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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41552 ***
+
+                      THE WEIRD SISTERS.
+
+                         A Romance.
+
+                     BY RICHARD DOWLING,
+
+             AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF KILLARD."
+
+
+    In Three Volumes.
+    VOL. I.
+
+
+    LONDON:
+    TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
+    1880.
+
+    [_All rights reserved._]
+
+    CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
+    GREAT NEW STREET, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+                  TO
+          EDMOND POWER, ESQ.,
+            OF SPRINGFIELD,
+    Whose kindness to Mine and to Me
+          I SHALL NEVER FORGET
+              WHILE I AM.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    Part I.--A Plain Gold Guard.
+
+
+        I.--A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR                        1
+
+       II.--A GENEROUS BANKER                             24
+
+      III.--THE MANOR HOUSE                               47
+
+       IV.--AN UNSELFISH MOTHER                           69
+
+        V.--AN UNSELFISH FATHER                           99
+
+       VI.--"TO THE ISLAND OR TO ----"                   123
+
+      VII.--TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES                   148
+
+     VIII.--WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT                  174
+
+       IX.--A FLASK OF COGNAC                            194
+
+        X.--ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH                    216
+
+       XI.--BY THE STATE BED                             235
+
+
+
+
+THE WEIRD SISTERS.
+
+PART I. A PLAIN GOLD GUARD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR.
+
+
+Mr. Henry Walter Grey sat in his dining-room sipping claret on the
+evening of Monday, the 27th August, 1866. His house was in the suburbs
+of the city of Daneford.
+
+Mr. Grey was a man of about forty-five years of age, looking no more
+than thirty-eight. He was tall, broad, without the least tendency to
+corpulency, and yet pleasantly rounded and full. There was no
+angularity or harshness in his face or figure. The figure was active
+looking and powerful, the face open, joyous, and benignant. The hair had
+begun to thin at his forehead; this gave his face a soothing expression
+of contented calm.
+
+His forehead was broad and white; his eyes were constant, candid, and
+kindly; his nose was large, with quickly-mobile sensitive nostrils; and
+his mouth well formed and full, having a sly uptwist at one corner,
+indicating strong sympathy with humour. He wore neither beard nor
+moustache.
+
+His complexion was bright without being florid, fair without being
+white. His skin was smooth as a young girl's cheek. He stood six feet
+without his boots. He was this evening in the deepest mourning for his
+wife, whom he had lost on Friday, the 17th of that month, August.
+
+Although he occupied one of the most important positions in Daneford, no
+person who knew him, or had heard of him from a Danefordian, ever
+called him either Henry or Walter. He was universally known as Wat Grey.
+Daneford believed him to be enormously rich. He was the owner of the
+Daneford Bank, an institution which did a large business and held its
+head high.
+
+Indeed, in Daneford it was almost unnecessary to add the banker's
+surname to his Christian name; and if anyone said, "Wat did so-and-so,"
+and you asked, "Wat who?" the purveyor of the news would know you for an
+alien or a nobody in the city.
+
+The young men worshipped him as one of themselves, who, despite his
+gaiety and lightheartedness, had prospered in the world, and kept his
+youth and made his money, and was one of themselves still, and would
+continue to be one of them as long as he lived.
+
+Elder men liked him for the solid prudence which guided all his
+business transactions, and which, while it enabled him to be with the
+young, allowed him to exercise over his juniors in years the influence
+of an equal combined with the authority of experience. Lads of twenty
+never thought of him as a fogey, and men of thirty looked upon him as a
+younger man, who had learned the folly of vicious vanities very much
+sooner than others; and consequently they confided in him, and submitted
+themselves to him with docility. Young men assembled at his house, but
+there were no orgies; elder men came, and went away cheered and
+diverted, and no whit the less rich or wise because discussions of
+important matters had been enlivened with interludes of gayer discourse.
+
+Wat Grey was one of the most active men in Daneford. He was Chairman of
+the Chamber of Commerce, of the Commercial Club, and of the Harbour
+Board.
+
+He was Vice-chairman of the Daneford Boat Club, and Treasurer of the
+Poor's Christmas Coal Fund.
+
+If he was rich, he was liberal. He subscribed splendidly to all the
+local charities, but never as a public man or as owner of the Daneford
+Bank. What he thought it wise to give he always sent from "Wat," as
+though he prized more highly the distinction of familiarity his town had
+conferred upon him than any conventional array of Christian and
+surnames, or any title of cold courtesy or routine right. It was not
+often he dropped from his cheerful level of high-spirited and rich
+animal enjoyment into sentimentalism, but on one occasion he said to
+young Feltoe: "I'd rather be 'Wat' to my friends than Sir Thingumbob
+Giggamarigs to all the rest of the world."
+
+There was nothing Daneford could have refused him. He had been mayor,
+and could be Liberal member of Parliament for the ancient and small
+constituency any time he chose when the Liberal seat was vacant.
+Daneford was one of those constituencies which give one hand to one side
+and the other hand to the other, and have no hand free for action.
+Walter Grey had always declined the seat; he would say:
+
+"I'm too young yet, far too young. As I grow older, I shall grow wiser
+and more corrupt. Then you can put me in, and I shall have great
+pleasure in ratting for a baronetcy. Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+Of late, however, it had been rumoured the chance of getting the rich
+banker to consent to take the seat (this was the way everyone put it)
+had increased, and that he might be induced to stand at the next
+vacancy. Then all who knew of his personal qualities, his immense
+knowledge of finance, and his large fortune, said that if he chose he
+might be Chancellor of the Exchequer in time; and after his retirement
+from business, and purchase of an estate, the refusal of a peerage was
+certain to come his way.
+
+As he sat sipping his claret that Monday evening of the 27th of August,
+1866, his face was as placid as a secret well. Whether he was thinking
+of his dead wife and sorrowing for her, or revolving the ordinary
+matters of his banking business, or devising some scheme for the
+reduction of taxation in the city, or dallying mentally with the sirens
+who sought to ensnare him in parliamentary honours, could no more be
+gathered from his face than from the dull heavy clouds that hung low
+over the sultry land abroad.
+
+It was not often he had to smoke his after-dinner cigar and sip his
+after-dinner claret alone; men were always glad to dine with him, and
+he was always glad to have them; but the newness of his black clothes
+and of the bands on his hats in the hall accounted for the absence of
+guests. He was not dressed for dinner. One of the things which had made
+his table so free and jovial was that a man might sit down to it in a
+coat of any cut or colour, and in top-boots and breeches if he liked.
+Before his bereavement he would say:
+
+"Mrs. Grey--although she may not sit with us--has an antiquated
+objection to a man dining in his shirt-sleeves. I have often
+expostulated with her unreasonable prejudice, but I can't get her to
+concede no coat at all. You may wear your hat and your gloves if you
+like, but for Heaven's sake come in a coat of some kind. If you can't
+manage a coat, a jacket will do splendidly."
+
+Mrs. Grey never dined out. In fact, she saw little company; tea was
+always sent into the dining-room.
+
+Mr. Grey had not got more than half-way through his cigar on that
+evening of the 27th of August when a servant knocked and entered.
+
+The master, whose face was towards the window, turned round his head
+slowly, and said in a kindly voice:
+
+"Well, James, what is it?"
+
+"A man, sir, wants to see you."
+
+James was thick-set, low-sized, near-sighted, and dull. He had been a
+private soldier in a foot regiment, and had been obliged to leave
+because of his increasing near-sightedness. But he had been long enough
+in uniform to acquire the accomplishment of strict and literal attention
+to orders, and the complete suspension of his own faculties of judgment
+and discretion. Although his master was several inches taller than
+James, the latter looked in the presence of the banker like a clumsy
+elephant beside an elegant panther.
+
+"A man wants to see me!" cried Mr. Grey, in astonishment, not unmixed
+with a sense of the ridiculous. "What kind of a man? and what is his
+business."
+
+He glanced good-humouredly at James, but owing to the shortness of the
+servant's sight the expression of the master's face was wasted in air.
+
+James, who had but a small stock of observation and no fancy, replied
+respectfully:
+
+"He seems a common man, sir; like a man you'd see in the street."
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Grey, with a smile; "that sort of man, is it? Ah! Which,
+James, do you mean: the sort of man you'd see walking in the streets, or
+standing at a public-house corner?"
+
+Again Mr. Grey smiled at the droll dulness and droller simplicity of
+his servant.
+
+A gleam of light came into James's dim eyes upon finding the description
+narrowed down to the selection of one of two characteristics, and he
+said, in a voice of solemn sagacity:
+
+"The back of his coat is dirty, sir, as if he'd been leaning against a
+public-house wall."
+
+"Or as if he had been carrying a sack of corn on his back?" demanded the
+master, laughing softly, and brushing imaginary cigar-ashes off the
+polished oak-table with his white curved little finger.
+
+For a moment James stood on his heels in stupefied doubt and dismay at
+this close questioning. He was a man of action, not of thought. Had his
+master shouted, "Right wheel--quick march!" he would have gone out of
+the window, through the glass, without a murmur and without a thought
+of reproach; but to be thus interrogated on subtleties of appearance
+made him feel like a blindfold man, who is certain he is about to be
+attacked, but does not know where, by whom, or with what weapon. He
+resolved to risk all and escape.
+
+"I think, sir, it was a public-house, for I smelt liquor."
+
+"That is conclusive," said the master, laughing out at last. "That is
+all right, James. I am too lazy to go down to see him. Show him up here.
+Stop a moment, James. Let him come up in five minutes."
+
+The servant left the room, and as he did so the master laughed still
+more loudly, and then chuckled softly to himself, muttering:
+
+"He thought the man had been leaning against a public-house because he
+smelt of liquor! Ha, ha, ha! My quaint James, you will be the death of
+your master. You will, indeed."
+
+When he had finished his laugh he dismissed the idea of James finally
+with a roguish shrug of his shoulders and wag of his head.
+
+Then he drew down the gasalier, pushed an enormous easy-chair in front
+of the empty fire-place, pulled a small table between the dining-table
+and the easy-chair, and placed an ordinary oak and green dining-room
+chair at the corner of the dining-table near the window; then he sat
+down on the ordinary chair.
+
+When this was done he ascertained that the drawer of the small table
+opened easily, closed in the drawer softly, threw himself back in his
+own chair and began smoking slowly, blowing the smoke towards the
+ceiling without taking the cigar from his lips, and keeping his legs
+thrust out before him, and his hands deep in his trousers-pockets.
+
+Presently the door opened; James said, "The man, sir!" the door closed
+again, and all was still.
+
+"Come over and sit down, my man," said the banker, in a good-natured
+tone of voice, without, however, removing his eyes from the ceiling.
+
+To this there was no reply by either sound or gesture.
+
+Mr. Grey must have been pursuing some humorous thought over the ceiling;
+for when he at last dropped his eyes and looked towards the door, he
+said, with a quiet sigh, as though the ridiculous in the world was
+killing him slowly: "It's too droll, too droll." Then to the man, who
+still stood just inside the door: "Come over here and sit down, my man.
+I have been expecting a call from you. Come over and sit down. Or would
+you prefer I should send the brougham for you?"
+
+As he turned his eyes round, they fell on the figure of a man of forty,
+who, with head depressed and shoulders thrust up high, and a battered,
+worn sealskin-cap held in both hands close together, thumbs uppermost,
+was standing on one leg, a model of abject, obsequious servility.
+
+The man made no reply; but as Mr. Grey's eyes fell upon him he
+substituted the leg drawn up for the one on which he had been standing,
+thrust up his shoulders, and pressed down his head in token of
+unspeakable humility under the honour of Mr. Grey's glance, and of
+profound gratitude for the honour of Mr. Grey's speech.
+
+"Come, my man; do come over and sit down. The conversation is becoming
+monotonous already. Do come over, and sit down here. I can't keep on
+saying 'come' all the evening. I assure you I have expected this call
+from you. Do come and sit down."
+
+Mr. Grey motioned the man to the large easy-chair in front of him.
+
+At last the man moved, stealthily, furtively, across the carpet,
+skirting the furniture cautiously, as though it consisted of
+infernal-machines which might go off at any moment. His dress was ragged
+and torn; his face, a long narrow one, of mahogany colour; his eyes were
+bright full blue, the one good feature in his shy unhandsome
+countenance.
+
+"Sit in that chair," said Mr. Grey blandly, at the same time waving his
+hand towards the capacious and luxurious easy-chair.
+
+"Please, sir, I'd rather stand," said the man, in a low sneaking tone.
+
+The contrast between the two was remarkably striking: the one, large
+and liberal of aspect, gracious and humorous of manner, broad-faced,
+generous-looking, perfectly dressed, scrupulously neat; the other, drawn
+together, mean in form, narrow of features, with avaricious mouth and
+unsteady eye, with ragged and soiled clothes.
+
+"Sit down, my good man; sit down. I assure you the conversation will
+continue to be very monotonous until you take my advice, and sit down in
+that chair. You need not be afraid of spoiling it. Sit down, and then
+you may at your leisure tell me what I can do for you."
+
+Mr. Grey may have smiled at the whim of Nature in forging such a
+counterfeit of human nature as the man before him, or he may have smiled
+at the obvious dislike with which his visitor surveyed the chair. The
+smile, however, was a pleasant, cordial, happy one. He drew in his legs,
+sat upright, and, leaning his left elbow on the small table before him,
+pointed to the chair with his right hand, and kept his right hand fixed
+in the attitude of pointing until the man, with a scowl at the chair and
+a violent upheaval of his shoulders and depression of his head, sank
+among the soft cushions.
+
+"Now we shall get on much more comfortably," said Mr. Grey, placing what
+remained unsmoked of his cigar on the ash-tray beside him, clasping his
+hands over his waistcoat, and bending slightly forward to indicate that
+his best attention was at the disposal of his visitor. "What is your
+name?"
+
+"Joe Farleg."
+
+"Joe Farleg, Joe Farleg," mused, half aloud, Mr. Grey. "An odd name. Why
+am I fated always to meet people with odd ways or odd names? Well, never
+mind answering that question, Joe," he said, more loudly, in an
+indulgent tone, as though he felt he would be violating kindliness by
+insisting on a reply which had little or nothing to do with Farleg. He
+continued, "I don't think I have ever seen you or heard your name
+before; and although I did not think it improbable you, or someone like
+you, would call, I could not know exactly whom I was to see. Before we
+go any farther, I ask you: Haven't I been good to you without even
+knowing who you were?"
+
+"Good to me, sir!" cried the man, in surprise.
+
+"Yes; I have been very good to you in not setting the police after you."
+
+The man tried to struggle up out of the chair, but, unused to a seat of
+the kind, struggled for a moment in vain. At last he gained his feet,
+and with an oath demanded: "How did you know I did it? Are you going to
+set them after me now?" His blue eyes swiftly explored the room to find
+if the officers had sprung out of concealment, and to ascertain the
+chances of his escape.
+
+With a kindly wave of his hand, Mr. Grey indicated the chair. "I have
+not even spoken to the police about the matter, and I do not intend
+speaking to them. Sit down in your chair, Joe, and let us talk the
+matter over quietly."
+
+"I'm d----d if I sit in that chair again. It smothers me."
+
+He regarded the banker with uneasiness and the chair with terror.
+
+Mr. Grey laughed outright. The laughter seemed to soothe Farleg a
+little. He cast his large blue eyes once more hastily round the room,
+then regarded the banker for an instant, and dropped his glance upon the
+chair.
+
+Nothing could have been more reassuring than the brilliantly-lighted
+dining-room, the good-natured, good-humoured face of its master, and
+the harmlessly seductive appearance of the chair. Farleg was ashamed of
+his fears; upon another invitation, and an assurance that nothing
+farther would be said by his host until he had returned to his former
+position, he threw himself once more into the comfortable seat.
+
+"And now, Joe, that we are in a position to go on smoothly, what can I
+do for you?"
+
+"You remember, sir, the night of the robbery, sir?"
+
+"Yes; you broke into my house, into one of the tower-rooms, on the
+evening of the 17th of this month, and you carried off a few things of
+no great value."
+
+"And you're not going to send the police after me?"
+
+"No."
+
+Farleg leaned forward in his chair until his elbows rested on his
+knees.
+
+"You missed the things. You said a while ago you expected me, or whoever
+did the robbery; was that a true word? Did you expect whoever did the
+robbery to come and see you?"
+
+"I did. I could not be sure you would come, but when I missed the things
+I thought you might call. There was, of course, the chance you might
+not."
+
+"That's it. Well, I have come, you see. I found some rings, and I kept
+three; but I thought you might like to have this one, and I brought it
+to you, as I am about to leave the country. Look at it. It's a plain
+gold guard."
+
+As Farleg said these words his eyes, no longer wandering, fixed
+themselves on the face of Mr. Grey.
+
+For an instant the face of the banker puckered and wrinkled up like a
+blighted leaf. Almost instantly it smoothed out again; and, with a bland
+smile, he said:
+
+"Thank you very much. It was my poor wife's guard ring. You were very
+kind to think of bringing it back to me."
+
+As he spoke he began softly opening the drawer of the little table that
+stood between him and the burglar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A GENEROUS BANKER.
+
+
+The ring lay on the little table. Mr. Grey did not take it up, but left
+it where Farleg had placed it.
+
+When the banker had pulled out the drawer half-a-dozen inches, he looked
+up from the ring, and, with a glance of kindly interest, said:
+
+"So you intend leaving the country. Why? And where do you purpose
+going?"
+
+Farleg looked down at his boots, and thrust up his shoulders as he
+answered:
+
+"Well, sir, things are getting hot, and the place is getting hot. It
+isn't every one has so much consideration as you for a man who has to
+live as best he can----"
+
+"Poor fellow!"
+
+"And if I and the old woman don't clear out of this soon, why, they'll
+be sending me away, 'Carriage paid: with care.'"
+
+He paused, raised his head, and turned those prominent blue eyes on the
+face of the banker. The latter was drawing small circles on the table in
+front of him with the white forefinger of his left hand, his eyes
+intently followed his finger, his white right hand rested on the edge of
+the partly open drawer.
+
+Mr. Grey said, softly and emphatically: "I understand, I understand. Go
+on, and don't be afraid to speak plainly, Joe. May I ask you what you
+were before you devoted yourself to your present--profession? Your
+conversation and way of putting things are far above the average of men
+of your calling;" with a smile of sly interest.
+
+"I was a clerk, sir," answered the man meekly.
+
+"In a bank?" demanded the banker, looking up brightly.
+
+"No, sir; in a corn-store."
+
+"Ah, I thought it couldn't have been in a bank. We are not so fortunate
+as to have men of your talents and enterprise in banks. But I
+interrupted you. Pray, proceed. You were about to say----" The
+invitation was accompanied by a gracious and encouraging wave of the
+left hand.
+
+"I was thinking, sir, that it would be best if I went away of my own
+accord; and I thought I'd just mention this matter to you when I called
+with the guard ring of your good lady that's dead and gone."
+
+"Quite right, quite right. And naturally you thought that I might be
+willing to lend you a hand on your way, partly out of feeling for you
+in your difficult position, and partly out of gratitude to you for your
+kind thoughtfulness in bringing me back the guard ring of poor Mrs.
+Grey."
+
+The white forefinger of the white left hand went on quietly describing
+the circles, but the circles were one after the other increasing in
+circumference. The white right hand still rested on the edge of the
+partly-open drawer.
+
+"That's it," said Farleg, with a sigh of relief. It was such a comfort
+to deal with a sensible man, a man who did most of the talking and
+thinking for you. "You know, sir, I found the rings----"
+
+"Quite so, quite so."
+
+Mr. Grey gave up describing circles, and for a while devoted himself to
+parallelograms. When he had finished each figure he regarded the
+invisible design for a while as though comparing the result of his
+labour with an ideal parallelogram. Then, becoming dissatisfied with
+his work, he began afresh.
+
+"Quite so," he repeated, after a silence of a few moments. "You need not
+trouble yourself to go into detail. In fact, I prefer you should not, as
+my feelings are still much occupied with my great loss. Will you answer
+a few questions that may help to allay and soothe my feelings?"
+
+He ceased drawing the parallelograms, and looked up at the other with a
+glance of friendly enquiry.
+
+Farleg threw himself back in his chair, and replied gravely: "I'll
+answer you, sir, any question it may please you to put."
+
+"At what hour on the evening of the 17th did you break into this house?"
+
+"Eight o'clock."
+
+"By Jove, Joe, you were an adventurous fellow to break into a house in
+daylight! I do think, in the face of such an enterprising spirit, you
+ought to seek a new country, where you would be properly appreciated.
+You have no chance here. Go to some place where the telegraph has not
+yet struck root. And yet for a man of your peculiar calling a dense
+population and civilisation are requisite. Your case, Joe, interests me
+a good deal, and, rely upon it, I shall always be glad to hear of your
+welfare and prosperity. I feel for you in your little difficulty, and I
+applaud your boldness. Fancy, breaking into a man's house at eight
+o'clock of an August evening! And how did you get in, Joe? I suppose by
+a ladder the workman had left against the wall?"
+
+"Yes, sir. It was seeing a ladder against the wall that put the idea
+into my head."
+
+The banker looked at Farleg with an expression of unlimited admiration.
+
+"What a general you would make, Joe!" cried Mr. Grey, in pleasant
+enthusiasm. "You would use every bulrush as cover for your men! And so,
+when you saw the ladder against the wall, you thought to yourself you
+might as well slip up that ladder and have a look round? What a pushing
+man of business too! And you were alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You entered the tower first-floor, and gathered up a few things, this
+ring of my poor wife among the rest. But I don't think you went into any
+other room?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"And I don't think you could have been very long in the room; now, about
+how long?"
+
+"Short of an hour. I heard you coming back, and I cleared out then."
