Edina: A Novel

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(Princeton University)

EDINA

A NOVEL

BY

MRS. HENRY WOOD

AUTHOR OF
"EAST LYNNE," "THE CHANNINGS," "JOHNNY LUDLOW," ETC.

Fiftieth Thousand

London

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1900

EDINA.

[PART THE FIRST.]

[CHAPTER I.]

HEARD AT MIDNIGHT

The village, in which the first scenes of this history are laid, was called Trennach; and the land about it was bleak and bare and dreary enough, though situated in the grand old county of Cornwall. For mines lay around, with all the signs and features of miners' work about them; yawning pit mouths, leading down to rich beds of minerals—some of the mines in all the bustle of full operation, some worked out and abandoned. Again, in the neighbourhood of these, might be seen miners' huts and other dwelling-places, and the counting-houses attached to the shafts. The little village of Trennach skirted this tract of labour; for, while the mining district extended for some miles on one side the hamlet; on the other side, half-an-hour's quiet walking brought you to a different country altogether—to spreading trees and rich pasture land and luxuriant vegetation.

The village street chiefly consisted of shops. Very humble shops, most of them; but the miners and the other inhabitants, out of reach of better, found them sufficiently good for their purposes. Most of the shops dealt in mixed articles, and might be called general shops. The linendraper added brushes and brooms to his cottons and stuffs; the grocer sold saucepans and gridirons; the baker did a thriving trade in home-made pickles. On a dark night, the most cheerful-looking shop was the druggist's: the coloured globes displayed in its windows sending forth their reflections into the thoroughfare. This shop had also added another branch to its legitimate trade—that of general literature: for the one solitary doctor of the place dispensed his own medicines, and the sale of drugs was not great. The shop boasted a small circulating library; the miners and the miners' wives, like their betters, being fond of sensational fiction. The books consisted entirely of cheap volumes, issued at a shilling or two shillings each; some indeed at sixpence. The proprietor of this mart, Edmund Float, chemist and druggist, was almost a confirmed invalid, and would often be laid up for a week at a time. The doctor told him that if he would devote less of his time to that noted hostelry, the Golden Shaft, he might escape these attacks of illness. At these times the business of the shop, both as to drugs and books, was transacted by a young native of Falmouth; one Blase Pellet, who had served his apprenticeship in it and remained on as assistant.

The doctor's name was Raynor. He wrote himself Hugh Raynor, M.D., Member of the Royal College of Physicians. That he, a man of fair ability in his profession and a gentleman as well, should be contented to live in this obscure place, in all the drudgery of a general practitioner and apothecary, may seem a matter of surprise—but his history shall be given further on. His house stood in the middle of the village, somewhat back from the street: a low, square, detached building, a bow window on each side its entrance, and three windows above. On the door, which always stood open in the daytime, was a brass plate, bearing the name, "Dr. Raynor." The bow window to the left was screened by a brown wire blind, displaying the word "Surgery" in large white letters. Above the blind Dr. Raynor's white head, or the younger head of his handsome nephew, might occasionally be seen by the passers-by, or by Mr. Blase Pellet over the way. For the doctor's house and the druggist's shop faced each other; and Mr. Pellet, being of an inquisitive disposition, seemed never tired of peeping and peering into his neighbours' doings generally, and especially into any that might take place at Dr. Raynor's. At either end of this rather straggling street were seated respectively the parish church and the Wesleyan meeting-house. The latter was the better attended; for most of the miners followed their fathers' faith—that of the Wesleyan Methodists.

It was Monday morning, and a cold clear day in March. The wind came sweeping down the wide street; the dust whirled in the air; overhead, the sun was shining brightly. Dr. Raynor stood near the fire in his surgery, looking over his day-book, in which a summary of the cases under treatment was entered. He was dressed in black. A tall, grand-looking, elderly man, very quiet in manner, with a pale, placid face, and carefully-trimmed thin white whiskers. It was eight o'clock, and he had just entered the surgery: his nephew had already been in it half-an-hour. Never a more active man in his work than Dr. Raynor, but latterly his energy had strangely failed him.

"Has any message come in this morning from Pollock's wife, Frank?" he asked.

"No, sir."

"Then I suppose she's better," remarked the doctor, closing the book as he spoke, and moving towards the window.

A square table stood at the end of the room, facing the window. Behind it was Frank Raynor, making up mixtures, the ingredients for which he took from some of the various bottles ranged upon the shelves behind him. He was a slender, gentlemanly young fellow of four-and-twenty, rather above the middle height, and wore this morning a suit of grey clothes. The thought that passed through a stranger's minds on first seeing Frank Raynor was, How good-looking he is! It was not, however, so much in physical beauty that the good looks consisted, as in the bright expression of his well-featured face, and the sunny, laughing blue eyes. The face wanted one thing—firmness. In the delicate mouth, very sweet and pleasant in form though it was, might be traced his want of stability. He could not say No to a petition, let it be what it might: he was swayed as easily as the wind. Most lovable was Frank Raynor; but he would be almost sure to be his own enemy as he went through life. You could not help liking him; every one did that—with the exception of Mr. Blase Pellet across the road. Frank's hair was golden brown, curling slightly, and worn rather long. His face, like his uncle's, was close-shaved, excepting that he too wore whiskers, which were of the same colour as the hair.

"What a number of men are standing about!" exclaimed Dr. Raynor, looking over the blind. "More even than usual on a Monday morning. One might think they were not at work."

"They are not at work," replied Frank. "As I hear.

"No! what's that for?"

Frank's lips parted with a smile. An amused look sat in his blue eyes as he answered.

"Through some superstition, I fancy, Uncle Hugh. They say the Seven Whistlers were heard in the night."

Dr. Raynor turned quickly towards his nephew. "The Seven Whistlers;" he repeated. "Why, who says that?"

"Ross told me. He came in for some laudanum for his neuralgia. As there is to be no work done to-day, the overseer thought he might as well lie up and doctor himself. A rare temper he is in."

"Can't he get the men to work?"

"Not one of them. Threats and promises alike fail. There's safe to be an accident if they go down to-day, say the men; and they won't risk it. Bell had better not come in Ross's way whilst his present temper lasts," added Frank, as he began to screw a cork into a bottle. "I think Ross would knock him down."

"Why Bell in particular?"

"Because it is Bell who professes to have heard the Whistlers."

"And none of the others?" cried the doctor.

"I fancy not. Uncle Hugh, what is the superstition?" added Frank. "What does it mean? I don't understand: and Ross, when I asked him, he turned away instead of answering me. Is it something especially ridiculous?"

Dr. Raynor briefly replied. This superstition of the Seven Whistlers arose from certain sounds in the air. They were supposed by the miners, when heard—which was very rarely, indeed, in this neighbourhood—to foretell ill luck. Accident, death, all sorts of calamities, in fact, might be expected, according to the popular superstition, by those who had the misfortune to hear the sounds.

Frank Raynor listened to the doctor's short explanation, a glow of amusement on his face. It sounded to him like a bit of absurd fun.

"You don't believe in such nonsense, surely, Uncle Hugh!"

Dr. Raynor had returned to the fire, and was gazing into it; some speculation, or perhaps recollection, or it might be doubt, in his grey eyes.

"All my experience in regard to the Seven Whistlers is this, Frank—and you may make the most of it. Many years ago, when I was staying amongst the collieries in North Warwickshire, there arose a commotion one morning. The men did not want to go down the pits that day, giving as a reason that the Seven Whistlers had passed over the place during the night, and had been heard by many of them. I naturally inquired what the Seven Whistlers meant, never having heard of them, and received in reply the explanation I have now given you. But workmen were not so independent in those days, Frank, as they are in these; and the men were forced to go down the pits as usual."

"And what came of it?" asked Frank.

"Of the going down? This. An accident took place in the pit that same morning—through fire-damp, I think; and many of them never came up again alive."

"How dreadful! But that could not have been the fault of the Seven Whistlers?" debated Frank.

"My second and only other experience was at Trennach," continued Dr. Raynor, passing over Frank's comment. "About six years ago, some of the miners professed to have heard these sounds. That same day, as they were descending one of the shafts after dinner, an accident occurred to the machinery——"

"And did damage," interrupted Frank, with increasing interest.

"Yes. Three of the men fell to the bottom of the mine, and were killed; and several others were injured more or less badly. I attended them. You ask me if I place faith in the superstition, Frank. No: I do not. I am sufficiently enlightened not to do so. But the experiences that I have told you of are facts. I look upon them as mere coincidences."

A pause. Frank was going on with his work.

"Are the sounds all fancy, Uncle Hugh?"

"Oh no. The sounds are real enough."

"What do they proceed from? What causes them?"

"It is said that they proceed from certain night-birds," replied Dr. Raynor. "Flocks of birds, in their nocturnal passage across the country, making plaintive sounds; and when these sounds are heard, they are superstitiously supposed to predict evil to those who hear them. Ignorant men are always credulous. That is all I know about it, Frank."

"Did you ever hear the sounds yourself, Uncle Hugh?"

"Never. This is only the third occasion that I have been in any place at the time they have been heard—or said to have been heard—and I have not myself been one of the hearers. There's Bell!" added Dr. Raynor, seeing a man leave the chemist's and cross the street in the direction of his house. "He seems to be coming here."

"And Float the miner's following him," observed Frank.

Two men entered through the doctor's open front-door, and thence to the surgery. The one was a little, middle-aged man, who carried a stout stick and walked somewhat lame. His countenance, not very pleasing at the best of times, just now wore a grey tinge that was rather remarkable. This was Josiah Bell. The one who followed him in was a tall, burly man, with a pleasant face, as fresh as a farm-labourer's; his voice was soft, and his manner meek and retiring. The little man's voice, on the contrary, was loud and self-asserting. Bell was given to quarrel with every one who would quarrel with him; scarcely a day passed but he, to use his own words, "had it out" with some one. Andrew Float had never quarrelled in his life; not even with his quarrelsome friend Bell; but was one of the most peaceable and easy-natured of men. Though only a common miner, he was brother to the chemist, and also brother to John Float, landlord of the Golden Shaft. The three brothers were usually distinguished in the place as Float the druggist, Float the miner, and Float the publican.

"I've brought Float over to ask you just to look at this arm of his, doctor, if you'll be so good," began Bell. "It strikes me his brother is not doing what's right by it."

There was a refinement in the man's accent, a readiness of speech, an independence of tone, not at all in keeping with what might be expected from one of a gang of miners. The fact was, Josiah Bell had originally held a far better position in life. He had begun that life as a clerk in the office of some large colliery works in Staffordshire; but, partly owing to unsteady habits, partly to an accident which had for many months laid him low and lamed him for life, he had sunk down in the world to what he now was—a workman in a Cornish mine.

"Won't the burn heal?" observed Dr. Raynor. "Let me see it, Float."

"If you'd please to be so kind, sir," replied the big man, with deprecation, as he took off his coat and prepared to display his arm. It had been badly burned some time ago; and it seemed to get worse instead of better, in spite of the doctoring of his brother the chemist, and of Mr. Blase Pellet.

"I have asked you more than once to let me look to your arm, you know, Float," remarked Mr. Frank Raynor.

"But I didn't like to trouble you, Master Raynor. I thought Ned and his salves could do for it, sir."

"And so you men are not at work to-day, Bell!" began the doctor, as he examined the arm. "What's this absurd story I hear about the Seven Whistlers?"

Bell's aspect changed at the question. The pallor on his face seemed to become greyer. It was a greyness that attracted Dr. Raynor's attention: he had never seen it in the man's face before.

"They passed over Trennach at midnight," said Bell, in low tones, from which all independence had gone out. "I heard them myself."

"And who else heard them?"

"I don't know. Nobody—that I can as yet find out. The men were all indoors, they say, long before midnight. The Golden Shaft shuts at ten on a Sunday night."

"You stayed out later?"

"I came on to Float the druggist's when the public-house closed, and smoked a pipe with him and Pellet, and sat there, talking. It was in going home that I heard the Whistlers."

"You may have been mistaken, in thinking you heard them."

"No," dissented Bell. "It was in the middle of the Bare Plain. I was stepping along quietly——"

"And soberly?" interposed Frank, with a twinkling eye, and a tone that might be taken either for jest or earnest.

"And soberly," asserted Bell, resentfully. "As sober as you are now, Mr. Frank Raynor. I was stepping along quietly, I say, when the church clock began to strike. I stood to count it, not believing it could be twelve—not thinking I had stayed all that time at the druggist's. It was twelve, however, and I was still standing after the last stroke had died away, wondering how the time could have passed, when those other sounds broke out high in the air above me. Seven of them: I counted them as I had counted the clock. The saddest sound of a wail I've ever heard—save once before. It seemed to freeze me up."

"Did you hear more?" asked Dr. Raynor.

"No. And the last two sounds of the seven were so faint, I should not have heard them if I had not been listening. The cries had broken out right above where I was standing: they seemed to die away gradually in the distance."

"I say that you may have been mistaken, Bell," persisted Dr. Raynor. "The sounds you heard may not have been the Seven Whistlers at all."

Bell shook his head, His manner and voice this morning were more subdued than usual. "I can't be mistaken in them. No man can be who has once heard them, Dr. Raynor."

"Is it this that has turned your face so grey?" questioned Frank, alluding to the pallor noticed by his uncle; but which the elder and experienced man had refrained from remarking upon.

"I didn't know it was grey," rejoined Bell, his resentful tones cropping up again.

"It's as grey as this powder," persisted Frank, holding forth a delectable compound he was preparing for some unfortunate patient.

"And so, on the strength of this night adventure of yours, Bell, all you men are making holiday to-day!" resumed the doctor.

But Bell, who did not seem to approve of Frank's remarks on his complexion, possibly taking them as ridicule—though he might have known Frank Raynor better—stood in dudgeon, and vouchsafed no reply. Andrew Float took up the retort in his humble, hesitating fashion.

"There ain't one of us, Dr. Raynor, that would venture down to-day after this. When Bell come up to the pit this morning, where us men was collecting to go down, and said the Seven Whistlers had passed over last night at midnight, it took us all aback. Not one of us would hazard it after that. Ross, he stormed and raged, but he couldn't force us down, sir."

"And the Golden Shaft will have the benefit of you instead!" said the doctor.

"Our lives are dear to us all, sir," was the deprecating reply of Float, not attempting to answer the remark. "And I thank ye kindly, sir, for it feels more comfortable like already. They burns be nasty things."

"They are apt to be so when not properly attended to. Your brother should not have allowed it to get into this state."

"Well, you see, Dr. Raynor, some days he's been bad abed, and I didn't trouble him with it then; and young Pellet don't seem to know much about they bad places."

"You should have come to me. Bell, how is your wife to-day?"

"Pretty much as usual," said surly Bell. "If she's worse, it's through the Seven Whistlers. She don't like to hear tell of them."

"Why did you tell her?"

Josiah Bell lifted his cold light eyes in wonder. "Could I keep such a thing as that to myself, Dr. Raynor? It comes as a warning, and must be guarded against. That is, as far as we can guard against it."

"Has the sickness returned?"

"For the matter of that, she always feels sick. I should just give her some good strong doses of mustard-and-water to make her so in earnest, were I you, doctor, and then perhaps the feeling would go off."

"Ah," remarked the doctor, a faint smile parting his lips, "we are all apt to think we know other people's business best, Bell. Float," added he, as the two men were about to leave, "don't you go in for a bout of drinking to-day; it would do your arm no good."

"Thank ye, sir; I'll take care to be mod'rate," replied Float, backing out.

"The Golden Shaft will have a good deal of his company to-day, in spite of your warning, sir; and of Bell's too," observed Frank, as the surgery-door closed on the men. "How grey and queer Bell's face looks! Did you notice it, Uncle Hugh?"

"Yes."

"He looks just like a man who has had a shock. The Seven Whistlers gave it him, I suppose. I could not have believed Bell was so silly."

"I hope it is only the shock that has done it," said the doctor.

"Done what, Uncle Hugh?"

"Turned his face that peculiar colour." And Frank looked up to his uncle as if scarcely understanding him. But Dr. Raynor said no more.

At that moment the door again opened, and a young lady glanced in. Seeing no stranger present, she came forward.

"Papa! do you know how late it is getting? Breakfast has been waiting ever so long."

The voice was very sweet and gentle; a patient voice, that somehow gave one the idea that its owner had known sorrow. She was the doctor's only child: and to call her a young lady may be regarded as a figure of speech, for she was past thirty. A calm, sensible, gentle girl she had ever been, of great practical sense. Her pale face was rather plain than handsome: but it was a face pleasant to look upon, with its expression of sincere earnestness, and its steadfast, truthful dark eyes. Her dark brown hair, smooth and bright, was simply braided in front and plaited behind on the well-shaped head. She was of middle height, light and graceful; and she wore this morning a violet merino dress, with embroidered cuffs and collar of her own work. Such was Edina Raynor.

"You may pour out the coffee, my dear," said her father. "We are coming now."

Edina disappeared, and the doctor followed her. Frank stayed a minute or two longer to make an end of his physic. He then adjusted his coat-cuffs, which had been turned up, pulled his wristbands down, and also passed out of the surgery. The sun was shining into the passage through the open entrance-door; and Frank, as if he would sun himself for an instant, or else wishing for a wider view of the street, and of the miners loitering about it, stepped outside. The men had collected chiefly in groups, and were talking idly, in slouching attitudes, hands in pockets; some were smoking. A little to the left, as Frank stood, on the other side of the way, was that much-frequented hostelry, the Golden Shaft: it was evidently the point of attraction to-day.

Mr. Blase Pellet chanced to be standing at his shop-door, rubbing his hands on his white apron. He was an awkward-looking, under-sized, unfortunately-plain man, with very red-brown eyes, and rough reddish hair that stood up in bristles. When he caught sight of Frank, he backed into the shop, went behind the counter, and peeped out at him between two of the glass globes.

"I wonder what he's come out to look at now?" debated Mr. Blase with himself. "She can't be in the street! What a proud wretch he looks this morning!—with his fine curls, and that ring upon his finger!"

"Twenty of them, at least, ready to go in!" mentally spoke Frank, his eyes fixed on the miners standing about the Golden Shaft. "And some of them will never come out all day."

Frank went in to breakfast. The meal was laid in a small parlour, behind the best sitting-room, which was on the side of the passage opposite to the surgery, and faced the street. This back-room looked down on a square yard, and the bare open country beyond: to the mines and to the miners' dwelling-places. They lay to the right, as you looked out. To the left stretched a barren tract of land, called the Bare Plain—perhaps from its dreary aspect—which we shall come to by-and-by.

Edina sat at the breakfast-table, her back to the window; Dr. Raynor sat opposite to her. Frank took his usual place between them, facing the cheerful fire.

"If your coffee's cold, Frank, it is your own fault," said Edina, handing his cup to him. "I poured it out as soon as papa came in."

"All right, Edina: it is sure to be warm enough for me," was the answer, as he took it and thanked her. He was the least selfish, the least self-indulgent mortal in the world; the most easily satisfied.

"What a pity it is about the men:" exclaimed Edina to Frank: for this report of the Seven Whistlers had become generally known, and the doctor's maid-servant had imparted the news to Miss Raynor. "They will make it an excuse for two or three days' drinking."

"As a matter of course," replied Frank.

"It seems altogether so ridiculous. I have been saying to papa that I thought Josiah Bell had better sense. He may have taken more than was good for him last night; and fancied he heard the sounds."

"Oh, I think he heard them," said the doctor. "Bell rarely drinks enough to cloud his faculties, And he is certainly not fanciful."

"But how, Uncle Hugh," put in Frank, "you cannot seriously think that there's anything in it!"

"Anything in what?"

"In this superstition. Of course one can readily understand that a flock of birds may fly over a place by night, as well as by day; and that they may give out sounds and cries on the way. But that these cries should forebode evil to those who may hear them, is not to be credited for a moment."

Dr. Raynor nodded. He was languidly eating an egg. For some time past, appetite had failed him.

"I say, Uncle Hugh, that you cannot believe in such nonsense. You admitted that the incidents you gave just now were mere coincidences."

"Frank," returned the doctor, in his quiet tone, that latterly had seemed to tell of pain, "I have already said so. But when you shall have lived to my age, experience will have taught you that there are some things in this world that cannot be fathomed or explained. We must be content to leave them. I told you that I did not myself place faith in this popular belief of the miners: but I related to you at the same time my own experiences in regard to it. I don't judge: but I cannot explain."

Frank turned a laughing look on his cousin.

"Suppose we go out on the Bare Plain to-night and listen for the Seven Whistlers ourselves; you and I, Edina?"

"A watched pot never boils," said Edina, quaintly, quoting a homely proverb. "The Whistlers would be sure not to come, Frank, if we listened for them."

[CHAPTER II.]

ROSALINE BELL

Frank Raynor had been a qualified medical man for some few years; he was skilful, kind, attentive, and possessed in an eminent degree that cheering manner which is so valuable in a general practitioner. Consequently he was much liked by the doctor's patients, especially by those of the better class, living at a distance; so that Dr. Raynor had no scruple in frequently making Frank his substitute in the daily visits. Frank alone suspected—and it was only a half-suspicion as yet—that his uncle was beginning to feel himself unequal to the exertion of paying them.

It was getting towards midday, and Frank had seen all the sick near home at present on their hands, when he started on his walk to see one or two living further away. But he called in at home first of all, to give Dr. Raynor a report of his visits, and to change his grey coat for a black one. Every inch a gentleman looked Frank, as he left the house again, turned to the right, and went down the street with long strides. He was followed by the envious eyes of Mr. Blase Pellet: who, in the very midst of weighing out some pounded ginger for a customer, darted round the counter to watch him.

"He is off there, for a guinea!" growled Mr. Pellet, as he lost sight of Frank and turned back to his ginger. "What possesses Mother Bell, I wonder, to go and fancy herself ill and in want of a doctor!"

The houses and the church, which stood at that end of Trennach, were soon left behind; and Frank Raynor was on the wide tract of land which was called the Bare Plain. The first break he came to in its bleak monotony was a worked-out mine on the left. This old pit was encompassed about by mounds of earth of different heights, where children would play at hide-and-seek during the daylight; but not one of them ever approached the mouth of the shaft. Not only was it dangerous, from being unprotected; and children, as a rule are given to running into danger instead of avoiding it; but the place had an evil reputation. Some short time ago, a miner had committed suicide there: one Daniel Sandon: had deliberately jumped in and destroyed himself. Since then, the miners and their families, who were for the most part very superstitious and ignorant, held a belief that the man's ghost haunted the pit; that, on a still night, any one listening down the shaft, might hear his sighs and groans. This caused it to be shunned: scarcely a miner would venture close to it alone after dark. There was nothing to take them near it, for it lay some little distance away from the broad path that led through the centre of the Plain. The depth of the pit had given rise to its appellation, "The Bottomless Shaft:" and poor Daniel Sandon must have died before he reached the end. For any one falling into it there could be no hope: escape from death was impossible.

