Into the Highways & Hedges

BY F. F. Montrésor

SEVENTH EDITION

London 1896

HUTCHINSON & CO.
34 PATERNOSTER ROW

"Let a man contend to the uttermost for his life's set prize, be it what it will."

Dedicated
TO
MY MOTHER

PREFACE.

This is not meant to be a controversial novel. I by no means agree with all Barnabas Thorpe's opinions. Nevertheless I believe that the men who fight for their ideals have been, and always will be, the saving element in a world which happily has never yet been left without them.

Before and since the days when Socrates found that it was "impossible to live a quiet life, for that would be to disobey the deity," there have always been some souls who have counted it worth while to lose all else, if haply in the losing they might get nearer to the light from which they came. Their failures, their apparently hopeless mistakes, are often evident enough, yet the mistakes die, and the spirit which animates them lives. It would be dark, indeed, if the torches of those eager runners were to go out.

F. F. M.

INTO THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES.

FIRST PART.

CHAPTER I.

The woman whose story is written here, was in the fulness of her youth some fifty years ago.

She is dead now, and so are the two men who loved her best, who would each, according to his lights, have given his life for her happiness.

Her name is inscribed in the family Bible, that holds on its flyleaf the generation of Deanes, but there is a thick stroke through it, which almost obliterates the delicate characters, and there is no record either of her marriage or of her death.

She made a great mistake; she was one of the people who blunder on a large scale, who put all their eggs into one basket, and who are apt to break their hearts as well as their goods; but, in so far as her life did not end in pure tragedy, it seemed to me worth the telling.

One lifts one's cap to those who never go wrong, but Heaven knows it is easy enough to stumble, and there are two sides to every ditch; let us, at least, cry "Hurrah!" when any one scrambles out on the right bank.

Margaret was the third daughter of Charles Deane—(so much we find chronicled); she was five years younger than her sister Katherine, and seven years younger than Laura, and she must have been barely six when her father, then newly widowed, brought his children to London, and left them in charge of his sister.

The three little girls were heiresses, and plentifully provided for. The Deanes and Russelthorpes have always been rich; money seems to have clung to their fingers, though there was never a miser among them. The families had intermarried for two generations, before Mr. Deane's sister accepted Mr. Joseph Russelthorpe, and took possession of the house in Bryanston Square. The marriage was not blessed with children, and "Aunt Russelthorpe" had consequently plenty of spare energy to expend on the training of her nieces. She was still handsome, though past her youth, when little Margaret first made her acquaintance. A tall striking woman, with very erect carriage, a decided manner, and a hard voice. She was a brilliant talker, and her parties were the rage at one time, though she was a shade too fond of monopolising attention to be a perfect hostess.

She wore her hair in little ringlets on her high narrow forehead, according to, what was then, the fashion. Her hair and eyelashes were fair, her eyes wonderfully bright, though yellowish in colour, her complexion was exquisite, and her features were regular, save that her upper lip was rather too long.

Her small nieces thought her "ugly" when they first saw her, but children never took to Mrs. Russelthorpe, and motherliness was not among her charms.

Margaret clung fast to her father, and hid her face in his coat tails when he tried to introduce her to her new guardian; Laura and Kate held each other's hands tightly, and stared hard at their aunt, trying not to blink in the sudden blaze of light.

The grand drawing-room, with its chandeliers and tall mirrors and gilded chairs, rather overawed them. "Children were out of place there."

"Miss Cripps is waiting for the girls in the schoolroom; James can show them the way," said Mrs. Russelthorpe; and then her bright eyes fell on Margaret.

"You spoil your youngest, I am afraid," she remarked.

Margaret clung closer to her father.

"Oh, don't let me be taken away from you," she sobbed; and Mr. Deane lifted her on to his shoulder, where she stopped crying; and looked defiance at her aunt, with one chubby hand resting on his wavy bright brown hair.

"You must forgive our bad manners to-night. Meg is very fond of her old father, aren't you, lady-love?" he said; and he carried her down to the dining-room (though with an apologetic glance at his sister), and she sat on his knee while he ate his dinner, and sipped sherry from his glass, and listened wide-eyed to his talk.

Mrs. Russelthorpe shook her head, and bided her time. Charles was going away to-morrow, and Meg should be taught how to behave herself before he came back.

In the meantime the little lady had a short-lived triumph.

Her baby face was like her handsome father's, and the two made a pretty pair. She put up her soft red lips to kiss him once, and her aunt turned away sharply. It was ridiculous to be angry with a child, and she was irritable with herself as well as with Meg.

"Uncle Russelthorpe" sat at the bottom of the table, watching, rather than joining in, the conversation. He had a way of slipping lower and lower in his chair, a trick which rather fascinated Meg, who wondered whether he would slide below the tablecloth if they sat long enough.

He was an insignificant little man, dull-complexioned, with wiry iron-grey whiskers that seemed to twitch with nervousness, and sharp ferret-like eyes that surprised you at times by a sudden humorous twinkle. He had given up contending with his wife long ago, and consoled himself for his abdication by sly internal comments on her proceedings. His remarks stung her occasionally, and she never quite ruled him, though he was not man enough to rule her.

Mrs. Russelthorpe and her brother waxed hot over politics; and Meg, understanding about one remark in ten, was yet unwittingly charmed by the flow of her father's sentences and the tone of his musical voice.

The taste of sherry always brought back a remembrance of him, with his chin swathed in the stiff stock of those days, his face aglow with enthusiasm, his blue eyes kindling as he spoke.

He was a very gallant gentleman, to whom all women were good and pure and beautiful; it was no wonder they liked him.

Mr. Deane was the one Radical in a Tory family at a time when party spirit ran high, and his sister was genuinely shocked at the tendencies he displayed, and combated them with excellent force and some wit. Mrs. Russelthorpe enjoyed an argument, but her brother was too keenly interested to fence well.

"My dear Augusta, it's easy to sit at an over-heaped table, and preach about the insubordination of the starving," he cried. "We've done that long enough. No wonder Lazarus outside becomes impatient!"

"Is Lazarus just outside?" asked Meg, raising her head, which was nestled against his breast.

"Ay, God knows he is!" said her father. "And this bitter winter is nipping his toes and freezing his marrow, Meg, so that he threatens to come in, and take his share of the good things. You see, sis," he added apologetically, "there are two sides to every question."

Uncle Russelthorpe emitted a sudden unmusical chuckle.

"Very true, Charles," he said. "But you are not the man to see both."

Here Meg began to cry. "I'm frightened of Lazarus," she gasped. "I don't want him to come in!" and her father laughed at and comforted her, and finally bore her up to bed, being rather flattered at her devotion to him, as well as touched at parting with his motherless children, whose hearts he had quite won during the long coach journey to London.

He saw very little of his girls as a rule, he had so many other things to think of (he was a great patron of art and letters, a dabbler in politics, and the most popular man in the county), but when he was with them he was charming, and petted them far more than was the fashion in those days.

Meg's predilection for him became quite inconvenient when he tried to leave her; and she clung to him more desperately than ever, partly from terror at her new surroundings and at being left to sleep alone in a strange room.

"I'll show you something beautiful if you'll only stop crying," he said, as he put her down on the nursery-maid's lap and knelt in front of them, Meg still clutching at the lace frills of his cuff to prevent his departure.

"You'll never, never come back no more if I let you go," said the child between her sobs; but, like a true little daughter of Eve, she allowed herself to be overcome by curiosity and her hold loosened.

He drew out a small diamond-circled miniature that hung concealed round his neck.

"Who is it?" he asked in a whisper.

"Mother!" cried Meg; and he was delighted at the recognition.

"There! You shall keep it for me if you'll let me go," he said, and put it in her pink baby fingers, closing them gently over it.

Meg smiled at the shimmer of the stones. "I'll look in and see you asleep," he told her, and kissed her very tenderly as he left; but he did not look in again. Another scene was more than he could stand, and his sister advised him not to.

Meg fell asleep at last with the miniature in her hand, but woke in the middle of the night with a terrified consciousness that some one was bending over her, and feeling stealthily under her pillow.

"It's Lazarus! Father, father!" she screamed, but the figure fled incontinently—and in the morning Meg's diamonds were gone. She never spoke of her loss: like many a nervous child she could not bear to talk of nightly terrors; but for years she was haunted with the idea of that gaunt hungry figure "just outside," who might creep again into her room and stand by her with freezing hands and frost-bitten feet,—a sort of embodied and revengeful poverty.

Nursery days ended under the new régime, and the pretty spoilt baby developed into a shy little schoolroom girl, who curtsied demurely, and spoke in a whisper when she appeared with her sisters in the drawing-room, for a terrible half-hour before dinner.

The girls had their meals in the schoolroom at the top of the house, with Miss Cripps, who, poor thing, had a dull enough time of it; and their world was quite distinct from their aunt's as a rule, though she occasionally invaded it, very much to their dismay.

Mrs. Russelthorpe had no intention of treating her nieces unfairly, and no money was spared over their education; if little love was lavished on them they certainly never expected, and probably never consciously missed it.

Laura and Kate held together with a close and exclusive alliance; and little Meg, who was rather "out of it" so far as her sisters were concerned, would nurse her doll in a corner, and wear the pink off its cheeks with her kisses.

Laura was a sturdy broad-shouldered girl, with a square jaw and clear blue eyes. She was abnormally solemn in the drawing-room, as indeed they all were, but possessed a fund of dry humour that would bubble up suddenly and quaintly even in schoolroom days, and a philosophical self-reliance that unfortunately had a tendency to degenerate into selfishness.

Kate was graceful and delicate. She had languid and rather plaintive manners, and gave promise of unusual beauty. She was lazy and apparently yielding, though, as a matter of fact, she possessed a gentle tenacity of purpose that seldom readily gave way to anything; but none of the Deanes were wanting in obstinacy.

One unhappy day Aunt Russelthorpe made a sudden descent on the schoolroom. She had a habit of bursting in at irregular intervals in order to see how things were going: for she never quite trusted any governess, and was genuinely determined to do her duty by the girls. Her advent was generally a prelude to storms.

"A good storm clears the air," she used to declare; and doubtless she went away the happier for having relieved her mind; as for the atmosphere she left behind, it is open to doubt whether that benefited.

This especial storm marked a crisis in Meg's life, warming her distrust of her aunt into an absolute dislike, that tended to make her childhood and girlhood both morbid and unhappy.

It was seven o'clock, and lessons were over—Miss Cripps was caught napping, and Laura and Kate were interrupted in the game they were playing together, when Mrs. Russelthorpe opened the door.

Miss Cripps had no savoir faire whatever, and they were all taken by surprise, and stared silently at the apparition in evening dress, suddenly appearing in that dull room.

"How sleepy you all are!" cried Mrs. Russelthorpe. "I never saw such quiet children! Do you never have any conversation? One would think I beat you. Where's Margaret? Oh, sitting in a corner as usual. You are getting much too old for dolls, Margaret. Miss Cripps shouldn't allow you to be such a baby—why, how old are you?"

Meg crimsoned up to the very roots of her hair, clasped her doll more tightly, her eyes growing round and dilated, and remained speechless.

"The child's a fool! How—old—are—you?" with exaggerated clearness, and a full stop between each word.

"Twelve," murmured Meg; and then began to cry from sheer nervousness. There are some natures whom tears aggravate beyond endurance; Aunt Russelthorpe lost patience and shook her niece, and the doll fell to the ground.

It was an old and worn and dirty doll, and Mrs. Russelthorpe hated anything old; it was awkward of Meg to drop it, and awkwardness set her nerves on edge. She caught the doll up by its leg, and with an exclamation of disgust threw it into the fire.

Meg screamed, and sprang forward to save it, with her face suddenly as white as her pinafore. Before any one could stop her, she had plunged her hand into the flames, and dragged out a melting mass.

Mrs. Russelthorpe, with praiseworthy presence of mind, caught up the rug and smothered her niece in it.

The blaze was out in a minute, but Meg's arm was badly burnt, and her doll was a blackened stump.

The child was beside herself with grief, and for the moment she no more felt physical pain than if she had been under chloroform. She turned to her aunt with her grey eyes blazing.

"Oh! how I hate you, Aunt Russelthorpe!" she cried. "I can't burn you—I wish—I wish I could; but I will hate you every moment of every day just as long as ever I live!"

It was after this episode that Meg took to slipping away in play-hours, and wandering off on her own devices. She felt secretly sore with Miss Cripps, and Laura and Kate, who had all looked on, and done nothing to avert the tragedy. She buried her doll in a corner of Bryanston Square, wrapped in a cambric handkerchief; but she could never laugh or play there afterwards.

She had suffered for that bit of wax as if it had been a sentient creature, that she had seen writhe in the flames. The object had been absurd enough, but the love that enveloped it had been living, and that died hard.

Meg shot up, mentally and physically about this time, and grew lanky and pale: she was beginning to leave childish ways behind her; but her childish grief had one odd result,—it led to a curious alliance between herself and her old uncle, who, of all people in the world, was supposed to most detest children.

The Russelthorpes seldom dined alone; but Mr. Russelthorpe, having established a reputation for eccentricity, left the entertaining to his wife, and would often shuffle off to his quiet study, even before dinner was fairly over.

One night he was earlier than usual.

His slippered feet made no noise as he crossed the hall, but he drew a breath of relief on entering his own den, and his breath was echoed by a startled gasp from the top of the library steps.

There sat a slim pale girl, with three volumes in her lap, and a fourth in her arms. She had taken sanctuary in his library (which even housemaids durst not invade) for three weeks, but she was discovered at last.

The two gazed at each other in silence. Uncle Russelthorpe's sharp eyes began to twinkle under their heavy brows, Meg's grew large with despair.

"Upon my word!" he said slowly. "And what are you here for?"

The dining-room door opened at this moment, and the sound of voices reached them, Aunt Russelthorpe's high above the rest.

"Oh, don't call her! Please, please," cried Meg, with desperate entreaty. "I didn't mean any harm, I didn't really—I always have gone before you came in—I won't ever stay so late again—I came to—to get away from them all."

"Hm—so did I," said Uncle Russelthorpe; and he shut the door, and drew the thick curtain before it.

"How long do you generally stop, ghost?"

"Till the clock strikes half-past seven," said Meg.

"Oh," said he, "you had better keep to your time. Ghosts are always regular in their visitations, but don't make any noise if you want to haunt me. I don't allow bodies in here, only spirits." He glanced at her again under his eyebrows.

"You've not flesh enough to speak of," he said. "Yes, I think you may stay."

So Meg stayed till the half-hour, when she took off her shoes in order to make no noise, stole from her high perch, and vanished on tip-toe.

She was pathetically grateful to him for the privilege; and their friendship prospered.

It was a characteristic of the old gentleman that he felt no responsibility for her. She devoured his books as she chose, and so long as she treated them carefully, he was only amused at her choice. He let her go her own way, as he let his wife; Meg worshipped him for his so-called kindness, and answered with eyes full of reverence when he addressed her; she thought his laziness patience, and his tolerance angelic.

All her life she saw heroes in ordinary men and women, and was disappointed if they failed to act up to her ideal of them. It was a propensity that cost her bitter tears—but, after all, the world might be the worse without the few fools who go on believing all things of those they love.

Sometimes Uncle Russelthorpe would take no notice of his "ghost"; and then, true to her part, she never spoke; sometimes, when the humour took him, he would draw her out and amuse himself with her quaint remarks. Occasionally her questions slightly discomposed him, "irresponsible" though he was.

"What does Socrates mean by this?" the clear, unabashed voice would ask; and Uncle Russelthorpe would interrupt the reading aloud that followed, with a hasty,—

"Oh, that is meant for old men like me, not for women or girls. You needn't think about it."

Fortunately, Meg had no morbid curiosity; and the ancient writers with whom her childish spirit communed left no stain on her innocence.

Sir Thomas Browne fascinated her; for the twelve-year-old girl, like the visionary doctor, had a strong leaning toward the supernatural.

Once Uncle Russelthorpe saw her shudder, as she bent over the big folio on her knee.

"What's the matter?" he inquired.

"Sir Thomas Browne says rather frightening things sometimes," said Meg, and proceeded to quote.

"But that those phantasms appear often, and do frequent cemeteries, charnel houses, and churches, it is because those are the dormitories, where the devil, like an insolent champion, beholds with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory in Adam."

"Do you think he really does do that, uncle?"

"Eh? Who? Does what?" said Uncle Russelthorpe, taking snuff.

"The—the devil," whispered Meg. "Does he truly walk about the cemeteries like an insolent champion?"

"We all make our own Devil, as we make our own God," said Mr. Russelthorpe. "You and your friend Sir Thomas make a very terrific one, with uncommonly long horns, because you are both cursed with imagination."

"I don't understand," said the child, after puzzling some time over this reply; and perhaps it was as well she didn't.

On the whole, the hours in the library were good for Meg. Mrs. Russelthorpe observed that she was getting less babyish, and put the change down to her own excellent treatment. She would probably have disapproved of the evening "hauntings" had she known of them; but Mr. Russelthorpe held his tongue on the subject, and they continued till Meg's lesson hours were lengthened with her petticoats, and she was well into her "teens". The cleverest of us are allowed less management than we sometimes fancy, wherein Providence shows some mercy.

CHAPTER II.

The madman saith he says so—It is strange!

Margaret was not brought out till she was nearly twenty.

"She was ridiculously young for her age," her aunt said; "besides, three unmarried nieces were too many, and Margaret was so unsteady that the least taste of excitement turned her head."

There was reason in all her remarks. A very little change excited Meg, as a very little champagne will excite habitual water-drinkers, and she was remarkably youthful in her enthusiasms.

Laura and Kate became engaged almost at the same time; Mr. Deane came down to the family place in Kent, and there were grand doings before the joint wedding.

Ravenshill had not been so gay since the time when Mr. Deane's young wife reigned there, and when the children pattered merrily about the passages.

Meg was always overjoyed when her father came home, and he on his side was inclined to be proud of his pretty daughter. She had developed fast, and was far prettier at twenty than when he had last seen her at sixteen. The youngest Miss Deane bid fair to rival Kate, who was the acknowledged beauty of the family.

She was a slim fair girl, with a sweet rather thin face, and eager innocent grey eyes.

Her looks were remarkably subject to moods. Her colour would come and go when she talked, and when she was with any one whom she cared for, and who took the trouble to overcome her shyness, she would light up into real brilliancy of beauty. Alone with her father she was often gay, and always intensely interested and sympathetic; with her aunt she was cold and constrained, having never overcome her childish horror of her.

During Meg's childhood the dislike was chiefly on her own side; for Mrs. Russelthorpe troubled her head very little about the whims of her youngest niece, but after she came out it was a different matter.

Meg had always been the favourite child, and during this last visit had become in some measure her father's confidante.

She caught his opinions with a thoroughness and wholesale admiration that delighted him; she brightened when he entered the room, and responded eagerly to his lightest humour.

There was no arrière pensée in her adaptability. Meg loved her father and hated her aunt, and made no secret of either feeling; but hers was not a nature to lay plots, and she would have been astonished had she guessed how often her aunt had said bitterly of late that "Margaret was cleverer than people fancied, and knew how to get round poor Charles".

Mrs. Russelthorpe and her youngest niece walked into Dover one day to return a call.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was determined that neither her own conscience nor the world should accuse her of neglecting her duty; and, now that Meg was fairly grown-up, she chaperoned her everywhere, with at least as much vigour as she had expended on Laura and Kate.

Meg, like her father, had a natural turn for society, but her aunt's criticisms made her nervous, and she was apt to be both shy and absent.

Some few people had been attracted by the rather pathetic charm that the girl possessed; but, as a rule, nothing but monosyllables could be got out of her in her aunt's presence, and she was generally accounted "disappointing".

The July sun was blazing as the two ladies walked along the white Dover road.

They were offered red and white wine when they reached their destination; and either that or the hot room made Meg giddy.

Her aunt cried sharply: "Margaret, are you quite moonstruck?" And then Meg "jumped" violently, and spilt her wine on the carpet.

"You want a breath of the sea to freshen you up, my dear," said her hostess kindly. "Run outside, and sit on the beach for a bit."

"Oh, thank you," cried Meg; and lifted her soft eyes, with the sudden sweet smile that always won old ladies hearts, and rather irritated her aunt.

"I am so sorry I spilt your wine, I generally am stupid. I think you had better get rid of me, and I should like to sit by the sea;" and she ran downstairs before Mrs. Russelthorpe could raise an objection.

A fresh wind crisped the surface of the water, so that it was covered with curly white flecks, and it was hard to tell which was bluest, sea or sky. Meg's eyes ached with sunshine; but it refreshed and exhilarated her, and so did the salt breeze that tossed against her cheek.

The beach was crowded with nursery-maids and children, niggers and Punches, and men selling indigestible gooseberries, and women with false lace.

Meg bought some of the last—the hungry-looking vendor making her feel sad, even after she had paid an exorbitant price for the purchase.

"Blessing on you, my lady, and may you never know a want, and live in sunshine all your days, and tread on nothing but velvet with your pretty feet, and have your hands always full of gold!" cried the beggar. But somehow the blessing sounded to Meg like a curse, and the envious hunger in the tramp's eyes made her shudder. "I hope some one else will give you more—it is all I have with me," she said gently, and stood looking after her protégée as she trudged off.

The woman was less lucky in her next appeal. The "'Arries" whom she persecuted were inclined to chaff her, whereupon she responded with a volley of abuse. Meg blushed and got up to move away, when her attention was arrested by a man who had joined the group, and laid his hand on the tramp's arm.

"I have a message for you," he said, "from the Lord, who has heard your words and is grieving for you; and for you," turning to the men, "from the Master, whose wrath is upon those who jeer at the unfortunate!"

"He is a looney straight from Bedlam!" said one of the men.

"I am not mad," said the stranger simply; and across Meg's mind flashed St. Paul's answer, "I am not mad, most noble Festus!"

This man reminded her of an apostle, but not of St. Paul—rather, perhaps, of St. Peter.

There was an unmistakably "out-of-door" look about him, and he walked with an even springy tread, like one to whom exercise is a joy.

He was about thirty years of age, burnt with sun and air. His deep set blue eyes had an intent expression in them, his mouth was partly hidden by his curly fair beard.

He clasped his hands, holding them straight in front of him, the sinews of his wrists standing out like cord. A few idlers lounged within hearing, ready for any free entertainment, religious or otherwise.

