Read Ebook: The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century. by Byrn Edward W Edward Wright

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Ebook has 392 lines and 54674 words, and 8 pages

"Unfortunately I know him, and so does our young friend here," said Mr. Stenhouse--"the old fellow who happened to be present when--ah, I see you recollect now! Awkward business, very--and Sir John Armitage himself is a client of yours; how very provoking! I'm afraid you'll have to do something about it, Pouncet; it would not answer you at all to have this affair known."

Mr. Pouncet did not look up; rage and provocation almost beyond bearing had risen within him, but he durst not show them. His very integrity and honour in other matters made the bondage of this one guilt more intolerable; he was enraged to be compelled to bow to it, but he dared not resist.

"The matter can be easily arranged, if Mr. Pouncet does not object to the cost," said Horace, trying the new r?le of peacemaker.

"My dear fellow, compose yourself; it is too late for that; and, besides, it is you who are endangered," said the bland Mr. Stenhouse; "think of your own interest, my excellent friend."

Mr. Pouncet immediately betook himself to his papers as before, turning them over rapidly; he made no answer; habit had accustomed him to the civil taunts of Stenhouse--but he could not bear the same insulting inferences from a new voice.

"There is a very easy way of managing the matter," said Horace, once more; "the man is old, and has been long in your service. He lost his son in an accident at the pit two years ago; it is perfectly practicable to pension him on that account."

"And leave him free to seek another pension on the other," said Mr. Stenhouse; "won't do: no--they are rapacious, those people; that would only rouse his appetite, the old rogue. A man who gets one thing easily always hankers for another. He'd try Sir John immediately, and double his terms. No, no; if he gets anything, he must understand distinctly what he gets it for. If I were you, Pouncet, I'd lose no time, either. He can't live long, that's one good thing."

"I never have bribed any man!" cried Mr. Pouncet, vehemently--"I'll not begin now. I don't mind doing my share for any old servant; but I--I can't stand this, Stenhouse! What do you mean by turning it all on me?"

"Simply because he can do me no harm, my dear fellow," said the smiling Mr. Stenhouse. "Stop now! don't let us get impatient; here is our young friend has something to say."

Mr. Stenhouse was already benevolently aware that the remarks of "our young friend" were gall and bitterness to his old partner, and perhaps if anything could have made Horace's new patron more gracious, it was this fact.

"I was about to say," said Horace, with a little eagerness, "that the old man believes me a friend of the young Squire, as he calls him, and that I am quite willing to be made the channel of communication with him. If you trust it to me, he shall never know that the money does not come from Roger Musgrave; and my own opinion is that this will be the best arrangement. If he wants more money, at least he will come to you to seek it, and not to--"

The young man stopped short prudently, and went no further. Mr. Pouncet could not bear the emphasis upon that you, or the look of personal appeal which accompanied it, at least from any one but his old partner. He got up abruptly, and pushed his chair from the table.

"Stenhouse, will you settle this business? I'll agree to your decision," he said, pushing hastily away. "I've--I've got an appointment at twelve o'clock. I'm rather too late already; you can settle it without me."

