seemed to know God. Who but him had created that divine consciousness! The whole human mother was roused in me for my uncle. I was a very tigress of love over him. I would die exulting to save him from hurt! The dying would not hurt me! The worm was welcome to swallow me if that would kill it. My being was a well of loving pity, pouring itself out over that trembling hand. He took up the letter, handed it to me, and turned away his face with a groan. I left the room in a strange exaltation the exaltation of merest love. I went to the study; no other place was fit; and there I read the letter. Here it is. Having transcribed it I shall destroy it. me "SIK,- If you persist in coming between a woman and her son, who will blame the mother if she cast aside forbearance! I would have spared you as hitherto; I will spare you no longer. You little thought who I was when you crossed - how near was the only one in the world in whose power you lay-she who could let the world know what you are! I would perish everlastingly rather than permit one of my blood to marry one of yours. My words are strong; you are welcome to call them unladylike; but you shall not doubt what I mean. You know perfectly that, if I went this moment and denounced you as a murderer, I could prove what I said; and as to my silence for so many years, that I am able thoroughly to explain. I shall give you no further warning. My son is gone to London; you know where he is; if he is not in my house within two days, I shall take the steps necessary to your arrest. I have made up my mind. "LUCRETIA CAIRNEDGE." "A lie, as wicked as herself! My uncle! The best and gentlest of men, a murderer! I laughed aloud in my indignation and wrath. But though the woman was a liar, she must have something to say with a show of truth! Else how should she dare attempt intimidation with such a man? And how, otherwise, could her threat have so wrought upon my uncle? What could she have to say? What was the some thing on which she founded her lie? That was what my uncle was going to tell me! I was nowise alarmed at the thought of his story. I feared no revelation that would lower him in my eyes. No, thank God, I was not false to my uncle! But I little thought what a terrible tale it would prove, or how long it would be before I knew it. I ran down the stair with the vile missive in my hand. " If "The wicked woman!" I cried. she be John's mother, I don't care! She's a devil and a liar!" "Hush, hush, little one!" said my uncle, with a smile in which the sadness seemed to intensify the sweetness; "you do not know anything against her! You do not know that she is a liar!" "There are things, uncle, one knows without knowing!" "What if I said she was not a liar?" "I should say people can lie without telling lies; my uncle is not what she says. "But men have repented, and grown so different would not know them; how you can you tell it has not been so with me? I may have been a bad man once and grown better!" "I know you are trying to prepare me for what you think will be a shock, uncle,” I answered; "but I want no preparing. Out with your worst! I defy you!" Ah, me, confident! But I had not to repent of confidence. my My uncle gave a great sigh. There seemed nothing for him now but tell all. He shrank visibly from the task. He put his hand over his eyes, and said slowly, which you know next to nothing. Not "You belong to a world, little one, of Satan only has fallen as lightning from heaven!" He lay silent so long that I was strained to speak again. "Well, uncle dear," I said, not going to tell me?" 66 con "6 are you 'I cannot," he answered. There was absolute silence for, I should think, about twenty minutes. I could not and would not urge him to speak. What right had I to rouse a killing effort! He was not bound to tell me anything! I mourned only the impossibility of doing my best for him while in ignorance, poor as that best might be. "Do not think, my darling," he said at last, and laid his hand on my head as I knelt beside him, "that I have the least difficulty in trusting you; it is only in telling you. I would trust you with my eternal soul. You must understand there is something terrible to tell, for would I not otherwise laugh to scorn the threat of that bad woman? There can hardly be on the earth one who has less right to say what she knows. And I am compelled to share a secret with her! If I say more now, my heart will burst. But why should it not burst? It would be the easiest way out of - yes, I think, out of all my trouble! Believe me, little one, if any ever needed God, I need him. I desire from him the pardon that goes hand in hand with righteous judgment, the pardon of him who alone is able to make lawful and right excuse." 