Tom and Elsley are safe at Whitbury at last; and Tom, ere he has seen his father, has packed Elsley safe away in lodgings with an old dame whom he can trust. Then he asks his way to his father's new abode; a small old-fashioned house, with low bay windows jutting out upon the narrow pavement.

Tom stops, and looks in the window. His father is sitting close to it, in his arm-chair, his hands upon his knees, his face lifted to the sunlight, with chin slightly outstretched, and his pale eyes feeling for the light. The expression would have been painful, but for its perfect sweetness and resignation. His countenance is not, perhaps, a strong one; but its delicacy, and calm, and the high forehead, and the long white locks, are most venerable. With a blind man's exquisite sense, he feels Tom's shadow fall on him, and starts, and calls him by name; for he has been expecting him, and thinking of nothing else all the morning, and takes for granted that it must be he.

In another moment Tom is at his father's side. What need to describe the sacred joy of those first few minutes, even if it were possible? But unrestrained tenderness between man and man, rare as it is, and, as it were, unaccustomed to itself, has no passionate fluency, no metaphor or poetry, such as man pours out to woman, and woman again to man. All its language lies in the tones, the looks, the little half-concealed gestures, hints which pass themselves off modestly in jest; and such was Tom's first interview with his father; till the old Isaac, having felt Tom's head and hands again and again, to be sure whether it were his very son or no, made him sit down by him, holding him still fast, and began—

"Now, tell me, tell me, while Jane gets you something to eat. No, Jane, you mustn't talk to Master Tom yet, to bother about how much he's grown;—nonsense, I must have him all to myself, Jane. Go and get him some dinner. Now, Tom," as if he was afraid of losing a moment; "you have been a dear boy to write to me every week; but there are so many questions which only word of mouth will answer, and I have stored up dozens of them! I want to know what a coral reef really looks like, and if you saw any trepangs upon them? And what sort of strata is the gold really in? And you saw one of those giant rays; I want a whole hour's talk about the fellow. And—What an old babbler I am! talking to you when you should be talking to me. Now begin. Let us have the trepangs first. Are they real Holothurians or not?"

And Tom began, and told for a full half-hour, interrupted then by some little comment of the old man's, which proved how prodigious was the memory within, imprisoned and forced to feed upon itself.

"You seem to know more about Australia than I do, father," said Tom at last.

"No, child; but Mary Armsworth, God bless her! comes down here almost every evening to read your letters to me; and she has been reading to me a book of Mrs. Lee's Adventures in Australia, which reads like a novel; delicious book—to me at least. Why, there is her step outside, I do believe, and her father's with her!"

The lighter woman's step was inaudible to Tom; but the heavy, deliberate waddle of the banker was not. He opened the house-door, and then the parlour-door, without knocking; but when he saw the visitor, he stopped on the threshold with outstretched arms.

"Hillo, ho! who have we here? Our prodigal son returned, with his pockets full of nuggets from the diggings. Oh, mum's the word, is it?" as Tom laid his finger on his lips. "Come here, then, and let's have a look at you!" and he catches both Tom's hands in his, and almost shakes them off. "I knew you were coming, old boy! Mary told me—she's in all the old man's secrets. Come along, Mary, and see your old playfellow. She has got a little fruit for the old gentleman. Mary, where are you I always colloguing with Jane."

Mary comes in: a little dumpty body, with a yellow face, and a red nose, the smile of an angel, and a heart full of many little secrets of other people's—and of one great one of her own, which is no business of any man's—and with fifty thousand pounds as her portion, for she is an only child. But no man will touch that fifty thousand; for "no one would marry me for myself," says Mary; "and no one shall marry me for my money."

So she greets Tom shyly and humbly, without looking in his face, yet very cordially; and then slips away to deposit on the table a noble pine-apple.

"A little bit of fruit from her greenhouse," says the old man in a disparaging tone: "and, oh Jane, bring me a saucer. Here's a sprat I just capered out of Hemmelford mill-pit; perhaps the Doctor would like it fried for supper, if it's big enough not to fall through the gridiron."