+
+"Ah! You heard me coming back, and you cleared out then. Quite so. No
+doubt it was inconsiderate of me to come back and disturb you. But, you
+know, I was in a great state of anxiety and alarm--anxiety and alarm
+which were unfortunately only too well founded, as you, no doubt, have
+heard; we need not dwell on that painful event now. May I ask you if you
+have spoken of this affair to anyone?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Not to a soul?"
+
+"Not to a soul."
+
+"What a discreet general you would make! Upon my word I think you ought
+to go to California. San Francisco is the place for one so daring and so
+cautious. What a dashing cavalry leader you would make! And yet it would
+be a pity to throw you away on cavalry. Your natural place would be in
+the engineers."
+
+Mr. Grey half closed his eyes, and gazed dreamily for a few seconds at
+the reclining figure of the man before him. Then hitching his chair a
+few inches nearer to the small table standing between him and Farleg, he
+said, in a drawling tone, as he softly slipped his hand into the drawer:
+
+"I admire you for your ingenuity in availing yourself of that ladder,
+and for your boldness in entering the house in daylight. But I am
+completely carried away with enthusiasm when I think of your coming here
+to me, telling me this tale, and preserving the admirable calmness which
+you display. Indeed, Joe, I am amazed."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"Now, how much money did you think I'd be likely to give to help you out
+of this scrape, and out of this country?"
+
+"Mr. Grey, you're a rich man."
+
+The banker bowed and smiled.
+
+"And that ring ought to be worth a heap of money to you."
+
+"A guinea, or perhaps thirty shillings. At the very most I should say
+two pounds."
+
+"But, sir, considering that it was your wife's, and that she wore it on
+the very day----"
+
+"Quite so. On the very day of her wedding----"
+
+"That is not what I meant----"
+
+"But that is the aspect of the affair which endears the ring to me. Pray
+let us keep to the business in hand. You bring me a ring which I own I
+should not like you to have kept from me. You make me a present of this
+ring, and you ask me to help you out of the country. Now, how much would
+be sufficient to help you out of the country, and settle you and your
+wife comfortably in a new home?"
+
+"A thousand pounds."
+
+"A thousand pounds! My dear Joe, if you were about to represent the
+majesty of the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland at a foreign court,
+you could ask little more for travelling-expenses and commencing
+existence. A thousand pounds! What a lucrative business yours must have
+been to make you hope you could get a thousand pounds for the goodwill
+of it!"
+
+"But it is not every day a thing like this turns up. You have a lot of
+waiting before you get your chance. In fact, my chance did not belong to
+the ordinary business at all."
+
+"Quite so. It was a kind of perquisite. Well, now, Joe, don't you think
+if I gave you twenty-five pounds as a present it would fully provide for
+your outward voyage?" Mr. Grey made the proposal with a winning and an
+enticing gesture of his left hand.
+
+Farleg looked down at his boots again, and said very slowly, and with an
+accent that left no doubt of his earnestness and determination:
+
+"It isn't often a chance of this kind turns up, and I can't afford to
+let it pass; no honest man could afford to let it pass, and I have a
+wife looking to me. You have no one looking to you, not even a wife--not
+even a wife."
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"Well, I want the money. I want to try and get an honest start in life,
+and I think I shall buy land----"
+
+"Out of the thousand pounds?" queried Mr. Grey, with a look of amused
+enjoyment.
+
+"Out of the thousand pounds you are going to give me. Can't you see,"
+added Farleg, sitting up in his chair, leaning both his elbows on the
+small table between them, "can't you see it's to your advantage as well
+as mine to give me a large sum?"
+
+"Candidly I cannot," answered Mr. Grey, tapping Farleg encouragingly on
+the shoulder with his white left hand. "Tell me how it is. I am quite
+willing to be convinced."
+
+"Well, if I take your five-and-twenty, I spend it here, or I spend it
+getting there, and then I'm stranded, don't you see, sir?"
+
+"Go on." With two soft appreciative pats from the left white hand.
+
+"Of course, as soon as I find myself hard up I come to you, or I write
+to you for more, and that would only be wasting your time."
+
+"But," said Mr. Grey, with a sly look and a sly wag of his head, "if you
+got the thousand you might spend it here or there, and then you might
+again be applying to me. Ah, no! Joe, I don't think it would do to give
+you that thousand. You can have the twenty-five now, if you like."
+
+"Well, sir, I've looked into the matter deeper than that. When you give
+me the thousand, I and my wife will leave this country, go to America,
+out West, and buy land. There we shall settle down as respectable
+people, and it would be no advantage to me to rake up the past, once I
+was settled down and prosperous. So, sir, if you please, I'll have the
+thousand."
+
+There was respectful resolution in Farleg's voice as he spoke. The faces
+of the two men were not more than a foot apart now. They were looking as
+straight into one another's eyes as two experienced fencers when the
+play begins. Mr. Grey's face ceased to move, and took a settled
+expression of gracious badinage.
+
+"I think, Joe," said he, "that I can manage the matter more economically
+than your way."
+
+"What is that way, sir?"
+
+"As I told you before, I look on you as a very enterprising man. First,
+you break into a man's house in daylight, and then you come and beard
+the lion in his den. You come to the man whose house you honoured by a
+visit through a window, and you say to him--I admit that nothing could
+have been in better taste than your manner of saying it----"
+
+"Thank you, sir, but you took me so kindly and so gentleman-like."
+
+"Thank _you_, Joe; but I mustn't compliment you again, or we shall get
+no farther than compliments to-night. As I was saying, you ask him for
+no less than a thousand pounds to help you out of the country and into
+a respectable line of life. Indeed, all my sympathy is with you in your
+good intention, but then I have to think of myself----"
+
+"But you're a rich man, sir, and to you a thousand pounds isn't much,
+and it's everything to me. It will make me safe, and help me out of a
+way of life I never took to until driven to it," pleaded Farleg.
+
+"Well put, very well put. Now, this is my position. This is my plan; let
+me hear what you think of it: On the night or evening of the 17th you
+break into my house; on the night or evening of the 27th you visit me
+for some purpose or other----"
+
+"To give you back your dead wife's ring."
+
+"Quite so. You may be sure I am overlooking no point in the case. Let me
+proceed with my view. You and I don't get on well together, and you
+attack me. You are clearly the burglar, and I am attacked by you, and I
+defend myself with force. You kill me; that is no good to you. You won't
+make a penny by my death. But suppose it should unhappily occur that the
+revolver, on the trigger of which, Joe, I now have my finger, and the
+muzzle of which is about a foot from your heart, suppose it should go
+off, what then? You can see the accident would be all in my favour."
+
+Farleg uttered a loud whistle.
+
+For a second no word was spoken. No movement was made in that room.
+
+All at once, apparently from the feet of the two men, a wild alarmed
+scream of a woman shot up through the silence, and shook the silence
+into echoes of chattering fear.
+
+As though a blast had struck the banker's face, it shrivelled up like a
+withered leaf. Something heavy fell from his hand in the drawer, and he
+rose slowly, painfully, to his feet.
+
+Farleg rose also, keeping his face in the same relation, and on the same
+level as the banker's, until the pinched face of the banker stole slowly
+above the burglar's.
+
+The hands of Grey rested on the table. His eyes were fixed on vacancy.
+He seemed to be listening intently, spellbound by some awful vision,
+some distracting anticipation intimately concerned with appalling
+voices.
+
+Slowly from his lips trickled the whispered words: "What was that?"
+
+"_My_ wife's voice," whispered Farleg. "You thought it was _yours_. When
+I told you no one knew, I meant I had no pal. But my wife knows _all_,
+and if anything came amiss to me she'd tell all."
+
+"I understand," the banker answered, still in a whisper. The dread was
+slowly descending from his face, and he made a hideous attempt at a
+smile.
+
+"I, too," pursued Farleg, "was afraid we might quarrel, and left her
+there. For one whistle she was to scream out to show she was on the
+watch. For two whistles she was to run away and call help. Do you see,
+sir?"
+
+"Very clever. Very neat. You have won the odd trick."
+
+"And honours are divided."
+
+"Yes. How is that money to reach you?"
+
+"I'd like it in gold, sir, if you please. You can send it in a large
+parcel, a hamper, sir, or a large box, so that no one need be the wiser.
+I'm for your own good as well as my own in this matter."
+
+"You shall have the money the day after to-morrow at four o'clock. It
+will reach you from London. Now go."
+
+"Well, after what has been done, and our coming to a bargain, shake
+hands, Wat," said the man, in a tone of insolent triumph.
+
+"Go, sir. Go at once!"
+
+"Honours are not divided; I hold three to your one. Give me your hand,
+old man. Joe Farleg will never split on a pal."
+
+With a shudder of loathing the banker held out his hand.
+
+As soon as he was alone, the moment the door was shut, he took up the
+claret-jug, poured the contents over his right hand to cleanse it from
+the contamination of that touch, and then walked hastily up and down the
+room, waving his hand through the air until it dried.
+
+"A thousand isn't much to secure him. But will it secure him? That is
+the question. Yes, I think it will. I think the coast is now clear. With
+prudence and patience I can do all now," he whispered to himself, with
+his left hand on his forehead. "Wat Grey, you've had a close shave.
+Nothing could have been closer. Had you pulled that trigger all would
+have been lost. Now you have a clear stage, and must let things take
+their course. The old man can't live for ever; and until he dies you
+must keep quiet and repress all indication of the direction in which
+your hopes lie. Maud does not dream of this."
+
+A knock at the door.
+
+"Come in."
+
+James, the servant, entered, holding a slip of paper in his hand.
+
+"What is it, James?" asked the master.
+
+"That man that's gone out, sir, said he forgot to give his address, and
+as you might want it he asked me to take it up to you."
+
+Mr. Grey was standing by the low gasalier as the servant handed him the
+piece of paper.
+
+Mr. Grey took the address in his right hand; as he did so the purblind
+footman sprang back a pace.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Mr. Grey with an amused smile.
+
+"Ex--excuse--me--sir," the man faltered, "but your hand----"
+
+"Well, what about it?"
+
+"It's all over blood!"
+
+"What! What do you say?" shouted the master, in a tone of dismay. "Do
+_you_ want a thousand too?"
+
+"Indeed, no, sir; and I beg pardon; but do look at your hand."
+
+Mr. Grey held up his hand, examined it, and then burst out into a loud
+shout of laughter. When he could speak he cried:
+
+"You charming idiot! You will kill me with your droll ways. That dirty
+wretch who went out touched my hand. I had no water near me, so I poured
+some claret over my hand and forgot to wipe it."
+
+He approached James and held out his hand, saying, "Look." Then added,
+in a tone of solemn amusement: "James, there was once a man who died of
+laughing at seeing an ass eat. I do think I shall die of laughing at
+hearing a donkey talk. Bring me the coffee. Go."
+
+And as the servant was leaving the room, Mr. Grey broke out into a laugh
+of quiet self-congratulation on the fact of his possessing such a
+wonderful source of amusement in his servant, James.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE MANOR HOUSE.
+
+
+The house occupied by Mr. Grey was very old. It had been the Manor
+House, and was still called the Manor House, or the Manor, although it
+had long ago ceased to be the property of the original owner's
+descendants. For years before Mr. Grey bought it the house had been
+uninhabited.
+
+It bore a bad name--why, no one could tell. The fortunes of the lords of
+the manor had gradually mouldered away, and the old house had been
+allowed to fall into decay and dilapidation.
+
+During the time it was shut up people spoke of it as a kind of phantom
+house; some regarded it as a myth, and others treated it with a
+superstitious respect as a thing which might exercise an evil influence
+over those who fell under the shadow of its displeasure.
+
+Sunken deeply from the road, surrounded by a wild tangle of rugged oaks,
+its grounds girt with walls ten feet high, there were few points open to
+the public from which a glimpse of it could be caught, and no spot from
+which a full view could be obtained.
+
+Boys had scaled the walls and penetrated into the tangled mazes of the
+neglected undergrowth. But the briars and brambles and bushes were too
+rough even for boys, and they came away soon.
+
+No boy of Daneford--and there were high-hearted, brave, adventurous boys
+there--could say he had penetrated as far as the house. Although those
+who had once been boys of Daneford had faced the enemies of their
+country in every clime, by day and by night, on land and sea, and
+although the boys of that city, at the time spoken of, were made of as
+stout stuff and inspired by as gallant hearts as the boys who had fought
+and fallen in Spain, India, America, Belgium, Egypt, where you will, not
+one of all of them would dare, alone and by night, to break through that
+jungle, and penetrate to that house.
+
+The soil of the Manor Park was low and full of rich juices, and fertile
+with long rest, so the vegetation beneath the gnarled boughs of the
+interlacing oaks could hold the moisture well when the sun was hot, and
+from that ground to the sun they never saw clearly rose huge green and
+red and yellow slimy weeds among the brambles and the shrubs.
+
+From the nests of many generations of birds which had built in those
+distorted trees seeds of all things that grow on this land had fallen,
+and taken root and prospered in the rich ground of the sultry glens and
+caverns formed by the scraggy arms and foliage of the oaks; year after
+year this disorderly growth had burst up out of the fat, greasy soil in
+unwholesome profusion, unclean luxury, and had rotted down again into
+the over-lush earth. So that the spring-root and ground-fruit, and all
+manner of green things, jostled and crushed one another, and the weaker
+were strangled and eaten up by the stronger.
+
+Thousands of birds yearly built in the trees of the Manor Park; for here
+came no guns to kill or scare, no boys to pilfer the eggs or young ones;
+and this republic of birds overhead was a source of great profit to the
+soil below.
+
+Often birds fell from the trees dead of cold in the winter nights, and
+when the sun shone out the industrious mole came and buried them
+decently, and their bones were of service to the soil.
+
+The mole, too, was useful in another way, for he turned up the clay now
+and then, here and there, and opened avenues into the earth for water
+burdened with fructifying juices.
+
+And here, too, was that ever-active sexton of the vegetable world, the
+fungus. In the vast winds of the winters, when the oaks gored one
+another, and tore off the fangs of their antlers, great boughs fell with
+shrieks to the earth. Later the sexton fungus crept over to the
+shattered limbs and lodged on them, and ate them up silently and slowly,
+and then the fungus itself melted into the earth.
+
+Here were worms of enormous growth, and frogs and toads, and snails and
+lizards, and all other kinds of slimy insects and reptiles, and the boys
+said snakes, but snakes were put forward in excuse of fear on the part
+of the boys. There were no hares, no rabbits, no deer, no cows, no
+sheep, no goats, nor any of the gentle creatures that put grass and
+green things to uses profitable to man.
+
+Here in those vaults of sickly twilight vegetable nature held high
+saturnalia, undisturbed save by the seasons and worms and snails and
+caterpillars and slugs. This was not a prosperous field, a prudent
+grove, a stately wood, a discreet garden; it was a robber's cave of the
+green world, in which the plunder of all the fields lay heaped without
+design, for no good or useful end.
+
+At night the darkness was thick and hot in these blind alleys and
+inexplorable aisles. When the foot was put down something slipped
+beneath it, a greasy branch, a viscous fruit, a reptile, or the fat
+stalk of some large-leafed ground-plant.
+
+The trunks of the trees and the branches of the shrubs were damp with
+gelatinous dews. If there was a moon, something might always be seen
+sliding silently through the grass or leaves and pulpy roots.
+
+Strange and depressing odours of decay came stealthily upon the sense
+now and then, and filled the mind with hints of unutterable fears. If in
+the branches above a sleeping bird chirped or fluttered, it seemed as
+though the last bird left was stealing away from the fearful place. The
+fat reptiles that glided and slipped in the ghostly moonlight were
+fleeing, and leaving you alone to behold some spectacle, encounter some
+fate, too repulsive for the contemplation of reason.
+
+Within this belt of rank vegetation and oaks the Manor House stood. The
+house had a plain stone front with small narrow windows, three on each
+side of the main door. At the rear was a large paved courtyard, with a
+pump and horse-trough in the middle.
+
+The chief building consisted of a ground-floor, on which were the
+reception-rooms; a first floor of bedrooms; and a second floor, the
+windows of which were dormar, intended for the servants of the
+establishment.
+
+The walls of the house were of great thickness and strength. On the
+ground and first floors most of the doorways into the passages had
+double doors. Owing to the great thickness of the walls, and the double
+doors, and the massive floorings and partition walls, sounds, even the
+loudest, travelled with great difficulty through that house.
+
+In front of the house stretched a broad gravelled drive, which narrowed
+into a gravelled road as it set off to the main road, a considerable
+distance farther on. This carriage-road wound in and out through the
+oaks of the Park. Between the gravelled open in front of the house and
+the trees stretched a narrow band of shaven grass. This narrow band of
+grass followed the carriage-road up to the lodge-gate.
+
+Around the paved yard in the rear stood the coach-house, stables,
+kitchen, laundry, scullery, larder, and other offices, and still farther
+to the rear of the house, behind the yard, were the flower and kitchen
+gardens. To the rear of all, surrounding all, and binding all in like
+suffocating bondage, was the Park of gnarled oaks and rank lush
+undergrowth and slimy soil.
+
+In looking at the house you were not conscious of anything uncanny or
+repulsive. At the left-hand end--that is, the end of the house nearest
+to Daneford--there rose a tower, mounting only one storey above the
+dormar floor.
+
+Upon the top of this tower was a huge iron tank, corroded into a
+skeleton of its former self. Looking at that weather-battered and rusted
+tank, with the undergrowth in the Park behind you, the former resembled
+the decay of the indomitable natives of America, who perished slowly in
+opposing themselves to fate; the overripe prosperity of the latter
+looked like the destruction of the Romans, who ate and drank and slept
+their simplicity and their manhood away.
+
+One peculiarity of this house was that no green plant or creeper could
+get a living out of its dry walls. Neither on the house nor on the tower
+had ever been seen one leaf native to the place. Here was another thing
+in strong contrast to the teeming vegetation environing this house.
+
+It was not while looking at the Manor you felt its unpleasant influence.
+In sunshine nothing disturbed your peace while you contemplated its dry,
+cold front. But when you had gone away; when you were sitting in your
+own bright room; when you were walking along a lonely road; when you
+awoke in the middle of the night, and heard the torrents of the storm
+roar as they whirled round your window; then, if the thought of that
+house came up before your mind, you shrank back from its image as from
+an apparition of evil mission. In your mental vision the house itself
+seemed scared and afeared.
+
+The intense green life that dwelt beneath those oaks stood out in
+startling contrast with the absolute nudity of those unapparelled
+stones. The house seemed to shrink instinctively from any contact with
+verdure, as though it felt assured of evil from moss or leaf or blade.
+It appeared to dread that the oaks would creep up on it and overwhelm it
+in their portentous shadows, beat it down with their giant arms.
+
+That tower stood out in the imagination like an arm uplifted in appeal;
+that shattered tank became a tattered flag of distress. The windows
+looked like scared eyes, the broad doorway a mouth gaping with terror.
+The whole building quivered with human horror, was silent with frozen
+awe.
+
+In the year 1856 Henry Walter Grey's father died, and the son became
+sole proprietor of the Daneford Bank. Up to that time the son had lived,
+with his wife, to whom he had then been married six years, in the
+Bank-house as manager under his father. There were only a few years'
+lease of his father's suburban residence, to run, and a likelihood arose
+that the landlord would not renew, so young Grey had to look out for a
+home, as he intended appointing a manager and living away from the
+office.
+
+At that time the Manor House was in the market, and Mr. Grey bought it
+for, as he said, "a song, and a very poor song, too," considering the
+extent of the Park, the value of the timber, and the spacious old house.
+As a matter of fact, no one valued the dwelling at a penny beyond what
+the sale of its stones would bring; for the impression of the seller was
+that, owing to its uncanny aspect and bad name, no one would think of
+buying it to live in.
+
+All Daneford was taken by surprise when it heard that young Grey, Wat
+Grey, Wat had bought the fearful Manor House in which no family had
+lived for generations, and from which even the furniture and servants
+had been long since withdrawn. Did he mean to take it down, build a new
+house, and effect a wholesome clearance of those odious groves?
+
+No, he had answered, with a light laugh, he harboured no intention of
+knocking down the old house to please the neighbours; of course he was
+going to repair the house, and when it was fully restored he would ask
+his friends to come and try if beef and mutton tasted worse, or wine was
+less cheering, under that roof because nervous people had been pleased
+to frighten themselves into fits over the Park and the Manor House.
+
+In a year the house had been put into thorough order, and even the tower
+had not been wholly neglected, for one room of it, that on a level with
+Mr. Grey's own bedroom, had been completely renovated into a kind of
+extra dressing-room to Mr. Grey's bedroom, from which a short passage
+led to it.
+
+Nothing was done to the ground-floor of the tower; nothing was done to
+the floor on a level with the dormar; nothing was done with the floor
+above the dormar.
+
+Nothing was done to the unsightly tank on the top of the tower.
+
+With respect to the rooms of the tower, Mr. Grey said he had no need of
+more than the one.
+
+With respect to the tank, he said he would in no way try to diminish the
+unprepossessing aspect of the exterior of the house; he would rely upon
+the interior, the good cheer and the welcome beneath the roof, to
+countervail the ill-omened outer walls.
+
+There was another reason, too, Mr. Grey said, why he had made up his
+mind to alter nothing in the surrounding grounds or outward aspect of
+the house--he wanted to see whether that house was going to beat him, or
+he was going to beat that house.
+
+So when all was in order, he set about house-warming on a prodigious
+scale--a scale that was a revelation to the people of Daneford.
+
+He filled all the bedrooms with guests, and had a couple of dozen men to
+dine with him every day for a fortnight.
+
+He told his servants, as long as they did their work punctually and
+satisfactorily, they might have friends to see them, and might make
+their friends welcome to the best things in the servants' hall every day
+for a fortnight.