66 May God himself be your judge, uncle, and neither man nor woman! "I don't think you would altogether condemn me, little one, much and greatly as I condemn myself - terribly as I deserve condemnation." "Condemn you, uncle! I want to know all just to show you that nothing can make the least difference with me. If you were as bad as that bad woman would have you, there is one of your own blood who knows what love means. But I know you are good, uncle, whatever you may have done. know, too, that you never were wicked as that woman would make the world believe-out of hatred because I am yours and you take my part." 66 I Little one, you comfort me," sighed my uncle. "I cannot tell you this thing, for when I had told it, I should want to kill myself more than ever. But neither can I bear that you should not know it. will not have a secret with that woman! I have always intended to tell you everything. I have the whole fearful story set down for your eyes-and those of any you may wish to see it; I cannot speak the words into your ears. The paper I will give you now; but you will not open it until I give you leave." "Certainly not, uncle." "If I should die before you have read it, I permit and desire you to read it. I know your loyalty so well, that I believe you would not look at it even after my death, if I had not given you leave before it. There are those who have so little belief that their friends are alive after they are out of sight, that they treat them as if they had no more right in anything, and at once do the thing they know that of all things they disliked. They think they do not know it, and that is for them enough. They dismiss them tell them to get away to Hades, and trouble them no more. But you would never be like that to your uncle, little one! When the time comes for you to read my story, remember that I now, in foresight and preparation for the knowledge that will give you, ask you to pardon me then for all the trouble that what you read will bring into your life and that of your husband - John being that husband. I have tried to do my best for you. How much better I might have done with a clear conscience, God only knows. It may be that I was the tenderer uncle that I could not be a better one." He hid his face in his hands, and burst into a tempest of weeping. It was terrible to see the man to whom I had all my life looked with a reverence that prepared me for knowing the great father, weeping like a bitterly repentant and self-abhorrent child. It seemed sacrilege to be present. My eyes for seeing him thus, deserved the ravens to pick them out. I could not contain myself. I rose and threw my arms about him, got close to him as a child to her mother, and, as soon as the passion of my love would let me, sobbed out, "Uncle darling uncle! I love you more than ever! I did not know before that I could love you so much! I could kill that woman with my own hands! I wish I had killed her when I had her down that day! It is well to kill poisonous creatures; she is worse than any snake!" He smiled a sad little smile and shook his head. Then first I seemed to understand a little. A dull flash went through me. I drew back a little and gazed at him. My eyes fixed themselves on his, and I stared with my mouth open. He had ceased to weep, and was regarding me with calm, responding eyes. "You don't mean, uncle 66 Yes, little one, I do. That woman was the cause, in great measure the conscious and wilful cause of the action for which she threatens to denounce me. And you will marry her son, and be her daughter-in-law ! " I sprang from him. My proximity was a pollution to him while he believed such a thing of me. I stood up and said, 66 Never, uncle, never! Can you think it of one who loves you as I love you? I will denounce her! She will be hanged, and we shall all be comfortable." "And John?" said my uncle. "John must look after himself," I cried fiercely. "Because he chooses to have such a mother, am I to bring my uncle a hair's-breadth nearer to her? Not for any man that ever was born! John must discard his mother, or he and I are as we were. He said she should never cross his threshold but at my invitation; death will come to her one day; my invitation never! | uncle's conscience, already overburdened, She is a hyena, a shark a monster! Un- the misery of having kept two lovely lovcle, she is a devil! — I don't care! It is ers apart? I will tell you what I have true; and what is true is the right thing resolved upon. I will have no more seto say. I will go to her, and tell her the crets from you, Orba. Oh, how I thank truth to her face!" you, dearest, for not casting me off!" I turned and made for the door. My heart felt as big as the biggest man's. "If she kill you, little one," said my uncle quietly," I shall be left with nobody to take care of me!" I burst into fresh tears. I saw that I was a fool, and could do nothing. Then I thought of John. "Poor fellow, to have such a mother!' I said. Then in a rage of rebellion I cried, "I don't believe she is his mother. Is it possible now, uncle- does it stand to reason, that such a pestilence of a woman should ever have borne such a child as my John? I don't, I can't, I won't believe it!" "I'm afraid there are other mysteries in the world quite as hard to explain," replied my uncle. "I confess, if I had known who was his mother, I should have been far from ready to yield to his wishes." "What does it matter?" I said, with a sigh that seemed to tear my heart out. "Of course I shall not marry him!" "Not marry him, child?" returned my uncle. "What are you thinking of? Is the poor fellow to suffer for, as well as by, the sins of his mother?" "If you think, uncle, that I will bring you into any kind of relation with that horrible woman, if the worst of it were only that you would have to see her once because she was my husband's mother, you are mistaken. Still less will I have her for my sake seek revenge on you. She to threaten you if you did not send back her