The year was growing a little later; the evenings were lengthening, and the light of the setting sun, illumining the west with a golden radiance, threw some of its cheering brightness even on the streets and houses of close, smoky London.

It shone on the person of the Reverend Henry William Ollivera, as he sat at home, taking his frugal meal, a tea-dinner. The room was a good one, and well furnished in a plain way. The table had been drawn towards one of the windows, open to the hum of the street; the rosewood cabinet at the back was handsome with its sheet of plate-glass and its white marble top; the chairs and sofa were covered with substantial cloth, the pier-glass over the mantlepiece reflected back bright ornaments. Mr. Ollivera was of very simple habits, partly because he really cared little how he lived, partly because the scenes of distress and privation he met with daily in his ministrations read him a lesson that he was not slow to take. How could he pamper himself up with rich food, when so many within a stone\'s throw were pining for want of bread? His landlady, Mrs. Jones, gave him sound lectures on occasion, telling him to his face that he was trying to break down. Sometimes she prepared nice dinners in spite of him: a fowl, or some other luxury, and Mr. Ollivera smiled and did not say it was not enjoyed. The district of his curacy was full of poor; poverty, vice, misery reigned, and would reign, in spite of what he could do. Some of the worst phases of London life were ever before him. The great problem, "What shall be done with these?" arose to his mind day by day. He had his scripture readers; he had other help; but destitution both of body and mind reared itself aloft like a many-headed monster, defying all solution. Sometimes Mr. Ollivera did not come in to dinner at all, but took a mutton-chop with his tea; as he was doing now.

Four years had elapsed since his brother\'s mysterious death (surely it may be called so!) and the conviction on the clergyman\'s mind, that the verdict was wholly at variance with the facts, had not abated one iota. Nay, time had but served to strengthen it. Nothing else had strengthened it. No discovery had been made, no circumstance, however minute, had arisen to throw light upon it one way or the other. The hoped-for, looked-for communication from the police-agent, Butterby, had never come. In point of fact Mr. Butterby, in regard to this case, had found himself wholly at sea. Godfrey Pitman did not turn up in response to the threatened "looking after;" Miss Rye departed for London with her sister when affairs at the Jones\'s came to a crash; and, if the truth must be told, Mr. Butterby veered round to his original opinion, that the verdict had been a correct one. Once, and once only, that renowned officer had presented himself at the house of Greatorex and Greatorex. Happening to be in London, he thought he would give them a call. But he brought no news. It was but a few weeks following the occurrence, and there might not have been time for any to arise. One thing he had requested--to retain in his possession the scrap of writing found on the table at the death. It might be useful to him, he said, for of course he should still keep his eyes open: and Mr. Greatorex readily acquiesced. Since then nothing whatever had been heard from Mr. Butterby, or from any other quarter; but the sad facts were rarely out of the clergyman\'s mind; and the positive conviction, the expectation of the light, to break in sooner or later, burnt within him with a steady ray, sure and true as Heaven.

Not of this, however, was Mr. Ollivera\'s mind filled this evening. His thoughts were running on the disheartening scenes of the day; the difficult men and women he had tried to deal with--some of them meek and resigned, many hard and bad; all wanting help for their sick bodies or worse souls. There was one case in particular that interested him sadly. A man named Gisby, discovered shortly before, lay in a room, dying slowly. He did not want help in kind, as so many did; but of spiritual help, none could be in greater need. Little by little, Mr. Ollivera got at his history. It appeared that the man had once been servant in the house of Kene, the Queen\'s counsel--Judge Kene now: he had been raised to the bench in the past year. During his service there, a silver mug disappeared; circumstances seemed to point to Gisby as guilty, and he was discharged, getting subsequently other employment.

But now, the man was not guilty--as he convinced Mr. Ollivera, and the suspicion appeared to have worked him a great deal of ill, and made him hard. On this day, when the clergyman sat by his bed-side, reading and praying, he had turned a deaf ear. "Where\'s the use?" he roughly cried, "Sir Thomas thinks me guilty always." It struck Mr. Ollivera that the man had greatly respected his master, had valued his good opinion and craved for it still; and the next morning this was confirmed. "You\'ll go to him when I\'m dead, sir, and tell him the truth then, that I was not guilty? I never touched the mug, or knew how or where it went."

Returning home with these words ringing in his ears, Mr. Ollivera could not get the man out of his mind. So long as the sense of being wronged lay upon Gisby, so long would he encase himself in his hard indifference, and refuse to hear. "I must get Kene to go to see the man," decided Mr. Ollivera. "He must hear with his own ears and see with his own eyes that he was not guilty, and tell him so; and then Gisby will come round. I wonder if Kene is back from circuit."