+
+There were bonfires in the courtyard, and fiddlers and dancing. A barrel
+of beer was placed on the horse-trough, and mugs and cans appeared in
+glittering rows on a table beside the cask, and painted on the butt-end
+of the cask the words, "Help yourself."
+
+When he lived in town his establishment had consisted of three servants.
+For the fête a dozen additional servants were engaged and a French cook.
+There were a lodge and gate to the Manor Park, but there was no
+lodge-man or woman; and during the festivities the gate always stood
+open until midnight, and all passersby were free to come in and join the
+dancers and partake of the ale.
+
+One day he had all the clerks of his own bank to dine with him; and
+while they were over their wine and cigars he informed them their
+salaries were from that hour advanced twenty per cent.
+
+He was then a simple member of the Chamber of Commerce; he had not yet
+been elected chairman. He entertained the whole Chamber another evening,
+and then told the members he had that day written to their secretary,
+declaring his resolution not to charge interest on the money advanced by
+his bank--three thousand pounds--for the completion of the new building
+in course of construction by the Chamber.
+
+A third evening he asked all the members of the Harbour Board, and told
+them that he had made up his mind to abandon the old claim for interest
+on their overdraughts set up by his father.
+
+Then he gave a Commercial Club evening, to which were bidden all his
+friends and acquaintances, who were also members of the club. After
+roast beef came two large silver dishes, on one of which was, plainly
+enough, plum-pudding; on the other, something that was plainly not
+plum-pudding. The host nodded to the servants, and both dishes burst
+into flame; the dish that contained the plum-pudding standing opposite
+the treasurer of the club, at the foot of the table; the thing that was
+not plum-pudding standing opposite the banker. Whatever had been before
+him was, when the brandy ceased to burn, all consumed, except a little
+black matter that floated about on the surface of the fluid in the dish.
+
+"Everyone must have some of my new sauce. I invented it myself, and I
+will take it as a favour if all will taste it with the pudding."
+
+All partook of it and praised it highly, and many said they had never
+tasted its like before, and several began elaborate analyses of it, and
+minute comparisons between it and a hundred of well-known sauces.
+
+After a while he said: "The roast beef and plum-pudding of Old England
+for ever!" Then pointing to the dish containing the floating black
+matter before him, "And the ashes of my mortgage on the club property
+once!"
+
+The Boat Club were his guests another evening, and a large gold
+loving-cup was brought in and carried about with a rich compound of dark
+wines and stimulating spices, and out of this all were to drink. When
+all had tasted and toasted in the common cup the object of their common
+solicitude, the last man after drinking called out that there was
+something which rattled and jingled and slid about in the bottom of the
+cup. The master of the house seemed more inquisitive than any of the
+others, bade the finder spill out the contents of the cup on a salver,
+and, behold, one hundred and five new sovereigns fresh from the Mint!
+Upon this discovery the host rose and said that love was the rarest of
+alchemy, and that the touch of a score of loyal lips, all having the one
+interest at heart, had changed the liquor into gold for the good of the
+club, and that the gold and the cup must go together to the club.
+
+When he had the organisers and directors of the Poor's Christmas Coal
+Fund to dinner, each member found, folded up in his napkin, twenty
+orders, each order for five shillings' worth of coal.
+
+Such generous and kindly deeds, and such cordial hospitality, could not
+but endear him to the people of Daneford; and by reason of his knowing
+so many men intimately, and each one of these men being more or less
+proud of the acquaintance, they all called him "Wat," to show how very
+intimate they were with him, and to show that in the best commercial set
+in Daneford there was no one else known by the name of Wat. They called
+him Wat in preference to Henry or Harry, because there is not perhaps
+among all the Christian names one which admits of such an intimately
+familiar contraction as Walter.
+
+But all the banqueting and largess did not disenchant the ominous
+mansion.
+
+Those who had been at the prodigal house-warming always remembered the
+exterior aspect of the house when the revels were at their height as
+even worse than the ordinary appearance; for the small red windows in
+the thick dark walls looked at night like the eyes of a desperate man
+who had drank deeply to keep up his courage in some supreme ordeal. And
+by day ever afterwards, to those who had been in the house at the
+festival, it seemed as though the house looked more aghast than ever,
+like the face of one who, having slept off the artificial courage, had
+awaked to reduced resources and increased dangers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+AN UNSELFISH MOTHER.
+
+
+All the parties given by Mr. Grey at the Manor House were men's parties.
+Mrs. Grey rarely or never was to be found in the drawing-room after
+dinner; and, indeed, the drawing-room was seldom lighted up.
+
+Mrs. Grey was a pretty, low-sized, dark-eyed, nervous woman, a few years
+the junior of her husband. He had met her first in London, in a house
+where she was staying on a visit with friends. She was alone in the
+world, had a small fortune, which, while it made her no object of
+pursuit in the circle she frequented, kept her independent.
+
+There was a little mystery and a little doubt about her, and while
+neither the mystery nor the doubt was sufficient to disquiet anyone, it
+served to keep interest in her alive, and the more prudent and
+calculating of suitors from love-making. Individually she was popular;
+but while those who knew her spoke well of her in her absence, the good
+things said of her always began in superlatives, and, as the
+conversation went on, diminished to positives, and the talk usually
+ended with a vague "but" and an unfinished sentence.
+
+Perhaps she was a little odd, they said. Perhaps she had French blood in
+her veins. Perhaps the strange blood was Spanish. She had a look not
+wholly English--a look denoting no close kinship with any other people.
+Her name was Muir, which seemed to indicate that she came of a stock
+north of the Tweed. Yet she had never been in Scotland, nor her father
+before her, nor anyone of his side, as far as he could trace back. Her
+mother had been the daughter of a Truro solicitor, her father a member
+of the Equity bar of London. Those who had known her father and mother
+declared that she resembled neither in her face nor her manner. She was
+dark, low-sized, and odd; they had both been tall, fair, and models of
+conventional insipidity.
+
+When Henry Walter Grey married Miss Muir she was twenty-four years of
+age, he twenty-nine. The women judged her to be thirty-four, the men
+allowed that she might be twenty-seven; but all agreed that young Grey,
+with his prospects, might have done much better as far as money went.
+
+But among the young and the chivalric of Daneford, young Grey helped
+forward his nascent popularity by marrying a poor wife and risking his
+father's displeasure for his sweetheart's sake. The young and chivalric
+of Daneford were never tired of pointing to the pleasantest and most
+prosperous man in the city as one who had made his love paramount above
+all other considerations in the selection of a wife.
+
+From the time he won his wife until he lost her his manner towards her
+gained him daily increase of respect among the people of the city. Every
+indulgence and luxury which his position could afford were lavished upon
+her. Wives who had cause of displeasure or dissatisfaction with their
+husbands always cited Mr. Grey as a shining contrast to their own too
+economical or exacting lords. It was not alone that she was never denied
+anything for which she could reasonably care, but, notwithstanding the
+clubs and the institutions and the boards of which Mr. Grey was a
+member, no more domestic man lived in Daneford. He always dined at home,
+except on occasions of great public interest; and when he had no guests
+he sat reading or conversing with her, or they both went for a stroll in
+the fine twilight, or visited the theatre, or any other form of public
+amusement afforded by the town.
+
+As the years of their married life glided by, and no child came to make
+an endearing interruption to the smooth course of wedded sweethearts,
+the attachment between the husband and wife seemed to borrow a greater
+depth from the soft melancholy arising out of their childless condition.
+It was, the town said, a thousand pities the rich, amiable, amusing,
+good-looking Wat Grey had no one to leave his fine business and his vast
+fortune to.
+
+If a friend alluded to the fact of his childlessness he always put the
+subject aside with as little humour and as much gentleness as the
+character of the speaker allowed of. To his wife, who often made tearful
+allusions to the circumstance, he replied with cheerful hopefulness, and
+bade her set her grief for him away, as he was quite content and happy
+with the blessings Heaven had already sent him, chief among which was a
+wife he loved.
+
+Although Mrs. Grey did not go into society, and had no ladies to dinner,
+she had a few visiting friends upon whom she called in turn, and who
+learned from her the uniform kindliness of her husband, and the great
+gentleness with which he accepted the absence of an heir or heiress.
+
+In fact, the more people heard of Mr. Grey, the more he grew in popular
+esteem, and behind all this amiability on his part there was a factor
+which hugely multiplied its value. At first, when he brought his wife
+home to Daneford, and the people of his set began to know her a little,
+they all declared that she was pretty, very pretty, and a trifle odd.
+
+Time went on, and although she lost none of her prettiness with her
+years--hers being the beauty that depends on bone and outline, and not
+on surface and colour--her peculiarities gained upon her; and whether,
+the Daneford folk said, it was the foreign blood that darkened her eyes
+and her hair and her ways, or a slight strain of madness, they could not
+decide, but she was, beyond all doubt, not in manner like the average
+English-woman of her class.
+
+At first her peculiarities defied definition. People said she was very
+nice, but a little queer, cracked, crazy. She was very impulsive, and
+sometimes incoherent. No action of hers seemed the result of forethought
+or preparation. She ordered the servants to bring this, that, or the
+other thing, and when they came with it she told them they might take it
+away again, as she had changed her mind. She ordered the brougham for
+four, went out walking at a quarter to four, and stayed out till six,
+without countermanding the brougham.
+
+About the time that Mr. Grey bought the Manor House, Mrs. Grey had a
+difference with her cook, and her cook left her in a violent temper. The
+cook had been with her ever since Mrs. Grey had first come to Daneford,
+and was the confidential servant of her mistress. Soon after the cook
+had left it reached the ears of a few acquaintances of Mr. Grey that a
+dreadful spectre had appeared in his household. The fact that Mrs. Grey
+had now been married some years and was still childless had preyed very
+deeply on her excitable temperament, and, dreadful to say, she not
+unfrequently took more wine than was good for her.
+
+Those who heard this now saw a reason, unguessed by others, why the
+banker bought that odious house swathed round with that fearful wood.
+There his wife would be secluded, free from prying eyes and guarded
+against any close daily contact with neighbours. How had it been kept
+secret so long? The cook, now discharged, had obtained for the unhappy
+woman what she wanted, and the poor lady was wonderfully discreet and
+cautious, and until that servant went no one but the cook and the
+afflicted husband ever dreamed of such a thing. It was dreadful.
+
+But the most intimate friend of Grey never knew from him, by even the
+faintest hint, there was a single cloud over his domestic happiness.
+
+He always spoke of his wife in terms of the most tender consideration
+and kindliness. He was by no means weak or uxorious; but there was a
+loyal trust, an ever-active sympathy in him towards her, that won
+greatly on the young and old men and women of Daneford.
+
+The evil circumstance under which Mrs. Grey laboured was never an open
+scandal in the town. In the first place, owing to her own great prudence
+and circumspection, no one had any suspicion of the melancholy fact from
+herself. If she was the victim of a debasing weakness, she never
+betrayed herself publicly, and those who heard of it through indirect
+ways had kept the secret closely, out of respect to the man whose fame
+and name and popularity stood so high among his fellow-citizens. Indeed,
+some who heard the rumour disbelieved it wholly, and declared their
+conviction that it was the malicious invention of a discharged servant,
+based on the eccentric habits and unfamiliar ways of the poor lady.
+
+But the fact remained that, even to the spacious Manor House, no lady
+guests were invited to dinner; no lady guests stayed for twenty-four
+hours; and, beyond a few afternoon callers, no ladies visited the house
+at all. But perhaps in Daneford there were not a dozen families in
+possession of the fact that would account for the strict retirement in
+which the mistress of the Manor lived, and the young and the chivalric
+continued to look on Grey and his wife as not only the most prosperous,
+but also the most happy, couple in the whole county.
+
+Very soon after Henry Grey's marriage with Miss Muir, he found out that
+she did not possess the solid good sense and grave discernment essential
+in the confidant of a banker.
+
+She not only lacked the golden faculty of silence, but dealt with facts
+communicated to her in a most imaginative and injudicious manner. He
+told her that a substantial and solvent merchant of the town had
+overdrawn his account five hundred pounds. Shortly after, the merchant's
+wife called on Mrs. Grey, and the latter, in a moment of
+communicativeness, said to the former that business was in a bad way,
+and that she understood the former's husband owed the Bank, over and
+above ordinary business, no less a sum than five thousand pounds. The
+merchant's wife related this to her husband, and he came in great
+indignation to Grey. Mr. Grey said his wife's talk had been only woman's
+gossip, and that he had most certainly never told his wife or any one
+else the merchant owed the Bank five thousand pounds over-draught.
+
+The merchant said he was quite sure Mr. Grey had not, but urged that
+something of the over-draught must have been communicated to Mrs. Grey,
+and that a woman's gossip was quite capable of ruining a solvent man.
+
+On another occasion the banker told her the Bank had not made as much
+money that year as the year before, and she informed some chance callers
+that the Bank was losing heavily. This rumour might have shaken the
+credit of an institution less solidly established than the Daneford
+Bank; but in the city and country surrounding the city the Bank was
+looked upon as much more safe than the Bank of England, insomuch as the
+Threadneedle Street concern had a paper currency, and the Daneford did
+not mortgage any of its capital by such an issue, and stood in no
+temptation to diminish its stock of gold or overstep safety.
+
+These two experiences of Grey's, coupled with a few others of less
+importance but similar nature, convinced him that the more general and
+abstract his statements of business matters to his wife the better, and
+from the moment he arrived at this conclusion he carried it into effect.
+She, having no talent for the particular, did not seem to miss his
+confidence, and remained perfectly content with commonplace generalities
+as to business matters. Indeed, having very little of the highly
+feminine virtue of inquisitiveness, she was not much interested in
+business statements of any kind.
+
+Most men will talk more freely to a woman whom they trust than to any
+man, no matter how near to them by ties of nature or affection. Henry
+Grey was no exception to the rule, and when he found he durst no longer
+confide important secrets to his wife, he unburdened himself to another
+woman, a widow, now past seventy, but still straight and intelligent,
+and sympathetic and hale, a woman who had won and retained a most
+powerful hold upon his esteem, affection, and confidence--his mother.
+
+Whilst all the world of Daneford was calculating the enormous fortune
+the Daneford Bank must be making for its owner, and was bemoaning the
+fact that Wat Grey had no child to leave his fine business and his vast
+savings to, there were two people the nature of whose anxiety about Mr.
+Grey's affairs did not take the same course.
+
+These two people were the only beings possessing knowledge of the
+condition of Mr. Grey's private fortune and the bank.
+
+For years he had kept the true state of affairs from his mother, but at
+length, as blow succeeded blow, he could no longer bear the burden of
+his secret, and he unfolded it to her. He did not trouble her with
+detail, but informed her briefly that he had backed the South in the
+American wars--that not only had he lost all his own private fortune,
+but of the depositors' money as well.
+
+At first she was overwhelmed with surprise and horror to think the
+splendid business and reputation made for the Bank by her dead husband
+and his father before him should be ruined by her son, and that not only
+had the Bank been ruined and her son's fortune and position destroyed,
+but the moneys of the clients had also been included in the horrible
+disaster.
+
+But, despite her seventy years, she was a brave old lady, full of honour
+and spirits and courage. Once the first shock was over, she set all her
+faculties at work to try and sustain the drooping energies of her only
+son.
+
+She know he was not free from troubles at home; she knew he gave none
+of his business confidences to his wife. Though she deplored these
+facts, she felt there was no help for them; and if at first reluctant to
+assist him in councils which ought to be held between him and his wife,
+in the end she saw it would be the wisest course for her to listen, to
+encourage him to speak, and to aid him with any advice she might think
+it wise to give.
+
+Apparently, however, the affairs of the Bank were beyond the aid of
+advice. At every interview between mother and son he assured her he saw
+no opening in the clouds; that, in fact, they got blacker and blacker as
+time wore on.
+
+Towards the beginning of 1866 things had, the son told the mother, come
+to the worst.
+
+"All is lost," he said; "all is lost. I have been staving off and
+staving off until everything has got into a hopeless tangle, out of
+which I can find but one thing--ruin!"
+
+"Then, Henry, I suppose you must shut the door; and as you see nothing
+else for it, the sooner you stop up the better."
+
+"Mother, the day I shut the Bank door I'll open another door."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I'll open the door into the other world with a charge of gunpowder."
+
+"Don't say such a foolish, dreadful thing! You are not, I hope, such a
+coward as to fly from the consequences of your own act. If you have lost
+the money in fair trading you need not be ashamed to meet them all;
+others beside you lost by that unfortunate South. Your father would have
+stood his ground and faced the city," said the old woman, with spirit
+and pride.
+
+"No doubt, mother, no doubt my father would have had the manliness to
+stand and face the break; but he was a man of great endurance and nerve;
+you know I am not. I would do anything rather than meet such a crash and
+live after it. You know I have been much more out in the world than my
+father. I am mixed up with such a number of things, am closely connected
+with such a number of institutions and men, that nothing, no
+consideration, could induce me to outlive bankruptcy. The people would
+not believe facts; they would not credit any statement, however plain,
+that I was insolvent. They would say that I had appropriated the money
+of the depositors, made a fraudulent pretence of bankruptcy, and
+concealed the money for my own use. I know the world better than you,
+mother; I know the world, and what it would say. I may be popular now;
+but if I fell, the street-boys might kick me through the gutter and no
+one would take my part, or try to get me fair play."
+
+He dropped his head into his hands and shuddered.
+
+The old woman looked at him with a sad sympathy, which was not wholly
+destitute of reproach.
+
+"You know, Henry, thousands of men have had to face such things, and
+have come out of their difficulties without a stain or a hard word----"
+
+"In my case that is impossible. I tell you, mother, they would have no
+more mercy on me than on a snake. The Bank is a private one, the
+property of one person, and on that one person all the wrath would fall.
+It is not like a joint stock, or a limited liability, where many are
+concerned as principals or shareholders or directors. It would be a case
+between an individual and his creditors. It would look as if I had
+borrowed money privately of all the people I knew, and spent it or
+gambled in dangerous foreign speculations, until I had dissipated their
+last pennies and left the people beggars. No, mother; the day I shut the
+Bank door I open the gate of Eternity with a bullet."
+
+He was walking up and down his mother's drawing-room, with his hands
+clasped behind his coat, his eyes bent on the ground, and a look of
+concentrated thought upon his usually placid and beaming features.
+
+"I will not hear you say that again, Henry," cried the mother, stamping
+her foot impatiently on the floor. "Listen to me. You know my two
+thousand a year is clear of the Bank----"
+
+"Thank Heaven and my father for that!" cried Grey earnestly.
+
+"Can't you shut up the Bank, and you and Bee"--Beatrice, his wife--"come
+and stay with me for a while? We could leave England and live on a
+thousand a year in the south of France, or anywhere you like, and save
+up a thousand a year to start you again----"
+
+"I would die ten thousand deaths, dear mother, rather than touch your
+money," he cried fervently, catching her hand and holding it in both
+his, and opening his hands now and then to kiss the shrivelled hand
+which had once, when soft and full, joined his--then softer and
+fuller--in prayer, and now, when he was strong and she was weak, tried
+to shield and succour him as in the days when he was a little child.
+
+"Don't be sentimental at such a crisis," cried his mother petulantly.
+"You shall do as I say; or if you like, when the Bank affair is settled,
+we can sell the annuity. I know I'm old, and it's not worth many years'
+purchase; but we should get a few thousand for it, and that would give
+you a fresh start in some other business. Now I tell you this is what
+_shall_ happen. Do you hear me? I will not wait for your consent; this
+very day I will see about selling the annuity--what do you call it?
+capitalising it? Go, Henry, and no more nonsense about gunpowder and
+bullets. Such things are only fit for the stage or the Continent, and
+are quite beneath the notice of a sensible English man of business."
+
+He rose to his feet and cried: "You shall not, you must not, mother. I
+have been making out things worse than they really are. I am depressed
+and ill. Believe me, there is no need for doing what you say. There is
+one venture of mine, in no way connected with the late war, the greatest
+of all my ventures; and although I do not look on it as a very safe or
+sound venture, it may come all right yet. I shall know in a fortnight.
+You must promise me to do nothing until then. Promise me, my dear
+mother!"
+
+He spoke eagerly, passionately; and as he uttered the final words he
+caught both her hands in his, and looked beseechingly into her eyes.
+
+"And in a fortnight you will tell me?" she asked, looking searchingly
+into his face.
+
+"In a fortnight I will tell you."
+
+"And between this and then you will not, in my presence or in your own
+secret mind, speak or think about such nonsense as daggers or
+poison-bowls, or gunpowder or bullets?" she asked scornfully.
+
+"I promise I will not."
+
+"Very well," she said; "I will do nothing till I hear from you at the
+end of a fortnight. Let us shake hands, Henry, and part friends."
+
+"Friends!" he exclaimed, as tears of love and sorrow came into his
+eyes. "Mother, you are the only one on earth I love now."
+
+"Hush, sir! How dare you say such a thing!"
+
+"I swear it!" he cried vehemently. "I would do anything, dare anything,
+for you, mother----"
+
+"And for your wife," she added, as if reminding him of an omission made
+in carelessness.
+
+He paid no attention to her suggestion.
+
+"You are the only one in the world who knows me really."
+
+"And longest," she added, with a bright smile. "There--go now, Henry;
+this scene is growing theatrical or Continental, and unbecoming the
+drawing-room of an English mother. There--go."
+
+And she hustled him to the door, opened the door, thrust him out, and
+closed the door upon him.
+
+As soon as she was sure he had left the vicinity of the door she threw
+herself down on a couch and burst into tears, exclaiming softly to
+herself between the sobs:
+
+"My Wat! my poor Wat! my darling child, is it come to this with you?"
