amount of kindness, but it would be
+enough for her now. After all that she had gone through, she would be
+content with something short of love, say even tolerance. She would try
+to win the rest, in after years--years when Ned settled down in some
+distant country--when Ned reformed. Could he refuse her now so small a
+measure of what she gave him without stint? Surely not. It was
+impossible. Unless--unless--unless--
+
+What made Elizabeth Ryan clench her drenched cold fingers and draw her
+breath so hard? What blotted out the visionary blue skies, tore hope and
+fancy to shreds, and roused her to the bleak reality of wind and rain
+and the sickening memory of her husband's heartlessness? What, indeed,
+but the suggestions of Jem Pound?
+
+She loathed herself for listening to a single word from that polluted
+source; yet, as Pound's words came back to her, she listened again to
+them all. She thought of the pretty, delicate, pink-and-white woman her
+own eyes had seen by the waters of the Thames, with whom she had spoken,
+who had dared to offer her money. The thought became a globe of fire in
+her brain; and soon the poor woman had worked herself back into a frame
+of mind bordering upon that frenzy which had driven her hither and
+thither, like a derelict ship at the wind's mercy, through the long
+hours of the previous night. The appearance of watery lights through the
+storm came not before it was time. Even to Elizabeth Ryan, with hope and
+passion wrestling in her breast, there was a certain faint excitement
+and satisfaction in reaching a village after a six-mile tramp through
+wind, rain, and dusk deepening into night. Besides, if this was
+Melmerbridge, she must ask and find out the road to Gateby.
+
+Guided by the lights, she presently reached the north end of the long,
+one-sided village street; the long straight stream, now running
+turbulently, was on her left as she advanced, and Melmerbridge Bank
+straight ahead, at the southern end of the village. An irregular line of
+lights marked the houses on the right; to the left, across the beck,
+there were no such lights; but a set of church windows--the church being
+lit up for evening service--hung gaudily against the black screen of
+night; the outline of the church itself was invisible. The deep notes of
+an organ rose and fell in the distance, then died away; then suddenly,
+as the wayfarer gazed, the stained-glass window disappeared, and Mrs.
+Ryan found herself in the midst of a little stream of people who were
+coming from the bridge in front of the church to the cottages on the
+opposite side of the road.
+
+From one of these people she received the directions she required, but
+she noticed that most of them were talking eagerly and excitedly, in a
+way not usual among folks fresh from worship, or indeed in a quiet
+country village at any time. Little groups formed in the doorways and
+kept up an animated conversation. Clearly there was something of
+uncommon interest astir. Mrs. Ryan passed on, mildly interested herself.
+
+The last houses of the village were darker. Elizabeth touched their
+outer walls with her skirts as she trudged along the narrow uneven
+pavement. From one of them came a sound which struck her as an odd sound
+for a Sabbath evening--the long, steady sweep and swish of a plane. This
+house was a shop; for six parallel threads of light issued from the
+chinks of the tall shutters. Through one of these chinks a small boy was
+gazing with rapt attention and one eye closed. Mrs. Ryan stopped, and
+out of mere curiosity peered through another.
+
+A burly old man was energetically planing a long, wide, roughly-shaped,
+hexagonal plank. The shape of the plank was startling.
+
+"What is it he is making?" inquired Mrs. Ryan of the small boy. Perhaps
+she could see for herself, and put the question mechanically.
+
+The answer was prompt and short:
+
+"A coffin!"
+
+Mrs. Ryan shuddered and stood still. The urchin volunteered a comment.
+
+"My! ain't it a long 'un! Did ye iver see sich a long 'un, missis?"
+
+He was little Tom Rowntree, the sexton's son and heir, this boy, so he
+knew what he was talking about; one day, all being well, he would dig
+graves and bury folks himself; he took a profound premature interest in
+all branches of the hereditary avocation.
+
+"Who is dead?" asked Mrs. Ryan, in a hard metallic voice.
+
+"Haven't heard tell his name, but 'tis a sooincide, missis--a sooincide!
+A gent's been and shot hisself upon the bank there, this afternoon. He's
+a-lyin' ower yonder at t' Blue Bell."
+
+"Where is that?"
+
+"Yonder, look--t' last house on this side. It's nigh all dark, it is,
+an' no one there 'cept my mother an' Mr. Robisson hisself, an' customers
+turned away an' all. That's 'cause Mrs. Robisson she's took the
+high-strikes--some people is that weak!"
+
+But there was no listener to these final words of scorn. With a ghastly
+face and starting eyes, Elizabeth Ryan was staggering to the Blue Bell
+inn.
+
+A square of pale light dimly illumined a window close to the ground to
+the left of the door, otherwise the inn was in darkness. Elizabeth Ryan
+crouched down, and never took her eyes from that window till the light
+was extinguished. Then she heard the door within open and shut, and the
+outer door open. A man and a woman stood conversing in low tones on the
+steps, the woman's voice broken by sobs.
+
+"'Tisn't that I'm growing old and nervous, Mr. Robisson, and thinkin'
+that me own time'll come some day; no, it's not that. But all these
+years--and never such a thing to happen in the village before--little
+did I think to live to be called in to the likes o' this. And such a
+good face as I never seed in living man, poor fellow! You never know
+where madness comes in, and that's what it's been, Mr. Robisson. And now
+I'm out o' t' room I'm that faint I don't know how to get home."
+
+"Come, come, I'll give you my arm and umbrella across, Mistress
+Rowntree."
+
+"But ye've left t' key in t' door?"
+
+"Oh, I'll be back quick enough; it's only a step."
+
+He gave her his arm, and the pair came out together and went slowly up
+the village street. In less than five minutes the landlord of the Blue
+Bell returned, locked all the doors, and went to bed, leaving the inn in
+total darkness.
+
+A quarter of an hour later this total darkness was interrupted; a pale
+light glimmered in the window close to the ground to the left of the
+door. This light burned some ten or twenty minutes. Just before it was
+put out, the window-sash was moved up slowly. Then, when all was once
+more in darkness, a figure stepped out upon the sill, leapt lightly to
+the ground, and cautiously drew down the sash.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXX
+
+                             SWEET REVENGE
+
+
+Whistling over the hilltops and thundering through the valleys, down
+came the wind upon the little lonely house by the roadside; and with the
+wind, driving rain; and they beat together upon the walls of that corner
+room wherein Alice Bristo lay trembling between life and death.
+
+The surgeon from Melmerbridge pronounced it to be brain fever. He had
+found the patient wildly delirious. The case was grave, very grave.
+Dangerous? There was always danger with an abnormal temperature and
+delirium. Dr. Mowbray stayed until evening and ultimately left his
+patient sleeping quietly. He promised to return in the early morning.
+
+The doctor stopped, as he was driving off, to shriek something through
+the storm:
+
+"Have you any one who can nurse--among the servants?"
+
+Inquiries were immediately made.
+
+"No," was the answer.
+
+"I'll send over a handy woman from Melmerbridge," said Dr. Mowbray;
+crack went his whip, and the gig-wheels splashed away through the mud.
+
+A young man standing at the other side of the road, bareheaded and
+soaked to the skin, wondered whether the nurse would be sent at once
+that night. Then this young man continued his wild rapid walk up and
+down the country road, glancing up every moment at the feeble light that
+shone from the casement of that corner room on the upper floor.
+
+Up and down, never pausing nor slackening his speed, fifty paces above
+the house and fifty below it, this unquiet spirit strode to and fro in
+the wind and the rain, like Vanderdecken on his storm-proof poop.
+
+Once, when opposite the house, he touched the skirts of a woman
+crouching under the hedge; but he was not aware of it--he was gazing up
+at the window--and, before he passed that spot again the woman was gone.