Excessively tired with his day\'s work, for his frame was not of the strongest, Mr. Ollivera did not care to go out that evening to Sir Thomas Kene\'s distant residence on the chance of not finding him. And yet, if the judge was back, there ought to be no time lost in communicating with him, for Gisby was daily getting nearer to death. "Bede Greatorex will be able to tell me," suddenly thought Mr. Ollivera, when his tea had been long over and twilight was setting in. "I\'ll send and ask him."

Moving to his writing-table, he wrote a short note, reading it over before enclosing it in an envelope.

"Dear Bede,--Can you tell me whether Sir Thomas Kene is in London? I wish particularly to see him as soon as possible. It is on a little matter connected with my parish work.

"Truly yours

"William Ollivera."

It was a latent thought that induced Mr. Ollivera to add the concluding sentence and the motive shall be told. He and Bede Greatorex had come to an issue twice upon the subject of his so persistently cherishing the notion that the now long-past death was anything but a suicide; or rather, that he should pursue it. Bede heard so much of it from him that he grew vexed, and at length vowed he would listen to him no more. And Mr. Ollivera thought that if Bede fancied he wanted to see Sir Thomas Kene on that subject, he might refuse to answer him.

Ringing the bell, he gave the note to the servant with a request (preferred with deprecation and a plea of his own tired state, for he was one of those who are sensitively chary of giving any extra trouble) that it should be taken to Mr. Bede Greatorex, and an answer waited for.

But when the girl got downstairs, there arose some slight difficulty; she was engaged in a necessary household occupation--ironing--and her mistress did not care that she should quit it. Miss Rye stood by with her things on, about to go out on some errand of her own. Ah me! these apparently trifling chances do not happen accidentally.

"Can\'t you just step round to Bedford Square, with it, Alletha?" asked Mrs. Jones. "It won\'t take you far out of your way."

Miss Rye\'s silent answer--she seemed always silent now--was to pick up the note and go out with it. She knew the house, for she worked occasionally for Mrs. Bede Greatorex, and was passing to the private entrance when she encountered Frank Greatorex, who was coming out at the other door. He wished her good evening, and she told him her errand, showing the note directed to Bede.

"He is in his office still," said Frank, throwing open the door for her. "Walk in. Mr. Brown, attend here, please."

Miss Rye stepped into the semi-lighted room, for there was only a shaded lamp on Mr. Brown\'s desk; and Frank Greatorex, closing the door, was gone again. Mr. Brown, at work as late as his master, came forward.

"For Mr. Bede Greatorex," said Miss Rye, handing him the note. "I will wait----"

The words were broken off with a faint, sharp cry. A cry, low though it was, of surprise, of terror, of dismay. Both their faces blanched to whiteness, they stood gazing at each other, she with strained eyes and drawnback lips, he with a kind of forced stillness on his features, that nevertheless told of inward emotion.

"Oh, my good heaven!" she breathed in her agitation. "Is it you?"

Miss Rye had heard speak of Mr. Brown, the managing clerk in the department of Mr. Bede Greatorex. Jenner had mentioned him: Roland Yorke had commented on him and his wig. But that "Mr. Brown" should be the man now standing before her, she had never suspected; no, not in her wildest dreams.

"Sit down, Miss Rye. You are faint."

She put his arm from her, as he would have supported her to a seat, and staggered to one of herself. He followed, and stood by her in silence.

"What are you called here?" she began--and, it may be, that in the moment\'s agitation she forgot his ostensible name and really put it as a question, not in mocking, condemnatory scorn:--"Godfrey Pitman?"

Every instinct of terror the man possessed seemed to rise up within him at sound of the name. He glanced round the room; at the desks; at the walls; as if to assure himself that no ear was there.

"Hush--sh--sh!" with a prolonged note of caution. "Never breathe that name, here or elsewhere."

"What if I were to? To speak it aloud to all who ought to hear it?"

"Why then you would bring a hornet\'s nest about heads that you little wot of. Their sting might end in worse than death."

"Death for you?"

"No: I should be the hangman."

"What do you mean?"

"Listen, Miss Rye. I cannot tell you what I mean: and your better plan will be never to ask me. If----"

"Better for whom?" she interrupted.

"For--well, for me, for one. The fact is, that certain interests pertaining to myself and others--certain reminiscences of the past," he continued with very strong emphasis, "have become so complicated, so interwoven as it were one with the other, that we must in all probability stand or fall together."

"I do not understand you."

"I can scarcely expect that you should. But--were any proceeding on your part, any word, whether spoken by design or accident, to lead to that fall, you would rue it to the last hour of your life. That you can at least understand."

The faintness was passing off, and Miss Rye rose, steadying herself against the railings of Mr. Hurst\'s desk. At that moment the inner door was unlatched, and the clerk, recalled to present duties, caught the note from her unresisting hand.