Frank Raynor passed it without so much as a thought. Keeping on his way, he came by-and-by to a cluster of miners' dwellings, called Bleak Row, lying on the Plain, away to the right. Not many of them: the miners for the most part lived on the other side the village, near the mines. Out of one of the best of these small houses, there chanced to come a girl, just as he was approaching it; and they met face to face. It was Rosaline Bell.

Never a more beautiful girl in the world than she. Two-and-twenty years of age now, rather tall, with a light and graceful form, as easy in her movements, as refined in her actions as though she had been born a gentlewoman, with a sweet, low voice and a face of delicate loveliness. Her features were of almost a perfect Grecian type; her complexion was fresh as a summer rose, and her deep violet eyes sparkled beneath their long dark lashes. Eyes that, in spite of their brightness, had an expression of settled sadness in them: and that sad expression of the eye is said, you know, only to exist where its owner is destined to sorrow. Poor Rosaline! Sorrow was on its way to her quickly, even now. Her dress was of some dark stuff, neatly made and worn; her bonnet was of white straw; and the pink bow at her throat rivalled in colour the rose of her cheek.

Far deeper in hue did those cheeks become as she recognized Frank Raynor. With a hasty movement, as if all too conscious of her blushes and what they might imply, she raised her hand to cover them, making pretence gently to put back her dark and beautiful hair. Nature had indeed been prodigal in her gifts to Rosaline Bell. Rosaline had been brought up well; had received a fairly good education, and profited by it.

"How do you do, Rose!" cried Frank, in his gay voice, stopping before her. "Where are you going?"

She let her hand fall. The rich bloom on her face, the shy, answering glance of her lustrous eyes, were charming to behold. Frank Raynor admired beauty wherever he saw it, and he especially admired that of Rosaline.

"I am going in to find my father; to induce him to come back with me," she said. "My mother is anxious about him; and anxiety is not good for her, you know, Mr. Frank."

"Anxiety is very bad for her," returned Frank. "Is she worse to-day?"

"Not worse, sir; only worried. Father heard the Seven Whistlers last night; and I think that is rather disturbing her."

Frank Raynor broke into a laugh. "It amuses me beyond everything, Rose—those Whistlers. I never heard of them in all my life until this morning."

Rosaline smiled in answer—a sad smile. "My father firmly believes in them," she said; "and mother is anxious because he is. I must go on now, sir, or I shall not get back by dinnertime."

Taking one of her hands, he waved it towards the village, as if he would speed her onwards, said his gay good-bye, and lifted the latch of the door. It opened to the kitchen: a clean and, it might almost be said, rather tasty apartment, with the red-tiled floor on which the fire threw its glow, and a strip of carpet by way of hearthrug. A mahogany dresser was fixed to the wall on one side, plates and dishes of the old willow pattern were ranged on its shelves; an eight-day clock in its mahogany case ticked beside the fireplace, which faced the door. The window was gay with flowers. Hyacinths in their blue glasses stood on the frame half-way up: beneath were red pots containing other plants. It was easy to be seen that this was not the abode of a common miner.

Seated in an arm-chair near the round table, which was covered with a red cloth, her back to the window, was Mrs. Bell, who had latterly become an invalid. She was rubbing some dried mint into powder. By this, and the savoury smell, Frank Raynor guessed they were to have pea-soup for dinner. But all signs of dinner to be seen were three plates warming on the fender, and an iron pot steaming by the side of the fire.

"And now, mother, how are you to-day?" asked Frank, in his warm-hearted and genuine tones of sympathy, that so won his patients' regard.

He drew a chair towards her and sat down. The word "mother" came from him naturally. Two years ago, just after Frank came to Trennach, he was taken ill with a fever; and Mrs. Bell helped Edina to nurse him through it. He took a great liking to the quaint, well-meaning, and rather superior woman, who was so deft with her fingers, and so ready with her tongue. He would often then, partly in jest, call her "mother;" he called her so still.

Mrs. Bell was seven-and-forty now, and very stout; her short grey curls lay flat under her mob-cap; her still bright complexion must once have been as delicately beautiful as her daughter's. She put the basin of mint on the table, and smoothed down her clean white apron.

"I'm no great things to-day, Master Frank. Sometimes now, sir, I get to think that I never shall be again."

"Just as I thought in that fever of mine," said Frank, purposely making light of her words. "Why, my good woman, by this day twelvemonth you'll be as strong and well as I am. Only take heart and have patience. Yours is a case, you know, that cannot be dealt with in a day: it requires time."

Into the further conversation we need not enter. It related to her ailments. Not a word was said by either about that disturbing element, the Seven Whistlers: and Frank went out again, wishing her a good appetite for her dinner.

Putting his best foot foremost, he sped along, fleet as the wind. The Bare Plain gave place to pasture land, trees, and flowers. A quarter-of-an-hour brought him to The Mount—a moderately-sized mansion, standing in its own grounds, the residence of the St. Clares. By the sudden death of the late owner, who had not reached the meridian of life, it had fallen unexpectedly to a distant cousin; a young lieutenant serving with his regiment in India. In his absence, his mother had given up her house at Bath, and taken possession of it; she and her two daughters. They had come quite strangers to the place about two months ago. Mrs. St. Clare—it should be mentioned that they chose to give their name its full pronunciation, Saint Clare—had four children. The eldest, Charlotte, was with her husband, Captain Townley, in India; Lydia was second; the lieutenant and present owner of The Mount came next; and lastly Margaret, who was several years younger than the rest, and indulged accordingly. Mrs. St. Clare was extremely fond of society; and considered that at The Mount she was simply buried alive.

The great entrance-gates were on the opposite side; Frank Raynor never went round to them, unless he was on horseback: when on foot, he entered, as now, by the small postern-gate that was almost hidden by clustering shrubs. A short walk through the narrow pathway between these shrubs, and he was met by Margaret St. Clare: or, as they generally called her at home, Daisy. It frequently happened that she did meet him: and, in truth, the meetings were becoming rather precious to both, most especially so to her. During these two months' residence of the St. Clares at The Mount, Mr. Raynor and Margaret had seen a good deal of each other. Lydia was an invalid—or fancied herself one—and the Raynors had been in attendance from the first, paying visits to The Mount almost every other day. The doctor himself now and then, but it was generally Frank who went.

And Mrs. St. Clare was quite contented that it should be Frank. In this dead-alive spot, Frank Raynor, with his good looks, his sunny presence, his attractive manners, seemed like a godsend to her. She chanced to know that he was a gentleman by birth, having met members of his family before: Major Raynor; and, once, old Mrs. Atkinson, of Eagles' Nest. She did not know much about them, and in her proud heart secretly looked down upon Frank: as she would have looked upon any other general practitioner. But she liked Frank himself, and she very much liked his society, and often asked him to dinner, en famille. The few visiting people who lived within reach did not form a large party; but Mrs. St. Clare brought them together occasionally, and made the best of them.

Margaret St. Clare would be nineteen to-morrow. A slight-made, fair, pretty girl, putting one somehow in mind of a fairy. Her small feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground as she walked, her small arms and hands, her delicate throat and neck, were all perfectly formed. The face was fair and piquante, quiet and rather grave when in repose. Her eyes were of that remarkable shade that some people call light hazel and others amber; and in truth they occasionally looked as clear and bright as amber.

She was fond of dress. Mrs. St. Clare's daughters were all fond of it. Margaret's gown this morning, of fine, light blue texture, fell in soft folds around her, some narrow white lace at the throat. A thin gold chain holding a locket was round her neck. Her hat, its blue ribbons streaming, hung on her arm; her auburn hair was somewhat ruffled by the breeze. As she came forward to meet Frank, her face was lighted up with smiles of pleasure; its blushes were almost as deep as those that had lighted up Rosaline Bell's not half-an-hour ago. Frank took both her hands in silence. His heart was beating at the sight of her: and silence in these brief moments is the finest eloquence. Rapidly indeed was he arriving at that blissful state, described by Lord Byron in a word or two: "For him there was but one beloved face on earth." Ay, and arriving also at its consciousness. Even now it was "shining on him."

She was the first to break the silence. "You are late, Mr. Raynor. Lydia has been all impatience."

"I am a little late, Miss Margaret. There is always a good deal to do on a Monday morning."

Lydia St. Clare might be impatient, but neither of them seemed anxious to hurry in to her. The windows of the house could not be seen from here; evergreens grew high and thick between them, a very wilderness. In fact, the grounds generally were little better than a wilderness; the late owner was an absentee, and the place had been neglected. But it seemed beautiful as Eden to these two, strolling along side by side, and lingering on this bright day. The blue sky was almost cloudless; the sun gilded the budding trees; the birds sang as they built their nests: early flowers were coming up; all things spoke of the sweet spring-time. The sweet spring-time that is renewed year by year in nature when bleak winter dies; but which comes to the heart but once. It was reigning in the hearts of those two happy strollers; and it was in its very earliest dawn, when it is freshest and sweetest.

"See," said Margaret, stooping; "a beautiful double-daisy, pink-fringed! It has only come out to-day. Is it not very early for them?"

He took the flower from her unresisting hand as she held it out to him. "Will you give it me, Daisy?" he asked, in low, tender tones, his eyes meeting hers with a meaning she could not misunderstand.

Her eyes fell beneath his, her fingers trembled as she resigned the blossom. He had never called her by that pet name before; only once or twice had he said Margaret without the formal prefix.

"It is not worth your having," she stammered. "It is only a daisy."

"Only a daisy! The daisy shall be my favourite flower of all flowers from henceforth."

"Indeed, I think you must go in to Lydia."

"I am going in. How the wind blows! You will catch cold without your hat."

"I never catch cold, Mr. Raynor. I never have anything the matter with me."

He put the daisy into his button-hole, its pink and white head just peeping out. Margaret protested hotly.

"Oh, don't; please don't! Mamma will laugh at you, Mr. Raynor. Such a stupid little flower!"

"Not stupid to me," he answered. "As to laughing, Mrs. St. Clare may laugh at it as much as she pleases; and at me too."

The house was gained at last. Crossing the flagged entrance-hall, they entered a very pretty morning-room, its curtains and furniture of pale green, bordered with gold. Mrs. St. Clare, a large, fair woman with a Roman nose, lay back in an easy-chair, a beautifully-worked screen attached to the white marble mantelpiece shading her face from the fire. Her gown was black and white: grey and black ribbons composed her head-dress. She looked half-dead with ennui. Those large women are often incorrigibly idle and listless: she never took up a needle, never cared to turn the pages of a book. She was indolent by nature, and had grown more so during her life in India before the death of her husband, Colonel St. Clare.

But her face lighted up to something like animation when Mr. Raynor entered and went forward. Margaret fell into the background. After shaking hands with Mrs. St. Clare, he turned to the opposite side of the fireplace; where, in another easy-chair, enveloped in a pink morning-wrapper, sat the invalid, Lydia.

She was a tall, fair, Roman-nosed young woman too, promising to be in time as large as her mother. As idle she was already. Dr. Raynor said all she wanted was to exert herself: to walk and take an interest in the bustling concerns of daily life as other girls did; she would talk no more of nervousness and chest-ache then.

Frank felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and inquired how she had slept; with all the rest of the usual medical routine. Lydia answered fretfully, and began complaining of the dulness of her life. It was this wretched Cornish mining country that was making her worse: she felt sure of it.

"And that silly child, Daisy, declared this morning that it was the sweetest place she was ever in!" added Miss St. Clare, in withering contempt meant for Daisy. "She said she should like existence, as it is just at present, to last for ever!"

Frank Raynor caught a glimpse of a painfully-blushing face in the distance, and something like a smile crossed his own. He took a small phial, containing a tonic, from his pocket, which he had brought with him, and handed it to the invalid.

"You will drive out to-day as usual, of course?" said he.

"Oh, I suppose so," was Miss St. Clare's careless answer. "I don't know how we should live through the hours between luncheon and dinner without driving. Not that I care for it."

"Talking of dinner," interposed Mrs. St. Clare, "I want you to dine with us to-day, Mr. Raynor. Is that a daisy in your coat? What an absurd ornament!"

"Yes, it is a daisy," replied Frank, looking down on it. "Thank you very much for your invitation. I will come, if I possibly can."

"I cannot allow you any 'If' in the matter."

Frank smiled, and gave a flick to the lavender glove in his hand. He liked to be a bit of a dandy when he called at The Mount. As to dining there—in truth, he desired nothing better. But he was never quite sure what he could do until the hour came.

"A doctor's time is not his own, you know, Mrs. St. Clare."

"You must really give us yours this evening. Our dinners are insufferably dull when we sit down alone."

So Frank Raynor gave the promise—and he meant to keep it if possible. Ah, that he had not kept it! that he had remained at home! But for that unfortunate evening's visit to The Mount, and its consequences, a great deal of this history would not have been written.

The day went on. Nothing occurred to prevent Frank's fulfilling his engagement. The dinner hour at The Mount was seven o'clock. It was growing dusk when Frank, a light coat thrown over his evening dress, started for his walk to it, but not yet dark enough to conceal objects. Frank meant to get over the ground in twenty minutes: and, really, his long legs and active frame were capable of any feat in the matter of speed. That would give him ten minutes before dinner for a chat with Daisy: Mrs. and Miss St. Clare rarely entered the drawing-room until the last moment.

"Going off to dine again with that proud lot at The Mount!" enviously remarked Mr. Pellet, as he noted Frank's attire from his usual post of observation, the threshold of the chemist's door. "It's fine to be him!"

"Blase," called his master from within, "where have you put that new lot of camomiles?"

Mr. Blase was turning leisurely to respond, when his quick red-brown eyes caught sight of something exceedingly disagreeable to them: a meeting between Frank and Rosaline Bell. She had come into the village apparently from home: and she and Frank were now talking together. Mr. Blase felt terribly uncomfortable, almost splitting with wrath and envy.

He would have given his ears to hear what they were saying. Frank was laughing and chattering in that usually gay manner of his that most people found so attractive; she was listening, her pretty lips parted with a smile. Even at this distance, and in spite of the fading light, Mr. Blase, aided by imagination, could see her shy, half-conscious look, and the rose-blush on her cheeks.

And Frank stayed talking and laughing with her as though time and The Mount were nothing to him. He thought no harm, he meant no wrong. Frank Raynor never meant harm to living mortal. If he had only been as cautious as he was well-intentioned!

"Blase!" reiterated old Edmund Float, "I want to find they new camomiles, just come in. Don't you hear me? What have you done with them?"

Mr. Blase was quite impervious to the words. They had parted now: Frank was swinging on again; Rosaline was coming this way. Blase went strolling across the street to meet her: but she, as if purposely to avoid him, suddenly turned down an opening between the houses, and was lost to sight and to Blase Pellet.

"I wonder if she cut down there to avoid me?" thought he, standing still in mortification. And there was a very angry look on his face as he crossed back again from his fruitless errand.

Daisy was not alone in the drawing-room this evening when Frank arrived. Whether his gossip with Rosaline had been too prolonged, or whether he had not walked as quickly as usual, it was a minute past seven when Frank reached The Mount. All the ladies were assembled: Lydia and Daisy in blue silk; Mrs. St. Clare in black satin. Their kinsman had been dead six months, and the young ladies had just gone out of mourning for him; but Mrs. St. Clare wore hers still.

Daisy looked radiant; at any rate, in Frank's eyes: a very fairy. The white lace on her low body and sleeves was scarcely whiter than her fair neck and arms: one white rose nestled in her hair.

"Dinner is served, madam."

Frank offered his arm to Mrs. St. Clare: the two young ladies followed. It was a large and very handsome dining-room: the table, with its white cloth, and its glass and silver glittering under the wax-lights, looked almost lost in it. Lydia faced her mother; Frank and Daisy were opposite each other. He looked well in evening dress: worthy of being a prince, thought Daisy.

The conversation turned chiefly on the festivities of the following evening. Mrs. St. Clare was to give a dance in honour of her youngest daughter's birthday. It would not be a large party; the neighbourhood did not afford that; but some guests from a distance were to sleep in the house, and remain for a day or two.

"Will you give me the first dance, Daisy?" Frank seized an opportunity of whispering to her, as they were all returning to the drawing-room together.

Daisy shook her head, and blushed again. Blushed at the familiar word, which he had not presumed to use until that day. But it had never sounded so sweet to her from other lips.

"I may not," she answered. "Mamma has decided that my first dance must be with some old guy of a Cornish baronet—Sir Paul Trellasis. Going, do you say! Why? It is not yet nine o'clock.

"I am obliged to leave," he answered. "I promised Dr. Raynor. I have to see a country patient for him to-night."

Making his apologies to Mrs. St. Clare for his early departure, and stating the reason, Frank left the house. It was a cold and very light night: the skies clear, the moon intensely bright. Frank went on with his best step. When about half-way across the Bare Plain he met Rosaline Bell. The church clock was striking nine.

"Why, Rose! Have you been all this time at Granny Sandon's?"

"Yes; the whole time," she answered. "I stayed to help her into bed. Poor granny's rheumatism is very bad: she can scarcely do anything for herself."

"Is her rheumatism bad again? I must call and see her. A cold night, is it not?"

"I am nearly perished," she said. "I forgot to take a shawl with me."

But Rosaline did not look perished. The meeting had called up warmth and colouring to her face, so inexpressibly beautiful in the full, bright moonlight. A beauty that might have stirred a heart less susceptible than was Frank Raynor's.

"Perished!" he cried. "Let us have a dance together, Rose." And, seizing her hands, he waltzed round with her on the path, in very lightness of spirit.

"Oh, Mr. Raynor, pray don't! I must be going home, indeed, sir. Mother will think I am lost."

"There! Are you warm now? I must go, also."

And before she could resist—if, indeed, she would have resisted—Frank Raynor snatched a kiss from the lovely face, released her hands, and went swiftly away over the Bare Plain.

There was not very much harm in this: and most assuredly Frank intended none. That has been already said. He would often act without thought; do mad things upon impulse. He admired Rosaline's beauty, and he liked to talk and laugh with her. He might not have chosen to steal a kiss from her in the face and eyes of Trennach: but what harm could there be in doing it when they were alone in the moonlight?

And if the moon had been the only spectator, no harm would have come of it. Unfortunately a pair of human eyes had been looking on as well: and the very worst eyes, taken in that sense, that could have gazed—Mr. Blase Pellet's. After shutting up the shop that night, ill luck had put it into Mr. Pellet's head to take a walk over to Mrs. Bell's. He went in the hope of seeing Rosaline: in which he was disappointed: and was now on his way home again.

Rosaline stood gazing after Frank Raynor. No one but herself knew how dear he was to her; no one ever would know. The momentary kiss seemed still to tremble on her lips; her heart beat wildly. Wrapt in this ecstatic confusion, it was not to be wondered at that she neither saw nor heard the advance of Mr. Pellet; or that Frank, absorbed in her and the dance, had previously been equally unobservant.

With a sigh, Rosaline at length turned, and found herself face to face with the intruder. He had halted close to her, and was standing quite still.

"Blase!" she exclaimed, with a faint cry. "How you startled me!"

"Where have you been?" asked Blase, in sullen tones. "Your mother says you've been out for I don't know how many hours."

"I've been to Granny Sandon's. Good-night to you, Blase: it is late."

"A little too late for honest girls," returned Blase, putting himself in her way. "Have you been stopping out with him?" pointing to the fast-disappearing figure of Frank Raynor.

"I met Mr. Raynor here, where we are standing; and was talking with him for about a minute."

"It seems to me you are always meeting him," growled Blase, suppressing any mention of the dance he had seen, and the kiss that succeeded it.

"Do you want to quarrel with me, Blase? It seems so by your tone."

"You met him at dusk this evening as you were going to old Sandon's—if you were going there; and you meet him now in returning," continued Blase. "It's done on purpose."

"If I did meet him each time, it was by accident. Do you suppose I put myself in the way of meeting Mr. Raynor?"

"Yes, I do. There!"

"You shall not say these things to me, Blase. Just because you chance to be a fifteenth cousin of my mother's, you think that gives you a right to lecture me."

"You are always out and about somewhere," contended Blase. "What on earth d'you want at old Sandon's for ever?"

"She is sad and lonely, Blase," was the pleading answer, given in a tone of sweet pity. "Think of her sorrow! Poor Granny Sandon!"

"Why do you call her 'Granny'?" demanded Blase, who was in a fault-finding mood. "She's no granny of yours, Rosaline."

Rosaline laughed slightly. "Indeed, I don't know why we call her 'Granny,' Blase. Every one does. Let me pass."

"Every one doesn't. No: you are not going to pass yet. I intend to have it out with you about the way you favour that fool, Raynor. Meeting him at all hours of the day and night."

Rosaline's anger was aroused. In her heart she disliked Blase Pellet. He had given her trouble for some time past in trying to force his attentions upon her. It seemed to her that half the work of her life consisted in devising means to repress and avoid him.

"How dare you speak to me in this manner, Blase Pellet? You have not the right to do it, and you never will have."

"You'd rather listen to the false palaver of that stuck-up gentleman, Raynor, than you would to the words of an honest man like me."

"Blase Pellet, hear me once for all," vehemently retorted the girl. "Whatever Mr. Raynor may say to me, it is nothing to you; it never will be anything to you. If you speak in this way of him again, I shall tell him of it."

She eluded the outstretched arm, ran swiftly by, and gained her home. Blase Pellet, standing to watch, saw the light within as she opened the door and entered.

"Is it nothing to me!" he repeated, in a crestfallen tone. "You'll find that out before we are a day older, Miss Rosaline. I'll stop your fun with that proud fellow, Raynor."

[CHAPTER III.]

ON THE BARE PLAIN

"In vain I look from height and tower,

No wished-for form I see;

In vain I seek the woodbine bower—

He comes no more to me."

So sang Rosaline Bell in the beams of the morning sun. They came glinting between the hyacinths in the window, and fell on the cups and saucers. Rosaline stood at the kitchen-table, washing up the breakfast-things. She wore a light print gown, with a white linen collar fastened by a small silver brooch.