+
+The woman had crept stealthily across the road and through the open
+wicket. She was crouching behind the opposite hedge, on the rough
+grass-plot in front of the house. Once more the swinging steps passed
+the house and grew faint in the distance. The crouching woman sprang
+erect, darted noiselessly up the steps, and grasped the door-handle. She
+turned the handle and pushed gently, the door was neither locked nor
+bolted; it opened. The woman entered, and closed the door softly behind
+her. She stooped, listening. The footsteps passed the house without a
+pause or a hitch, as before. She had been neither seen nor heard--from
+without. A horrid smile disfigured the woman's livid face. She stood
+upright for an instant, her hand raised to her forehead, pausing in
+thought.
+
+A lamp was burning low on the table in the passage; its dull light
+flickered upon the dark, fierce, resolute face of Elizabeth Ryan.
+
+The dark hair fell in sodden masses about a face livid and distorted
+with blind fury, the dark eyes burned like live coals in the dim light,
+the cast of the firm wide mouth was vindictive, pitiless; the fingers of
+the right hand twitched terribly; once they closed spasmodically upon a
+loose portion of the ragged dress, and wrung it so hard that the water
+trickled down in a stream upon the mat, and at that moment murder was
+written in the writhing face. The left hand was tightly clasped.
+
+Elizabeth Ryan had crept into the chamber of death, in the Blue Bell at
+Melmerbridge, during the five minutes' absence of the innkeeper. It was
+she who had quitted that room by the window. She had fled wildly over
+the moor, maddened by a discovery that scorched up the grief in her
+heart, setting fire to her brain, changed in a flash from a bewildered,
+heartbroken, forlorn creature to a ruthless frantic vendetta. The
+substance of that discovery was hidden in her clasped left hand.
+
+She stood for a brief interval on the mat, then stepped stealthily
+forward towards the stairs. A light issued from an open door on the
+left, near the foot of the stairs. She peeped in as she passed.
+Stretched on a couch lay an old white-haired man, dressed as though it
+were mid-day instead of mid-night, in a tweed suit. Though asleep, his
+face was full of trouble. Nothing in this circumstance, nor in the
+conduct of the man outside walking to and fro in the storm, nor in the
+dim lights all over the house at this hour, struck Elizabeth Ryan as
+extraordinary. Her power of perception was left her; her power of
+inference was gone, except in direct relation to the one hideous
+project that possessed her soul. She crept softly up the stairs. They
+did not creak. She appreciated their silence, since it furthered her
+design.
+
+As below, a light issued from an open door. She approached this door on
+tip-toe. A pair of small light shoes, with the morning's dust still upon
+them, stood at one side of the mat; someone had mechanically placed them
+there. When Elizabeth Ryan saw them her burning eyes dilated, and her
+long nervous fingers closed with another convulsive grasp upon the folds
+of her skirt.
+
+She crossed the threshold and entered the room. The first thing she saw,
+in the lowered light of a lamp, was an old, puckered, wrinkled face just
+appearing over a barrier of eiderdown and shawls, and deep-set in an
+easy-chair. The brown, wrinkled eyelids met the brown, furrowed cheeks.
+The watcher slumbered and slept.
+
+As yet the room wore none of the common trappings of a sick-room: the
+illness was too young for that. The book the sick girl had been reading
+last night lay open, leaves downward, on the chest of drawers; the
+flowers that she had picked on the way to church, to fasten in her
+dress, had not yet lost their freshness; the very watch that she had
+wound with her own hand last night was still ticking noisily on the
+toilet-table. Thus, to one entering the room, there was no warning of
+sickness within, unless it was the sight of the queer old sleeping woman
+in the great chair by the fireside, where a small fire was burning.
+
+The stealthy visitor took two soft, swift, bold steps forward--only to
+start back in awe and horror, and press her hand before her eyes. She,
+Elizabeth Ryan, might do her worst now. She could not undo what had been
+done before. She could not kill Death, and Death had forestalled her
+here.
+
+A cold dew broke out upon the woman's forehead. She could not move. She
+could only stand still and stare. Her brain was dazed. She could not
+understand, though she saw plainly enough. After a few moments she did
+understand, and her heart sickened as it throbbed. Oh that it would beat
+its last beat there and then! Oh if only she too might die! Standing, as
+she thought, in the presence of death for the second time that night,
+Elizabeth Ryan lifted her two arms, and prayed that the gracious cold
+hand might be extended to her also. In the quenching of the fires that
+had raged in her brain, in the reawakening of her heart's anguish, this
+poor soul besought the Angel of Death not to pass her by, praying
+earnestly, pitifully, dumbly, with the gestures of a fanatic.
+
+She lowered her eyes to face for the last time her whom death had
+snatched from vengeance. She started backwards, as she did so, in sudden
+terror. What was this? The dead girl moved--the dead girl breathed--the
+counterpane rose and fell evenly. Had she been mistaken in her first
+impression? Elizabeth Ryan asked herself with chattering teeth. No! More
+likely she was mistaken now. This must be an illusion, like the last;
+she had been terrified by a like movement in the room at the Blue Bell,
+and it had proved but a cruel trick of the sight and the imagination;
+and this was a repetition of the same cruel trick.
+
+No, again! The longer she looked the more distinct grew this movement.
+It was regular, and it was gentle. Faint yet regular breathing became
+audible. The face on the pillows was flushed. Death had stopped short at
+Melmerbridge; Death had not travelled so far as this--at least, not yet:
+there was still a chance for vengeance!
+
+But Elizabeth Ryan had undergone a swift psychological reaction. That
+minute in which she stood, as she believed, for the second time that
+night in the presence of Death--that minute in which her spirit yearned
+with a mighty longing to be stilled, too, for ever--that minute had done
+its work. In it the mists of passion had risen from the woman's mind; in
+it the venom had been extracted from her heart. Her eyes, now grown soft
+and dim, roved slowly round the room. They fell curiously upon something
+upon a chair on the far side of the bed--a heap of light hair; they
+glanced rapidly to the head on the pillows--it was all but shaved.
+
+Elizabeth Ryan raised her clenched left hand; the hand trembled--the
+woman trembled from head to foot. She laid her arms upon the chest of
+drawers, and her face upon her arms, and stood there until her trembling
+ceased. When at last she raised her head, her eyes were swimming, but a
+bright determination shone out through the tears.
+
+She moved cautiously round the foot of the bed and dipped her left hand
+into the heap of light hair, and for the first time unclasped her hand.
+The hand was lifted empty, but the heap of Alice's hair remained a heap
+of her hair still; it had but received its own again.
+
+This strange yet simple act seemed to afford the performer the deepest
+relief; she gazed kindly, even tenderly, on the young wan face before
+her, and sighed deeply. Then hastily she retraced her steps to the door.
+At the door she stopped to throw back a glance of forgiveness and
+farewell.
+
+Now it happened that the head of the sleeping girl had slipped upon the
+pillow, so that its present position made the breathing laboured.
+
+Quick as thought, Mrs. Ryan recrossed the room from the door, and, with
+her woman's clever light hand, rearranged the pillows beneath the
+burning head, and smoothed them gently. But in doing this the silent
+tears fell one after the other upon the coverlet; and when it was done
+some sudden impulse brought Elizabeth upon her knees by the bedside, and
+from that bleeding heart there went up a short and humble prayer, of
+which we have no knowing--at which we can make no guess, since it flew
+upward without the weight of words.
+
+How cold, how bitter, how piercing were the blast and the driving rain
+outside! In the earlier part of the night their edge had not been half
+so keen; at all events, it did not cut so deep. Where was a woman to
+turn on such a night? A woman who had no longer any object in life, nor
+a single friend, nor--if it came to that--a single coin: what was such
+an one to do on a night like this?
+
+The picture of the warm, dry bedroom came vividly back to Elizabeth
+Ryan; she felt that she would rather lie sick unto death in that room
+than face the wild night without an ailment more serious than a broken,
+bleeding heart. She looked once back at the dim light in the upper
+window, and then she set her face to Gateby. Before, however, she was
+many paces on her way, quick footsteps approached her--footsteps that
+she seemed to know--and a man's voice hailed her in rapid, excited
+tones:
+
+"Are you from Melmerbridge?"