+
+Then after a while she dried her eyes and sat up. "Perhaps all may go
+well with him after all. Perhaps this venture of his may come right. It
+was lucky I got him out of the room so soon. Another moment and I should
+have broken down, and been more dramatic and Continental than he, and
+that would never do. No son respects or relies on a mother who weeps on
+his bosom, and causes him to remember she is not his earliest and
+strongest friend."
+
+In the strong-room of the Daneford Bank all the money and securities
+held by the bank were kept. The last duty of Mr. Aldridge, manager of
+the Daneford Bank, each day, was to return the cash, bills, books, &c.,
+to this strong-room. To this strong-room there were three keys in the
+possession of the staff of the bank, one held by the manager, one by the
+accountant, and one by the teller.
+
+The door could not be opened save by the aid of the three keys. Thus no
+officer of the Bank could commit a larceny in the strong-room without
+the countenance of two others.
+
+Mr. Grey had duplicates of the keys held by the accountant and teller.
+But the key held by the manager was unique, and even Mr. Grey himself
+could not enter the strong-room without the manager's key.
+
+In this strong-room were kept not only the valuables of the bank, but
+cases and chests containing all kinds of highly portable and extremely
+precious substances and papers belonging to customers of the Bank. Here
+were iron plate-chests, iron deed-boxes, jewel-caskets in great numbers,
+left for safe keeping, not being part of the Bank's property, and
+against which there was no charge by the Bank but an almost nominal one
+for storage.
+
+The evening after Mr. Grey had that interview with his mother, he called
+at the Bank, found the manager in, and having told Mr. Aldridge that a
+secret report had reached him to the disadvantage of a customer whose
+name he was not allowed to disclose, he wished to borrow the manager's
+key for half an hour, as he wanted to turn over the suspected man's
+account.
+
+He got the key and a candle, and went down to the strong-room. In half
+an hour he returned, and handing back the key to Mr. Aldridge, said: "I
+am glad to say that the account I spoke of is quite satisfactory, and
+that it will not be necessary to make any alteration in our dealings
+with the customer I alluded to."
+
+The next day Mr. Grey went to London, and returned the evening after. A
+few days later, among the letters was an advice from Mr. Grey's London
+correspondents to the effect that Messrs. Barrington, Ware, & Duncan had
+lodged twenty thousand pounds with them to Mr. Grey's credit.
+
+That day Mr. Grey called upon his mother, and told her some of the
+expected good luck had come--not all, but still twenty thousand out of
+the fire.
+
+"I told you, Henry, you had only to wait and face it, and you would win.
+If you did any of those romantic and foolish things with daggers and
+poison-bowls, they would say you were little better than a thief."
+
+"Now they could not even say as much," he said softly to himself.
+
+"What _are_ you dreaming about now!" his mother cried, in exasperation.
+
+He looked up with one of his best and brightest smiles, and said:
+"Dreams, madam! nay, it is. I know not dreams;" and kissing his mother
+to punctuate his parody, he smiled again, and added: "I was only joking,
+just to enjoy the sight of your anger now that things are looking
+better. Good-bye."
+
+And so he left her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AN UNSELFISH FATHER.
+
+
+The city of Daneford, on the river Weeslade, is about eighteen miles
+from the small watering-town, Seacliff, which stands in a little bay at
+the mouth of the river. Between Daneford and Seacliff the width of the
+river varies, but is never less than a mile.
+
+At a distance of less than four miles from the city the river widens
+considerably into a loop, and in the loop is the island of Warfinger.
+The island, which rarely is called by its particular name, but is spoken
+of as "The Island," measures a mile long by half a mile broad. It rises
+gradually from the shores to the centre, and on the highest point of it
+stands Island Castle, the seat of the Midharsts for generations. In the
+neighbourhood the title of Island Castle is cut down also, and no one at
+all familiar with the locality ever calls it anything but "The Castle."
+
+In the early part of the year 1866 the tenant for life of Island Castle
+was old Sir Alexander Midharst, a widower, who lived in the Castle in
+great retirement and the meanest economy. His wife had then been dead
+twenty years. She had died in giving birth to her only child, Maud, now
+rapidly approaching her majority; a girl of such gentle beauty and
+simple childlike manners that all who met her spoke of her beauty and
+her grace with tender respect and ready enthusiasm.
+
+Maud Midharst did not need any adventitious aid to make her beauty
+apparent and her presence acceptable, but her delicate complexion, her
+dark sweet eyes, her pleasant smile, all came out in strong contrast
+with her surroundings at the Castle.
+
+In the building everything, including the structure itself, seemed
+hastening to decay. The walls, the floor, the furniture, the servants,
+the master, all were old. She formed the one exception to the general
+appearance of approaching dissolution. The outer walls of the pile were
+seamed and lined, the water had eaten into the stone, the frost had
+cracked the mortar, and unsightly yellow stains lay upon the masonry,
+like long skeleton fingers pointing to the earth into which the walls
+were hastening.
+
+When castles were places of defence as well as of residence, Island
+Castle was well known. It had stood two sieges, and had been a famous
+place of meeting among the Jacobites. Its insular position, the wide
+prospect it commanded, the fact that it could not be invested on all
+sides at once except by a whole army, the facilities it afforded to
+approach and flight of friends, and the difficulty, amounting almost to
+an impossibility, of reaching it by surprise except under the favour of
+night or a fog, all added together made it a place of great importance
+once upon a time.
+
+The Castle had not always been in the Midharst family. It had come to
+them early in the eighteenth century, upon the failure in heirs male of
+the great Fleurey family, by which failure the historic earldom of
+Stancroft was lost to the blood for ever. The Midharsts had some of the
+female Fleurey blood in their veins, but it was of distant origin; and
+title to the fine castle and property was declared to Sir John Midharst,
+the first of his name who laid claim to it, only after long and
+expensive litigation and much scandal.
+
+Up to that time the Midharsts had been poor baronets. The property
+accompanying the Island in the year 1866 brought in a rental of more
+than twenty-two thousand pounds a year.
+
+It was a very singular fact that from the first baronet who sat as
+master in Warfinger Island Castle down to old Sir Alexander, no son
+succeeded a father. It was always a grandson or a nephew, or a
+grand-nephew or some remote cousin. Now matters were worse than ever.
+Sir Alexander was upwards of seventy years of age, with an only child, a
+daughter, and the closest male was a direct descendant of the youngest
+son of the baronet, the lucky Sir John who came in for the property that
+had supported the extinct earldom of Stancroft.
+
+No doubt this remote cousin was a Midharst in name and blood, but
+somehow it was hard for Sir Alexander to feel very cordial or friendly
+towards one so remote from him, one who was going to take the property
+and the title away from his immediate family.
+
+At the time Lady Midharst died Sir Alexander was but a little over fifty
+years of age, and many thought he would marry again. But even then he
+was ailing, and doctors told him that between asthma and valvular
+derangement of the heart his chance of living even a few years was
+slight. Of course, they said, he might live fifty years, but he was
+heavily handicapped.
+
+As long as his wife, who had been much younger than he, lived he
+continued to hope for an heir; but upon the death of Lady Midharst,
+having ascertained the precise nature and import of the diseases from
+which he suffered, he made up his mind to give up all thought of an
+heir, and devote himself wholly to making a suitable provision for his
+daughter Maud, who was healthy and well-grown, and promised to be strong
+and long-lived.
+
+And now began with Sir Alexander Midharst the practices by which he
+disgraced his order, and made himself a byword for all who knew his
+habits and his name.
+
+He shut up his London house and advertised it to be let. A rich
+distiller took it furnished at two hundred pounds a month during the
+season, and a manufacturing jeweller for eighty pounds a month during
+the unfashionable periods of the year.
+
+He sold his horses and carriages, all save one old state coach, which he
+could not sell for two reasons; first, because its preservation and
+"maintenance" were provided for by his predecessors; and secondly,
+because no one would pay haulage for it from the Island to the city.
+
+He dismissed all his servants but the housekeeper, one maid, and one
+man, allowing, however, a nurse and "governess" for the baby, who yet
+lacked of three months. He resigned the membership of his two London
+clubs, of the three county clubs he belonged to, and intimated to all
+institutions or bodies or guilds to which he was patron, chairman,
+subscriber, or member, that his connection in any way with them must
+cease.
+
+He discharged his steward, and resolved upon collecting his own rents
+and superintending his own property.
+
+Up to this anyone who chose might go over his fine old Castle. Anyone
+still might go over the Castle, but an entrance fee of one shilling was
+now demanded from each sightseer.
+
+As time advanced, and he became more imbued with avarice, more expert in
+meanness, he cut and shaved and clipped here and there and everywhere,
+until he had reduced his expenditure to about a thousand a year.
+
+But he did not rest content with cutting down his own expenses; he was
+fully as careful to increase his income by every means in his power.
+
+When leases expired they were renewed only on payment of heavy fines.
+His care was not so much to inflate the rent-roll as to get in all the
+ready-money he could. He had, he calculated, only a few years, if so
+long, to live, and the rent-roll would then be the concern of that
+William Midharst whom he had never seen and whom he wished never to see.
+
+He cut down and sold all the timber as far as his right to do so
+extended; and all the trimming and underwood, which had previously been
+allowed to go as perquisites to the men or as gleaning among the poor,
+he took possession of and sold.
+
+He let the right of shooting over his land and the right of fishing in
+his streams and rivers. He sold off all he might of the more modern
+furniture at the Castle.
+
+He sold all his personal plate and jewels, and all the pictures he had
+acquired in his lifetime. When he was young he had made a collection of
+coins; this, too, he converted into cash.
+
+At one time he contemplated letting one wing of the Castle to a rich
+tallow-chandler of the city, and was absolutely in treaty with him, when
+with a shudder of shame he drew back and broke off the negotiations.
+
+When he commenced his scheme of economy and exactions, he had said to
+himself that if he pursued it for one year, and sold off all the things
+he then contemplated, he should be able to leave his baby-girl close on
+forty thousand pounds. At the end of twelve months he found he had put
+more money together than he had anticipated. There was no new cause of
+anxiety with regard to his health, and he made up his mind to continue
+upon the track he had adopted. He might live a year, ay, two years yet;
+if he lasted two years more the leases of Garfield estate would fall in,
+and he should reap a harvest out of renewals. Give him two years more,
+that is, three from the beginning, and he should be able to leave his
+only child close upon one hundred thousand pounds.
+
+At the end of the three years he found he had not come within several
+thousand pounds of his limit; so he resolved to complete the hundred
+thousand before he changed his manner of living or of dealing with the
+property.
+
+When the end of the fourth year was reached he had saved more than the
+hundred thousand pounds. By this time he had become accustomed to the
+loss of all his old associations, had grown to love the new, and, above
+all, had become the slave of avarice, that most inflexible and enduring
+of all the passions. Therefore, he threw all idea of change to the
+winds, and resolved as long as he lived, whether for a week or twenty
+years, to save all the money he could, in order that the descendants of
+his side of the family might be able to hold up their heads hereafter.
+
+At the death of his wife Sir Alexander Midharst closed his London
+banking account and transferred all his business to the Daneford Bank,
+where he had had an account when he came into the property, and where
+his predecessor in the title had also kept his account.
+
+Now in money matters Sir Alexander may have been a good sergeant, or
+even on occasions a trustworthy captain; but he was no general, and he
+knew it. He accordingly resolved to consult with Mr. Grey, father of
+Wat. He explained the whole scheme to the banker, and the purpose for
+which the money was being saved, and said that in the first place he
+wanted to invest the money safely, and in the second of course he wanted
+some interest for it.
+
+The banker suggested that for the present the money should be invested
+in the Three per Cent. Consols, which could be realised readily should
+any more desirable form of investment offer itself, and where it would
+be as safe as in land.
+
+After some consideration Sir Alexander agreed to follow the banker's
+advice, on the condition that Mr. Grey would buy the stock, keep the
+account of it, with the heirloom jewels and plate of Island Castle, but
+that in this case Mr. Grey was to retain the key of the chest containing
+the valuables and transact all the business connected with the Consols,
+such as receiving dividends, crediting the amount, and buying in more
+Consols with the interest of the Consols themselves, and any money Sir
+Alexander should lodge to the Midharst (Consols) account.
+
+"I shall save the money," said the baronet, "and you will take care of
+it."
+
+And so it was arranged. Sir Alexander gave the banker power-of-attorney
+with regard to these Consols and all the money lodged to their account
+for the future; all communications from the Bank of England, of
+solicitors, or anyone else, were to be addressed to Sir Alexander
+Midharst, Daneford Bank, Daneford. These letters were to be opened and
+attended to by Mr. Grey, who was to make a reasonable charge for the
+trouble.
+
+Things went on thus until the elder Mr. Grey's death, when the son
+succeeded to the banking business and a considerable private fortune in
+1856.
+
+Young Mr. Grey, as soon as he came into the business, at once waited
+upon Sir Alexander Midharst, and said he would advise that some new plan
+should be adopted with regard to the baronet's business and accounts.
+
+The baronet, who knew young Grey very well, and liked him exceedingly,
+told him that his father had managed the business excellently, and that
+the son ought to be able to do as well.
+
+Young Grey said the responsibility was very great, the sum being now
+more than two hundred thousand pounds over which Grey had complete
+power.
+
+The baronet took him by the hand and said:
+
+"You are a younger man than your father, and ought not to be more timid.
+Our family have known your bank before now; for my part, I am not able
+to take charge of these things. I prefer your guardianship to that of my
+lawyer's or of anybody else. If your father charged too little for the
+trouble, you may charge more. You know the money is for my little
+daughter: the estates go to a stranger after my death; and this money is
+the fortune of my child, that no man shall say she, a Midharst--the last
+of the direct line, I may say--was left penniless and portionless,
+though she may be left homeless, on the world."
+
+"As you put it now I cannot refuse," answered young Grey.
+
+"Look around you." They were in the gateway leading to the courtyard,
+with their faces turned towards the slope of the hill. "Look around you.
+I have shorn the land close for my child. I work night and day for her,
+as though her daily bread depended on my arms and my brain. I may die
+any time. I have no friend, no relative. I am alone with my child.
+Everyone seems against me. That greedy, rapacious young scoundrel who is
+to follow me is looking with hungry eyes upon Warfinger Island, and
+nightly praying for my death. All my old friends have given me up. I am
+not of them now, because I have striven to make provision for my child.
+They call me a sordid miser, a stain upon the order I share with them.
+Let them rave. I will do what I think right by my child. Let them do as
+they choose. I do not ask their help. I only ask them to let me alone.
+But you I ask to help me; and you will, for you are not ennobled by the
+accident of your birth, but by the generosity of your nature."
+
+If any power of wavering had remained in young Grey, this appeal would
+have overcome it. So the matter was finally settled: the son was to act
+for the baronet precisely as the father had acted before.
+
+During the year 1856 Mr. Grey the younger was a frequent visitor to
+Island Castle. He liked boating; and often in the fine evenings pulled
+down the river Weeslade to the Island, had a consultation with Sir
+Alexander, and then pulled back to Daneford in the sweet fresh twilight.
+
+Often when it was growing dusk, and he was about to start from the
+Island for the city, he pushed off his boat into mid-stream, and rested
+on his oars, looking up at the mouldering Castle standing out clear
+against the darkening sky.
+
+There was something desolate and forlorn about that vast pile,
+inhabited by that ageing man and that young girl.
+
+In front, facing the wider water-passage, it stood high above him, its
+blind gateway looking down upon him, a lonely round tower at the right
+of the archway catching the strange gleams of light reflected from the
+Weeslade as the river glided silently towards the sea.
+
+Winter and summer, when there was sunshine at sunset, the top of that
+tower caught the reflection of the last red streak that flickered on the
+polished surface of the river. This fact affected long ago the
+superstitious feelings of the people. There was a tradition in the
+neighbourhood that in times gone by the wicked mother of a Lord
+Stancroft used abominable witchcraft against her daughter-in-law, her
+son's bride, newly brought home from the kingdom of Spain, a country far
+away, and near the sun, and full of gallant men and fine ladies, whose
+eyes it were a marvellous fine feast to see, but who were--the
+ladies--treacherous and light of love.
+
+The abominable and damnable exercises practised by the wicked dowager
+caused the dark-eyed Lady Stancroft, who had come among strangers out of
+the far-away kingdom of Spain, to wither up and grow old and loathsome
+in a year. So that the young lord turned away from her, and cared
+nothing for her any more. And the poor young lady, gap-toothed and
+wrinkled and foul-looking as she had been made by devilish witchcraft,
+was still young in her mind and her affections, and doated on the lord,
+who would not as much as come nigh the Castle while she was there, but
+took to wine and evil ways.
+
+So at last the poor young wife, who looked eighty, was lost, and could
+be found nowhere. It was long after, and in the time of the next lord,
+that, in the topmost chamber of the round gate-tower, a chamber never
+used save in war-time, they discovered the skeleton of the young wife,
+and words written in a strange tongue, the language of Spain, saying how
+she had stolen up there to die, as she could not win back the love of
+her husband, the young lord. Ever after that the topmost chamber of the
+tower was red at sunset. Some thought this red gleam came from the fire
+where the wicked dowager Lady Stancroft suffered for her great sin;
+others thought this was the reflection from the wreath of glory worn by
+the poor young wife. But all agreed it had to do with the deed of the
+wicked Lady Stancroft; and so they called the tower the Witch's Tower, a
+name it bore until Walter Grey gave it another.
+
+The year 1856 was one full of remarkable events in the life of Mr. Grey.
+In it his father died; he came into a considerable fortune; he
+purchased a house; and grew to be a frequent visitor at Island Castle.
+It often struck him as a peculiar coincidence that in the same year he
+should have become owner of the most remarkable house near Daneford, and
+caretaker to the fortune of the owner of the most remarkable house in
+the whole district.
+
+About that time he read an account of a certain tree said to be in
+sympathy with a certain tower. The idea was fresh to him, and seemed to
+open up a new field of speculation, and he dwelt upon it a good deal.
+
+One evening, as he was rowing from the Castle to his own home, a thought
+flashed into his mind. There was a striking coincidence in the fact of
+his being connected so closely with two such houses. Each was unpopular,
+each was weird, strange; there were queer stories about each, each had a
+tower. The tower of one had an unpleasant history connected with the
+skeleton of that poor Spanish lady; the tower on his house had that
+rusty framework of a tank that looked like a skeleton. "Might not," he
+thought, with a smile at the absurdity, "there be some sympathy between
+these two houses?"
+
+He ceased to row, and looked at the vast pile that brooded over the dark
+waters of the Weeslade. He rested upon his oars.
+
+"It looks, if like anything human, like a witch charming the river. My
+house, too, looks like a witch sitting at bay within her magic circle of
+grove. It wouldn't be bad to name them both The Weird Sisters. They are
+uglier than the crones in 'Macbeth.'"
+
+He pulled a few strokes and mused again, resting on his oars.
+
+"They don't use that tower. I don't use my tower. They found the
+skeleton of the Spanish Lady Stancroft in the top of that tower. There's
+the skeleton of that old tank on the top of mine. Towers and skeletons
+suggest Bombay and the Parsees. By Jove, the Towers of Silence would not
+be a bad name for those two."
+
+Next day he told several people the names he had given the two houses
+and the two towers. All who heard of the new nomenclature smiled, and
+admired the cleverness; and from that time forth in Daneford the two
+houses were known as the Weird Sisters, and the two towers as the Towers
+of Silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+"TO THE ISLAND OR TO----."
+
+
+Early in the year 1866 the Midharst (Consols) account-book with the
+Daneford Bank showed that, after deducting all charges and paying all
+expenses, the principal and interest reached the enormous sum of five
+hundred and fifty thousand pounds, enough to buy such a property as the
+old baronet enjoyed.
+
+By this time Sir Alexander had passed out of middle life into age. He
+was now thin and bent to one side, and very weak, but still firm of
+purpose. He had defeated the doctors by living so long; he had defeated
+"that ungrateful whelp," as he called his heir-presumptive. Of this
+distant cousin he had no knowledge whatever; he declined to listen to
+anything about him. Why he called him ungrateful no one ever knew; he
+called him a whelp because he was young. It was believed that Sir
+Alexander had never in all his life set eyes upon him, or even got an
+account of the young man from one who knew him.
+
+At the time of his wife's death, the baronet made outline enquiries
+through his solicitor as to the age and descent of the boy. In the year
+of Lady Midharst's death, the boy, whose father had been a poor naval
+officer, was aged eight, having been born in 1838. The boy's father had
+died at sea. There could not be the shadow of a doubt that this William
+Midharst was heir-presumptive, and, if he lived, would inherit the
+title and the property, should Sir Alexander die without leaving a son.
+
+Little of the baronet's time was spent with his daughter; often a whole
+week went by, and he did not pass more than an hour of the whole time
+with her. She had a suite of rooms for herself, where she lived with
+Mrs. Grant, an officer's widow, who knew much of the world, and was now
+glad to accept the position of lady's companion to the baronet's only
+child.
+
+Owing to the eccentric life led by Sir Alexander, the facts that he saw
+no company and had no intercourse with any of the county families, Maud
+never went into society, and was wholly dependent on good sympathetic
+little Mrs. Grant for any knowledge she might gain of the great outside
+world. Mrs. Grant, who was of a gay and pleasure-loving disposition,
+had no patience with the whims and meannesses of the old man.
+
+"You know, my dear," she said to Maud, as they sat over their tea in
+Maud's little drawing-room, "it's all very well for Sir Alexander to go
+on saving up money for you, so that you may be a great heiress one of
+these days; but that isn't all. He treats you as if you were a girl of
+twelve yet. Why, my dear, I had been out three years before I was your
+age, and had refused three or four offers. I had, indeed. I know you
+don't want offers, my dear; but I did; for I was only a poor rector's
+daughter, and hadn't even beauty to help me."
+
+"Indeed I am sure you must have been wonderfully pretty. You don't know
+now nice you look now," replied the girl softly.