An expression of intense happiness sat on her beautiful face. This old song, that she was singing to herself in a sweet undertone, was one that her mother used to sing to her when she was a child. The words came from the girl half unconsciously; for, while she sang, she was living over again in thought last night's meeting with Frank Raynor on the Bare Plain.

"Rosie!"

The fond name, called in her mother's voice, interrupted her. Putting down the saucer she was drying, she advanced to the staircase-door, which opened from the kitchen, and stood there.

"Yes, mother! Did you want me?"

"Has your father gone out, Rose?"

"Yes. He said he should not be long."

"Oh no, I dare say not!" crossly responded Mrs. Bell; her tone plainly implying that she put no faith whatever in any promise of the sort. "They'll make a day of it again, as they did yesterday. Bring me a little warm water in half-an-hour, Rose, and I'll get up."

"Very well, mother."

Rose returned to her tea-cups, and resumed her song; resumed it in very gladness of heart. Ah, could she only have known what this day was designed to bring forth for her before it should finally close, she had sunk down in the blankness of despair! But there was no foreshadowing on her spirit.

"'Twas at the dawn of a summer morn,

My false love hied away;

O'er his shoulder hung the hunter's horn,

And his looks were blithe and gay.

"'Ere the evening dew-drops fall, my love,'

He thus to me, did say,

'I'll be at the garden-gate, my love'—

And gaily he rode away."

Another interruption. Some one tried the door—of which Rosaline had a habit of slipping the bolt—and then knocked sharply. Rosaline opened it. A rough-looking woman, miserably attired, stood there: an inhabitant of one of the poorest dwellings in this quarter.

"I wants to know," cried this woman, in a voice as uncouth as her speech, and with a dialect that needs translation for the uninitiated reader, "whether they vools o' men be at work to-day."

"I think not," replied Rosaline.

"There's that man o' mine gone off again to the Golden Shaaft, and he'll come hoam as he did yesternight! What tha plague does they father go and fill all they vools up weth lies about they Whistlers for? That's what I'd like to know. If Bell had heered they Whistlers, others 'ud hev heered they."

"I can't tell you anything at all about it, Mrs. Janes," returned Rosaline, civilly but very distantly; for she knew these people to be immeasurably her inferiors, and held them at arm's-length. "You can ask my father about it yourself; he'll be here by-and-by. I can't let you in now; mother's just as poorly as ever to-day, and she cannot bear a noise."

Closing the door as she spoke, and slipping the bolt, lest rude Mrs. Janes should choose to enter by force, Rosaline took up her song again.

"I watched from the topmost, topmost height,

Till the sun's bright beams were o'er,

And the pale moon shed her vestal light—

But my lover returned no more."

Whether the men were still incited by a dread of the Seven Whistlers, and were really afraid to descend into the mines, or whether they used the pretext as an excuse for a second day's holiday, certain it was that not a single man had gone to work. Ross, the overseer, reiterated his threats of punishment again and again; and reiterated in vain.

As a general rule, there exists not a more sober race of men than that of the Cornish miners; and the miners in question had once been no exception to the rule. But some few years before this, on the occasion of a prolonged dispute between masters and men, many fresh workmen had been imported from distant parts of England, and they had brought their drinking habits with them. The Cornish men caught them up in a degree: but it was only on occasions like the present that they indulged them to any extent, and therefore, when they did so, it was the more noticeable.

Mr. John Float at the Golden Shaft was doing a great stroke of business these idle days. As many men as could find seats in his hospitable house took possession of it. Amongst them was Josiah Bell. Few had ever seen Bell absolutely intoxicated; but he now and then took enough to render him more sullen than usual; and at such times he was sure to be quarrelsome.

Turning out of the Golden Shaft on this second day between twelve and one o'clock, Bell went down the street towards his home, with some more men who lived in that direction. Dr. Raynor chanced to be standing outside his house, and accosted Bell. The other men walked on.

"Not at work yet, Bell!"

"Not at work yet," echoed Bell, as doggedly as he dared, and standing to face the doctor.

"How long do you mean to let this fancy about the Seven Whistlers hinder you? When is it to end?"

Bell's eyes went out straight before him, as if trying to foresee what and where the end would be, and his tones lost their fierceness. This fancy in regard to the Seven Whistlers—as the doctor styled it—had evidently taken a serious, nay, a solemn hold upon him. Whether or not the other men anticipated ill-fortune from it, most indisputably Bell did so.

"I don't know, sir," he said, quite humbly. "I should like to see the end."

"Are you feeling well, Bell?" continued Dr. Raynor, in a tone of sympathy—for the strange grey pallor was on the man's face still.

"I'm well enough, doctor. What should ail me?"

"You don't look well."

Bell shifted his stick from one hand to the other. "The Whistlers gave me a turn, I suppose," he said.

"Nonsense, man! You should not be so superstitious."

"See here, Dr. Raynor," was the reply—and the tone was lowered in what sounded very like fear. "You know of the hurt I got in the pit in Staffordshire—which lamed me for good? Well, the night before it I heard the Seven Whistlers. They warned me of ill-luck then; and now they've warned me again, and I know it will come. I won't go down the mine till three days have passed. The other men may do as they like."

He walked on with the last words. Mr. Blase Pellet, who had been looking on at the interview from over the way, gazed idly after Bell until he had turned the corner and was out of sight. All in a moment, as though some recollection came suddenly to him, Blase tore off his white apron, darted in for his hat, and ran after Bell; coming up with him just beyond the parsonage.

What Mr. Blase Pellet communicated to him, to put Bell's temper up as it did, and what particular language he used, was best known to himself. If the young man had any conscience, one would think that remorse, for what that communication led to, must lie on it to his dying day. Its substance was connected with Rosaline and Frank Raynor. He was telling tales of them, giving his own colouring to what he said, and representing the latter gentleman and matters in general in a very unfavourable light indeed.

"If he dares to molest her again, I'll knock his head off," threatened Bell to himself and the Bare Plain, as he parted with Pellet, and made his way across it, muttering and brandishing his stick. The other men had disappeared, each within his home. Bell was about to enter his, when Mrs. Janes came out of her one room, her hair hanging, her gown in tatters, her voice shrill. She placed herself before Bell.

"I've been asking about my man. They tells me he es in a-drinking at the Golden Shaaft. I'll twist hes ears for he when he comes out on't And now I'm a-going to have it out with you about they Whistlers! Ef the——"

Mrs. Janes's eloquence was summarily arrested. With an unceremonious push, Josiah Bell put her out of his way, strode on to his own door, and closed it against her.

Rosaline was alone, laying the cloth for dinner. Bell, excited by drink, abused his daughter roundly, accusing her of "lightness" and all sorts of unorthodox things. Rosaline stared at him in simple astonishment.

"Why, father, what can you be thinking of?" she exclaimed. "Who has been putting this into your head?"

"Blase Pellet," answered Bell, scorning to equivocate. "And I'd a mind to knock him down for his pains—whether it's true or whether it's not."

"True!—that I could be guilty of light conduct!" returned Rosaline. "Father, I thought you knew me better. As to Mr. Raynor, I don't believe he is capable of an unworthy thought. He would rather do good in the world than evil."

And her tone was so truthful, her demeanour so consciously dignified, that Bell felt his gloomy thoughts melt away as if by magic; and he wished he had knocked Mr. Pellet down.

The day went on to evening, and tea was being taken at Dr. Raynor's. Five o'clock was the usual hour for the meal, and it was now nearly seven: but the doctor had been some miles into the country to see a wealthy patient, and Edina waited for him. They sat round the table in the best parlour; the one of which the bow-window looked on to the street; the other room was chiefly used for breakfast and dinner.

Its warm curtains were drawn before the window now, behind the small table that held the stand of beautiful white coral, brought home years ago by Major Raynor; the fire burned brightly; two candles stood near the tea-tray. Behind the doctor, who sat facing the window, was a handsome cabinet, a few choice books on its shelves. Frank, reading a newspaper and sipping his tea, sat between his uncle and Edina.

This was the night of the ball at The Mount. Edina was going to it. A most unusual dissipation for her; one she was quite unaccustomed to. Trennach afforded no opportunity for this sort of visiting, and it would have been all the same to Miss Raynor if it had. As she truly said, she had not been to a dance for years and years. Frank was making merry over it, asking her whether she could remember her "steps."

"I am sorry you accepted for me, papa," she suddenly said. "I have regretted it ever since."

"Why, Edina?"

"It is not in my way, you know, papa. And I have had the trouble of altering a dress.

"Mrs. St. Clare was good enough to press your going, Edina—she candidly told me she wanted more ladies—and I did not like to refuse. She wanted me to go," added Dr. Raynor, with a broad smile.

"I'm sure, papa, you would be as much of an ornament at a ball as I shall be—and would be far more welcome to Mrs. St. Clare," said Edina.

"Ornament? Oh, I leave that to Frank."

"I dare say you could dance, even now, as well as I can, papa."

Something like a flash of pain crossed his face. He dance now! Edina little thought how near—if matters with regard to himself were as he suspected—how very near he was to the end of all things.

"You looked tired, papa," she said.

"I am tired, child. That horse of mine does not seem to carry me as easily as he did. Or perhaps it is I who feel his action more. What do you say, Frank?"

"About the horse, uncle? I think he is just as easy to ride as he always was."

Dr. Raynor suppressed a sigh, and quitted the room. Frank rose, put his elbow on the mantelpiece, and glanced at his good-looking face in the glass.

"What time do you mean to start, Edina?"

"At half-past eight. I don't wish to go in later than the card says—nine o'clock. It is a shame to invite people for so late an hour!"

"It is late for Trennach," acknowledged Frank; "but would be early for some places. Mrs. St. Clare has brought her fashionable hours with her."

At that moment, the entrance-door was pushed violently open, and an applicant was heard to clatter in, in a desperate hurry. Frank went out to see.

Mrs. Molly Janes was lying at home, half killed, in immediate need of the services of either Dr. or Mr. Raynor. Mr. Janes had just staggered home from his day's enjoyment at the Golden Shaft: his wife was unwise enough to attack him in that state; he had retaliated and nearly "done" for her. Such was the substance of the report brought by the messenger—a lad with wild eyes and panting breath.

"You will have to go, Frank," said the doctor. "I am sorry for it, but I am really not able to walk there to-night. My ride shook me fearfully."

"Of course I will go, sir," replied Frank, in his ready way. "I shall be back long before Edina wants me. What are Mrs. Janes's chief injuries?" he asked, turning to the boy.

"He heve faaled on her like a fiend, master," answered the alarmed lad. "He've broke aal her bones to lerrups, he heve."

A bad account. Frank prepared to start without delay. He had left his hat in the parlour; and whilst getting it he said a hasty word to Edina—he had to go off to the cottages on the Bare Plain. Edina caught up the idea that it was Mrs. Bell who needed him: she knew of no other patient in that quarter.

"Come back as quickly as you can, Frank," she said. "You have to dress, you know. Don't stay chattering with Rosaline."

"With Rosaline!" he exclaimed, in surprise. "Oh, I see. It is not Mrs. Bell who wants me; it is Molly Janes. She and her husband have been at issue again."

With a gay laugh at Edina's advice touching Rosaline, and the rather serious and meaning tone she gave it in, Frank hastened away. The fact was, some odds and ends of joking had been heard in the village lately, coupling Frank's name with the girl's, and they had reached the ears of Edina. She intended to talk to Frank warningly about it on the first opportunity.

When about half-way across the Bare Plain, Frank saw some man before him, in the moonlight, who was not very steady on his legs. The lad had gone rushing forward, thinking to come in at the end of the fight; should it, haply, still be going on.

"What, is it you, Bell!" exclaimed Frank, recognizing the staggerer as he overtook and passed him. "You've had nearly as much as you can carry, have you not?" he added, in light good-nature.

It was Bell. Stumbling homewards from the Golden Shaft. A very early hour indeed, considering the state he was in, for him to quit the seductions of that hostelry. He had been unwise enough to go back to it after his dinner, and there he had sat until now. Had he chosen to keep sober, the matter whispered by Blase Pellet would not have returned to rankle in his mind: as he did not, it had soon begun to do so ominously. With every cup he took, the matter grew in his imagination, until it assumed an ugly look, and became a very black picture. And he had now come blundering forth with the intention of "looking out for himself," as ingeniously suggested by Blase Pellet that day when they were parting. In short, to track the steps and movements of the two suspected people; to watch whether they met, and all about it.

"Perhaps other folks will have as much as they can carry soon," was his insolent retort to Frank, lifting the heavy stick in his hand menacingly. At which Frank only laughed, and sped onwards.

A terribly savage mood rushed over Josiah Bell. Seeing Frank strike off towards Bleak Row, he concluded that it was to his dwelling-house he was bent, and to see Rosaline. And he gnashed his teeth in fury, and gave vent to a fierce oath because he could not overtake the steps of the younger man.

Bursting in at his own door when he at length reached it, he sent his eyes round the room in search of the offenders. But all the living inmates that met his view consisted of his wife in her mob-cap and white apron, knitting, as usual, in her own chair, and the cat sleeping upon the hearth.

"Where's Rosaline?"

Mrs. Bell put down her knitting—a grey worsted stocking for Bell himself—and sighed deeply as she gazed at him. He had not been very sober at dinnertime: he was worse now. Nevertheless she felt thankful that he had come home so soon.

"She's gone out!" he continued, before Mrs. Bell had spoken: and it was evident that the fact of Rosaline's being out was putting him into a furious passion. "Who is she with?"

"Rose went over after tea to sit a bit with Granny Sandon. Granny's worse to-day, poor thing. I'm expecting her back every minute."

Bell staggered to the fireplace and stood there grasping his stick. His wife went on with her knitting in silence. To reproach him now would do harm instead of good. It must be owned that his exceeding to this extent was quite an exceptional case: not many times had his wife known him do it.

"Where's Raynor?" he broke out.

"Raynor!" she echoed, in surprise. "Do you mean Mr. Frank Raynor? I don't know where he is."

"He came in here a few minutes ago."

"Bless you, no, not he," returned the wife, in an easy tone, thinking it the best tone to assume just then.

"I tell ye I saw him come here."

"The moonlight must have misled you, Josiah. Mr. Raynor has not been here to-day. Put down your stick and take off your hat: and sit down and be comfortable."

To this persuasive invitation, Bell made no reply. Yet a minute or two he stood in silence, gazing at the fire; then, grasping his stick more firmly, and ramming his hat upon his head, he staggered out again, banging the door after him. Mrs. Bell sighed audibly; she supposed he was returning to the Golden Shaft.

Meanwhile Frank Raynor was with Mrs. Molly Janes. Her damages were not so bad as had been represented, and he proceeded to treat them: which took some little time. Leaving her a model of artistically-applied sticking-plaster, Frank started homewards again. The night was most beautiful; the sky clear, except for a few fleecy clouds that now and then passed across it, the silvery moon riding grandly above them. Just as Frank came opposite the Bottomless Shaft, he met Rosaline, on her way home from Granny Sandon's.

They stopped to speak—as a matter of course. Frank told her of the affray that had taken place, and the punishment of Molly Janes. While Rosaline listened, she kept her face turned in the direction she had come from, as though she were watching for some one: and her quick eyes discerned a figure approaching in the moonlight.

"Good-night—you pass on, Mr. Frank," she suddenly and hurriedly exclaimed. "I am going to hide here for a minute."

Darting towards the Bottomless Shaft, she took refuge amongst the surrounding mounds: mounds which looked like great earth batteries, thrown up in time of war. Instead of passing on his way, Frank followed her, in sheer astonishment: and found her behind the furthest mound at the back of the Shaft.

"Are you hiding from me?" he demanded. "What is it, Rosaline? I don't understand."

"Not from you," she whispered. "Why didn't you go on? Hush! Some one is going to pass that I don't want to see.

"Who is it? Your father? I think he has gone home."

"It is Blase Pellet," she answered. "I saw him at the shop-door as I came by, and I think he is following me. He talks nonsense, and I would rather walk home alone. Listen! Can we hear his footsteps, do you think, sir? He must be going by now."

Frank humoured her: he did not particularly like Blase Pellet himself, but he had no motive in remaining still, except that it was her wish. On the contrary, he would have preferred to be going homewards, for he had not much time to lose. Whistling softly, leaning against the nearest mound, he watched the white clouds coursing in the sky.

"He must have passed now, Rosaline."

She stole cautiously away, to reconnoitre; and came back with a beaming face.

"Yes," she said, "and he has gone quickly, for he is out of sight. He must have run, thinking to catch me up."

"I wonder you were not afraid to go through the mounds alone and pass close to the Bottomless Shaft!" cried Frank, in a tone of raillery, no longer deeming it necessary to lower his voice. "Old Sandon's ghost might have come up, you know, and carried you off.

"I am not afraid of old Sandon's ghost," said Rosaline.

"I dare say not!" laughed Frank.

In a spirit of bravado, or perhaps in very lightness of heart, Rosaline suddenly ran through the zigzag turnings, until she stood close to the mouth of the Shaft. Frank followed her, quickly also, for in truth he was impatient to be gone.

"I am listening for the ghost," said she, her head bent over the yawning pit. It was a dangerous position: the least slip, one incautious step nearer, might have been irredeemable: and Frank put his arm round her waist to protect her.

Another half-moment passed, when—— They hardly knew what occurred. A howl of rage, a heavy stick brandished over them in the air, and Rosaline started back, to see her father. Old Bell must have been hiding amongst the mounds on his own score, looking out for what might be seen.

Down came the stick heavily on Frank's shoulders. An instant's tussle ensued: a shout from a despairing, falling man; a momentary glimpse of an upturned face; a cry of horror from a woman's voice; an agonized word from her companion; and all was over. Francis Raynor and the unhappy Rosaline stood alone under the pitiless moonlight.

[CHAPTER IV.]

WAITING FOR BELL

The fire threw its glow on Mrs. Bell's kitchen—kitchen and sitting-room combined—lighting up the strip of bright carpet before the fender and the red-tiled floor; playing on the plates and dishes on the dresser, and on the blue hyacinth glasses in the window, now closed in by the outer shutters. Stout Mrs. Bell sat by the round table in her white apron and mob-cap, plying her knitting-needles. On the other side the hearth sat a neighbour, one Nancy Tomson, a tall, thin Cornish woman in a check apron, with projecting teeth and a high nose, who had come in for a chat. On the table waited the supper of bread-and-cheese; and a candle stood ready for lighting.

The clock struck nine. Mrs. Bell looked up as though the sound half startled her.

"Who'd heve thought it!" cried the visitor, whose chatter had been going incessantly for the last hour, causing the time to pass quickly. "Be they clock too fast, Dame Bell?"

"No," said the dame. "It's right by the church."

"Well, I'd never heve said it were nine. Your folks es late. I wonder where they be that they don't come hoam."

"No need to wonder," returned Mrs. Bell, in sharp tones, meant for the absentees. "Rosaline's staying with poor Granny Sandon, who seems to have nobody else to stay with her. As to Bell, he is off again to the Golden Shaft."

"You said he had comed in."

"He did come in: and I thought he had come in for good. But he didn't stay a minute; he must needs tramp out again. And he was further gone, Nancy Tomson, than I've seen him these three years."

Dame Bell plied her needles vigorously, as if her temper had got down into her fingers. The visitor plunged into renewed conversation, chiefly turning upon that interesting episode, the encounter between Janes and his wife. At half-past nine, Mrs. Bell put down her knitting and rose from her seat. She was growing uneasy.

"What can keep Rosaline? She never stays out so late as this, let Granny Sandon want her ever so. I'll take a look out and see if I can see her."

Unbolting and opening the door she admitted a flood of pale moonlight: pale, compared with the ruddier glow of the interior. Mrs. Bell peered out across the Bare Plain in the direction of Trennach; and Nancy Tomson, who was always ready for any divertisement, advanced and stretched her long neck over Dame Bell's shoulder.

"It's a rare light night," she said. "But I don't see nobody coming, Mrs. Bell. They keeps to the Golden Shaaft."

Feeling the air cold after the hot fire, Nancy Tomson withdrew indoors again. She was in no hurry to be gone. Her husband made one of the company at the Golden Shaft to-night, and this warm domicile was pleasanter than her own. Dame Bell was about to shut the door, when a faint sound caused her to look quickly out again, and advance somewhat farther than she did before. Leaning against the wall on the other side the window was a dark object: and, to Mrs. Bell's intense surprise, she discovered it to be Rosaline.

Rosaline, in what appeared to be the very utmost abandonment of grief or of terror. Her hands were clasped, her face was bent down. Every laboured breath she took seemed to come forth with suppressed anguish.

"Why, child, what on earth's the matter?" ejaculated the mother. "What are you staying there for?"

The words quickly brought out Nancy Tomson. Her exclamations, when she saw Rosaline, might almost have been heard at Trennach.

Rosaline's moans subsided into silence. She slowly moved from the wall, and they helped her indoors. Her face was white as that of the dead, and appeared to have a nameless horror in it. She sat down on the first chair she came to, put her arms on the table, and her head upon them, so that her countenance was hidden. The two women, closing the front-door, stood gazing at her with the most intense curiosity.

"She heve been frighted," whispered Nancy Tomson. And it did indeed look like it. Mrs. Bell, however, negatived the suggestion.

"Frighted! What is there to frighten her? What's the matter, Rosaline?" she continued, somewhat sharply. "Be you struck mooney, child?"

Nancy Tomson was one who liked her own opinion, and held to the fright. She advanced a step or two nearer Rosaline, dropping her voice to a low key.

"Heve you seen anything o' Dan Sandon? Maybe hes ghost shawed itself to you as you come by the Bottomless Shaaft?"

The words seemed to affect Rosaline so strongly that the table, not a very substantial one, vibrated beneath her weight.

"Then just you tell us whaat else it es," pursued Nancy Tomson, eager for enlightenment—for Rosaline had made a movement in the negative as to Dan Sandon's ghost. "Sure," added the woman to Mrs. Bell, "sure Janes and her be not a-fighting again! Sure he heven't been and killed her! Is it that whaat heve frighted you, Rosaline?"

"No, no," murmured Rosaline.

"Well, it must be something or t'other," urged the woman, beside herself with curiosity. "One caan't be frighted to death for nothing. Heve ye faaled down and hurted yerself?"

An idea, like an inspiration, seized upon Mrs. Bell. And it seemed to her so certain to be the true one that she only wondered she had not thought of it before. She laid her hand upon her daughter's shoulder.