Mr. Stenhouse smiled as he went, and so did Horace, almost without being aware of it. They had both a certain pleasure in the sufferings of their victim--a pure amateur enjoyment, entirely distinct from any consideration of advantage; however, they settled the matter between them easily and rapidly enough. To be liberal with another man's means is no difficult matter. Mr. Stenhouse arranged that a sum sufficient for a year's stipend to the old pitman, at his own terms of ten shillings a-week, should be paid into the hands of Horace, who undertook to dispense it; and Horace, on his part, lost no time in demanding from his new employer a few days' leave of absence before proceeding to his post. Mr. Stenhouse was very curious to know why this sudden permission was asked from him--so curious, that he granted it only on condition that Horace should first be settled in his office, and ascertain the nature of his new duties. After he had spent a week in Harliflax, perhaps he might be spared for another week; and as he was going to London, as he said, why, Harliflax was so much nearer London than Kenlisle, and indeed on the way. With which decision Horace chafing considerably, but compelled to assent, had no alternative but to declare himself satisfied. It was so arranged accordingly. Mr. Pouncet, when he returned, put his name to the required check, which certainly committed him to nothing, and might indeed appear nothing but a gratuity to the clerk who was about to leave him; and Horace put twenty pounds out of the six-and-twenty in his own pocket. Not that he meant to defraud the pitman, or anybody else, but he was completely indifferent whether the money he used for his own immediate purposes was his own, or Mr. Pouncet's, or the property of old Adam. He made full arrangement to have the weekly stipend paid to the old miner. He saw him indeed, paid him the first instalment himself, and persuaded the poor pensioner that his own bounty was the immediate source of this little income; his own bounty, subject to the approval of the young Squire. Then having done this Christian office, and procured for the ungrateful Mr. Pouncet the unwilling virtue of doing good by stealth, Horace, with Mr. Pouncet's twenty pounds in his pocket, started on his journey to Harliflax, full of hope, ambition, and expectation, with Doctors' Commons and the unknown will occupying most of his thoughts. But a week--no more--and he should know what was his "singular and unhappy fortune," and what the mysterious document which was supposed to have influenced him in his earliest childhood, and had broken all ties of nature between himself and his father, actually was.

Mr. Stenhouse, whatever his motive or purpose might be, received Horace, on his arrival at Harliflax, where the lawyer had preceded his new clerk by a few days, with great civility and kindness. Perhaps Mr. Stenhouse was not much more beloved in his present residence than he had been in Kenlisle; but he was now a man of some wealth and importance, and his house had other attractions, which kept "society" in Harliflax on very good terms with him. The lawyer's household was a little out of the common order of such dwelling-places. It was divided by a singular separation, but not divided against itself. Two distinct and incompatible phases of life went on within its walls; but the one displayed no antagonism, and fought no battles with the other; and any Quixote who had chosen to take up arms for a wife neglected and a mother set aside, would have been as completely in the wrong as ever Quixote was. The family consisted of three daughters, aged from fifteen to nineteen, and of one boy, a child five years younger than his youngest sister, a hopeless little invalid, born to suffering. The girls were the daylight surface of the family, the pride of their father, and the supreme influence in the house. Two of them were pretty, the eldest as near beautiful as it could fall to the fate of an imperfectly educated provincial belle to be; and all three expensive and extravagant to the very verge of their means and opportunities. Over such a trio of young uncontrollable spirits--and the Misses Stenhouse were innocent of sentiment, and neither had nor pretended any devotion for their mother--the nervous and timid woman who was the nominal mistress of the lawyer's house could exercise no sway. Years ago, when Amelia, the beauty, was but just beginning to be conscious of her own perfections, and to assert herself accordingly, Mrs. Stenhouse had retired from the contest. The lovely young termagant had scarcely put off her last pinafore, when she found herself triumphant mistress of the drawing-room, while her mother fell back upon that never-failing interest and occupation which the poor woman wept over and believed one of the sorest afflictions of her life, but which was in fact its great preservative--the illness and weakness of her boy. Little Edmund and she lived together in a touching and perfect unity in the comfortable parlour downstairs, while the young ladies entertained their own friends and enjoyed their own pleasures above. Perhaps Mrs. Stenhouse did not do her duty by consenting to this tacit arrangement; but, like most weak people, she was so perfectly convinced that she could not help herself, that she was quite unable for the task from which she shrank, and would have done her daughters more harm than good by keeping up an unavailing contest, that her conscience did not disturb her in the loving performance of her other duty, her unwearied care of little Edmund, from which nothing ever diverted or withdrew the entire heart of his mother. This invisible fireside in the back parlour, where Edmund, despotic and imperious as only a child-invalid can be, tyrannized over his constant companion, and shared every thought she had, seemed no very important influence in the family to a cursory observer; but the household itself was perfectly aware that any distinct desire proceeding thence from little Edmund's sharp, high-pitched, childish voice, was law even to Edmund's father; and that the decrepid child, who did not even particularly appreciate or return his affection, was the very apple of that father's eye; his son, his heir, his representative; though nobody, save the two most deeply interested, the father and mother, believed or expected that the child could ever live to be a man.

