It was "Poaching Wilson" who pulled the bell, after some difficulty in finding the handle, owing to the liberality with which he had "treated himself" as a preparation for the journey.

Max, alarmed at the invasion, had made his way round to the billiard-room door at the back, bolted it on the inside, and hastened to give directions to the servants to lock all the other doors, and to secure the ground-floor windows.

Then he rushed into the hall, just as his father had come out from the dining-room, serviette in hand, to learn the cause of the noise outside.

"Hello, Max! Is it you back again? And have you brought down half the population of London with you?"

"No, sir, they didn't come with me. They are guests of yours, I understand. And they expect to be treated to unlimited beer, so I gather from their remarks. They've brought some firewood, I believe."

At this moment the clanging of the front-door bell resounded through the house for the second time. The frightened butler, who was a young man and rather nervous, stood by the door, not daring to open it. The ladies of the household had by this time come out of the dining-room; Mrs. Wedmore looked flush and frightened; the girls were tittering. Smothered explosions of laughter came from time to time to the ears of the master of the house, from the closed door which led to the servants' hall.

"Shall—shall I see who it is, sir?" asked the butler, who could hear the epithets applied to him on the other side of the door.

"No, no!" cried Doreen. "Not on any account! Tell them to put the thing down and go away."

There was a pause, during which the bell rang again, and there was a violent lunge at the door.

"They won't—they won't go away, Miss, without they get something first," said the butler, who was as white as a sheet.

"Tell them," began Mr. Wedmore, in a loud tone of easy confidence, "to take it round to the back door, and—and to send a—deputation to me in the morning; when—er—they shall be properly rewarded for their trouble."

"They ought to reward us for our trouble, papa, don't you think?" suggested Doreen.

"There! They've begun to reward themselves," said Queenie, as a stone came through one of the windows.

Mr. Wedmore was furious. He saw the mistake he had made, but he would not own it. Putting strong constraint upon himself, he assumed a gay geniality of manner which his looks belied, and boldly advanced to the door. But Mrs. Wedmore flung her arms round her husband in a capacious embrace, dragging him backward with an energy there was no use resisting.

"No, no, no, George! I won't have you expose yourself to those horrid roughs! Don't open the door, Bartram! Put up the bolt!"

"Nonsense! Nonsense, my dear!" retorted Mr. Wedmore, who was, perhaps, not so unwilling to be saved from the howling mob as he wished to appear. "It's only good-humored fun—of a rough sort, perhaps, but quite harmless. It's some mischievous boy who threw the stone. But, of course, they must go round to the back."

"Cook won't dare to open the door to 'em, sir," said the butler.

The situation was becoming serious. There was no denying that the house was besieged. Mrs. Wedmore began to feel like a chatelaine of the Cavalier party, with the Roundhead army at the doors clamoring for her husband's blood. The cries of the villagers were becoming more derisive.

As a happy thought, Mrs. Wedmore suggested haranguing the mob from an upper window. This course seemed rather ignominious, but prudence decided in its favor.

There was a rush upstairs, and Mr. Wedmore, followed by all the ladies, flung himself into the bathroom and threw up the window.

It was not at all the sort of thing that merry squire of the olden times might have been expected to do. In fact, as Doreen remarked, there were no bathrooms in the olden time to harangue a mob from. But Mr. Wedmore's medieval ardor being damped, he submitted to circumstances with fortitude.

"Yah! There 'e is at last!" "'Ow are you, old un?" "Don't put your nose out too fur this cold night!"

These and similar ribald remarks greeted Mr. Wedmore as he appeared at the window, telling him only too plainly that the merry days of old were gone, never to be restored, and that the feudal feeling which bound (or is supposed to have bound) rich and poor, gentle and simple, in one great tie of brotherhood had disappeared forever.

Doreen and Queenie were secretly enjoying the fun, though they had the sense to be very quiet; but Mrs. Wedmore was in an agony of sympathy with her husband, and of fear for the results of his enterprise. He began a speech of thanks, but the noise below was too great for him to be heard. Indeed, it was his own servants who did the most toward drowning his voice by their well-meant endeavors to shout down the interrupting cries.

"They're most of them tipsy, I think," whispered Doreen to her mother, who said, "Sh-sh!" in shocked remonstrance, but secretly agreed with her daughter's verdict.

"Throw them some coppers, papa," suggested the sage and practical Queenie.

Mr. Wedmore turned out his pockets, taking care to disperse his largesse as widely as possible. The girls helped him, hunting high and low for coins, among which, urged by the crowd in no subdued voice to "come down handsome," sixpences and shillings presently made their welcome appearance.

"Oh, the hollies!" whispered Doreen to her sister.