+
+"Yes," she faltered. What else dared she say. It was true, too.
+
+"Then you are the nurse! you are the nurse! I have been waiting for you,
+looking out for you, all the night, and now you have come; you have
+walked through the storm; God bless you for it!"
+
+His voice was tremulous with thanks and joy; yet trouble must have
+clouded his mind, too, or he never could have believed in his words.
+
+"I do not understand--" Mrs. Ryan was beginning, but he checked her
+impatiently:
+
+"You are the nurse, are you not?" he cried, with sudden fear in his
+voice. "Oh don't--don't tell me I'm mistaken! Speak--yes, speak--for
+here we are at the house."
+
+The pause that followed well-nigh drove him frantic. Then came the
+answer in a low, clear voice:
+
+"You are not mistaken. I am waiting to be shown into the house."
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXXI
+
+                         THE CHARITY OF SILENCE
+
+
+Dr. Mowbray, coming first thing in the morning, declared that the
+patient had passed a better night than he had hoped for; but he told
+Colonel Bristo privately that he must count on nothing as yet, and be
+prepared for anything.
+
+To his surprise and delight, the physician found his patient in the
+hands of a gentle, intelligent nurse. This was the more fortunate since
+he had failed to find in Melmerbridge a capable woman who was able to
+come. Whoever the dark, shabbily-dressed woman was, she must not be
+allowed to leave the bedside for the present. "She is a godsend," said
+Dr. Mowbray on coming downstairs. Colonel Bristo, for his part, knew
+nothing of the woman; he supposed she was from Gateby. Mrs. Parish, no
+doubt, knew all about her; and after the doctor's account of her
+services, the Colonel made no inquiries.
+
+Edmonstone and Pinckney were to drive back to Melmerbridge with the
+doctor to attend the inquest on the body of the suicide. Before they
+started the Colonel called the two young men aside, and a brief, earnest
+colloquy took place.
+
+During the drive Dr. Mowbray mentioned a strange report that had reached
+him before leaving Melmerbridge; it was noised in the village, at that
+early hour, that the dead man had moved one of his hands during the
+night.
+
+"It will show you," the doctor said, "the lengths to which the rustic
+imagination can stretch. The fact is, they are terribly excited and
+primed with superstition, for there hasn't been a suicide in the parish
+in the memory of this generation. What is more," added the old
+gentleman, suddenly, "I'm not sure that there's been one now!"
+
+There was some excuse, perhaps, for the string of excited questions
+reeled off on the spur of the moment by young Pinckney: "Why? How could
+it be anything else but suicide? Had they not got the pistol--Miles's
+own pistol? Had not Dr. Mowbray himself said that the bullet extracted
+fitted the one empty cartridge found in the revolver? Besides, Miles had
+not denied shooting himself when asked by Edmonstone what he had done."
+
+"But did he admit that he had shot himself?" asked Dr. Mowbray, turning
+to Edmonstone.
+
+"No, he did not."
+
+"Was his manner, up to the last, that of a man who had deliberately shot
+himself?"
+
+"No, it was not. It might have been an accident."
+
+"Neither the one nor the other," said the doctor. "Now I'll tell you two
+something that I shall make public presently: a man cannot point a
+pistol at himself from a greater distance than two feet at the outside;
+but this shot was fired at three times that range!"
+
+"How can you tell, sir?" asked Pinckney, with added awe and subtracted
+vehemence.
+
+"The clothes are not singed; the hole might have been made by a drill,
+it was so clean."
+
+The young man sat in silent wonder. Then Dick put a last question:
+
+"You think it has been--murder?"
+
+"Personally, I am convinced of it. We shall say all we know, and get an
+adjournment. At the adjourned inquest Colonel Bristo will attend, and
+tell us his relations with the dead man, who, it appears, had no other
+friend in the country; but to-day that is not absolutely necessary, and
+I shall explain his absence myself. Meanwhile, detectives will be sent
+down, and will find out nothing at all, and the affair will end in a
+verdict against some person or persons unknown, at best."
+
+Dr. Mowbray's first prediction was forthwith fulfilled: the inquest was
+adjourned. The doctor at once drove back to Gateby with the two young
+men. As they drove slowly down the last hill they descried two
+strangers, in overcoats and hard hats, conversing with Colonel Bristo in
+the road. Philip Robson was standing by, talking to no one, and looking
+uncomfortable.
+
+When the shorter of the two strangers turned his face to the gig, Dick
+ejaculated his surprise--for it was the rough, red, good-humoured face
+of the Honourable Stephen Biggs.
+
+"What has brought you here?" Dick asked in a low voice when he had
+greeted the legislator.
+
+By way of reply, Biggs introduced him to the tall, grave, black-bearded,
+sharp-featured gentleman--Sergeant Compton, late of the Victorian
+Mounted Police.
+
+There was an embarrassed silence; then Philip Robson stepped forward.
+
+"It was my doing," he said, awkwardly enough; and he motioned Dick to
+follow him out of hearing of the others. "I listened," he then
+confessed, "to a conversation between you and Miles. I heard you read a
+letter aloud. From what passed between you, I gathered that Miles was a
+blackleg of some kind, whom you were screening from the police. Miles
+found that I had overheard you, and swore to me that you were the victim
+of a delusion. When I reflected, I disbelieved him utterly. I copied the
+address of the letter you had written, and the next day I wrote myself
+to Mr. Biggs, describing Miles as well as I could, and saying where he
+was. I did not dream that Miles was a bushranger, even then--I thought
+he was merely a common swindler. However, that's the whole truth.
+Edmonstone, I'm sorry!"
+
+Dick's first expression of contempt had vanished. Frank admissions turn
+away wrath more surely than soft answers. Besides, Robson had behaved
+well yesterday: without him, what might not have happened before Dr.
+Mowbray arrived?
+
+"I believe," said Dick, "that you were justified in what you did,
+only--I'm sorry you did it."
+
+Mr. Biggs was in close conversation with Colonel Bristo. Sergeant
+Compton stood aloof, silent and brooding; in the hour of triumph Death
+had baulked him of his quarry; his dark face presented a study in fierce
+melancholy.
+
+"If only," the Colonel was saying piteously, "the tragedy could stop at
+the name of Miles! The scandal that will attach to us when the whole
+sensation comes to light is difficult to face. For my part, I would face
+it cheerfully if it were not--if it were not for my daughter Alice. And,
+after all, it may not annoy her. She may not live to hear it."
+
+The last words were broken and hardly intelligible.
+
+The rugged face of Stephen Biggs showed honest concern, and honest
+sympathy too. It did not take him long to see the case from the
+Colonel's point of view, and he declared very bluntly that, for his
+part, he would be glad enough to hush the thing up, so far as the dead
+man's past life was concerned (and here Mr. Biggs jingled handfuls of
+coins in his pockets), but that, unfortunately, it did not rest with
+him.
+
+"You see, Colonel," he explained, "my mate here he's been on Ned Ryan's
+trail, off and on, these four years. Look at him now. He's just mad at
+being cheated in the end. But he's one of the warmest traps in this
+Colony--I mean out in Vic.; and, mark me, he'll take care to let the
+whole Colony know that, if he warn't in at Sundown's death, he was
+nearer it than any other blessed 'trap.' There's some personal feeling
+in it, Colonel," said Biggs, lowering his voice. "Frank Compton has
+sworn some mighty oath or other to take Ned Ryan alive or dead."
+
+"Suppose," said the Colonel, "we induce your friend here to hold his
+tongue, do you think it would be possible for us to let this poor fellow
+pass out of the world as Miles, a squatter, or, at worst, an unknown
+adventurer?"
+
+"How many are there of you, Colonel, up here who know?"
+
+"Four."
+
+"And there are two of us. Total six men in the world who know that Ned
+Ryan, the bushranger, died yesterday. The rest of the world believes
+that he was drowned in the Channel three months ago. Yes, I think it
+would be quite possible. Moreover, I don't see that it would do the
+least good to any one to undeceive the rest of the world; but Frank
+Compton--"
+
+"Is he the only detective after Miles in this country?"