This second domestic centre of Mr. Stenhouse's affections and interests was, however, invisible and unknown to Horace Scarsdale, when the unusual distinction of an invitation to dinner opened his employer's house to him a day or two after his arrival. He saw, it is true, the silent mother seated at the head of the table, nervously and quietly impatient of the time occupied there; and he observed that she disappeared from the drawing-room very early in the evening, and took little or no part in what was going on there. But Horace had neither eyes nor curiosity for Mrs. Stenhouse: he was more agreeably occupied. He who entered the lawyer's house with all his usual disdainful indifference--except in so far as they might serve him--to the people whom he was about to meet, had encountered a new influence, which proved too much for him at that undreaded table. All unprepared and unarmed as he was, a sudden and alarming accident, altogether beyond his calculations and out of his reckoning, happened to Horace; the young man fell in love!

This extraordinary and unexpected event took Horace much by surprise. It was the first time in his life that he had not scorned womankind and all its influences; but Amelia Stenhouse was an entirely new development of feminity. She was very--extremely handsome, in the first place, and she was authoritative and imperious, and had a kind of wit which her beauty made brilliant and successful. Used to homage and admiration, accustomed to believe that it became her, and was her privilege to do unusual things and make unusual speeches, and audaciously confident in her own powers, she shone upon Horace like a new species unknown and undiscovered before; and the contrast offered by her exuberant beauty, "dash," and presumption, was irresistibly piquant to the brother of Susan, on whom a tamer and sweeter beauty might have shone for years in vain. Horace neither knew the moment nor the means by which that amazing accident befell him; but it had happened long before the other people had eaten their dinner, transcending such common earthly occupations as much in speed as in importance. Neither did he know how the evening passed, in his sudden and strange intoxication. His new passion partook of the nature of all sublime and primitive emotions, so far, at least, as to blot out the little cross-bars of time from the young man's consciousness, and blur these hours into one exciting moment. He was transported even out of himself--a more remarkable result--and turned his back upon Mr. Stenhouse, and forgot his own interest, in devouring with his eyes, and pursuing with his attentions, this new star called Amelia, whom already--arrogant even in his love--he determined upon appropriating, however she or any one else might choose to object.

Uncareful of either etiquette or propriety, Horace stayed as long as he could stay, and only took his leave at length in obedience to hints which there was no mistaking. He went downstairs hurriedly, wrapt in his dream, all the air before him filled with two objects, intensely visible, and eclipsing all the world besides; which two objects were, Amelia Stenhouse, and that unknown document in Doctors' Commons which was to reveal to Horace his fate; when his course was suddenly and singularly interrupted. He had just reached the foot of the staircase, when a door was timidly opened, a glow of firelight came flushing into the hall, and the quiet little woman to whom he had been presented a few hours before, but whose voice he had not yet heard, stood doubtful and hesitating before him. Only for a moment, however, for, urged by an exclamation from within, Mrs. Stenhouse hastily addressed the stranger: "Mr. Scarsdale! Oh, come in here for a moment, please!" she cried nervously. Taken by surprise, and scarcely knowing what he did, Horace followed her. The room was very warm, carpeted and curtained into a sort of noiseless, airless luxury, which was half suffocating to the healthy and vigorous senses of the unwilling visitor; and near the fire, in an easy-chair, sat a small boy, pale-faced and sharp-featured, restlessly wide awake, as children are when kept up beyond their usual hour, and full of eagerness about something, with a whole volume of questions in his face. This was the little hermit of the luxurious seclusion into which Horace, who knew nothing about the boy, and had not even heard of his existence, was thus mysteriously introduced. The little fellow measured his visitor with those sharp inquisitive eyes, and addressed another adjuration to his mother. Edmund's "Now, mamma!" exclaimed somewhat impatiently, acted like a spur upon the timid woman. She started, and tremulously began a string of confused yet eager questions.