"Thank goodness, the look of the garden to-morrow morning will be an object-lesson to papa!"

For the invaders, well aware of the value of such wares at Christmas time, filled out the pauses by slashing at the berry-bearing trees with their pocket-knives, secure in the safety of numbers.

By the time the shower of money ceased the crowd had begun to thin; those members of it who had been lucky enough to secure silver coins had made off in the direction of the nearest public-house, and those who had cut down the holly had taken themselves off with their booty.

There remained in front of the door, when this clearance had been effected, the Yule log itself, the laborers who had drawn it along and a group of manageable size.

Max, who had been watching the proceedings from the study, after turning out the light, judged that the moment had come for negotiations to commence. So he told the butler to throw open the front door, and he himself invited the unwelcome guests to enter. He had taken the precaution to have all portable articles removed from the hall and all the doors locked except that which led to the servants' hall and the staircases.

In they came, a little subdued, and with their first disastrous energy sufficiently exhausted for them to be able to listen and to do as they were told.

The oaken center-table had been pushed on one side, and there was a clear space, wide, carpetless, from the front door to the big stone fireplace opposite.

"This way with the log! Now, boys, pull with a will!" cried Max, not insensible to the novelty and picturesqueness of the situation, as a motley crowd, some in smock-frocks, some in corduroy and some in gaiters and great-coats, pressed into the great hall dragging the log after them with many a "Whoop!" and shout and cry.

Mr. and Mrs. Wedmore and the two girls hurried downstairs on hearing the door open, and stood by the fireplace, with a little glow of satisfaction and pleasure at the turn affairs had taken.

It was a log! Or, rather, it was more than a log; for it was half a tree. Slowly the huge thing came in, scraping the nicely polished floor, rolling a little from side to side, and threatening all those within a yard of it. And then, when its appearance had spread consternation through the household, the inevitable question came: What was to be done with it?

The fire-basket had been taken out of the hearth on purpose for its reception, but it was evident that, even after this careful preparation, to think of burning it whole was out of the question. There was nothing for it but to send for a saw and to reduce the log then and there to a manageable size.

This was done, amid considerable noise and excitement, drinking of the health of the family by villagers who had been drinking too much already, and much scraping of the polished floor by muddy, hob-nailed boots.

Finally the deputation was got rid of, and the interrupted dinner was allowed to proceed, much to the comfort of Max, who had eaten nothing since breakfast, and much to the dismay of Mrs. Wedmore, who was then able to ascertain the extent of the damage done by the invaders.

It was lucky for Max that he had arrived at such an opportune moment. His father had been grumbling at the number of visits he had made to town lately, and the young man would have found him in no very good humor if he had not discovered to his hand the opportunity of making himself conspicuously useful.

It is scarcely necessary to say that Max did not tell anyone about the adventures he had met with. He knew that he should have to go through the ordeal of an interview with his sister, Doreen, who would want to know a great deal more than he was willing to tell her; but he was tired, and he made up his mind that he would not be interrogated that evening. So he gave her no opportunity for the confidential talk she was dying to have with him, but spent the remainder of the evening in dutiful attendance upon his mother.

The following day was Christmas Eve. Max came down late to breakfast, and he had scarcely entered the morning-room when his father handed him the Standard, pointing to a certain paragraph without any comment but a glance at the girls, as a hint to his son not to make any remark which would recall Dudley and his affairs to their minds.

The paragraph was as follows:

"SHOCKING DISCOVERY!

"The body of a man was found floating in the river close to Limehouse Pier late yesterday evening. Medical evidence points to death by violence, and the police are making inquiries. It is thought that the description of the body, which is that of a man of a Jewish type of countenance, rather under than over the middle height, aged between fifty and fifty-five, gray hair and short, gray beard, tallies with that given a few days ago by a woman who applied at the —— Street Police Court, alleging that her husband had disappeared in the above neighborhood. The police are extremely reticent, but at the present they have no clue to the authors of the outrage. The body awaits identification at the mortuary, and an inquest will be held to-day."

"I wonder whether Dudley will see that?" said Mr. Wedmore, in a low voice, as soon as his daughters were engaged in talk together. "It looks like the sequel to the other paragraph which upset him so the other evening, doesn't it? I shall watch the papers for the result of the inquest. It seems to me pretty certain that it was Edward Jacobs. Curious affair, isn't it, that he should be murdered in a slum, after making a fortune at other people's expense? Retribution—just retribution! Curious, isn't it!"

To Max it was so much more than merely "curious," knowing what he did, that he felt sick with horror. Surely this body, found floating near Limehouse Pier, was the one he had touched in the dark!



CHAPTER XIV.

IS IT BLACKMAIL?