Jane, who knows Mark Armsworth's humour, brings in the largest dish in the house, and Mark pulls out of his basket a great three-pound trout.

"Aha! my young rover; Old Mark's right hand hasn't forgot its cunning, eh? And this is the month for them; fish all quiet now. When fools go a-shooting, wise men go a-fishing! Eh? Come here, and look me over. How do I wear, eh? As like a Muscovy duck as ever, you young rogue? Do you recollect asking me, at the Club dinner, why I was like a Muscovy duck? Because I was a fat thing in green velveteen, with a bald red head, that was always waddling about the river bank. Ah, those were days! We'll have some more of them. Come up to-night and try the old '21 bin."

"I must have him myself to-night; indeed I must, Mark," says the Doctor.

"All to yourself you selfish old rogue?"

"Why—no—"

"We'll come down, then, Mary and I, and bring the '21 with us, and hear all his cock-and-bull stories. Full of travellers' lies as ever, eh? Well, I'll come, and smoke my pipe with you. Always the same old Mark, my lad," nudging Tom with his elbow; "one fellow comes and borrows my money, and goes out and calls me a stingy old hunks because I won't let him cheat me; another comes, and eats my pines, and drinks my port, goes home, and calls me a purse-proud upstart, because he can't match 'em. Never mind; old Mark's old Mark; sound in the heart, and sound in the liver, just the same as thirty years ago, and will be till he takes his last quietus est—

'And drops into his grassy nest.'

Bye, bye, Doctor! Come, Mary!"

And out he toddled, with silent little Mary at his heels.

"Old Mark wears well, body and soul," said Tom.

"He is a noble, generous fellow, and as delicate-hearted as a woman withal, in spite of his conceit and roughness. Fifty and odd years now, Tom, have we been brothers, and I never found him change. And brothers we shall be, I trust, a few years more, till I see you back again from the East, comfortably settled. And then—"

"Don't talk of that, sir, please!" said Tom, quite quickly and sharply.
"How ill poor Mary looks!"

"So they say, poor child; and one hears it in her voice. Ah, Tom, that girl is an angel; she has been to me daughter, doctor, clergyman, eyes and library; and would have been nurse too, if it had not been for making old Jane jealous. But she is ill. Some love affair, I suppose—"

"How quaint it is, that the father has kept all the animal vigour to himself, and transmitted none to the daughter."

"He has not kept the soul to himself, Tom, or the eyes either. She will bring me in wild flowers, and talk to me about them, till I fancy I can see them as well as ever. Ah, well! It is a sweet world still, Tom, and there are sweet souls in it. A sweet world: I was too fond of looking at it once, I suppose, so God took away my sight, that I might learn to look at Him." And the old man lay back in his chair, and covered his face with his handkerchief, and was quite still awhile. And Tom watched him, and thought that he would give all his cunning and power to be like that old man.

Then Jane came in, and laid the cloth,—a coarse one enough,—and Tom picked a cold mutton bone with a steel fork, and drank his pint of beer from the public-house, and lighted his father's pipe, and then his own, and vowed that he had never dined so well in his life, and began his traveller's stories again.

And in the evening Mark came in, with a bottle of the '21 in his coat-tail pocket; and the three sat and chatted, while Mary brought out her work, and stitched listening silently, till it was time to lead the old man upstairs.

Tom put his father to bed, and then made a hesitating request—

"There is a poor sick man whom I brought down with me, sir, if you could spare me half-an-hour. It really is a professional case; he is under my charge, I may say."

"What is it, boy?"

"Well, laudanum and a broken heart."

"Exercise and ammonia for the first. For the second, God's grace and the grave: and those latter medicines you can't exhibit, my dear boy. Well, as it is professional duty, I suppose you must: but don't exceed the hour; I shall lie awake till you return, and then you must talk me to sleep."

So Tom went out and homeward with Mark and Mary, for their roads lay together; and as he went, he thought good to tell them somewhat of the history of John Briggs, alias Elsley Vavasour.