+
+"The only one left. The others went back to Australia, satisfied that
+their man was drowned."
+
+"But our police--"
+
+"Oh, your police are all right, Colonel. They've never so much as heard
+of Sundown. They're easily pleased, are your police!"
+
+It was at this point that Dr. Mowbray reappeared on the steps. Colonel
+Bristo went at once to learn his report, which must have been no worse
+than that of the early morning, for it was to speak of the inquest that
+the Colonel hurried back the moment the doctor drove away.
+
+"Dick," said he, in a voice that all could hear (Edmonstone was still
+talking to Robson--Compton still standing aloof), "you never told me the
+result. The inquest is adjourned; but there is a strong impression it
+seems that it is not a case of suicide after all, gentlemen--but one of
+wilful murder."
+
+The personal bias mentioned by Biggs had not altogether extinguished
+ordinary professional instincts in the breast of Sergeant Compton; for,
+at this, his black eyes glittered, and he pulled his patron aside.
+
+Biggs, in his turn, sought a private word with the Colonel.
+
+"Compton," he said, "is bent on at once seeing the spot where Ryan was
+shot. Will you send some one with us? I'll bring my man back this
+evening, and we'll try to talk him over between us; but I fear it's
+hopeless."
+
+Between three and four that afternoon the body of Jem Pound was found at
+the bottom of the cliff, a mile from Melmerbridge, among the fir-trees.
+
+Between eight and nine that evening, in the little gun-room at the
+shooting-box, Biggs--in the presence of Colonel Bristo--made a last
+effort to induce Sergeant Compton to join the conspiracy of silence
+regarding the identity of Miles, the Australian adventurer, now lying
+dead at Melmerbridge, with Sundown, the Australian bushranger, supposed
+to have been drowned in the Channel in the previous April. All to no
+purpose. The Sergeant remained obdurate.
+
+"Mr. Biggs," said he, "and you, sir, I must declare to you firmly and
+finally that it is impossible for me to hold my tongue in a case like
+this. I will not speak of fairness and justice, for I agree that no one
+will be a bit the better off for knowing that Ned Ryan died yesterday
+instead of last spring. I will be perfectly candid. I will ask you to
+think for a moment what this means to me. It means this: when I get back
+to Melbourne I will be worth twice what I was before I sailed. The fact
+of having been the only man to disbelieve in Ryan's drowning, and the
+fact of having as near as a touch taken both Ryan and Pound alive, will
+make my fortune for me out there."
+
+Honest Biggs rattled the coins in his pockets, and seemed about to
+speak.
+
+"No, sir," said Compton, turning to his patron. "My silence won't be
+given--it cannot be bought. I have another reason for telling
+everything: my hatred for Ned Ryan--that death cannot cool!"
+
+These words Compton hissed out in a voice of low, concentrated passion.
+
+"I have not dogged him all these years for mere love of the work. No! He
+brought disgrace upon me and mine, and I swore to take him alive or
+dead. I keep my oath--I take him dead! All who know me shall know that I
+have kept my oath! As for Jem Pound, his mate and his murderer--"
+
+The door opened, and the nurse stood panting on the threshold. Even in
+her intense excitement she remembered that she had left her charge
+sleeping lightly, and her words were low:
+
+"What is it you say? Do you say that Jem Pound murdered my husband?"
+Colonel Bristo and the Sergeant started simultaneously. "Well, I might
+have known that--I might have told you that. But upstairs--I have been
+forgetting! I have been forgetting--forgetting! Yet when I heard you
+gentlemen come in here I remembered, and it was to tell you what I knew
+about Jem Pound that I came down."
+
+Sergeant Compton had turned an ashen grey; his eyes never moved from the
+face of the woman from the moment she entered the room. Elizabeth Ryan
+crossed the room and stood in front of him. His face was in shadow.
+
+"You, sir--I heard your voice as my hand was on the door-handle; and I
+seemed to know your voice; and, while I stood trying to remember whose
+voice it was, I heard what you said. So you will not let the dead man
+rest! So, since he escaped you by his death, you would bring all the
+world to hoot over his grave! Oh, sir, if the prayers of his wife--his
+widow--"
+
+She stopped. The man had risen unsteadily from his chair. His face was
+close to hers. She sprang back as though shot.
+
+Sergeant Compton whispered one word: "Liz!"
+
+Biggs and the Colonel watched the pale dark woman and the dark pale man
+in silent wonder. There was a likeness between man and woman.
+
+"Liz!" repeated the Sergeant in a low, hoarse voice.
+
+"Who--who are you? Are you--are you--"
+
+"I am Frank!"
+
+"Frank!" she whispered to herself, unable to realise all at once who
+Frank had been--it was so long since there had been a Frank in her life.
+"What!" she exclaimed in a whisper; "not my brother Frank?"
+
+"Yes, your brother Frank. But--but I thought you were out there, Liz. I
+thought he had long ago deserted you; and that made me thirst all the
+more--"
+
+His sister flung herself at his feet.
+
+"Oh, Frank! Frank!" she wailed. "Since the day I married I have spoken
+to none of my own kith and kin until this night. And this is how we
+meet! Frank!--Frank!"--her voice fell to a tremulous whisper--"do one
+thing for me, and then, if you are still so bitter against me, go away
+again. Only one thing I ask--a promise. Promise, for your part, to keep
+silence! Let the dead man--let the dead man sleep peacefully. If the
+whole truth will come out, come out it must; but don't let it be through
+you, Frank--never let it be through you! Speak. Do you promise?"
+
+The low, tearful, plaintive tones ceased, and there was silence in the
+room. Then Francis Compton bent down, and lifted his sister Elizabeth in
+his arms.
+
+"I promise," he whispered in a broken voice. "God knows you have
+suffered enough!"
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXXII
+
+                           SUSPENSE: REACTION
+
+
+Days of suspense followed, while Alice's life trembled in the balance.
+In what way these days were passed the watchers themselves scarcely
+knew: for it is among the offices of suspense to make word and deed
+mechanical, and life a dream. The senses are dulled; nothing is
+realised--not even death itself, when death comes. Afterwards you
+remember with horror your callousness: when all the time your senses
+have been dulled by the most merciful of Nature's laws. Afterwards you
+find that you received many an impression without knowing it. Thus Dick
+Edmonstone, for one, recalled a few things that he had quite forgotten,
+on his way south in the train afterwards.
+
+He could feel again the wind lifting the hair from his head on the dark
+hilltop. He saw the crescent moon racing through foamy billows of
+clouds, like a dismasted ship before the wind. He felt the rushing air
+as he sped back to the post in the lonely road from which he watched all
+night that square of yellow light--the light through her window-blind.
+This faint yellow light shot beams of hope into his heart through the
+long nights; he watched it till dawn, and then crept wearily to his bed
+in the inn. When he roamed away from it, a superstitious dread seized
+him that he would return to find the light gone out for ever. The pale,
+faint light became to him an emblem of the faint, flickering life that
+had burnt so low. He would wildly hurry back, with death at his heart.
+Thank God! the light still burned.
+
+In memory he could hear his own voice treating with a carter for a load
+of straw. He was again laying down with his own hands the narrow road
+with this straw; he was sitting half the day at his post in the gap of
+the hedge, watching her window; he was tasting again of the delight with
+which he watched the first vehicle crawl noiselessly across that straw.
+
+These were among his most vivid recollections; but voices came back to
+him plainest of all.
+
+The voices of the professional nurses, whispering where they little
+dreamt there was a listener; foreboding the worst; comparing notes with
+their last fatal cases; throwing into their tones a kind of pity worse
+than open indifference--perfunctory and cold. Or, again, these same
+voices telling how a certain name was always on the feverish lips
+upstairs.
+
+"Ah, poor soul!" said they; "she thinks of nothing but him!"
+
+Of whom? Whose name was for ever on her lips? The name of him to whom
+she had breathed her last conscious words?