"Rosaline! You have heard the Seven Whistlers!"

A slight pause. Rosaline neither stirred nor spoke. To Nancy Tomson the suggestion cleared up the mystery.

"Thaat's it," she cried emphatically. "Where was aal my wits, I wonder, thaat I never remembered they? Now doan't you go for to deny it, Rosaline Bell: you have heared they Seven Whistlers, and gashly things they be."

Another pause. A shiver. And then Rosaline slowly lifted her white face.

"Yes," she answered. "The Seven Whistlers." And the avowal struck such consternation on her hearers, although the suggestion had first come from them, that they became dumb.

"Father heard them, you know," went on Rosaline, a look of terror in her eyes, and a dreamy, far-off sound in her voice. "Father heard them. And they mean ill-luck."

"They bode death: as some says," spoke Nancy Tomson, lowering her voice to an appropriate key.

"Yes," repeated Rosaline, in a tone of sad wailing. "Yes: they bode death. Oh, mother! mother!"

But now, Mrs. Bell, although given, like her neighbours, to putting some faith in the Seven Whistlers: for example is contagious: was by no means one to be overcome with the fear of them. Rather was the superstition regarded by her as a prolific theme for gossip, and she altogether disapproved of the men's making it an excuse for idleness. Had she heard the Whistlers with her own ears, it would not have moved her much. Of course she did not particularly like the Whistlers; she was willing to believe that they were in some mysterious way the harbingers of ill-luck; and the discomfort evinced by her husband on Sunday night, when he returned home after hearing the sounds, had in a degree imparted discomfort to herself. But, that any one should be put into a state of terror by them, such as this now displayed by Rosaline, she looked upon as absurd and unreasonable.

"Don't take on like that, child!" she rebuked. "You must be silly. They don't bode your death: never fear. I'll warm you a cup o' pea-soup. There's some left in the crock."

She bustled into the back-kitchen for the soup and a saucepan. Rosaline kept her head down: deep, laboured breathings agitated her. Nancy Tomson stood looking on, her arms folded in her check apron.

"Whereabouts did ye hear they Whistlers, Rosaline?" she asked at length.

But there was no answer.

"On the Bare Plain, I take it," resumed the woman. "Were't a-nigh they mounds by the Shaaft? Sounds echoes in they zigzag paths rarely. I've heard the wind a-whistling like anything there afore now. She be a pewerly lonesome consarn, thaat Shaaft, for waun who has to paas her at night alone."

A moan, telling of the sharpest mental agony, broke from Rosaline. Dame Bell heard it as she was coming in. In the midst of her sympathy, it angered her.

"Rosaline, I won't have this. There's reason in roasting of eggs. We shall have your father here directly, and what will he say? I can tell you, he was bad enough when he went out. Come! just rouse yourself."

"Father heard the Whistlers, and—they—bode—death!" shivered Rosaline.

"They don't bode yours, I say," repeated Dame Bell, losing patience. "Do you suppose death comes to every person who hears the Whistlers?—or ill-luck either?"

"No, no," assented Nancy Tomson, for Rosaline did not speak. "For waun that faals into ill-luck after hearing they Whistlers, ten escapes. I've knowed a whole crowd o' they men hear the sounds, and nought heve come on't to any waun on 'em."

"And that's quite true," said Mrs. Bell.

Rosaline could not be persuaded to try the soup. It was impossible that she could swallow it, she said. Taking a candle; she went up to her room; to bed, as her mother supposed.

"And the best place for her," remarked Dame Bell. "To think of her getting a fright like this!"

But poor Rosaline did not go to bed, and did not undress. Taking her shoes off, that she might not be heard, she began to pace the few yards of her narrow chamber, to and fro, to and fro, from wall to wall, in an anguish the like of which has rarely been felt on earth. She was living over again the night's meeting at the Bottomless Shaft and its frightful ending: she saw the white, upturned, agonized face, and heard the awful cry of despair of him who was falling into its pitiless depths, and was now lying there, dead: and it seemed to her that she, herself, must die of it.

The clock struck ten, and Nancy Tomson tore herself away from the warm and hospitable kitchen, after regaling herself upon the soup rejected by Rosaline. And Dame Bell sat on, knitting, and waiting for her husband.

When Rosaline, her hands lifted in distress, tore away that evening from the Bottomless Shaft, and the tragedy that had been enacted there, and went flying over the Bare Plain towards home, Frank Raynor, recovering from the horror which had well-nigh stunned his faculties, went after her. Two or three times he attempted to say a word to her, but she took no notice of him; only sped the quicker, if that were possible. She never answered; it was as if she did not hear. When they reached the narrow path that branched off to the cottages, there she stopped, and turned towards him.

"We part here. Part for ever.

"Are you going home?" he asked.

"Where else should I go?" she rejoined, in anguish. "Where else can I go?"

"I will see you safe to the door.

"No. No! Good-bye."

And, throwing up her hands, as if to ward him off, she would have sped onwards. But Frank Raynor could not part thus: he had something to say, and detained her, holding her hands tightly. A few hasty words passed between them, and then she was at liberty to go on. He stood watching her until she drew near to her own door, and then turned back on his way across the plain.

In his whole life Francis Raynor had never felt as he was feeling now. An awful weight had settled upon his soul. His friends had been wont to say that no calamity upon earth could bring down Frank's exuberant spirits, or change the lightness of his ways. But something had been found to do it now. Little less agitated was he than Rosaline; the sense of horror upon him was the same as hers.

He was now passing the fatal spot, the Bottomless Shaft; its surrounding hillocks shone out in the moonlight. Frank turned his eyes that way, and stood still to gaze. Of their own accord, and as if some fascination impelled him against his will, his steps moved thitherwards.

With a livid face, and noiseless feet, and a heart that ceased for the moment to beat, he took the first narrow zigzag between two of the mounds. And—but what was it that met his gaze? As he came in view of the Shaft, he saw the figure of a man standing on its brink. The sight was so utterly unexpected, and so unlikely, that Frank stood still, scarcely believing it to be reality. For one blissful moment he lost sight of impossibilities, and did indeed think it must be Josiah Bell.

Only for an instant. The truth returned to his mind in all its wretchedness, together with the recognition of Mr. Blase Pellet. Mr. Blase was gingerly bending forward, but with the utmost caution, and looking down into the pit. As if he were listening for what might be to be heard there: just as the unhappy Rosaline had professed to listen a few minutes before.

Frank had not made any noise; and, even though he had, a strong gust of wind, just then sweeping the mounds, deadened all sound but its own. But, with that subtle instinct that warns us sometimes of a human presence, Blase Pellet turned sharply round, and saw him. Not a word passed. Frank drew silently back—though he knew the man had recognized him—and pursued his way over the Plain.

He guessed how it was. When he and Rosaline had been waiting amidst the mounds for Blase Pellet to pass, Blase had not passed. Blase must have seen them cross over to the spot in the moonlight; and, instead of continuing his route, had stealthily crossed after them and concealed himself in one or other of the narrow zigzags. He must have remained there until now. How much had he seen? How much did he know? If anything had been capable of adding to the weight of perplexity and trouble that had fallen on Frank Raynor, it would be this. He groaned in spirit he pursued his way homeward.

"How late you are, Frank!"

The words, spoken by Edina, met him as he entered. Hearing him come in, she had opened the door of the sitting-room. In the bewildering confusion of his mind, the perplexity as to the future, the sudden shock of the one moment's calamity, which might change the whole current of his future life, Frank Raynor had lost all recollection of the engagement for the evening. The appearance of Edina recalled it to him.

She was in evening dress: though very sober dress. A plain grey silk, its low body and short sleeves trimmed with a little white lace; a gold chain and locket on her neck; and bracelets of not much value. Quite ready, all but her gloves.

"Are—are you going, Edina?"

"Going!" replied Edina. "Of course I am going. You are going also, are you not?"

Frank pushed his hair off his brow. The gay scene at The Mount, and the dreadful scene in which he had just been an actor, struck upon him as being frightfully incongruous. Edina was gazing at him: she detected some curious change in his manner, and she saw that he was looking very pale.

"Is anything the matter, Frank? Are you not well?"

"Oh, I am quite well."

"Surely that poor woman is not dead?"

"What woman?" asked Frank, his wits still wool-gathering. Dr. Raynor, leaving his chair by the parlour-fire, had also come to the door, and was looking on.

"Have you been to see more than one woman?" said Edina. "I meant Molly Janes."

"Oh—ay—yes," returned Frank, passing his hand over his perplexed brow. "She'll be all right in a few days. There's no very serious damage done."

"What has made you so long, then?" questioned the doctor.

"I—did not know it was late," was the only excuse poor Frank could think of, as he turned from the steady gaze of Edina: though he might have urged that plastering up Mrs. Molly's wounds had taken time. And in point of fact he did not, even yet, know whether it was late or early.

"Pray make haste, Frank," said Edina. "You can dress quickly when you like. I did not wish, you know, to be so late as this."

He turned to seek his room. There was no help for it: he must go to this revelry. Edina could not go alone: and, indeed, he had no plea for declining to accompany her. Not until he was taking off his coat did he remember the blow on his shoulder. Frank Raynor, in his mind's grievous trouble, had neither felt the pain left by the blow, nor remembered that he had received one.

Yet it was a pretty severe stroke, and the shoulder on which it fell was stiff and aching. Frank, his coat off, was passing his hand gently over the place, perhaps to ascertain the extent of the damage, when the door was tapped at and then opened by Edina.

"I have brought you a flower for your button-hole, Frank."

It was a hot-house flower, white and beautiful as wax. Dr. Raynor had brought it from a patient's house where he had been in the afternoon, and Edina had kept it until the last moment as a small surprise to Frank. He took it mechanically; thanking her, it is true, but very tamely, his thoughts evidently far away. Edina could only note the change: what had become of Frank's light-heartedness?

"Is anything wrong with your shoulder?"

"It has a bit of a bruise, I think," he carelessly answered, putting the flower down on his dressing-table.

She shut the door, and Frank went on dressing, always mechanically. How many nights, and days, and weeks, and years, would it be before his mind would lose the horror of the recent scene!

"I wish to Heaven that she-demon, Molly Janes, had been there!" he cried, stamping his foot on the floor in a sudden access of grief and passion. "But for her vagaries, I should not have been called out this evening, and this frightful calamity would not have happened!"

Edina was ready when he went down, cloaked and shawled, a warm hood over her smooth brown hair. The doctor did not keep a close carriage; such a thing as a fly was not to be had at Trennach; and so they had to walk. Mrs. St. Clare had graciously intimated that she would send her carriage for Miss Raynor if the night turned out a bad one. But the night was bright and fine.

"You will be sure not to sit up for us, papa," said Edina, while Frank was putting on his overcoat. "It is quite uncertain what time we shall return home."

"No, no, child; I shall not sit up."

When they came to the end of the village, Frank turned on to the roadway, at the back of the parsonage. Edina, who was on his arm, asked him why he did so: the Bare Plain was the nearer way.

"But this is less dreary," was his answer. "We shall be there soon enough."

"Nay, I think the Bare Plain far less dreary than the road: especially on such a night as this," said Edina. "Here we are over-shadowed by trees: on the Plain we have the full moonlight."

He said no more: only kept on his way. It did not matter; it would make only about three minutes' difference. Edina stepped out cheerfully; she never made a fuss over trifles. By-and-by, she began to wonder at his silence. It was very unusual.

"Have you a headache, Frank?"

"No. Yes. Just a little."

Edina said nothing to the contradictory answer. Something unusual and unpleasant had decidedly occurred to him.

"How did you bruise your shoulder?" she presently asked.

"Oh—gave it a knock," he said, after the slightest possible pause. "My shoulder's all right, Edina: don't talk about it. Much better than that confounded Molly Janes's bruises are."

And with the sharp words, sounding so strangely from Frank's good-natured lips, Edina gathered the notion that the grievance was in some way connected with Molly Janes; perhaps the damaged shoulder also. Possibly she had turned obstreperous under the young doctor's hands and had shown fight to him as well as to her husband.

The Mount burst upon them in a blaze of light. Plants, festoons, music, brilliancy! As they were entering the chief reception-room, out-door wrappings removed, Edina missed the beautiful white flower: Frank's coat was unadorned.

"Frank! what have you done with your flower?"

His eyes wandered to the flowers decorating the rooms, and then to his button-hole, all in an absent sort of way that surprised Miss Raynor.

"I fear I must have forgotten it, Edina. I wish you had worn it yourself: it would have been more appropriate. How well it would have looked in your hair!"

"Fancy me with flowers in my hair!" laughed Edina. "But, Frank, I think Molly Janes must have scared some of your wits away."

Their greeting to Mrs. St. Clare over, Frank found a seat for Edina, and stood back himself in a corner, behind a remote door. How terribly this scene of worldly excitement contrasted with the one enacted so short a time ago! He was living it, perforce, over again; going through its short-lived action, that had all been over in one or two fatal moments: this, before him, seemed as a dream. The gaily-robed women sweeping past him with light laughter; the gleam of jewels; the pomp and pageantry: all seemed but the shifting scenes of a panorama. Frank could have groaned aloud at the bitter mockery: here life, gay, heedless, joyous: there DEATH; death violent and sudden. Never before, throughout his days, had the solemn responsibilities of this world and of the next so painfully pressed themselves upon him in all their dread reality.

"Oh, Mr. Raynor! I thought you were not coming! Have you been here long?"

The emotional words came from a fair girl in a cloud of white—Daisy St. Clare. Frank's hand went forward to meet the one held out to him: but never a smile crossed his face.

"How long have you been here, Mr. Raynor?"

"How long? I am not sure. Half-an-hour, I think."

"Have you been dancing?"

"Oh no. I have been standing here."

"To hide yourself? I really should not have seen you but that I am looking everywhere for Lydia's card, which she has lost."

He did not answer: his head was throbbing, his heart beating. Daisy thought him very silent.

"I have had my dance with Sir Paul Trellasis," said Daisy, toying with her own card, a blush on her face, and her eyes cast down.

At any other moment Frank would have read the signs, and taken the hint: she was ready to dance with him. But he never asked her: he did not take the gilded leaves and pencil into his own hands and write down his name as many times as he pleased. He simply stood still, gazing out with vacant eyes and a sad look on his face. Daisy at length glanced up at him.

"Are you ill?" she inquired.

"No; only tired."

"Too tired to dance?" she ventured to ask, after a pause, her pulses quickening a little as she put the suggestive question.

"Yes. I cannot dance to-night, Miss Margaret."

"Oh, but why?"

His breath was coming a little quickly with emotion. Not caused by Daisy, and her hope of dancing; but by that terrible recollection. Subduing his tones as far as possible, he spoke.

"Pray forgive me, Miss Margaret: I really cannot dance to-night."

And the cold demeanour, the discouraging words, threw a chill upon her heart. What had she done to him, that he should change like this? With a bearing that sought to be proud, but a quivering lip, Margaret turned away.

He caught her eye as she was doing so; caught the expression of her face, and read its bitter disappointment. The next moment he was bending over her, pressing her hand within his.

"Forgive me, Daisy," he whispered, in pleading tones. "Indeed it is not caprice: I—I cannot dance to-night. Go and dance to your heart's content, and let me hide myself here until Miss Raynor is ready to leave you. The kindest thing you can do is to take no further notice of me."

He released her hand as he spoke, and stood back again in his dark corner. Margaret turned away with a sigh. Her pleasure in the evening had flown.

"And he never wished me any good wishes! It might just as well not have been my birthday."

[CHAPTER V.]

MISSING

There was commotion next morning at Trennach, especially about the region of the Bare Plain and the cottages in Bleak Row. Josiah Bell had disappeared. Mrs. Bell had sat up half the night waiting for him; then, concluding he had taken too much liquor to be able to find his way home, and had either stayed at the Golden Shaft or found refuge with Andrew Float, she went to bed. Upon making inquiries this morning, this proved not to be the case. Nothing seemed to be known of Josiah Bell. His comrades professed ignorance as to his movements: the Golden Shaft had not taken him in; neither had Andrew Float.

Mrs. Bell rose early. People in a state of exasperation, lose sight of physical weakness: and this exactly expresses Dame Bell's state of mind. It was of course necessary that she should be up, in order to give Bell a proper lecture when he should make his appearance. Whilst dressing, she saw Nancy Tomson's husband outside, apparently starting for Trennach. Throwing a warm shawl over her shoulders, she opened the window.

"Tomson!" she called out. "Tomson!"

The man heard and looked up, his face leaden and his eyes red and inflamed. Last night's potations were not yet slept off.

"What was the reason my husband did not come home?"

Tomson took a few moments to digest the question. Apparently his recollection on the point did not quickly serve him.

"I doan't know," said he. "Didn't Bell come hoam?"

"No, he didn't."

"Baan't he come hoam?"

"No, he has not come. And I think it was a very unfriendly thing of the rest of you not to bring him. You had to come yourselves. Did you leave him at the Golden Shaft?"

"Bell warn't at tha Golden Shaaft," said Tomson.

"Now don't you tell me any of your untruths, Ben Tomson," returned the dame. "Not at the Golden Shaft! Where else was he?"

"I'll take my davy Bell were not weth us at tha Golden Shaaft last evening!" said the man. "He cleared out at dusk."

"But he went back to it later."

"He never did—not as I saw," persisted Tomson; who was always obstinate in maintaining his own opinion.

"Was Andrew Float there?" asked Mrs. Bell.

"Andrew Float? Yes, Float was there."

"Then I know Bell was there too. And don't you talk any more nonsense about it, Ben Tomson. Bell was too bad to get home by himself, and none of you chose to help him home; perhaps you were too bad yourselves to do it. And there he has stayed till now; either at the Golden Shaft, or with Float the miner: and you'd very much oblige me, Tomson, if you'd hunt him up."

She shut the casement, watched Tomson start on his way to Trennach, and, presently, went down to breakfast. Rosaline was getting it ready as usual, looking more dead than alive.

"We'll wait a bit, Rose, to see whether your father comes. Don't put the tea in yet."

Rose was kneeling before the fire at the moment. She turned at the words, a wild look in her eyes, and seemed about to say something; but checked herself.

Half-an-hour passed: Dame Bell growing more angry each minute, and rehearsing a sharper reception for Bell in her mind. At last they sat down to breakfast. Rose could not eat; she seemed ill: but her mother, taken up with the ill-doings of the truant, did not observe her as much as she would otherwise have done. Breakfast was at an end, although Mrs. Bell had lingered over it, when Tomson returned; and with him appeared the tall ungainly form of Float the miner.

"Well?" cried the dame, rising briskly from her chair in expectation, as Tomson raised the latch of the door.

"Well, 'tis as I said," said Tomson. "Bell didn't come back to the Golden Shaaft last night after he cleared out just afore dark. He ain't nowheres about as we can see."

Mrs. Bell looked from one to the other: at Tomson's rather sullen countenance, at Float's good-natured one. She might have thought the men were deceiving her, but she could see no motive for their doing so. Unless, indeed, Bell was lying somewhere in Trennach, so ill after his bout that they did not like to tell her.

"Where is he, then, I should like to know?" she retorted, in reply to Tomson.

"Caan't tell," said Tomson. "None o' they men heve seen him."

"Now this won't do," cried Dame Bell. "You must know where he is. Do you suppose he's lost? Don't stand simpering there on one leg, Andrew Float, but just tell me where he is hiding."

"I'd tell ye if I knew, ma'am," said Andrew, in his meek way. "I'd like to know where he is myself."

"But he was at the Golden Shaft last night: he must have been there," insisted the dame, unable to divest herself of this opinion. "What became of him when the place shut up? What state was he in?"

"No, ma'am, he was not there," said Andrew, mildly, for he never liked contradicting.

"Stuff!" said Mrs. Bell. "There was nowhere else for him to go to. What did you do with him, Andrew Float?"

"I heve done naught with him," rejoined Andrew. "He kep' I and they t'other soes awaiting all the evening for him at the Golden Shaft; but he didn't come back to't."

"I know he was at the Golden Shaft pretty nigh all yesterday," retorted Mrs. Bell, angrily.

"He were," acknowledged Andrew. "He come back after his dinner, and stayed there along o' the rest of us: but he was pewerly silent and glum; we couldna get a word from him. Just as they were a-lighting up, Bell he gets off the settle, and puts on his hat; and when we asked where he was going, he said to do his work. Upon that, one o' they sees—old Perkins, I think it were—wanted to know what work; but Bell wouldn't answer him. He'd be back by-and-by, he said; and went out."

"And he did not go back again?" reiterated Dame Bell.

"No, ma'am, he didn't. Though we aal stayed a bit later than usual on the strength of expecting him."

"It's very strange," said she. "He came home here about seven o'clock, or between that and half-past—I can't be sure as to the exact time. I thought he had come for good; he was three-parts tipsy then, and I advised him to sit down and make himself comfortable. Not a bit would he heed. After standing a minute or so, twirling his stick about, and asking where Rosaline was, and this and the other, he suddenly pushes his hat down over his eyes, and out he goes in a passion—as I could tell by his banging the door. Of course he was going back to the Golden Shaft. There can't be a doubt of it."

"He never came to the Golden Shaft, ma'am," said Float.

"I say," cried Tomson at this juncture, "what's amiss with Rosaline?"

During the above conversation, Rosaline had stood at the dresser, wiping the plates one by one, and keeping her back to the company, so that they did not see her face. But it chanced that Tomson went to the fire to light his pipe, just as Rosaline's work came to an end. As she crossed the kitchen to the staircase, Tomson met her and had full view of her. The man stared after her in surprise: even when she had disappeared up the stairs and shut the door behind her, he still stood staring; for he had never seen in all his life a face to equal it for terror. It was then that he put his question to Mrs. Bell.

"Didn't your wife tell you what it was that frightened her, Ben Tomson?" was the dame's query.

"My wife have said ne'er a word to me since yesterday dinnertime, save to call me a vool," confessed Tomson. "Her temper be up. Rosaline do look bad, though!"

"She heard the Seven Whistlers last night," explained Mrs. Bell. "It did fright her a'most to death.

"What!—they Whistlers here again laast night?" cried Tomson, his eyes opening with consternation.

Dame Bell nodded. "Your wife and me were sitting here, Ben Tomson, waiting for Rosaline to come in, and wondering why Granny Sandon kept her so late. I opened the door to see if I could see her coming across the Plain—or Bell, either, for the matter o' that—and there she was, leaning again' the wall outside with terror. We got her indoors, me and Nancy Tomson, and for some time could make nothing of her; she was too frighted to speak. At last she told us she had heard the Seven Whistlers as she was coming over the Plain."