"Poor fool!" said Mark, who listened in silence to the end. "Why didn't he mind his bottles, and just do what Heaven sent him to do? Is he in want of the rhino, Tom?"

"He had not five shillings left after he had paid his fare; and he refuses to ask his wife for a farthing."

"Quite right—very proper spirit." And Mark walked on in silence a few minutes.

"I say, Tom, a fool and his money are soon parted. There's a five-pound note for him, you begging, insinuating dog, and be hanged to you both! I shall die in the workhouse at this rate."

"Oh father, you will never miss—"

"Who told you I thought I should, pray? Don't you go giving another five pounds out of your pocket-money behind my back, ma'am. I know your tricks of old. Tom, I'll come and see the poor beggar to-morrow with you, and call him Mr. Vavasour—Lord Vavasour, if he likes—if you'll warrant me against laughing in his face." And the old man did laugh, till he stopped and held his sides again.

"Oh, father, father, don't be so cruel. Remember how wretched the poor man is."

"I can't think of anything but old Bolus's boy turned poet. Why did you tell me, Tom, you bad fellow? It's too much for a man at my time of life, and after his dinner too."

And with that he opened the little gate by the side of the grand one, and turned to ask Tom—

"Won't come in, boy, and have one more cigar?"

"I promised my father to be back as quickly as possible."

"Good lad—that's the plan to go on—

  'You'll be churchwarden before all's over,
  And so arrive at wealth and fame.'

Instead of writing po-o-o-etry? Do you recollect that morning, and the black draught? Oh dear, my side!"

And Tom heard him keckling to himself up the garden walk to his house; went off to see that Elsley was safe; and then home, and slept like a top; no wonder, for he would have done so the night before his execution.

And what was little Mary doing all the while?

She had gone up to the room, after telling her father, with a kiss, not to forget to say his prayers. And then she fed her canary bird, and made up the Persian cat's bed; and then sat long at the open window, gazing out over the shadow-dappled lawn, away to the poplars sleeping in the moonlight, and the shining silent stream, and the shining silent stars, till she seemed to become as one of them, and a quiet heaven within her eyes took counsel with the quiet heaven above. And then she drew in suddenly, as if stung by some random thought, and shut the window. A picture hung over her mantelpiece—a portrait of her mother, who had been a country beauty in her time. She glanced at it, and then at the looking-glass. Would she have given her fifty thousand pounds to have exchanged her face for such a face as that?

She caught up her little Thomas à Kempis, marked through and through with lines and references, and sat and read steadfastly for an hour and more. That was her school, as it has been the school of many a noble soul. And, for some cause or other, that stinging thought returned no more; and she knelt and prayed like a little child; and like a little child slept sweetly all the night, and was away before breakfast the next morning, after feeding the canary and the cat, to old women who worshipped her as their ministering angel, and said, looking after her: "That dear Miss Mary, pity she is so plain! Such a match as she might have made! But she'll be handsome enough, when she is a blessed angel in heaven."

Ah, true sisters of mercy, whom the world sneers at as "old maids," if you pour out on cats and dogs and parrots, a little of the love which is yearning to spend itself on children of your own flesh and blood! As long as such as you walk this lower world, one needs no Butler's Analogy to prove to us that there is another world, where such as you will have a fuller and a fairer (I dare not say a juster) portion.

* * * * *

Next morning Mark started with Tom to call on Elsley, chatting and puffing all the way.

"I'll butter him, trust me. Nothing comforts a poor beggar like a bit of praise when he's down; and all fellows that take to writing are as greedy after it as trout after the drake, even if they only scribble in county newspapers. I've watched them when I've been electioneering, my boy!"

"Only," said Tom, "don't be angry with him if he is proud and peevish.
The poor fellow is all but mad with misery."

"Poh! quarrel with him? whom did I ever quarrel with? If he barks, I'll stop his mouth with a good dinner. I suppose he's gentleman enough, to invite?"

"As much a gentleman as you and I; not of the very first water, of course. Still he eats like other people, and don't break many glasses during a sitting. Think! he couldn't have been a very great cad to marry a nobleman's daughter!"