"For Mr. Bede Greatorex," he said aloud, glancing at the superscription. "I will give it to him."

It was Mr. Bede Greatorex who came forth. He took the note, and glanced at Alletha.

"Ah, Miss Rye! Is it you?"

"Our maid was busy, so I brought it down," she explained. "Mr. Ollivera is waiting for an answer."

Bede Greatorex went back to his room, leaving the intervening door open. She sat and waited. Mr. Brown, whose work was in a hurry, wrote on steadily at his desk by the light of a shaded lamp. A minute or two, and Bede Greatorex brought her a bit of paper twisted up, and showed her out himself.

With the errand she had come abroad to execute for herself gone clean out of her head, Alletha Rye went back home, her brain in a whirl. The streets she passed through were crowded with all the bustle and jostle of London life; but, had she been traversing an African desert, she could not have felt more entirely alone. Her life that night lay within her: and it was one of confused tumult.

The note found Mr. Ollivera asleep: as the twilight deepened, he had dropped, in sheer weariness, into an unconscious slumber. Untwisting the scrap of paper, he held it near a lighted candle and read the contents:--

"Dear Henry,--Kene is back, and is coming to us this evening; we expect two or three friends. Louisa will be pleased if you can join us. Faithfully yours,

"B.G."

Mr. Ollivera eschewed gaiety of all kinds, parties included. Over and over again had he been fruitlessly invited to the grand dinners and soirées of Mrs. Bede Greatorex, until they left off asking him. "Two or three friends," he repeated as he put down the note. "I don\'t mind that, for I must see Kene."

Dressing himself; he was on the point of setting out, when a messenger arrived to fetch him to a sick person; so that it was half-past ten when he reached the house of Mr. Greatorex. And then, but for his mission to the Judge, he would have quitted it again without entering the reception-rooms.

Two or three friends! Lining the wide staircase, dotting the handsome landing, crowding the numerous guest-rooms, there they were; a mob of them. Women in the costly and fantastic toilettes of the present day; men bowing and bending with their evening manners on. Mr. Ollivera resented the crowd as a personal wrong.

"\'Two or three friends,\' you wrote me word, Bede," he reproachfully said, seeing his cousin in a corner near the entrance-door. "You know I do not like these things and never go to them."

"On my word, Henry, I did not know it was going to be this cram," returned Bede Greatorex. "I thought we might be twenty, perhaps, all told."

"How can you put up with this? Is it seemly, Bede--in this once staid and pattern house?"

"Seemly?" repeated Bede Greatorex.

"Forgive me, Bede. I was thinking of the dear old times under your mother\'s rule. The happy evenings, all hospitality and cheerfulness; the chapter read at bedtime, when the small knot of guests had departed. Friends were entertained then; but I don\'t know what you call these."

Perhaps Bede Greatorex had never, amid all his provocations, felt so tempted to avow the truth as now--that he abhorred it with his whole heart and soul. Henry William Ollivera could not hate and despise it more than he. As to the good old days of sunshine and peace thus recalled, a groan well nigh burst from him, at their recollection. It was indeed a contrast, then and now: in more things than this. The world bore a new aspect for Bede Greatorex, and not a happier one.

"Is Kene here, Bede?"

"Not yet. What is it that you want with him?"

Mr. Ollivera gave a brief outline of the case; Bede left him in the middle of it to welcome fresh arrivals. Something awfully fine loomed up, in pink silk and lace, and blazing emeralds. It was Mrs. Bede Greatorex. Her chignon was a mile high, and her gown was below her shoulder-blades. The modest young clergyman turned away at the sight, his cheeks flushing a dusky red. Not in this kind of society of late years, the curiosities of fashionable attire were new to him.

"Is Bede mad?" he inwardly said, "or has he lost all control over his wife\'s actions?"

Somebody else, not used to society, was staring on with all the eyes of wonder he possessed. And that was Roland Yorke. Leaning against the wall in a new suit of dress-clothes, with a huge pair of white gloves on that would have been quite the proper thing at Port Natal, stood Roland. Mr. Ollivera, trying to get away from everybody, ran against him. The two were great friends now, and Roland was in the habit of running up to Mr. Ollivera\'s drawing-room at will.

"I say," began Roland, "this is rather strong, is it not?"

"Do you mean the crowd?"

"I mean everything. Some of the girls and women look as if they had forgotten to put their gowns on. Why do they dress in this way?"

"Because they fancy it\'s the fashion, I suppose," replied Mr. Ollivera, drawing down the corners of his thin lips.

"They must have taken the fashion from the Zulu Kaffirs," returned Roland. "When one has been knocked about amidst that savage lot--fought with \'em, too, men and women--one loses superfluous fastidiousness, Mr. Ollivera; but I don\'t think this is right."

Mr. Ollivera intimated that there c............