+
+Even so; for another voice had echoed through the silent house more than
+once, and could never be forgotten by those who heard it; the piercing,
+heart-rending, delirious voice of Alice herself, reiterating those last
+conscious words of hers:
+
+"Hear what it was he said to me, and my answer--which is my answer
+still!"
+
+What had Miles said? What had been Alice's answer? Who would ever know?
+Not Dick; and these words came back to him more often than any others,
+and they tortured him.
+
+But there were other words--words that had been spoken but yesterday,
+and as yet seemed too good to be true; the words of the kind old country
+doctor:
+
+"She is out of danger!"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now Dick Edmonstone was being whirled back to London. Alice was
+declared out of danger, so he had come away. Alice was not going to die.
+Her young life was spared. Then why was Dick's heart not filled with joy
+and thanksgiving? Perhaps it was; but why did he not show it? He who had
+been frenzied by her peril, should have leapt or wept for joy at her
+safety. He did neither. He could show no joy. Why not?
+
+Edmonstone arrived in town, and broke his fast at an hotel--he had
+travelled all night. After breakfast he drove, with his luggage, first
+to the offices of the P. and O. Company in Leadenhall Street. He stepped
+from that office with a brisker air; something was off his mind;
+something was definitely settled. On his way thence to Waterloo he
+whistled lively tunes in the cab. By the time he reached Teddington and
+Iris Lodge, the jauntiness of his manner was complete. In fact, his
+manner was so entirely different from what his mother and Fanny had been
+prepared for, that the good ladies were relieved and delighted beyond
+measure for the first few minutes, until a something in his tone pained
+them both.
+
+"Oh yes," he said, carelessly, in answer to their hushed inquiry, "she
+is out of danger now, safe enough. It has been touch and go, though."
+
+He might have been speaking of a horse or dog, and yet have given people
+the impression that he was a young man without much feeling.
+
+"But--my boy," cried Mrs. Edmonstone, "what has been the matter with
+you? We never heard that you were ill; and you look like a ghost, my
+poor Dick!"
+
+Dick was standing in rather a swaggering attitude on the hearthrug. He
+wheeled round, and looked at himself in the large glass over the
+chimneypiece. His face was haggard and lined, and his expression just
+then was not a nice one.
+
+"Why," he owned, with a grating laugh, "I certainly don't look very fit,
+now you mention it, do I? But it's all on the surface. I'm all right,
+bless you! I'm not on speaking terms with the sexton yet, anyway!"
+
+A tear stood in each of Mrs. Edmonstone's dark eyes. Fanny frowned, and
+beat her foot impatiently upon the carpet. What had come over Dick?
+
+He must have known perfectly well the utter falsity of the mask he was
+wearing; if not, self-deception was one of his accomplishments. Or
+perhaps those tears in his mother's eyes caused a pang of shame to shoot
+through him. In any case, he made a hasty effort to change his tone.
+
+"How are you two? That is the main point with me. Bother my seediness!"
+
+"We are always well," sighed Mrs. Edmonstone.
+
+"And Maurice?"
+
+"Maurice was never brisker."
+
+"Lucky dog!" said Dick, involuntarily; and the bitterness was back in
+his tone before he knew it.
+
+"Your friend Mr. Flint," said Mrs. Edmonstone, "is Maurice's friend now,
+and Mr. Flint finds all his friends in good spirits."
+
+"Do you mean to say old Jack is doing the absentee landlord altogether?
+Did he never go back?"
+
+"Yes. But he is over again--he is in town just now," said Mrs.
+Edmonstone.
+
+"He's fast qualifying for buckshot, that fellow," said Dick, with light
+irony.
+
+"I rather fancy," observed Fanny, with much indifference, "that you will
+see him this evening. I half think he is coming back with Maurice." And
+Miss Fanny became profoundly interested in the world out of the window.
+
+"Good!" cried Dick; and there was a ring of sincerity in that
+monosyllable which ought to have made it appreciated--as much as a
+diamond in a dustheap!
+
+In a little while Dick went up to his room. He had letters to write, he
+said; but he was heard whistling and singing as he unpacked his
+portmanteau. Neither of the ladies saw much more of him that day. They
+sat together in wretched silence; there was some constraint between
+them; they felt hurt, but were too proud to express the feeling even to
+each other. The fact was, they did not quite know why they felt hurt.
+Dick had greeted them kindly enough--it was only that there was a
+something in his manner which they didn't like and could not
+understand. And so both these women longed heartily for evening, and the
+coming of Maurice and merry Mr. Flint--Fanny, however, the more heartily
+of the two.
+
+Maurice and Flint did come--in excellent time, too; and it so happened
+that when the little table-gong rang out its silvery call, Mr. Flint and
+Miss Edmonstone were still perambulating the dewy, twilit tennis-court.
+It further happened, in spite of the last-mentioned fact, that Miss
+Fanny contrived to reach the drawing-room before her mother was finally
+disentangled from the wools and needles that beset her at most hours of
+the day; that mother and daughter were the last to enter the little
+dining-room, hand in hand; that Miss Fanny looked uncommonly radiant,
+and that the usual stupid tears were standing in gentle Mrs.
+Edmonstone's soft, loving eyes.
+
+Dick was unusually brilliant in his old place at the head of the
+table--so brilliant that his friend Flint was taken by surprise, and,
+for his own part, silenced; though it is true that the latter had
+something on his mind which would have made him, in any case, worse
+company than usual. Dick rattled on incessantly, about the dales, and
+the moors, and the grouse, as though his stay in Yorkshire was
+associated with no tragedy, and no sickness nigh unto death. His mood,
+indeed, was not taken up by the others, but he did not seem to notice or
+to mind that; only when he was quiet, all were quiet, and the sudden
+silences were embarrassing to all save their prime author.
+
+The longest and most awkward of these pauses occurred while the crumbs
+were being removed. When the maid had withdrawn, Dick drank of his
+wine, refilled his glass, held it daintily by the stem between finger
+and thumb, leant back in his chair, and proceeded deliberately to break
+the spell.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, speaking the trite words in the same
+disagreeable tone that had pained the ladies that morning, "I am going
+to make you a little speech; a very little one, mind, so don't look
+uncomfortable--you needn't even feel it."
+
+He glanced from one to another of them. They did look uncomfortable;
+they felt that somehow Dick was not himself; they heartily wished he
+would be quiet. His manner was not the manner to carry off a sneer as so
+much pleasantry.
+
+Dick continued:
+
+"All good things must come to an end, you know--and, in fact, that's my
+very original text. Now look at me, please--mother, look at your sheep
+that was lost: thanks. You will, perhaps, agree with me that I'm hardly
+the fellow I was when I landed; the fact being that this beautiful
+British climate is playing old Harry with me, and--all good things come
+to an end. If I may class myself among the good things for a moment--for
+argument's sake--it seems to me that one good thing will come to an end
+pretty soon. Look at me--don't you think so?"
+
+The wretched smile that crossed his lean, pale face was not at variance
+with his words. He was much altered. His cheeks were sunken and
+bloodless, dark only under the eyes. His eyes to-night were unnaturally
+bright. His lips too were bloodless; to-night they were quivering
+incessantly. His question was left unanswered, as he meant that it
+should be. Flint was trying mentally to compute the quantity of wine his
+friend might possibly have taken; the others could not have spoken at
+that moment even if they would.
+
+"Now," continued Dick, still toying with his wine, "the country I left a
+few months ago never allows a man to fall into my unhappy plight. It
+puts a man in good health at the beginning, and keeps him in it to the
+end, somewhere in the nineties. Why, Maurice, if he went out there,
+would find that he has never known what health is! Fanny, we know, is a
+hardy plant, and would thrive anywhere; yet she was made for the life
+out there, if girl ever was. As for you, mother, it would clap twenty
+years on to your dear old life--no, it would make you twenty years
+younger. No one who has once lived there will live anywhere else. Even
+old Flint here is dying to go back; he confessed as much last month. Now
+what I say is this: all good things, etcetera--England among them.