Margaret stood still and listened. He spoke at first jerkily, with long pauses between each sentence, and with an anxious strained look in his eyes as if he were waiting for inspiration.

"The Lord has sent me to speak to you. His hand leads me—from one place to another—to call the souls He died for to Him. I am unworthy, I cannot speak as I would—my words halt."

"Cheer up, old man," called out a dissipated youth irreverently; and the crowd giggled. Meg, standing on the outskirts, felt a pang of pity; she had a painful sympathy with any one who was laughed at, but apparently the touch of mockery inspired rather than depressed him. He fixed his blue eyes suddenly on the youth, who reddened and slunk back. "Ay, ay—it's to you the Lord is calling," he cried. "Speak, Lord! Speak through my lips that this soul may hear! He is crying aloud—turn—turn from the path of destruction. He stands in the way to stop you! His arms are spread out wide—His feet are bleeding. The pain of the nails crushing through them was sweeter to Him than the smoothness of the Courts of Heaven. Among His many mansions His soul is still in pain for the children created of His Father. He rests not day or night till He has drawn them to Him. Behold the hunger for souls is upon me—even upon me—and what I feel is His Spirit moving in me. Come—ye who are weary. He had not where to lay His head. Come—ye who weep—for the Man of Sorrows has tasted the cup of bitterness and He only can comfort. Come—ye who have sinned. He fought wi' that devil, and conquered him. Lord, Thou art standing by my side now, as Thou didst stand on the shores of Galilee; but this people's eyes are holden that they cannot see Thee. Yet let us kneel before Thee, for Thou art here!"

He flung himself on his knees as he spoke, and looked up as if his eyes indeed beheld the "Son of Man" in their midst.

"Kneel! Kneel!" he cried imperatively; and swayed by his intense belief, his strong personal magnetism, his hearers knelt.

In the dead silence that followed, Meg's heart was beating wildly, she alone did not kneel; perhaps her education made any display of religious emotion more repugnant to her than to the rest of his audience; but her knees were shaking under her, and she turned white with the intensity of the awe with which she realised the presence of God.

"Lord, we kneel to Thee. We acknowledge Thee our God. We will follow Thee in all things, counting riches as nought, and throwing aside the pleasures of this world. Thou who wast poor among men, and travel-stained and weary, shall be from henceforth our King and Pattern," he cried, still looking up as if making a vow to One whom his bodily eyes beheld. Then suddenly his glance fell on Meg.

"There is one here who does not kneel to Thee yet," he cried. "Oh, my God, touch her, melt her! The daughters of Jerusalem followed Thee weeping. Mary wept at Thy cross. Wilt Thou not draw her too? this woman, who longs to come to Thee, but fears——" Then, with a ring of triumph in his tone, as if an answer had been vouchsafed to him:—

"He calls you!" he cried. "You have chosen for Him! Kneel!—kneel! Pour out your soul in thanksgiving!" And Meg, sobbing, fell on her knees.

She heard little of the oration which followed; she did not know that a man behind her was groaning over his sins; that two girls had been persuaded to take the pledge; that one tipsy old woman was proclaiming, somewhat pharisaically, that "she'd been converted fourteen years ago, and 'adn't no call to be 'saved' fresh now."

The preacher's voice and the splash of the waves on the shingle sounded far away and indistinct.

Always she had longed for a personal revelation of the Christ; and now it came to her.

As she had never realised before she realised now the "travel-stained" Son of the Father, whose mighty love had made the joys of Heaven pain till the lost were found. Ah, well! Since the day of Pentecost, and before, it is through man's voice that that revelation has come, and through men who have been baptised with a fiery baptism.

Presently they began to sing; and some one officiously touched her shoulder, and said, "Ain't you a-goin' to join, miss?" And she stood up, feeling as if dazed by a sudden fall.

Her overwrought nerves were jarred.

The claptrappy tune, the overdone emphasis, the vulgar intonation distressed her; she was ashamed of the feeling, but could not help it; she turned to walk away. The preacher paused in the middle of a line.

"You have put your hand to the plough; you will not turn back!" he cried pleadingly. The public appeal annoyed her for a second, but when she met his eyes, bright with an earnest desire to "save her soul," her anger died.

"I hope not," she said gently; and walked away with his fervent "God help you!" ringing in her ears.

CHAPTER III.

The world is very odd, we see;
We do not comprehend it.
But in one fact we all agree,—
God won't and we can't mend it.

Being common-sense it can't be sin
To take it as I find it:
The pleasure—to take pleasure in;
The pain—try not to mind it.

—A. H. Clough.

Dover was unusually gay in the year when Barnabas Thorpe held his revival meetings there. Mr. Deane gave a large ball at Ravenshill, all the county magnates attended, and the guests danced in the old picture gallery.

It was a remarkably pretty entertainment, and the host and his three daughters were worthy descendants of the ruffled and powdered Deanes who looked down on them from the walls.

They were a stately family. Mrs. Russelthorpe herself was a most dignified woman, and Kate and Margaret had inherited her grace of bearing.

Margaret in her gold and white dress, with pearls on her white neck, was a good deal admired, but her attention kept wandering from her partners to her father, who was talking and laughing merrily, but who coughed every now and then rather ominously. Consumption, that scourge of so many English families, was terribly familiar in this one.

Meg had been immensely excited about the ball before-hand, and had taken intense interest in all the preparations for it, including her own new dress; but, at the last, something had occurred to change the current of her thoughts, she might be arrayed in sackcloth now for all she cared.

"Margaret's character comes out even in small things," Mrs. Russelthorpe observed cuttingly. "She is unstable as water. One can never depend on her in the least. Where do you think I found her this afternoon? Just emerging from a vulgar crowd on Dover sands, where she had been staring at a singing minstrel or a play-actor or a buffoon of some kind! She came in with her head full of nothing else, and wanted to tease her father into going back with her to listen too."

"Ah! I heard that fellow on the beach; his buffoonery takes the form of preaching," said the lawyer to whom she had made the remark, and who was rather a favourite with Mrs. Russelthorpe. He glanced at Margaret, who was standing a little way off, but was quite unconscious of his observation.

"It is a curious question whether that sort of canter is most knave or fool," he said. "I incline to the former hypothesis; Deane, to the latter. Miss Deane sees him as a sort of inspired prophet, I suppose. A good deal depends on the colour of one's own glasses, you know. After all, hers are the prettiest!"

Mrs. Russelthorpe shrugged her shoulders with a short laugh as she turned away.

"I did not know you had such an innocent taste for bread and butter," she said.

Mr. Sauls looked after her with some amusement; it was not the first time that he had noticed that there was no love lost between Mr. Deane's favourite daughter and her aunt, and he had occasionally felt sorry for the girl, as evidently the weaker of the two.

"If it isn't possible to serve two masters, two mistresses must be a degree more hopeless," he remarked to himself. "I really don't know that I can do without Mrs. Russelthorpe yet—but I'll risk it!" And he walked across the room, and asked Miss Deane to dance.

Meg stared with uncomplimentary surprise; she had always considered that Mr. Sauls "flattered Aunt Russelthorpe," and had despised him accordingly with sweeping girlish severity. She would have refused to dance if she had had sufficient presence of mind, but he (who was never wanting in that quality) took her momentary hesitation for acceptance, and she found herself engaged to him, she hardly knew how.

She could not have discovered a partner more entirely unlike herself if she had ransacked England for her opposite; and her father laughed, but with a little sense of chagrin, when he saw Mr. Sauls offer her his arm.

The Saulses usually came to Dover for a few months in the year. The county people had turned their aristocratic backs on them, till Mr. Deane, in a moment of generous enthusiasm, had ridden full tilt against "pernicious prejudices," and had introduced young Sauls as his dear friend right and left.

This had occurred some time before. County exclusiveness was no longer the subject on which Mr. Deane was hottest, and, to tell the truth, George Sauls was no longer his dear friend; but the young man amused Mrs. Russelthorpe, and had kept his footing in the house.

Nature had not been kind to Mr. Sauls in the matter of looks, but had made it up in brains; he knew his own worth in that respect, and meant to get full market value for his capabilities. He had an assured belief in himself, of which time proved him justified.

When the plums of his profession began to fall to his share, people called him uncommonly lucky; but fortune only pretends to be blind, I fancy, and seldom favours fools.

"You are wishing me at Jericho," he remarked, as Meg unwillingly took his arm. "But your father's daughter ought to be liberal above all things—ought not she?"

Meg, whose generosity was easily wakened, coloured and then smiled, pleased at the implied compliment to Mr. Deane.

"I know that my father is always fair to every one," she said. "I did not mean to be rude to you, but he promised me this dance, and I am so disappointed that he has not come. Of course, it is nicer to dance with father than with anybody."

"Of course," assented Mr. Sauls. He would have disbelieved that statement if any other girl had ventured on it; but he was intelligent enough to appreciate Meg's truthfulness. Indeed, the very essence of George Sauls' cleverness lay in the capability of rightly estimating many diverse sorts of characters.

He persevered in his efforts to interest her, partly because he was in the habit of persevering in anything he undertook, partly because it had occurred to him that Miss Deane was an heiress, and partly because she really attracted him, perhaps by the law of contraries.

He was more than ten years Meg's senior in age, and twenty in experience; therefore he listened to her opinions with respect, and took care not to appear to patronise her. Meg was interested very easily.

Her shyness wore off, and she let him draw out wonderful theories imbibed from her father about Universal Brotherhood, and the Rights of the People, and the New School of Poetry, and heaven knows what besides.

Mr. Sauls led her on, and hid his occasional amusement fairly well.

Miss Deane was a "very transparent little girl," he thought; but yet she touched him.

He felt sorry for any one so crammed with illusions, so terribly sensitive, and so remarkably unpractical—besides, she was remarkably pretty too!

Meg thought him very ugly at first, and first impressions were vivid (though not always lasting) with her. Meg had no "indifference" in her; she always liked or disliked emphatically—and his was not the kind of face to take her fancy.

Mr. Sauls was a heavy-looking man, thick, and rather round-shouldered. He was dark-complexioned, with a coarse clever mouth, and a good forehead.

Eyeglasses happened to be an affectation of the year among young lawyers. Mr. Sauls had a trick of dropping his when he was amused or excited, and opening his eyes, which would brighten as suddenly as an owl's when it startles you by lifting the dull film, and transfixing you by an uncomfortably "wide-awake" gaze.

He was perfectly aware that Meg had disliked him, and that he was changing her opinion, and entertaining her pretty successfully.

The more trouble he took, the more determined he became to make friends with this quixotic maiden, who fancied herself wildly democratic, and who was rather more fastidious in reality than any one he had met, saving the father she occasionally reminded him of.

He led the conversation away from abstract subjects after a time, and fell into two or three small errors, but had wit to see and cover them.

For example, he made a sharp remark at the expense of Mrs. Russelthorpe, whom he felt convinced Meg disliked. Meg raised her eyebrows, drew herself up, and snubbed the witticism.

"All these Deanes are d——d thin-skinned," he reflected, for more than once his own coarser nature had rasped and offended Meg's father, but he did not make that mistake again, and he admired the girl none the less for the rebuff.

He liked her pride, which was quite unconscious, and her inconsistencies amused him.

They looked down upon the waltz (which had only just come in, and which many people saw for the first time that night) from the picture gallery which runs round the great hall.

Mr. Sauls was content with that arrangement, Meg stood tapping her small foot in time to the music.

"Father does not like to see me dance anything but squares, unless it is with him," she said; and Mr. Sauls, following the direction of her wistful eyes, observed that "Mr. Deane approved waltzing only for other people's daughters," but, taught by experience, refrained from making his comment aloud.

He earned his partner's warm gratitude by relinquishing his claim to take her to supper, when (that fast innovation having whirled to its close) Meg's father actually remembered her; but later in the evening he discovered that she had had nothing to eat, and insisted on carrying her off and supplying her with chicken and ice cream as compensation for his former abnegation.

Supper was really over, and they were almost alone in the big dining-room.

Meg had a bright colour in her cheeks now, her eyes and lips both laughed, her spirits had gone up like quick-silver. Mr. Sauls had never seen any one change so quickly and completely; she was radiant for the moment, and joy is a great beautifier.

Her excitement was contagious. It did credit to the man's self-command that he managed to keep his admiration to himself; Meg would be hard to win he knew; he smiled, thinking how exceedingly astonished she would have been if she could have read his mind, and seen that he had set it hard on winning her.

On one point he did allow himself a slightly incautious question.

"Miss Deane," he said suddenly, "I haven't the faintest shadow of right to ask, but—have you come in for a million of money? Or is your worst enemy dead? Or what good fortune has befallen you since the beginning of this evening? There, I am quite at your mercy! I had no earthly business to inquire, only—I should so uncommonly like to know."

Meg laughed ruefully.

"How very bad I must be at keeping my own counsel," she said; "or else you must be very clever. Don't tell any one else, please, for it isn't quite settled yet. I asked my father to let me go with him. He is going abroad after the wedding. I want him to let me live with him altogether. It is so difficult to find father alone in the daytime, and that was why I was so very anxious to dance with him to-night. It is impossible to ask a favour with my—with some one else looking on." She paused a moment; then the pleasure of telling good news brought a still happier curve to her parted lips.

"Isn't it good of him?" she cried. "He has said yes."

"No! how remarkably kind!" said Mr. Sauls, a little drily; but this time Meg was quite unconscious of the possibility of sarcasm.

She enjoyed all the rest of the night with the keen power of enjoyment, that is perhaps some compensation for a keen susceptibility to pain; and when the guests had departed and the lights were all out in the hall, she ran up to her own room humming a dance as she ran.

"Meg is gay to-night," said her father, lifting her face by the chin, and kissing her on the landing. "Good-night, Peg-top; don't dance in your sleep! I wish you would always keep that colour."

"So I will when you take me to live with you," whispered Meg.

She put out her candle, and throwing open her window sat looking out down the moonlit road, spinning fancies as beautiful as moonbeams.

There was no touch of sentiment about them, for the habit she had of comparing the men she met to her father was always to their disadvantage. How very much handsomer, cleverer, and incomparably better he was than all the rest of his sex put together! How charming to keep house for him! How delightful to help him carry out all his ideas! How good she would be, even to Aunt Russelthorpe, when she entered into possession of her castle in the air! Her mood grew graver as she sat there like a ghost in the dark, watching the white clouds chase each other across the deep night sky. She remembered the preacher on the sands again and shivered, half frightened to think how his words had taken hold of her. "Thou who wast poor among men, and travel-stained and weary, shalt be our King."

What would the preacher have thought of them all to-night? What sort of discipleship was this? Meg involuntarily fingered the gleaming gold and white dress, which certainly seemed in pretty strong opposition to the ascetic side of religion.

"But when I live with father, he will explain everything and make things right," she repeated to herself. "Father" had no leisure to listen to her difficulties at present, but in the good time coming it would all be quite different; and in the meanwhile where he saw no harm of course there could be none. It is really such a great comfort to have a pope, that it is no wonder some women keep their eyes shut so long as they possibly can. "I shall read all the books he likes and become very clever, but not at all a 'blue-stocking,' because he doesn't like women who think they know as much as men," reflected Meg. "I shall be able to choose my own dresses, and I think I shall wear sky-blue, for it is his favourite colour. We'll spend very little on eating or drinking, because he doesn't really approve of luxury, and——Oh! what was that?"

She jumped up, rather startled and guilty. Had Aunt Russelthorpe divined her thoughts, and come to knock down her towering palace?

No; it was only Laura, in a dressing-gown, looking comfortably substantial and cheerful. Meg was surprised to see her, for the sisters did not often seek her society.

"I thought I should find you awake, Meg," said she. "Do, for goodness' sake! shut your window. What an uncomfortable child you are! Why, you have not even taken off your ball-room dress, and you have no candle! Don't look at me as if I were a ghost, please. I know it's an odd time of the night to choose, but I hardly ever see you alone in the day, and somehow I wanted to talk to you. Kate likes to have me to herself, you see."

"Yes, I know," said Meg rather sadly; for Kate was jealous of any claim on Laura's affection.

Laura sat down on the bed, resting her hands on her knees, and turning out her elbows. The attitude made her look squarer than ever; but there was an air of purpose about her set little figure that tickled Meg's fancy,—Meg's sighs and smiles were always near together!

"Oh!" she cried, laughing. "Even your shadow on the wall looks as if it had something to say, and meant to say it."

"We settled about the wedding to-night," said Laura, not noticing this irrelevant remark. "Kate and I are going to be married on the same day,—this day month!"

"So soon!" said Meg. "Oh, Laura," she hesitated a moment, being always shy with her sisters, "I hope you will—will like it." "Will be happy" was what she meant, but Laura was apt to snub any expression of feeling.

"I shouldn't do it if I didn't!" said Laura; "if by 'it' you mean matrimony. The sooner we get the wedding over the better, I think. Aunt Russelthorpe is arranging it all, and settling who are to be the bridesmaids. I don't mean to interfere. It is the very last chance she shall ever have of putting a finger into any pie of mine, so she may as well make the most of it; but I came to talk about you, not about myself. Follow my example, Meg, and get away from this house as soon as you can, for if you and Aunt Russelthorpe are left together here, you will drive each other perfectly crazy."

"I spoke to father to-night," said Meg. "I begged him to let me live with him, and he nearly promised that——"

"That which he'll never perform," said Laura. "Oh, Meg, what a baby you are! Can't you see that it's no good depending on father? Oh! you needn't look so angry. He can't help it,—it's not his fault, of course. Aunt Russelthorpe is stronger than he is, that's all, and she is jealous of you. My dear, you think you understand him better than she does, because you sympathise with all his fine ideas, and she doesn't; but she knew him before you were heard of; she can make up his mind for him, and save him trouble, and make him comfortable. On the whole, you'd much better study a man's weaknesses than his nobilities, if you want to have a hold over him; but you'll never take in that bit of wisdom if you live to a hundred, and I expect she was born with it."

"Father hasn't got weaknesses—at least, I don't want to discover them. For shame, Laura, to talk so of him!" cried Meg. And Laura laughed and nodded.

"Just so! That's where Aunt Russelthorpe has the pull over you," she retorted. "Don't quarrel with her, Meg. You'll get the worst of it. Try and keep the peace till you are independent of her. Don't fight for the possession of father, for it's a losing game, but take what offers, and when you are clear of her authority snub her as much as you like. Shan't I enjoy it if she tries to interfere with me after I am married? I hope she will," said Laura, with a twinkle of fun; "but I am afraid she won't. She is too clever for that. Really, I've a great admiration for my aunt."

"Have you?" said Meg. "I hate her! but I shouldn't want to snub her if I were free of her. I only want never to be in the same place, or world, with her again. I shiver when I hear her voice."

"Exactly!" said Laura. "And that is so silly of you, Meg. What is the use of a hate like that? It only gives her another advantage. However, I suppose it's something in the way you are made that makes you take things so. You always did; and you'll go on getting more and more miserable, and you will aggravate her more and more, till she wears you out altogether, unless you get away; and you can't go alone, and you may wait till you are grey or till my aunt is dead before father takes things into his own hands; and I really don't see how I can have you, because——"

"I wouldn't trouble you," said Meg proudly. She stood very upright, and looked at her sister with wondering eyes. What were all these gloomy prognostications leading to?

"Well then, because you would not trouble me," said Laura. "And that leaves one way out of the difficulty. Marry as soon as you can, Meg, because you are too unhappy here! It was bad enough before; but now that you've thrown down your gauntlet (how could you be such a little fool?), and tried to get father away from Aunt Russelthorpe, it will be ten times worse. If it were I it wouldn't matter. I never care twopence what she says; but you'll suffer a martyrdom like St. Sebastian. All her spiteful little arrows will stick. I declare on my honour, Meg, I would give a thousand pounds, as well as my blessing, to hear you were going to marry any decently rich man who would be good to you!"

"Oh Laura!" cried Meg, half amused, half aghast.

"Oh Margaret!" cried her sister, mimicking her. "Yes; I know these are not the right sentiments for a bride to express. If we had a mother I shouldn't offer them; but I kept thinking about you this evening, and I didn't like my thoughts. Don't you wait for impossibilities, Meg. I am sure you believe in an impossible sort of lover, if ever you condescend to think of one at all; half a knight and half a saint; some one who has never loved any other woman, and never will, and yet isn't a milksop; who drinks nothing but water, and doesn't care what he eats, but is as strong as Goliath; who is full of high-flown ideas, and yet madly in love; who is handsome as Adonis, and does not know it. Well! don't expect him; he doesn't exist, and, what's more, he would be a monster of unnaturalness if he did! Take the man who'll fight your battles for you, even though he isn't beautiful. Don't bother too much about his ideals. If he is a good sort at home, and sticks to—well, his vulgar old mother, we'll say—he'll probably stick to you. If he has brains, you'll grow proud of him; if he is ambitious, that will suit you."

She watched Meg while she spoke; but Meg was utterly unconscious: it never occurred to her to put a name to Laura's hypothetical suitor; and Laura (whose shrewd eyes had seen a good deal that evening) could only hope her sage advice might bear fruit later.

"Well, I've said my say," she remarked, taking up her candle and getting off the bed. "Don't forget it! Don't be wretched because you cannot have the moon. Who can? Not one of us gets what he starts by wanting—not one in ten!" said Laura with a half-sigh. "But the people who eat their half-loaves and make the most of makeshifts, are the happy ones—as happiness goes. Good-night!"

She got as far as the door, then turned, with a half comical, half rueful face. "I might have been a better sister, I daresay," she said; "and half a pound of help is worth a pound of good advice, tho' mine's excellent; but, you see, there is Kate, and it doesn't pay to be fond of too many people,—there'd be nothing left for oneself."

Meg made no answer. Laura paused a moment longer. It was odd how her heart softened to-night to the "little sister" she had never taken much account of before.

"Let's kiss each other for once!" she said. And Meg surprised, flung both arms round her neck.

"Oh Laura, you do like me just a little then, don't you?" she cried. "And you don't really believe all you've been saying? I do hate it so! I would rather be unhappy all my life, than think that nobody ever gets anything but half-loaves and makeshifts. It is better to be miserable than satisfied like that."