But now this statement of Mrs. Bell's unconsciously deviated from the strict line of truth. Rosaline had not "told" them that she heard the Seven Whistlers on the Plain. When her mother suddenly accused her of having heard the Whistlers, and was backed in the suggestion by Nancy Tomson, poor Rosaline nodded an affirmative, but she gave it in sheer despair. She could not avow what had really frightened her; and the Seven Whistlers—which she had certainly not heard—served excellently for an excuse. The two women of course adopted the explanation religiously, and they had no objection to talk about it.

"They Whistlers again!" resumed Tomson, in dismay. "Ross, he's raging just like a bear this morning, threatening us weth law and what not; but he caan't expect us to go down and risk our lives while they boding Whistlers be glinting about."

"There, never mind they Whistlers," broke in Mrs. Bell, who sometimes fell into the native dialect. "Where's Bell got to? that's what I want to know."

Of course Tomson could not say. Neither could Float. The latter made the most sensible suggestion the circumstances admitted of—namely, that they should go and search for him. Mrs. Bell urged them to do so at once and to make haste about it. Bell would be found in Trennach fast enough, she said. As he had not taken refuge in Float's the miner's house, he had taken it in somebody else's, and was staying there till he grew sober.

On this day, Wednesday, Trennach was again taking holiday, and laying the blame on the Seven Whistlers. But this state of things could not last. The men knew that; and they now promised the overseer, Ross, whose rage had reached a culminating point, that the morrow should see them at work. One wise old miner avowed an opinion that three days would be enough to "break the spell o' they Whistlers and avert evil."

So the village street was filled with idlers, who really, apart from smoking and drinking, had nothing to do with themselves. It was a little early yet for the Golden Shaft: and when Andrew Float and Tomson arrived amongst them with the account that Josiah Bell had not been seen since the previous evening or been home all night, and that his wife (or as Tomson phrased it in the local vernacular, his woman) couldn't think where he had got to and had put a rod in pickle for him: the men listened. With one accord, they agreed to go and look for Bell: and they set about it heartily, for it gave them something to do.

But Josiah Bell could not be found. The miners' dwellings were searched, perhaps without a single exception, but he had not taken refuge in any one of them. Since quitting the Golden Shaft the previous evening at dusk, as testified to by the men who were there, only two persons, apart from his wife, could remember to have seen him: Blase Pellet, and the Rector of Trennach, the Reverend Thomas Pine. Mr. Pellet, standing at his shop-door for recreation at the twilight hour, had seen Bell pass down the street on his way from the inn, and noticed that he was tolerably far gone in liquor. The clergyman had seen and spoken to Bell a very few minutes later.

Chancing to meet the men on their search this morning, Mr. Pine learnt that Josiah Bell was missing. The clergyman always made himself at home with the men, whether they belonged to his flock or were Wesleyans. He never attempted to interfere in the slightest degree with their form of worship, but he constantly strove by friendly persuasion to lead them away from evil. The Wesleyan minister was obliged to him for it: he himself was lame, and could not be so active as he would have liked. Mr. Pine did much good, no doubt: but this last affair of the Whistlers, and the consequent idleness, had been too strong for him. Latterly Mr. Pine had also been in very indifferent health; the result of many years' hard work, and no holiday. Dr. Raynor had now told him that an entire rest of some months had become essential to him; without it he would inevitably break down. He was a tall, thin, middle-aged man with a worn face. Particularly worn, it looked, as he stood talking to the group of miners this morning.

"I saw Bell last evening myself," observed Mr. Pine. "And I was very sorry to see him as I did, for he could hardly walk straight. I was coming off the Plain and met him there. He had halted, and was gazing about, as if looking for some one: or, perhaps, in doubt—as it struck me—whether he should go on home, or, return whence he had come; which I supposed was from that favourite resort of yours, my men, the Golden Shaft. 'Better go straight home, Bell,' I said to him. 'I'm going that way, sir,' he answered. And he did go that way: for I watched him well on to the Plain."

"Well, we caan't find him nohow, sir," observed Andrew Float. "What time might that have been, sir, please?"

"Time? Something past seven. I should think it likely that Bell lay down somewhere to sleep the liquor off," added the clergyman, preparing to continue his way. "It is not often Bell exceeds as he did yesterday, and therefore it would take more effect upon him." The Bells, it may as well be remarked, were church people.

"Most likely he have faaled down, as tha paarson says; but he's a vool for lying there still," observed the men amongst themselves, as they turned off to pursue the search. Frank Raynor was out on his round this morning, as usual, and paid a visit to Molly Janes, whom he found going on satisfactorily. In passing Mrs. Bell's window, he saw Rosaline: hesitated, and then lifted the latch and went in. He stayed a minute or two talking with her alone, the mother being upstairs: and left her with the one word emphatically repeated: "Remember."

When Tomson went home to his midday meal, he opened Mrs. Bell's door to inform her that there were no tidings of her husband. Dame Bell received the information with incredulity. Much they had searched! she observed to her daughter, as Tomson disappeared: they had just sat themselves down again at the Golden Shaft; that was what they had done. Which accusation was this time a libel. She resolved to go and look after him herself when she had eaten her dinner. As to Rosaline, she did not know what to make of her. The girl looked frightfully ill, did not speak, and every now and then was seized with a fit of trembling.

"Such nonsense, child, to let the Whistlers frighten you into this state!" cried Mrs. Bell, tartly.

Retiring to her room after dinner, she came down by-and-by with her things on. Rosaline looked surprised.

"Where are you going, mother?"

"Into Trennach," said Dame Bell. "There's an old saying, 'If you want a thing done, do it yourself.' I shall find your father, I'll be bound, if he is to be found anywhere."

"You will be so tired, mother."

"Tired! Nonsense. Mind you have tea ready, Rosaline. I shall be sure to bring him back with me; I'm not going to stand any nonsense: and you might make a nice bit of buttered toast; he's fond of it, you know."

Stepping briskly across the Plain, Mrs. Bell went onwards. Nothing induces activity like a little access of temper, and she was boiling over with indignation at her husband. The illness from which she was suffering did not deprive her of exertion: and in truth it was not a serious illness as yet, though it might become so. Symptoms of a slow, inward complaint were manifesting themselves, and Dr. Raynor was doing his best to subdue them. Privately he feared the result; but Dame Bell did not suspect that yet.

Dr. Raynor and his nephew stood in the surgery after their midday dinner, the doctor with his back to the fire, Frank handing some prepared medicines, for delivery, to the boy who waited for them. As the latter went out with his basket, Blase Pellet ran across the road and came in, apron on, but minus his hat.

"Could you oblige us with a small quantity of one or two drugs, sir?" he asked of Dr. Raynor: mentioning those required. "We are out of them, and our traveller won't call before next week. Mr. Float's respects, sir, and he'll be much obliged if you can do it."

"I dare say we can," replied Dr. Raynor. "Just see, Frank, will you?"

As Frank was looking out the drugs, Mr. Pine came in. He was rather fond of running in for a chat with the doctor and Frank at leisure moments. Frank was an especial favourite of his, with his unaffected goodness of heart and his genial nature.

"A fine state of things, is it not!" cried the clergyman, alluding to the idlers in the streets. "Three days of it, we have had now."

"They will be at work to-morrow, I hear," said the doctor.

"Has Bell turned up yet?"

"No. The men have just told me they don't know where to look for him. They have searched everywhere. It seems strange where he can have got to."

Blase Pellet, standing before the table, waiting for the drugs, caught Frank's eye as the last words were spoken. A meaning look shot out from Pellet, and Frank Raynor's gaze fell as he met it. It plainly said, "You know where he is:" or it seemed so to Frank's guilty conscience.

"The fellow must have seen all!" thought Frank. "What on earth will come of it?"

Some one pushed back the half-open door, and stepped in with a quick gait and rather a sharp tongue: sharp, at least, this afternoon. Dame Bell: in her Sunday Paisley shawl, and green strings to her bonnet.

"If you please, Dr. Raynor—I beg pardon, gentlefolk"—catching sight of the clergyman—"if you please, doctor, could you give me some little thing to quiet Rosaline's nerves. She heard the Seven Whistlers last night, and they have frightened her out of her senses."

"Heard the Seven Whistlers!" repeated the clergyman, a hearty smile crossing his face.

"She did, sir. And pretty nearly died of it. I'm sure last night I thought she would have died. I'd never have supposed Rosaline could be so foolish. But there; it is so; and to-day she's just like one dazed. Not an atom of colour in her face; cowed down so as hardly to be able to put one foot before the other; and every other minute has a fit of the shivers."

To hear this astounding account of the hitherto gay, light-hearted, and self-contained Rosaline Bell, surprised the surgery not a little. Dr. Raynor naturally asked for further particulars; and Dame Bell plunged into the history of the previous night, and went through with it.

"Yes, gentlefolk, those were her very words—almost all we could get out of her: 'Father heard them and they boded death.' I——"

"But you should have tried to reason her out of such nonsense," interrupted Dr. Raynor.

"Me tried!" retorted Dame Bell, resenting the words. "Why, sir, it is what I did do. Me and Nancy Tomson both tried our best; but all she answered was just what I now tell you: 'Father heard the Whistlers, and they boded death.'"

Mr. Blase Pellet, standing with the small packet of drugs in his hand, ready to depart, but apparently unable to tear himself away, glanced up at Frank with the last words, and again momentarily met his eye. A slight shivering passed through Frank—caught perhaps from hearing of Rosaline's shiverings—and he bent his face over a deep drawer, where it could not be seen; as if searching for something missing.

"Well, it is a pity Rosaline should suffer herself to be alarmed by anything of the sort," observed Dr. Raynor; "but I will send her a composing draught. Are you going home now, Mrs. Bell?"

"As soon as I can find my husband, sir. I've come in to look for him. Tomson wanted to persuade me that he and Andrew Float and a lot more of them had been hunting for him all the morning; but I know better. Bell is inside one of their houses, sleeping off the effects of drink."

"The men have just told me they can't find him," said the clergyman. "I know they have been searching."

"There's an old saying, sir, 'If you want a thing well done, do it yourself.' I repeated it to Rose before I came out. Fine searching, I've no doubt it has been!—the best part of it inside the Golden Shaft. I'm going to look him up myself—and if you please, Dr. Raynor, I'll make bold to call in, as I go back, for the physic for Rosaline."

Unbelieving Mrs. Bell departed. Blase Pellet followed her. Dr. Raynor told Frank what to make up for Rosaline, and then he himself went out with Mr. Pine.

A few minutes afterwards, Edina softly opened the surgery-door, and glanced in. She generally came cautiously, not knowing whether patients might be in it or not. But there was only Frank. And Frank had his arms on the desk, and his head resting on them. The attitude certainly told of despondency, and Edina stood in astonishment: it was so unlike the gay-hearted young man.

"Why, Frank! What is the matter?"

He started up, and stared, bewildered, at Edina: as if his thoughts had been far away, and he could not in a moment bring them back again. Edina saw the trouble in his unguarded face, but he smoothed it away instantly.

"You have not seemed yourself since last night, Frank," said she in low tones, as she advanced further into the room. "Something or other has happened, I am sure. Is it anything that I can set right?—or help you in?"

"Now, Edina, don't run away with fancies," rejoined he, as gaily as though he had not a care in the world. "There's nothing at all the matter with me. I suppose I had dropped asleep over the physic. One does not stay out raking till three o'clock in the morning every day, you know."

"You cannot deceive me, Frank," rejoined Edina, her true, thoughtful eyes fixed earnestly upon him. "I—I cannot help fancying that it is in some way connected with Rosaline Bell," she added, lowering her voice. "I hope you are not getting into any entanglement: falling in love with her; or anything of that sort?"

"Not a bit of it," readily answered Frank.

"Well, Frank, if I can do anything to aid you in any way, you have only to ask me; you know that," concluded Edina, perceiving he was not inclined to speak out. "Always remember this, Frank: that in any trouble or perplexity, the best course is to look it straight in the face, freely and fully. Doing so takes away half its sting."

Meanwhile Dame Bell was pursuing her search. But she found that she could not do more than the miners had done towards discovering her husband. Into this house, out of that one, inquiring here, seeking there, went she, but all to no purpose. She was not uneasy, only exasperated: and she gave Mr. Blase Pellet a sharp reprimand upon his venturing to hint that there might exist cause for uneasiness.

The reprimand occurred as she was returning towards home. After her unsuccessful search, she was walking back down the street of Trennach in a state of much inward wonder as to where Bell could be hiding, and had nearly reached Dr. Raynor's, when she saw Float the druggist standing at his shop-door, and crossed over to enlarge upon the mystery to him. Mr. Blase Pellet came forward, as a matter of course, from his place behind the book-counter to assist at the conference.

"Bell is safe to turn up soon," remarked the druggist, who was a peaceable man, after listening to Mrs. Bell for a few minutes in silence.

"Turn up! of course he will turn up," replied the dame. "What's to hinder it? And he will have such a dressing from me that I don't think he'll be for hiding himself again in a hurry."

Upon that, Blase Pellet, partially sheltered behind the burly form of the druggist, spoke.

"Suppose he never does turn up? Suppose he is dead?—or something of that kind."

The suggestion angered Mrs. Bell.

"Are you a heathen, Blase Pellet, to invent such a thought as that?" she demanded in wrath. "What do you suppose Bell's likely to die from?—and where?"

Leaving Mr. Pellet to repent of his rashness, she marched over to Dr. Raynor's for the composing draught promised for Rosaline. And when Mrs. Bell went home with it she fully expected that by that time the truant would have made his appearance there.

But he had not done so. Rosaline had prepared the tea and toast, according to orders, but no Bell was there to partake of it. Nancy Tomson shared it instead. All the rest of the evening Dame Bell was looking out for him; and exchanging suggestions with her neighbours, who kept dropping in. Rosaline scarcely spoke: not at all unless she was spoken to. The same cold, white hue sat on her face, the same involuntary shiver at times momentarily shook her frame. The gossips gazed at her curiously—as a specimen of the fright those dreaded Whistlers had power to inflict.

They sat up again half the night, waiting for Bell, but waiting in vain; and then they went to rest. Mrs. Bell did not sleep as well as usual: she was disturbed with doubts as to where he could be, and by repeated fancyings that she heard his step outside. Once she got up, opened the casement, and looked out; but there was nothing to be seen; nothing except the great Bare Plain lying bleak and silent in the silver moonlight.

[CHAPTER VI.]

DINING AT THE MOUNT

When another day dawned upon Trennach, and still Josiah Bell had not returned, his wife's exasperation gave place to real anxiety. She could not even guess what had become of him, or where he could be. Suspicion was unable to turn upon any particular quarter; not a shadow of foundation appeared for it anywhere. Had the man taken refuge in one of the miners' houses, as she had supposed, there he would still be; but there he was not. Had he stretched himself on the Bare Plain to sleep off the stupidity arising from drinking, as suggested by Mr. Pine, there he would have been found. No: the miners' dwellings and the Plain were alike guiltless of harbouring him; and Mrs. Bell was puzzled nearly out of her wits.

It cannot be said that as yet fear of any fatal accident or issue assailed her. The mystery as to where her husband could be was a great mystery, at present utterly unaccountable; but she never supposed that it would not be solved by his reappearance sooner or later. And she would have been quite ready to put down any hint of the kind, as she had put down Mr. Pellet's hint the previous day. Mrs. Bell fully believed that this day would not pass without bringing him home: and she was up with the lark, and down before Rosaline, in anticipation of it.

The miners had returned to their work this morning, and to their usual habits of sobriety: all things were quiet out of doors. The world was going on in its old groove; just as though, but for the absence of Bell, no ill-omened flock of Whistlers had come to raise a commotion in it.

This had been another night of sleeplessness for Rosaline, another prolonged interval of remorse and terror. She had undressed the previous night, and got into bed; and there she lay until morning, living through her fits of despondency, and striving to plan out the future. To stay at Trennach would, she felt, be simply impossible; if she did, she should die of it; she firmly believed that only to pass the Bottomless Shaft again, and look at it, would kill her. Discovery must come, she supposed, sooner or later; but she dared not stay in the place to face it.

Mrs. Bell was a native of Warwickshire. Her sister had married a Cornish man, who kept a shop in Falmouth. His name was John Pellet, and he was cousin to Blase Pellet's father. So that in point of fact there was no relationship between the Bells and Blase, although Blase enlarged upon their "cousinship," and Rosaline admitted it. They were merely connections. Mrs. Pellet had a small business as a milliner: she had no children, and could well attend to it. She and her husband, what with his trade and her work, were very comfortably off. She was fond of Rosaline, and frequently had her at Falmouth. It was to this refuge that Rosaline's thoughts now turned. She determined to go to it without delay. But so many neighbours came in during breakfast, inquiring after Bell, that she found no opportunity to speak of it then.

"Mother," she said, coming into the kitchen after attending to the upstairs rooms, Mrs. Bell having this morning undertaken to put away the breakfast-things: "mother, I think I shall go to Falmouth.

"Go where?" cried Dame Bell, in surprise.

"To Aunt Pellet's."

"Why, what on earth has put that into your head, Rose?" demanded Mrs. Bell, after a prolonged pause of amazement.

Rosaline did not answer immediately. She had caught up the brass ladle, that chanced to lie on the table, and a piece of wash-leather from the knife-box, and was rubbing away at the ladle.

"Aunt will be glad to see me, mother. She always is."

"Glad to see you? What of that? Why do you want to go just now? And what are you polishing up that ladle for?" went on Mrs. Bell, uniting the grievances. "The brasses and tins had a regular cleaning last Saturday, for I gave it 'em myself."

Again Rosaline did not speak. As Mrs. Bell glanced at her, waiting for some rejoinder, she was struck with the girl's extreme pallor, her look of utter misery. Rosaline burst into tears.

"Oh, mother, don't hinder me!" she cried imploringly, dropping the ladle, and raising her hands in supplication. "I can't stay here. I must go away."

"You are afraid of hearing the Seven Whistlers again!"

"Let me go, mother; let me go!" piteously sobbed Rosaline. And her mother thought she had never seen any one in so deplorable a state of agitation before.

"Well, well, child, we'll see," said the dame, too much concerned to oppose her. "I wish the Whistlers had been somewhere. It is most unreasonable to let them take hold of your nerves in this way. A bit of an absence will put you all right again, and drive the thought out of your head. You shall go for a week, child, as soon as your father comes home."

"I must go to-day," said Rosaline.

"To-day!"

"Don't keep me, mother," besought Rosaline. "You don't know what it is for me here. These past two nights! have never closed my eyes; no, not for a moment. Let me start at once, mother! Oh, let me go! I shall have brain-fever if I remain."

"Well, I never!" cried Mrs. Bell, other words failing her to express her astonishment. "I never did think you could have put yourself into this unseemly fantigue, child; no, not for all the Whistlers in the air. As to starting off to Falmouth to-day, why, you could not have your things ready."

"They can be ready in half-an-hour," returned Rosaline, eagerly, her lips feverish with excitement. "I have already put them together."

"Well, I'm sure!—taking French leave, in that way, before you knew whether you might go or not! There, there; don't begin to cry and shake again. There's an afternoon train. And—and perhaps your father will be in before that."

"It is the best train I could go by," said Rosaline, turning to hang up the ladle on its hook by the dresser.

"It's not the best; it's the worst," contradicted Dame Bell. "Not but what it may be as well if you do go. I'm ashamed of the neighbours seeing you can be so silly and superstitious. The train does not get into Falmouth till night-time."

"Oh yes, it does," said Rosaline, anxiously: "it gets in quite early enough. Why, mother, I shall be at Aunt Pellet's soon after dark." And she crossed the kitchen with a quicker step than had been seen since that past miserable Tuesday night, and opened the staircase-door.

"And suppose your father does not come home first?" debated Mrs. Bell, not quite pleased with the tacit leave she had given. "How will you reconcile yourself to going away in the uncertainty, Rose?"

Rose did not answer. She only ran up the stairs, shutting the door behind her. "What in the world does ail the child?" exclaimed Dame Bell, considerably put out. "It's my belief the fright has turned her head. Until now she has always laughed at such things."

But Mrs. Bell made no further opposition to the journey. A discerning woman in most kinds of illness, she recognized the fact that change of some sort might be necessary for Rosaline. Still Bell did not return, and still the day went on.

In the afternoon Rosaline was ready to start, with a bandbox and handbag. Nancy Tomson had volunteered to accompany her to the station.

"I might perhaps have managed the walk to the train; I don't know; it's a goodish step there and back," said Dame Bell, as Rosaline stood before her, to say good-bye. "But you see, child, I want to wait in for your father. I shouldn't like him to find an empty house on his return."

Rosaline burst into a fit of sobbing, and laid hold of her mother as if seeking protection from some visible terror. And once again Mrs. Bell was puzzled, and could not make her out at all.

"Oh, mother dear, take care of yourself! And forgive me for all the ill I have ever done. Forgive, forgive me!"

"Goodness bless me, child, there's nothing to forgive that I know of!" testily cried Dame Bell, not accustomed to this sort of sensational leave-taking. "I shall take care of myself; never fear. Mind you take care of yourself, Rose: those steam railways are risky things to travel by: and give my love to your aunt and my respects to Pellet."

"And we hed better be going," put in Nancy Tomson, who had put on her Sunday cloak and bonnet for the occasion. "They trains don't wait for nobody."

They were in ample time for this one: perhaps Rosaline had taken care of that: arriving, in fact, twenty minutes too soon. Rosaline entered it when it came up, and was steamed away.

In returning, Nancy Tomson saw Frank Raynor. He was on horseback; riding along very leisurely.

"Good-day," said he, nodding to her in passing. "Been out gallivanting?" he added in his light way.

"I heve been a-seeing Rosaline Bell off by one o' they trains, sir," answered the woman. And Frank checked his horse as he heard it and sat as still as a statue.

"Where has she gone to?"

"Off on a maggot to Falmouth. They Whistlers went and give her a prime fright, sir: she heve hardly done shaking yet, and looks as gashly as you please. She heve gone to her aunt's to forget it."

"Oh, to be sure," carelessly assented Frank: and rode on.

A few minutes afterwards, when near Trennach, he met Mrs. St. Clare's carriage; herself, two ladies, and Lydia seated within it. The coachman pulled up by orders. Of course Frank had to do the same.

