When Hamish Channing joined the breakfast-table at home that morning at nine o’clock, he mentioned his adventure at the station with Lady Augusta Yorke. It was the first intimation they had received of Roland’s departure; indeed, the first that some of them had heard of his intention to depart.

Arthur laid down his knife and fork. To him alone could the full consequences of the step present themselves, as regarded Mr. Galloway.

“Hamish! he cannot actually have gone?”

“That he is actually off by the train to London, I can certify,” was the reply of Hamish. “Whether he will be off to Port Natal, is another thing. He desired me to tell you, Arthur, that he should write his adieu to you from town.”

“He might have come to see me,” observed Arthur, a shade of resentment in his tone. “I never thought he would really go.”

“I did,” said Hamish, “funds permitting him. If Lord Carrick will supply those, he’ll be off by the first comfortable ship that sails. His mind was so completely bent upon it.”

“What can he think of doing at Port Natal?” inquired Constance, wonderingly.

“Making his fortune.” But Hamish laughed as he said it. “Wherever I may have met him latterly, his whole talk has been of Port Natal. Lady Augusta says he is going to take out frying-pans to begin with.”

“Hamish!”

“She said so, Constance. I have no doubt Roland said so to her. I should like to see the sort of cargo he will lay in for the start.”

“What does Mr. Galloway say to it, I wonder?” exclaimed Arthur, that gentleman’s perplexities presenting themselves to his mind above everything else. “I cannot think what he will do.”

“I have an idea that Mr. Galloway is as yet unaware of it,” said Hamish. “Roland assured me that no person whatever knew of his departure, except Jenkins. He called upon him on his way to the station.”

“Unaware of it!” Arthur fell into consternation great as Mr. Galloway’s, as he repeated the words. Was it possible that Roland had stolen a march on Mr. Galloway? He relapsed into silence and thought.

“What makes you so sad?” Constance asked of Arthur later, when they were dispersing to their several occupations.

“I am not sad, Constance; only thoughtful. I have been carrying on an inward battle,” he added, half laughingly.

“With your conscience?”

“With my spirit. It is a proud one yet, in spite of all I have had to tame it; a great deal more rebellious than I like it to be.”

“Why, what is the matter, Arthur?”

“Constance, I think I ought to come forward and help Mr. Galloway out of this strait. I think my duty lies in doing it.”

“To return to his office, you mean?”

“Yes; until he can see his way out of the wood. But it goes against the grain.”

“Arthur dear, I know you will do it,” she gently said. “Were our duty always pleasant to us, where would be the merit in fulfilling it?”

“I shall do it,” he answered. “To that I have made up my mind. The difficulty is, Constance, to do it with a good grace.”

She looked at him with a loving smile. “Only try. A firm will, Arthur, will conquer even a rebellious spirit.”

Arthur knew it. He knew how to set about it. And a little later, he was on his way to Close Street, with the best grace in the world. Not only in appearance, mind you, but inwardly. It is a GREAT thing, reader, to conquer the risings of a proud spirit! To bring it from its haughty, rebellious pedestal, down to cordiality and love. Have you learnt the way?

Some parchments under his arm, for he had stayed to collect them together, Arthur bounded in to Mr. Galloway’s. The first object his eyes fell on was that shadowy form, coughing and panting. “Oh, Jenkins!” he involuntarily uttered, “what do you do out of your house?”

“Anxiety for me has brought him out,” said Mr. Galloway. “How can I scold him?”

“I could not rest, sir, knowing my master was alone in his need,” cried Jenkins to Arthur. “What is to become of the office, sir, with no one in it?”

“But he is not alone,” said Arthur; and, if he had wanted a reward for coming forward, that moment would have supplied it, in satisfying poor Jenkins. “If you will allow me, sir,” Arthur added, turning frankly to Mr. Galloway, “I will take my place here, until you shall be suited.”