"Oh Lord!" said Laura, who had a trick of strong language. "This comes of trying to put a modicum of common-sense into your head. Go your own way and be miserable, then. Some people do prefer it, I believe!" And Meg got into bed at last, and had a horrible nightmare, in which she was dancing with an angel who discoursed of the regeneration of the world, till suddenly a horror fell on her, and she saw he was the devil in disguise, and fled shrieking to Laura and Uncle Russelthorpe, who were looking on from a corner, and Uncle Russelthorpe chuckled and remarked:—

"Yes; every one has the original old gentleman under his skin; scratch deep enough, and you'll find the savage instinct at the bottom of all our refinements". A speech which Uncle Russelthorpe had really made years before, and which had puzzled Meg's childish brain at the time; but Laura shrugged her square shoulders, and said:—

"My dear, make the best of him; it is what we all do in the end".

Meg's sisters were married from Ravenshill in the pretty month of May.

The bridal party walked through the garden to the chapel under archways of flowers and flags.

Kate looked beautiful; Laura, very unmoved and like her ordinary self, only as they passed under the church door she slid her hand into her sister's and held it tight. Meg, following, saw the action. Kate hardly noticed it; but that was an old story; indeed, it is a story that goes on from generation to generation.

The sunshine shone between clouds, and there was a light spring shower, just sprinkling the procession as it wound between the beds of anemones and daffodils. The drops clung to Meg's soft hair, and glistened there like diamonds through the service.

There were fourteen bridesmaids chosen by Aunt Russelthorpe, none of them personal friends of either bride. Fourteen maids in green and white,—a goodly company!

Meg walked first, looking rather shy at finding herself in such unwonted prominence; but she forgot that in the solemnity of the occasion when they had entered the cool dark old church, and stood grouped under the stained glass window that was put up by a Deane of the sixteenth century in memory of a husband who died fighting.

How many Deanes had been christened and married within those old walls? George Sauls, standing far back in the aisle, wondered what visions were passing through the chief bridesmaid's brain, and put in imagination a white veil on her graceful bowed head.

Aunt Russelthorpe nudged her suddenly. "Are you asleep, Margaret? Take Laura's bouquet and gloves," she whispered in a sharp undertone; and Meg blushed crimson, and hid her confusion in an armful of blossoms.

"Meg's awkwardness was the only contretemps," as Mrs. Russelthorpe said. "And that no one could provide against," she added.

Everything else went off splendidly, and everything else was the result of her generalship.

Uncle Russelthorpe did not appear in church. "He is getting more eccentric than ever," people whispered; but he was in the porch in cap and slippers when the brides drove off.

"Good-bye, Laura!" he said. "So you've got a husband instead of a sister to take care of! Lord! Lord! how time flies! Twelve years since you all came to us! I hope you'll be happy, my dear."

"I'm sure I shall," said Laura cheerfully. "I mean to be. Good-bye, uncle;" and she kissed him, for the first time in her life. Aunt Russelthorpe had never approved of their kissing their uncle; and Meg could not help wondering whether it was affection or new-born independence that prompted the embrace.

Kate held out her hand coldly. She was ashamed of the queer figure the old man cut.

Laura's face positively beamed when she bid farewell to her aunt.

"Mind you come and see me," she insisted hospitably, and a little patronisingly, "I shall enjoy it!" She kissed Meg hurriedly, but clung a moment to Kate. Kate's face was wet as the two parted.

So they drove off in a shower of rice, and Aunt Russelthorpe stood waving her handkerchief till they were out of sight. She had never felt more kindly towards her nieces; and they, who had come to her as children, and left as women, were glad enough to go. Surely there was something a little tragic about the extreme cheerfulness of that wedding; but no one thought it so, except perhaps their father, who said with a sigh:—

"One wants the mother on these occasions". And when the last carriage had departed and the last guest gone Mrs. Russelthorpe drew a long breath of satisfaction as she reflected again that she certainly had "done well for those girls".

She expressed as much to her brother, while they lingered together in the great drawing-room before dinner. (Mr. Deane was the only member of the family who ever beguiled Mrs. Russelthorpe's restless spirit into dawdling.)

He sighed rather heavily.

"I am sure I don't understand how it is," he said, "but I seem to know very little of them. Laura has always been so reserved, and Kate so cold; and yet I am very fond of my children, and Meg is fond of me. I won't have her marrying,—do you hear, sis? I can't spare poor little Meg, and I really couldn't stand another son-in-law."

"Margaret is neither poor nor little. I cannot imagine why you always call her by baby names," said Mrs. Russelthorpe, with a hard ring in her voice, which made him look up in surprise.

"Parental foolishness, I suppose," he said. "I can't imagine why you should mind if I do." And Mrs. Russelthorpe bit her lip, and repented of her ebullition of impatience.

Apparently her words had given him food for thought; for after a few minutes' pause he said gravely:—

"I am meditating taking her away with me. You have been wonderfully good. I can't think what I should have done with my poor bairns if I had not had you to fall back on years ago; but, after all, Meg is quite grown-up now,—at least, so she constantly assures me; and she does not seem over happy here, though I daresay that is not your fault, and she is exceedingly anxious to come. In fact, I couldn't say her nay. I am afraid you will feel hurt, sis; but——"

"On the contrary, I have no doubt it is a capital plan," said Mrs. Russelthorpe briskly; and he leant back with an air of relief. After all, Augusta was always sensible. Meg had imagined that her aunt would be angry at the idea, but Meg was apt to take fancies.

"Of course, you will give up wandering about the country when you constitute yourself chaperon to a pretty daughter," said his sister, sitting down opposite him, to comfortably discuss the project. "Margaret is very attractive. In fact, to outsiders she is the most winning of the three. I noticed that she excited a great deal of admiration at our ball. She is so innocent she needs very careful guarding. I never let her go anywhere alone, not even into Dover."

"I had thought of showing her Italy," said Mr. Deane doubtfully; "but,—well, perhaps you are right there, sis. I couldn't be constantly at her elbow, and she is very rash. I remember now that I meant to give her a hint about Sauls, who is all very well, and an uncommonly clever man, and excellent company; but the way he stuck to my daughter was—well—" (with a laugh) "was like his impertinence."

"A girl of Margaret's age cannot be expected to have much worldly wisdom. It really is hardly desirable that she should. I did not blame the child," said Mrs. Russelthorpe, with a leniency which would considerably have astonished her niece. "But no doubt you will be cautious for her. You can't be too careful. I suppose you will live here? She is full young to be mistress of such a big establishment, is she not? And at present she is extremely forgetful, and naturally has no idea whatever of housekeeping. But then you could manage things yourself practically, and there are several nice families whom you could invite to the house. Bachelor parties would be out of the question, in the peculiar circumstances; but Margaret needs young society. There are the Ripleys of Ripley Court, and the Melluishes of St. Andrew's, for example."

"Oh no; we couldn't have them," said Mr. Deane hastily. "You know, sis, a very small dose of county magnates goes a long way with me. I don't mind a ball for once, but I couldn't live in their set; besides, Meg swears that she will be perfectly happy in a prolonged tête-à-tête."

"Yes?" said his sister. She smiled, but a little doubtfully. "It would hardly be fair on her to take her at her word," she remarked. "And I know that you are not selfish, Charles, and don't mean it seriously when you say you don't wish her to marry. Meg isn't cut out for an old maid. Oh, you'll soon see that, in common justice to her, you must entertain the county if you have the responsibility of bringing her out. As for her being happy alone with you, I do not for a moment doubt her truthfulness; she is candour itself, but she is variable, and she takes her own moods seriously. Meg will be ready for a convent one day, and a dance the next. You can never be sure of her. You are a charming companion; perhaps if you amuse her a good deal she will not be moped with you. I have found her fits of depression rather trying, but then I always consider that they arise from delicacy of constitution. You will watch her health, won't you? Her chest is delicate, you know, and——"

"My dear Augusta!" he cried, appalled. "What a fearful number of injunctions! I wonder whether I am equal to all these cares? Don't heap on any more, please!"

"You'll find out the rest for yourself," said Mrs. Russelthorpe cheerfully. "It is an excellent plan, as I said before, and you will not mind a little sacrifice of comfort. You'll stay here with Margaret, when Joseph and I go back to town, then?"

"Well—no—I am not quite prepared for that," he said, and dismay evidently filled his heart. "Especially if Meg hasn't any notion of housekeeping. I suppose it wouldn't do to take her to Florence with me, eh?—No—well, since she is so delicate, and, as you say, so pretty and attractive and guileless, perhaps I could hardly manage that; but she'll be terribly disappointed. I tell you what! I will think it all over, and write to her about it all from abroad. We need not give up the idea of her coming to me some time. No doubt we can arrange something."

Mrs. Russelthorpe acquiesced. "No doubt," she said; but she knew that she had won that game.

Mr. Deane left England a few weeks later.

As he rode through the village with rather a heavy heart, for to do him justice Meg's wistful face haunted him, he came upon an excited group of people, in the centre of which stood a delicate-looking youth, and a big fair-bearded man, who was talking with a strong north-country drawl.

"Why, that is Widow Penge's son, and he is walking without his crutches!" cried Mr. Deane, drawing rein. "And that other fellow must be the preacher little Meg is so mad about."

"I always thought Andrew Penge was a bit of an impostor," said Mrs. Russelthorpe, who accompanied him; "and now I know it! Come, Charles, my horse won't stand, and you'll miss the coach."

The preacher had made a step forward as she spoke.

"Is that Mr. Deane of Ravenshill? I've something to deliver to one o' his family," he said; but Mr. Deane had ridden on.

"He was going to give us a word in season," Mrs. Russelthorpe declared contemptuously. "Charles'" good-natured tolerance for all kinds of enthusiasts irritated her.

Mr. Deane laughed his light kindly laugh.

"Meg wanted me to make acquaintance with him, and I half promised I would. I've lost my chance," he said. And his words were truer than he thought.

CHAPTER IV.

It was Meg's twenty-first birthday. She woke early, and went into the garden while the dew was still thick on the grass, and there was a wet haze, precursor of a broiling day, over everything.

"How old I am growing!" she thought, as she shut the door softly behind her and smiled with pleasure, and a most youthful sense of adventure, at being out at that hour. She buried her nose in a cluster of seven-sister roses, and their fragrant wet little faces covered hers with dew. Meg was too fond of flowers to pick them.

How lovely it was! The earth smelt so sweet, the spider's webs sparkled like silver traceries.

It was an enchanted land, seen through the mist; even the stones on the gravel path showed wonderful colours, though they felt cold through thin slippers.

The girl looked as if she had stepped out of a fairy story herself, while she wandered along with a soft wonder in her eyes. Her mind was filled with guesses as to what would happen to her in the year to come. A birthday was a fresh turning-point to Meg, from which she tried to peep down a vista of possibilities.

She leant over the garden gate presently, resting her round white arms on it, and gazing idly up the quiet road.

The flickering shadows played on her face, and made leafy patterns on her white dress, and the honeysuckle touched her shoulder caressingly.

Meg bent her head, and just put her lips to the fresh dew-washed flower, then started violently, for a harsh laugh greeted her childish action.

"Why, my pretty lady; you ought to have something better worth the kissing!" cried some one.

Meg stood erect, both offended and frightened, but much too proud to run away.

"What are you?" she said. And then a thrill of recollection came to her; the voice was the voice of the hungry tramp who had begged from her on the Dover beach. The woman scrambled up from the deep shadow of the hedge under which she had spent the night, and stepped into the road.

There was something gipsy-like about her bearing, and her cold eyes scanned the young lady sharply.

"There's no mistaking the nest you come from, my pretty," said she. "You've your father—and a handsome gentleman he is too—written all over you. You've got his smile too," as Meg's mobile face involuntarily brightened at the compliment. "Sweet as sugar-sticks, and proud as the devil. Hold out your hand, my lady, and let the gipsy read your life for you. Why, you ain't scared, are you?"

Meg hesitated a second, then stretched out her hand over the gate. The woman was dirty, and too free in her speech to please the little lady, who was used to being treated to low curtsies and deepest respect by her father's tenants; but then there was a taste of excitement about the fortune-telling, and Meg was half superstitious and half amused.

Her hand looked very white and delicate in the tramp's grimy fingers. The woman glanced from it to the girl's fair face, and began to prophesy with an earnestness and apparent belief in her own words, which were perhaps not wholly simulated. The blue veins stood out too clearly, and the lines on Meg's palm were deeply cut.

"You've more than one lover already," said the prophetess. "But your heart's not touched yet. There's a dark man who is set on having you, but you'll only bring him ill-luck. There's a woman who hates you because she's jealous. Take care, or she'll do you a mischief. There's a great change coming in your life soon—and——" But Meg snatched her hand away and stood ashamed. The preacher of the beach was coming up the hill.

She stepped back into the shadow in order that he might go by without seeing her: she did not care to be caught having her fortune told like a silly servant girl. She knew of no reason in the world why he should stop at the Ravenshill gate; and yet an absolute certainty that he would so stop, and that he would speak to her, came over her. Perhaps it was because he was walking with an evident purpose, looking neither to the right nor left; but she was hardly surprised, only slightly dismayed, as at a fulfilled presentiment, when the man turned as she expected, and came straight towards her.

His hand was on the latch before he saw Meg; then he went to the point without any preamble.

"I've come to bring you this," he said. "Will ye take it? It's yours by rights."

He was not in the least astonished, as Meg observed, at finding her there. Barnabas Thorpe possibly did not know how seldom Miss Deane was out at five in the morning; besides, it took a good deal to move him to wonder. "The Lord had led her," he supposed, which was sufficient explanation for anything.

Meg was rather awe-struck. She felt as if it were highly probable that this miraculously gifted preacher, who looked like a fisherman, but spoke with the authority of inspiration, might deliver some supernatural sign into her keeping. He drew a handkerchief out of his pocket; it was rolled into a tight ball, and he handed it to her without more ado. She could feel something cold and hard through the cotton.

Her slim fingers trembled a little when they struggled with the knot; then she gave a scream of joyful surprise.

"Oh! it's father's locket!" she cried. There in her hand lay the diamond-circled miniature, her mother's face looking out from the midst of the shimmering stones, with the gentle wistful expression she remembered of old.

Meg had thought more of the setting than of the portrait, when it had lain in her baby hand; but the face had impressed itself on her memory all the same. Now it seemed to her like a birthday present from both parents.

Barnabas Thorpe watched her ecstasies disapprovingly; and when she lifted her beautiful eyes to his with a "Thank you, with all my heart," he said gravely:—

"You have not me to thank. I was only an instrument, and I'm thinking such stones as those are bought wi' too high a price."

"I don't understand you," said Meg.

In the pause that ensued, the tramp, who had been watching this curious episode with some interest, thought fit to put in her claim. "You must have been born with a caul, missy," said she. "For folk who lose diamonds don't generally get 'em back so easy. Let me just finish your fortune for you: it will be worth the telling."

"No, no," said Meg. "It was silly of me. I don't want to hear it now." She put her hand in her pocket, meaning to pay the woman and get rid of her; but, alas! it was empty.

"I'll wait here, honey, and you'll run in and fetch your purse, and then I'll tell you the rest," coaxed the gipsy, when the preacher interposed, "What do ye want playing with the devil?" he said. "I can't stand by and see a maid dabble wi' witchcraft. God has your fortune in His own hand. Leave it there. It's safe with Him."

"Oh, ay, you're one of the pious ones!" cried the woman angrily. "Down on a poor body for picking up a scrap here and there, while you're pocketing pounds yourself! Where did you get them diamonds from? What'll she give you for 'em? The pretty lady don't ask where you got 'em, 'cos for why, you're young and lusty, and she——"

"Off with you!" said Barnabas. And Meg was rather shocked to see him take her by the arms and march her down the hill. He did it good-naturedly enough, however.

When they reached the bottom, the woman wriggled out of his grasp, and shook her fist at Meg.

"Oh, it's all very fine! You may laugh, and welcome; but it's the wrong side of your mouth you'll laugh with one day," she shouted hoarsely, though Meg was in truth little inclined to be merry. "You'll leave your finery behind you. You'll run out of the garden into the highway. And you'll repent it every day of your life! You'll be cold and hungry and foot-sore; and you'll wish you were in your grave, and your people will say, 'She had better not have been born'. They love their name better than they love you; for there's none so cold-hearted as gentlefolk, and so you'll find. They will call you a disgrace to ——"

"That'll do!" said the preacher. "Let the lady be. Cursing is an ill trade, missus. Which way are ye going?"

"I've told her her fortune, though she cheated me out of my due," said the tramp; and she strode off grumbling. She was not half so irate with the preacher as with the "fine lady," though it had been he who had practically interfered with her. She could understand Barnabas Thorpe's forcibly expressed rebukes, but Meg's shilly-shallying she put down to a mean desire to escape payment. "Gentlefolk were very mean," she muttered.

Meg still stood with the diamonds in her hand, when the preacher returned to the gate.

She wondered whether she ought to offer him a reward, or whether he considered himself above that. She wished that she had not got up quite so early, no one was awake to consult. Barnabas Thorpe shook his head at her embarrassed suggestion. "No, thank you," he said. "I never take money for doing the Lord's work; and your trinket there was given me to ease a poor soul whom Satan had in his clutches. Will ye come with me and see her? She's sore afflicted, and I doubt it's as much mind as body."

"Who is she?" said Meg.

"I'll tell ye," said the preacher, "if ye'll not set the police on her." And Meg reddened, and drew herself up.

"It is not likely I should do that," she said haughtily. "I have not the least desire to know her name, if she would rather I did not. I only asked that I might thank her for returning my locket. I value it very much. Please thank her for me. Good-morning!"

"Stop!" said the preacher eagerly. "Don't turn away from one ye can help. I see I've angered ye, but it's not for me ye'll come. I'm not used to speaking to ladies. Happen I'm a bit rough. I didn't mean to be. But what can it matter what the messenger is? The message is the same. This woman asks your forgiveness in Christ's name. You can't refuse. Come to-morrow she may be gone to where she'll ask your forgiveness no more. Have ye so few sins of your own that ye can let her go unforgiven?"

"Oh, it wasn't that," said Meg, who, indeed, felt no difficulty in pardoning an unknown thief.

Barnabas opened the gate.

"It's not above a shortish walk," he said. "You'll come." And Meg stepped into the road. As the gate shut behind her with a click, she felt as if she had passed some invisible line, taken some more decisive step than she knew. The gipsy's prophecy touched the superstitious strain that was strong in her, but she would not turn back for all that. "I'll not give in to being afraid," thought she.

They walked on some way in silence, then Meg paused to take breath, and smiled in the midst of her earnestness, when she watched her conductor swinging along up the hill without noticing her defection, his head being fuller of the penitent he was hurrying to than of his strange companion.

Barnabas Thorpe had a tenderness for publicans and sinners, that had been broadened and deepened by much personal experience; but as for the rich and educated, his work had not lain in their direction, his warm human sympathy had had no chance of correcting his narrow theories there, and it is to be feared he looked upon them all as in very evil case, remembering always the saying about the rich man and the needle.

He was singularly illiterate considering his opportunities, for his father had been a great reader, and had sent or rather driven him to a good middle-class school.

He had read and re-read his Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress; but books in general had no charm for him, though the prophets of the Old Testament impressed him, and probably influenced his style in preaching. He would tramp miles over down or marsh, hill or dale, to speak a word, whether in or out of season, to some hesitating convert whom he had "almost persuaded". He never failed to know when his words had touched, or, as he would have put it, "when the spirit that spoke through him had drawn" any one.

He was a man of passionate temper, as the red tinge in his curly hair testified; but no mockery could hurt or opposition rebuff him in pursuit of his calling. All the superabundant vehemence of his nature was thrown into the fight for his "Master". The preacher was absolutely sincere, but he was also absolutely certain of his right to deliver his message when and wherever he felt "called". The sheer force of undoubting conviction impelled him, and coerced his hearers. Meg had felt that coercion on the beach; she was to see it again now.

He remembered her when he had reached the top of the hill, and paused. "I've been going too fast for ye," he said; "I clean forgot. I am sorry."

She noticed the burr in his speech, and the independence of his manner; but the frank honesty of his face disarmed her.

Children and women generally trusted the preacher, and she suddenly made up her mind to throw aside her shyness and talk to him.

"Why did you say my diamonds were bought with too high a price?" she asked.

The preacher turned and looked at her, as if half doubtful of the sincerity of the question. She expected a tirade on the wickedness of luxury; and perhaps such a sermon was on the tip of his tongue, but apparently he checked himself.

"I havena felt called to preach to the women who live in palaces and are clothed wi' fine linen," he said. "But I ha' seen ye before, and I believed the Master had called ye. If so, ye'll learn from Him that ye canna wear for an ornament what should be bread to the starving. If ye had seen what I have ye wouldna ha' asked me that."

"What have you seen?" said Meg; and the colour mounted to Barnabas Thorpe's high cheek bones, and his blue eyes lit up.

"I've seen the wicked flourish like a green bay tree," he said, "and I ha' seen the defenceless trodden down, and the bairns wailing for food. I ha' seen the rich man who tempts by his sinfu' waste, and the poor man who is tempted and falls, like the poor lass we are going to now."

"Where are we going?" asked Meg; "and how did you find her?"

It was a question that the generality of people would have asked before they set out. Meg had walked two miles, and her thin shoes were rubbed and her feet sore, before it occurred to her.

"Over to River. It's not more nor a mile on," said Barnabas Thorpe. "It was this way I was brought to her. I had been preaching on the Downs the other evening. It was getting to dusk, and I was going back to Dover, when a woman, who had been listening, followed me. 'Can you really cure diseases?' she asks, coming close behind. I said, 'Ay, if the Lord willed'. 'My daughter is sick,' she says, 'and I am not one that holds with doctors; for if a woman's to die she'll die, and if she's to live she'll live, and it stands to reason they can't do nothing against Them that's above.' 'And that's true,' I said."

Meg was startled into a faint exclamation at this wholesale condemnation of doctors, but he went on unheeding.

"'But if you come who don't mess about with physics, but just call on Them,' she said, 'perhaps They'll hear you and cure her.' So I went. I found the poor thing labouring for breath and sore afflicted, and in great terror of death, seein' her conscience was laden wi' heavy sin." He paused. "Ye'll no' be hard on her?" he said pleadingly.

"No, of course not," said Meg.

"She was nursery-maid in Mr. Russelthorpe's house sixteen years back. Her name is Susan Kekewich."

"I remember her," said Meg, her thoughts flying back to that far-away time. "She came up to London with us, and cried nearly as much as I did in the coach. She was quite young, and I think she was pretty. She was very kind to me."

"Ay, was she?" said Barnabas. "I could fancy so. She wasn't meant to go wrong. Poor maid! but there is many one's heart aches for. It seems she saw her master give you the trinket one night."