"Oh, Mr. Scarsdale! I beg your pardon! They told me you came from Kenlisle," cried Mrs. Stenhouse. "There is some one near there--Yes, Edmund, darling! wait an instant. Some one who--his name is Roger Musgrave. Did you ever hear of him? Do you know him? Could you give me any news of my--of--of--the young gentleman? Perhaps you may have heard of Tillington Grange, if you know the country. Do you think they have heard anything there of--of--. Oh, I beg your pardon! it is too much to expect that you should know."

"I used to know Roger Musgrave very well," said Horace. "I lived near Tillington when I was a boy."

"Oh, my darling child, the gentleman will be angry! He's a sad invalid, Mr. Scarsdale; everybody indulges him," cried poor Mrs. Stenhouse. "Pray, pray, don't be displeased!"

"He's a good deal bigger than me," said Horace, half amused, and half spiteful, answering the question with an involuntary grudge, and increased impulse of dislike to poor Roger, whose additional inches--poor advantage though that was--it galled him for the moment to remember.

The child clapped his hands. "How much?" he cried, with a little childish shout of triumph. The sight would have been touching enough to any one who had the heart to be moved by it. But Horace saw nothing that was not ludicrous in the poor little dwarfish invalid's eager and exultant curiosity about the size and strength of his unknown brother. He laughed in spite of himself.

"About two inches, perhaps," he said; "I have not heard anything of Musgrave lately," he continued, turning to the mother; "you know, perhaps, that he enlisted and went abroad; but I have an uncle--Colonel Sutherland, you may have heard of him--who took poor Roger up; he is very likely to know."

The scant civility and supercilious tone of this reply lost all its effect upon Mrs. Stenhouse from the name contained in it--"Colonel Sutherland! Oh, Edmund, darling! the dear old Colonel who was so kind to Roger!" she said, with tears in her eyes; "and to think a relation of his should come here! Oh, Mr. Scarsdale, if there is anything we can do for you, I or my poor boy , you have only to say it--oh, thank you, thank you, a hundred times! My dearest child, it is very late, we must not keep Mr. Scarsdale longer to-night; another time perhaps he will come in and see us and tell us more. Good night, good night! Say good night, darling, to the gentleman; and thank you a hundred times, Mr. Scarsdale. I am so very, very glad you have come here!"

Saying which, Mrs. Stenhouse preceded her visitor to the street-door, and opened it for him with her own trembling hands.

He went away with a smile on his lip; but it was only a smile of momentary ridicule, and bore no kindly meaning. That sad little secret romance of domestic life had neither charm nor sentiment for Horace. Without discovering what was in it, he plunged back into his own novel passion and excitement, in which, as was sufficiently natural, the young man passed that night and the remainder of his week in Harliflax as in a rapid and exciting dream. Falling in love was no softening enchantment for Horace; it did not involve affection, or respect, or tenderness, those sentiments and principles which act upon a man's whole nature. It made no difference on his opinion of other people, or his dealings with other people, that he had fallen in love with Amelia Stenhouse. No sweet imaginations of home or hearth clung round the object of his sudden passion; he neither endowed herself with imaginary perfections, nor thought better of his neighbours, for her sake; but still, according to his nature, he was "in love." His thoughts burned and glowed about the lawyer's beautiful daughter; he wanted her, without inquiring what, or what manner of spirit she was--a sturdy principle of love on the whole, and one which perhaps wears better than a more sentimental preference; but its immediate influence upon Horace was not particularly elevating. If it had been necessary, however, to fix and intensify his anxious curiosity concerning that unknown document in Doctors' Commons, this sudden attachment was the sharpest spur which could have been applied; for here alone lay the means by which the beauty might be appropriated and taken possession of. And every circumstance concurred to convince Horace of the importance of the discovery he had made at Marchmain. He saw the position of affairs there without any mistake or self-deception; perceived, with perfect clearness, that the letter which he had taken had been missed from his father's desk, and coolly contented himself with the knowledge that Susan had been banished from home for his fault. "So much the better for Susan," he said to himself, with entire composure; and it did not trouble him in the least that both Susan and Peggy must be quite aware who was the real criminal. He hoped, indeed, to be able very shortly to make the consequences of that theft apparent enough; for in all Horace's calculations the thought of some immediate issue followed without pause his investigation of the will. The impatience of youth and inexperience--mingling with all the calculations and designs of his unyouthful and ungenerous intelligence, the foresight and cold selfishness of age--made his very imaginations covetous and grasping; but the youth in his veins betrayed him into dreams of a conclusion as rapid as it was brilliant. He could form his schemes with all the coolness of an old man, but he could not wait for his fortune; like a young man, he was determined to have it now.