"Why, no. Speaks well for him, that, considering his breeding. He must be a very clever fellow to have caught the trick of the thing so soon."

"And so he is, a very clever fellow; too clever by half; and a very fine-hearted fellow, too, in spite of his conceit and his temper. But that don't prevent his being an awful fool!"

"You speak like a book, Tom!" said old Mark, clapping him on the back. "Look at me! no one can say I was ever troubled with genius: but I can show my money, pay my way, eat my dinner, kill my trout, hunt my hounds, help a lame dog over a stile" (which was Mark's phrase for doing a generous thing), "and thank God for all; and who wants more, I should like to know? But here we are—you go up first!"

They found Elsley crouched up over the empty grate, his head in his hands, and a few scraps of paper by him, on which he had been trying to scribble. He did not look up as they came in, but gave a sort of impatient half-turn, as if angry at being disturbed. Tom was about to announce the banker; but he announced himself.

"Come to do myself the honour of calling on you, Mr. Vavasour. I am sorry to see you so poorly; I hope our Whitbury air will set all right."

"You mistake me, sir; my name is Briggs!" said Elsley, without turning his head; but a moment after he looked up angrily.

"Mr. Armsworth? I beg your pardon, sir; but what brings you here? Are you come, sir, to use the rich successful man's right, and lecture me in my misery?"

"'Pon my word, sir, you must have forgotten old Mark Armsworth, indeed, if you fancy him capable of any such dirt. No, sir, I came to pay my respects to you, sir, hoping that you'd come up and take a family dinner. I could do no less," ran on the banker, seeing that Elsley was preparing a peevish answer, "considering the honour that, I hear, you have been to your native town. A very distinguished person, our friend Tom tells me; and we ought to be proud of you, and behave to you as you deserve, for I am sure we don't send too many clever fellows out of Whitbury."

"Would that you had never sent me!" said Elsley in his bitter way.

"Ah, sir, that's matter of opinion! You would never have been heard of down here, never have had justice done you, I mean; for heard of you have been. There's my daughter has read your poems again and again— always quoting them; and very pretty they sound too. Poetry is not in my line, of course; still, it's a credit to a man to do anything well, if he has the gift; and she tells me that you have it, and plenty of it. And though she's no fine lady, thank Heaven, I'll back her for good sense against any woman. Come up, sir, and judge for yourself if I don't speak the truth; she will be delighted to meet you, and bade me say so."

By this time good Mark had talked himself out of breath; and Elsley flushing up, as of old, at a little praise, began to stammer an excuse. "His nerves were so weak, and his spirits so broken with late troubles."

"My dear sir, that's the very reason I want you to come. A bottle of port will cure the nerves, and a pleasant chat the spirits. Nothing like forgetting all for a little time; and then to it again with a fresh lease of strength, and beat it at last like a man."

"Too late, my dear sir; I must pay the penalty of my own folly," said
Elsley, really won by the man's cordiality.

"Never too late, sir, while there's life left in us. And," he went on in a gentler tone, "if we all were to pay for our own follies, or lie down and die when we saw them coming full cry at our heels, where would any one of us be by now? I have been a fool in my time, young gentleman, more than once or twice; and that too when I was old enough to be your father: and down I went, and deserved what I got: but my rule always was—Fight fair; fall soft; know when you've got enough; and don't cry out when you've got it: but just go home; train again; and say—better luck next fight." And so old Mark's sermon ended (as most of them did) in somewhat Socratic allegory, savouring rather of the market than of the study; but Elsley understood him, and looked up with a smile.

"You too are somewhat of a poet in your way, I see, sir!"

"I never thought to live to hear that, sir. I can't doubt now that you are cleverer than your neighbours, for you have found out something which they never did. But you will come?—for that's my business."

Elsley looked inquiringly at Tom; he had learnt now to consult his eye, and lean on him like a child. Tom looked a stout yes, and Elsley said languidly,—

"You have given me so much new and good advice in a few minutes, sir, that I must really do myself the pleasure of coming and hearing more."