+
+"Ah, well, my dear, after a few seasons you get to know all about your
+good looks; and then, my dear, after a few seasons more you get to know
+what is of a great deal more consequence, all your defects, or at least
+a good many. I don't suppose any woman ever found out all the weak
+points in her appearance, and that's a mercy. But as I was saying--what
+was I saying?"
+
+"I think," said Maud, with an expression of great innocence, "that you
+were blaming papa for never having given me an opportunity of finding
+out the weak points in my personal appearance."
+
+"Yes, that's it. That is, not quite it. Maud, I won't have you twist
+things I say in that way. You know I am always for your good; indeed I
+am."
+
+"I am quite sure of it, dear Mrs. Grant," returned the girl gratefully,
+and with a trace of moisture in her large soft eyes, as though she
+relented having taken advantage of the other's impetuosity.
+
+The woman took her hand, and stroked it briskly, and said:
+
+"There, there, Maud, don't be silly. Look at this very case in point.
+Why, you turn sentimental over a few words from an uninteresting
+middle-aged woman! Now is that a proper thing in an heiress of twenty?
+Why, my dear, you'd have no account to give of offers refused if once
+_you_ went out. You'd marry the first booby who asked you, rather than
+disoblige him or cause him pain."
+
+"I shall never marry anyone I do not love," said Maud, with an air of
+quiet decision.
+
+"Maud, be silent; you are only a school-girl, with a lot of sound rules
+in your head, and not the least idea of how they are applied, or where.
+I tell you _I_ know something of the world and girls and love and
+marriage. I tell you, you'd marry the first stupid lout who said to
+you: Maud, I love you!"
+
+"Was the first who proposed to you a stupid lout?" asked the girl
+simply.
+
+"No, he wasn't; at least I did think he was then, but I afterwards knew
+that he was the best of them all; and I was often sorry I did not take
+him."
+
+"And did he marry?"
+
+"Yes; he married a fool."
+
+"Who had just come out--her first season?" asked Maud, with her hands
+folded serenely on her lap.
+
+"Yes. But how did you guess?"
+
+"Well, you see, you told me I should marry the first stupid lout who
+asked me, and I thought it likely a girl only just out did marry the
+stupid lout who proposed first to you."
+
+"But, dear, I told you he wasn't a stupid lout; then I thought he was
+stupid, and was often sorry afterwards--of course I mean before I
+married--that I did not accept him."
+
+"This gives me more hope for my own case. You see, the girl who had only
+just come out took the man you thought was a stupid lout, and was right
+in taking him."
+
+Maud looked up and smiled.
+
+For a moment Mrs. Grant tapped her foot impatiently on the carpet;
+looked hither and thither, rose a little hastily, and cried: "Well,
+Maud, if you don't think I have a very serious interest in what I say, I
+will say----" She paused, and looked at the sweet, half-frightened face
+of the girl. All at once her manner underwent a change. She drew near
+the girl, and putting her arm round her waist, "I will say," she
+continued, "that whoever gets you cannot help loving you. Men are often
+bad, Maud darling; but I don't think there is one such a villain and a
+fool as to be unkind to you."
+
+As April of 1866 grew into May, the asthmatic affection from which the
+old baronet suffered abated; but the valvular defect of heart increased.
+He had fainted three or four times in the month of April, and in May his
+debility became so great that he was unable to leave his bed. Other
+symptoms now showed themselves, and complicated the case, and so
+embarrassed the action of the heart that the doctors declared he must
+expect a speedy termination. Towards the end of May the doctors declared
+he would never rise from his bed.
+
+The old man, whose spirit was in arms against these doctors, would not
+believe them. Twenty years ago they had told him the same thing.
+
+They said: No, the circumstances were different. They had then said he
+_might_ go at any moment; things were worse than that now. There was no
+longer any chance of recovery, and the dread was things would grow
+worse.
+
+The doctors found it necessary to be almost brutally candid with him,
+for they had learned he had not yet made his will.
+
+Insecure as was the tenure upon which he had for the past twenty years
+held his life, he had gone on from day to day deferring the arrangement
+of his affairs on the grounds that he was too busy, and that if he made
+his will now he should have to add codicils according as his savings
+increased. His lawyer assured him no such thing was necessary, because,
+after all bequests had been mentioned, he could leave his daughter
+residuary legatee absolutely or with any provisions and restrictions he
+liked to impose.
+
+As the lawyer had failed in the old time the doctors failed now. But
+they were resolved to leave no stone unturned in their attempt to get
+him to settle his affairs. The dying man's daughter was too young, and
+too timid, and too closely interested in the execution of the document
+to think of asking her aid; so they resolved to summon Mrs. Grant, and
+request her to press the matter home to the mind of the invalid.
+
+In the great banqueting-room the three physicians in attendance sat when
+it was resolved to invoke Mrs. Grant.
+
+The vast apartment had been allowed to fall almost into ruins. It was
+the finest room in the house, and few houses in either county that
+claimed the banks of the Weeslade at this point could boast so noble a
+chamber.
+
+But twenty years of neglect had defiled and defaced the room. The
+curtains were faded and worn, the hair grinned through the torn covers
+of the fine old oak chairs. Damp had attacked the moulding of the
+picture frames, and here and there the moulding had fallen off, leaving
+the bones of the discoloured frames exposed to view. The ceiling, formed
+of oak cross-beams, with flowers and fruit pieces in the panels, had
+felt the corroding touch of wilful Time. Here and there the canvas
+bulged off the panel, and hung in loose flabby blisters from the roof.
+The fine oak floor had grown dull and woolly for want of use and care.
+Sir Alexander kept no servants to look after the apartments he did not
+make use of, and refused to allow even beeswax for the floors.
+
+The dog-irons, which had stood watch over the home-fire of generations
+of his name and blood, were rusted. The tapestries hanging across the
+doors, here and there torn from their hooks, hung in neglected disorder
+from the rods. The hospitable greeting "Welcome," in blue enamel in the
+wreath of carved vine-leaves round the top of the huge sideboard, had
+lost some of its letters. The glasses of the lamps held by the bronze
+Nubian slaves at the doors were reduced to half their number. The
+leather thongs lacing the suits of armour that held the groups of
+candles at either end of the sideboard had rotted and parted, and the
+helmets and back and breast plates gaped at the sutures.
+
+The chamber smelt like a vault just opened, and, although the weather
+was bright and fine, all the furniture, the walls, the floor, felt damp
+and slimy.
+
+As soon as the doctors had finished luncheon, Mrs. Grant was sent for.
+She arrived in a state of great agitation; she feared that Sir Alexander
+was in the last extremity.
+
+Dr. Hardy, the senior physician, a pale, soft-voiced, self-contained man
+of few words, was the spokesman. He said:
+
+"You will be glad to hear, and you will be kind enough to inform Miss
+Midharst, that there is no cause for any alarm on account of the present
+condition of Sir Alexander."
+
+Mrs. Grant looked infinitely relieved. Strange and unsympathetic a
+father as the invalid had been, she did not like the thought of having
+to tell anything dreadful about him to Maud.
+
+"I am glad to hear it. Shall I go at once and tell Miss Midharst the
+good news?"
+
+Dr. Hardy held up his hand with a gesture which said quite plainly: "If
+you will be so kind as to confine your attention to me, you may rest
+assured of knowing explicitly what I wish to have done in this matter."
+Having allowed the gesture a little while to sink into the mind of Mrs.
+Grant, he went on with his lips:
+
+"_But_," he said, with strong emphasis on the conjunction, to show Mrs.
+Grant that she had interrupted him, and that he regarded the
+interruption as frivolous, "the case has now arrived at that state of
+progress when almost at any time the patient's head may be attacked.
+Should the head be attacked, Sir Alexander will lose the possession of
+those mental gifts and powers which he now possesses undiminished and
+unimpaired."
+
+"Poor child!" cried the widow, thinking of the guileless daughter of the
+stricken man.
+
+"_And_," continued Dr. Hardy, with the same resolute emphasis on the
+conjunction, "we consider that he should be at once induced to make his
+will, and we have resolved to request you will use your influence with
+him. We have tried and failed. May we count on you?"
+
+Mrs. Grant looked up with a half-amused, half-astonished air. As soon as
+she had somewhat recovered from her surprise, she said very earnestly:
+
+"There is nothing in this world I would not try to do for Miss Midharst;
+but there is no more chance of Sir Alexander listening to me on any
+business matter than of his asking advice of the wind. He believes women
+can and ought to know nothing about business. It would only vex him if I
+spoke of anything of the kind to him."
+
+The poor little woman looked quite distressed and helpless.
+
+The three men glanced from one to the other in despair. In a few seconds
+Dr. Hardy spoke again to the little widow.
+
+"Is there no friend of the patient's whom you could suggest as likely
+to have influence on him? Do you think his lawyer would have weight? We
+know how he has secluded himself from the world and his own class, and
+that we are not to look among those who would naturally be his friends
+for the assistance we now want. Do you think his lawyer would be likely
+to succeed with him in this?"
+
+"I am greatly afraid not. I have heard that--although he has a high
+opinion of Mr. Shaw, his lawyer--he would never in any way accept advice
+in his affairs beyond legal matters. I understand Sir Alexander has no
+personal liking for Mr. Shaw. And he won't speak to any clergyman."
+
+Again the three men looked at one another in doubt and difficulty. Again
+Dr. Hardy spoke:
+
+"This is a matter of the utmost importance to those who come after Sir
+Alexander, and we are most anxious it should be settled, and at once. If
+we thought it was a disinclination to make a will, or a determination
+not to make one, that kept him back, we should feel no responsibility in
+the matter. But he refuses to settle his worldly affairs solely upon the
+ground that we are deceived as to his condition of health. Now we are
+confident we are right. He will never rise from his bed again. Already
+dropsy has made its appearance; at any moment that may, directly or
+indirectly, affect the head; in his case it is almost sure to do so at
+some time."
+
+Dr. Hardy paused a moment; then proceeded with more decision than
+heretofore:
+
+"Perhaps you, Mrs. Grant, would be kind enough to ask Miss Midharst if
+she could give you the name of anyone on whose advice Sir Alexander
+would be likely to rely in an important business affair? You need not
+distress Miss Midharst with anything more explicit."
+
+Mrs. Grant rose with prompt willingness, and hurried away in the
+sustaining hope that Maud might be able to solve the difficulty.
+
+When Mrs. Grant had gone, the three men drew near one of the tall narrow
+windows that looked west along the Island and commanded the beautiful
+valley of the broad river, and the broad, blue, bright Weeslade itself.
+
+An everlasting Sabbath filled that luxuriant valley with a peace which
+seemed too fine for earth. Because of the height on which the Castle
+stood, and its distance from the nearest shore beyond the western end of
+the Island, all detail was subdued and lost; nothing was left to trouble
+the eye or excite enquiry. The eye could see nothing but broad green
+pasturages and vast expanses of emerald grainshoots reaching down to the
+river's brink, and sloping softly inward towards the quiet hills that
+stood up apart, clad in purple and blue wood, and crowned with violet
+uplands lying secure against the azure sky.
+
+The tide was full; the winds were still; from the trees around through
+the open window came the fragrant spices of the may. Above, the lark
+took up where all human voices end the praises of the spring. The glory
+of inextinguishable youth was in his song, the wild rapture of a
+regenerated soul. Below, the sad-throated thrush piped of the mellow
+melancholy of a ripe old world that had borne a thousand generations of
+men, who had moved all their days through the same narrow and
+unsatisfying avenues of desire and passion and final failure to the
+richly padded grave. The thrush sang to the earth of those who had died;
+the lark sang to the skies of those who shall live for ever.
+
+Around the three men as they stood by the open window was the mouldering
+chamber of an ancient house. On one side lay the decayed old man of a
+noble race. On the other side the maiden daughter of that man, who had
+smothered up his affectionate visitings under piles of gold, scraped
+together for her, for the pride of his lineage.
+
+Beyond there in the city was ruin. A great bank which had a branch in
+Daneford had stopped payment to-day. The three men by the window were
+talking of that while they awaited the return of the woman.
+
+"Dreadful! I am told that the poor Mainwarings are completely ruined by
+it."
+
+"Completely. Fancy old John Musgrave put four thousand pounds into it on
+deposit this day week. It will kill him. He had sold out Turks, and was
+going to buy United States."
+
+"Poor old fellow! I do pity him."
+
+"There was a rumour of one of the local banks being in a bad way. Did
+either of you hear it?"
+
+"Not the Daneford?"
+
+"No; Grey is safe. Bless me, his father left him a couple of hundred
+thousand clear of the business, and he's been making money ever since."
+
+"Is it the Weeslade Valley?"
+
+"I don't like to say. It is so dangerous to speak. But there _is_ a
+rumour of a local bank, and it's _not Grey's_."
+
+"No. I should think Grey could stand anything. They say it was always
+Grey's system to keep the money near home. It's a commercial and
+customers' bank, and not a gad-about among foreign speculations and
+bubble manufacturers."
+
+At that moment Mrs. Grant re-entered the room.
+
+The three men turned round and went to her.
+
+"I have seen Miss Midharst, and she says she thinks the person most
+likely to have influence with Sir Alexander is Mr. Grey the banker."
+
+"A most excellent man," said Dr. Hardy, turning to the other two. "What
+do you think?"
+
+"Capital!"
+
+"No one could be better."
+
+Dr. Hardy spoke to Mrs. Grant for the last time on that occasion. "Send
+a note by express to Mr. Grey, requesting him to come immediately.
+Explain to him what our views are, and ask him to do his best to induce
+Sir Alexander to make his will."
+
+In less than an hour and a half Mr. Grey received Mrs. Grant's letter.
+It merely said that his presence was urgently desired at the Castle at
+once, and that by hurrying he would greatly oblige Sarah Grant.
+
+He was in his private room at the Bank when he read the letter. He
+opened his private black bag. Bank proprietors do not always carry
+firearms, in fact rarely, almost never. Clerks in charge of money often
+do. Grey always carried a revolver--now.
+
+"He can't have heard of his Consols? In that case he would have written
+himself or come. What can this be?--so sudden, so urgent, and from Mrs.
+Grant! Perhaps the failure of the St. George's has frightened him. If he
+asks me to give up the money now! Ah, I can't face that! No, no! This
+first," and he took a revolver out of his bag.
+
+Again he thought awhile, and ended with a question: "Shall I go to the
+Island or to----?" He poised the revolver.
+
+As he did so there was a knock at the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES.
+
+
+"Come in," said the banker mechanically, and his mother entered.
+
+With a start Mr. Grey's mother cried out "Henry!" then crossed the room
+hastily, and, putting her hand on his arm, looked up into his face with
+alarm.
+
+With an amused smile he glanced down at her, and said simply, "Mother?"
+in a tone of badinage, as if paying her off in her own coin by replying
+to her with a single word.
+
+"What was that you held in your hand and dropped into the bag as I came
+in?" she asked with reproachful earnestness, looking up fixedly into
+his eyes, as though she would pierce to his innermost thoughts.
+
+He put his hand on her shoulder playfully, and smoothed one of the black
+silk strings of her black bonnet with his thumb and finger, returning
+her steady gaze with a steady eye and a free smile. "That, mother," he
+answered, "is the countersign for thieves."
+
+"The countersign for thieves! What do you mean, Henry; you ought not to
+bandy words with your mother."
+
+"Indeed, I am not playing with words. I am only describing the weapon
+and its use as briefly as possible. I was looking at my revolver, for I
+was just about to set out on a journey. You see, if a thief comes up to
+a man armed with a revolver, and demands the man's purse, the man
+produces that revolver, and the thief says, "Pass on, friend." If a
+thief who has stolen money meets the man he stole it from, or a
+policeman, and can pull out a revolver, then he can say to the man or
+the policeman, "Let me pass, or I will shoot you down;" or suppose the
+thief finds the odds are against him, he can put the barrel to his own
+temple, and pass the foe in spite of numbers. Now, mother, don't you
+think my explanation is very clever and very exhaustive?"
+
+He placed his two hands on the widow's shoulders, and pushed her back
+arm's length, dropped his head roguishly over his shoulder, and laughed
+a soft laugh, which seemed to invite her to enjoy his cleverness and be
+amused at the humour of the explanation.
+
+Mrs. Grey did not smile. For a moment her face grew puckered and
+perplexed. In her eyes shone the light of a mental conflict between
+anger and tears. The conflict ended in a few moments. She threw herself
+into a chair and covered her face with her hands. She neither stormed
+nor wept.
+
+He hastened to her with compunctious solicitude. He knelt on one knee by
+her side, and put his powerful arm round her emaciated shoulders, and
+with the hand of his other arm gently drew down her hands from her face.
+
+"Mother! mother!" he pleaded, in a tone of passionate tenderness. "I did
+not mean to annoy or trouble you. I was only a little wilfully following
+out a fancy, a conceit. It was a foolish vanity that made me seem to
+play with your questions. You know, my own mother, I would not give you
+any pain I could help, for all the world. Forgive me, and let us drop
+the nonsense. Forgive me, and let us speak of something else."
+
+All the earnestness of this man's nature went into these words, and
+there was in them and the manner attending them a fervid pathos which
+stirred the heart of the woman so deeply it almost killed her to keep
+from crying out, and throwing her arms round her son, and weeping on his
+breast. But by a superhuman effort, an effort no created being could
+make but a mother for the salvation of a child, she held her passionate
+love within her own heart; for, according to her theory, so must all
+women who wish to rule their children; and she wanted to rule, not for
+the love of power, but for the love of love and the preservation of her
+son.
+
+She gave one quick glance at him out of those sharp eyes, and then
+throwing down the eyes on the ground, said in a constrained voice:
+
+"The St. George's Banking Company has failed. There is a run on the
+Daneford. You are unable to meet that run, and you were thinking of
+getting away from the run and the closing of the doors with----that."
+She shuddered, raised her hand, and pointed to the black bag into which
+he had dropped the revolver.
+
+"No! no! no! mother!" he cried imploringly. "I pledge you my word--if
+you like I will prove to you--that we are able to meet any run that may
+come upon us in consequence of this failure. If you like I will call in
+Aldridge to corroborate my words."
+
+"Corroborate your word, Henry!" she cried scornfully. "Do you think I
+could doubt my son's word, and believe the word of any other man alive!
+Never while I live, I hope, shall you fall so pitifully low as to need
+another man's word to help your word to my belief." She laid hold of the
+imputed question of her son's word as a point on which to rally her
+disordered feelings and overcome the tendency she felt to break down.
+
+"Well, mother, rest assured this run threatens us with no danger
+whatever. On the contrary, as we are able to meet it without the least
+inconvenience, the position of the Bank ought to be very materially
+improved when all becomes quiet again." He rose and left her as he
+spoke, and locked the two doors of the room, observing: "We don't want
+anyone to come in and interrupt us now."
+
+By the time he returned to his seat she had recovered her composure.
+"Then what do you mean by 'setting out on a journey?' Those words helped
+me into the fear."
+
+As a reply to that question, he pushed the note he had just received
+from Mrs. Grant across the table to her, and said: "Read that, and you
+will understand."
+
+She adjusted her tortoiseshell spectacles and read the note
+deliberately. When she had finished she looked up quickly.
+
+He was standing at the window looking out. His back was towards her, and
+she could not see his face. It was wrinkled and drawn up like a yellow
+leaf.
+
+"Do you know what you are wanted for at the Castle?" she asked briskly.
+
+"No."
+
+"What has happened to your voice?" she asked, in a tone of anxiety and
+surprise. He had spoken as though his windpipe was almost closed in a
+gripe.
+
+"Nothing; or at least something has gone against my--breath. What am I
+wanted for at the Castle?" Still he spoke as if half suffocated. Still
+he kept his face to the window. Still his face was wrinkled and yellow
+and withered up.
+
+"I met Dr. Hardy as I came in. He had just driven straight back from the
+Castle. There has been a consultation of doctors to-day, and they have
+little or no hope of Sir Alexander getting better. He has not yet made
+his will, and they all agreed you were the only person likely to have
+any influence with him. They could get him to do nothing about it."
+
+Grey's face cleared as if by magic. He turned round suddenly, threw up
+both his hands, and burst into a loud and continuous shout of laughter.
+
+His mother started to her feet, and looked at him aghast. "Henry!" she
+cried, in great alarm; "Henry, what is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing, mother, nothing," he said between his laughter; "I thought it
+was something serious."
+
+She regarded him in a stupor of amazement for a few seconds. "You
+thought it was something serious," she whispered, as if she questioned
+her hearing.
+
+"Yes, something very serious."
+
+"But it is very serious. He is in danger of death, and has not yet made
+his will. Surely that, Henry, is no subject for laughter."
+
+He was composed now. His face was radiant, and he smiled apologetically
+as he said: "You must really forgive me, dear mother. The fact is, for
+the past quarter of an hour I have been on such a stretch in the
+interview between us that to hear of anything else but my own affairs
+relieved me, and I could not help laughing. I did not, indeed, laugh at
+the thought of poor Sir Alexander being ill; I pity him with all my
+heart. But what you said touched some spring of my mind, and I could no
+more have forborne to laugh than to breathe for an hour. Well, I think I
+had better start for the Island at once. You now feel all right about
+the Bank? You feel quite comfortable about it, mother, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, but do not be so odd, Henry; you frighten me to death with your
+strange ways of late."
+
+"I have a good deal of anxiety, and perhaps am too abrupt. More of my
+abruptness: I can't wait another moment. Good-bye, mother."
+
+And in a few seconds he had gone.
+
+When she found herself alone, she sat down to recover and to reflect.
+"Every day," she thought, "he becomes less like his old self, and more
+of a riddle."
+
+Her eyes caught something on the table.