This point accordingly was one on which he concluded without doubt or hesitation. He did not know what fortune might have in store for him; he could not tell what mysterious inheritance lay waiting, till he should make his momentous discovery; but he felt convinced that to enter upon the immediate enjoyment of these unknown and concealed riches he had but to find this secret out. With all the cold blood of age, totally careless and indifferent to any results which did not affect himself, he leapt at the rapid conclusion of youth, and found wealth, love, and luxury in a sudden windfall of extraordinary fortune. So, happily unaware of his own inconsistency, Horace lived in a fever through the few tedious days which he was obliged to spend in Harliflax, in the monotonous occupations of Mr. Stenhouse's office, with only one other glimpse of Amelia before he could start on his important journey. Steady though his selfish intelligence was, the hours danced and buzzed over him in a dizzy whirl. He stood on the threshold of a dazzling and splendid fortune, the future of a fairy tale. He stood like a knight of romance, with his lady's name upon his lips, impatient to enter the charmed gateway, and read in the enchanted scroll the secret of his fate; but the talisman which should roll back these solemn gates of the future was no spell for the lips of a true knight; and romantic as his position might be, Horace Scarsdale occupied it in no romantic frame of mind. The romance of his attitude was all unwitting and unwilling, the work of circumstances. And it was not to conquer fortune, but to hunt for a cruel bit of paper, that, burning with suppressed eagerness, he set out for that London which to him meant only Doctors' Commons, bent upon two ideas which occupied his whole being--Amelia Stenhouse and the Will.

"Had Horace anything to do with Mr. Musgrave, uncle?" she asked, somewhat timidly.

"Eh? Horace? Not that I am aware of," said the Colonel; "but your brother, my love, is inscrutable, and might have to do with the Rajah of Sarawak, for anything I know."

"I never heard they were friends," said Susan, musingly. "I wonder what Horace could mean? You would have thought he was managing something for Mr. Musgrave, to hear how he spoke to that old man; and he told me--oh!" cried Susan, stopping abruptly, growing very red, and looking somewhat scared, in Uncle Edward's face.

"What, my dear child?" said the benign Colonel, with a smile.

"Oh, uncle! he told me not to tell you," said Susan, with a mixture of fright and boldness. "It must have been something wrong."

"Then perhaps you had better not tell me," said Uncle Edward, rather gravely. "I should be sorry to have a suspicion of either Roger or Horace. Never tell anything that seems to be wrong until you are sure of it, Susan. It may be safe enough to praise upon slight grounds, but never, my dear, to blame."

"That is how you treat me, Uncle Edward," said Susan, looking up brightly with recovered courage--"but this is different. What could anybody have to tell Mr. Musgrave, uncle, which would be worth paying a pension or an annuity for?--ten shillings a-week the old man said; and he was going to Armitage Park, but Horace would not let him. Horace seemed to be managing it all, as if it was for the young Squire: he said so even in words. Uncle, I wonder what it could be?"