"Well done, our side!" cried old Mark. "Dinner at half-past five. No London late hours here, sir. Miss Armsworth will be out of her mind when she hears you're coming."

And off he went.

"Do you think he'll come up to the scratch, Tom?"

"I am very much afraid his courage will fail him. I will see him again, and bring him up with me: but now, my dear Mr. Armsworth, do remember one thing; that if you go on with him at your usual rate of hospitality, the man will as surely be drunk, as his nerves and brain are all but ruined; and if he is so, he will most probably destroy himself to-morrow morning."

"Destroy himself?"

"He will. The shame of making a fool of himself just now before you will be more than he could bear. So be stingy for once. He will not wish for it unless you press him; but if he talks (and he will talk after the first half-hour), he will forget himself, and half a bottle will make him mad; and then I won't answer for the consequences."

"Good gracious! why, these poets want as tender handling as a bag of gunpowder over the fire."

"You speak like a book there in your turn." And Tom went home to his father.

He returned in due time. A new difficulty had arisen. Elsley, under the excitement of expectation, had gone out and deigned to buy laudanum—so will an unhealthy craving degrade a man!—of old Bolus himself, who luckily did not recognise him. He had taken his fullest dose, and was now unable to go anywhere or do anything. Tom did not disturb him: but went away, sorely perplexed, and very much minded to tell a white lie to Armsworth, in whose eyes this would be an offence—not unpardonable, for nothing with him was unpardonable, save lying or cruelty—but very grievous. If a man had drunk too much wine in his house, he would have simply kept his eye on him afterwards, as a fool who did not know when he had his "quotum;" but laudanum drinking,—involving, too, the breaking of an engagement, which, well managed, might have been of immense use to Elsley,—was a very different matter. So Tom knew not what to say or do; and not knowing, determined to wait on Providence, smartened himself as best he could, went up to the great house, and found Miss Mary.

"I'll tell her. She will manage it somehow, if she is a woman; much more if she is an angel, as my father says."

Mary looked very much shocked and grieved; answered hardly a word; but said at last, "Come in, while I go and see my father." He came into the smart drawing-room, which he could see was seldom used; for Mary lived in her own room, her father in his counting-house, or in his "den." In ten minutes she came down. Tom thought she had been crying.

"I have settled it. Poor unhappy man! We will talk of something more pleasant. Tell me about your shipwreck, and that place,—Aberalva, is it not? What a pretty name!"

Tom told her, wondering then, and wondering long afterwards, how she had "settled it" with her father. She chatted on artlessly enough, till the old man came in, and to dinner, in capital humour, without saying one word of Elsley.

"How has the old lion been tamed?" thought Tom. "The two greatest affronts you could offer him in old times were, to break an engagement, and to despise his good cheer." He did not know what the quiet oil on the waters of such a spirit as Mary's can effect.

The evening passed pleasantly enough till nine, in chatting over old times, and listening to the history of every extraordinary trout and fox which had been killed within twenty miles, when the footboy entered with a somewhat scared face.

"Please, sir, is Mr. Vavasour here?"

"Here? Who wants him?"

"Mrs. Brown, sir, in Hemmelford Street. Says he lodges with her, and has been to seek for him at Dr. Thurnall's."

"I think you had better go, Mr. Thurnall," said Mary, quietly.

"Indeed you had, boy. Bother poets, and the day they first began to breed in Whitbury! Such an evening spoilt! Have a cup of coffee? No? then a glass of sherry?"

Out went Tom. Mrs. Brown had been up, and seen him seemingly sleeping; then had heard him run downstairs hurriedly. He passed her in the passage, looking very wild. "Seemed, sir, just like my nevy's wife's brother, Will Ford, before he made away with hes'self."

Tom goes off post haste, revolving many things in a crafty heart. Then he steers for Bolus's shop. Bolus is at "The Angler's Arms;" but his assistant is in.

"Did a gentleman call here just now, in a long cloak, with a felt wide-awake?"

"Yes." And the assistant looks confused enough for Tom to rejoin,—

"And you sold him laudanum?"