+
+"When I came in he told me he was examining that dreadful thing because
+he was going on a journey, and now he's gone off and left it behind him
+in the bag on that table. Can it be he is losing his reason?"
+
+When Mr. Grey found himself outside the Bank-door he hailed the nearest
+fly, jumped in, and cried cheerily to the driver:
+
+"Island Ferry, and I lay you a half-crown to a whip-lash you don't do it
+under half an hour. Take the time and drive on."
+
+With a chuckle of grave satisfaction, the banker threw himself back in
+the fly, and as they drove rapidly through the town he waved his hand or
+doffed his hat at every twenty yards. There was cordiality in every look
+that greeted him, and many who saw him go by turned and gazed with
+admiration and envy after the fine rich jovial banker.
+
+No wonder he looked pleased. An hour ago, less than an hour ago, he had,
+upon reading that note, almost come to the conclusion Sir Alexander
+Midharst had discovered he, Grey, had "borrowed" every penny of the
+immense sum confided to his charge by the baronet. Such a discovery
+would have been to him simply and literally fatal.
+
+Early in this year, when he disclosed the secret of the Bank to his
+mother, he and it were bankrupt, and all the depositors' money was gone.
+Pressure after pressure had come upon him after that, and all such
+demands had been met by "borrowing" the baronet's savings without the
+baronet's consent.
+
+Three months ago he was a bankrupt, now he was a bankrupt and a thief.
+He had no more right to sell those Consols than to put his hand into any
+customer's pocket and take his purse. He had glided into the thing
+gradually, beginning by borrowing twenty thousand pounds, which he
+caused to be lodged to his own credit at his London agents in the name
+of Barrington, Ware, and Duncan, an imaginary firm of Boston merchants,
+who remitted the money through their London agent on account of
+supposititious dealings in hides on the western coast of the United
+States.
+
+The twenty thousand had only stopped the gap for a few days. Then
+heavier and heavier bills came to maturity, and before there was any
+general uneasiness in the commercial world, one hundred thousand pounds
+of the baronet's savings had been "borrowed."
+
+Then came ugly rumours of certain banking establishments; and although
+the Daneford Bank was always spoken of with the highest esteem in the
+district, the city, and in such quarters of London as it was known, the
+accommodation market had got very much straitened, and the Daneford
+Bank's London agents not only hinted they did not care to make any
+additional advances, but sounded Grey as to the possibility of their
+being able to get a little advance from him. Could he let them have
+fifty thousand for six weeks on Argentines they did not want to sell?
+
+Here was a chance of showing the stability of his own concern and
+helping a friendly firm which might be of incalculable use to him
+another time. Now that he had dipped into the Midharst fund, why not go
+deeper? He could make something out of this transaction; and it was for
+the good of Sir Alexander as well as himself that he should try to pull
+back all the money he could, and keep the name of the Bank at the very
+highest level. He lent the money.
+
+Then came other pressures because of those old speculations, a quarter
+of million at least; and last, more uneasy rumours in the financial
+world, and the possibility of a run on the Bank. At all risks the Bank
+must stand; for on its stability depended not only the life of Henry
+Walter Grey, but all chance of winning back any portion of the baronet's
+money.
+
+When the moment of this decision arrived Grey put down his last stake;
+sold the last hundred thousand of Sir Alexander's half a million
+Consols, and bought the revolver. As he put the matter to himself in his
+figurative way, the situation now was a race between gold and lead.
+Would the gold, in the form of profits and deposits, come back to him in
+such quantities as to prevent the necessity for the outgoing of the
+lead?
+
+It was on Wednesday, the 30th of May, 1866, he got that note from Mrs.
+Grant. He had just been calculating his chances of falling in for some
+of the business of the St. George's Bank. He had even put down a few
+figures to please and flatter his sight. It might be that if he could
+hold on and get--say, half the business of the Daneford branch of the
+St. George's Bank, the chance of the gold overtaking the lead would be
+enormously increased. All this was of course contingent upon Sir
+Alexander remaining in ignorance of the "borrowing." If that came to his
+ears in any way, nothing could prevent the lead overtaking the gold.
+
+That note almost precipitated the crisis. In the usual way when he was
+wanted at the Castle Sir Alexander wrote a line himself, or called and
+asked the banker down for the evening. This note did not come from Sir
+Alexander, but from Miss Midharst's companion. At the moment when his
+mother entered a straw might have turned his resolution in favour of
+giving the lead a walk-over. But with the news brought by his mother all
+was changed, and the gold had taken a good lead.
+
+As he sat back in the fly and reviewed his position he could hardly
+restrain his exultation within the bounds of mere facial joy. He would
+have liked to get out and run through the streets, and shout.
+
+A few minutes ago he held all black cards to a red trump. Now the whole
+pack seemed to have been put before him face up, with liberty to select
+his own hand and turn a trump of his own choosing.
+
+No run could injure the Daneford Bank; other banks might fail, but his
+was secure for the time; and by the aid of its good substantial name the
+Daneford would get strong while others were crumbling, and the future
+success of the Bank would be assured beyond the reach of his highest
+hope of years ago.
+
+Only two possible chances were against him, and if neither of these
+chances turned up within twelve months he might laugh at fate.
+
+The former was that in the will there should be introduced anything
+adverse to him. The latter was that the old man should die in less than
+twelve months, and leave it incumbent on the banker to render an account
+and deliver up the money before the end of twelve months.
+
+Grey had fully made up his mind as to the necessity for a will. Without
+a will there would in all likelihood be Chancery proceedings; and while
+no one in Daneford would dream of suspecting Grey, or ask details of the
+account, much less verification of the items, the Chancery folk will go
+through the whole affair as a matter of routine, and not as a matter of
+precaution, or because of any suspicion.
+
+Let there be a will, by all means.
+
+It was fine to drive through the bright sunlight of that glorious May
+weather, and feel that the gold was overtaking the lead. It was better
+than recovering from a long illness; it was coming back, to life and
+green fields and the voices of birds and the pressure of hands we love,
+out of the dark, damp, noisome tomb.
+
+When Mr. Grey arrived at Island Ferry he alighted, told the driver of
+the fly to wait for him, and took the boat to the Island.
+
+As soon as he arrived at the Castle he was shown into the dreary
+deserted banquet-room.
+
+Here he found irrepressible little Mrs. Grant waiting for him. After
+some time he gathered from her how matters stood, and sent up his name
+to the sick man.
+
+Sir Alexander would see Mr. Grey.
+
+When the banker reached the room where the baronet lay, he was greatly
+shocked at the change which had taken place in the latter since the last
+time they had met, although that was only a few days ago.
+
+There had always been a bright bloom, the bloom of old age heightened
+and deepened by the malady which afflicted him chronically, on the old
+man's face. Now the cheeks were puffed and purple, and the eyes, once so
+keen and cold, were dull and restless and impatient.
+
+The long thin sinewy hands lay outside the counterpane, and the voice of
+the sufferer when he spoke was tremulous, querulous, making a painful
+contrast to the firm, clear, thin, biting speech of other days.
+
+After the usual greetings and Grey's expression of sorrow for his
+indisposition, the old man spoke quickly, and in an unsteady voice.
+
+"These doctors have been worrying me to-day, Grey, and I am very glad
+you have come. I want to talk to you. Pull that curtain a little across
+the window; I hate the sunlight. Thank you, Grey. Sit down now, where I
+can see you. It's a comfort to look at a man like you after those false
+prophets and hoarse ravens. The doctors have been with me, Grey; and
+they tell me I should make my will. Now I'm not talking to you as a
+medical man, but as a man of business. What do you say?"
+
+"Have you spoken to Mr. Shaw about the matter?" asked the banker softly.
+
+"No; I have not spoken to Shaw about it. I hate lawyers," cried the old
+man pettishly.
+
+"If I hated lawyers," returned Grey, with a shy smile, "I should not be
+without a will for four-and-twenty hours."
+
+"Why?" demanded the old man, with a contraction of the brows and a
+glance of suspicion directed at an imaginary group of lawyers.
+
+"You know, Sir Alexander, lawyers have a special prayer, asking for the
+management of intestate estates." He raised his eyebrows and smiled
+archly at the prostrate man.
+
+"I don't understand you, Grey. These doctors, with their fears and their
+jargon, have confused me. What do you mean?"
+
+For a moment the banker looked at the baronet uneasily. Could it be that
+already his mind was becoming clouded or torpid? After a moment's
+observation and thought, Grey decided that the old man was only dazed
+and tired.
+
+"What I mean, Sir Alexander, is, that in cases where there is no will,
+the law-costs often consume the whole estate, and _always_ eat up
+enormously more money than where there is a sound will."
+
+The old man reflected awhile.
+
+"Have you made your own will?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly. I could not rest if I thought what little fortune I may have
+should, instead of going to my wife, be scattered about in this and that
+court, in this and that litigation. As I go home the ferry-boat may
+overturn and I may be drowned, the horse may run away and I may be
+killed. Making a will has with me no connection with good or bad health.
+It is a business thing which ought, on the principle of economy, to be
+done in time. In nothing more than in making a will is it true that a
+stitch in time saves nine?"
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+"Grey!"
+
+"Yes, Sir Alexander."
+
+"You helped me to put this fortune together for my daughter."
+
+A bow of deprecation.
+
+"You have been ten years now taking care of it for her."
+
+"Yes, Sir Alexander." What was coming now? Could all this be a _ruse_?
+Was this serene interview to end in a storm of intolerable ruin? Had
+this old man been leading up with deceiving equanimity to some
+prodigious burst, some unendurable tempest of reproach?
+
+"Will you go still farther?"
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Will you act as one of the executors, the chief--no, as the sole, as
+sole trustee and guardian?"
+
+"What! Sir Alexander, Sir Alexander, are you--are you trifling with me?
+If you are, give it up. I cannot, I will not, be trifled with." His
+face shrivelled up, and he covered it in his hands. For that brief space
+he thought all had been discovered.
+
+"What I say I mean. Why should I trifle with you? If I am to die or be
+killed, let me die with the knowledge that the fortune of my child will
+be as safe when I am dead as it is now. Will you do this, Grey, for me?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"Then you may tell Shaw to come. Go to him at once. I wish to make my
+will."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT.
+
+
+Mr. Grey's drive to Castle Ferry had been an excursion to meet victory;
+his return to Daneford was a triumphant progress.
+
+Now it seemed to him nothing short of a conspiracy between fate and
+accident could wreck him. The two chances which had threatened him with
+ruin had melted into thin air. Nothing adverse to him would be in the
+will, and not only that, but from the day of Sir Alexander's death until
+the coming of age of Miss Midharst he would have absolute control of
+affairs, and every chance of making good the sum he had abstracted. The
+gold was going to beat the lead at a walk.
+
+The financial world was now in a state of deplorable despondency, but
+that condition of things could not last for ever. There was of course no
+prospect of his making a tenth part of the half a million profit during
+the twelve months; but the St. George's Bank was gone, and deposits
+would come flowing in, and having obliged his London agents in their
+need, they could not refuse him anything in reason by-and-by. After
+riding out the bad times his credit would be so firmly established that
+he could get money on the best terms to build up the horrible gap he had
+made. He could borrow to replace what he had stolen.
+
+"I shall win now, and I shall win easily," he thought, as he drove
+through the bright fresh air towards Daneford; "and by the time there is
+another dissolution, who can tell but I may take one of the seats for
+the city, if it is offered to me."
+
+He went straight to Mr. Shaw, and told that gentleman how Sir Alexander
+Midharst desired to see him with a view to making his will, and how the
+client, although in no immediate danger of death, was nevertheless in a
+state of health which made it highly desirable his worldly affairs
+should be put in order as quickly as possible.
+
+Mr. Shaw visited the Castle that evening, wrote from the baronet's
+dictation, and on Monday, the 4th of June, 1866, the will was signed by
+Sir Alexander in the presence of two competent witnesses, who, in the
+presence of the testator and of one another, affixed their signatures.
+
+A few days afterwards Mr. Gray met the lawyer.
+
+"Well," said the banker, with one of his easiest smiles, "did you do
+what was required at the Castle?"
+
+"Yes," answered the white-haired solicitor, who was tremulous, and had a
+disconcerting way of shutting his eyes and consulting imaginary internal
+Acts of Parliament when he spoke. He was not by nature communicative,
+and he held in rigid regard all professional etiquette; but Mr. Henry
+Walter Grey was a very exceptional man, and, moreover, the testator had
+told him Mr. Grey had consented to act as guardian and trustee;
+therefore he did not feel he committed any impropriety in adding: "Sir
+Alexander appears to share public feeling in your favour, and to place
+unlimited confidence in our most careful banker."
+
+"You are very kind," returned Mr. Grey, with his most cordial smile. "As
+you know, our establishment has been a long time connected with the
+Castle, and when Sir Alexander asked me to act, it would look
+ungracious in me to refuse."
+
+"It's a heavy responsibility."
+
+"Oh, as far as the responsibility goes----" He did not finish the
+sentence in words, but with a shrug of his shoulders, as much as to say:
+"We bankers are accustomed to grave responsibilities." Then the two
+parted.
+
+From this conversation Grey not only gathered that the will had been
+made, but also that under it he had been appointed executor and trustee
+to the document and the estate, and guardian to the heiress.
+
+What more could he require to put his mind at rest?
+
+And yet as the days went on he was far from easy. Many things caused him
+trouble and made him anxious. The gloom over the financial world
+deepened instead of lifting. The ordinary depositors grew shyer and
+shyer, as crash followed crash, and house followed house, in the awful
+ruin of the time.
+
+No one breathed a word against the Daneford Bank; all who spoke of it
+acknowledged its position unassailable; still its business showed no
+vast increase, no such increase as would help Grey out of the whirlpool
+into which he had been drawn, although the Bank's borrowing power had
+been secured.
+
+From bad, things went to worse. As the year wore on, some of his best
+customers began to feel the pressure of the times. Instead of finding
+funds flowing into the Bank in unexampled abundance, money ran out.
+
+Old respectable firms now came to him and asked to be helped over the
+disastrous period. They brought this security and that, and begged for
+advances. If the name and fame of the Bank were to be magnified, this
+was the time to do it. He had still funds enough to make the Bank proof
+against contingency; over and above this he had a little margin, not
+much, but most useful.
+
+About the middle of June the Weeslade Steamship Company quarrelled with
+their bankers, the Weeslade Valley Bank. The Steamship Company wanted an
+advance of five thousand pounds on the river steamboat _Rodwell_, which
+carried passengers between Daneford and Seacliff. The Weeslade Valley
+Bank refused. The Steamship Company withdrew their account from the
+Valley Bank, and offered their business to the Daneford Bank. The
+account was opened in the Daneford, and the advance was made by mortgage
+on the _Rodwell_, the Steamship Company paying interest on the advance,
+and depositing with the mortgage a policy of insurance against total
+loss by water or weather.
+
+Towards the end of June the Daneford Bank's London agent failed, by
+which the Bank lost a clear twenty thousand pounds, besides losses by
+delay in getting a dividend. This was very serious. It caused a run on
+the Daneford Bank. In three days thirty thousand pounds were withdrawn
+in excess of average draughts.
+
+On the morning of the third day the Daneford Bank issued a circular
+which took the town by storm. The circular was brief, and ran as
+follows:
+
+     "Thursday, 28th June, 1866.
+
+     "THE DANEFORD BANK.
+
+     "Take notice, owing to the fact that a run has begun on the
+     Daneford Bank, the offices of that Bank will be opened every
+     morning at eight instead of nine, and will be closed at seven
+     instead of four p.m., until this run has ceased.
+
+     "HENRY WALTER GREY."
+
+This circular was town talk the next day. The admirers of Wat were more
+enthusiastic than ever in their praises of his boldness and wisdom. This
+circular killed the panic, and on Saturday of the same week the drawings
+had shrunk back to an average. Yet for another week the Bank was kept
+open from eight in the morning till seven in the evening.
+
+On Monday, the 9th of July, a second circular was issued from the Bank,
+saying that as the run had ceased for a week the office hours for the
+future would be as of old, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
+
+But, although the run had ceased, upwards of thirty thousand pounds had
+been withdrawn, and only five thousand found its way back again, and
+that was decidedly bad. The Bank was not in the least jeopardy. Sir
+Alexander Midharst's half a million had saved it; but the baronet's
+money was not only not returning, but the balance of it in hand began
+to run low.
+
+Notwithstanding all this business pressure and the perilous position in
+which Grey stood, no one could detect in his face or manner a clue to
+the anxiety which consumed him. Still he was the same joyous companion,
+the same jovial host, the same considerate employer, the same liberal
+patron.
+
+To his mother he displayed the best view of his position. He showed her
+how the steamship business had fallen in to him because he was in funds
+and could give accommodation beyond the power of his local rival. He
+admitted the loss in London, but pointed out how the loss and the run,
+taken together, must end in great advantage to his Bank.
+
+She heard not only his story, but, from all who spoke to her on the
+subject, congratulations upon the Bank's position and his great
+prudence and good sense. He told her the money from Boston had not only
+saved him, but had so improved his resources that the Bank was now in
+fully as good a position as at any time during his father's lifetime.
+
+Hard as the business affairs of Mr. Grey pressed upon him, and difficult
+as he felt the burden, they were not all the troubles he had to endure.
+
+In order to prevent bankruptcy he had committed fraud. Up to this time
+he had carried on that fraud without exciting a hint of suspicion. The
+man whose money he had appropriated to his own use not only felt no
+misgivings as to the safety of his vast hoard, but had recently lavished
+upon him, Grey, the last proofs of implicit confidence when placing
+practically all that fortune and the care of the heiress in his hands.
+
+But, as well as the pressure of his business and the weight of his
+crime, he had other difficulties to endure. He still entertained his
+friends with his usual hospitality and good grace, but the condition of
+the inner circle of his domestic life grew daily harder and harder to
+bear.
+
+The eccentricity of Mrs. Grey developed with time, and, still more
+unfortunately, the terrible infirmity to which she had given way
+increased upon her with the years.
+
+She was childless; she was alone all day in that great strange house;
+few people called upon her, and she rarely went out. Her husband was
+always kind in manner towards her, and she could ask for nothing he
+would not get her. But she knew he and she were not one, that they never
+had been one, that they never could be one.
+
+Mr. Grey did not lunch at home, so that Mrs. Grey usually had luncheon
+by herself, except upon the rare occasions when one of her few
+acquaintances called and stayed.
+
+Seldom Mr. Grey dined out; often he had someone to dine with him, and
+often he gave parties. All this caused Mrs. Grey to be much by herself,
+and solitude was, for one of her disposition and tendency, fatal.
+
+By little and little the disastrous habit grew. It was most carefully
+concealed from the servants. At first Grey had tried to effect a cure;
+then, despairing of that, he strove with all his skill to avoid a
+scandal.
+
+With that view he had a little cupboard fitted up in the only room
+furnished in the Tower. For this cupboard he got two keys--one for
+himself, and one for his wife. In giving her the key he had said
+quietly:
+
+"In future you will find the wine for ordinary purposes in the new
+cupboard; so that you may not have the trouble of sending to the cellar
+for it, or in case I am out and you want more than is decanted, you can
+get it there. You will always have some there without sending to the
+cellar for it."
+
+"But we don't want any more than is decanted--so few people call," said
+the wife tremulously.
+
+"I know, I know. But someone may call, and as I keep the key of the
+cellar you might find yourself in a difficult position. Take this key of
+the cupboard, and here is the key of the room itself; there is only one
+other key, and I have that. The room is the quietest in the whole house.
+_The door locks on either the in or the outside._ The room is
+comfortably done up, and you can make any use you please of it. If you
+feel worried, or not very well, and wish to get away from the annoyance
+of the servants, you can go and lie down a while there."
+
+These precautions were deplorable and degrading. All the love he had
+once borne this woman had died; and although he carefully concealed his
+feelings towards her, he had at last come to regard her with loathing.
+
+She was in no way responsible for the disasters which had fallen on his
+business; she furnished no excuse for the crime he had committed, but
+she was one of the elements in his misfortune; and now that she had
+fallen into an odious fault, he resolved to put no impediment in her
+downward career, so long as her descent did not become apparent or
+public.
+
+It was a sad development of the romantic and chivalric story of Wat
+Grey's wooing. But then, so long as Daneford knew nothing of the decay
+of that romance or the decline of that chivalry, the fact that both
+were going--gone, was of little moment to Wat Grey.
+
+His embezzlement of the money had taught him that damaging facts had
+no injurious influence with the public--so long as the facts were
+carefully concealed. He found crime an easier burden than he had
+expected, and in place of his old dread of crime itself he had now a
+dread of disclosure only. If he had grown to hate his wife, what
+then--so long as no one knew of it.
+
+Up to this point Fate seemed to have played deliberately into his hands.
+He had ruined himself in Southern expectations, Fate had put more than
+half a million of money into his power, and he had extricated his
+fortune. An unlucky turn of the die might have betrayed him, and given
+him up to worse destruction than the former, but all came round as
+though he had the ordering of events. Not only was there to be no
+immediate call for that money, no immediate investigation into accounts
+with a checking of documents and an examination of affairs, but he was
+appointed supreme custodian of the whole property, and, for upwards of a
+year from the old man's death, no enquiry disadvantageous to him could
+be set on foot.
+
+Suppose the old man were to die soon, and business were to keep on the
+disastrous lines it had adopted of late? What then?
+
+What then?
+
+Many and many a day he put that question to himself in the morning
+before he broke his fast; and again at night before he went to bed he
+repeated this terrible question--unanswered.
+
+And the more he pondered over this question the less he liked to look at
+the answer. Not that the simple and direct answer appalled him, for
+that had been familiar to his mind for some time; the simple answer was,
+Ruin--Self-imposed Death.
+
+That was the positive answer to the question; but that did not affright
+him _now_, though it had terrified him at first.