"I know the rest," said Meg; "and she came into my room at night, and put her hand under my pillow and stole it. I was too frightened to scream. I thought she was Lazarus."

"It was not for herself," said Barnabas eagerly. "Her lover was starving; he'd lost his place; they thought he was one of them that set fire to the ricks in Hampshire that winter; he was a poor creature, and afraid to stand a trial, tho' innocent as a baby of that piece of work; and he hung about in hiding in London, and came and begged at the kitchen door for scraps, and she had given him all she could, and hadn't a penny left, and he thought that if he could get beyond the sea, he might start again and make a home for her. She was anxious to get him off, and the devil tempted her. She knew the lad was sinking lower, loafing round, afeart o' the daylight, and wi' no decent place to put his head in that city of iniquity. She went out meaning to sell the diamonds, and to give him the price, and afore she was three paces fro' the door she got a message fro' her lad to say he was in gaol for stealing a loaf; but she didn't go back to the house. Happen she thought they'd ha' found her out, and couldn face it. Happen she was a bit mazed. She just lived on her savings till they were gone; an' ye can guess the rest. Her lover got the gaol-fever, and made no fight against it; he was dead within the week. She was afeared to sell your locket then, and afeared to give it back. She buried it once, and then got a fancy that the wind 'ud blow the earth away, and the rain 'ud wash it clear, and couldna keep hersel' fro' the place till she had it up again. She's a bit out o' her mind about it by now with the constant thinking; and her mother says as she believes her lover's death turned her queer for a time, an' she wasn't wholly responsible. She drifted away fro' the streets, and wandered home i' the end."

Meg shuddered. "It's a dreadful story," she said. "Too dreadful to think of."

"Do ye say so?" said the preacher. "Ay, ye scatter temptation i' the way o' the poor, ye rich, an' are too soft-hearted to hear tell o' their fall!" after which they both relapsed into silence.

The sun was beginning to beat down on their heads, when they reached the little hamlet of River.

It consisted of one chalk road, on either side of which were very white cottages, which had a deceptive air of comfort and prettiness. Pink china roses clustered against their walls, and low-thatched roofs shone gold in the morning light.

The villagers were out in the fields: only one old man, and a baby with sore eyes and an eruption all over its face, stared open-mouthed at the oddly matched pair. Barnabas stooped to pass through the doorway of one of the cottages; and Meg following him would have tumbled down the one step into the room, if he had not held out his hand to save her.

She never forgot the sudden plunge out of sunshine into that dark room, close and hot, and yet with a damp smell about it.

Labourers' cottages sixty years ago were so bad that one wonders, when one thinks of them, that the wave of revolution that was passing over Europe, did not utterly submerge us too!

Meg stood leaning against the door, watching the preacher; too shy to venture further. Her eyes dilated, and she turned whiter as she looked. The damp clay floor, the sickening odour, the room that was bedroom and sitting-room as well, horrified her. Yet Barnabas had been in many a worse place, and this was no exceptionally bad case; indeed, it was decent compared to many a cottage in Kent. But Meg lived before the day of district visiting, and the world of poverty was a new world to her.

A woman was lying on a press bed in the farthest corner, her eyes shut. Meg thought at first that she was dead. Her thin pinched little mother came hurrying from the inner room to meet them.

"She's had two more of them spasms since you left," she said to Barnabas. "I should think the next would about carry her off." She spoke in a querulous tone, as if the spasms were somehow the preacher's fault, but her face twitched nervously. She had small features like her daughter, and black eyes, and spoke with the south-country accent.

The woman on the bed stirred and then gave a quick choking sound, and Barnabas was by her side in an instant, supporting her in his arms. It was literally a fight for life!

The poor thing's eyes started, and the veins on her forehead swelled; Barnabas held her up with one arm, and fanned the air towards her mouth with the other hand.

"Open the window!" he shouted; but the window was apparently not made to open. Such a thing had never been done. "Take the poker and break the pane!" he said; and the woman hesitated. "I can't see as making a draught is good," she murmured; but Meg obeyed him at once. The green substance, grimed with dirt, did not break easily, but it gave at last; and Meg was thankful to turn her back on that awful sight.

When she looked again, Barnabas was blowing into Susan's lips, pausing every now and then to ejaculate, "Lord, help me!" The gasping breaths were getting easier, the grip of the clenched hands was relaxing; presently the patient fell back exhausted.

"She's going!" said the mother. "Lord, if I had a drop of brandy left, it might save her!"

The preacher covered his face with his hands a second,—he, perhaps, was a little exhausted too; then he stood upright, and put his hands on her forehead.

"Oh merciful Lord, heal her!" he cried. "Pour Thy strength into her! Pour Thy strength into her! Let it flow through me to her now while I pray." He repeated the same words again and again at intervals. It seemed to Meg that his face was as the face of some strong healing angel, so bright with undoubting faith.

Presently the patient opened her eyes, looked at him, and smiled. It might have been an hour that he had stood there. "I've got new life in me," she said. "I feel it;" and Barnabas fell on his knees.

"Now, the Lord be thanked," he said, "who has given us the victory over death, through Christ our Master." And Meg drew a breath of relief; she had felt as if he had been fighting some tangible enemy, and now the dreadful presence was routed—she almost fancied she saw it like a black shadow flee past her, out into the open air.

The fight was over.

"My maid," said Barnabas, "God has been good to you. You will not die, but live, and your sins are forgiven, both by Him and the woman you stole from: she has come to tell you so."

Meg came forward quickly and knelt by his side.

"Oh Susie," she said. "I am so sorry you have been unhappy all these years! and I would have forgiven you at once if I had only known. Why, I would lose all I have ten times over rather than that any one should be so unhappy!" And Susie looked at her with the black eyes that had such depths of sadness in them.

"It's Miss Meg! She always was a dear little lady, and so soft-hearted. I thought if she could understand she wouldn't mind," she said. "And he was so hungry, it went to my heart to feel him hungry! but God was against me, and sent him to gaol to punish me, though I would have given my soul to save him. I was a bad girl, and they punished him for it—to—to—how was it?—because I stole? They are uncommon hard up above, but it's just justice, I suppose!"

Meg took the wasted hands in hers; she could not preach, the problem was beyond her; but she laid her cheek against Susan's for a moment, and the preacher said gently, "You see she's not hard, and the Lord who made her merciful must be more merciful Himself. He's better nor the things He makes." Then he rose from his knees. "Good-bye," he said simply, "I'd keep that window open, and let the air in, Mrs. Kekewich. I've often noticed it's got a deal of healing in it."

Meg followed him out of the cottage; they were outside when Mrs. Kekewich regained the use of her tongue, and ran after them to pour out a volley of thanks to both. Meg blushed. Barnabas Thorpe took off his hat reverently when she said "God bless you".

Meg told her aunt exactly what had happened the moment she got home; she was too proud ever to stoop to petty concealments, but she knew that if she waited her courage would cool. Uncle Russelthorpe chuckled behind his newspaper (they were at breakfast) and Aunt Russelthorpe was, not unnaturally, very wroth.

"It's high time this sort of thing were stopped," she said. "As for her not going to balls, or wearing trinkets any more, she shall go!"

"Meg's much the most amusing of the three," said Uncle Russelthorpe; "and nothing makes a faith grow like a little persecution."

CHAPTER V.

So Margaret Deane was numbered amongst Barnabas Thorpe's converts; and of all the inexplicable miracles that the man was said to work, society counted that the most extraordinary.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was not a popular woman, and she was too proud to elicit much sympathy; but, on the whole, public opinion sided with her, rather than with her niece.

Barnabas Thorpe was essentially the people's preacher; and even his greatest admirers felt that it was unbecoming of him "to try and convert the gentry".

As a matter of fact he was less presumptuous than they fancied; and, far from being triumphant, experienced at times a most unusual qualm of pain at this unexpected result of his teaching.

Years ago in the days of his boyhood, long before he had, to use his own phrase, "been taken by religion," he had once plunged his hand into a spider's web with intent to save a butterfly that got entangled. He had broken the creature's wing in trying to free it, and the mishap had stuck in his memory, because both as child and man he had been unusually pitiful to physical suffering. That bygone episode was fantastically associated in his mind with Miss Deane.

There was no doubt to him that but one answer was possible to the "What shall I do to be saved?" of man or woman cursed by riches. "Leave all that thou hast" seemed the inevitable prelude to "Follow me".

He had quoted that reply on the Downs to a group in the midst of which stood Margaret, in the soft grey dress which was the most quakerish garment she possessed.

He had seen her wince at the words as if they startled or hurt her; and had had a quick feeling of compunction, such as he had experienced when he had found the butterfly's purple and gold down staining his over-strong and clumsy fingers.

No one in after days would have believed it, but it was none the less true, that Meg's evident sensitiveness rather deterred than encouraged him in his dealings with her, till an incident, grotesque enough in itself, changed his attitude, and he felt himself suddenly challenged by the world through the mouth of a worldly woman. The combative instinct was thoroughly roused then, and his doubts fled. It was a very small link in the chain that was to bind his life and Margaret's, but nevertheless it was a link.

Barnabas was one day sitting by the roadside carving, when Mrs. Russelthorpe, coming through the great gates of Ravenshill, saw, and made up her mind to deliver her opinion to this impertinent preacher.

Barnabas was chiselling a little chalk head with his pocket knife; he was intent on his occupation, his hair and beard were powdered with white dust, and he looked up only now and then to speak to a child who was eagerly watching him, and for whose benefit the image was being fashioned.

Mrs. Russelthorpe deliberately paused in front of him, and studied him through her gold eyeglass. Meg had never thought about the man, she had seen only the preacher, but the elder woman recognised that this was no weak opponent or hysterical babbler.

She lifted her silk skirt—she was never hurried or awkward in her movements,—and drew out of the pocket that hung round her waist a sovereign, which she held out to him.

"We are in your debt," she said, "for the trouble you had in returning my niece's locket. It was exceedingly honest of you. You had better take the money, my good fellow;" for the preacher had raised his head with an expression of utter amazement, which would have confused a less intrepid woman. "I am sure"—a little patronisingly—"that you quite deserve it."

"No—thanks," said Barnabas shortly. "In the part I come from we don't fancy it 'exceedingly honest' not to steal, nor look to be paid for not being rascals." And he went on with his work.

"Tut, tut!" said Mrs. Russelthorpe. "You cannot afford to fling away gold, I am sure." And she dropped the sovereign on to the man's hand.

The preacher started up as if the coin falling on his brown fingers had burnt them.

"Here, ma'am. Please take it back. I thought I'd made it clear, I'll ha' none o' et," he cried; and there was a ring in his voice, which sounded as if the "Old Adam" were not quite dead yet.

"I shall certainly not take it. I do not approve of unpaid services," said Mrs. Russelthorpe. And Barnabas with a quick movement drew back his arm, and pitched the sovereign over her head, far away into the park.

It span through the air like a flash of light, and Mrs. Russelthorpe's lips compressed as she saw it.

"That was a most insolent exhibition of temper for one who preaches to others," she said coldly; but the answer surprised her.

"Ay, an' that's true; so it was," he said, reddening.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was not generous enough to take no advantage of her adversary's slip.

"Your rudeness to me can only injure yourself," she went on, "and is certainly not worth remark; but I am glad to have this opportunity of saying that I believe you to be doing great harm by your preaching. Religious excitement is always bad, and I have had to remonstrate seriously with my niece, who is very young and foolish, about the ideas your unwise words have put into her head. She sees her mistake now," added Mrs. Russelthorpe, rather prematurely. "But had I not been at hand to guide her, you might have done an infinity of evil in attempting to dictate to her about the duties of a position which you cannot in the least be expected to understand."

An anxious look came over the preacher's face; his own pride was forgotten on the instant.

"Tell me," he said eagerly, "she is surely not turning back?"

"I do not understand your expression," said Mrs. Russelthorpe; "but Miss Deane will shortly accompany me to London, and take her part in society as usual. I am glad to say she recognises the folly of your teaching."

That last assertion was unfounded; but then, "If it is not true yet, it shall be," thought Mrs. Russelthorpe, and she couldn't resist a triumph.

She departed after that, with the last word and the best of the encounter, well pleased; but if she had known the preacher better she would not have told him that his disciple was "giving in".

"She is doing the devil's work, an' the poor maid is over weak," he reflected, "an' hard beset; an' what shall I do?"

He took his worn Bible from his pocket and laid it open on the road; the wind stirred the pages gently, and the man shut his eyes with a prayer for enlightenment. Then he opened them and picked the book up. He read in the bright glancing sunlight one sentence: "And He saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee and follow Me".

Mrs. Russelthorpe and Meg were sitting together in the drawing-room.

The girl looked ill and nervous. The constant strain of a conflict with a stronger willed antagonist told on her. She had slept little of late, she had suffered a veritable martyrdom in the carrying out of Barnabas Thorpe's principles.

All at once the blood rushed to her white face.

"I hear footsteps in the hall," she said.

"You are going crazy about 'footsteps'!" cried her aunt impatiently, and then lifted her eyebrows in some surprise. "Some one is coming upstairs. Who can be calling at this hour?"

"It is the preacher. They are his footsteps that I've heard coming nearer all the week," said Meg quietly, and before Mrs. Russelthorpe could say a word of reproof to this extraordinary statement, Barnabas Thorpe stood in the doorway.

"I ask pardon for interrupting you, but I ha' a message for this maid," he said. "I ha' been told that havin' put your hand to th' plough ye are in danger o' turning back. Is it true?"

"The man is mad!" cried Mrs. Russelthorpe, "or he is drunk!"

She stood upright, putting her frame aside without haste or flurry. She had never felt fear in her life, though her indignation was strong.

"Go at once, sir!" she said.

"Is it true?" said the preacher.

His eyes were fixed on Meg. He was too eager to be self-conscious. In the intensity of his effort to arrest and turn again a wavering soul, he did not even hear Mrs. Russelthorpe; and for a moment his absorption, his utter imperviousness to all that was "outside" his mission, impressed even her.

The preacher was as "one-ideaed" as a sleuth hound in pursuit of his quarry. The simile is not a pretty one, but it flashed across her mind, when her command fell futile and powerless.

"Is it true?" Then, while Meg, who had been sitting with dilated eyes staring at him, covered her face with her hands, his voice melted into entreaty.

"Perhaps it is so," he said. "But the Master is full of pity. Still He says 'Come'. He knows our backslidings. He bears wi' us again and again, as a mother wi' a bairn who stumbles running to her. His feet bear the bruises o' the stones by the way," cried Barnabas. And again, as on the beach, his blue eyes had the expression of eyes that see that of which they speak. "An' ye shall not be afeard o' th' path they trod! His hands are marked wi' th' nails o' Calvary, an' by those marks they shall lead us men, who are feeble and sore discouraged. Behold, I know"—and his voice rang through the room, making Meg wonder whimsically in the midst of her excitement whether the very chairs and tables were not startled in their spindle-legged propriety—"Behold, I know that it is sweeter to walk wi' Him through th' valley o' death, than to walk wi'out Him through th' sunshine o' the World."

"My good man," said Mrs. Russelthorpe, "whatever may be the case in 'the valley of death,' you are very much out of place in my drawing-room. We have had enough."

She pointed to the door while she spoke.

Outside in the road the man had had the worst of it when he had crossed swords with her; here, strangely enough, she had no more effect on him than a child's breath against a boat in full sail.

He was acting under authority now. He believed himself as much bound to testify as ever Moses before the Egyptian king.

"My Master has called this maid," he said; "who is it bids you hinder? Promise," and he turned again to Meg, "that ye will follow Him to the giving up of all He disallows. Promise! an' I will go my way in peace."

Meg let her hands drop on her lap, and looked at him with the saddest smile he had ever seen. The pathos of it touched the man as well as the apostle, though he wasn't himself aware of that fact; and his innermost thought of her was free from any taint of self-consciousness.

"I will promise nothing," she said; "I should only fail."

Her low voice sounded weary and dispirited, the very antithesis of his. This time she said to herself she would not let herself go.

His enthusiasm might carry her a little way by its own strength, but she knew what the end would be. This narrowly strong preacher, with his northern burr, his gesticulations, his intense conviction, came, after all, from another world. She envied his assurance, she admired his courage, but he could not "help her".

"I may be miserable, and know I am wrong, and yet give way at last, unless something happens," said Meg. The "something" meant support from her father. Then she was ashamed of her own words.

"I will try—but I won't promise," she said wistfully.

There was a tense silence. "I have a message for ye, an' I canna understand it," said Barnabas at last, "but the Lord will make it clear. Listen, these are the words, And the angel said unto him, Cast thy garment about thee and follow Me."

"The man is raving!" exclaimed Mrs. Russelthorpe. And she put her hand on the bell; but he had already turned to go.

He would add no words of his own to the inspired "mandate"; and he walked out of the room and out of the house unmolested, as he had come.

Mrs. Russelthorpe drew a deep breath, that was not so much of relief as of utter astonishment.

"I do not know why I allowed him to go on so long. He is the most extraordinary person I have ever set eyes on! Upon my word, I believe he has walked straight out of Bedlam; but, mad or sane, this is beyond a joke. Margaret! if you so much as look at him again, I'll wash my hands of you. I'll make an end to this."

"Will you?" said Meg dreamily. She did not speak in defiance, only doubtfully, with a vague sense that Barnabas Thorpe's especial Providence might be too strong even for Aunt Russelthorpe. Had he not said his say in spite of her?

"Will you, Aunt Russelthorpe? But I don't think one has really much to do with what happens."

"I've something to do with it," said Aunt Russelthorpe grimly; "and so he will find." And so indeed he did find,—though not in the way she meant.

Another and widely different acquaintance was at least as deeply interested in the change in her. Mr. Sauls was the very last person whom any one would have expected to champion an impracticable enthusiasm; yet he certainly stood up for Margaret at this time, to her immense surprise and rather perplexed gratitude.

This slip of a girl, who shrank from the least touch of love-making, but yet loved and hated so vehemently, who was more innocent than any other woman he had ever known, and who yet did such terribly rash things, who was full of shy dignity and sudden indiscreet revelations, was the first person who had inspired him with any awe of womanhood.

He laughed at himself a good deal, but thought of her, whom most people sneered at, with a sort of half-amused reverence. If in the first place he had been in love with Meg's good name and prospective fortune, his love for Meg's self was striking deeper roots than he should consistently have allowed; but we all of us fail to stick to our principles at times.

When the first faint rumour of a scandal reached him, Mr. Sauls went straight to Ravenshill to call.

He met Mr. Russelthorpe in the hall, and stopped to speak to him, being on very friendly terms with the old man, whose society he had cultivated of late.

"It is so long since I have met your niece anywhere, that I have come to inquire after her health," he said boldly.

"Hm! she has 'repented' and taken to religion, as I have no doubt you have heard," said the other; he held on to the banisters with one shrivelled hand, and peered up into George Sauls' strong dark face to see how his announcement was taken.

"Repented! but she was always a little saint!" cried Mr. Sauls.

"Ah! that's it," responded Meg's uncle. "It is the saints who repent; the sinners have other things to do."

Mr. Sauls stood twisting the cord of his eyeglass rapidly round his finger: he had a trick of apparently absorbing himself in some physical detail of the sort when he was more than usually interested.

"I want to be converted," he remarked. "Do you think that she would undertake me?"

Mr. Russelthorpe chuckled. This young Jew, with his keen eye to the main chance, always entertained him.

"There's no knowing. Young women are very hopeful," he said. "Go on—go on and try."

Mr. Sauls went on into the drawing-room.

A buzz of conversation greeted him. Mrs. Russelthorpe was entertaining about twenty ladies; Meg was standing apart in the bow window.

Mr. Sauls joined in the talk at once; he made smart speeches to his hostess, and conversed with every one: he was never in the least shy.

Presently some one mentioned the ball that was to be given at the Heights. "You are going, of course?" she said.

The question sounded innocent enough, but it sent a thrill through the atmosphere.

Mrs. Russelthorpe made a distinct pause, and then said, in clear decisive tones: "My niece sets all her elders to rights on that subject. You had better explain why we are not to go, Margaret; for your views are beyond me."

Mr. Sauls glanced at the girl's white face, and swore under his breath. "I'd like to duck Mrs. Russelthorpe," he said to himself; and then he threw down his glove, to the general astonishment.

"If Miss Deane does not choose to give us the pleasure of her company, it is so much the worse for us," he said. "But society would become unbearable if it were allowed to demand explanations each time any one stayed away from an entertainment. I can't see why we should bother Miss Deane with impertinent questions, and I protest against them on principle. They encroach on the sacred rights of the individual."

He had diverted attention from Meg anyhow. What did it matter what rhodomontade he was talking? It was curious how that little nervous shudder of hers affected him; it had seemed to run like fire through his veins. How durst they distress her? prying closely into the secrets of her sensitive conscience, frightening her (for he could see that she was frightened) by their irreverent curiosity. Reverence was not a quality that any one had suspected in him heretofore, but Meg had awakened it.

He did not quite know her, however, in spite of his sympathy: she was thin-skinned enough in all conscience; but she was something else as well. She lifted her head and faced Mrs. Russelthorpe: she was not going to take shelter behind Mr. Sauls, though she was grateful to him.

"I have explained to you over and over again," she said. "I don't go to balls because I don't think I ought. I like them so much I forget everything else when I do. I don't know about other people, I daresay that they are perfectly right to go."

Mrs. Russelthorpe laughed.

"Other people are on a lower level of sanctity evidently," she said. "Come! We are all of us waiting to be enlightened. Where does the iniquity lie? You of the young generation are wonderfully quick at seeing evil—where is it?"

George twirled his eyeglass furiously.

"Don't answer!" he cried, with assumed jocosity. "Miss Deane, your counsel advises you not to—this is a bad precedent—against all fairness."

Meg flushed painfully, there were tears in her eyes.

"In me, I suppose," she said softly, and left the room.

Mr. Sauls took up his hat.

"I think we ought all to feel pretty well ashamed of ourselves after that," he remarked; and he went out, shutting the door sharply after him.

He had burnt his boats, and he knew it. He had made an enemy, and forced his own hand; he had rebuked Mrs. Russelthorpe in her own drawing-room, and closed the Ravenshill gates against himself; and he shrugged his shoulders at his own rashness as he went downstairs. Meg was by no means won yet, and he had been bolder than he could well afford.

"I never guessed I was such a fool," he said to himself; and then he smiled in spite of his cooler after-thoughts.