+Therefore let us all go out there together, and live happily ever
+afterwards! Stop; hear me out, all of you: it's arranged already--I go
+out first, to stock the station, and all the rest of it. The fact is, I
+booked my passage this morning! Come, you have had good patience; my
+speech, like better 'good things,' has come to an end!"
+
+His tone had changed from half-jest to whole earnest--from earnestness
+to ardour--from ardour to something bordering on defiance. But, with the
+last word scarcely out of his mouth, he checked himself, and ejaculated
+below his breath: "Good heavens!"
+
+Mrs. Edmonstone had rushed sobbing from the room.
+
+No one followed her. The others stared blankly, then indignantly, at
+Dick, in whose face concern began to show itself. Then young Maurice
+spoke up.
+
+"If I were you," he said hotly to his brother, "I'd go after her, and
+tell her you have taken too much wine, and beg her pardon for making a
+fool of yourself!"
+
+Dick darted an angry glance at him, but rose and stalked from the room.
+In point of fact, the wine had not had much to do with it--no more and
+no less than it has to do with anybody's after-dinner speech. At the
+same time, Dick had not been altogether in his right senses, either then
+or any time that day. He found his mother weeping as though her heart
+would break; whereat his own heart smote him so that he came to his
+senses there and then, and knelt in humility and shame at her feet.
+
+"Dearest mother, forgive me!" he murmured again and again, and took her
+hand in his and kissed it.
+
+"But are you--are you really going back--back over the seas?" she
+sobbed.
+
+"Yes. I can't help it, mother! No one knows how miserable I have been
+over here. Forgive me--forgive me--but I can't stay! I can't indeed!
+But--but you shall come out too, and the others; and your life will be
+happier than it has been for years, once you are used to it."
+
+Mrs. Edmonstone shook her head.
+
+"No; it is impossible," she said with sudden decision.
+
+"How so? Both Fanny and Maurice, once when I sounded them--"
+
+"Fanny will never go, and I cannot leave her."
+
+"Why? Mother dear, what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that your sister is going to be married."
+
+Married! The mere word ought not to have cut him to the heart; yet, in
+the state that he was in then, it did. He rose uncertainly to his feet.
+
+"You take my breath away, mother! I know of nothing. Whom is it to?"
+
+"Can you ask?"
+
+"I cannot guess."
+
+"Then it is to your friend, Mr.--no, Jack--Jack Flint."
+
+"God bless old Jack!"
+
+That was what Dick said upon the instant. Then he stood silent. And
+then--Dick sank into a chair, and laid his face upon his hands.
+
+"I can go out alone," he whispered. "And--and I wish them joy; from my
+heart I do! I will go and tell them so."
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXXIII
+
+                         HOW DICK SAID GOOD-BYE
+
+
+The month was October; the day Dick's last in England. Both the day and
+the month were far spent: in an hour or two it would be dark, in a week
+or so it would be November. This time to-morrow the R.M.S. Rome, with
+Dick on board, would be just clear of the Thames; this time next month
+she would be ploughing through the Indian Ocean, with nothing but
+Australia to stop her.
+
+"Last days," as a rule, are made bearable by that blessed atmosphere of
+excitement which accompanies them, and is deleterious to open sentiment.
+That excitement, however, is less due to the mere fact of impending
+departure than to the providential provision of things to be done and
+seen to at the last moment. An uncomfortable "rush" is the best of
+pain-killers when it comes to long farewells. The work, moreover, should
+be for all hands, and last to the very end; then there is no time for
+lamentation--no time until the boxes are out of the hall and the cab has
+turned the corner, and the empty, untidy room has to be set to rights.
+Then, if you like, is the time for tears.
+
+Now Dick had made a great mistake. He had booked his passage too far in
+advance. For six weeks he had nothing to think of but his voyage;
+nothing to do but get ready. Everything was prearranged; nothing, in
+this exceptional case, was left to the last, the very luggage being sent
+to the boat before the day of sailing. If Dick had deliberately set
+himself to deepen the gloom that shadowed his departure, he could not
+have contrived things better. Maurice, for instance, with great
+difficulty obtained a holiday from the bank because it was Dick's last
+day. He might just as well have stopped in the City. There was nothing
+for him to do. The day wore on in dismal idleness.
+
+About three in the afternoon Dick left the house. He was seen by the
+others from the front windows. The sight of him going out without a look
+or a word on his last day cut them to the heart, though Dick had been
+everything that was kind, and thoughtful, and affectionate since that
+evening after his return from Yorkshire. Besides, the little family was
+going to be broken up completely before long: Fanny was to be married in
+the spring. No wonder they were sad.
+
+Dick turned to the right, walked towards the river, turned to the right
+again, and so along the London road towards the village.
+
+"It is the right thing," he kept assuring himself, and with such
+frequency that one might have supposed it was the wrong thing; "it is
+the right thing, after all, to go and say good-bye. I should have done
+it before, and got it over. I was a fool to think of shirking it
+altogether; that would have been behaving like a boor. Well, I'll just
+go in naturally, say good-bye all round, stop a few minutes, and then
+hurry back home. A month ago I couldn't have trusted myself, but
+now----"
+
+It was a joyless smile that ended the unspoken sentence. The last month
+had certainly strengthened his self-control; it had also hardened and
+lined his face in a way that did not improve his good looks. Yes, he was
+pretty safe in trusting himself now.
+
+At the corner opposite the low-lying old churchyard he hesitated. He had
+hesitated at that corner once before. He remembered the other occasion
+with peculiar vividness to-day. Why should he not repeat the performance
+he had gone through then? Why should he not take a boat and row up to
+Graysbrooke? An admirable idea! It harmonised so completely with his
+humour. It was the one thing wanting to complete the satire of his
+home-coming. That satire had been so thoroughly bitter that it would be
+a pity to deny it a finishing touch or two. Besides, it was so fitting
+in every way: the then and the now offered a contrast that it would be a
+shame not to make the most of. Then, thought Dick, his foolish hopes had
+been as fresh and young and bright as the June leaves. Look at his bare
+heart now! look at the naked trees! Hopes and leaves had gone the same
+way--was it the way of all hopes as well as of all leaves? His mind, as
+well as his eye, saw everything in autumnal tints. Nor did he shirk the
+view. There is a stage of melancholy that rather encourages the cruel
+contrasts of memory.
+
+"I'll row up," said Dick, "and go through it all again. Let it do its
+worst, it won't touch me now--therefore nothing will ever touch me as
+long as I live. A good test!"
+
+He did row up, wearing the same joyless smile.
+
+He stood the test to perfection.
+
+He did not forget to remember anything. He gave sentimentality a
+princely chance to play the mischief with him. It was a rough and gusty
+day, but mild for the time of year; a day of neither sunshine nor rain,
+but plenty of wind and clouds; one of those blustering fellows, heralds
+of Winter, that come and abuse Autumn for neglecting her business, and
+tear off the last of the leaves for her with unseemly violence and
+haste. The current was swift and strong, and many a crisp leaf of
+crimson and amber and gold sailed down its broad fretted surface, to be
+dashed over the weir and ripped into fragments in the churning froth
+below.
+
+Dick rowed into the little inlet with the white bridge across it,
+landed, and nodded, in the spirit, to a hundred spots marked in his mind
+by the associations of last June; those of an older day were not thought
+of. Here was the place where Alice's boat had been when he had found her
+reading a magazine--and interrupted her reading--on the day after his
+return. There were the seven poplars, in whose shadows he had found
+Miles on the night of the ball, when the miscreant Pound came inquiring
+for him. There was the window through which he, Dick, had leapt after
+that final scene--final in its results--with Alice in the empty
+ballroom. A full minute's contemplation and elaborate, cold-blooded
+recollection failed to awake one pang--it may be that, to a certain
+quality of pain, Dick's sense had long been deadened. Then he walked
+meditatively to the front of the house, and rang the bell--a thing he
+was not sure that he had ever done before at this house.