"Have you been to The Mount, Mr. Raynor?"

"No, I have been across to Pendon," he answered, keeping his hat off; and the breeze took advantage of that to stir the waves of his bright hair.

"This makes two days that we have seen nothing of you," said Mrs. St. Clare. "You have not been near us since Tuesday night."

A faint flush passed over his face. He murmured something about having been very busy himself—concluded they were occupied: but he spoke rather confusedly, not at all with the usual ready manner of Frank Raynor.

"Well, we shall see you this evening, Mr. Raynor. You are coming to dine with us."

Very hastily he declined the invitation. "I cannot come, thank you," he said. "I shall have patients to see, and must stay at home."

"But you must come; you are to come," rejoined Mrs. St. Clare. "I have seen Dr. Raynor, and he has promised that you shall. Finally, Mr. Raynor, you will very much oblige me by doing so."

What further objection could Frank make? None. He gave the required assent, together with a sweeping bow, as the carriage drove on.

"What a bright-looking, handsome man!" exclaimed one of the ladies to Mrs. St. Clare. "I really do not remember, though, to have seen him the night of the ball, as you say I did."

"Oh, he stuck himself in a corner all the night," put in Lydia. "I don't believe he came out of it once, or danced at all."

"He is too good-looking for a doctor. I should tremble for my daughters' hearts."

"Being a doctor, there is, I hope, no cause for me to tremble for the hearts of mine," haughtily rejoined Mrs. St. Clare. "Not but that he is of fairly good family and expectations: the eldest son of Major Raynor and the heir to Eagles' Nest."

Mrs. St. Clare, unconsciously to herself, was not altogether correct in this statement. But it may pass for the present.

Frank rode home. Dr. Raynor was out; and he went into the parlour to Edina. She sat in the bow window, prosily darning stockings.

"Why did Uncle Hugh promise Mrs. St. Clare that I should dine at The Mount to-night? Do you know, Edina?"

"Because she invited you, I suppose. I saw the carriage at the door and papa standing at it as he talked to them. Don't you care to go?"

"Not this evening—particularly."

"Papa just looked in here afterwards and said would I tell you that you were to dine at The Mount. I thought you were fond of dining there, Frank."

"So I am sometimes. Where is Uncle Hugh?"

"He has been sent for to the parsonage. Mr. Pine is not well."

Again Frank Raynor—and this time sorely against his will—sat at Mrs. St. Clare's brilliant dinner-table. He could see why she had made so great a point of his coming: only one gentleman was present besides himself. In fact, there was only Frank in all Trennach to fall back upon. Dr. Raynor never dined out: the Rector pleaded ill-health. Most of the guests who had been staying in the house had left it this morning after their two nights' sojourn: those remaining—General Sir Arthur Beauchamp, Lady and Miss Beauchamp, and a young married woman, Mrs. Fox—were to leave on the morrow. It fell to Frank's lot to take in Lady Beauchamp: she it was who had expressed doubts as to the stability of young ladies' hearts, if exposed to the attractions of Mr. Raynor. Margaret, as it chanced, sat on Frank's left hand; and Margaret, for the time being, was supremely happy.

"Are you better than you were on Tuesday night, Mr. Raynor?" she took occasion to ask him in a whisper, when a buzz of conversation was going on.

"Better? I was not——" not ill, Frank was about to respond in surprise, and then recollected himself. "Oh, thank you, yes, Margaret. I was rather out of sorts that night."

"Mr. Raynor, what is this story about some man being lost?" asked Mrs. St. Clare, from the head of the table. "One of the miners, we hear, has mysteriously disappeared and cannot be found."

Frank's face flushed hotly, and he would have given the world to avoid the subject. But he could not: and he related the particulars.

"But where is it supposed that he can be, this Josiah Bell?" asked the general. "Where should you think he is, Mr. Raynor?"

Perhaps no one at the table, with the exception of Margaret, noticed that the young surgeon was somewhat agitated by the topic: that his breath seemed a little laboured as he answered the repeated questions, and that his complexion changed from red to pale. Margaret silently wondered why the disappearance of a miner should so affect him.

"Are there any old pits, used out and abandoned, that the man could have fallen into?" asked the sensible general.

A strangely-vivid flush now on Frank Raynor's face. A marked hesitation in his voice, as he replied.

"Not—not any—that are easy of access, I fancy, Sir Arthur."

"Well, the man must be somewhere, dead or alive. You say it is not at all thought that he would run away."

"Oh no; his friends say he would not be likely to do that."

"He has a very beautiful daughter, has he not?" spoke Lydia to Frank, from the opposite side of the table.

"Yes, she is nice-looking."

"Nice-looking is not the word for it, Mr. Raynor—as we are told," persisted Lydia. "We hear she is strictly, faultlessly beautiful. Fancy that, for the daughter of a common miner!"

Miss St. Clare's tone seemed to savour of mockery—as her tones often did. Frank, straightforward and true-hearted to the core, answered rather warmly.

"The man has come down in life; he was not always a common miner: and Rosaline is superior in all ways to her station. She is very beautiful."

"You seem to know her well."

"Oh, very well," carelessly replied Frank.

"We should not have been likely to hear of the affair at all: of the man's disappearance, or that he had a daughter who was celebrated for her looks; but for mamma's maid," said Lydia, more slightingly; for in truth she considered it a condescension even to speak of such people. "Tabitha has relatives in Trennach: she paid them a visit this morning, heard the news about the missing man, and entertained us with it on her return."

"I should like to see this Rosaline," spoke Lady Beauchamp. "I am a passionate admirer of beauty. You do, by some rare chance, now and again, find it wonderfully developed in a girl of the lower orders."

"Well, it is to be hoped the poor man will be found all right," concluded Sir Arthur.

And, with that, the conversation turned to some other topic—to Frank's intense relief. But Margaret St. Clare still marvelled at the interest he had betrayed: and she was fated to remember it, to her cost, in the time to come.

[CHAPTER VII.]

EDINA'S ROMANCE

In the days gone by there were three of the brothers Raynor: Francis, Henry, and Hugh. Francis entered the army; Henry the church; and Hugh the medical profession. With the two former we have at present nothing to do. Hugh Raynor passed his examinations satisfactorily, and took all his degrees—thus becoming Dr. Raynor. Chance and fortune favoured him. He was at once taken by the hand by an old doctor who had an excellent practice in Mayfair, and became his assistant and frequent companion. The old doctor had one only child, a daughter, who was just as much taken with Hugh (and he with her) as was her father. They were married; and on the death of the old doctor shortly afterwards, Dr. Raynor succeeded to a good deal of the practice. He was quite a young man still, thoroughly well intentioned, but not so prudent as he might have been. He and his wife lived rather extravagantly, and the doctor sometimes found himself short of ready-money. They resided in the house that had been the old doctor's; and they heedlessly, and perhaps unconsciously, made the mistake of beginning where he had left off: that is, they continued their housekeeping on the same scale as his: maintained the same expenses, horses, carriages and entertainments. The result was, that Dr. Raynor in the course of four or five years found himself considerably involved. In an evil moment, thinking to make money by which to retrieve his fortunes, he embarked his name (and as much money as he could scrape together) in one of the bubble schemes of the day. A scheme which—according to its prospectus, its promoters' assertions, and the credulous doctor's own belief—was certain to realize an immense fortune in no time.

Instead of that, it realized poverty and ruin. The scheme failed—the usual result—and Dr. Raynor found himself responsible for more money than he would ever make in this world. Misfortunes, it has been too often said, do not come singly: Dr. Raynor proved an example of it. Just before the bubble burst, he lost his wife; and the only one element of comfort that came to him in the midst of his bitter grief for her, was to know that she died before the other blow fell.

A frightful blow it was, almost prostrating Dr. Raynor. The creditors of the ruthless company took all from him: even to the gold watch upon his person. They sold up his furniture, his books, his carriages and horses, everything; and they told him he might thank their leniency that they did not imprison him until he could pay up the scores of thousands they made out he was responsible for. The fact was, the promoters of the company, and those of its directors who possessed funds, had gone over to the Continent; and there remained only the poor doctor, innocent and honourable, to come upon.

Turned out of house and home, his name in the papers, his prospects gone, Dr. Raynor felt he should be glad to die. He did not even attempt to retain his practice, which was a great mistake; his only care was to escape from the scene of his prosperity and hide his humiliated head for ever. His little child, Edina, the only one he had, was five years old; and for her sake he must try and keep a roof over his head and find bread to eat. So he looked out for employment after a time, as far away from London and in as obscure a corner of the land as might be, and obtained it amidst the collieries in North Warwickshire, as assistant to a general practitioner. After remaining there for some years, he heard of an opening at a place in Cornwall. The surgeon of the place, Trennach, an old man, who wanted to retire, chanced to know Dr. Raynor, and wrote to offer him the succession upon very easy terms. It was accepted, and the doctor removed to Trennach. The returns from the practice were very small at first, he found, scarcely enabling him to make way, for it lay almost entirely amongst the poor; but subsequently Dr. Raynor dropped into a better class of practice as well through the death of another surgeon some two or three miles from Trennach. And here, in Trennach, he remained; a sad and silent man ever since the misfortune of his early days; and lived as retired a life as might be. His only care, his constant companion, had been his beloved child, Edina. He had trained her to be all that a woman should be: true, earnest, thoughtful, good. Mrs. Pine, who had no children of her own, had helped him, and been to Edina almost as a second mother. Not many women in this world were like Edina Raynor.

The only sister of the three brothers Raynor had married a London banker, Timothy Atkinson, the junior partner in the house of Atkinson and Atkinson. When Edina was two-and-twenty years of age, she went on a visit to her aunt in London. Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Atkinson, who had married rather late in life, were childless; and in these later years Mrs. Atkinson had become an invalid. She was also eccentric and capricious; and, for the first few days after her arrival, Edina thought she should not enjoy her visit at all. Timothy Atkinson was a sociable little man, but he spent all his time in the business downstairs—for they lived at the banking-house. His cousin, the head and chief, disabled by illness, rarely came to business now; it all lay on Timothy's shoulders. No one seemed to have any time to give to Edina.

But soon a change came. George Atkinson, the son of the elder partner, found out Edina; and perhaps pitying her loneliness, or out of courtesy, constituted himself her cavalier. He was nine or ten years older than Edina: a good-looking, rather silent young man of middle height and grave courtesy, with a pleasant voice and thoughtful face. He was not strong, and there had been some talk of his having been ordered to travel for his health; but the death of his mother had intervened and prevented it. But, though a silent man to the world in general, he was eloquent to Edina. At least, she found him so. As though they had been the actual cousins that Mrs. Atkinson sometimes called them, he was allowed to take her everywhere. To the theatres, the opera, the gardens, all the shows and sights of London, Edina was entrusted to the care of George Atkinson. Sometimes Mrs. Atkinson was with them; more often she was not.

And better care he could not have taken of her, or shown himself more solicitous for her comfort, had she been his sister or cousin. Honourable, instinctively kind, upright and noble, there was in George Atkinson a chivalrous devotion to women, that could only betray itself in manner and tell upon those on whom it was exercised. It told upon Edina. Highly educated, and possessing a fund of general information, he was a most agreeable companion. Before one-half of their few weeks' intercourse together had passed, she had learned to love George Atkinson with a lasting affection.

Many a half-hour did he spend talking to her in low gentle accents of his recently dead mother. His love, his reverence, his still lively grief for her loss, was expressed in the truest and most tender terms. This alone would have taken Edina's heart by storm. She believed there lived not another man in the world who was so true a gentleman, so estimable and admirable in all respects as George Atkinson. Indeed he was very much so, as young men go; and neither Edina nor any other girl need feel anything but pride at being chosen by him.

Poor Edina! It was the one great mistake of her life. Whilst George Atkinson had no ulterior thought of her, hope was whispering to her heart the possibility that they might pass their future lives together. And oh, what an Eden it would have been for Edina! She loved him with all the intensity of a pure young heart; a heart in its virgin freshness. Whilst he, though no doubt liking her very much indeed; nay, perhaps even loving her a little just in one corner of his heart; had no thought, no intentions beyond the present hour. He knew he was not strong; and he meant to see what travelling far and wide would do to make him so. Consequently the idea of marriage had not entered his head.

It was only on the last day of her stay, the one previous to her departure for home, that the revelation came to Edina, and her eyes were opened all too abruptly. They were together in the drawing-room in the half-hour before dinner. Mr. Timothy Atkinson had not come up from the counting-house, his wife was in her chamber, dressing. It was a lovely day in late spring. Edina stood by one of the open windows, which had been made into a sort of small fernery. The western sunlight was playing upon the leaves, and touching her own smooth hair and her fair young face.

"It is very beautiful—but I think very delicate," observed Edina, speaking of a new specimen of fern just planted, which they were both looking at. "Do you think it will live?"

George Atkinson passed his fingers under the small leaf, and somehow they met Edina's. He did not appear to notice the momentary contact; her pulses thrilled at it.

"Oh yes, it will live and flourish," he answered. "In six months' time you will see what it will be."

"You may see," she said, smiling. "It will be a great many more months than six, I suppose, before I am here again. Perhaps it may be years."

"Indeed, Edina, you are more likely to be here in six months' time than I am. But for my mother's death and my father's failing health, I should have left before this."

"But you will return?" said Edina.

"Some time I may do so. I cannot answer for it.

"What do you mean, George?"

"Not very much," he answered, with a grave and kindly smile in his dark grey eyes. "An idea crosses my mind now and then, that when once I am in those genial lands, where the skies are blue and the winds temperate, I shall be in no hurry to quit them again. Of course I don't say that I shall remain there for life; but—it might happen so."

A pang, sharp as a two-edged sword, struck Edina. "What, and abandon your country for ever, and—and home ties?"

"As to home ties, Edina, I shall have none then. There is only my father now. Of course my future movements will be regulated with reference to him as long as he is with us. But—I fear—that may not be very much longer. As you know."

She made a slight movement of assent; and bent her head over the ferns.

"And I shall not be likely to make home ties for myself," went on George Atkinson, unconscious of the anguish he was inflicting. "I shall never marry."

"Why?" breathed Edina.

"I scarcely know why," he replied, after a pause, as if searching for a reason. "I have never admitted the thought. I fancy I shall like a life of change and travel best. And so—when once we part, Edina—and that must be to-morrow, you say, though I think you might have remained longer—it is hard to say when we shall meet again. If ever."

"Halloa, who's here? Oh, it is you, George; and Edina! Where's your aunt? Dinner must be nearly ready."

The interruption came from brisk little Timothy Atkinson, who bounded into the room with quick steps and his shining bald head.

As Edina turned at his entrance, George Atkinson caught the expression of her face; the strange sadness of its eyes, its extreme pallor. She looked like one who has received a shock. All at once a revelation broke upon him, as if from subtle instinct. For an instant he stood motionless, one hand pushing back his brown hair; hair that was very much the same shade as Edina's.

"It may be better so," he said in a whisper, meeting her yearning eyes with his earnest gaze. "At any rate, I have thought so. Better for myself, better for all."

The tall, portly frame of Mrs. Timothy Atkinson, clothed with rich crimson satin, rolled into the room, and the conversation was at an end. And with it, as Edina knew, her life's romance.

"God bless you, Edina," George Atkinson said to her the next day, as he attended her to the station with Mr. Timothy, and clasped her hand at parting. "When I return to England in years to come—if ever I do return—I shall find you a blooming matron, with a husband and a flock of children about you. Farewell."

And as Edina sat back in the swiftly-speeding railway-carriage, not striving, in these early moments of anguished awakening to do battle with her breaking heart, she knew that the blow would last her for all time. Dr. Raynor thought her changed when she arrived home: he continued to think her so as the days went on. She was more quiet, more subdued: sad, even, at times. He little knew the struggle that was going on within her, or the incessant strivings to subdue the recollection of the past: and from henceforth she endeavoured to make duty her guide.

Never a word was exchanged between father and daughter upon the subject; but probably Dr. Raynor suspected something of the truth. About a year after Edina's return from London, a gentleman who lived a few miles from Trennach made her an offer of marriage. It would have been an excellent match in all respects; but she refused him. Dr. Raynor, perhaps feeling a little vexed for Edina's sake, asked her the reason of her rejection. "I shall never marry, papa," she answered, her cheek flushing and paling with emotion. "Please do not let us ever talk of such a thing; please let me stay at home with you always."

Nothing more was said, then or later. No one else came forward for her, and the matter dwindled down into a recollection of the past. Edina got over the cruel blow in time, but it exercised an influence upon her still.

And that had been Edina Raynor's romance in life, and its ending.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

ROSE-COLOURED DREAMS

The sweet spring sunshine lay upon Trennach, and upon Dr. Raynor's surgery. Francis Raynor stood in it, softly whistling. Two sovereigns lay on the square table, amongst the small scales and the drugs and the bottles, and he was looking down upon them somewhat doubtfully. He wanted to convey this money anonymously to a certain destination, and hardly knew how to accomplish it. Sovereigns were not at all plentiful with Frank; but he would, in his open-heartedness, have given away the last he possessed, and never cast regret after it.

"I know!" he suddenly cried, taking up a sheet of white paper. "I'll pack them up in an envelope, direct it to her, stick a stamp on it, and get Gale the postman to deliver it on his round. Dame Bell is as unsuspicious as the day, and will think the money is sent by Rosaline—as the last was. As to Gale—he is ready to do anything for me and Uncle Hugh: he gets his children doctored for nothing. It's a shame he is so badly paid, poor fellow!"

Several weeks had gone on since the disappearance of Josiah Bell, and it was now close upon May. Bell had never returned: nothing could be heard of him. Mrs. Bell knew not what to make of it: she was a calm-natured, unemotional woman, and she took the loss more easily than some wives might have taken it. Bell was missing: she could make neither more nor less of it than that: he might come back some time, and she believed he would do so: meanwhile she tried to do the best she could without him. In losing him, she had lost the good wages he earned, and they had been the home's chief support. She possessed a very small income of her own, which she received quarterly—and this had enabled them to live in a better way than most of the other miners—but this alone was not sufficient to keep her. A managing, practical woman, Mrs. Bell had at once looked out for some way of helping herself in the dilemma, and found it. She took in two of the unmarried miners as lodgers—one of them being Andrew Float, and she began to knit worsted stockings for sale. "I shall get along somehow till Bell returns," was her cheerful remark to the community.

Rosaline was still at Falmouth—and meant to remain there. She wrote that she was helping her aunt with her millinery business, was already clever at it, and received wages, which she intended to transmit to her mother. The first instalment—it was not much—had already come. Frank Raynor had just called Dame Bell unsuspicious as the day. She was so. But, one curious fact, in spite of the freedom from suspicion, was beginning to strike her: in all the letters written by Rosaline she had never once mentioned her father's name, or inquired whether he was found.

Frank Raynor, elastic Frank, had recovered his spirits. It was perhaps impossible that one of his light and sanguine temperament should long retain the impression left by the dreadful calamity of that fatal March night. Whatever the precise details of the occurrence had been, he had managed outwardly to shake off the weight they had thrown upon him, and in manner was himself again.

Perhaps one thing, that helped him to do this, was his altered opinion as to the amount of knowledge possessed by Blase Pellet. At first he had feared the man; feared what he knew, and what evil he might bring. But, as the days and the weeks had gone on, and Blase Pellet did not speak, or give any hint to Trennach that he had anything in his power to betray, Frank grew to think that he really knew nothing; that though the man might vaguely suspect that something wrong had occurred that night, he was not actually cognizant of it. Therefore Frank Raynor had become in a measure his own light and genial self again. None could more bitterly regret the night's doings than he did: but his elastic temperament could throw off all sign of remorse; ay, and often its recollection.

The thing that troubled him a little was Mrs. Bell's position. It was through him she had been deprived of the chief means which had kept her home; therefore it was only just, as he looked upon it, that he should help her now. Even with the proceeds from the lodgers and the stockings, and with what Rosaline would be enabled to send her, her weekly income would be very much smaller than it had been. Frank wished with his whole heart that he could settle something upon her, or make her a weekly allowance; but he was not rich enough to do that. He would, however, help her a little now and again in secret—as much as he was able—and this was the destination of the two sovereigns. In secret. It would not do to let her or any one else know the money came from him, lest the question might be asked, What claim has she upon you that you should send it to her? To answer that truthfully would be singularly inconvenient.

Trennach in general could of course make no more of the disappearance of Bell than his wife made. It was simply not to be understood. Many and many an hour's discussion took place over it in the pits; or at the Golden Shaft, to the accompaniment of pipes and beer; many a theory was started. The man might be here, or he might be there; he might have strolled this way, or wandered that way—but it all ended as it began: in uncertainty. Bell was missing, and none of them could divine the cause. And the Seven Whistlers, that he heard on the Sunday night or thought he heard, had certainly left no damage behind them for the miners. The men might just as well have been at work those three days for all the accident that had occurred in the mines. Perhaps better.

Seated at the window of what was called the pink drawing-room at The Mount, from the colour of its walls, were Mrs. St. Clare and her daughter Lydia. The large window, shaded by its lace curtains, stood open to the warm bright day. Upon the lawn was Margaret in her white dress, flitting from flower to flower, gay as the early butterflies that sported in the sunshine. Lydia, a peculiar expression on her discontented face, watched her sister's movements.

Frank Raynor had just gone out from his morning visit, carrying with him an invitation to dine with them in the evening. Lydia was really better; she no more wanted the attendance of a doctor than her sister wanted it: but she was devoured by ennui still, and the daily, or almost daily, coming of Frank Raynor was the most welcome episode in her present life. She had learned to look for him: perhaps had learned in a very slight degree to like him: at any rate, his presence was ever welcome. Not that Lydia would have suffered herself to entertain serious thoughts of the young surgeon—because he was a surgeon, and therefore far beneath her notice in that way—but she did recognize the fascination of his companionship, and enjoyed it. Latterly, however, an idea had dawned upon her that some one else enjoyed it also—her sister—and the suspicion was extremely unwelcome. Lydia was of an intensely jealous disposition. She would not for the world have condescended to look upon Frank Raynor as a lover, but her jealousy was rising, now that she suspected Daisy might be doing so, somewhat after the fashion of the dog-in-the-manger. That little chit, Daisy, too, whom she looked upon as a child!—there was some difference, she hoped, between nineteen and her own more experienced age of five-and-twenty! She was fond of Daisy, but had not the least intention of being rivalled by her; and perhaps for the child's own sake, it might be as well to speak.