“Thank you,” emphatically replied Mr. Galloway. “It will relieve me from a serious embarrassment.”

Arthur went to his old desk, and sat down on his old stool, and began settling the papers and other things on it, just as though he had not been absent an hour. “I must still attend the cathedral as usual, sir,” he observed to Mr. Galloway; “but I can give you the whole of my remaining time. I shall be better for you than no one.”

“I would rather have you here than any one else, Channing; he”—laying his hand on Jenkins’s shoulder—“excepted. I offered that you should return before.”

“I know you did, sir,” replied Arthur, in a brief tone—one that seemed to intimate he would prefer not to pursue the subject.

“And now are you satisfied?” struck in Mrs. Jenkins to her husband.

“I am more than satisfied,” answered Jenkins, clasping his hands. “With Mr. Arthur in the office, I shall have no fear of its missing me, and I can go home in peace, to die.”

“Please just to hold your tongue about dying,” reprimanded Mrs. Jenkins. “Your business is to get well, if you can. And now I am going to see after a fly. A pretty dance I should have had here, if he had persisted in stopping, bringing him messes and cordials every half-hour! Which would have worn out first, I wonder—the pavement or my shoes?”

“Channing,” said Mr. Galloway, “let us understand each other. Have you come here to do anything there may be to do—out of doors as well as in? In short, to be my clerk as heretofore?”

“Of course I have, sir; until”—Arthur spoke very distinctly—“you shall be able to suit yourself; not longer.”

“Then take this paper round to Deering’s office, and get it signed. You will have time to do it before college.”

Arthur’s answer was to put on his hat, and vault away with the paper. Jenkins turned to Mr. Galloway as soon as they were alone. “Oh, sir, keep him in your office!” he earnestly said. “He will soon be of more value to you than I have ever been!”

“That he will not, Jenkins. Nor any one else.”

“Yes, he will, sir! He will be able to replace you in the chapter house upon any emergency, and I never could do that, you know, sir, not being a gentleman. When you have him to yourself alone, sir, you will see his value; and I shall not be missed. He is steady and thoughtful beyond his years, sir, and every day will make him older.”

“You forget the charge against him, Jenkins. Until he shall be cleared of that—if he can be cleared of it—he will not be of great value to any one; certainly not to me.”

“Sir,” said Jenkins, raising his wan face, its hectic deepening, find his eye lighting, while his voice sunk to a whisper, so deep as to savour of solemnity, “that time will come! He never did it, and he will as surely be cleared, as that I am now saying it! Sir, I have thought much about this accusation; it has troubled me in sleep; but I know that God will bring the right to light for those who trust in Him. If any one ever trusted in God, it is Mr. Arthur Channing. I lie and think of all this, sir. I seem to be so near God, now,” Jenkins went on dreamily, “that I know the right must come to light; that it will come in God’s own good time. And I believe I shall live to see it!”

“You have certainly firm faith in his innocence, Jenkins. How then do you account for his very suspicious manner?”

“It does not weigh with me, sir. I could as soon believe a good wholesome apple-tree would bring forth poison, as that Mr. Arthur would be guilty of a deliberately bad action. Sometimes I have thought, sir, when puzzling over it, that he may be screening another. There’s no telling how it was. I hear, sir, that the money has been returned to you.”

“Yes. Was it he who told you?”

“It was Mr. Roland Yorke who told me, sir. Mr. Roland is another, sir, who has had firm faith in his innocence from the first.”

“Much his faith goes for!” ejaculated Mr. Galloway, as he came back from his private room with a letter, which he handed to Jenkins, who was skilled in caligraphy. “What do you make of it?” he asked. “It is the letter which came with the returned money.”

“It is a disguised hand, sir—there’s no doubt of that,” replied Jenkins, when he had surveyed it critically. “I do not remember to have seen any person write like it.”

Mr. Galloway took it back to his room, and presently a fly drove up with Mrs. Jenkins inside it. Jenkins............