"A pension of ten shillings a-week!" exclaimed Colonel Sutherland. The old man reddened with a painful colour. Unsuspicious of evil as he was, he had lived long in the world, and knew its darker side. The first idea which occurred to him was that of some youthful vice which this payment was to hide; and he was grieved to his heart.

"It sounded like--" said Susan, who was perfectly ignorant of her auditor's thoughts, and innocently went on pursuing her own--"it sounded like as if something had been found out about Mr. Musgrave's property or something, and that it would do him good, and that he would be so thankful to hear it that he would give the money directly; and Horace must have thought so, too, for he promised to get it for the old man. I wonder what could have been found out; for all the land was sold--was it not, uncle?--and Mr. Musgrave was poor."

"I doubt if he has ten shillings a-week for himself of his own," said the Colonel, hastily.

"Then, uncle, something must have been found out!" cried Susan--"I am sure of it, from the way the old man spoke; and Horace promised to get him the pension, and would not let him go to Armitage. That was a little strange, wasn't it?--because Sir John, you told me, uncle, was Mr. Musgrave's great friend, and I never believed that Horace even knew him until that day."

"Odd enough, to be sure. I did not know it either, Susan. They don't look much like a pair of friends," said the puzzled Colonel; "and your brother--hum--Horace is very clever, my dear," said Uncle Edward, with a grieved look, and a slight sigh. He did not want to think any harm of his nephew, but the old man could not make the young schemer out.

"I hope, uncle, it is not anything very wrong," said Susan, faltering a little.

An hour or two later Colonel Sutherland came into the drawing-room, where Susan sat at work, with her thoughts busy about this matter. The old soldier loitered about, poking his gray moustache into the pretty bookshelves, as though he had suddenly grown short-sighted, and impending with the stoop habitual to his deafness over Susan's chair. He had something to say, but was reluctant to say it, lest he should wound, even by implication, the feelings of his young guest.

He looked at her doubtfully from under his gray eyebrows, laying a caressing hand upon her hair. He was afraid she would not like this proposal, and still more afraid that, alarmed in the quick and tender pride of family affection, she would guess and resent his suspicion of her brother. But Susan looked up quickly, without any shade of offence upon her face, which, however, had become very grave.

"I am afraid of Horace, uncle," she said, simply and sadly; "he is my own brother, and it is dreadful to say so; but I am not sure of him, as you are of my cousins. Since I think of it, I am afraid it is something wrong."

"Then you do not object, and I may write to Armitage?" said Uncle Edward. "Thank you, my dear child; perhaps we shall find it all a mistake, and Horace the most upright of us all. I trust so; he is very clever, Susan, and clever boys are sometimes tempted into scheming--eh? And besides, poor fellow, he has had little justice in his own life. I will write, then, my love, and I hope everything will come perfectly clear."

But here stood the facts, certain and unchangeable. Fortune, as dazzling as he had ever hoped for, lay within Horace's sight, his lawful inheritance; but between him and that glorious vision stood the black figure of the disinherited--his father, through whose lineal hands the family wealth ought to have flowed. What did he live for--that unhappy, solitary man?--what was the good of an existence which dragged its melancholy days out after such a fashion? Horace understood now what was the meaning of "posthumous punishment and vengeance," and what bitter effect the disappointed man had given to his father's cruel will; but the heir was not sorry for the hermit of Marchmain. Pity found no entrance into the self-absorbed mind of Horace; he saw his own position merely and no other, and thought as little of Mr. Scarsdale's lifelong tragedy as if the recluse had been a wooden image; a scarecrow to keep him off his enchanted land. Yet something more; though he resisted it, the dark thought would return to increase the turmoil of his mind. His father was still young, a strong man in the vigour and flush of life. Again and again that dark red flush rose to the young man's cheek, and the dew hung heavy on his forehead. Ten years, twenty years--who could prophesy how long that dreary life might hang and linger out yonder on the dreary moor? The good, the just, the lives most loved and prized, fade out of human ways; but the man accursed and excommunicated lives on. This man, perhaps, whose death would scarcely call a tear to any eye, would die most likely a very patriarch of disappointment, hatred, and misery; while his son, the heir, lingered out the blossom of his life in daily drudgery, unconsidered and poor.