"Why—ah—"

"And you had sold him laudanum already this afternoon, you young rascal? How dare you, twice in six hours? I'll hold you responsible for the man's life!"

"You dare call me a rascal?" blusters the youth, terror-stricken at finding how much Tom knows.

"I am a member of the College of Surgeons," says Tom, recovering his coolness, "and have just been dining with Mr. Armsworth. I suppose you know him?"

The assistant shook in his shoes at the name of that terrible justice of the peace and of the war also; and meekly and contritely he replied,—

"Oh sir, what shall I do?"

"You're in a very neat scrape; you could not have feathered your nest better," says Tom, quietly filling his pipe, and thinking. "As you behave now, I will get you out of it, or leave you to—you know what, as well as I. Get your hat."

He went out, and the youth followed trembling, while Tom formed his plans in his mind.

"The wild beast goes home to his lair to die, and so may he; for I fear it's life and death now. I'll try the house where he was born. Somewhere in Water Lane it is I know."

And toward Water Lane he hurried. It was a low-lying offshoot of the town, leading along the water meadows, with a straggling row of houses on each side, the perennial haunts of fever and ague. Before them, on each side the road, and fringed with pollard willows and tall poplars, ran a tiny branch of the Whit, to feed some mill below; and spread out, meanwhile, into ponds and mires full of offal and duckweed and rank floating grass. A thick mist hung knee-deep over them, and over the gardens right and left; and as Tom came down on the lane from the main street above, he could see the mist spreading across the water-meadows and reflecting the moon-beams like a lake; and as he walked into it, he felt as if he were walking down a well. And he hurried down the lane, looking out anxiously ahead for the long cloak.

At last he came to a better sort of house. That might be it. He would take the chance. There was a man of the middle class, and two or three women, standing at the gate. He went up—

"Pray, sir, did a medical man named Briggs ever live here?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"Why"—Tom thought matters were too serious for delicacy—"I am looking for a gentleman, and thought he might have come here."

"And so he did, if you mean one in a queer hat and a cloak."

"How long since?"

"Why, he came up our garden an hour or more ago; walked right into the parlour without with your leave, or by your leave, and stared at us all round like one out of his mind; and so away, as soon as ever I asked him what he was at—"

"Which way?"

"To the river, I expect: I ran out, and saw him go down the lane, but I was not going far by night alone with any such strange customers."

"Lend me a lanthorn then, for Heaven's sake!"

The lanthorn is lent, and Tom starts again down the lane.

Now to search. At the end of the lane is a cross road parallel to the river. A broad still ditch lies beyond it, with a little bridge across, where one gets minnows for bait: then a broad water-meadow; then silver Whit.

The bridge-gate is open. Tom hurries across the road to it. The lanthorn shows him fresh footmarks going into the meadow. Forward!

Up and down in that meadow for an hour or more did Tom and the trembling youth beat like a brace of pointer dogs, stumbling into gripes, and over sleeping cows; and more than once stopping short just in time, as they were walking into some broad and deep feeder.

Almost in despair, and after having searched down the river bank for full two hundred yards, Tom was on the point of returning, when his eye rested on a part of the stream where the mist lay higher than usual, and let the reflection of the moonlight off the water reach his eye; and in the moonlight ripples, close to the farther bank of the river—what was that black lump?

Tom knew the spot well; the river there is very broad, and very shallow, flowing round low islands of gravel and turf. It was very low just now too, as it generally is in October: there could not be four inches of water where the black lump lay, but on the side nearest him the water was full knee deep.

The thing, whatever it was, was forty yards from him; and it was a cold night for wading. It might be a hassock of rushes; a tuft of the great water-dock; a dead dog; one of the "hangs" with which the club-water was studded, torn up and stranded: but yet, to Tom, it had not a canny look.

"As usual! Here am I getting wet, dirty, and miserable, about matters which are not the slightest concern of mine! I believe I shall end by getting hanged or shot in somebody else's place, with this confounded spirit of meddling. Yah! how cold the water is!"