son, as if John were a horse you had stolen! You have been the angel of God about me all the days of my life, but even to please you, I cannot consent to despise myself.' "She shall not hurt me. I will take care of myself for your sakes. Your life shall not be clouded by any scandal about your uncle." "How are you to prevent it, uncle dear? Fulfil her threat or not, she would be sure to talk!" "When she sees it can nowise serve her purpose, she will hardly risk possible reprisals.' "She will certainly not risk them when she finds we have said good-bye." "But how would that serve me, little one? What would you heap on your I threw myself on my knees by his bed. 66 "Uncle," I cried, my heart ready to break with the effort to show itself, "if I did not love you more than ever, I should deserve to be cast out, and trodden under foot. What do you think of doing? "I shall leave the country, not to return while the woman lives." "I'm ready, uncle. At least shall be in a few minutes." "But hear me out, little one," he said, with a smile of genuine pleasure; "you don't know half my plan yet. How am I to live abroad, if my property go to rack and ruin? Listen, and don't say anything till I've done; I have no time to lose. I must get up at once. As soon as I am on board at Dover for Paris, you and John must get yourselves married the first possible moment, and settle down here to make the best of the little property you can, and send me what you can spare. I shall not want much to wait upon till it please God to take me. I know you will be good to Martha." "John may take your place if he will. It would be far better than going back to his mother. For me, I am going with my uncle. Why, uncle, I should be miserable in John's arms, and you out of the country for our sakes! Is there to be nobody in the world but husbands, forsooth! I should love John ever so much more away with you and my duty, than if I had him with me, and you were a wanderer. How happy I shall be, thinking of John, and taking care of you! He let me run on, and made no objec tion. When I stopped at length, "In any case," he said, with a smile, we cannot do much till I am up and drest!" 1 contents would shake about in the conti- | I knew that what John would like, would As I made these preparations, I felt mortified to think we should be so far in the power of Lady Cairnedge that she could drive us from our home. But exile was escape from her. Very likely I should never marry John; that I would not heed; he would be mine all the same; but to promise that I would not marry him, because it suited her plans to marry him to some one else—that I would not do to save my life. I would have done it to save my uncle's, but our exile would render it unnecessary, and my heart was glad within me. to be sure, could manage well enough with the bailiff, but could John, or I either, consent that he should live on my uncle in idleness? I was like one lost on the dark mountains, not knowing where lay the door of the light, or what it might bring - bondage or release. If only John would come! With a sudden spasm of agonizing selfreproach, I remembered that I had made no attempt to overtake my uncle. It was true I did not know, for nobody could tell me, in what direction he had gone; but Zoe's instinct might have sufficed, where mine was useless, to follow and find Death. It was hopeless now, but I could no longer be still. I got Zoe, and fled to the moor. All the rest of the day I rode hither and thither, nor saw a single soul on its wide expanse. The very life seemed to have gone out of it. The twilight was deepening toward night when I turned to ride home, a little comforted by the wide solitude. I had eaten I went to find my uncle, reproaching nothing since breakfast, and though not myself that I had spent so much time hungry, was thoroughly tired. Through over my packing; ought to have been the great dark hush, where was no sound helping him, for neither he nor his arm of water, though here and there like lurkwas quite strong yet. I went to his rooming live thing lay so much, I rode slowly therefore with a heartful of apology. He was not there. I went to the study, he was not there. I went all over the house, then to the stable, but he was nowhere; no one had seen him. The truth burst upon me: he was gone; and no one was to know whither. He had given himself for my happiness! And his sacrifice was all in vain, for I could never be happy! To be in Paradise, however much a paradise, without him, would not be to be in Heaven. John was in London; I could do nothing. I threw myself on my uncle's bed, and lay lost in despair. Even if John were with me, and we had found him, what could we do? We could not hope to persuade him from his deliberate resolve. I knew it now as impossible for him to separate us that he might be unmolested, as it was for us to accept the sacrifice of his life that we might be happy. What he wanted, and, so far as lay with him, was determined upon, was, that we should marry in spite of John's mother, and live on my uncle's land, until such time as John should be his own master. home. My short-sightedness, along with my fasting, made everything in turn take a shape that was not its own. I seemed to be haunted by shapes. And indeed I have sometimes thought whether the spirits that love solitary places, may not delight in appropriating, for