"If, after all, my luck holds good, and I do get her, and I will," he reflected, "won't I make that aunt of hers feel the difference? I should like to see the woman who will bully my wife. I should like it immensely."

His sympathy for his shy lady was very genuine, but he felt a thrill of exhilaration all the same. Mrs. Russelthorpe's anger, the growing gossip, this very "religious mania," were all playing into his hands—they would drive the girl nearer to him.

He meant to be very patient; it was only once in a blue moon that his feelings got the better of him; he would wait, and watch; and when Meg's position became unbearable, he would step in and say, "Here am I! With me you shall do as you choose. Follow your very exacting conscience where you like; dip your pretty fingers into my purse, and dress in sackcloth if it pleases you." He would not bully Meg. She was none the worse for a touch of asceticism in his eyes.

Like many men who believe in little themselves, he held that the more beliefs a woman has the better—and the safer.

Let her be as saint-like as she chose; if he was of the earth (as he candidly allowed he was) his wife should be of heaven, a thing apart, set in a costly shrine which he would delight in decorating.

Her religion was a fitting ornament, a halo round her fair head! Far be it from him to wish to discrown her.

Women's pretty superstitions became them even better than their diamonds—he would grudge Meg neither.

He went to the ball at the Heights three weeks later, and found, as he had expected, that Mrs. Russelthorpe cut him, that Miss Deane was not present, and that Miss Deane's name was overmuch in people's mouths.

One little bit of innuendo, which he happened to overhear, made his blood boil, in spite of his conviction that it was unfounded.

Miss Deane in love with a canting tub-preacher! Miss Deane, who was only too fastidious! If Mr. Sauls' idea of a woman's position had just a tinge of Orientalism about it, at least his respect for Meg was true enough for him to be sure that that scandal was absurd on the face of it. But it showed how her innocence needed protection.

Poor Meg! He would have shielded her from every rough breath, yet the winds of heaven were to blow harder on her than on him; he would have lined her path with velvet, but for her the road was to be stony indeed. "Give our beloved peace and happiness," we pray—but they are given pain, and the stress of the battle. "Deliver them from evil"—but they fall.

"I will write soon, very soon," George Sauls decided, as he left the hot ball-room behind him, and walked towards the twinkling town, with the sound of the dance ringing in his ears.

He had actually rather a longing to turn up the road to Ravenshill, where Mrs. Russelthorpe's carriage was disappearing, and take a look at the shell which held his pearl; but a sense of the ridiculous withheld him, or, perhaps, the bad luck that dogged his footsteps where his love was concerned.

If he had followed his impulse, the upshot of that night's events might have been different.

If Meg had married him, he would have loved her long and well, for his was a grasp that never loosened easily; but for once in his life, George gave more than he received, and he certainly did not count the experience blessed.

The three weeks that had followed that scene in the drawing-room had been trying ones at Ravenshill. Meg's courage was of the kind that can lead a forlorn hope, but finds it very difficult to sustain a siege.

Poor child! it was hard enough that the first avowedly religious man she had met should be also a bit of a fanatic.

That our consciences have so little judgment is surely one of the oddest things in this queer world!

Martyrs go to the stake for false gods, as well as for the truth; men die heroically for mistakes, loyal to blundering leaders; and what is the end of it all, we ask? Is it a farce or a tragedy? or does the loyalty live somehow, though the error wither as chaff that has held the grain?

CHAPTER VI.

Uncle Russelthorpe sat alone in his library on the evening of the ball: the habit of shuffling out of family gatherings had grown on him, his queer slip-shod figure was seldom seen beyond its own precincts now. His distaste for his wife increased with increasing age, and her loud voice and rather aggressive strength jarred more on him.

Perhaps, after all, Meg's was not the saddest tragedy in that house; for it is better to burn than to rot, and it is doubtful whether the over-hasty actors who bring grief on themselves, and other people, in their attempts to make the world turn round the other way, do half the harm of the easy-going philosophers, who sit with their talents in napkins, and say, "Let be! why struggle against the inevitable?" Stagnant water is not a healthy feature in the landscape at any time.

It was late in the evening, the soft air came in at the window laden with dew, as well as with sweetness. The old man got up to close the shutters; he had a morbid dislike to intrusion, and the servants did not dare invade his sanctum. He lit his lamp, and fell back into the depths of his armchair with a sigh of relief, because that small effort was accomplished. He had grown weaker lately, though no one had noticed it. He no longer studied with the avidity of old, but sat often, as he sat to-night, with his hands on his knees, peering into the fire. Perhaps he saw shadows of the past there—ghosts of possibilities that were never realities, saddest of all ghosts are these "might-have-beens," pale phantoms that have never known life. He had started with rather more than the average share of brains and money, and come to the conclusion, now that his days were few and evil, that the game had hardly been worth playing, sorry fun at the best! Presently some one spoke behind him, and he frowned irritably.

"Who is it?" he asked rather crossly. "I'm busy. What do you want in here?"

"It is I—Margaret!" said a voice with a suspicion of tremor in it; and his niece walked round his chair, and after a moment's hesitation, sat down on a high-backed seat opposite him.

Uncle Russelthorpe straightened himself with a jerk. This was a most unprecedented visit, and his curiosity overcame his annoyance. Meg had hardly been in his study since the days when she had haunted it as a child. What could she want? It was not a house where the young ones ever intruded unnecessarily on their elders' leisure; and Mr. Russelthorpe, though he had a secret partiality for his youngest niece, did not consider her any "affair of his". His wife managed the girls, and "very funnily too," he sometimes thought.

Meg sat pressing her fingers together and looking straight at him. She had not taken this unusual step without a pretty strong motive.

"Uncle," she said, "I want advice! You used to be very kind to me when I was a little girl. Will you give it to me, please?"

"Eh? What?" said her uncle. "You'd better go to——" he was about to say "your aunt," but feeling that that counsel was rather a cruel mockery, seeing that Meg's relations with Mrs. Russelthorpe were more than usually strained just then, ended, "to your father for it."

"Yes, but I don't know how," said Meg; "he is somewhere in Greece, I suppose."

"Hm—wise man!" said Uncle Russelthorpe. "I don't, as a rule, think much of Charles' worldly wisdom; but that way he has of going off, without leaving an address, has always struck me as admirable; it secures such absolute immunity from worries."

"I suppose I am one of the worries," said Meg, with a smile that was more sad than merry. "Since I can't bother him, I'm worrying you!"

"Not at all!" said the old gentleman politely; but he drew his watch out of its fob and fidgeted.

"You see there is no one else," said Meg apologetically. "Uncle Russelthorpe, I mean to go away. I can't stay here any longer. Father promised me that he would write soon, and perhaps send for me. He has been gone nearly two months, and I have not heard from him. Perhaps,"—with her ungovernable desire to shift the blame from his shoulders—"perhaps, he is ill, or he may have sent a message that has not been given to me. Anyhow, I can't—oh I can't—wait much longer."

"Tut, tut!" interrupted Mr. Russelthorpe. "You are young and impatient. When you are my age, you will not say 'can' and 'can't' so easily. There are few things we can't endure, hardly any I should say; and our skins become toughened with age, fortunately, and our hearts colder, also most fortunately."

Meg shivered involuntarily.

"But I haven't begun to be old yet!" she cried. "That doesn't help me!"

The old man looked at her uneasily; he had something of the feeling that one of the audience of a play might have, if suddenly appealed to by an actor: he hated being dragged out of his safe place as spectator, and being asked for practical advice.

"I think the sort of life we lead is all wrong from beginning to end," said this inconvenient niece; and the corners of Mr. Russelthorpe's lips twitched a little, he was genuinely sorry for her unhappiness, but her revolutionary sentiments amused him.

"Father really thinks so too. I have never forgotten something he said when I was a child, about Dives preaching contentment to the starving across an over-loaded table."

Uncle Russelthorpe took snuff and shook his head.

"My dear young lady, don't you begin to talk cheap Chartist cant," he said. "One Whig in the family is enough, and Charles' harangues don't sound so well at second-hand; it is his voice and manner that makes any nonsense he chooses to spout go down; besides, he would be considerably deranged, I fancy, if you were to take upon yourself to put all his theories into practice; that's a very pernicious habit that you've contracted—not inherited—I doubt its being so pleasing to him as you imagine."

"But that's worse than anything, and I won't believe you!" cried Meg, with a passion that actually startled him. "Uncle, it makes me feel miserable when you say that; as if father were not ever in earnest! Aunt Russelthorpe tells me that too! She says he never really meant me to live with him, and that I'd taken everything too seriously. It isn't true. I want to go to him, and to hear him say it isn't true. Will you help me? I believe Aunt Russelthorpe knows where he is. Will you make her tell you? Will you give me the money, and send some one with me if I mustn't travel alone? I won't run away. It isn't wrong to want to go to my own father," cried poor Meg, with a rather pathetic pride. "I'll do it openly. My aunt will be angry, but he will understand. I am his child, and he always says I am to come to him in any difficulty. I know that he will be glad!"

There was a confidence in her tone, that made Mr. Russelthorpe wonder for a moment what sort of a man he would have been, if he had had a child with such unlimited faith in him. Really, it was a pity Charles didn't do more to justify it; and that reflection gave rise to another.

"It seems to me," he said, "that a more interesting and younger admirer than your old uncle would be charmed to point an obvious way out of your difficulties. There was a young sprig here the other day; it struck me that his interest in my coins had shot up rather suddenly, like Jack's bean-stalk. I shouldn't wonder if it withered when it's served its turn, eh? My old eyes are not so sharp as they were, but I'm not in my dotage yet. I don't see how I can interfere, my dear; but if you are anxious to leave us,—why, there's the church door conveniently near. Laura and Kate got out by it. I've no doubt the escort to Greece could be provided too."

"You mean Mr. Sauls," said Meg, with a calmness which boded ill for that gentleman's hopes. "I don't think he would be so silly; but, anyhow, I should hate a husband who let me believe what I liked, and do as I thought right because 'it didn't matter'. Mr. Sauls has been rather kind to me. I don't want my gratitude spoilt by that kind of nonsense; please." The last words were a protest against Mr. Russelthorpe's characteristic chuckle. Meg had an impatience of any approach to love-making, that was more boyish than girlish; and the least attempt at sentiment was enough to chill her rather doubtful liking for her father's quondam protégé.

"I really am in earnest!" she cried. "Don't laugh at me! Aunt Russelthorpe has been saying things I cannot repeat: she says other people say them too. I think," lifting her head proudly, "that they should all be ashamed of themselves, and I don't care in the very least—but"—with a sudden illogical break-down—"I must go away! No one will miss me, you see,—it isn't as if this were home, or as if I were any good to any one, or had any real place. It seems a waste of life to stay and make her angry, and fight every day because I don't any longer do the things she does. Besides," added Meg despairingly, "I don't know how to go on struggling for ever. Aunt Russelthorpe rather likes it, I believe, but I don't. Uncle, I'm so terribly afraid of giving in, and doing everything she wants, and feeling a shameful coward all the rest of my life."

"Dear, dear!" said Mr. Russelthorpe. "'The rest of life!' and, 'for ever and ever!' Eh! how tragic we are at twenty, to be sure!" But again he felt uneasy. The girl was unhappy. He knew she must have been hard pressed before she took the initiative and appealed to him—also there was no doubt that tongues were wagging too fast about her.

He sometimes shrewdly suspected that Augusta wouldn't be sorry to drive her niece into any decently good marriage; and he knew that the one plan her heart was set against was this of Meg's keeping house for Mr. Deane. Why were women such fools? Why, above all, did Meg bother him? He had given up contention on his own account so long ago. Yet it would be good for the poor child to get away; and if Charles understood how matters were, he would be indignant enough. Charles had plenty of spirit, though a baby could hoodwink him. Should he interpose for once, and tell his wife that——

"Margaret!" said a voice behind them. They both started like guilty conspirators; but Meg recovered herself in a second, and stood upright, white and defiant.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was in the doorway dressed for a ball, as she had been long ago when she and Meg had had their first pitched battle. She had an open letter in her hand, and a smile on her lips.

"I have been looking for you. What are you doing in here, I wonder?" said she. "Here is an answer from your father, Margaret; and now I hope you are satisfied."

Meg held out her hand without a word. Mrs. Russelthorpe gave her the letter over Mr. Russelthorpe's head, who peered up out of his deep armchair. "'So they two crossed swords without more ado,'" he quoted to himself.

Margaret read the letter all through before she spoke. A few months earlier she would have protested at her aunt's having broken the seal, and mastered the contents; now, rightly or wrongly, she felt that the issue of this contest was too serious for her to waste strength in resenting small grievances.

Mrs. Russelthorpe noted the change. Margaret was not quite so contemptible an adversary as she had been: she was growing more womanly.

Meg turned to her uncle when she had finished reading, as to a supreme court of appeal.

"If father had ever got my letter," she said, "he would not have written like this. Please judge for yourself, uncle."

"Charles' hand tries my eyes," murmured Mr. Russelthorpe fretfully.

"Then I will read it aloud," said Meg; and her aunt raised her eyebrows and laughed, but not very mirthfully.

"Margaret is determined on having a scene!"

The first part of the letter was all about the place Mr. Deane was staying in, and the people he was meeting. It was illustrated with pen-and-ink sketches, and was charmingly descriptive and good-naturedly witty. Then came a tender half-playful recommendation to his daughter not to addle her brains with overmuch thinking.

"Your aunt actually tells me that she can't persuade my Peg-top to spin any more!" he wrote. "Of course I only wish you to follow your own conscience, dearest; but don't, even for heaven's sake, turn into a severe old maid, or get crow's-feet and wrinkles before I come home again. I couldn't forgive you! As for that delightful plan which we concocted last time I was at Ravenshill, I fear, on thinking it over, that it is impossible to carry it out,—at least, for the next few years. There are many objections to it, which I lost sight of before; and I believe, that, after all, you are better and happier in your uncle's house, than you would be wandering about with me. Your aunt always writes most kindly of you. It is a long time since I have heard from you.

"Your very affectionate father,
"Charles Deane."

"That is all," said Meg; "and," looking at her aunt, "I am not in the least satisfied;" and then, with a sudden impulsive movement, she knelt down by the old man's chair, and the loose sheets of that rather unsatisfactory epistle floated aimlessly to the floor.

"Father is so far away, and nothing I do or say seems to reach him," she cried; and there were tears in her voice now. "Uncle, I am desperate! Do help me!"

Mr. Russelthorpe glanced nervously from her to his wife.

"Upon my word, Augusta," he began, when Mrs. Russelthorpe interrupted, her louder voice drowning his, as her quick decision mastered his slow championship.

"We've had enough theatricals!" she said. "Get up, Margaret, you are spoiling your dress and wasting your uncle's time, and mine too," with a glance at the clock. But Meg's eyes were still fixed on Uncle Russelthorpe; he had been kind to her when she was a child, and she had always consequently (though illogically) believed in him. Surely, surely he would take her part now.

He fidgeted, shifting his position as if to turn from her eager, pleading face. It was hard on him to be called so suddenly to espouse a side,—on him, who liked to smile at the fallibility of all causes. Prompt action, too, was almost impossible at seventy, when at sixty he had let the reins drop. Yes! it was hard on him, though Meg in her passionate youth couldn't see that.

"I—I don't see what you come to me for," he said feebly. "You are so violent, Meg. Nothing is probably so bad as you imagine, you know; and, if you wait long enough, grievances burn themselves out, like everything else. You may be mistaken too, and fancy—fancy——"

"Yes—I was mistaken," said Meg slowly. She had risen from her knees while the old man mumbled on; the eagerness had died out of her face and left it rather scornful. "I did fancy you would help me, but I shall not fancy it again. I was foolish to trouble you, uncle. I am sorry. I never will any more."

She went out of the library, holding her fair head very high, and without looking at either uncle or aunt; but when she got to her own room she threw herself down on her bed and sobbed, all her dignity vanishing.

"Oh father, father, I do so want you! I can't be good all alone!" she cried. "Why aren't you ever here?"

CHAPTER VII.

I am too weak to live by half my conscience,
I have no wit to weigh and choose the mean.
Life is too short for logic; what I do,
I must do simply; God alone shall judge,
For God alone shall guide, and God's elect.

—The Saint's Tragedy.

The events of that evening followed on each other so quickly that it seemed to Meg afterwards as if she had been impelled by some power outside herself, though whether of Heaven or hell she doubted later in life.

She heard the crunch of gravel under the carriage wheels, as her aunt drove away to the ball over which they had had such contention; then she dried her eyes and drew a breath of relief.

Meg always felt happier when Mrs. Russelthorpe was out of the house; and her antipathy was the more painful because she blamed herself for it. It was wicked to hate any one. Unfortunately, naming the devil doesn't always exorcise him!

One thing at least was clear to the girl,—it was impossible to go on "for the next few years" as they had been going on lately; and that lightly written sentence of Mr. Deane's stung her almost into despair.

Then she remembered that at least she had his address now, and could send the letters that Aunt Russelthorpe had refused to forward, and in which she had poured out all her difficulties, and asked his decision on them, as if he had been confessor as well as father. Meg looked upon that refusal as a piece of gratuitous and incomprehensible cruelty; but then, in spite of Laura's plain speaking, she never quite understood Mrs. Russelthorpe. She might have abjured gaieties if she had only refrained from claiming her father's sympathy and counsel in her temporary insanity; though even if she had fully recognised that fact, it is doubtful whether she would have sold her birthright. She threw it away instead, which, to some temperaments, is easier than selling.

Balls were early in those days, and it was only eight o'clock, when, with her letter in her hand, she started for the Dover post-office.

It was a long lonely walk; and an older woman than Meg might have thought twice about it, but the girl was too ignorant of evil to be afraid.

She had scruples about asking a servant of her aunt's to accompany her, but she had no doubt that she was justified in her own action.

Her father had told her to write to him,—that was reason enough, and to do anything was a relief to her.

Meg's strength and weakness both rose from the same source: she could be unhesitatingly daring for the person she loved, but if that support should fail, would slip into confusion and despair. Even now there was a leaven of bitterness working in her, a terror that was making her restless. Were Aunt Russelthorpe and Laura right? Did "father" not "care" much after all?

She turned instinctively from that suggestion, and tried to fix her mind on the topics that had lately filled it. As she took the short cut over the cliffs, and walked quickly along the footway that skirts their edge, she thought of that still narrower path which Barnabas Thorpe had pointed out as the only way of salvation.

The sky still glowed behind Dover Castle, though the sun had disappeared; there was hardly a breath of wind to stir the short crisp grass, the broad downs lay still and peaceful in the gathering dusk: Meg was the only human being to be seen, but the little brown rabbits scurried by, and peeped at her from a safe distance, making her smile in spite of her sadness. She was as easily moved to smiles as she was to sighs.

It had been a hot summer, and there were ominous cracks across the footway, which had been deserted of late. Meg, who was Kentish born, ought to have known what those fissures and gaps meant. Perhaps the rabbits would have warned her if they could; for one of them loosened a morsel of chalk as he leaped, which bounded and rebounded down the side of the cliff. She watched it idly, not considering the signification.

Earlier in the day there had been a heavy thunderstorm, which was growling still in the far distance. Meg lingered a moment, listening to the echo among the chalk caves below,—smuggling haunts, where many a keg of brandy had been hidden.

If she had not paused, her light footsteps would have carried her safely over the dangerous bit. As it was, the "crack" she had just stepped carelessly over suddenly widened to a chasm, the earth seemed to give way under her; she stretched out her arms with a wild cry, and fell,—fell, with a vision of clouds of white powder and flashing lights, stopping at last, with a sharp jarring shock, to find herself grasping desperately at something steady, just above her, in a reeling tumbling world! She lay on her side on a narrow ledge a quarter of the way down the cliff, her right shoulder and arm bruised by the fall; but she was hardly conscious of pain, her mind being set on clinging fast to the friendly poppy root that was keeping her from death.

She could hear the sea washing hungrily, with a sullen break, and a strong backward suck, many feet below; she shuddered, and then screamed with all her might, again and again, waking the echoes and the seagulls, who answered her derisively.

She was in terror lest her fingers should relax their hold, in spite of her will. She lost count of time, and began to feel as if she had lain for ages between earth and sky.

Her left arm was getting numb, and her brain dizzy; she was dreadfully afraid of losing consciousness, and tried hard to keep possession of "herself," knowing that if she fainted she would slip down at once, and the green water would roll her over and draw her back.

"Like a cat with a mouse," thought Meg. Her reflections were getting indistinct, and she gathered her strength together to scream once more. A horror of losing her identity, of being swamped in a "black nothingness," was strong on her.

"Help me!" she cried, with an effort to make the words articulate, that was followed by a vague recollection that she had asked some one to "help her" once before, but he never did or never could.

She couldn't quite remember how it was: her past life seemed to have got far away, to have dropped off her, leaving her soul all alone, face to face with this black empty space that was trying to engulf it.

"There isn't any help," she said to herself. "It's all really like the sea, or cats and mice, and my fingers don't seem to belong to me any more," and then——

"Hold on!" said a voice above her. "Don't move, I'll run for a rope."

She opened her eyes and tried to collect her wits.

"I can't hold on more than a minute more," she said a little indistinctly. "If you go I shall fall." While she spoke the root she was clinging to "gave" a little, and a light shower of chalk fell on her face.

"I'm falling! oh be quick!" she cried; and the next moment something blue dangled above her face.

"Let go those leaves, and catch hold of my jersey. I'll pull ye up by it," shouted the voice, the owner of which had flung himself full length on the cliff, his face and arms over the edge.

"Do it at once!" He called, this time as peremptorily as he could, for he was in momentary terror lest yellow poppy and girl should go together to the bottom.

To his relief she obeyed him.

"Both hands!" he cried encouragingly. "I can't pull you up by one."

"I can't move my right arm," she answered. "It's twisted somehow;" and he whistled in dismay.

Meg was as white as the chalk, but she showed some courage now that help was at hand, and she managed to pull herself into a sitting posture, holding tight to his jersey. Further than that he couldn't get her, and he did not dare to leave her lest she should turn giddy.

"I tell you what," he said at last. "There is only one way; I can't pull ye up, an' I doan't risk leaving ye on that narrow bit: ye must e'en come down to me. If I drop over the face o' the cliff there's a foothold close beside ye, now that you're sitting up, and a drop below that again, there's a broader ledge and a cave. Ye'll be safe enough there. Will 'ee try? but we must, for there's naught else to be done. Can ye let go my jersey and sit quite still one minute? Doan't 'ee look, lass, shut your eyes and put your hands down each side."