+
+Colonel Bristo was out, but Mrs. Parish was in. Dick would see Mrs.
+Parish; he would be as civil to his old enemy as to the rest of them;
+why not?
+
+But Mrs. Parish received him in a wondrous manner; remorse and
+apology--nothing less--were in the tones of her ricketty voice and the
+grasp of her skinny hand. The fact was, those weeks in Yorkshire had
+left their mark upon the old lady. They had left her older still, a
+little less worldly, a little more sensible, and humbler by the
+possession of a number of uncomfortable regrets. She had heard of Dick's
+probable return to Australia, long ago; but her information had been
+neither definite nor authentic. When he now told her that he was
+actually to sail the next day, the old woman was for the moment visibly
+affected. She felt that here there was a new and poignant regret in
+store for her--one that would probably haunt her for the rest of her
+days. At this rate life would soon become unbearable. It is a terrible
+thing to become suddenly soft-hearted in your old age!
+
+"Colonel Bristo is out," said Mrs. Parish, with a vague feeling that
+made matters worse. "You will wait and see him, of course? I am sure he
+will not be long; and then, you know, you must say good-bye to
+Alice--she will be shocked when you tell her."
+
+"Alice?" said Dick, unceremoniously, as became such a very old friend of
+the family. "I hope so--yes, of course. Where is she?"
+
+"She is in the dining-room. She spends her days there."
+
+"How is she?" Dick asked, with less indifference in his manner.
+
+"Better; but not well enough to stand a long journey, or else her father
+would have taken her to the south of France before this. Come and see
+her. She will be so pleased--but so grieved when she hears you are going
+out again. I am sure she has no idea of such a thing. And to-morrow,
+too!"
+
+Dick followed Mrs. Parish from the room, wishing in his heart that
+convalescence was a shorter business, or else that Alice might have the
+advantages of climate that in a few days, and for evermore, would be
+his; also speculating as to whether he would find her much changed, but
+wishing and wondering without the slightest ruffling emotion. He had
+some time ago pronounced himself a cure. Therefore, of course, he was
+cured.
+
+There were two fireplaces in the dining-room, one on each side of the
+conservatory door. In the grate nearer the windows, which were all at
+one end, overlooking lawn and river, a fire of wood and coal was burning
+brightly. In a long low structure of basketwork--half-sofa, half-chair,
+such as one mostly sees on shipboard and in verandahs--propped up by
+cushions and wrapped in plaids and woollen clouds, lay Alice, the
+convalescent. There was no sign that she had been reading. She did not
+look as though she had been sleeping. If, then, it was her habit to
+encourage the exclusive company of her own thoughts, it is little wonder
+that she was so long in parting company with her weakness.
+
+Dick stood humbly and gravely by the door; a thrill of sorrow shot
+through him on seeing her lying there like that; the sensation was only
+natural.
+
+"Here is Mr. Richard come to--to--to ask you how you are," stammered
+poor Mrs. Parish.
+
+Alice looked up sharply. Mr. Richard crossed the room and held out his
+hand with a smile.
+
+"I hope from my heart that you are better--that you will very soon be
+quite better."
+
+"Thank you. It was kind of you to come. Yes, indeed, I am almost well
+now. But it has been a long business."
+
+Her voice was weak, and the hand she held out to him seemed so thin and
+wasted that he took it as one would handle a piece of dainty, delicate
+porcelain. Her hair, too, was cut short like a boy's. This was as much
+as he noticed at the moment. The firelight played so persistently upon
+her face that, for aught he could tell, she might be either pale as
+death or bathed in blushes. For the latter, however, he was not in the
+least on the look-out.
+
+"Won't you sit down?" said Alice. "Papa will come in presently, and he
+will be so pleased to see you; and you will take tea with us. Have you
+been away?"
+
+"No," said Dick, feeling awkward because he had made no inquiries
+personally since the return of the Bristos from Yorkshire, now some days
+back. "But I have been getting ready to go." He put down his hat on the
+red baize cover of the big table, and sat down a few chairs further from
+Alice than he need have done.
+
+"What a capital time to go abroad," said Alice, "just when everything is
+becoming horrid in England! We, too, are waiting to go; it is I that am
+the stumbling-block."
+
+So she took it that he was only going on the Continent. Better enlighten
+her at once, thought Dick. Mrs. Parish had disappeared mysteriously from
+the room.
+
+"This time to-morrow," Dick accordingly said, "I shall be on board the
+Rome."
+
+The effect of this statement upon Alice was startling.
+
+"What!" cried she, raising herself a few inches in suddenly aroused
+interest. "Are you going to see them off?"
+
+"See whom off?" Dick was mystified.
+
+"My dear good nurse--the first and the best of my nurses--and her
+brother the Sergeant."
+
+"Do you mean Compton?"
+
+"Yes. They sail in the Rome to-morrow."
+
+"So the brother," Dick thought to himself, "is taking the sister back to
+her own people, to be welcomed and forgiven, and to lead a better kind
+of life. Poor thing! poor thing! Perhaps her husband's death was the
+best thing that could have befallen her. She will be able to start
+afresh. She is a widow now."
+
+Aloud, he only said: "I am glad--very glad to hear it."
+
+"Did you know," said Alice, seeing that he was thinking more than he
+said, "that she was a widow?"
+
+"Yes," said Dick.
+
+It was plain to him that Alice did not know whose widow the poor woman
+was. She suspected no sort of bond between the woman who had nursed her
+and the man who had made love to her. She did not know the baseness of
+that love on his part. This was as it should be. She must never
+suspect; she must never, never know.
+
+"Yes," said Dick slowly, "I knew that."
+
+"Oh!" cried out Alice. "How dreadful it all was! How terrible!"
+
+"Ay," said Dick, gravely; "it was that indeed."
+
+There was a pause between them. It was Alice who broke it.
+
+"Dick," she said frankly--and honest shame trembled through her
+utterance--"I want to ask your pardon for something--no, you shall not
+stop me! I want to tell you that I am sorry for having said
+something--something that I just dimly remember saying, but something
+that I know was monstrous and inexcusable. It was just before--but I was
+accountable enough to know better. Ah! I see you remember; indeed, you
+could never forget--please--please--try to forgive!"
+
+Dick felt immensely uneasy.
+
+"Say no more, Alice. I deserved it all, and more besides. I was
+fearfully at fault. I should never have approached you as I did, my
+discovery once made. I shall never forgive myself for all that has
+happened. But he took me in--he took me in, up there, playing the
+penitent thief, the--poor fellow!"
+
+His voice dropped, his tone changed: many things came back to him in a
+rush.
+
+"Papa has told me the whole history of the relations between you," Alice
+said quietly, "and we think you behaved nobly."
+
+"There was precious little nobility in it," Dick said grimly. Nor was
+there any mock modesty in this. He knew too well that he had done
+nothing to be proud of.
+
+There was another pause. Dick broke this one.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, "if I refer to anything very painful, but I am
+going away to-morrow, and--there was something else you said, just after
+you administered that just rebuke to me. You said you would tell us what
+Miles had said to you. Now I do not mean it as presumption, but we are
+old friends"--she winced--"and I have rather suspected that he made some
+confession to you which he never made to anyone else. There was a lot of
+gold----"
+
+Alice interrupted him in a low voice.
+
+"I would rather not tell you what he said; it was nothing to do with
+anything of that kind."
+
+Dick's question had not been unpremeditated. He had had his own
+conviction as to the "confession" Alice had listened to; he only wanted
+that conviction confirmed. Now, by her hesitation and her refusal to
+answer, it was confirmed. Miles had proposed marriage on the way from
+Melmerbridge Church, and been accepted! Well, it was a satisfaction to
+have that put beyond doubt. He had put his question in rather an
+underhand way, but how was he to do otherwise? He had got his answer;
+the end justified the means.
+
+"Pray don't say another word," said Dick impulsively. "Forgive me for
+prying. Perhaps I can guess what he said."
+
+Alice darted at him a swift glance, and saw his meaning in a flash.