embodiment momentary and partial, such existing shapes as fit their passing moods; so that it is not mere gnarled, crone-like hawthorn, or misshapen rock, that comes suddenly between the wanderer and the pale sky, bringing him the sense of a presence. The hawthorn, the rock, or the dead pine, is there indeed, but perhaps not alone. Some such thoughts as these were in my mind as I rode homeward that evening, faint and weary; when, about half-way from home, I saw, towering between me and the sky, something mounted on a huge horse. The air was too dark, and the figure too distant for conclusion concerning it; but my first thought, very naturally, was of my uncle, and the next of the great horse and his rider that John and I had both had reason to suspect as haunting the moor. I am so constituted, no thanks to myself, as to be capable of feeling awe without a spark, or rather, without more than a spark of terror. The horse and his rider drew nearer; they were on the same road, and coming to meet me! Something strange about their look was afterward accounted for by the fact that I had the idea of a man in my mind, as was most natural in such a solitary place, whereas the rider was a woman. Then immediately I recalled the adventure of my childhood with her who was now the source of all our trouble. Next I remembered, with a shoot of dismay, that John had told me his mother always rode the biggest horse she could find; could that shape towering in the dark be indeed my deadly enemy? My uncle had warned me she would kill me if she had the chance. A shoot of fear, very different from the ghostly, went through me. I hesitated for a moment whether to turn and make for some covert, until she should have passed from between me and my home; but pride, perhaps something better, revolted. If the wicked, I thought, flee when no man pursueth, it ill becomes the righteous to flee when the wicked pursue. I held straight on. By this time the twilight had grown all but night, and I had a vague hope of passing unquestioned. But the lady pulled up her great animal in the middle of the way, just before we met. That she had a question to ask, was, I think, pure stratagem to make certain it was myself, and to secure the advantage of having me at a stand. "Ah," thought I, "what could Zoe do in a race with that terrible horse of the night?" For he seemed made of the darkness, and his head rose above us like the figurehead of a frigate above a yacht. She asked me if I could tell her the way to Rising. The hard, bell voice was unmistakable. I pointed in the right direction, forgetting she could scantly see, and thinking only of escaping her recognition. 66 Speak," she cried, in a voice of command, "or I will ride you down!" and she made her whip hiss through the air. But her voice and her whip together so startled Zoe, that she sprang aside, and was off the road a few yards before I could pull her up. Then I saw that she was urging her horse to follow. I knew her danger, and was not tempted to be silent. I called to her. But I kept on the watch, ready to give the rein to Zoe, who would get into no difficulty. "Mind what you are doing, Lady Cairnedge!" I cried. "The ground here will not carry the weight of a horse like yours." As I spoke her horse yielded, and sprang across the little ditch at the wayside. "You think to escape," she answered in a clear voice, which yet had a feminine growl in it. "I am not one to be taken in by such as you!" No," I answered; "nobody will take you in but yourself, thinking every one a liar!" Her rejoinder was a cut with her whip to her horse, which stood still the moment he had taken his unwilling jump. I spoke to Zoe, and she bounded off like a fawn. Pulling her up again, I looked back. She continued urging her horse. I heard and saw her whipping him, and thought she was spurring him, too. She had lost her temper with him. "I tell you once more you had better mind what you are doing!" I cried. She persisted, without reply. "Then I must leave you to the consequences," I said; and Zoe and I made for the road, but at a point nearer home, cutting off a bend of it. Had she not been in a passion she would surely have had the better sense to return at once to the road, and try to intercept us; but she did not know the danger of the spot as I did. We had not gone far when we heard behind us the soft plunging and sucking of the big horse through the boggy ground. I looked over my shoulder. There was the huge bulk, like Wordsworth's peak, towering betwixt me and the stars. "Go, Zoe!" I shrieked. She bounded away. The next moment a cry came from the horse behind us, and I heard the woman say, "Good God! I stopped, and peered through the dark. What I saw was no higher above the ground than myself. Terror seized me. I turned and rode back within easy distance of speech. 66 My stupid animal has bogged himself," she said quietly, while her horse every other moment gave a fruitless plunge. It was no time to tell her that not the horse but his mistress was stupid, because unbelieving. "For God's sake," I cried, "get off, your weight is sinking the poor animal! you will smother him!" "It will be no more than he deserves. Come here, and give me your hand." "That you may smother me! I think I will not," I answered. "You can get out of the saddle well enough by yourself. I will ride home and fetch help |