As Frank went out, he crossed Daisy's path on the lawn. They turned away side by side, walking slowly, talking apparently of the flowers; lingering over them, bending to inhale their perfume. Mrs. St. Clare, a new magazine and a paper-knife in her hand—for she did make a pretence of reading now and then, though it was as much a penance as a pleasure—glanced up indifferently at them once, and then glanced down again at her book. But Lydia, watching more observantly, saw signs and wonders: the earnest gaze of Frank's blue eyes as they looked into Daisy's; the shy droop in hers; and the lingering pressure of the hands in farewell. He went on his way; and Daisy, detecting in that moment her sister's sharp glance from the window, made herself at once very busy with the beds and the flowers, as if they were her only thought in life.

"Mamma!"

The tone was so sharp that Mrs. St. Clare lifted her head in surprise. Lydia's voice was usually as supinely listless as her own.

"What is it, Lydia?"

"Don't you think that Daisy wants a little looking after?"

"In what way?"

"Of course I may be mistaken in my suspicions. But I think I am not. I will assume that I am not."

"Well, Lydia?"

"She and Mr. Raynor are flirting desperately."

Mrs. St. Clare made no reply whatever. Her eyes fixed inquiringly on Lydia's, kept their gaze for a moment or so, and then fell on the magazine pages again. Lydia felt a little astonished: was this indignation or indifference?

"Did you understand me, mamma?"

"Perfectly, my dear."

"Then—I really do not comprehend you. Don't you consider that Daisy ought to be restrained?"

"If I see Daisy doing anything that I very much disapprove, I shall be sure to restrain her."

"Have you not noticed, yourself, that they are flirting?"

"I suppose they are. Something of the sort."

"But surely, mamma, you cannot approve of Mr. Raynor! Suppose a serious attachment came of it, you could not suffer her to marry him!"

Mrs. St. Clare turned her book upside down upon her knee, and spoke in the equable manner that characterized her, folding her arms idly in the light morning scarf she wore.

"It never occurred to me, Lydia, until one day, a week or two ago, that any possibility could arise of what you are mentioning. Mr. Raynor's visits here are merely professional. Even when he comes by invitation to dinner, I consider them as partaking of that nature: to look upon them in any other light never entered my mind. On this day, however, I saw something that, figuratively speaking, opened my eyes."

"What was it?" asked Lydia.

"It occurred on the day that the Faulkners were to have come to us, and did not. Mr. Raynor dined here in the evening. After dinner I dropped into a doze; there, on the sofa"—pointing to the other end of the room. "When I awoke it was quite dusk; not dark; and Mr. Raynor and Daisy were standing together at this open window; standing very close indeed to each other. Daisy was leaning against him, in fact; and he, I think, had one of her hands in his. You were not in the room."

"It was the evening I had so bad a headache, through vexation at those stupid people not coming!" cried Lydia, angrily. "I had gone upstairs, I suppose, to take my drops. But what did you do, mamma? Order Mr. Raynor from the house?"

"No. Had I acted on my first impulse, I might have done that, Lydia. But instinct warned me to take time for consideration. I did so. I sat quite still, my head down on the cushion as before, they of course supposing me to be still asleep, and I ran the matter rapidly over in my mind. The decision I came to was, not to speak hastily; not then; to take, at any rate, the night for further reflection: so I coughed to let them know I was awake, and said nothing."

"Well?" cried Lydia, impatiently.

"I went over the affair again at night with myself, looking at it from all points of view, weighing its merits and demerits, and trying to balance one against the other," pursued Mrs. St. Clare. "The result I came to was this, Lydia: to let the matter take its course."

Lydia opened her eyes very widely. "What, to let—to let her marry him?"

"Perhaps. But you jump to conclusions too rapidly, Lydia."

"Why, he is only a common medical practitioner!"

"There of course lies the objection. But he is not a 'common' practitioner, Lydia. If he were so, do you suppose I should invite him here as I do, and make much of him? He is a gentleman, and the son of a gentleman. In point of fact," added Mrs. St. Clare, in a lower tone, as if the acknowledgment might only be given in a whisper, "our branch of the St. Clare family is little, if any, better than the Raynors——"

"Mamma, how can you say so?" burst forth Lydia. "It is not true. And the Raynors have always been as poor as church mice."

"And—I was going to say," went on Mrs. St. Clare with equanimity—"he is the heir to Eagles' Nest."

Lydia sat back in her chair, a scowl on her brow. She could not contradict that.

"In most cases of this kind there are advantages and disadvantages," quietly spoke Mrs. St. Clare, "and I tried, as I tell you, to put the one side against the other, and see which was the weightier. On the one hand there is his profession, and his want of connections; on the other, there is Eagles' Nest, and his own personal attractions. You are looking very cross, Lydia. You think, I see, that Daisy might do better."

"Of course she might."

"She might or she might not," spoke Mrs. St. Clare, impressively. "Marriage used to be called a lottery: but it is a lottery that seems to be getting as scarce now as the lotteries that the old governments put down. For one girl who marries, half-a-dozen girls do not marry. Is it, or is it not so, Lydia?"

No response. Mrs. St. Clare resumed.

"And it appears to me, Lydia, that the more eligible girls, those who are most worthy to be chosen and who would make the best wives, are generally those who are left. Have you been chosen yet?—forgive me for speaking plainly. No. Yet you have been waiting to be chosen—just as other girls wait—for these six or seven years. Daisy may wait in the same manner; wait for ever. We must sacrifice some prejudices in these non-marrying days, Lydia, if we are to get our daughters off at all. If an offer comes, though it may be one that in the old times would have been summarily rejected, it is well to consider it in these. And so, you see, my dear, why I am letting matters take their course with regard to Daisy and Mr. Raynor."

"He may mean nothing," debated Lydia.

"Neither of them may mean anything, if it comes to that," said Mrs. St. Clare, relapsing into her idly indifferent manner. "It may be only a little flirtation—your own word just now—on both sides; pour faire passer le temps."

"And if Daisy loses her heart to him, and nothing comes of it? You have called him attractive yourself."

"Highly attractive," composedly assented Mrs. St. Clare. "As to the rest, it would be no very great calamity that I know of. When once a girl has had a little love affair in early life, and has got over it, she is always the more tractable in regard to eligible offers, should they drop in. No, Lydia, all things considered—and I have well considered them—it is the better policy not to interfere. The matter shall be left to take its course."

"Well, I must say, Daisy ought not to be allowed to drift into love with a rubbishing assistant-surgeon."

"She has already drifted into it, unless I am mistaken," said Mrs. St. Clare, significantly; "has been deep in it for some little time past. My eyes were not opened quickly enough; but since they did open, they have been tolerably observant, Lydia. Why—do you suppose I should wink at their being so much together, unless I intended the matter to go on? Don't they stroll out alone by moonlight and twilight, in goodness knows what shady walks of the garden, talking sentiment, looking at the stars, and bending over the same flowers? Twice that has happened, Lydia, since I have been on the watch: how many times it happened before, I can't pretend to say."

Lydia remained silent. It was all true. Where had her own eyes been? Daisy would walk out through the open French window—she remembered it now—and he would stroll out after her: while Mrs. St. Clare would be in her after-dinner doze, and she, Lydia, lying back in her chair with the chest-ache, or upstairs taking her drops. Yes, it was all true. And what an idiot she had been not to see it—not to suspect it!

"We cannot have everything; we must, as I say, make sacrifices," resumed Mrs. St. Clare. "I could have wished that Mr. Raynor was not in the medical profession, especially in its lower branch. Of course at present he can only be regarded as altogether unsuitable for Daisy: but that will be altered when the major comes into Eagles' Nest. Frank will then no doubt quit the profession, and——"

"The singular thing to me is, that he should ever have entered it," interrupted Lydia. "Fancy the heir to Eagles' Nest making himself a working apothecary! It is perfectly incongruous."

"It seems so," said Mrs. St. Clare. "I conclude there must have been some motive for it. Perhaps the major thought it well to give him a profession; and when he had acquired it sent him to this remote place to keep him out of mischief. It will be all right, Lydia, when they come into Eagles' Nest. The major will of course make Frank a suitable allowance as his heir. The major is already getting in years: Frank will soon come into it."

"As to that old Mrs. Atkinson, she must intend to live to a hundred," remarked Lydia, tartly. "How many centuries is it since we saw her in London?—and she was old then. She ought to give up Eagles' Nest to the major and live elsewhere. If it be the beautiful place that people say it is, she might be generous enough to let some one else have a little benefit out of it."

Mrs. St. Clare laughed. "Old people are selfish, Lydia; they prefer their own ease to other people's. I dare say we shall be the same if we live long enough."

From this conversation, it will be gathered that the check thrown upon Frank Raynor's pleasant intercourse with Margaret St. Clare by the unknown calamity (unknown to the world) that had so mysteriously and suddenly happened, had been only transitory. For a week or two afterwards, Frank had paid none but strictly professional visits to The Mount; had been simply courteous to its inmates, Daisy included, as a professional man, and nothing more. He had not danced with Daisy on her birthday; he had not given her any more tender glances, or exchanged a confidential word with her. But, as the first horror of the occurrence began to lose its hold upon his mind, and his temperament recovered its elasticity, his love returned to him. He was more with Daisy than ever; he sought opportunities to be with her now: formerly they had only met in the natural course of things. And so they, he and she, were living in an enchanted dream, whose rose-coloured hues seemed as if they could only have come direct from Eden.

And Frank Raynor, never famous for foresight or forethought at the best of times, fell into the belief that Mrs. St. Clare approved of him as a future aspirant for her daughter's hand and tacitly encouraged their love. That she must see they were intimate with an especial intimacy, and very much together, he knew, and in his sanguine way he drew deductions accordingly. In this he was partly right, as the reader has learnt; but it never entered into his incautious head to suppose that Mrs. St. Clare was counting upon his coming in for future wealth and greatness.

They stood once more together on this same evening, he and Daisy, gazing at the remains of the gorgeous sunset. Dinner over, Daisy had strolled out as usual into the garden; he following her in a minute or two, without excuse or apology. In his assumption of Mrs. St. Clare's tacit encouragement, he believed excuse to be no longer necessary. Clouds of purple and crimson, flecked with gold, crowded the west; lighting up Daisy's face, as they stood side by side leaning on the low iron gate, with a hue as rosy as the dream they were living in.

"I should like to see the sunsets of Italy," observed Margaret. "It is said they are very beautiful."

"So should I," promptly replied Frank. "Perhaps some time we may see them together."

Her face took a brighter tint, though there was nothing in the sky to induce it. He passed his hand along the gate, until it rested on hers.

"Mamma talks of going abroad this summer," whispered Daisy. "I do not know whether it will be to Italy."

"I hope she will not take you with her!"

"It is Lydia's fault. She says this place tires her. And possibly," added Daisy, with a sigh, "when once we get abroad, we shall stay there."

"But, my darling, you know that must not be. I could not spare you. Why, Daisy, how could we live apart?"

Her hand, clasped tenderly, lay in his. Her whole frame thrilled as the hand rested there.

"Shall you always stay on at Trennach?" she questioned in low tones.

"Stay on at Trennach!" he repeated, in surprise. "I! Why, Daisy, I hope to be very, very soon away from it. I came to my uncle two years ago, of my own accord, to gain experience. Nothing teaches experience like the drudgery of a general practice: and I was not one of those self-sufficient young students who set up after hospital work with M.D. on their door-plate, and believe themselves qualified to cure the world. It is kill or cure, haphazard, with some of them."

"And—when you leave Trennach?" she asked, her clear eyes, clear this evening as amber, gazing out, as if she would fain see into the future.

"Oh, it will be all right when I leave Trennach; I shall get along well," returned Frank, in his light, sanguine fashion. "I—I don't care to praise myself, Daisy, but I am clever in my profession; and a clever man must make his way in it. Perhaps I should purchase a share in a West-end practice in town; or perhaps set up on my own account in that desirable quarter."

The bright hope of anticipation lighted Daisy's beautiful eyes. Frank changed his tone to one of the sweetest melody. At least, it sounded so to her ear.

"And with one gentle spirit at my hearth to cheer and guide me, the world will be to me as a long day in Paradise. My best and dearest you know what spirit it is that I covet. Will she say me nay?"

She did not say anything just now; but the trembling fingers, lying in his hand, entwined themselves confidingly within his.

"I know you will get on," she murmured. "You will be great sometime."

"Of course I shall, Daisy. And keep carriages and horses for my darling wife; and the queen will knight me when I have gained name and fame; and—and we shall be happier than the live-long day."

The bright colours in the sky faded by degrees, leaving the grey twilight in their stead. Before them lay the sloping landscape, not a living soul to be seen on it; immediately behind them was the grove of laurels, shutting them out from view. In this favourable isolation, Frank passed his arm around Daisy's waist, and drew her face to his breast.

"Nothing shall ever separate us, Daisy. Nothing in this world."

"Nothing," she murmured, speaking between his passionate kisses. "I will be yours always and for ever."

"And there will be no trouble," remarked he, in sanguine impulse, as they turned reluctantly from the gate to regain the house. "I mean no opposition. I am my own master, Daisy, accountable to none; and your mother has seen our love and sanctions it."

"Oh, do you think she does sanction it?" exclaimed Daisy, drawing a deep breath.

"Why, of course she does," replied Frank, speaking in accordance with his belief. "Would Mrs. St. Clare let us linger out together, evening after evening, if she did not see and sanction it? No, there will be neither trouble nor impediment. Life lies before us, Daisy, fair as a happy valley."

Tea waited on the table when they got in. Mrs. St. Clare was sleeping still; Lydia looked very cross. Frank glanced at his watch, as if doubting whether he could stay longer.

Daisy's pretty hands, the lace meant to shade them falling back, began to busy themselves with the tea-cups. It awoke Mrs. St. Clare. She drew her chair at once to the tea-table. Frank pushed Lydia's light couch towards it.

"We were speaking to-day of Eagles' Nest," observed Mrs. St. Clare—and she really did not introduce the subject with any ulterior view; simply as something to talk about. "It's a very nice place, is it not?"

"Very—by all accounts," replied Frank. "I have not seen it."

"Indeed! Is not that strange?"

"My aunt Atkinson has never invited me there. None of us have been invited, except the major. And he has not been there for several years."

"How is that? Major Raynor is the next heir."

"Well, I scarcely know how it is. He and Mrs. Atkinson are not very good friends. There was some quarrel, I fancy."

"Mrs. Atkinson must be very old."

"About seventy-four, I believe."

"Not more than that! I thought she was ninety at least."

"I was saying to-day," put in Lydia, "that those old people ought to give up their estates to the heir. It is unreasonable to keep Major Raynor so long out of his own."

Frank smiled. "He would be very glad if she did give it up, I dare say; but I don't know about the justice of it. Elderly people, as a rule, cling to their homes. I once knew an old lady who was unexpectedly called upon to give up the home in which she had lived for very many years, and it killed her. Before the day for turning out came, she was dead."

"At any rate, Mr. Raynor, you will not be kept out of it so long when it comes to your turn," remarked Mrs. St. Clare: "for I suppose the major is very nearly as old as Mrs. Atkinson."

Frank's honest blue eyes went straight into those of the speaker with a questioning glance.

"I beg your pardon: kept out of what?"

"Of Eagles' Nest."

His whole face lighted up with amusement at the mistake she was making.

"I shall never come into Eagles' Nest, Mrs. St. Clare."

"Never come into Eagles' Nest! But the major comes into it."

"The major does. But——"

"And you are his eldest son."

Frank laughed outright. Freely and candidly he answered—with never a thought of reserve.

"My dear lady, I am not Major Raynor's son at all. His eldest son is my cousin Charley. It is he who will succeed to Eagles' Nest."

Mrs. St. Clare stared at Frank. "Good Heavens!" she murmured under her breath. "You are not the son of Major Raynor?"

"No, I am his nephew. My father was the clergyman."

"I—I have heard Major Raynor call you his son!" she debated, hardly believing her own ears. "He has called you so to my face."

"He often does call me so," laughed Frank. "I fear—he is—proud of me—dear, fond old uncle!"

"Well, I never was so deceived in all my life!" ejaculated Mrs. St. Clare.

[CHAPTER IX.]

PLANNING OUT THE FUTURE

It has been already said that there were originally three of the brothers Raynor: Francis, who was an officer in her Majesty's service; Henry the clergyman; and Hugh the doctor. The youngest of these, Hugh, was the first to marry by several years; the next to marry was Henry. Henry might have married earlier, but could not afford it: he waited until a living was given to him. In the pretty country rectory attached to his church, he and his wife lived for one brief year of their married life: and then she died, leaving him a little boy-baby, who was named Francis after the clergyman's eldest brother. Some ten years later the Reverend Henry Raynor himself died; and the little boy was an orphan, possessed of just sufficient means to educate him and give him a start in life in some not too costly profession. When the time came, he chose that of medicine, as his Uncle Hugh had done before him.

The eldest of the three brothers was the last to marry: Captain Raynor. He and his young wife led rather a scrambling sort of life for some years afterwards, always puzzled how to make both ends of their straitened income meet; and then a slice of good fortune (as the captain regarded it) befell him. Some distant relative left him an annuity of five hundred a-year. Five hundred a-year in addition to his pay seemed riches to the captain: whilst his unsophisticated and not too-well-managing wife thought they were now clear of shoals for life.

Very closely upon this, the captain obtained his majority. This was succeeded by a long and severe attack of illness; and the major, too hastily deciding that he should never be again fit for active service, sold out. He and his wife settled down in a pretty cottage-villa, called Spring Lawn, in the neighbourhood of Bath, living there and bringing up their children in much the same scrambling fashion that they had previously lived. No order, no method; all good-hearted carelessness, good-natured improvidence. Just as it had been in their earlier days, so it was now: they never knew where to look for a shilling of ready-money. That it would be so all through life with Major Raynor, whatever might be the amount of his income, was pretty certain: he was sanguine, off-hand, naturally improvident. The proceeds from the sale of his commission had all vanished, chiefly in paying back-debts; the five hundred a-year was all they had to live upon, and that five hundred would die with the major: and, in short, they seemed to be worse off now than before the annuity came to them. Considering that they spent considerably more than the five hundred yearly, and yet had no comfort to show for it, and that debts had gathered again over the major's head, it was not to be wondered at that they were not well off. The major never gave a thought to consequences; debt sat as lightly upon him as though it had been a wreath of laurel. If he did feel slightly worried at times, what mattered it: he should, sooner or later, come into Eagles' Nest, when all things would be smooth as glass. A more prudent man than the major might have seen cause to doubt the absolute certainty of the estate coming to him. He did not; he looked upon the inheritance of it as an accomplished fact.

The reader has probably not forgotten Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Atkinson—at whose house Edina had stayed so many years ago. Changes had taken place since then. Both the partners in the bank, Timothy and his cousin (they were only second cousins), were dead: and the firm had long been Atkinson and Street. For, upon the death of the two old men, Mr. George Atkinson, their sole successor, took his managing clerk, Edwin Street, into partnership. The bank was not one of magnitude—I think this has already been said—only a small, safe, private one. The acting head of it was, to all intents and purposes, Edwin Street: for Mr. George Atkinson passed the greater portion of his time abroad, coming home only every two or three years. George Atkinson was well off, and did not choose to worry himself with the cares of business: had the bank been given up to-morrow, he would have had plenty of money without it. During his later life, Mr. Timothy Atkinson had invested the chief portion of his savings in the purchase of an estate in Kent, called Eagles' Nest. He was not a rich man, as bankers go, never having been an equal partner in the firm; drawing from it in fact only a small share. His death was somewhat sudden, and occurred during one of his sojourns at Eagles' Nest. Mrs. Atkinson, his widow; not less portly than of yore, and still very much of an invalid; summoned her two brothers to attend the funeral: Major Raynor from Bath, Dr. Raynor from Trennach. The major went up at once: Dr. Raynor sent a refusal; his excuse, no idle one, being that he could not leave his patients. The season was one of unusual sickness, and he had no one to take his place. This refusal Mrs. Atkinson, never a very genial woman, or at all cordial with her brothers, resented.

When Mr. Timothy Atkinson's will was opened, it was found that he had left everything he possessed to his wife unconditionally. Consequently the estate was now at her own disposal. Though a pretty, compact property, it was not a large one: worth some two thousand a-year, but capable of great improvement.

On the day following the funeral, Mrs. Atkinson went up to her house in London, the major accompanying her. There she found George Atkinson, who had just arrived in England; which was an agreeable surprise to her. He had always been a favourite of hers, and he would be useful to her just now.

"I shall leave it to you, George," she suddenly observed one morning, a few days after this, as they sat together looking over letters and papers.

"Leave what to me, aunt?" For he had called her "aunt" in the old days, and often did so still.

"Eagles' Nest."

George Atkinson laid down the bundle of letters he was untying, and looked questioningly at the old lady, almost as though he doubted her words.

"I am sure you cannot mean that."

"Why not, pray?"

"Because it is a thing that you must not think of doing. You have near relatives in your brothers. It is they who should benefit by your will."

"My brothers can't both inherit the place," retorted the old lady.

"The elder of them can—Major Raynor."

"I like you better, George, than I like him."

"I am very glad you like me—but not that your liking should render you unjust to your family," he returned, firmly but gently. "Indeed, dear Mrs. Atkinson, to prefer me to them would be an act of the greatest injustice."

"My will ought to be made at once," said the old lady.

"Certainly. And I hope you will not as much as mention my name in it," he added with a smile. "I have so very much of my own, you know, that a bequest from you would be altogether superfluous."

The conversation decided Mrs. Atkinson. She sent for her lawyer, Mr. John Street, and had her will drawn up in favour of Major Raynor. Legacies to a smaller or larger amount were bequeathed to a few people, but to Major Raynor was left Eagles' Nest. Her brother Hugh, poor Dr. Raynor of Trennach, was not mentioned in it: neither was Edina.

The will was made in duplicate; Mrs. Atkinson desired her solicitor to retain possession of one copy; the other she handed to Major Raynor. She affixed her own seal to the envelope in which the will was enclosed, but allowed him first to read it over.

"I don't know how to thank you, Ann, for this," said the major, tears of genuine emotion resting on his eyelashes. "It will be good news for Mary and the young ones."

"Well, I'm told it's the right thing to do, Frank," answered the old lady: who was older than any of her brothers, and had domineered over them in early life. "I suppose it is."