For in he went, the grumbling honest dog; stepped across to the black lump; and lifted it up hastily enough,—for it was Elsley Vavasour.

Drowned?

No. But wet through, and senseless from mingled cold and laudanum.

Whether he had meant to drown himself, and lighting on the shallow, had stumbled on till he fell exhausted: or whether he had merely blundered into the stream, careless whither he went, Tom knew not, and never knew; for Elsley himself could not recollect.

Tom took him in his arms, carried him ashore and up through the water meadow; borrowed a blanket and a wheelbarrow at the nearest cottage; wrapped him up; and made the offending surgeon's assistant wheel him to his lodgings.

He sat with him there an hour; and then entered Mark's house again with his usual composed face, to find Mark and Mary sitting up in great anxiety.

"Mr. Armsworth, does the telegraph work at this time of night?"

"I'll make it, if it is wanted. But what's the matter?"

"You will indeed?"

"'Gad, I'll go myself and kick up the station-master. What's the matter?"

"That if poor Mrs. Vavasour wishes to see her husband alive, she must be here in four-and-twenty hours. I'll tell you all presently—"

"Mary, my coat and comforter!" cries Mark, jumping up.

"And, Mary, a pen and ink to write the message," says Tom.

"Oh! cannot I be of any use?" says Mary.

"No, you angel."

"You must not call me an angel, Mr. Thurnall. After all, what can I do which you have not done already?"

Tom started. Grace had once used to him the very same words. By the by, what was it in the two women which made them so like? Certainly, neither face nor fortune. Something in the tones of their voices.

"Ah! if Grace had Mary's fortune, or Mary Grace's face!" thought Tom, as he hurried back to Elsley, and Mark rushed down to the station.

Elsley was conscious when he returned, and only too conscious. All night he screamed in agonies of rheumatic fever; by the next afternoon he was failing fast; his heart was affected; and Tom knew that he might die any hour.

The evening train brings two ladies, Valencia and Lucia. At the risk of her life, the poor faithful wife has come.

A gentleman's carriage is waiting for them, though they have ordered none; and as they go through the station-room, a plain little well-dressed body comes humbly up to them—

"Are either of these ladies Mrs. Vavasour?"

"Yes! I!—I!—is he alive?" gasps Lucia.

"Alive, and better! and expecting you—"

"Better?—expecting me?" almost shrieks she, as Valencia and Mary (for it is she) help her to the carriage. Mary puts them in, and turns away.

"Are you not coming too?" asks Valencia, who is puzzled.

"No, thank you, madam; I am going to take a walk. John, you know where to drive these ladies."

Little Mary does not think it necessary to say that she, with her father's carriage, has been down to two other afternoon trains, upon the chance of finding them.

But why is not Frank Headley with them, when he is needed most? And why are Valencia's eyes more red with weeping than even her sister's sorrow need have made them?

Because Frank Headley is rolling away in a French railway, on his road to Marseilles, and to what Heaven shall find for him to do.

Yes, he is gone Eastward Ho among the many; will he come Westward Ho again, among the few?

They are at the door of Elsley's lodgings now. Tom Thurnall meets them there, and bows them upstairs silently. Lucia is so weak that she has to cling to the banister a moment; and then, with a strong shudder, the spirit conquers the flesh, and she hurries up before them both.

It is a small low room—Valencia had expected that: but she had expected, too, confusion and wretchedness: for a note from Major Campbell, ere he started, had told her of the condition in which Elsley had been found. Instead, she finds neatness—even gaiety; fresh damask linen, comfortable furniture, a vase of hothouse flowers, while the air was full of cool perfumes. No one is likely to tell her that Mary has furnished all at Tom's hint—"We must smarten up the place, for the poor wife's sake. It will take something off the shock; and I want to avoid shocks for her."

So Tom had worked with his own hands that morning; arranging the room as carefully as any woman, with that true doctor's forethought and consideration, which often issues in the loftiest, because the most unconscious, benevolence.

He paused at the door—

"Will you go in?" whispered he to Valencia, in a tone which meant............