Meg nodded and held her breath. She felt him alight at her side, and then heard him shout from below.

"All right! There's room enough here," he cried. "Edge along sideways as far as ye can to the right. Don't be scared, ye won't fall! It's quite possible."

He spoke with assurance, and his confident tone gave her courage as he intended it should; but, nevertheless, his own pulses were beating rather fast, albeit his nerves were good as a rule.

Would the girl do it, or would she slip before he could catch her? She was directly over him at last. "Now," he said, "your foot almost touches my shoulder. Ay—that's it, put your weight on it and—ah! that's right. Thank God!" He held her in his arms now, and the next moment she was safe at his side.

Meg leant against the entrance of the cave, half laughing and half crying.

She was not in the least surprised to see that it was the preacher who had saved her, but the absurdity of the situation struck her with a sudden reaction.

The cave was dark, and very damp and ill-smelling; the ledge was just wide enough for them to stand quite safely on it. They were perched like two big birds on the face of the cliff, with a sheer descent that not even Barnabas could have swarmed down, below them.

"Yes, yes!" she gasped in answer to his ejaculation of thankfulness. "But—we shall never, never get up again!"

The preacher made no reply directly. Possibly the same idea had occurred to him.

She sat down in the entrance of the cave, and he tied up her bruised arm as well as he could, improvising a sling with the lace scarf she wore round her neck.

Fortunately, no bones were broken; and she assured him with a smile that he "hardly hurt her at all," though the muscles had been badly strained and her arm was still quite useless. He looked at her doubtfully, but could hardly gather from her face how much or how little she was suffering. He was not accustomed to women of Meg's class, and was sorely puzzled as to what he had best do next.

"Look here!" he said at last. "It's not possible that ye should spend the night in this wet hole; ye'd be fairly starved wi' cold, and no one's likely to come by before morning. I'll climb up somehow and run to the coastguard for help. Ye won't be scared here, eh?"

He bent down and put his jersey between her and the wall of the cave.

"It's been an Irish way of helping ye up!"

Meg looked at him. Her face was very pale, but she had quite recovered her self-command now.

"Don't go," she said. "You might so easily be killed trying to climb in the dark. It is dark. I can hardly see the sea now. It would be my fault if you were to fall, and really I don't think I am worth it."

"If I am to die it 'ull happen the same whatever I do, an' if not, I'll be as safe as if I were in my bed," said Barnabas Thorpe. "But I doan't fancy ye need be scared, for I believe neither you nor I ha' come to an end o' things yet. It has been on my mind that I'd see ye again."

He turned, and began to swarm up the cliff as he spoke; and Meg stopped her ears, for the sound of the crumbling chalk sickened her, and waited in the dark.

The preacher shouted cheerfully when he scrambled to his feet at the top; and then, without further loss of time, started off towards the coastguard station. He was barefooted, having taken off his boots in order to climb; but that troubled him little, as he ran steadily across the night-curtained sleeping country.

Some hours later they stood together in the hall at Ravenshill, Mrs. Russelthorpe facing them.

It was one o'clock; the short summer's night was nearly spent, but the big swinging lamp was still burning. To Meg and Barnabas, coming in from the sweet dark garden, the house seemed in a blaze of light.

The men were all out, searching far and wide for Meg. Only Mr. Russelthorpe had not been told of her absence: he had gone early to bed, and locked the door on himself; giving orders that no one was to disturb him.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was white with passion. Meg was quite silent.

Barnabas Thorpe stood looking from one woman to the other.

"You are a disgrace to the house! You have no shame left!" said Mrs. Russelthorpe. Then the man's blue eyes flashed angrily.

"There's only one of us three has any cause for shame, an' it's not this maid nor me. It's not fit that any should say such things to her. Have ye no brother or father, lass? If ye have, I would like to speak wi' him."

Meg shook her head.

"Yes; but he is a very long way off; and I don't quite know where," she said; "and, perhaps, he'll believe Aunt Russelthorpe."

Mrs. Russelthorpe's face hardened; the preacher could not have done worse than appeal from her to Meg's father. She was a hard woman, and rather a coarse one; but she would scarcely have said what she said that night, if the jealousy which always smouldered between her and her brother's child had not been fanned by his words.

"He will most certainly believe me," she said. "But it is almost a pity (for his sake) that, having stayed away so long, you ever came back at all."

Meg caught her breath with a low cry, as if she had been stabbed; but a sudden light broke over the preacher's face.

"Cast thy garments about thee, and follow me," he cried. "I did not understand before. My eyes were holden; but now it is made clear to us: it is the message from the Lord."

He made one stride forward and stretched out both his hands.

"Come now!" he cried. "I will snatch you like a brand from the burning. Come with me! Let us go out together and preach the Master in the Highways and Hedges. Your example shall be as a shining light to guide the feet of those who are snared by riches. Come! The world has called you on one side and the Master on the other, and you have hesitated; and now the call has been made clearer. Choose quickly, before it is too late. Let me take you from the evil that you feel too strong for you. No one can stay us. You shall go like Peter through the prison doors at the call of the Lord, an' in His strength I will hold ye safe."

Meg looked at him, one long earnest look, then away from him, at the familiar hall, where she had danced gaily three months ago. She thought of the portrait of the great-aunt whose eyes always followed her, and who had done something mysteriously "dreadful". Aunt Russelthorpe would say she was as bad, but she wasn't, she was following a call. She thought of her old uncle, who was sleeping through all this commotion; she thought of Laura and Kate; her aunt's words about her father had hurt her so much that she tried not to think of him; she saw again the preacher on the beach, ah! that was the beginning, and to-night only grew out of it; or was the beginning further back still in the days when her father had told her of Lazarus waiting "outside"?

"Choose while ye may," said Barnabas Thorpe. And she put her hand in his with an odd sense that very little "choice" was left.

"You say it is a message?" she said. "Very well. Let it be so—I will go with you."

Mrs. Russelthorpe had stood with lips compressed, rigidly still, during the preacher's extraordinary proposal; she made one faint attempt to stop them now—but it was too late.

Barnabas Thorpe put her aside as easily as he would have brushed away a fly. "You ha' said your say. It was a cruel one," he said. "You ha' done wi' this maid." And they went out together into the night.

The men who had been sent out to search for Meg returned in the early morning. Their mistress met them in the hall; she had evidently taken no rest, and her face in the pitiless daylight looked haggard and worn.

It had been known in the household that Mrs. Russelthorpe and Miss Margaret didn't get on; but the servants whispered to each other now, that Mrs. Russelthorpe took it harder than might have been expected.

Later in the day, the coastguard from the station on the downs brought news of Miss Deane, and told how Barnabas Thorpe had come to his cottage for ropes, and of how they had gone together to the young lady's assistance.

The coastguard would hardly believe that the preacher had not brought his charge safely home. "I would have trusted my own daughter with him anywhere," he kept repeating. Of that strange scene in the hall, no one but the three concerned ever knew.

Later still they heard of Meg's marriage;—the bare announcement and no more. Mrs. Russelthorpe handed the missive to her husband.

"The girl is crazy," she said. "There is no other explanation."

Mr. Russelthorpe laid down his book—they were in the library—with a groan.

"I can't face Charles. I shall go away when he comes back," was the only comment he made.

"Why? It wasn't your fault," said his wife impatiently. "You had nothing to do with the unhappy child."

"Nothing, nothing!" muttered the old man. "She told me she was desperate, and I did nothing."

Mrs. Russelthorpe turned on him sharply; her face was hard and drawn.

"Margaret told you that? Then hold your tongue about it, Joseph. It is better she should be mad, than that she should have taken this scamp of her own free will."

Mr. Russelthorpe shook his head.

"You have never liked the girl," he said. "But she is no more mad than you are. She was in our charge, and we have been bad guardians; and when your brother comes——"

"When he comes I will meet him," said Mrs. Russelthorpe; "it is between him and me."

The old man gave her a quick furtive glance.

"You have never wanted any one else to come between you and him," he said; and Mrs. Russelthorpe winced.

"We'll talk of it no more," she cried. "Meg is dead to us."

"Yes," said Uncle Russelthorpe, "but that won't prevent there being the devil to pay."

There is—or rather there was when Margaret Deane was young—a fishing hamlet on the Kentish coast that consisted of just one line of tarred wooden huts, and a square-towered chapel.

The women would put their candles in the windows after the sun had dipped, that the twinkling friendly eyes of their houses might guide the fishermen home; but whether it was day or night Sheerhaven had always the air of a watcher by the sea.

The glow of dawn was just warming the grey water when a boat grated on Sheerhaven beach, and a man and a woman climbed slowly up the yellow shelving bank. When they had gone a few steps the man turned and held out his hand. "You are over weary, an' it's no wonder," he said. "Best let me help you."

A fisherman who was pushing off his boat paused and marvelled, as well he might.

"That's Barnabas Thorpe. But who is the girl?"

They walked along the queer old street, that was bounded on one side by the shingle, and was often wave- as well as wind-swept, in the high spring-tides.

Barnabas knocked at a door. His mind was still running on St. Peter and the angel. "It 'ull be the mistress not the maid who will open to us here," he remarked.

The smell of a clover field was blown to them, and a cock crew lustily while they waited.

"The new day has begun," said the girl in a low voice.

The woman who opened the door, a muscular large-featured fish-wife, started when she saw them.

"Dear heart! it's the preacher,—and wet through," she cried. "Now step in, Barnabas, and I'll have a fire in a minute. Eh! what's this? What do you say? A maid as wants shelter?" her good-natured face fell. She had little doubt that it was some "unfortunate" the preacher had rescued.

"We—el—yes; let her come along, she'll do us no harm."

She took them into the parlour, and began to lay the sticks.

"Ran down with the tide from Dover, eh? Well, you've given the lass a salt baptism; she's not got a dry stitch on her. Come nearer, my woman; the fire will blaze up in a minute. Why!" with a sudden change of voice as Meg obeyed her. "The Lord have mercy on us, Barnabas! What have you been about?"

"I'll tell ye by-and-by when she is a bit dryer," said the preacher; but Mrs. Cuxton's eyes did not wait for his telling. She took one more long stare at her strange visitor, who had taken off the rough coat Barnabas had wrapped round her in the boat, and who stood shivering a little by the fire.

Her glance fell from the delicate refined face to the small nervous hands, and the dainty shoes soaked in salt water.

"You belong to gentlefolk, missy?" she said. "Ah, yes! I can see——"

"I don't belong to them any more," said the girl, speaking for the first time with a thrill of excitement, but with an intonation and accent which belied her words; and their hostess shook her head, and looked again at Barnabas, who was staring thoughtfully at the flames.

"I'd as lief speak a word to 'ee," he said gravely; and she followed him out of the room with the liveliest interest depicted on her face.

When she returned alone she found her guest sleeping from sheer exhaustion, her head on the seat of the wooden chair, her slim girlish form on the sanded floor.

Mrs. Cuxton bent over her, her gratified curiosity giving place to a protective motherly compunction; Meg's fair hair was wet with the sea, and shone in the firelight like a halo, her lips were just parted, she looked less than her twenty-one years.

"Poor lamb! to think what I thought of her! Eh! but it's a bad enough business as it is!" muttered the woman; and even while she watched her heart went out to the girl.

Meg awake might possibly have aroused criticism or disapproval; Meg sleeping took her unawares.

Mrs. Cuxton made up a bed on the settle, and drew it to the fire and then took off the wet shoes and stockings, warming the cold feet between her hands. Meg woke up and remonstrated faintly, but was too utterly worn out to care much what happened. The reaction from the tremendous excitement of the night was telling on her, and she was almost too weary to stand, though she felt a sort of comfort in this rough woman's tenderness.

"How kind you are, and what a deal of trouble I am giving you!" she said, as Mrs. Cuxton made her lie down in the improvised bed, and tucked her in with a motherly admonition to "put sleep betwixt her and her sorrows".

"I can't think whatever your people were about to let you do such a thing, and you only a slip of a girl. Trouble? you're no trouble in the world, missy; but your mother must be breaking her heart to-night for you!" cried Mrs. Cuxton; and there were actually tears in her eyes.

"I haven't got a mother," said Meg. "Nobody's heart will break for me, so it really doesn't much matter, you know, what happens, and I am too tired to think; besides, it's done now!" Her eyelids closed again, almost while she was speaking; and Mrs. Cuxton left her with a muttered ejaculation, worn out with weariness and excitement, sleeping like a child over the very threshold of the new life.

It was in Sheerhaven that Meg was married to Barnabas Thorpe. She took that last irrevocable step with a curious unflinching determination,—a sense, half womanly, half childish, that having gone so far, there had better be no going back; that having trusted him so much, the responsibility was his altogether.

"I can't do any other way," he had told her. "I couldn't take ye with me without that; ye must have the protection o' my name, and give me that much right i' the eyes o' the world to fend for ye,—that's all I am wanting. I ha' never thought to marry since I was 'called'."

The girl, standing in the door of the black hut where he had brought her the night before, was quite silent for a full minute, her face full of conflicting emotions.

"If you say we must do it, then—very well," she said at last. "I may as well be Margaret Thorpe as Margaret Deane."

The preacher turned quickly; her quiet assent discomposed him, though in his heart he believed his own words: for the sake of the maid's good name there was no other way.

"Lass!" he said earnestly, "it seemed to me a call o' the Lord's, an' I had no doubts; but ye are young, an' I'm no natural mate for ye. If ye choose, I'll find that father ye talk of, wherever he may be, an' make him understan' the truth. I'll leave ye here this hour and go; but, having come out o' the city o' destruction, to my mind ye had better stay out."

"You will find my father?" Her face brightened and flushed for a second, and then rather a painful look crossed it, and she shook her head.

"Aunt Russelthorpe will see him first," she said; "so it is of no use."

No stranger could ever understand how much despair there was in that last sentence.

"Then there's just naught else possible," said the man: and she bent her head in assent.

She did not see him again till she saw him in the church, where they exchanged vows. Mrs. Cuxton gave her away with grim disapproval.

The guest whom the sea had brought in the early dawn, and who had spent two whole days under her roof, had charmed the heart out of the woman like a white witch.

Meg's fineness and slenderness touched the big fish-wife. Meg's sweet smile, the manner that was her father's, and her pretty voice, when she sat singing the whole of one morning to the little cripple lad whose life Barnabas Thorpe had once saved, were all part of the witchery. During the whole of her chequered life there were always some people (and generally people of a very opposite type to her own) who were inclined to give her that peculiarly warm and instinctive service that has something of the romance of loyalty in it; her home had been somewhat over-cold, but more than once the gift of love, unexpected and unasked, was held out by strange hands as she passed by.

It was a gusty morning, and the break of the waves sounded all through the short service when Meg was married. She paused when they stood on the steps of the church and looked across the sea,—a long look—(somewhere on the other side of that water was her father); then they went inside.

The bride had on a close-fitting plain straw bonnet that Mrs. Cuxton had bought in the village, and her white dress was simpler than what might have been worn by a woman of the preacher's own class; but the old clergyman who was to tie the knot (blind and sleepy though he was) peered hard at her, then looked at Barnabas Thorpe uncertainly. They were a strangely matched couple, he thought. If Meg had seemed frightened he would possibly have spoken; but when her courage was at the sticking-point she did not hesitate, and nothing would have induced her to show the white feather then. It was a plainly furnished church, small and light. The walls were whitewashed, the communion table was covered with a much-patched cloth. It was so small that the fishermen seemed almost to fill it.

They were a deeply interested congregation. All of them knew the preacher; many of them were bound to him by close ties.

Meg's fresh sweet voice, with its refined pronunciation, troubled the clergyman afresh; but it was too late to ask questions, and the service went on undisturbed to its conclusion.

The two signatures are still visible in the vestry. "Margaret Deane," in the fine Italian hand that Mrs. Russelthorpe had inculcated; and underneath, in laboured characters like a schoolboy's, "Barnabas Thorpe".

Meg's pride carried her safely through the meal that waited them on their return; it was spread in the kitchen, and some of the fishermen who had been in the church lounged in, and stared silently at her through the sheltering clouds of tobacco. She made a valiant attempt to eat, and then escaped to change her dress, for the blue serge skirt and cotton body, that Mrs. Cuxton had got with the slender stock of money Meg had had in her pocket.

Mrs. Cuxton followed her after a minute.

"Barnabas is writing them word at home that he has married you. He says have you aught to say?" she said.

"No," answered the girl; "there will never be anything more said between them and me."

Mrs. Cuxton nodded: her manner had changed slightly since the deed had been done, and the last gleam of doubt as to Meg's "really going on with it" had disappeared.

"I don't know what led you to this," she said, putting her hand on Meg's shoulder; "but you say true—you've done it! And whether the blame was mostly yours or not, it's you that must take the consequences! But you've a bit of a spirit of your own, that I fancy may carry you through; and Barnabas Thorpe is a good man, for all I blame him for this day's work. You just stick by him now, and don't never look back at what you've left—it's your only way!"

Meg made no answer: an odd frightened expression crossed her face; then she drew herself up. "I am ready," she said; "only just say 'Good Luck' to me before I go."

"God help you and bless you," said Mrs. Cuxton earnestly, "and him too!"

There was a hush when the bride came in, as unlike a fish-wife in her fish-wife's gear, as well could be.

Barnabas Thorpe sprang to his feet and cut leave-takings short. A cart was waiting for them; he threw up a bundle and lifted Meg in, before she knew what he was about, and they were off at a rather reckless pace down the uneven street.

Meg leant back to wave her hand to Mrs. Cuxton; she had not said good-bye, or thanked her, but she watched her till they were out of sight. It seemed to the good woman that those grey eyes were saying a good deal that Meg's tongue had not said; and as the cart dwindled to a speck in the distance she turned indoors with a heavy heart.

SECOND PART.

CHAPTER I.

Ravenshill was shut up after its brief season of gaiety, and the Deanes came back to it no more.

Margaret's father felt very bitterly the blow that had fallen on him. Both his affection and his pride were outraged; and he was wanting in neither quality, though, in the first shock of the news, the latter seemed to outweigh the former.

That Meg, his special pet, his favourite daughter, of whose beauty he had been so proud, whose very failings were so like his own that he had felt them a subtle form of flattery, that Meg should have done this thing,—it seemed monstrous and impossible.

At first he absolutely refused to credit her aunt's letter, throwing it into the fire with a quick scornful gesture and an angry laugh; but by the time he had reached England, the reality of what had happened had entered into his soul.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was not a sympathetic woman, but she cared for her brother; and the sight of his face on their first meeting in the drawing-room made her blench for once, and avert her gaze.

He uttered no word of reproach, he asked few questions, and made no comments.

If Margaret had been dead he would have wept for her; but she was too far away for tears. She had given the lie to her past; and, had he found her in her coffin, he felt that she would have been less utterly lost to him.

Death might have drawn a veil between them, but it is only life that can separate utterly.

Mrs. Russelthorpe made one faint attempt at consolation; but consoling was not in her line, and she did it awkwardly.

Mr. Deane lifted his head and looked at her, with a face that seemed to have grown grey, and eyes that were terribly like Meg's.

"Don't, please!" he said; "you mean well, sis—but you don't understand. She was my child, and is my grief." And Mrs. Russelthorpe was silent. If she had ever felt moved to a revelation of what had led to Meg's flight, she said to herself now that her brother's own entreaty sealed her lips.

No one spoke to him of Meg after that, though every one felt sorry for him. The quiet dignity with which he bore his trouble awoke more sympathy than any lamentations would have aroused; but he was a man who always and involuntarily awoke sympathy, whether in his joy or in his grief.

It was not till he had been some weeks in the house that he noticed his brother-in-law's absence.

"Joseph is quite as well as usual," Mrs. Russelthorpe said coldly, in reply to his inquiry. "He fancies himself an invalid, and will never make the slightest exertion now. It's no use for you to try and see him, Charles;" and Charles did not try.

Perhaps he rather dreaded the old man's sharp-edged cynicism just then; though he need not have been afraid: Meg's uncle was quite as sore about her as was Meg's father, and a good deal more remorseful.

Very few people saw anything of Mr. Russelthorpe during the last years of his life. George Sauls declared that the poor old fellow was scandalously neglected; but then George Sauls was a good hater, and not likely to take a lenient view of Mrs. Russelthorpe.

Oddly enough, Mr. Sauls was the only person who guessed how heavily Meg's last hopeless appeal weighed on her uncle's mind. He was fiercely angry himself, inclined to quarrel (if they would give him the chance) with all Meg's relatives, to scoff at the popular sympathy for Mr. Deane, and to be unamiably sceptical when he was told that Mrs. Russelthorpe was an altered woman, and felt far more deeply than might have been supposed.

People said, indignantly, that Mr. Sauls did not show himself in at all a pleasing light; and that, considering how kind Mr. Deane had been to him, he might have exhibited more feeling for his friend's trouble; and, indeed, the worst side of the man seemed uppermost at that time.

Yet he called at the house in Bryanston Square when the Russelthorpes returned to town, showing some boldness in continuing his visits in spite of Mrs. Russelthorpe's surprised looks when they encountered each other in the hall. Mr. Russelthorpe had a liking for the young Jew, whose secret he had guessed; and though George had made his way into the library, in the first instance, from purely interested motives, being determined to know all there was to be known about Meg, yet he came again and again, from an unexpressed friendship for the queer, whimsical recluse, who was nominally master of that big house, but who was of no account whatever, and who seemed to grow lonelier and queerer as the years went by.

On the occasion of his first visit after hearing of Meg's departure, George had almost forced an entry, and had found Meg's uncle sitting almost as Meg herself had found him, save that he was making no pretence of reading now, and that his little wizened face was surmounted by a nightcap.

"Go away, I am ill!" he cried fretfully, when the door opened; but when he saw who his visitor was, he straightened himself, and held out his hand.

"Have you come to look at my Egyptian coins again, Sauls?" he asked. "You haven't heard the news then, or you would know that the study of antiquities won't repay you,—won't repay you at all."

"It is true, then!" said Mr. Sauls, a trifle hoarsely. "Would you mind telling me what you know about it, sir?"

"Yes, I should mind," said the old man. Then, when he looked at Mr. Sauls, he apparently relented. "Sit down; though the story won't take long. It's short, and not particularly sweet," he remarked; and he told it in as few words as possible.