This idea pertinaciously clinging to his mind might have crazed a better heart than that of Horace; him it persecuted with a shuddering chill of inarticulate suggestions which paled his cheeks, yet stirred his mind with the wild excitement of temptation and crime. Crime! he was familiar enough with wickedness; but that ruffian whispering in his ear sickened him to the heart, yet moved his pulses with a tingle of passion. Wealth beyond his reckoning, power, riches, and Amelia, and only one desolate life standing between his strong arm and that threefold prize. The whisper which horrified him, but which he still listened to, stole into his heart as he went on; he had not closed his door against it. Already a fiercer excitement than he had ever known grew upon him and consumed him: he was innocent--he had never lifted his hand against life, nor shed blood; yet the passion and horror took hold upon him as if he were already guilty. How the hours and miles of his journey passed he was ignorant; when he had mechanically alighted at Harliflax he called himself fool not to have gone on; on, he did not know why, to that charmed spot, charmed by enmity and hostile passions, where his father, his hinderer, the bitter obstacle between him and fortune, dragged through his melancholy days. There was no influence upon the miserable young man to dispel the gloom of incipient murder from his heart; his very love, such as it was, urged him instead of staying him. He went on to the lodging which he had left yesterday with such different thoughts, in a brooding fit of hatred and disgust with himself and everybody else, afraid of the dreadful thought which made his pulses leap and his veins tingle, yet yielding to its fierce excitement, and permitting its fire of hideous temptation to light his path. A ghastly light; but it strung his nerves so high, and excited his mind so intensely, that by-and-bye the intoxicating influence was all that he was aware of, and the idea growing familiar ceased to horrify him. What was it?--but not even in the deepest silence could the coward crime shape itself into words. It was there, and he knew it. That was enough for the devil who had led, and the spirit which followed. He went through the darkness and the peaceful streets with this deadly inspiration within him; his thoughts hovering like so many spies, and closing in dark battalions round the house on the moor, where childhood and youth had passed for Horace. He had still almost a week's freedom--what was he to do?

When Horace arrived at his lodgings he found two letters awaiting him, which gave a momentary diversion to the dark current of his thoughts. One of them was from Colonel Sutherland, being an innocent device of that innocent old soldier to draw a candid and frank reply out of his nephew's uncandid soul. Out of his dismal passion and murderous thoughts Horace came down to something like his old everyday contempt of other people, as he read his uncle's letter, which ran thus:--

"MY DEAR HORACE--I have lately learnt by accident that you know Roger Musgrave, which I was not aware of; and as the youth has interested me very much, I would gladly know what you, with your superior penetration, think and know of him. I will tell you frankly what makes me wish this. Susan had begun to tell me of some encounter of yours with an old man at the railway, in which mention was made of young Musgrave, when she suddenly remembered that you did not wish her to mention it. This, of course, as you will suppose, knowing the nature of garrulous old men and gossips like myself, made me ten times more curious, and I managed to get out of Susan some vague story about a pension and something that had been found out. Susan is ignorant as a girl should be of a young man's follies, but I unfortunately know better. I wish you would tell me, if you can without breaking confidence, the rights of this story, and whether it is to hide some youthful sin that Musgrave is expected to pay somebody a pension. If it should be so, believe me, my dear boy, who know life and the world, that it is far better to tell all. Pay the money if need be, but hide nothing; it is fatal policy, trust an old man's word.

"Susan is very well and happy with me, where I hope you will come and see this flown bird, and where we have always a bed and a welcome for my sister's son. Come when you can--the sooner the better; and while this unfortunate difference lasts between you and your father, it would give me great pleasure, my dear boy, if you would look upon Milnehill as your home.

"Affectionately your uncle, "E. SUTHERLAND."

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