The Park Newton clocks, with more or less unanimity as to time, had just struck ten. It was a February night, clear and frosty, and Lionel Dering sat in his dressing-room in slippered ease, musing by firelight. He had turned out the lamp on purpose; it was too garish for his mood to-night. He was back again in thought at Gatehouse Farm. Again he saw the gray old cottage, with its moss-grown eaves--the cottage that was so ugly outside, but so cosy within. Again he saw the long low sandhills, where they stretched themselves out to meet the horizon, and, in fancy, heard again the low, monotonous plash of the waves, whose melancholy music, heard by day and night, had at one time been as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice. What a quiet, happy time that seemed as he now looked back to it--a time of soft shadows and mild sunshine, with a pensive charm that was all its own, and that was lost for ever in the hour which told him that he was a rich man! Riches! What had riches done for him? He groaned in spirit as he asked himself the question. He could have been happy with Edith in a garret--how happy none but himself could have told--had fortune compelled him to earn her bread and his own by the sweat of his strong right arm.

His musings were interrupted by a knock at the door. "Come in," he called out mechanically; and in there came, almost without, a sound, Dobbs, body-servant to Kester St. George.

"Oh, Dobbs, is that you?" said Lionel, a little wearily, as he turned his head and saw who it was.

"Yes, sir, I have made bold to intrude upon you for a few seconds," said Dobbs, with the utmost deference, as he slowly advanced into the room, rubbing the long lean fingers of one hand softly with the palm of the other. "My master has not yet got back from Duxley, and there\'s nobody about just now."

"Quite right, Dobbs," said Lionel. "Anything fresh to report?"

"Nothing particularly fresh, sir, but I thought that you might perhaps like to see me."

"Very considerate of you, Dobbs, but I am not aware that I have anything of consequence to say to you to-night."

"Thank you, sir," said Dobbs, with a faint smile and an extra rub of his fingers. "Master\'s still very queer, sir. No appetite worth speaking about. Obliged to screw himself up with brandy in a morning before he can finish his toilet. Mutters and moans a good deal in his sleep, sir."

"Mutters in his sleep, does he?" said Lionel. "Have you any idea, Dobbs, what it is that he talks about?"

"I\'ve tried my best to ascertain, sir, but without much success. I have listened and listened for hours, and very cold work it is, sir; but there\'s never more than a word now and a word then that one can make out. Nothing connected--nothing worth recollecting."

"Does Mr. St. George still walk in his sleep?"

"He does, sir, but not very often--not more than two or three times a month."

"Keep your eyes open, Dobbs, and the very next time your master walks in his sleep come to me at once--never mind what hour it may be--and tell me."

"I won\'t fail to do so, sir."

"In these sleep-walking rambles does Mr. St. George always confine himself to the house, or does he ever venture out into the park or grounds?"

"He generally goes out of doors, sir, at such times. Three times out of four he goes as far as the Wizard\'s Fountain, in the Sycamore Walk, stops there for a minute or two, and then walks back home. I have watched him several times."

"The Wizard\'s Fountain, in the Sycamore Walk! What should take him there?"

"Then you know the place, sir?"

"I know it well."

"Can\'t say what fancy takes him there, sir. Perhaps he doesn\'t know hisself."

"In any case, let me know when he next walks in his sleep. I have no further instructions for you to-night, Dobbs."

"Thank you, sir. I have the honour to wish you a very good night, sir."

"Good-night, Dobbs. Keep your eyes open, and report everything to me."

"Yes, sir, yes. You may trust me for doing that, sir." And Dobbs the obsequious bowed himself out.

In his cousin\'s valet Lionel had found an instrument ready to his hand, but it was not till after long hesitation and doubt that he made up his mind to avail himself of it. The necessities of the case at length decided him to do so. No one appreciated the value of a bribe better than Dobbs, or worked harder or more conscientiously to deserve one. There was a crooked element in his character which made whatever money he might earn by indirect means, or by tortuous working, seem far sweeter to him than the honest wages of everyday life. Kester St. George was not the kind of man ever to try to attach his inferiors to himself by any tie of gratitude or kindness. At different times and in various ways he suffered for this indifference, although the present could hardly be considered as a case in point, seeing that it was not in the nature of Dobbs to resist a bribe in whatever shape it might offer itself, and that gratitude was one of those virtues which had altogether been omitted from his composition.

Late one afternoon, a few days after the interview between Lionel and Dobbs, Kester St. George had his horse brought round, and rode out unattended, and without leaving word in what direction he was going, or at what hour he might be expected back. The day was dull and lowering, with fitful puffs of wind, that blew first from one point and then from another, and seemed the forerunners of a coming storm. Buried in his own thoughts, Kester paid no heed to the weather, but rode quickly forward till several miles of country had been crossed. By-and-by he diverged from the main road, and turned his horse\'s head into a tortuous and muddy lane, which, after half an hour\'s bad travelling, landed him on the verge of a wide stretch of brown treeless moor, than which no place could well have looked more desolate and cheerless under the gray monotony of the darkening February afternoon. Kester halted for awhile at the end of the lane to give his horse breathing time. Far as the eye could see, looking forward from the point where he was standing, all was bare and treeless, without one single sign of habitation or life.