"Put not your trust in women," said George, with rather a futile attempt at flippancy, when he had heard the end. "What a fool I've been! I thought I had bought all my experience in that line years ago. Oh well! it's done now, and the sweetest ingénue in the world won't take me in again."

Mr. Russelthorpe looked up sharply. "I suppose when a man's hurt he must blame some one," he said; "and it's easiest to throw the blame on the woman; and this, perhaps, is as good a reason for raving against her as any other. Otherwise, I should say that whoever has cause of complaint, you've none; but my eyes are old and blind. You talk of being 'taken in'. Possibly she encouraged you more than I knew."

George coloured. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "I did not mean to imply that Miss Deane—Mrs. Thorpe, I mean—ever did more than barely tolerate me at times. She was a cut above me, I fancied. As events have proved, I was a trifle too modest. It isn't generally my failing; but, evidently, her taste was not so fastidious as I supposed. Barnabas Thorpe knew better. D——n him!" he added savagely.

"Oh certainly!" said Mr. Russelthorpe. "We'll do that, with all my heart. Not that it will make any difference. But, as to her, you're wrong. If it's any consolation to you, I don't think that she would have married you in any case. Not that I don't believe she would have done a wise thing if she had," he added, holding out his hand with a gleam of sympathy. "I should have been glad to see it; but—and this is one of those little arrangements that make one wonder whether there isn't a devil at the steering wheel after all—the purer minded and more innocent a girl is, the more likely she is to fling herself away for an empty idea, and the more faith she'll have in any canting fool who appeals to her 'higher motives'. It is born with some women, that pining to sacrifice themselves, and to spend all their energies on other people. It used to amuse me, when my niece was a child, to see how she was always throwing pearls before swine. Well! well! she's done it with a vengeance this time!"

"Ah! I am glad it amuses you so much," said Mr. Sauls. "It's a very entertaining story from first to last, isn't it? I don't know which is funniest, the thought of that girl's lonely girlhood in this house, where no one seems to have cared twopence about her, or her reckless marriage with a man who'll probably make her repent every hour of her life. Do you suppose he'll kick her when he gets sick of the pearls? That would be most amusing of all, wouldn't it?"

He spoke almost brutally. Mr. Deane, however angry, could not have used that tone to an old man; but George had been brought up in a less strict school of manners, and, perhaps, at that moment had a revulsion of feeling against these grandees amongst whom he had pushed himself in,—to his own undoing, as he felt just then.

At that moment he found it hard to look at things calmly, or to consider that, after all, a love affair was an episode he would get over; whereas the advantages he had derived from an intimacy with the Deanes were solid and lasting, the entrée to Mr. Deane's house having been a decided step upwards on the social ladder. Mr. Russelthorpe made no reply, and George took up his hat.

"I am in too bad a temper to be good company, sir," he said; "though, I daresay, I amuse you. Good-bye."

"You are young still, and angry with fate, or Providence, or the devil,—whichever you like to call it," said the old man. "But as for me, I am old,—too old to be indignant any more, or to go on knocking my head against stone walls; but—I am sorry too—I have not outlived sorrow yet;—unfortunately, that is the last thing we leave behind."

George twisted his eyeglass rapidly. "There are a good many years before me, in all probability," he said. "I may meet her again. In fact, I will try to, sooner or later. One would like to know how it answers, but not just yet. I don't want to be taken up for assault, and I should find it hard to keep my hands off that preaching villain. I will wait."

"Well," said Mr. Russelthorpe drily, "I think you'd better; for I've heard that Barnabas Thorpe knows how to use his fists too: it would be undignified, should you get the worst of it. Besides (though you can hardly be expected to see this), though I've met hypocrites in my time, I doubt whether they are common. Self-deceived idiots there are in plenty, who dub their own desires and prejudices the 'Voice of the Lord'; but villains are scarce. He may be one; of course, it simplifies matters to believe that he is; one can curse him the more heartily,—but I doubt it."

"Do you?" said George shortly; "I don't!"

"No," said the old man; "I don't suppose you do. You're young and hard, as I said before, and sure about everything. Well, don't go and make a fool of yourself about her. What good do you suppose you could do? You might, of course, do harm—that is always so much easier—harm to her and yourself too. I don't know that it would amuse me much if harm should come to you. I should miss you rather—though probably I should do nothing to prevent it."

His voice died away sadly, in a rambling sentence, about something he had said or had not said, and might have prevented and hadn't prevented.

"But you are in such a hurry, Margaret, and I am too old to think so quickly—too old, too old!" he mumbled.

Mr. Sauls, who was just going away, turned back, arrested by that long weak murmur. He crossed the room again, made up the fire, and pushed the armchair closer to it.

"You are not well, sir. Ought you to be alone like this? shall I fetch any one?"

"No—no—don't fetch her. I can't stand her. Don't, I say, don't!" cried Mr. Russelthorpe so nervously that George gave up the idea at once.

"I'll look in again if you would like it," he said, half wondering at himself while he spoke.

"Yes; come again, and, Sauls—come nearer—I've something to say."

George came nearer, and bent over him. "If ever they tell you that I am dying, you insist on coming in, and turn her out," he whispered. "You turn her out! And—and—I want to make my will. Come in and talk it over. I wish to make you executor—and I'll tell you where I put it—then you can find it, when I am dead; but don't let her know—she knows only about the old one. Promise me!"

"All right!" said George; "I promise." Mr. Russelthorpe broke into a low chuckle.

"I wish my spirit could be there to see," he said. "Who knows? it may be, eh? We really know nothing after all. You won't mind a scene with her, will you?"

"With Mrs. Russelthorpe?" said George. "Oh, no; I shall rather like it!"

"Ah!" said the old man. "So shall I, if I am there, released from this feeble old body. I hope I may be." Arid he chuckled again. "Well, good-night, lad."

As for George, he wended his way to Hill Street to dine with his mother. He had pulled his rather unpresentable family up with him, and he was worshipped at home. He always gave Mrs. Sauls the pleasure of his society on one evening in the week; and, considering how busy he was, and how manifold were his engagements, his constancy in keeping to this rule showed some tenacity of purpose.

Mrs. Sauls most firmly believed that all the grand ladies he met were simply dying for "her George," and that he might, as she elegantly expressed it, "'ave 'is pick of them". Perhaps some of "George's" partners might have been rather appalled at the idea of having her for a mother-in-law; but then, as she said, "Lord bless you, they won't marry me; and George's wife will be able to afford to put up with my yellow old face if the Sauls' diamonds set off her young one. I shan't grudge 'em to her, though I won't give them up to any one else; and she'll have the finest in London."

While awaiting the arrival of "George's wife," who had been discussed and speculated on since George had been in petticoats, his mother wore the diamonds herself, in season and out of season. She had a gay taste in dress, delighting in crimsons and yellows, and she always put on her best clothes for her son. Rebecca Sauls had had a bad husband; but George more than made up, as she never tired of saying.

He had been a most objectionable little boy, and had sown a too liberal supply of wild oats as a youth; but his manhood had repaid her: he had turned out cleverer than his father; for, while old Sauls had known only how to make and to save, George, in addition, knew how to spend.

It had required something of an effort on George's part to tear himself away from the old place in the City; but his ambition was even stronger than his talent for money-making, and he boldly cut the shop, and went in for the law. His mother supported him, though all his father's relations held up their hands in holy horror.

"And now my son sits down at table in houses where the Benjamin Mosses and Joseph Saulses wouldn't dream of putting the tips of their long noses!" said she. "And, what's more, they are glad and thankful to get him; but he won't give me up, not for the grandest of them; he'll dine here on a Saturday night, let alone who wants him." And that Saturday night was Mrs. Sauls' gala day. Then she donned her lowest and gayest dress, and most fearful and wonderful headgear, and ordered an aldermanic feast. She would have given George melted pearls to drink, had he expressed any desire that way.

She was an odd-looking old lady, with jet black hair and curiously light-coloured eyes, which were in strong contrast to her very dark complexion, and gave her rather a strange expression. Her mouth was coarse, like her son's, and, like him also, she had plenty to say for herself, and was excellent company.

Some cousins came to dinner, also loud-voiced and bedizened with diamonds. The youngest cousin was at the age when Jewesses are handsomest, being barely seventeen.

She flirted outrageously with George, and he patronised her in a free and easy style. He could generally suit his manners to his company, and this company was rather a rest and relaxation to him.

They all made a great deal of noise after dinner; it struck George that seven people in Hill Street were noisier than fourteen in Bryanston Square, and probably merrier. Mrs. Russelthorpe's hair would have stood on end if she could have seen that entertainment.

Mrs. Sauls enjoyed it as much as any one; but when the company had gone off hilariously, and George, having seen his guests out of the hall door, returned for a tête-à-tête with her,—then she tasted the crowning felicity of the evening.

George always paid his mother the compliment of talking to her about his professional ambitions and interests. She was his only confidante, and he never forgot how she had encouraged him at the very outset of his career. He was not a man who forgot either injuries or benefits.

He talked a long time. Neither of them minded sitting up half the night; and the old lady liked the smell of his cigar, and enjoyed mixing his whisky and water for him, and rejoiced in the sound of his voice.

"Really!" he exclaimed at last, when two o'clock struck. "I am teaching you very bad ways, mother! I say, do you suppose that Miriam Moss will dream of forfeits to-night? She's a very precocious little girl! It's odd how early Jewesses develop. I've known other women of twenty or one and twenty not a quarter so 'formed' as she is."

His mother looked anxiously at him. "You are not thinking of marrying her, are you?" she asked. "You should do better than that, my son. The Mosses are rich, certainly; but I should like to see you go in for a title, myself; and you needn't be afraid that I'll stand in your way when you want to bring a wife home. Indeed, I'd like to have a grandson on my knee before I die, George; though I don't deny that it's been luck for me, in some respects, that you haven't married before. 'A son's a son till he gets him a wife.' Still, it's time now; and, if I were you, I'd look not lower than a county family. You've got money enough. And you may tell the lady from me," and her hard old face softened at the words, "you may tell her from me, that she'll be a lucky woman, for your vulgar old mother says so, and she has had reason enough to swear to it."

George laughed, and put his arm round her. The caress meant a good deal more than all the pretty speeches he had made to Miriam.

"The lucky young woman of title to whom I shall so kindly condescend to throw the handkerchief hasn't appeared on the horizon yet," he said. "When she does, she shan't turn up her highly aristocratic little nose at you, mother! Nobody shall come between you and me."

Mrs. Sauls nodded till her earrings twinkled again. "So much the better for me, my son; but wives aren't so amenable as mothers. Don't answer for her too soon!"

"One can answer for any woman—just as far as one can see her, eh?" said George, yawning; and his mother looked hard at him.

Possibly she guessed that the horizon had not been quite so clear as he would have had her believe; and had a pretty shrewd suspicion that something besides work had deepened the lines on his face. But she was wise in her generation, and kept her counsel.

He talked on for some time, chiefly on business, after that; bidding her good-night only when the dawn began to creep through the shutters.

"Good-night, my dear," said his mother, "and God bless you for a good son, as I'm sure He ought."

She had a wistful feeling while she said the words that Providence had somehow been unduly hard on George lately. Her son laughed profanely: "I believe you think that the Almighty is rather honoured in having me to bless!"

But he was fond of his mother all the same, and her blessing did him no harm.

After all, he couldn't go and make an utter fool of himself—or worse,—while the old woman believed in him so.

A girl begged of him on his way through the streets, and his sallow cheek flushed, for the colour of her hair was like Meg's.

Her innocent face swam before him for a moment, and he put his hand before his eyes with a sense of sacrilege at the reminder. He believed himself as little given to sentiment as any man; but he had felt, since he had known Meg, that his other thoughts were not good enough company for those of her. Now, with a bitter revulsion, he declared to himself that the preacher, who had had no scruples, had fared the best.

He thrust the girl aside, and quickened his steps with compressed lips.

When he got to his rooms he walked straight up to his writing-table drawer, and took from it a little water-colour sketch that had been torn out of Laura's sketch book.

"I can't afford this nonsense," he said. "I shall murder the preacher, if I let you stay here now."

He tore the portrait across, and burnt it in the flame of his lamp. And this was, perhaps, the most sensible thing he could have done; but George seldom lost his head, whatever happened to his heart.

CHAPTER II.

She has tied a knot with her tongue that she'll not undo with her teeth.

Caulderwell Farm is built on the edge of the "flats". All round it, in the days of which I write, was unreclaimed land—broad salt marshes, where the water crept slowly up at high tide, oozing between the rank grass and the sand banks, where the wild ducks nested and the frogs croaked. Fresh-water springs there were too, making tender green splotches in the midst of the redder salt-fed vegetation, and deep black pools, that only the wind and the rain and the shy water-birds visited from one year's end to the other.

From the windows that face south the silver streak of salt water could be seen five miles as the crow flies across the marshes,—a lonely sea breaking on no cheerful child-haunted beach, but rolling in in long grey waves over the soft reed-tufted sand, where the rime clung in crusted serpentine ridges, and where bits of timber and shells got caught among the weeds, till the waves carried them back again.

A lonely country, whose lover's salt kisses left her the more barren.

The grey walls of the solitary house stood sturdily square to every wind that blew; the bit of cultivated ground was dyked all round, and the one road across the marsh led straight to the house door, and there stopped, for beyond the farm was no man's land.

The Thorpes had lived here from generation to generation. They boasted that the marsh ague never touched them, and that their cattle never got lost in the "mosses". They had always been noted for a particular breed of horses, for which they got a sale at the annual horse fair at N——; for the gift of "bone setting," which had appeared in the family again and again; and for a certain obstinate originality, a "way of their own," which the first Thorpe had exemplified in his choice of a home. That good man was popularly supposed to have had a hard tussle with the marsh devil (who was peculiar to the soil, and was an unclean spirit with a head like a horse), over the building of the house. Apparently he had worsted his adversary thoroughly; for Caulderwell Farm still stands, and was three hundred years old when Margaret—who had been Margaret Deane—first made its acquaintance. Daughters had been scarce in the farm. In that respect also the Thorpe family had showed a decided peculiarity. Of the children born to it by far the larger proportion had been boys; and the few girls who had had the temerity to open their eyes in that wind-circled house had generally died before maturity.

Barnabas Thorpe's father had had no sisters, and his wife had brought him sons only.

He had been ambitious as a young man, separated as he was from the people about him by his new-fangled ideas, his greater education, and the touch of something that appeared very like genius in his youth, and like madness in his old age; the "something" that had been always cropping up afresh in each succeeding generation.

It seemed likely that his sons might be sent to college, and rise to the level of gentlefolk; but nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, the family fortunes fell back; a sort of melancholy blight seemed to have infected the man; he lost interest and energy; the tide of his ambition turned and ebbed, as that quiet creeping sea turned and ebbed from the pools outside.

People said that the two calamities of his life had soured him, that he had never been the same after the death of his wife, and that the accident that had made his first-born, his favourite son, grow up deformed in body, had given a morbid twist to the father's mind.

It may have been so; but it is more probable that the "twist" was there before,—born with him as surely as the colour of his eyes, and the shape of his head, and that it was only accentuated by circumstances.

His wife had died in childbirth; and, out of his passionate and extreme grief, grew, hardly controllable, an aversion for the innocent cause of it.

Tom Thorpe "fathered" his brother to the best of his ability, and kept him out of his real father's sight. Barnabas grew up sturdy and strong; a lover of "out-of-door" pursuits; a hater of books; a child possessed of immense animal spirits, noisy, and rather unruly, who played truant from school whenever he could, and took the consequent thrashings carelessly; a lad with a violent temper and a kind heart; who never puzzled his brains about anything, and was popular in spite of being slightly overbearing and obstinate, as all his forbears had been; a man who became a wanderer on the face of the earth, and startled every one who had known him by the suddenness and power of his "conversion".

He had been fifteen years in that service, to which he had given heart and life, when Margaret first saw him.

During that time he had come back to the farm at intervals, drawn by an overmastering longing for his native marshes; and, possibly, by a strong though undemonstrative affection for Tom. He had always returned, as he had gone, alone; until the night when he had brought home his wife.

It was late October. In the south, the trees still clung to their red and gold glories, and there was mellowness in the air, the afterglow of departing summer; but here, in the north, winter had already claimed possession, and had cut short brusquely the tender leave-takings of the warm weather.

The few trees that there were, little gnarled stunted specimens, had been violently bereft of their leaves, and leaned to one side, adapting themselves to the constant bullying of the gales, that swept through their thin knotted branches, and dashed against Caulderwell Farm, as if in hopes of, at last, laying that stern and sturdy old building low.

The lonely house looked cold and desolate enough from outside; but the heart of it, the cheerful kitchen where Mr. Thorpe and his son sat, was warm, even hot, on the coldest of nights.

The man who planned the farm had made the kitchen the noblest room in it. The prim "best parlour," and even the dining-room which no one ever used, but which boasted a curiously blazoned ceiling, were nothing in comparison.

The kitchen was oak-panelled, wide and essentially comfortable, with red brick floor and huge fireplace fitted with corner seats.

Candles, smoked hams, and rows of onions hung from the rafters. The china, genuine old willow, was piled on the oak dresser; pewter pots gleamed cheerfully in the firelight, though they were muddled up with pipes and fishing tackle in a way that would have made a good housewife's heart sink; and the rubicund face of an "old toby" beamed from among them,—a sort of presiding genius.

Two tallow candles stood on the square wooden table in the middle of the room. The remains of a meal were shoved together at one corner of the table, and books littered the other side. The candles cast deep eerie shadows, but never flickered; though the wind was tossing against the lozenge-shaped windows in angry gusts. The thick walls of the farm were quite draught-proof, let the storm shriek as it would.

Mr. Thorpe was walking with long uneven steps up and down the room. His hands—thin narrow hands—were clasped behind his back, his head poked forward a little.

He was a loose-limbed, gaunt man; big-boned, though he stooped so that it was difficult to guess his real height; his chest seemed to have sunk in, and his shoulders to have become permanently rounded.

His clothes hung on him as if they had been put on with a pitchfork, and his silky black beard straggled untidily over his old-fashioned flowered waistcoat.

His eyes were deep-set, blue, like his younger son's; but here the resemblance ended, for Mr. Thorpe was olive-complexioned, and his features were fine and clear cut. His was a more refined face than the preacher's. Evidently, Barnabas had inherited from his mother's side his fair skin and curly hair; also, probably, his incapacity for learning and his splendid health.

Tom Thorpe sat at the table with a pile of books in front of him; his shadow danced in the firelight, as if cruelly caricaturing the reality.

He was deformed, hunchbacked, and slightly crippled as well, one leg being oddly twisted inwards.

He had an odd face too, with a very big forehead, and rough jet black hair. He might have been taken for any age, having the sort of countenance that looks as if it had never been young, and yet is slow to grow old. In reality he was nearly forty.

His eyes were a greenish hazel, with curiously big pupils—very expressive eyes, that could be as soft as a woman's, though "softness" was not Tom's ordinary characteristic.

The mouth showed signs of pain endured silently and frequently; the lines about it were deep, and the lips closed very tightly when he was not talking.

Seated at the other end of the table, engaged in eating her supper, which she did with a kind of injured air, as if every mouthful were pain and grief to her, was a prim middle-aged woman, with an appearance of fretful, would-be gentility.

When she had finished, she rose with a stifled sob and seemed about to clear away, but Tom jumped, or rather hopped up, shut his book with a bang of suppressed irritation, limped round the table with surprising celerity, and took the plates out of her hands.

"If you are sartain you don't want more, I'll put 'em by," he said.

"I couldn't eat! not with you reading all the time, and Cousin Thorpe walking up and down like a wild beast in a cage," she murmured, with a quiver in her voice. "It takes all the heart out of one's meal!"

"But, my good soul, you ain't obliged to read," said Tom, "and I'm sure you are welcome to be as many hours over your supper as you like. If you've done, I'll put 'em off the table."

The corners of her mouth twitched downwards. "It never was cast up at me before that I take longer than is fitting over my food," she said; "but to see a person reading the whole of supper, with not a word to throw at one, and never caring what he's eating, no more than if it was dust and ashes, does break one's spirit; but if you think I consume more than I am entitled to, Tom, or if——"

"Look 'ee here!" cried Tom, "I never said nothing of the sort. Do you think I count your mouthfuls? If you dare hint such a thing again, I'll make you finish the ham before you go to bed." He caught it up by the bone as he spoke, and waved it aloft. Mrs. Tremnell looked terrified; she was always rather afraid of Tom, and could not have seen a joke to save her life. She retreated hastily from the combat to a far-off corner, where she produced a black silk workbag, and solaced her soul with tatting.

Tom put away the dishes, unwashed, with wonderful celerity, and buried himself again in his studies.

He rightly felt that if a woman were once allowed to have a hand in their extremely untidy domestic arrangements, she would never rest till she had revolutionised everything.

"Dad an' I'd be tidied out o' the kitchen before we knew where we were," he reflected; and poor Cousin Tremnell's desire after usefulness was vigorously snubbed whenever it durst show itself.

She sniffed over her work every now and then, and Tom glanced up irritably, yet with a suspicion of a smile at the corners of his lips. He was just opening his mouth to speak, this time with overtures of peace, when there was a thundering knock at the outer door.

"Who ever can it be at this time of night?" cried Mrs. Tremnell. And Mr. Thorpe paused in his restless walk.

"It's Barnabas!" cried Tom, his face lighting up. And he caught up his sticks, and was in the hall unbolting the massive door before the others had recovered from their surprise.

They heard his joyful, "Why, lad, I thought it was you!" and then a smothered exclamation of surprise. And then Barnabas came in, bringing a whiff of icy air with him.

The moisture was hanging from his beard, and dripping from his hat, making little pools on the red bricks. But not even Mrs. Tremnell noticed that; both she and Mr. Thorpe were staring in utter astonishment at a third figure,—a slight pale woman, with hair cut short, and big sad eyes, who followed him into the room silently.

"Father, this is my wife," said Barnabas Thorpe. "I wrote you a letter about her, but I doubt you never got it. It's a dirty night, and she's a bit weary."

There was a moment's silence; then the old farmer drew himself up, and held out his hand to the stranger with a gentle dignity that would have done credit to the finest gentleman in the land.

"You are welcome, ma'am," he said. "Will you come to the fire and rest? The storm's bad outside."

He demanded no explanation then. It was his house, and she his guest—on a night too when he wouldn't have shut out a dog,—that was enough for the present. All the rest could wait.