+
+He was still what might be called a young man, for he carried his
+five-and-forty years more easily than many another man carried thirty.
+He was not a whit insensible to the many physical and social personal
+advantages he possessed. He knew he was a favourite wherever he went. He
+knew he was good-looking. He knew he was clever.
+
+He knew he was married.
+
+His wife had brought him nothing worth speaking of--not position,
+happiness. He had been everything to her, and how poorly had she
+requited him! It was only by the utmost care he avoided a damning
+scandal alighting upon his name through her.
+
+Fortune had favoured him up to this. Would Fortune be his friend still
+further? Was it too much to hope that another great piece of good luck
+might await him?
+
+There was one sure way out of all his danger and difficulties, if he had
+only been a single man: there was Maud.
+
+If, when Sir Alexander died, he were a bachelor, he might marry Maud.
+She knew nothing of the world, and he knew she liked him. There would be
+no need for his ruin if he were only a bachelor.
+
+It was beyond the power of Fate to make him a bachelor; but suppose Fate
+should take away that unloved wife, that great danger to his name, that
+great stumbling-block in the way of his successful progress?
+
+_Then?_ What then? Answer: He should marry Maud, and so wipe out the
+history of his crime.
+
+Would chance or accident, would Heaven or Hell, or whatever else he
+might call it, take away from him this woman who was a curse and burden,
+and give him that woman who would bring him deliverance?
+
+Such thoughts had long haunted his mind before he had heard on that 17th
+of August the voices which assailed and tempted him in tremendous tones;
+that day on which the fate of the steamboat _Rodwell_ and of Beatrice
+his wife, of the Weird Sisters and the Towers of Silence, became sealed
+together for ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A FLASK OF COGNAC.
+
+
+When the Weeslade Valley Bank declined to advance five thousand pounds
+on the Weeslade Steamship Company's river passenger-boat the _Rodwell_,
+they had two reasons for the refusal: first, they were not prepared to
+lock up money at the time; second, a report reached them that the
+_Rodwell_ was in bad condition.
+
+In the winter of the year 1865 the _Rodwell_ had lain up, undergoing
+repairs, and then the discovery was made that her condition was far from
+satisfactory. Many of her plates were no thicker than brown-paper, and
+just at the bends aft the point of a scraper had absolutely gone
+through a plate.
+
+The boilers, too, were found to be in an unsatisfactory condition, and
+the machinery needed thorough overhauling.
+
+But they wanted the boat for the summer traffic, and had no time to get
+all she required done before the fine weather; so she was patched for
+the time, the intention being to lay her up the following autumn and put
+her in good repair; in the meantime one new boiler was to be made for
+her.
+
+Towards the middle of April she began running as usual with passengers
+between Daneford and Seacliff.
+
+On her third trip she broke down; something went wrong with her
+machinery, and she had to be towed into Seacliff by another steamer.
+
+As this accident occurred early in the season there were few passengers,
+and little excitement arose from the circumstance.
+
+Almost the whole trade of the _Rodwell_ consisted of carrying seaside
+folk from Daneford to Seacliff and back again. She sailed every week-day
+of the season from Seacliff to Daneford at half-past seven in the
+morning, and from Daneford to Seacliff at half-past six in the
+afternoon. Many of the business men of the city kept their families all
+the season at Seacliff, they themselves coming and going between the
+little town and the city daily, and enjoying the advantages of sleeping
+in sea-freshened air and two bright pleasant sails of a couple of hours
+each in the day.
+
+When, in overhauling the _Rodwell_ in 1865, they found the boilers in
+not a satisfactory condition, they took off five pounds of steam.
+"Better to be sure than sorry," they said. This reduction of steam made
+the _Rodwell_ slower in 1866 than in previous years.
+
+On Tuesday, the 14th of August, 1866, the engineer of the _Rodwell_ made
+a report to the owners, and was directed to work her at another five
+pounds' reduction of pressure.
+
+When Grey advanced the five thousand pounds on the mortgage he made no
+enquiry into her condition. He knew the boat very well, had many times
+travelled by her between Daneford and Seacliff. He knew she was worth
+more than the money asked for, and as no mortgage existed upon her he
+felt he should be quite secure if the company ensured her, and handed
+him a policy for five thousand pounds. His position was that if the
+company did not pay the interest on his money and his money itself,
+ultimately he could seize the _Rodwell_; and if the steamboat were lost
+by any chance of wind or water he should get his money from the
+insurance company.
+
+Mr. Grey was as familiar with the steamboat _Rodwell_ as any man in
+Daneford. He had often spent the summer months with his wife at
+Seacliff, and had been a passenger in the boat hundreds of times. He
+knew all the men employed on her; he knew every exterior brass plate and
+hinge and bolt. He could go about her blindfold, and steer her up or
+down the river. He didn't understand machinery, but often said he could
+command, steer, and attend to the engines all by himself, and save the
+wages of the crew.
+
+Daneford was proud of all its institutions, and after Wat there were few
+it felt more complaisant about than the pretty town and picturesque
+scenery of Seacliff and the faithful _Rodwell_, the town being regarded
+as the country sweetheart, the milkmaid lover of the city, and the
+steamboat as the Mercury of the love-making.
+
+It was Grey's intention to spend the month of September, 1866, at
+Seacliff. He did not own a house there. It had been his custom to rent a
+small white cottage that hung half-way down a red cliff surrounding one
+of the blue bays clustering around the high headland on which the white
+town was built.
+
+He did not regard his sojourn at Seacliff with any lively anticipations.
+It was pleasant to steam up and down the blue river between the sunlit
+green shores, through the sweet odours from the woods and hedges
+freshened and spiritualised by the full broad river. The morning swim in
+the strong sea-water brought the sense of health and vigour and power
+into his frame. The breakfast, ample, well cooked, appetising, with
+blithe company, full of inspiriting talk and resolute happiness, in the
+steamer's cabin, would cure a misanthrope and buoy the heart of a cynic.
+The joyous solemnity of that cigar on deck afterwards would reconcile an
+anchorite to comfort. Yet for all these advantages Henry Walter Grey did
+not like his season at Seacliff.
+
+The evening voyage was no less to be enjoyed. After the dust and worry
+of the city's day it was good to feel the moist winds blowing through
+your hair, against your forehead; to hear the cooling swirl of the water
+at the bow, and the far-off wash of the steamer's swells upon the
+shadowy shore; to watch the crimson sunset, and the coming of the
+pale-blue stars, and the red moon that, slowly rising from the hot earth
+to the limpid sky, grew mild and fair, while under it the white earth
+sailed silent down the ocean of the dark; to feel the hallowed peace of
+night ascending from earth to God.
+
+But it ruined all to know in that cottage above the bay on the ledge of
+red cliff one waited who was no companion, yet bound to him for life; to
+know year by year the chasm between them widened; and that above that
+chasm hung a spirit of evil, the bad angel of a terrible weakness, which
+might at any moment become visible to all those standing by, and ruin
+her, and bring on him pity--pity, that boneless scorn more unendurable
+than contempt or loathing.
+
+In the deep seclusion of the Manor, Grey felt the skeleton in his house
+was pretty safely hidden; here in Seacliff there were innumerable
+chances of discovery. It is more than likely he would not have gone to
+Seacliff in the summer if by any possibility he could safely avoid it.
+But all the well-off people of Daneford went every year to the little
+town, and to depart from the custom would be to attract a dangerous
+attention to himself and his household. It had been his custom of former
+years to stay at Seacliff for three months of summer; but in the year
+1866 he resolved to limit his stay to one month--the month of September.
+
+When he and she were at home in the Manor House, she was more directly
+under his control, immediately under his observation. But on leaving
+Seacliff in the morning he was always weighed down by the dread that in
+this little town of much gossip something might leak out while he was
+away. She might go into the town, and in some incautious way betray her
+fault, and destroy all the respect people felt for her--all the respect
+they felt for his wife.
+
+What an awful millstone to carry about with one! Fancy the men at the
+street-corners chatting together, or groups standing at the Chamber of
+Commerce windows, or the members of the Club, or his own staff at the
+Bank, looking after him with compassionate eyes, and saying: "Poor Wat!
+How sad and worn and broken-down he looks! What a wretched thing! What a
+dreadful thing when a man's wife is a--drunkard!"
+
+The last word was always haunting his ears, always booming in the hollow
+caverns through which his fears followed him during sleep; and although
+the habit of Mrs. Grey had not yet become so confirmed as to justify the
+application of such an odious epithet, her case was growing no better,
+growing rather worse with time.
+
+All the Midharst money was gone. Her fault was at most a vice; but he
+had committed a crime. He lay between two fears; he was threatened by
+two discoveries. Someone might find out about her, and blast the fame
+of the Manor House; someone might find out about him, and blast the
+Daneford Bank, and lock him up in jail, and brand the name he bore with
+ignominy.
+
+In such a state of mind was Grey when the 16th of August arrived and
+evening brought him home. The husband and wife sat down alone to dinner,
+sat down alone to the last dinner they were ever to eat together.
+
+"Bee," said Grey to his wife, when the dessert had been brought in and
+the servants had gone, "do you think you could go down to Seacliff in
+the _Rodwell_ to-morrow evening, and look up the cottage? I saw the
+estimable and penurious landlord of it to-day. It's not occupied this
+month, and he wanted me to take it from the 20th. I'm half inclined to
+accept his offer. He says we can have it from the 20th of this month to
+the end of September for a month's rent. It would be almost worth while
+to take him at his word, and hear how he'd whine if I gave him a cheque
+for the month's rent only. What are those two famous items out of last
+year's bill?"
+
+"Brunswick varnish, for the kitchen coal-scuttle, 2_d._; and a pair of
+brass stair-eyes, one lost and one damaged, 2_d._," quoted Mrs. Grey
+seriously, as if the imposition was intolerable.
+
+"Yes, yes. That's it. Brunswick varnish and stair-eyes," laughed Grey.
+"And at the end of all the items for damage was the general observation:
+'The same being in excess of reasonable wear and tear.' Didn't he make
+us whiten all the ceilings, too, on the grounds that we stopped far into
+the season and blackened them with the lamps?"
+
+"Yes, Wat."
+
+"Is it three or four times we have paid, Bee, for cracking that
+soup-tureen? The old crack, you know."
+
+"We've paid, I think, Wat, only twice for that crack, but he has charged
+us with the ladle every year, although we never had one."
+
+"Why, this old Parkinson is much more amusing than a state-jester of
+old, and not half so impudent or expensive." Mr. Grey smiled, and rubbed
+his smooth cheek with his white hand. After a moment's enjoyment of his
+recollections of Parkinson, he returned to the question. "Well, Bee,
+will you go down in the _Rodwell_ with me to-morrow evening? We can have
+a breath of sea-air, a look at Parkinson and the cottage, and come back
+by the boat in the morning."
+
+"Very well, Wat. Of course I'll go with you."
+
+"Now let me see. The best plan will be for you to go from this to the
+boat. Be on board at a quarter-past six, and stay there until I come.
+You won't forget?"
+
+"No, Wat."
+
+"You're quite sure you won't forget?" Of late Mrs. Grey's memory had
+shown signs of giving way.
+
+"I'll be there, certainly," she answered, a little hotly. "You don't
+think my memory is so bad I am likely to forget anything that gives me a
+chance of getting out of this dull house."
+
+"Because," he said, holding up his finger to quiet her displeasure, "I
+may not be able to get away from the office until just half-past six. I
+shall be at the boat in time. You will go aboard and sit down aft, and
+wait for me."
+
+Having thus arranged for the following evening, Grey lapsed into
+silence, and his wife withdrew.
+
+Those after-dinner hours, which, to the prosperous man are the most
+placid and full of content, were now to Grey full of fears and subtle
+agonies when he had no company. The necessity all through the day for
+showing a fair front to the world and keeping up his reputation for
+cordial joviality no longer existed when he found himself alone in his
+own dining-room.
+
+Then he exposed his imagination to all the dangers and difficulties in
+his path. Here, this 16th of August, was he safe over all the wreck of
+that awful month of May, but at what a cost? The commission of a
+disgraceful crime and the perpetual dread of a damning discovery.
+
+The financial crisis had shattered trade, dispersed confidence, and
+ruined enterprise. The last penny of the baronet's money had been taken,
+and was gone; and yet no remarkable prosperity, nothing in the meanest
+way approaching what he had calculated upon, had set in towards him.
+Even in the recent days of over-trading, when money was dear, the
+deposits in the Daneford Bank had been more than during the past few
+months. Things were not likely to mend in time for him. At the present
+rate twenty years could not bring in half the sum he wanted, and he
+might be called to disgorge within eighteen months, within a much less
+time should the old baronet suddenly die and matters take a turn
+unfavourable to his interest with regard to the guardianship of the
+heiress--his care over her not reaching, he supposed, beyond her
+twenty-first birthday. Merciful Heavens! what could deliver him?
+
+And then followed the invariable reply: There is nothing to save you
+from infamy but marriage with Maud Midharst.
+
+Then the memory of his wife's faults came up before him like an
+indictment seeking her life. She was flighty, unwise, dull,
+uncompanionable--intemperate.
+
+She was no pleasure to him. She seemed to be the source of no pleasure
+to herself. If the Powers of good would only take her, what a blessed
+relief to him!
+
+If the Powers of any denomination whatever would only take her and leave
+him free!
+
+He rose, and strode up and down the long room, his face puckered and
+pinched, his hands clutched, his eyebrows dragged down over his eyes
+until the eyes disappeared, those eyes wont to be so free and open.
+
+If the Powers of any denomination whatever----His thoughts paused a
+while, his brows relaxed, his whole face changed character, put on
+holiday attire. With a light foot and a pleasant smile he approached
+the chimney-piece and pulled the bell.
+
+"James," he said, when the man entered, "bring me a flask of cognac."
+
+While the servant was going to the cellar he said to himself, with a
+gentle smile, "I have been very thoughtless about that press in the
+Tower of Silence. I have left claret and port and sherry there, but
+until now I never remembered brandy! How careless I have been."
+
+In a few minutes James returned with the bottle, drew the cork, decanted
+the brandy, and left.
+
+Grey took up the decanter with a cordial smile on his face, walked
+towards the tower-room, the first-floor room in the Tower of Silence
+upon the top of which the wasted skeleton of the huge tank stood out
+clear against the quiet summer stars.
+
+It was now past eleven o'clock. No profounder silence reigned by night
+in deserted mine deep in the bowels of the earth, in Asian desert open
+to the glittering stars and the pale radiance of the moon, on the dark
+peaks of mighty alp that reaches upward into the thin windless air, than
+in the chambers and passages of the fearful Manor House.
+
+As he draws near the door of the tower-room he carries the decanter of
+brandy in one hand, a lighted candle in the other. When only a few feet
+separate him from the door he pauses suddenly, and looks earnestly
+forward. There are two keys for that door, one is on his ring, the other
+is in the possession of his wife. He holds the lamp high above his head,
+and listens intently. Yes; there is someone inside.
+
+While he waits he hears a lock shot. Presently the door opens, and with
+a cry of surprise and fear his wife confronts him.
+
+"Bee," he says, without allowing the smile to relax, "is this you? I
+thought you were gone to bed."
+
+"I went to my room," says the unhappy woman, trembling and looking down,
+"but I could not sleep. I was very nervous and--and, Wat, I thought a
+glass of port might do me good."
+
+"Of course it will. Of course it will," he says, in a soft voice. "I was
+just going to put this in the cupboard." He holds up the decanter.
+
+"What is that?" she asks, in a voice full of uneasiness and fear.
+
+"Only a little brandy. It's not a rattlesnake or a petard that you need
+be afraid of, Bee," he replies, in a bantering tone.
+
+"No, no, Wat," she cries, drawing back a pace and holding up her hands
+as though she saw some fearful object in her way. "We don't want any
+brandy here. Indeed we don't."
+
+"What nonsense!" he laughs. "But, seriously, Bee, you know we must have
+some brandy here. Suppose one of the servants, or any chance caller were
+to become suddenly faint, what could you do without brandy?"
+
+"Don't put it there, Wat! For my sake, for God's sake, don't put it
+there!" She covers her face with her hands, and trembles again.
+
+"There now, Bee, go to bed, and don't be silly. I should never be able
+to forgive myself if any harm came of there being no brandy that could
+be readily got at."
+
+With slow heavy steps the woman passes him, and, as she reaches the end
+of the short corridor, throws up her hands to heaven, sobs out, "God be
+merciful to me!" and bursts into tears.
+
+He waits until she is out of the passage, then shrugs his shoulders,
+and, with the old, genial smile upon his face deposits the decanter of
+cognac in the cupboard of the room on the first floor of the tower, of
+that tower which, in a moment of grim humour, he had called the Tower of
+Silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH.
+
+
+Mr. Grey breakfasted early, Mrs. Grey late. Nothing was said by either
+to the other on the night of the 16th. On Friday morning, the morning of
+the 17th of August, 1866, Mrs. Grey was still sleeping when her husband
+left the house.
+
+The morning was bright and clear, and as the banker strode on briskly to
+the city he hummed an air to keep him company. His voice was
+indifferent, his ear was indifferent, and yet it was more invigorating
+to hear him blundering out wild approximations to a tune than to listen
+to a moderately accomplished drawing-room vocalist. The banker seemed
+unable to keep the natural gladness of his nature within bounds; the
+accomplished vocalist follows an everyday handicraft or trade with the
+tools of which he is familiar and expert.
+
+As Grey walked to his office that bright Friday morning he met many
+friends and acquaintances. He had a nod, a wave of the hand, a cheerful
+word, a kind enquiry, a jovial wish, a congratulation for each,
+according to person and circumstances.
+
+He carried his black bag in his hand. In the black bag were some books,
+some papers, and the revolver. Nothing particular occurred to him on the
+way to the Bank. Nothing particular awaited him upon his arrival at the
+office. All was going on smoothly and prosperously--but very slowly,
+very slowly towards bringing back the baronet's money.
+
+Two was his luncheon hour, and at two he went out. He lunched at his
+club, and then strolled down to the Chamber of Commerce to see the
+latest Exchange telegrams, and have a chat with some of the merchants
+and traders and shipowners of Daneford. He got back to the office at a
+little after three.
+
+Nothing particular had occurred during his absence. He went into his
+private room and disposed of some routine affairs. Then, having no
+business to do, he threw up the window, and looking out, began to
+whistle softly a recitative of his own invention.
+
+After a little while he stopped whistling, and thought: "I shall be here
+two hours by myself this evening. I don't think I could do anything
+better than burn that book." In a little while more he made up his mind.
+"Yes; I will burn it. It would tell against me in any case. Even suppose
+by any miracle I am able to get that money together again, the dates
+would betray me. Then it is better to have neither book nor Stock than a
+tell-tale book only. Dead men and burnt books tell no tales. Yes; up the
+chimney it shall go. If I am able to replace that money, the making of a
+new book will be an easy task, a graceful amusement."
+
+Mr. Grey had always kept the Midharst (Consols) account in his own
+handwriting, and in a book to which none but himself had access. This
+was a small book bound in rough calf, having a patent lock and key.
+Before the Bank closed at four o'clock he went down to the strong-room
+and took up this book to his private office.
+
+By about half-past four all the clerks had left the office, and Mr.
+Aldridge had gone out to pick up an appetite for dinner. Grey locked the
+two doors that led into his office, opened the little ledger, and
+having cut the book out of the cover, he locked up the cover in a safe
+in the wall of his own office. There were two reasons for doing this: 1.
+The cover was, with the appliances at his command, indestructible. 2. He
+could get new paper bound into the old cover; and those of his staff who
+were familiar with the outside of the book would not be able to detect
+any difference between the original and the counterfeit.
+
+When the cover of the book had been concealed under lock and key he sat
+down in front of the grate, and began tearing up the book into single
+leaves, and burning each one separately in the empty grate.
+
+As the record of the baronet's twenty years of grinding, exaction, and
+penurious living changed into flame and smoke and ashes, Grey's thoughts
+were busy with the awful aspects of his position, and now, for the
+first time, a new element of fear entered into the case.
+
+He suddenly stopped in his work and looked round him with a ghastly
+smile. Last night he had been calculating that his only way of avoiding
+exposure lay through the freedom of himself to marry Maud. But suppose
+anything were to happen to his wife _now_. Suppose she died that very
+day; suppose she had died a week ago, a month ago; what would have
+occurred? He should then be a childless widower, younger in appearance
+and in manner than in years, and even young enough in years to be the
+suitor of any girl. Was it likely if he were so circumstanced Sir
+Alexander might not think of altering the will, of introducing into it
+another guardian, executor, or trustee? True, Sir Alexander was not an
+ordinary man, and had unlimited confidence in him, Grey; but surely he
+could not be such a fool as to leave his daughter and his daughter's
+fortune in the hands solely of a popular, good-looking, and an agreeable
+widower of forty-five?
+
+The thought flurried him, and he gasped and covered his face with his
+handkerchief, and leaned upon the mantelpiece.
+
+Last night it had appeared to him nothing more advantageous to his
+fortune could arise than the death of his wife. Now that event seemed
+the most disastrous which could befall him. The more he looked at the
+whole situation the more hopeless his position appeared. What last night
+he regarded as the gateway to deliverance now was the cavern of ruin.
+Well, he had begun burning this book, and he might as well finish it.
+Destroying this could have no important influence for evil on the case,
+and might be beneficial or have a mitigating influence.
+
+At last the whole book lay in a mass of black and blue ashes at his
+feet. He stood in front of the pile for a few moments thinking. "Between
+that book and me there is great similarity. It was once truthful, then
+it recorded a lie, and now it is burnt and black. I was once honest; I
+fell; and now my position, my prospects, and my hopes are in ashes.
+There is no chance of escape."