Mr. Wedmore repeated his comment: "Curious, isn't it?" before Max could reply. At last he nodded, and handed back the paper to his father. Then he turned his chair toward the fire, and stared at the blazing coals. He had lost his appetite; he felt cold, miserable.

His father could not help noticing that something was wrong with him; and, after watching him furtively for a few minutes, he said, with an abruptness which made Max start:

"Did you see anything of Dudley when you were in town?"

Max changed color, and glanced apprehensively at his father, as if fearing some suspicion in the unexpected question.

"No, sir," he answered, after a moment's hesitation. "I called at his chambers; but they told me he had gone away for the holidays and had left no address. All letters were to be kept for him till his return."

Both question and answer had been uttered very softly, but Max saw, by the look on Doreen's face, as she glanced over from the other side of the table, that she guessed what they were talking about, if she had not heard their words.

"Aren't you going to have any breakfast, Max?" asked she, as she came round to him. "We've kept everything about for you, and we want the table."

"Well, you can have it," said he, jumping up, quickly, and making for the door. "I don't want any breakfast this morning."

"Nonsense. You will not be allowed to leave the room until you have had some," retorted his sister, as she sprang at him and attempted to pinion his arms. "We allow no ill-temper on Christmas Eve, especially as we've got a surprise for you—a beautiful, real surprise. Guess who is coming this morning to stay till New Year!"

Queenie had come up by this time, and the two girls between them brought their brother back to the table, where the younger sister began to pour out his coffee.

But Max refused to show the slightest interest in the coming guest, and would not attempt to guess who it was. So they had to tell him.

"It was all on your account that we asked her," said Doreen, hurt by his indifference. "You took such a fancy to her, and she to you, apparently, at the Hutchinsons' dance, that we thought you'd be delighted. Now, don't you know who it is?"

To their great disappointment, both girls saw that he didn't. Mr. Wedmore, from the other end of the room, was observing this little incident with considerable annoyance. The young lady in question, Miss Mildred Appleby, was very pretty, and would be well dowered, and Mr. Wedmore had entered heartily into the plan of inviting her to spend Christmas with them, in the hope that Max would propose, be accepted, and that he would then make up his mind to settle.

"Why, it's Mildred Appleby," said Doreen, impatiently, when her brother's blank look had given her the wrong answer. "Surely, you don't mean to say you've forgotten all about her?"

"Oh, no, I remember her," answered Max, indifferently. "Tall girl with a fashion-plate face, waltzes pretty well and can't talk. Yes, I remember her, of course."

"Is that all you have to say about her?" cried Doreen, betraying her disappointment. "Why, a month ago she was the nicest and the jolliest and the everythingest girl you had ever met."

"He's seen somebody else since then," remarked the observant Queenie, in her dry, little voice. "When he was in town yesterday, perhaps."

Max looked at his sister with a curious expression. Was she right? Had he, in that adventurous thirty-six hours in London, seen somebody who took the color out of all the other girls he had ever met? He asked himself this question when Queenie's shrewd eyes met his, and he remembered the strange sensation he had felt at the touch of Carrie's hand, at the sound of her voice.

Before he could answer his sister, Mr. Wedmore spoke impatiently:

"Rubbish!" cried he, testily. "Every young man thinks it the proper thing to talk like that, as if no girl was good enough for him. Miss Appleby is a charming girl, and she will find plenty of admirers without waiting for Max's valuable adoration."

He had much better not have spoken, blundering old papa that he was. And both daughters thought so, as they saw Max raise his eyebrows and gather in all the details of the little plot in one sweeping glance at the faces around him. He drank his coffee, but he could not eat. Doreen sat watching him, ready to spring upon him at the first possible moment, and to carry him off for the tete-a-tete he was so anxious to put off.

What should he tell his sister of that adventure of his in the slums of the East End? Would she be satisfied if he told a white lie, if he said he had found out nothing?

Max felt that Doreen would not be satisfied if he got himself out of the difficulty like that. In the first place, she would not believe him. He saw that her quick eyes had been watching him since his return, and he felt that he had been unable to hide the fact that something of greater significance had occurred during that brief stay in town. What then should he tell her? Perfect frankness, perfect confidence was out of the question. To look back now, in the handsome, spacious house of his parents, from the snug depths of an easy-chair, on the time he had passed on and about the wharf by the docks, was so strange that Max could hardly believe in his own experiences.

Who would believe the story of his adventures, if he himself could scarcely do so? Would Doreen, would anybody give credence to the story of the dead body that he touched, but never saw, the eyes that looked at him from an unbroken wall, the girl who lured him into the shut-up house, and then let him out again with an air of secrecy and mystery?