Cousin Tremnell burnt with curiosity; and so did the hunchback, who looked dismayed as well; but neither of them durst ask anything.

Cousin Tremnell, indeed, was too much "taken aback," as she would have expressed it, to move; but Tom hopped across the room with the kettle, and cast furtive glances at the woman who stood on the hearth slowly unwinding a heavy shawl, which she let fall at last in a heap at her feet. She was rather uncanny—like a spirit, or like one of the elves, with golden hair and no backs to them, who dance on the marsh to the destruction of the unwary, he thought.

At the second glance he revised that impression: his shrewd eyes told him that there was nothing of the temptress about this girl; she did not look bad; she had never inveigled any one; but, good Lord! what a queer wife to have! How tiny her hands were, and how still she stood; not blushing, nor rolling her fingers in her apron, nor doing any of the things women generally do when they are nervous; but only looking gravely into the fire, and waiting patiently. He made the tea and cut thick slices of bread and ham, and then addressed himself directly to the stranger, being filled with great curiosity to hear her voice.

"Will 'ee sit down with us?" he said; and looked inquiringly at his brother, as though to ask whether this strange wife of his ate or drank like ordinary mortals.

Barnabas sat down with good appetite; his wife took her place beside him, and Mr. Thorpe drew his chair to the table as a mark of respect to his unexpected guest: he had had his own supper long before.

Mrs. Tremnell brought her sewing up to the light, though she was too flustered to work; and Tom hopped round the table offering Barnabas' wife everything he could think of.

On the whole, and considering the startling way in which Margaret had been introduced into their midst, it was wonderful how well the Thorpes behaved.

Meg's own father could not have shown finer courtesy than did the preacher's.

She ate her supper with outward composure, if with some inward tremor. Meg had seen so many strange scenes, and found herself in so many strange places, since the day when she had shut the door for ever on the old life, that she was not now so completely overcome by the position as she might once have been.

The preacher was too indifferent to other people's opinions to suffer from embarrassment; and, though deeply attached to his home, he had, for many a long year, held himself quite independent in the ordering of his life.

Meg noticed that he met his brother's eyes with the reassuring glance that told of mutual understanding; but that he and his father had apparently little in common.

The old man's sharply chiselled and refined features, as well as his gentler accent, surprised her; and she looked up gratefully when he asked her about their journey.

"You clip your words like a Londoner," he remarked smiling; but he thought to himself that she was a pretty spoken lass anyhow.

"I have always lived in London part of the year," said Meg. "We went out of town in July."

"Why?" asked Tom abruptly.

Meg looked confused, and silence fell on them.

"The upper circles vacate town at the close of the opera," said Cousin Tremnell. She was privately wondering whether the stranger had been in service, and rather hoped she had. She herself, driven by stress of circumstances, had been maid in a very "good family" for some months. She knew that the Thorpes looked down on her for it; and, while she felt herself their superior in gentility and manners, she was yet not strong-minded enough for her self-respect to be unruffled by their opinion.

"We've naught to do wi' upper circles, and doan't want to have," said Tom. "I'm going to see about your room. Will 'ee come, lad?"

He limped off with marvellous quickness.

Barnabas pushed back his chair, and followed him.

Mr. Thorpe got up too; and resumed the restless pace up and down that had been broken into by his new daughter-in-law's advent. She sat twisting the ring on her thin finger, and wondering whether the preacher was telling the whole story now, and what his brother thought of it. As it happened, she was not left long in doubt on that score.

The tap of Tom's sticks sounded again along the stone passage; he was talking eagerly; when he almost reached the door, she heard his final dictum: "E—eh, lad! Now, I doan't know on my soul which was th' biggest fule, you or she!"

So Meg was brought to Barnabas Thorpe's kin; and, sitting alone in her room, looked over the wide marshes that were to become familiar to her; and knew herself a stranger in a strange land.

It was two months since she had become his wife in name; and the two months' experience had made its mark on her,—a mark so deep that she believed herself to be hardly recognisable—a different woman altogether.

Her face had sharpened in outline, and deepened in expression; the girlish beauty of colour had faded, and she had cut off her abundant soft hair.

They had travelled from village to village, the girl sometimes walking, sometimes getting a lift in passing carts, never owning to weariness, or pain, or discomfort; but living, apparently, on the preacher's preaching.

Her zeal had outstripped his, burning like a devouring flame. She had sung at meetings; she had gone with him everywhere unshrinkingly; she had given away the very food she should have eaten. And the man had watched her; first with amazement, then with an overgrowing sense of uneasiness; never quite understanding what revelations of good and evil he had brought her face to face with, or how desperately she was clinging to her religious faith, as a child, frightened in the dark, clings to its father's hand.

Meg had been not only innocent, but more ignorant of some phases of evil than would have been possible in a woman of the preacher's own class. Her brain had nearly reeled with the shock of new experiences; her horror at much she had seen and heard had often kept her awake when her body was tired out; and when she slept, her sleep had been haunted with dreams that exhausted her as much as wakefulness. The supernatural grew very real to her then; she was happy only when Barnabas was praying or preaching; she was feverishly eager, growing bigger eyed and thinner day by day.

As for her companion, he had made up his mind to do his best for the lass, who was his wife in name only, and whom he had thought to take through the world, guarding her as he would have guarded a younger sister; but, as day followed day, and week succeeded week, the "doing for her" cost him more—both in heart and mind; and, even in pocket!

He was a clever workman; and, though nothing would have induced him to take money for his faith healing, he had fewer scruples where his knack of bone setting was concerned.

He gave Margaret every comfort he could think of, but became more and more uneasily conscious with the flight of time that the physical hardships of her life were telling on her, and that he did not know how to prevent it; that there was something unnatural about her fervour, but that that, too, was beyond him.

He had got into a habit of watching her, and of taking note of her ways, silently as a rule, because, being accustomed to solitude, he was a silent man in ordinary intercourse.

For any thought he took for her she thanked him, with a gentle graciousness that was inherited from her father; but which seemed to her companion to belong only to this girl, and to have the curious quality of making his heart beat faster.

He was disconcerted when she cut off her hair; and she was surprised that he should even notice the loss. She was apt to be surprised in those days if Barnabas behaved like an ordinary mortal.

Then a change had come over them both—a strain in their relations, ever tightening, impossible to break through, impalpable, and, finally, unbearable.

The woman was aware of it first, and tried to ignore it. She sang, and prayed, and worked with even increased ardour. She was over-taxing her poor body, that was so unequally yoked; and she knew, and rather rejoiced at the fact.

Possibly, at the bottom of her heart, she felt that that was one way of escape from a difficulty that lay in wait for her, unfaced as yet, and "impossible".

It had been in the evening, after a long day's walk, that the difficulty had stalked boldly out of its corner.

They had arrived late at an inn; and Meg, too tired to eat, had exerted herself to amuse a fretful child, who was sitting beside her on a bench.

She seldom spoke to strangers, but, at that moment, she had experienced a sudden and almost overpowering distaste for her surroundings. The hot, tobacco-reeking room, the smell of food, the noise every one made in eating, the way the men spat on the floor, and the way the woman next her laughed, affected her with a physical loathing. She fought desperately against the sensation, having a nervous fear that, should she once stop talking, and let herself go, she might break down altogether. Her cheeks flushed with the heat of the room, her eyes shone like stars, and her tongue went faster and faster. The child stared at her, open-mouthed; the child's mother looked at her rather inquisitively; but the father, a young mechanic, put down his knife and fork, and tried to draw the stranger's attention to himself.

All at once Meg was startled by the preacher's pushing back his chair noisily, and putting a hand on her shoulder.

"If ye can't eat, there's no call for 'ee to stop here chattering. Ye'd better go upstairs," he said.

His voice sounded a little thick, and his face was flushed, though he never drank anything but water.

Meg turned and looked at him in utter astonishment; then rose and left them without a word.

It had been nothing to speak of, nothing to make a fuss about, yet when she had found herself alone in the tiny room upstairs that he had taken for her, she had hidden her face in her hands with an indescribable feeling of shame.

"What right had this man to speak so to her,—to look at her as if he were jealous? He might, in his capacity of preacher, have reproved her for breaking any law in the decalogue, and she would not have been angry; but this was quite different."

Alas! it did not bear thinking of. She had given him "right" enough!

She had felt she could not sit still; the restlessness that had been growing on her had made anything more bearable than the quiet of her room. She had put on her bonnet, and gone down again almost immediately.

She had found Barnabas leaning against the porch outside; he had heard or felt her approach, and turned the moment she had joined him. Voices from the inn had assailed their ears, in a gust of sound with the opening of the door; and then they had been alone, wrapped in the sweet solemn night, and Meg's anger and shame had died. After all, they two were pilgrims together, through a tumultuous and alien world, and she had been foolish to have been so disturbed. It had always been wonderfully easy to Meg to look at things from a purely spiritual point of view.

"Are you going out again?" she had asked him; and he had answered, with some constraint, that he was going to catch the lads coming out of the factory in the town, pointing to where the lights of Nottingham twinkled in the distance.

"Then I'll come too," Meg had said. "I can start the singing if you want it; and I always like to hear you speak."

But, for the first time since she had known him, he had refused her companionship, speaking still with the same constrained tone, and without looking at her.

"Ye are just killing yourself, lass; I canna let you do that."

The girl had evinced much the same half-reproachful wonder that she had shown when he had objected to the cutting off of her hair.

"If I am of any service at all," she had said, "you, of all men, should not try to stop me." And at that, the man had stood upright with a laugh and a quick passionate gesture, as if he would have stretched out his arms to her.

"I, of all men! I, of all men!" he had cried. "Lass, do ye suppose I am no' of flesh and blood, like the others? The Lord has angels enough; let me ha' the woman by my side; I of all men shouldna stay ye. Come then an' ye want to, Margaret!" And Meg, aghast, had stood for one moment with frightened eyes; then had turned and fled.

He had wakened her with a rough shock, and had brought her back to an earth that was no longer only "the road to Heaven".

It was a natural thing enough that had befallen the strange pair; only Meg, with her eyes fixed on the stars, had never dreamed of its possibility, and her heart had sunk.

The next morning the preacher had met her with recovered self-command.

"I spoke to ye as I shouldna have," he had said gravely. "An' I am 'shamed to ha' done it; an' yet it was truth, lass, that it isna possible to go on as we are. I canna stand by an' see ye get thinner an' weaker afore my eyes. Will ye let me take ye to my own home an' leave ye for a spell wi' my own people? Happen ye'll grow stronger at th' farm an' piece on your life again."

And Meg had acquiesced. She would do as he liked, though he had fallen from his pinnacle and was no more an inspired prophet; for what else could she do?

"To piece on her life" would be a puzzling and difficult thing, far more confusing than to take the kingdom of Heaven by storm, and die of over-work and under-feeding, like a saint; but she had no choice.

While she sat at her window, her thoughts flew back over all that had happened, till the remembrance of Tom Thorpe's remark came as a sort of anti-climax to the painful gravity of her thoughts, and Meg laughed softly in the darkness.

"Which was the bigger fule?"

Well! if she had been that, there was no need to be a coward as well. The girl straightened herself with a touch of pride and determination that was a good sign. "I cut one knot—I'll untie the next," she said; "and live it out as best I can!"

CHAPTER III.

But the living out was difficult.

Meg awoke at the farm. After the strange and wonderful journey by the side of the preacher; after the days of wandering over hill and dale, with exhausted body, but with mind so fixed on the vision beautiful, that she would not have been surprised at any moment had the clouds parted, and the second coming of the Lord blazed forth; after that curious "intoxication" of the soul that such natures as hers seem liable to,—she "came to herself" in the old house among those northern marshes, and tried, a little desperately, to meet the demands of a lot she had not been born to.

The loneliness was all on her side; for to the Thorpes the advent of Barnabas' wife was, perhaps, on the whole a not unwelcome piece of excitement.

In the winter the road across the marshes was all but impassable for months together. Often from November till February the little stronghold which the first Thorpe had wrested, and his successors kept, from the devils of desolation, was left to its own resources.

The family characteristics had probably been fostered by the circumstances of their life; they were sufficient to themselves.

There were Thorpes; there were—but some way behind them—their fellow country, or rather county-men; and then there was the rest of the world. Weak-knee'd outsiders, with bad constitutions and "queer ways" and indifferent morals. The preacher's wife was not even north country; she was, in fact, almost a "foreigner".

Poor little "outsider," thrust down in their midst to take root in a strange soil, if she could; or to shrivel and droop with starvation!—which would she do?

"The best thing for the lass 'ud be to pack her in cotton wool, and send her back to her own kind," Tom Thorpe had declared. But the boats were burnt, and the going back was impossible!

On the whole, of all her new relatives, Tom alarmed Meg most; but "Cousin Tremnell" was the member of the family she liked least.

The prim little woman, with plaintive voice and sharp curiosity, with uneasy pretensions to "gentility" and small affectations, seemed more hopelessly out of touch with her than were her husband's rougher kinsmen. Cousin Tremnell asked questions with the eagerness of a born gossip, who had been starving for dearth of any subject more personal than "crops" and "horses"; and Meg shrank from her inquiries as if they were so many small stabs.

"It is not becoming for you to be sitting in the kitchen, ma'am," she had said on the morning after Meg's arrival, and had forthwith conducted her into the best parlour, which was the one ugly room in the house, with its carpet beflowered with magenta roses; its gauze-swathed frames, and bunches of worsted convolvuli under shades.

Mrs. Tremnell brought out her work, and settled herself down to see what she could "get out" of this extraordinary cousin-in-law, towards whom her feelings were at present rather mixed. It was something to have a connection who had been one of the Deanes of Kent; but what a degenerate Deane she must be! Mrs. Russelthorpe herself could not have had a keener sense of Meg's degradation.

"How could she ever have done such a thing?" Mrs. Tremnell kept repeating to herself, with little mental gasps and notes of interrogation; and the burden of her thoughts was embarrassingly apparent, even though something in the stranger's manner, a shy dignity that Mrs. Tremnell durst not quite outrage, prevented her from asking the question point blank.

"It must seem very strange to you here, ma'am," she said tentatively. "Of course, it can't be what you were accustomed to. I find my cousin's ways rough myself—not meaning no comparison to what your sensations must be. I understand you was brought up in a different station altogether."

"I have been in many rougher places than this," said Meg; "and the past is quite dead."

Mrs. Tremnell's eyes fairly twinkled with eagerness. The preacher's wife was "very peculiar-looking," she said to herself, glancing at Meg's short curls and shabby dress; but there was no doubt that she was a lady, and the lady's "past" possessed a wonderful fascination.

"Is your honoured father still alive?" she ventured; and the colour rushed to Meg's cheeks.

"Oh yes—I—I hope so!" the girl cried. But the idea that he might be dead and buried, for all she knew or would ever know about him, suddenly made her heart contract with a sharp spasm of fear.

She made a hasty effort to draw "Cousin Tremnell" away from the subject; and, asking questions in her turn, elicited a stream of information about the Thorpes in general, and Barnabas Thorpe in particular, a stream which was only checked by occasional little flights back to "the Deanes," whose very name seemed to attract Cousin Tremnell as honey attracts a bee.

It was curious to hear Barnabas spoken of familiarly; curious how the man's individuality was becoming stronger and the prophet's fainter to his wife's unwilling eyes.

"The Thorpes are all as sure as sure of everything," said Cousin Tremnell. "I take after my father's side myself, and he was a gentle-spoken man, and quite different; it was my mother was a Thorpe. And my dear husband was south country. I never saw much of Cousin Thorpe till after I was left a widow. Then, when my daughter was growing up, Barnabas used to be a deal over at L——, where we lived; but Tom and Lydia could never abide each other. I shouldn't have believed that I could ever come and live here then, nor that Tom Thorpe would ask me to; but blood is thicker than water, and I must allow that Tom's always kind, if one's in trouble. I was ill this spring, and I was sitting by myself, for I hadn't cared to have folks about since—since she left me, when Tom Thorpe walked in quite unexpected. I had got that weak and nervous—for living alone never suited me—that I fairly screamed when he opened the door. 'Now, you come along back with me, cousin,' says he; 'for I can't leave you here to think of your own funeral all the day.' And I hadn't the heart to say no, though I am half sorry now I didn't. I was that lonesome, you see; and a man does give one a feeling of support, especially if the man's Tom or Barnabas. Barnabas was the one I liked best as a lad, and, to be sure, I thought he would never forget—but there! it's nearly sixteen years ago now, since he was courting my poor Lydia."

Her voice dropped to a reverently lowered tone when she spoke of her daughter. The shadow of her grief momentarily dignified her pinched and rather fretful face; and Meg, who had been listening listlessly, looked up with awakened interest.

"Did she like him?" asked the preacher's wife shyly. Her quick fancy pictured the pretty girl, whom Barnabas had loved when a boy; and her sympathy was moved at once by the mother's sorrow.

Mrs. Tremnell, however, seemed half offended at the question.

"Oh, as for that, Lydia had plenty to admire her without Barnabas," she said.

And Meg could not guess how the little woman's sore heart was hurt, because the preacher's was healed; no one but her mother mourned for her pretty Lydia now.

"When he was a boy he would run the twelve miles from here to the town to get a talk with her; for all he was sure of a thrashing from Tom for playing truant when he got back," she went on. "But that's long past, and forgotten; and, perhaps, I shouldn't even have alluded to it to you, ma'am."

"Why not to me?" asked the girl; and then coloured, and laughed nervously when Cousin Tremnell's meaning dawned on her.

"To be sure, he is another man altogether since his conversion, and I hear the miracles he does is wonderful; though I do hope you'll persuade him to lay by and take money for his cures, now that he has got a wife and may have children," continued the plaintive voice, which was touched with asperity now. "He might make a very good thing of it, and people would think a deal more of him if they had to pay. Indeed, with your connection with the aristocracy, which is far beyond what he might have expected, I don't see why he shouldn't start a regular business. It was a sister of yours that married Lord Doran, was it not, ma'am?"

"Oh, won't you understand?" cried Meg, with sudden energy. "That is all done with—I—I—don't think about it."

"I beg your pardon, I am sure, ma'am; I was not aware that I had said anything amiss," said Cousin Tremnell huffily. And to herself she remarked that Barnabas had gone far to fare badly.

Meg went for a solitary walk in the marshes after that, and tried to sort and adjust her ideas and to "lay" decently several ghosts Cousin Tremnell had brought out of their graves. They had never, perhaps, been so entirely buried as she had fancied.

The incidents of that first day at the farm always remained in her memory, standing out from the many rather monotonous days that followed; not that they were remarkable in themselves, but because first impressions are cut sharp and clear as with a new die.

She came in after the mid-day meal had begun. The two or three farm labourers who ate in the same room, though at the other end of the long wooden table, turned round to stare at her with a stolid and deliberate stare. Tom Thorpe remarked that she was late, and they had "nigh done," though more by way of something to say than as a rebuke; and then, in the middle of the meal, "Foolish Timothy" lounged in, and effectually robbed her of her appetite.

The idiot shambled up to the table, and sat down beside her unasked, but unrebuked; and Meg could not repress a shudder of disgust.

The man's coarse loose mouth, and cunning shifty eyes, with their furtive sidelong glances, were unspeakably repulsive to her; and Timothy, unfortunately, saw the shiver, and hated her on the spot with the malicious, easily roused hate of a low nature. He was one of those ill-conditioned fools who have just cunning enough to pretend to be rather more idiotic than they are, when it suits their convenience; he lived on the kindness of the countryside, and lived well, occasionally repaying hospitality by buffoonery of a somewhat profane kind; but, at the Thorpes, he was generally on his good behaviour.

"What's wrong wi' ye?" Tom suddenly asked his sister-in-law. "Isn't the food to your liking, or aren't you hungry?"

"Yes, thank you, quite—I mean it's very nice," stammered Meg; but some fascination made her look at the creature by her side, who was contorting his face into sudden, hideous grimaces whenever he could catch her eyes unobserved by his host.

"What's the good o' telling lies?" said Tom. "It's plain ye can't eat that; and we all know ye've not been used to fare like us. Here, Timothy, make yourself useful, and fetch an egg from the barn; happen she'll relish it better."

"Oh no, please don't!" cried Meg, who felt that she could not for the life of her taste anything that Timothy had touched. "The pie is very good, but I have had plenty."

Tom frowned impatiently. "My good girl, that you've not," he said. "I am not going to force food down your throat if you don't want it; but why you persist in saying you like it when you can't swallow half a mouthful, goodness knows. Lord bless us! I am proud of our cooking, as Cousin Tremnell 'ull tell you; but I don't make a meal off the people who don't agree wi' me. Hands off, Timothy! Where are your manners?" For Timothy had surreptitiously stretched out a long-nailed, dirty hand towards the food in Meg's plate. She jumped up with a start at the touch of the idiot, and with a hastily murmured excuse fled from the kitchen. Tom Thorpe gave vent to a long, low whistle.

"It's a pretty business," he remarked; "an' the hottest water Barnabas has ever got into. What had he to do wi' a fine lady, as can't even sit down to table by us?"

"I must say the way she has been trapesing about the country half the morning isn't much like a lady," said Cousin Tremnell.

"Well, I've done. Ye may tell her I've gone out. So she can come and pick up a few more crumbs in peace," he said good-naturedly. "An', I say, cousin, ye might tell her I am not such an ogre as I look, eh? The fact is, I've got so used to myself living here alone wi' dad, that I don't think how I scare other people, unless a stranger comes to show me."

But Cousin Tremnell was still huffy, and didn't see that she had any call to "run after Mrs. Thorpe".

It was not a remarkably good beginning; and the preacher's wife felt much ashamed when she had recovered from her sudden horror.

She took herself to task for her disgust, as if it had been a crime, but could not prevail upon herself to return to the kitchen. Tom's deformity did not cause her the least repulsion; it was as it were accidental, and the man himself inspired her with respect; but Timothy seemed to her like some horrible brute, whose very likeness to humanity made him the more repulsive.

She sat down on the wide sill of the staircase window, and tried to forget the troublesome details of this rough-edged life, the while her eyes rested on the reed beds bowing in the wind, and the low grey sky, where a buzzard hung poised.

Thus seated, she clenched her hands; and, presently, began to sing very softly to herself, to the tune of an old Roundhead battle hymn. The inspiration of hard fighting was in it, and it did her good.

In the middle of a bar, she became aware that some one was listening; and, turning round, saw Mr. Thorpe standing on the stair above her.