+
+"Do not get up," said she quietly, for Dick was rising to go. "Since it
+is possible that you may guess wrong, I will tell you all. I insist in
+telling you all! Here, then, are the facts: Mr. Miles scarcely spoke a
+word on the way from church, until suddenly, when we were almost in
+sight of home, he--he caught hold of my hand."
+
+Dick knew that already. He was also quite sure that he knew what was
+coming. It was no use Alice going on; he could see that she was nervous
+and uncomfortable over it; he reproached himself furiously for making
+her so; he made a genuine effort to prevail upon her to say no more. In
+vain; for now Alice was determined. Seeing that it was so, he got up
+from his chair and walked over to the windows, and watched the brown
+leaves being whisked about the lawn and the sky overhead turning a
+deeper grey.
+
+Alice continued in a voice that was firm for all its faintness:
+
+"I suppose I looked surprised, and taken aback, and indignant, but he
+held my hand as if his was a vice, and still we walked on. Then I looked
+at him, and he was pale. Then he stared down upon me, closely and long,
+as if he meant to read my soul, and a great shudder seemed to pass
+through him. He almost flung my hand away from him, and faced me in the
+road. We were then on that little bridge between two hills, not far from
+the shooting-box: you will remember it. 'Miss Alice,' he said, 'I am a
+villain! a scoundrel! an impostor. I have never been fit to speak to
+you, and I have dared to take your hand. But I find I am a shade less
+black than I thought myself a minute ago; for what I meant to say to you
+I would not say now to save my soul, if I had one! Good-bye; you will
+see no more of me. Whatever you may one day hear of me--and you must
+believe it all, for it is every word true--remember this: that, bad as I
+still am, I am less bad than I was before I knew you, and I have found
+it out this instant. Go, leave me, run home; you shall never see me
+again. I shall go at once from this place, and I leave England in two
+days. Do you hear? Go, leave me alone--go! And God go with you!' His
+voice was breaking, his wild looks frightened me, but I answered him. I
+had my suspicions, as I told him, but I did not tell him that you put
+them into my head. What I did say to him was this: 'Whatever you have
+done, whatever you may do, you did one thing once that can never, never
+grow less in my eyes!' I meant his saving of my father's life; and with
+that I ran away from him and never looked round. That is every word that
+passed. I can never forget them. As to what happened afterwards, you
+know more than I."
+
+Alice's own voice shook; it was hollow, and hoarse, and scarcely audible
+at the end. As for Dick, he stood looking out of the window at the
+whirling leaves, with not a word to say, until an involuntary murmur
+escaped him.
+
+"Poor Miles!"
+
+The girl's answer was a low sob.
+
+Then here was the truth at last. The innocence and purity of the young
+English girl had awed and appalled that bold, desperate, unscrupulous
+man at the last moment. On the brink of the worst of all his crimes his
+nerve had failed him, or, to do him better justice, his heart had
+smitten him. Yes, it must have been this, for the poor fellow loved her
+well. His last thought was of her, his last, dying effort was for her,
+his life's blood ran out of him in her service!
+
+But Alice! Had she not loved him when he spoke? Had she not given her
+heart to him in the beginning? Had she not tacitly admitted as much in
+this very room? Then her heart must be his still; her heart must be his
+for ever--dead or living, false or true, villain or hero. Poor Alice!
+What a terrible thing for a girl to have so misplaced her love. Dick
+felt his heart bleeding for her, but what could he do? He could do
+nothing but go back to Australia, and pray that some day she might get
+over it and be consoled. Now that he thought of it, he had not told her
+about Australia. He had tried twice, and each time been interrupted. It
+must be done now.
+
+"By-the-bye," he began (it was after a long silence, and the room was
+filled with dusk, and the fire burning low), "I didn't tell you, after
+all, how it is that I shall be aboard the Rome this time to-morrow. It
+is not to see off Compton and his sister, because until you told me I
+didn't know they were going. Can't you guess the reason?"
+
+"No!"
+
+What could be the meaning of that quick gasp from the other side of the
+room that preceded the faint monosyllable?
+
+"I will tell you: it is because I sail for Australia myself to-morrow! I
+am going back to the bush."
+
+There was a slight shiver of the basketwork chair. Then all was still;
+and Dick watched evening gather over the flat Ham fields across the
+river. The next tones from near the fireplace had a steely ring about
+them.
+
+"Why are you going back?"
+
+"Because I have found England intolerable."
+
+"I thought you were going to get on so well in England?"
+
+"So did I."
+
+Another silence. Dick drummed idly upon the pane with his fingers. There
+was certainly a degree of regret in Alice's tone--enough to afford him a
+vague sense of gratitude to her.
+
+"Is it not a terrible disappointment to your family?"
+
+"I suppose it is," said Dick uneasily.
+
+"And can you lightly grieve those who love you?"
+
+She spoke as earnestly as though she belonged to that number herself;
+but, thought Dick, that must be from the force of her woman's sympathy
+for women. There was a slight catch in her voice, doubtless from the
+same cause. Could it be from any other cause? Dick trembled in the dusk
+by the window at the thought. No; it could not be. No; he did not wish
+it. He would not have her relent now. It was too late. He had set his
+mind on going; his passage was booked, his luggage was on board; nothing
+could unsettle him now. Was it not admitted in the beginning that he was
+an obstinate fellow? Besides, hope had been out of the range of his
+vision these many weeks. When a faint spark of hope burned on the
+horizon, was it natural that he should detect it at once? Yet her tones
+made him tremble.
+
+As for Alice, her heart was beating with wild, sickening thuds. She
+felt that she was receiving her just deserts. Dick was as cold to her
+now as she had been cold to Dick before; only far colder, for she had
+but been trying him. Ah! but Nemesis was cruel in her justice! And she,
+Alice, so faint, so weary, so heartsick, so loveless, so full of
+remorse, so ready to love! And this the last chance of all!
+
+"Is there nothing that could stop you from going now?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Nothing at all?"
+
+"No consideration upon earth!"
+
+"Ah, you have taken your passage!"
+
+"That's not it!"
+
+He was indignant. A paltry seventy guineas!
+
+"Then what is? It must be that you've made up your mind, and would not
+unmake it--no matter who asked you."
+
+The slightest stress imaginable was laid upon the relative.
+
+Dick was leaning against the window-ledge for support. His brain was
+whirling. He could scarcely believe his ears. There was a tearful
+tenderness in her voice which he could not, which he dared not
+understand.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+"I mean that--that you--that I----"
+
+The words ended in inarticulate sobs.
+
+"Do you mean that you ask me to stay in England?"
+
+Dick put this question in a voice that was absolutely stern, though it
+quivered with suppressed agitation. There was no answer: sobs were no
+answer. He crossed the room unsteadily, fell on his knees at her side,
+and took both her hands in his. Then he repeated the same question--in
+the same words, in the same tones.
+
+The answer came in a trembling whisper, with a fresh torrent of tears:
+
+"What if I did?"
+
+"The Rome might sail without me."
+
+A tearful incredulous smile from Alice.
+
+"Do you tell me to stay? I stay or go at your bidding. Darling! you know
+what that means to us two?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Speak! Speak, Alice, for I cannot bear this! The Rome would sail
+without me!"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alice did speak. The Rome did sail without him.
+
+
+
+
+                      Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
+
+Throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "oe".
+
+Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of
+the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
+
+On page 8, the quotation mark was deleted after "on this side of the
+road."
+
+On page 68, the word "looee" was replaced with "cooee".
+
+On page 92, a quotation mark was placed after "deducted from your
+allowance this evening."
+
+On page 158, "not this young follow" was replaced with "not this young
+fellow".
+
+On page 168, "bunshrangers" was replaced with "bushrangers".
+
+On page 184, a quotation mark was added after "and the older suitor."
+
+On page 201, "Cousin Philip has been a long voyage" was replaced with
+"Cousin Philip has been on a long voyage".
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of At Large, by E. W. Hornung
+
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