So Major Raynor went back to Spring Lawn with the will in his pocket; and he considered that from that hour all his embarrassments were over. And Mrs. Atkinson gave up her house in London, and stationed herself for life at Eagles' Nest. While George Atkinson, after a month's sojourn, went abroad again.

But now, as ill-fortune had it, Major Raynor had chanced, since that lucky day, to offend his sister. The year following the making of the will, being in London on some matter of business, he took the opportunity to go down to Eagles' Nest—and went without asking permission, or sending word. Whether that fact displeased Mrs. Atkinson, or whether she really did not care to see him at all, certain it was that she was very cross and crabbed with him, her temper almost unbearable. The major had a hot temper himself on occasion, and they came to an issue. A sharp quarrel ensued; and the major, impulsive in all he did, quitted Eagles' Nest that same hour. When he reached Spring Lawn, after staying another week in London to complete his business, he found a letter awaiting him from his sister, telling him that she had altered her will and left Eagles' Nest to George Atkinson.

"Stupid old thing!" exclaimed the major, laughing at what he looked upon as an idle threat. "As if she would do such a thing as that!" For the major had never the remotest idea that she had once intended to make George Atkinson her heir.

And from that hour to this, the major had not once seriously thought of the letter again. He had never since seen Mrs. Atkinson; had never but once heard from her; but he looked upon Eagles' Nest as being as certainly his as though it were already in his possession. Once every year at Christmas-time he wrote his sister a letter of good wishes; to which she did not respond. "Ann never went in for civilities," would observe the major.

The one exception was this. When his eldest son, Charles, had attained his sixteenth year, the major mentioned the fact in the annual letter to his sister. A few days afterwards, down came the answer from her of some half-dozen lines: in which she briefly offered Charles an opening (as she called it) in life: meaning, a clerkship in the bank of Atkinson and Street, which her interest would procure for him. Master Charles, who had far higher notions than these, as befitted the heir to Eagles' Nest, threw up his head in disdain: and the major wrote a letter of refusal, as brief as the old lady's offer. With that exception, they had never heard from her.

The major and his wife were both incredibly improvident; he in spending money; she in not knowing how to save it. Yielding and gentle, Mrs. Raynor fell in with anything and everything done by her husband, thinking that because he did it, it must be right. She never suggested that they might save cost here, and cut it off there; that this outlay would be extravagant, or that unnecessary. There are some women really not capable of forethought, and Mrs. Raynor was one of them. As to doing anything to advance their own interest, by cultivating Mrs. Atkinson's favour, both were too single-minded for such an act; it may be said too strictly honourable.

It was with them, his uncle and aunt, that Frank Raynor had spent his holidays when a boy, and all his after-intervals of leisure. They were just as fond of Frank as they were of their own children: he was ever welcome. The major sometimes called him "my son Frank," when speaking of him to strangers; very often indeed "my eldest boy." As to taking people in by so doing, the major had no thought of the sort; but there is no doubt that it did cause many a one, not acquainted with the actual relationship, to understand and believe that Frank was in truth the major's son. Possibly their names being the same—Francis—contributed to the impression. Amongst those who had caught up the belief, was Mrs. St. Clare. She had occasionally met the Major and Mrs. Raynor in Bath, though the acquaintanceship was of the slightest. When her son, young St. Clare, came into possession of The Mount, and it was known that she was going to remove there, the major, meeting her one day near the Old Pump-room, said to her, in the openness of his heart, "I'll write to Trennach to my boy Frank, and tell him to make himself useful to you." "Oh," returned Mrs. St. Clare, "have you a boy at Trennach?" "Yes, the eldest of them: he is with his uncle the doctor," concluded the major, unsuspiciously. Had he thought it would create mischief, or even a false impression, he would have swallowed the Pump-room before he had spoken it. That the major was the presumptive heir to Eagles' Nest was well known: and Mrs. St. Clare may be excused for having, under the circumstances, carried with her to her new abode the belief that Frank would succeed him in the estate.

On the night that the enlightenment took place—when Frank so candidly and carelessly disabused Mrs. St. Clare's mind of the impression—he perceived not the chill that the avowal evidently threw upon her. That it should affect her cordiality to him he could never have feared. A more worldly man, or one of a selfish nature, would have seen in a moment that his not being heir to Eagles' Nest rendered him a less eligible parti for Margaret; but Frank Raynor, in worldliness, as in selfishness, was singularly deficient. And he left The Mount when tea was over, quite unconscious that anything had occurred to diminish the favour in which he was held by its mistress.

Not with that was his mind occupied as he walked home; but rather with thoughts of the future. Daisy was to be his; she had promised it; and Frank would have taken her to himself to-morrow, could he have provided her with bread-and-cheese. How to do this was puzzling his brain now.

He took the road home over the Bare Plain. Never, since the night of that fatal tragedy, had Frank Raynor taken it by choice: he always chose the highway. But to-night he had a patient lying ill in the cottages on the Plain; and Dr. Raynor had said to him, "Call in and see Weston, Frank, as you return." The visit paid, he continued his way homewards. It was a light night: there were neither stars nor moon: but a white haze seemed to veil the sky, and lighted up surrounding objects. Frank looked towards the Bottomless Shaft as he passed it; his fascinated eyes turning to it of their own accord. Bringing them back with an effort and a shudder, he quickened his pace, and went onwards with his burthensome secret.

"Will it lie hidden there for ever?" he said, half aloud. "Pray Heaven that it may!"

Dr. Raynor was sitting in the small room behind his surgery; a room chiefly used for private consultations with patients; in his hand was a medical journal, which he was reading by lamplight. He put it down when Frank entered.

"I want to ask you something, Uncle Hugh," began Frank, impulsively, as though what he was about to say was good news. "Should I have any difficulty, do you think, in dropping into a practice when I leave you?"

"You do mean to leave me, then, Frank?" returned Dr. Raynor, without immediately replying to the question.

"Why, of course I do, Uncle Hugh," said Frank, in slight surprise. "It was always intended so. I came here, you know, for two years, and I have stayed longer than that."

"And you would not like to remain altogether, and be my partner and successor?"

"No," replied Frank, very promptly. "It would be a poor living for two people; my share of it very small, for I could not expect you to give me half the profits. And there are other reasons against it. No, Uncle Hugh; what I want to do is, to jump into some snug little practice in a place where I shall get on. Say in London."

A smile crossed the more experienced doctor's lips. Young men are sanguine.

"It is not easy to 'jump into a snug little practice,' Frank."

"I know that, sir: but there are two ways in which it may be done. One way is, to purchase a share in an established practice; another, to set up well in some likely situation, with a good house and a plate on the door, and all that, and wait for patients to drop in."

"But each of those ways requires money, Frank."

"Oh, of course," acquiesced Frank, lightly, as though money were the most ordinary commodity on earth.

"Well, Frank, where would you find the money? You have not saved much, I take it, out of the salary you have from me."

"I have not saved anything: I am never a pound to the good," answered Frank, candidly. "Clothes cost a good deal, for one thing."

"When gentlemen dress as you do, and buy their kid gloves by the dozen," said the doctor, archly. "Well, whence would you find the means to set yourself up in practice?"

"That's what I want to ask you about, Uncle Hugh. I dare say you remember, when there was so much talk about that will of my aunt Ann's, that it was said I had a share in it."

"Indeed, Frank, I don't. I remember I was told that she had not left anything to me; and I really remember no more."

"Then you cannot tell me what the amount was?" exclaimed Frank, in accents of disappointment. "I thought perhaps Uncle Francis might have told you."

Dr. Raynor shook his head. "I have no idea, Frank, whether it was one pound or one thousand. Or many thousands."

"You see, sir, if I knew the exact sum, I could think about my plans with more certainty."

"Just so, Frank. As it is, your plans must be somewhat like castles in the air."

"I recollect quite well Uncle Francis telling me that I came in for a good slice. That was the exact phrase: 'in for a good slice.' He had read the will, you know. I wonder he did not mention it to you."

"All I recollect, or know, about it is, that Francis wrote me word that nothing was left to me. He said he had remonstrated with Ann—your aunt—at leaving my name out of the will, and that she ordered him, in return, to mind his own business. I do not care for it myself; I do not, I am sure, covet any of the money Ann may leave; though I could have wished she had not quite passed over Edina."

"She must have a good deal of money, Uncle Hugh, apart from Eagles' Nest."

"I dare say she has."

"And, if Uncle Francis comes in for that money, I should think he would make over half of it to you. I should, were I in his place."

"Ah, Frank," smiled the doctor, "people are not so chivalrously generous in this world; even brothers."

"I should call it justice, not generosity, sir."

"If you come to talk of justice, you would also be entitled to your share, as Henry's son. He was equally her brother."

"But I don't expect anything of the kind," said Frank. "Provided I have enough to set me up in practice, that's all I care for."

"You would not have that until your aunt dies."

"To be sure not. I am not expecting it before. But what has struck me is this, Uncle Hugh—I have been turning the thing over in my mind as I walked home—that I might, without any dishonour, reckon upon the money now."

"In what way? How do you mean?"

"Suppose I go to some old-established man in London who, from some cause or other—advancing years, say—requires some one to relieve him of a portion of his daily work. I say to him, 'Will you take me at present as your assistant, at a fair salary, and when I come into my money'—naming the sum—'I will hand that over to you and become your partner?' Don't you think that seems feasible, sir?"

"I dare say it does, Frank."

"But then, you see, to do this, I ought to know the exact sum that is coming to me. Unless I were able to state that, I should not be listened to. That's why, sir, I was in hopes that you could tell me what it was."

"And so I would tell you if I knew it, Frank. I do not think Francis mentioned to me that you would come in for anything. I feel sure, if he had done so, I should remember it."

"That's awkward," mused Frank, thoughtfully balancing the paper-knife he had caught up from the table. "I wonder he did not tell you, Uncle Hugh."

"To say the truth, so do I," replied Dr. Raynor. "It would have been good news: and he knows that I am equally interested with himself in the welfare of Henry's orphan son. Are you sure, Frank, that you are making no mistake in this?"

"I don't think I am. I was staying at Spring Lawn when the major came home from Aunt Atkinson's after her husband's death, and he brought her will with him. He was telling us all about it—that Eagles' Nest was to be his, and that there were several legacies to different people, and he turned to me and said, 'You come in for a good slice, Frank.' I recollect it all, sir, as though it had taken place yesterday."

"Did he mention how much the 'slice' was?"

"No, he did not. And I did not like to ask him."

There was a pause. Dr. Raynor began putting the papers straight on the table, his usual custom before retiring for the night. Frank had apparently fallen into a reverie.

"Uncle Hugh," he cried, briskly, lifting his head, his face glowing with some idea, his frank blue eyes bright with it, "if you can spare me for a couple of days, I will go to Spring Lawn and ask Uncle Francis. I should like to be at some certainty in the matter."

"I could spare you, Frank: there's nothing particular on hand that I cannot attend to myself for that short time. But——"

"Thank you, Uncle Hugh," interrupted Frank, impetuously. "Then suppose I start to-morrow morning?"

"But—I was about to inquire—what is it that has put all this into your head so suddenly?"

Frank's eager eyes, raised to the doctor's face, fell at the question. A half-conscious smile parted his lips.

"There's no harm, sir, in trying to plan out one's future."

"None in the world, Frank. I only ask the reason for your setting about it in this—as it seems to me—sudden manner."

"Well—you know, Uncle Hugh—I—I may be marrying some time."

"And you have been fixing on the lady, I see, Frank!"

A broad smile now shone upon Frank's face. He was sending the paper-knife round in circles on the table, with rather an unnecessary noise. Dr. Raynor's thoughts were going hither and thither; he could not recall any individual in the neighbourhood of Trennach likely to be honoured by Frank's choice. In an instant an idea flashed over him—an idea that he did not like.

"Frank! can it be that you are thinking of one of the Miss St. Clares?"

"And if I were, sir?"

"Then—I fear—that there may be trouble in store for you," said the doctor, gravely. "Mrs. St. Clare would never sanction it."

"But she has sanctioned it, Uncle Hugh. She sanctions it every day of her life."

"Has she told you so?"

"Not in words. But she sees how much I and Daisy are together, and she allows it. That will be all right, Uncle Hugh."

"Daisy? Let me see? Oh, that is the young one: she is a nice little girl. I cannot say I like the elder. But——"

"But what, sir?"

"You are by nature over-sanguine, Frank; and I cannot help thinking that you are so in this. Rely upon it, there is some mistake here. Mrs. St. Clare is a proud, haughty woman, remarkably alive, unless I am in error, to self-interest. She would not be likely to give a daughter to one whose prospects are so uncertain as yours."

"But I am wishing to make my prospects more certain, you see, uncle. And I can assure you she approves of me for Daisy."

"Well, well; if so, I am glad to hear it. Nevertheless it surprises me. I should have supposed she would look higher for suitors for her daughters. The little girl is a nice girl, I say, Frank, and you have my best wishes."

"Thank you, Uncle Hugh," warmly repeated Frank, rising, his face flushing with pleasure as he met the doctor's hand. "Of course you understand that it must not yet be talked of: I must first of all speak to Mrs. St. Clare."

"I shall not be likely to talk of it," replied Dr. Raynor.

[CHAPTER X.]

MAJOR AND MRS. RAYNOR

The windows of Spring Lawn stood open to the afternoon sun. It was a small, pretty white house, half cottage, half villa, situated about three miles from Bath. A latticed portico, over which crept the white clematis, led into a miniature hall: Major Raynor could just turn round in it. On either side was a small sitting-room, the dining-room on the left, the drawing-room on the right.

The scrambling midday dinner was over. Somehow all the meals seemed to be scrambling at the major's, from the utter want of order, and of proper attendance. Only two servants were kept, a cook and a nurse: and they could not always get their wages paid. When Edina was there, she strove to bring a little comfort out of the chaos: but that was only a chance event; a brief and rare occasion, occurring at long intervals in life. Some wine stood on the old table-cover, with a plate of biscuits. On one side of the table sat the major; a tall and very portly man, with a bald head and a white moustache, looking every day of his nine and-sixty years. He had been getting on for fifty when he married his young wife; who was not quite eight-and-thirty yet: a delicate, fragile-looking woman, with a small fair face and gentle voice, mild blue eyes, a pink colour, and thin light brown hair quietly braided back from it. Mrs. Raynor looked what she was: a gentle, yielding, amiable, helpless woman; one who could never be strong-minded in any emergency whatever, but somehow one to be loved at first sight.

She sat half turned from the table—as indeed did the major opposite, their faces towards the window—her feet on a footstool, and her hands busy with work, apparently a new frock she was making for one of her younger children. She wore a faded muslin gown, green its predominant colour; a score of pins, belonging to the work in process, in her waistband.

They were talking of the weather. The major was generally in a state of heat. That morning he had walked into Bath and back again, and got in late for dinner, puffing and steaming, for it was an up-hill walk. He liked to have a fly one way at least; but he had not always the money in his pocket to pay for it.

"Yes, it was like an oven in the sun, Mary," continued he, enlarging upon the weather. "I don't remember any one single year that the heat has come upon us so early."

"That's why I have a good deal of sewing to do just now," observed Mrs. Raynor. "We have had to take to our summer things before they were ready. Look at poor dear little Robert! The child must be melted in that stuff frock."

"What's the nurse about?—can't she make him one?" asked the major.

"Oh, Francis, she has so much to do. With all these children! She does some sewing; but she has not time for very much."

The major, sipping his wine just then, looked at the children, sitting on the grass-plot. Four of them, in whose ages there was evidently more than the usual difference between brothers and sisters. One looked an almost grown-up young lady. That was Alice. She wore a washed-out cotton dress and a frayed black silk apron. Alfred was the next, aged ten, in an old brown-holland blouse and tumbled hair. Kate, in another washed-out cotton and a pinafore, was eight: and Robert was just three, a chubby, fat child in a thick woollen plaid frock. They were stemming cowslips to make into balls, and were as happy as the day was long.

"I saw Mrs. Manners in Bath this morning," resumed the major. "She says she is coming to spend a long day here."

"I hope she won't come until Bobby's new frock is finished," said Mrs. Raynor, her fingers plying the needle more swiftly at the thought. "He looks so shabby in that old thing."

"As if it mattered! Who cares what children have on?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Francis—the butcher asked to see me this morning: he came over for orders himself. He says he must have some money."

"Oh, does he?" returned the major, with careless unconcern. "I don't know when I shall have any for him, I'm sure. Did you tell him so?"

"I did not go to him: I sent Charley. I do hope he will not stop the supply of meat!"

"As if he would do that!" cried the major, throwing up his head with a beaming smile. "He knows I shall come into plenty of money sooner or later."

At this moment the children came rushing with one accord to the window, and stood—those who were tall enough—with their arms on the sill, Alice with the cowslips gathered up in her apron. Little Robert—often called Baby—who toddled up last, could only stretch his hands up to the edge of the sill.

"Mamma—papa," said Alice, a graceful girl, with the clearly-cut Raynor features and her mother's mild blue eyes, "we want to have a little party and a feast of strawberries and cream. It would be so delightful out here on the grass, with tables and chairs, and——"

"Strawberries are not in yet," interrupted the major. "Except those in the dearer shops."

"When they are in, we mean, papa. Shall we?"

"To be sure," said papa, as pleased with the idea as were the children. "Perhaps we could borrow a cow and make some syllabubs!"

Back ran the children to the grass again, to plan out the anticipated feast. Alice was seventeen; but in mind and manners she was still very much of a child. As they quitted the window, the room-door opened, and a tall, slender, well-dressed stripling entered. It was the eldest of them all, Charles Raynor. He also had the well-formed features of the Raynors, dark eyes and chestnut hair; altogether a very nice-looking young man.

"Why, Charley, I thought you were out!" cried his father.

"I have been lying down under the tree at the back, finishing my book," said Charley. "And now I am going into Bath to change it."

It was the greatest pity—at least most sensible people would have thought it so—to see a fine, capable young fellow wasting the best days of his existence. This, the dawning period of his manhood, was the time when he ought to have been at work, preparing himself to run his career in this working world. Instead of that, he was passing it in absolute idleness. Well for him that he had no vice in his nature: or the old proverb, about idle hands and Satan, might have been exemplified in him. All the reproach that could at present be cast on him was, that he was utterly useless, thoroughly idle: and perhaps he was not to blame for it, as nothing had been given him to do.

Charles Raynor was not brought up to any profession or business. Various callings had been talked of now and again in a desultory manner; but Major and Mrs. Raynor, in their easy-going negligence, had brought nothing to pass. As the heir to Eagles' Nest, they considered that he would not require to use his talents for his livelihood: Charles himself decidedly thought so. Gratuitous commissions in the army did not seem to be coming Major Raynor's way; he had not the means to purchase one: and, truth to tell, Charles's inclinations did not tend towards fighting. The same drawback, want of money, applied to other possibilities: and so Charles had been allowed to remain unprofitably at home, doing nothing; very much to his own satisfaction. If obliged to choose some profession for himself, he would have fixed on the Bar: but, first of all, he wanted to go to one of the universities. Everything was to be done, in every way, when Eagles' Nest dropped in: that would be the panacea for all present ills. Meanwhile, Major Raynor was content to let the time slip easily away, until that desirable consummation should arrive, and to allow his son to let it slip away easily too.

"Charley, I wish you'd bring me back a Madeira cake, if you are going into Bath."

"All right, mamma."

"And, Charley," added the major, "just call in at Steer's and get those seeds for the garden."

"Very well," said Charley. "Will they let me have the things without the money?"

"Oh yes. They'll put them down."

Charley gave a brush to his coat in the little hall, put on his hat, and started, book in hand. As he was passing the children, they plied him with questions: where he was going, and what to do.

"Oh, I'll go too!" cried Alfred, jumping to his feet. "Let me go with you, Charley!"

"I don't mind," said Charley. "You'll carry the book. How precious hot it is! Take care you don't get a sunstroke, Alice."

Alice hastily pulled her old straw hat over her forehead, and went on with her cowslips. "Charley, do you think you could bring me back a new crochet-needle?" she asked. "I'll give you the old one for a pattern."

"Hand it over," said Charley. "I shall have to bring back all Bath if I get many more orders. I say, youngster, you don't think, I hope, that you are going with me in that trim!"

Alfred looked down at his blouse, and at the rent in the hem of his trousers.

"What shall I put on, Charley? My Sunday clothes? I won't be a minute."

The boy ran into the house, and Charles strolled leisurely towards the little gate. He reached it just in time to meet some one who was entering. One moment's pause to gaze at each other, and then their hands were clasped.

"Frank!"

"Charley!"

"How surprised I am! Come in. You are about the last fellow I should have expected to see."

Frank laughed gaily. He enjoyed taking them by surprise in this way; enjoyed the gladness shining from their eyes at sight of him, the hearty welcome.

"I dare say I am. How are you all, Charley? There are the young ones, I see! Is that Alice? She has grown!"

Alice came bounding towards him, dropping the yellow blossoms from her apron. They had not seen him since the previous Christmas twelvemonth, when he had spent a week at Spring Lawn. Little Robert did not know him, and stood back, shyly staring.

"And is this my dear little Bob?" cried Frank, catching him up and kissing him. "Does he remember brother Frank? And—why, there's mamma!—and papa! Come along."

The child still in his arms, he went on to meet Major and Mrs. Raynor, who were hastening with outstretched hands of greeting.

"This sight is better than gold!" cried the major. "How are you, my dear boy?"

"We thought we were never to see you again," put in Mrs. Raynor. "How good of you to come!"

"I have come to take just a peep at you all. It seems ages since I was here."

"Are you come for a month?"

"A month!" laughed Frank. "For two days."

"Oh! Nonsense!"

And so the bustle and the greetings continued. Major Raynor poured out a glass of wine, though Frank protested it was too hot for wine, especially after his walk from Bath. Mrs. Raynor went to see her cook about sending in something substantial with tea. Charles deferred his walk, and the young ones seduced Frank to the grass-plot to help with the cowslips.

And Frank never gave the slightest intimation that he had come from Trennach for any purpose, except that of seeing them. But at night, when bedtime came and Mrs. Raynor went upstairs, leaving the major, as usual, to finish his glass and pipe, Frank drew up his chair for a conference, Charley being present.

He then disclosed the real purport of his visit—namely, to ascertain from Major Raynor the amount of money coming to him under Mrs. Atkinson's will. Explaining at the same time why he wished to ascertain this: his intention to get into practice in London, and the ideas that had occurred to him as to the best means of accomplishing it. Just as he had explained the matter to Dr. Raynor at Trennach, the previous night.