"Whatever else may be changed, either with me or the world," he muttered, "the old moor remains just as it was the first day that I can remember it. It was horrible to me at first, but I learned to like it--to love it even, before I left it; and I love it now--to-day--with all its dreariness and monotony. It is like the face of an old friend. You may go away for twenty years, and when you come back you know that you will find on it just the same look that it wore when you went away. Not that I have ever cared to cultivate such friendships," he added, half regretfully. "Well, the next best thing to having a good friend is to have a good enemy, and I can thank heaven for granting me several such."

He touched his horse with the spur, and rode slowly forward, taking a narrow bridle path that led in an oblique direction across the moor. "This ought to be the road if my memory serves me aright," he muttered, "but they are all so much alike, and intersect each other so frequently, that it\'s far more easy to lose one\'s way than to know where one is."

"I suppose I shall have the rough side of Mother Mim\'s tongue when I do find her," he went on. "I\'ve neglected her shamefully, without a doubt. But such ties as the one between her and me become tiresome in the long run. She ought to have died off long ago, but she\'s as tough as leather. Poor devils in this part of the country, that haven\'t a penny to bless themselves with, think nothing of living till they\'re a hundred. Is it a superfluity of ozone, or a want of brains, that keeps them alive so long?"

He rode steadily forward till he had nearly crossed one angle of the moor. At length, but not without some difficulty, he found the place he had come in search of. It was a rudely-built hut--cottage it could hardly be called--composed of mud, and turf, and great boulders all unhewn. Its roof of coarsest thatch was frayed and worn with the wind and rain of many winters. Its solitary door of old planks, roughly nailed together, opened full on to the moor.

At the back was a patch of garden-ground, which was supposed to grow potatoes in the season, but which had never yet been known to grow any that were fit to eat. Mr. St. George looked round with a sneer as he dismounted.

"And it was in this wretched den that I spent the first eight years of my existence!" he muttered. "And the woman whom this place calls its mistress was the first being whom I learned to love! And, faith, I\'m rather doubtful whether I\'ve ever loved anybody half so well since."

Putting his horse\'s bridle over a convenient hook, and dispensing with the ceremony of knocking, Kester St. George lifted the latch, pushed open the door, stooped his head, and went in. Inside the hut everything was in semi-darkness, and Kester stood for a minute with the door in his hand, striving to make out the objects before him.

"Come in and shut the door: I expected you," said a hollow voice from one corner of the room; and the one room, such as it was, comprised the whole hut.

"Is that you, Mother Mim?" asked Kester.

"Ay--who else should it be?" answered the voice. "But come in and shut the door. That cold wind gives me the shivers."

Kester did as he was told, and then made his way to a wretched pallet at the other end of the hut. Of furniture there was hardly any, and the aspect of the whole place was miserable in the extreme. Over the ashes of a wood fire crouched a girl of sixteen, ragged and unkempt, who stared at him with black, glittering eyes as he passed her. Next moment he was standing by the side of a ragged pallet, on which lay the figure of a woman who looked ill almost unto death.

"Why, mother, whatever has been the matter with you?" asked Kester. "A little bit out of sorts, eh? But you\'ll soon be all right again now."

"Yes, I shall soon be all right now--soon be quite well," answered the woman grimly. "A black box and six feet of earth cure everything."

"You mustn\'t talk in that way, mother," said Kester, as he sat down on the only chair in the place, and took one of the woman\'s lean, hot hands in his. "You will live to plague us for many a year to come."

"Kester St. George, this is the last time you and I will meet in this world."

"I hope not, with all my heart," said Kester, feelingly.

"I know what I know, and I know that what I say is true," answered Mother Mim. "You would not have come now if I had not worked a spell strong enough to bring you here even against your will. I worked it four nights ago, at midnight, when that young viper there"--pointing a finger at the girl, who was still cowering over the ashes--"was fast asleep, and there were no eyes to see but those of the cold stars. Ah! but it was horrible! and if it had not been that I felt I must see you before I died, I could never have gone through with it." She paused for a moment, as though overcome by some dreadful recollection. "Then, when it was over, I crept back to bed, and waited quietly, knowing that now you could not choose but come."

"I ought to have come and seen you long ago--I know it--I feel it," said Kester. "But let bygones be bygones, and I give you my solemn promise never to neglect you again. I am rich now, mother, and you shall never want for anything as long as you live."

"Too late--too late!" sighed the woman. "Yes, you\'re rich now, rich enough to bury me, and that\'s all I ask you to do."

"Don\'t talk like that, mother," said Kester.

"If you had only come to see me!" said the woman. "That was all I wanted. Just to see your face, and squeeze your hand, and have you to talk to me for a little while. I wanted none of your money--no, not a single shilling of it. It was only you I wanted."

Kester began to feel slightly bored. He squeezed Mother Mim\'s hand, and then dropped it, but he did not speak.

"But you didn\'t come," moaned the woman, "and you wouldn\'t have come now if I hadn\'t worked a charm to bring you."

"There you wrong me," said Kester, decisively. "Your charm, or spell, or whatever it may have been, had no effect in bringing me here. I came of my own free will."

"Self-conceited, as you always were and always will be," muttered the woman. Then, half raising herself in bed, and addressing the girl, she cried: "Nell, you hussy, just you hook it for a quarter of an hour. The gent and I have something to talk about."

The girl rose sullenly, went slowly out, and banged the door behind her.

Kester wondered what was coming next. He had dropped the woman\'s hand, but she now held it out for him to take again. He took it, and she pressed his hand passionately to her lips three or four times.

"If the great secret of my life is to be told at all on this side the grave, the time t............