+
+It was after five o'clock. He rang the bell; as he did so, he heard the
+street-bell ring also.
+
+"Aldridge coming back from his constitutional." Then, correcting
+himself, he thought: "Of course, Aldridge doesn't ring."
+
+He unlocked the doors, and in a few minutes the servant knocked and
+entered.
+
+"I want you to tidy up that grate; I've been burning some old letters,"
+said Grey.
+
+"Yes, sir; a letter for you, sir, just come."
+
+"All right; leave it on my table."
+
+"Beg pardon, sir, but it's from the Castle, and marked immediate."
+
+The banker took it and glanced at the superscription as the servant
+withdrew.
+
+"From Mrs. Grant," he muttered. "What can it be now?"
+
+He tore open the envelope and read the contents hastily. The note was
+very brief. Sir Alexander had had a bad night, and was rather worse this
+morning. He particularly wanted to see Mr. Grey _at once_. Would Mr.
+Grey be so good as to come _instantly_ upon receipt of this? The words
+in italics were underlined heavily three or four times.
+
+"What can this be?" he thought. "The last time I got a note from Mrs.
+Grant asking me to go to the Castle I was in the final extremity of
+apprehension, and all came much better than I could have dared to hope.
+There seems no possibility of a favourable solution of the present
+situation. If the old man is sinking, that will give me only a year--and
+that is the least terrible thing can cause this hasty summons. Well, go
+I must, and at once."
+
+He leaped lightly down the stairs, carrying his bag in his hand, and was
+soon driving rapidly towards Island Ferry.
+
+Two miles lay between him and the city before he remembered his
+appointment with his wife on board the _Rodwell_.
+
+"Never mind," he thought, "I'll board the steamboat as she passes the
+Island; that will make it all right."
+
+By six o'clock he had reached Island Ferry. Without the loss of a moment
+he crossed over to the Island and ascended towards the Castle.
+
+A servant at once conducted him to Mrs. Grant, who was waiting for him
+in the hall-room off the grand entrance-hall.
+
+"O Mr. Grey, I am so glad you have come; we are in such fearful anxiety.
+Poor Sir Alexander has got worse and worse ever since I wrote to you.
+The doctors say this is what they have been dreading all along."
+
+The little woman was in a state of the greatest excitement, and had
+completely lost all sense of proportion. The standards of her feelings
+had been broken by her agitation, and everything that went wrong seemed
+of equal importance and mischief.
+
+"What is the matter now?" the banker asked, in a soft sympathetic voice.
+"I hope Miss Midharst," he added, before he gave the little widow time
+to answer, "is kept as free as possible from these sad and depressing
+scenes.
+
+"Oh, yes; that is, I mean the poor child is fearfully distressed. She
+has been with her father all day. It's not good for her, but then she
+wouldn't come away. I think if you spoke to her it would do her good.
+She used to mind a good deal what I said to her, but all this day she
+sits there, staring as if the room was full of ghosts. I fear there's
+something bad the matter with the whole place; and only for darling
+Maud, I'm sure I shouldn't stop an hour. And to listen to him is
+something dreadful. He talks of nothing but his money and you and
+robbery----"
+
+"What!" exclaimed Grey, loudly and sharply.
+
+"Now," she cried, "you are offended with me just because I am nervous
+and excitable. Maybe _you'd_ be excited yourself, Mr. Grey, if he was
+turning to you every minute and saying you were a wolf in sheep's
+clothing, and that you wanted to rob his child of the fortune he had
+laid by for her. You wouldn't like to be called a robber, and you're a
+man, and I am only a nervous woman; and men are more used to that kind
+of language than women, although, until now, I did not know that
+gentlemen ever used such words."
+
+Here Mrs. Grant broke down completely, and sobbed.
+
+By this time Grey had recovered from the appalling shock caused by Mrs.
+Grant's association of himself with theft. He went up to the sobbing
+woman, and in his gentlest accents, having placed his hand reassuringly
+on her shoulder, said:
+
+"Mrs. Grant, I am exceedingly sorry if my hasty exclamation has caused
+you any annoyance. Believe me, nothing was further from my intention
+than to disturb you under the distressing circumstance you describe, and
+in the very shattered condition in which your nerves must be. Forgive
+me, pray. Do say that you forgive me."
+
+He pleaded in his most winning voice and manner; he looked upon the
+friendliness of Mrs. Grant towards him as of great importance.
+
+"It wasn't your fault, Mr. Grey," said Mrs. Grant, quieting her sobs. "I
+know I am not fit for anything of this kind; it always knocks me up."
+
+"No wonder. Of course, as you say, such expressions are never heard
+among gentlemen----"
+
+She interrupted him.
+
+"I hope I didn't say anything unbecoming to you; if I did, I didn't mean
+it. I am so worried and confused I don't know what I'm saying." By this
+time she had forgotten the cause of her tears. What Grey said made her
+believe she herself had uttered something offensive to the banker. "I
+wonder can it be that I have caught the fever from Sir Alexander, and
+am not in my right mind?"
+
+"No, no, no," laughed Grey reassuringly. "You need not be afraid of
+that." He had no desire to recall to her memory the words which had
+drawn from him the abrupt and disconcerting exclamation. "And so," he
+said, in a bland voice, "poor Sir Alexander's head is wandering."
+
+"Oh, yes. He began to be queer last night, and got worse all the night.
+This morning we sent for the doctors, and they came again in the
+afternoon. At the latter visit they said I had better send for you, as
+you were so much in Sir Alexander's mind, both when he was raving and
+when he wasn't."
+
+"Then he has lucid intervals?"
+
+"Oh, yes--or, at least, not quite lucid. There are times when he is less
+wild than others; but I think his mind is not quite free at any time. I
+have been keeping you here instead of taking you direct to him, as I
+should have done. You will excuse me; my poor head is quite gone too.
+Will you come with me to him now?"
+
+"Yes," he answered, with a profound bow.
+
+As he followed her through the dull stately passages that, although it
+was still full daylight, were dim and funereal, he tried to pierce the
+veil of the future. How would this sudden development of the old man's
+disease affect him? Was the old man in his comparatively lucid moments
+capable of altering his will? What was the cause of the old man's desire
+to see him? And, above all, how had this idea of theft come upon him?
+
+So far as he could now form an opinion of the case, he did not feel
+reassured.
+
+Suppose Mrs. Grant's account of the baronet's condition of mind in the
+less excited moments was overdrawn, and that while in his periods of
+delirium he was haunted by goblin fears of robbers, in his more
+collected phases he might be troubled with reasonable dread of theft or
+misappropriation or fraud. Did the old man desire to destroy or alter
+his will? That was the vital question. If he did, then surely the lead
+would overtake the gold.
+
+The gold! That gold could never be won back, not in as many years as it
+took the baronet to save it up. Not in twice as many years, and he might
+have no more than one year. The gold could never overtake the lead
+now--that is, the gold, the Consols.
+
+But the gold of a wedding-ring for Miss Midharst would balance the
+five-tons weight of the baronet's. Little over half an ounce of gold
+would outweigh five tons; a ring that cost no more than three guineas
+would balance a deficit of five hundred and fifty thousand pounds!
+
+Mrs. Grant softly opened the door of the sick chamber, and motioning
+someone inside to come near, she said, as Miss Midharst approached:
+
+"Maud, dear, here is Mr. Grey; he came at once."
+
+The girl offered him her hand, and Grey took it respectfully, tenderly,
+and held it, saying:
+
+"I am deeply grieved, Miss Midharst, at what Mrs. Grant tells me. I hope
+this may be only a temporary affection. How is Sir Alexander now?"
+
+"Oh, he's very, very bad!" sobbed the girl, in a whisper. "It was kind
+of you to come. He talks of you always."
+
+"I am, believe me, Miss Midharst, deeply grieved for him, and--you."
+
+Nothing could be more kind and sympathetic than his voice and manner.
+
+"He talks of nothing but you and the money," whispered the girl, through
+her tears.
+
+At that moment a shrill shout came from the bed, followed by the words:
+
+"Ah, Grey, is that you? You thieving scoundrel! Do you dare to come into
+my house, under my roof, after stealing my darling's fortune! Bring me
+my pistols, I say--some one bring me my pistols! I will shoot this
+miscreant banker Grey. My pistols, I say!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+BY THE STATE BED.
+
+
+For a moment Grey paused irresolutely on the threshold of the sick room.
+This was the most alarming ordeal to which he had been subjected. Could
+it be that by any untoward circumstance of disastrous fate the old man
+had discovered the truth?
+
+To be loudly, violently accused of the crime he had committed by the man
+whose money he had stolen, and in the presence of that man's daughter!
+
+He had often in his worst moments imagined the position he now occupied,
+but had never dared to think of, it had never entered his moments of
+wildest fear to realise, such a scene conducted in the presence of Miss
+Midharst and Mrs. Grant. And now to the horrors of hearing such words
+from the defrauded man's lips, was added the awful question, the
+appalling uncertainty in the questions: Did the baronet know anything?
+Did he know all?
+
+His name for honour, for honesty, the existence of the respectable old
+institution which had been handed down to him by his father unsullied,
+his very life, hung upon these two questions. There was only one chance
+between him and ruin, between him and death. At these thoughts he made a
+prodigious effort, and turning to the two distracted woman with a forced
+smile, and a lip he could not keep from trembling, said:
+
+"I fear my presence only excites Sir Alexander. Had I not better retire
+until he is more calm?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Grey," said Maud through her tears, "you must not mind his
+words. He does not know what he says. He does not understand what is
+said to him. He does not even know who is in the room when he is in this
+state. My poor father, oh, my poor father!" She covered her face with
+her hands and sobbed out.
+
+Grey began to breathe more freely. He whispered, as though the weight of
+a mountain were rolling off him, "He does not know what he says. He does
+not know who is in the room. Poor gentleman! Poor Sir Alexander! I am
+profoundly sorry for him and for you, Miss Midharst. You can understand
+how much I was surprised to hear him, who has so long relied upon me,
+use such words to me. It was, you must admit," he looked from the woman
+to the girl in deferential appeal, "rather startling."
+
+"We know what he thinks of you when he is in his right senses, Mr.
+Grey," said Mrs. Grant. "We know he has the greatest confidence in you."
+
+The banker bowed deeply, and when he had straightened himself once more,
+regarded the widow with profound and sorrowful attention.
+
+Mrs. Grant continued: "In his lucid moments he asked for you, and seemed
+anxious to see you on business, as of old; but when he raved as he did
+just now, he accused us all of taking his money."
+
+"What a sad and distracting form of delusion!" murmured the banker. He
+could scarcely contain himself. He would at that moment have forfeited
+the five thousand pounds advanced on the mortgage of the _Rodwell_ if he
+might throw his arms into the air and shout out and laugh and dance.
+
+The sick man spoke of everyone as a thief in his frenzy, but in his
+clear moments spoke of him, Grey, as of old! He did not suspect him
+exclusively; the indictment to which he had listened in paralysed terror
+had been by accident preferred against him; by accident it might have
+been preferred against any other human being with whose name Sir
+Alexander was familiar!
+
+The weight of earth had rolled back from his breast, and he was
+breathing more freely than for many a long day.
+
+The three now left the door and walked into the room. At best the vast
+chamber was gloomy, but now all light but a faint dim glow that clung to
+the inside of the curtains was excluded.
+
+Grey placed himself at the side of the vast bedstead. Sir Alexander had
+sold off all his personal furniture; he occupied one of the state rooms
+and slept in one of the enormous state bedsteads; these bedsteads were
+in the deeds he could not alter, and had to go down to the next heir.
+The first look the banker cast at the face of the sick man gave him a
+shock.
+
+The old baronet had always had a colour in his cheeks; now all the
+colour was gone from the cheeks and gathered into the temples and
+forehead. The wrinkled forehead was of a dull brick colour. The great
+forked dark vein of the forehead stood up out of the dry red skin like
+the forked mullion of a gothic window, against whose crimson panes the
+west is red. In the temples of the old man the rugged veins were swollen
+and knotted, and in the purple hollows between the dark blue knots a
+quick feeble pulse fluttered and hurried forward like a frightened
+hunted beast. Through the counterpane the thin form showed sharply. The
+breathing was quick and unquiet, the eyes staring and fixed upon the
+carved oak ceiling. Apparently the delirious paroxysm had passed, and
+the patient was suffering from modified collapse.
+
+"He will be better presently, and may recognise you," whispered Mrs.
+Grant into Grey's ear. She stood by his side. At the foot stood Maud,
+weeping softly, silently. For a while no one moved.
+
+Gradually the breathing of the sick man grew more steady, and the
+fluttering pulse in the hollow temples more regular.
+
+"In a few minutes," whispered the widow, "he will be quite collected."
+
+As she had foretold, his eyes descended from the ceiling and began
+running over the room and those present, as if trying to recover memory.
+At length they were fixed on Grey and did not move from him. Although
+the eye was dull and clouded, there was a look of intelligence in it. It
+was the eye of a weakened intellect rather than of a disordered one.
+
+"Ah, Grey, is that you?"
+
+"Yes, Sir Alexander. I hope you feel better?"
+
+"I am quite well. I have been greatly troubled about that money, those
+Consols. They tell me they have been sold. Is it true that my Consols
+have been sold? I ask you in the presence of my daughter, for whom they
+were saved, have they been sold?" The sick man's eyes were filmy; but
+while they were dull to the perception of surrounding objects, they
+seemed to be partly closed against objects of natural vision only that
+they might be partly opened to unascertainable forms and figures of
+supernatural view.
+
+Grey's heart quailed. Who were "they" that had informed him of the
+fraud? What did the sick man know of the fraud? What did he surmise? Was
+there anything but imagination to account for these fears, these hideous
+questions, this awful ordeal? He was sorry he had left his bag below in
+the little room where Mrs. Grant had received him. Nothing could save
+him now but a calm exterior and intrepid audacity. He cleared his throat
+to make sure his voice was obedient to his will, and answered boldly,
+but softly:
+
+"No one has sold the Consols, Sir Alexander. I answer you faithfully, in
+your presence and in the presence of Miss Midharst, for whose benefit
+they have been acquired and put by."
+
+He was amazed himself at the firmness and clearness of his voice. If it
+had been merely repeating the words of another man, his voice could not
+have been less open to suspicion; if he had been pronouncing a most
+consoling truth, his manner could not have been more benignly
+reassuring. Instead of the words being those of another, they were so
+intimately his own that his existence depended upon their utterance;
+instead of being true, they contained a lie so monstrous under the
+circumstances that they were as false and wicked as a blasphemous false
+oath. He thought to himself grimly, as he rapidly reviewed the words and
+the import of his voice: "I am acting in a play of the Devil's writing,
+and must do honour to the character I represent and credit to the
+author."
+
+The eyes of the old man were fixed on the banker's face as he said:
+"What you tell me of my money, _her_ money, is quite true? It is quite
+safe? No one has sold out?"
+
+"It is quite true; no one has sold out."
+
+"Swear it!"
+
+"I swear it."
+
+"Mrs. Grant, get the Book. I am a magistrate, and you shall swear the
+formal oath, so that you may be punished if you are hiding the truth
+from an old helpless man."
+
+Mrs. Grant placed a Testament on the bed beside Mr. Grey. The latter
+took up the Book. He did not care to question the legality of such an
+oath. He thought he would humour the old man. A crime or two more were
+nothing to him now, particularly when these crimes helped to cover up
+the other crime of embezzlement, theft, fraud--call it what you will.
+
+Mr. Grey took up the Testament, and Sir Alexander, in a confused way,
+repeated words which could not be clearly heard, but ended with the
+clause usual to the ending of a formal oath.
+
+Mr. Grey kissed the Book reverentially, and murmured the final words. As
+he uttered the words, he could not avoid the reflection that if he were
+acting in a play of the Devil's writing, some of the words to be
+uttered had a peculiar aspect as coming from the Master of Evil.
+
+Mr. Grey put the Book on the bed, and looked with reassuring glance at
+both the women. The old baronet muttered to himself indistinctly for a
+few seconds. "Bad dreams, bad dreams," he said distinctly at last; "they
+were only dreams."
+
+Mr. Grey looked round again at the women and inclined his head
+significantly to them, as though he would say: "Poor Sir Alexander! His
+dreams must have been bad indeed, if he fancied anyone had taken his
+money."
+
+By this the great flush had disappeared from the old man's forehead, the
+veins had subsided, and a deadly pallor covered his features from
+forehead to chin. During the paroxysms of his delirium, it seemed as
+though his head was in danger of bursting from too great a supply of
+heated blood; now it looked as if the walls of his skull and the flesh
+of his face were about to crumble and fall in for want of fluid
+sufficient to sustain their weight. But in the eye still lingered the
+heat and flickered the fire of the fever. He lay still for a while, and
+seemed to be about to fall asleep. Presently, however, all were startled
+to hear his voice ring out clear and firm, high above their notion of
+his present strength, clear above their notion of his intellectual
+capacity:
+
+"Henry Grey, take her hand, my daughter's hand, and lead her here--no
+the other hand--give her your left hand, Henry Grey."
+
+Mr. Grey walked to where the girl stood, now pale and tearless, at the
+foot of the bed, and offered her his right hand; then his left, and led
+her to the side of the bed, where he had been standing.
+
+"Now, Henry Grey, take the Testament in your right hand. I am going to
+make you swear--I am a deputy-lieutenant--to guard with all your power
+and wiles, my only daughter, Maud Midharst, herself and her fortune and
+her happiness. Say the words after me."
+
+"Herself and her fortune and her happiness to guard with all my power,"
+he repeated.
+
+"All your power and wiles," insisted the old man, in a tone of
+exasperation.
+
+"My power and--wiles," repeated Mr. Grey, after a slight hesitation.
+
+"To act as executor of my will, trustee to her fortune, and guardian of
+my child. So help me, God."
+
+Mr. Grey repeated the words with solemn deliberation.
+
+"Kiss the Book."
+
+Mr. Grey bent his head reverentially over the sacred volume and kissed
+it devoutly.
+
+"Kiss the Book, my child. Take it in your own right hand and kiss it. It
+is the history of the life and sufferings and death of our Lord, and
+something of great moment is conducting."
+
+"Kiss the Book, you also," looking towards Mrs. Grant.
+
+She did as he desired.
+
+"Now, my daughter, and you, Henry Grey, both together hold that Book,
+which is the history of the life and sufferings and death of our Lord,
+to my lips, for I am weak and unable, and I will kiss it last of all."
+
+They placed the Book against his lips, and when he had kissed it they
+drew it back, and placed the Testament on the bed.
+
+Mr. Grey folded his arms tightly across his chest; he had a feeling that
+his chest would burst if he did not shout out and relieve it.
+
+"My daughter," said the sick man, "if I should never get off this bed
+again--and I feel that something great is conducting--when I am dead you
+will look to him for all advice and guidance. He will be your friend,
+your only friend, who can be of aid to you when I am dead. You will lean
+upon him. He will guard your money and see that no one does you ill or
+cheats you. He is an honest man, Maud. He has taken care of your fortune
+for me until now; he will take care of it for you when I am dead. You
+will have no one else but him; no friend in all the world but Henry
+Grey."
+
+"Oh, my God!" burst from the banker. If the hangman were in the room,
+and any word spoken by him, Grey, was to be the signal for his death, he
+could not restrain himself.
+
+For a moment they all three looked at him in grave surprise. His words
+were not perhaps improper to the grave occasion, but his manner of
+uttering them had something startling in it. There was in his tone a cry
+of wild appeal against an inexorable decree of prodigious woe. His voice
+had more the sound of a brute's inarticulate cry of despair than any
+human agony fitted to human words. It was a death-cry, the death-cry of
+some fine instinct of the human soul. It was a cry the like of which no
+man utters twice in a lifetime.
+
+The old man regarded the banker for a moment with a look of surprise.
+Then the expression of the old man's face softened, and he said: "Grey,
+my arm is weak. I cannot raise it. Take my hand. You will be good to her
+when I am dead. I know what the world may say. It may say, Grey, that
+you and I are not equals; that I might have bestowed the guardianship of
+my daughter's fortune among houses such as the Fleureys' or the
+Midharsts'. But I know what you are and what your father was, and I am
+placing what I value above all earthly things in your keeping. I am an
+old man, and the doctors may be right this time. I am old and weak,
+Henry Grey, and I want you to be her friend when I am dead. The world
+may say what it pleases about you as guardian. I am firm in my faith in
+you. No orphan, friendless--the last, I may say, of her house--had ever
+a more careful or prudent or wise guardian than you. I am old and weak.
+There is one more favour I would ask of you before you go--for I have
+said all. You will not refuse an old man on his death-bed, Henry Grey?"
+
+"No," in a faint thin whisper.
+
+"I am weak, and cannot do it myself. Raise up my hand held in yours, and
+place your hand against my lips, that I may kiss the hand which is to
+shield my daughter when I am gone."
+
+"Oh, Sir Alexander!" in a tone of agonized protest.
+
+"I am very old and very weak. You will not, because I am old and weak
+and cannot raise your hand, deny me this pleasure."
+
+The banker did as he was asked.
+
+When he had placed the cold thin hand back again on the bed, the baronet
+sighed and murmured: "I am tired. I will try to sleep awhile. You may
+go, Henry Grey. God bless you, Henry Grey! Now I am at rest!"
+
+With a deep bow to the ladies, Mr. Grey left the room. He went down a
+passage and then turned into another. Here he was alone, out of sight
+and earshot. He threw his arms heavily up, straight above his head, and
+flung himself against the wall with a groan, beat his arms and hands
+against the wall, and struck his forehead against the wall.
+
+"Do I live?" he cried; "or am I already among the damned?"
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, GREAT NEW STREET, FETTER LANE, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Weird Sisters, Volume I (of 3), by 
+Richard Dowling
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41552 ***