In the white moonlight Sir Jasper Standish paced up and down the cobble-stoned yard with as monotonous a restlessness as if he had been hired this night to act the living sign at the Bear Inn, Devizes.

Each time he passed the low open window of the inn parlour, in which sat Mr. Stafford by the dim yellow light of two long-tongued tallow candles, the baronet would pause a moment to exchange from without a few dismal words with his friend. The latter, puffing at a long clay pipe, endeavoured in the intervals to while away the heavy minutes in the perusal of some tome out of mine host\'s library—a unique collection and celebrated on the Bath Road.

"Tom Stafford," said Sir Jasper, for the twentieth time, "how goes the hour?"

"Damned slowly, friend," said Stafford, consulting with a yawn the most exact of three watches at his fob. "To be precise, \'tis two minutes and one third since I told you that it wanted a quarter of midnight."

Sir Jasper fell once more to his ursine perambulation, and Stafford, yawning again, flicked over a page. He had not reached the bottom of it, however, before Sir Jasper\'s form returned between him and the moonlight.

"What," said the injured husband, "what if they should have taken another road?"

"Then," cried Stafford, closing his book with a snap between both his palms, tossing it on to the table and stretching himself desperately, "I shall only have to fight you myself for this most insufferably dull evening that you have made me spend, when I was due at more than one rendezvous, and had promised pretty Bellairs the first minuet."

"It shall be pistols," said Sir Jasper, following his own thoughts with a sort of gloomy lust, "pistols, Tom. For either he or I shall breathe our last to-night."

"Pistols with all my heart," said Stafford, stopping his pipe with his little finger. "Only do, like a good fellow, make up your mind—just for the sake of variety. I think the last time we considered the matter, we had decided for this"—describing a neat thrust at Sir Jasper\'s waistcoat through the window with the long stem of his churchwarden. "There\'s more blood about it, Jasper," he suggested critically.

"True," murmured the other, again all indecision. "But pistols at five paces——."

"Well—yes, there\'s a charm about five paces, I admit," returned the second with some weariness, dropping back again into his chair. "And we can reload, you know."

"If I fall," said Sir Jasper, with the emotion which generally overtakes a man who contemplates a tragic contingency to himself, "be gentle with her. She has sinned, but she was very dear to me."

"She\'ll make a deuced elegant widow," said Stafford, musingly, after a little pause, during which he had conjured up Lady Standish\'s especial points with the judgment of a true connoisseur.

"You must conduct her back to her home," gulped Sir Jasper, a minute later, slowly thrusting in his head again. "Alack, would that I had never fetched her thence.... Had you but seen her, when I wooed and won her, Tom! A country flower, all innocence, a wild rose.... And now, deceitful, double-faced!"

"\'Tis the way of the wild rose," said Stafford, philosophically. "Let you but transplant it from the native hedgerow, and before next season it grows double."

Here the speaker, who was always ready with a generous appreciation of his own conceits, threw his head back and laughed consumedly, while Sir Jasper uttered some sounds between a growl and a groan.

The volatile second in waiting wiped his eyes.

"Go to, man," cried he, turning with sudden irascibility upon his friend, "for pity\'s sake take that lugubrious countenance of thine out of my sight. What the devil I ever saw in thee, Jasper, to make a friend of, passes my comprehension: for, of all things, I love a fellow with a spark of wit. And thou, lad, lackest the saving grace of humour so wofully, that, in truth, I fear—well—thou art in a parlous state: I fear damnation waits thee, for \'tis incurable. What! in God\'s name cannot a man lose a throw in the game of happiness and yet laugh? Cannot a husbandman detect a poacher on his land and yet laugh as he sets the gin? Why," cried Mr. Stafford, warming to his thesis, and clambering lightly out of the window to seat himself on the outer sill, "strike me ugly! shall not a gentleman be ever ready to meet his fate with a smile? I vow I\'ve never yet seen Death\'s head grin at me, but I\'ve given him the grin back—split me!"

"Hark—hark!" cried Sir Jasper, pricking his strained ear, "d\'ye hear?"

"Pooh!" said Mr. Stafford, "only the wind in the tree."

"Nay," cried Sir Jasper; "hush man, listen!"

An unmistakable rumbling grew upon the still night air—a confused medley of sounds which gradually unravelled themselves upon their listening ears. It was the rhythmical striking of many hoofs, the roll of wheels, the crack of a merciless whip.

"Faith and faith," cried Stafford, pleasantly exhilarated, "I believe you\'re right, Jasper; here they come!"

The moonlight swam blood-red before Sir Jasper\'s flaming eye. "Pistols or swords?" questioned he again of himself, and grasped his hilt as the nearest relief, pending the decisive moment.

Out slouched a couple of sleepy ostlers, as Master Lawrence, mine host, rang the stable bell.

Betty, the maid, threw a couple of logs on the fire, while the dame in the bar, waking from her snooze, demanded the kettle, selected some lemons, and ordered candlesticks and dips with reckless prodigality.

*****

Mistress Kitty, peering out of the carriage window, her shoulder still turned upon the unhappy and unforgiven swain, hailed the twinkling lights of the Bear Inn with lively eyes.

While the chaise described an irreproachable curve round the yard, her quick glance had embraced every element of the scene. Sir Jasper\'s bulky figure, with folded arms, was leaning against the post of the inn door, awaiting her approach—retribution personified—capriciously illumined by the orange rays of the landlord\'s lantern. Out in the moonlight, shining in his pearl gray satin and powdered head, all silver from crest to shoe-buckle, like the prince of fairy lore, sat Stafford on his window-ledge, as gallant a picture to a woman\'s eye, the widow had time to think, as one could wish to see on such a night.

"Oh," she thought, "how we are going to enjoy ourselves at last!"

And being too true an artist to consider her mere personal convenience upon a question of effect, she resolved to defer the crisis until the ripe moment, no matter at what cost. Accordingly, even as O\'Hara cried out, in tones of surprise and disgust: "Thunder and turf! my darling,............