The transition had been so abrupt from the gloomy wharf, with its suspicious surroundings and the heavy, fog-laden air of the riverside, back to the warmth and light and brightness of home, that already his adventures had receded into a sort of dreamland, and he began to ask himself whether Carrie, with her fair hair and moving blue eyes, her vibrating voice and changeful expression, were not a creature of his imagination only.

He was still under the influence of the feelings roused by this dreamy remembrance, when he snatched the opportunity afforded by Doreen's being called away by Mrs. Wedmore, to go out into the grounds, on his way to the stables. A ride through the lanes in the frosty air would, he thought, be the best preparation for the trying ordeal of that inevitable talk with Doreen, whose wistful eyes haunted him as she waited for a chance of speaking to him alone.

In the garden a scene of desolation met his eye.

The lawns were torn up and trodden down; the gravel path from the stables looked like a freshly plowed field; every tree and every bush bore the marks of the marauder.

The head gardener was in a condition of unapproachable ferocity, and it was generally understood that he had given notice to leave. The under-gardeners kept out of the way, but could be heard at intervals checking outbursts of derisive laughter behind the shrubberies. The story of the Yule log and its adventures was the best joke the country had had for a long time, and it was bound to lose nothing as it passed from mouth to mouth. And poor Mr. Wedmore began to dread the ordeal of congratulations he would have to go through when he next went to church.

Max felt sorry for his father. As he entered the stable-yard, which was a wide expanse of flagged ground at the back of the house, round which were many outbuildings, he came upon a group of snickering servants, all enjoying the story of the master's freak.

The group broke up guiltily on the appearance of Max, the laundry-maids taking flight in one direction, while the stablemen became suddenly busy with yard-broom and leather.

Max put a question or two to the groom who saddled his horse for him.

"There was no great harm done last night, was there, except in the garden? You have not heard of anything being stolen, eh?"

"Well, no, sir. But it brought a lot of people up as had no business here. There was a person come up as we couldn't get rid of, asking questions about the family, sir; and about Mr. Horne, too, sir. She wouldn't believe as he wasn't here, an' she frightened some of the women, I believe, sir. They didn't know where she'd got to, an' nobody saw her go out of the place, so they've got an idea she's hiding about. A fortune-telling tramp, most likely, sir," added the man, who wished he had held his tongue about the intruder when he saw how strongly the young master was affected by this story.

The fact was that Max instantly connected this apparition of a woman "who asked questions about Mr. Horne" with the ugly story told him at the house by the wharf, and he was glad that Dudley was not spending Christmas at The Beeches.

He was oppressed during the whole of his ride by this suggestion that the questionable characters of the wharfside were pursuing Dudley; it gave color to Carrie's statement that it was Dudley who killed the man whom Max believed to have been Edward Jacobs; and it looked as if the object of the woman's visit was to levy blackmail.

Or was it—could it be that the woman was Carrie, and that her object was to warn Dudley? To associate Carrie herself with the levying of blackmail was not possible to the susceptible Max in the present state of his feelings toward her.

And, just as he was meditating upon this mystery, all unprepared for a meeting with his sister, Doreen waylaid him. He was entering the house by the back way, muddy from his ride, when she sprang upon him from an ambush on the stairs.

"I've been waiting all the morning to catch you alone," said she, as she ran out from behind the tall clock and seized his arm. "You've been trying to avoid me. Don't deny it. I say you have. As if it was any use! No, you shall not go upstairs and take off your boots first. You will just come into the study, mud and all, and tell me—tell me what you know, not what you have been making up, mind! I'm going to have the truth."

"Well, you can't," returned her brother, shortly, as he allowed himself to be dragged across the hall, which looked cheerless enough without a fire, and with the great, clumsy, hideous, maimed old Yule log filling up the fireplace and reminding everybody of all that it had cost.

Doreen pushed him into the study and shut the door.

"Why can't I know the truth?" asked she, eying him steadily. "Do you mean that you have found out Dudley doesn't care for me."

Max glanced at his sister's face, and then looked away. He had not known till that moment, when he caught the tender look of anxiety in her big brown eyes, how strong her love of Dudley was. An impulse of anger against the man seized him, and he frowned.

"Why, surely you know already that he doesn't care for you, in the way he ought to care, or he would never have neglected you, never have given you up!" said he, ferociously.

"I'm not so sure about that. At any rate I want to know what you found out. Don't think I'm not strong enough to bear it, whatever it is!"

"Well, then, I'll tell you. He is off his head. He has got mixed up in some way with a set of people no sane man would trust himself with for half an hour, and—and—and—well, they say—the people say he's done something that would hang him. There! Is that enough for you?"

He felt that he was a brute to tell her, but he could see no other way out of the difficulty in which her own persistency had placed him. She stared at him for a few seconds with blanched cheeks, clasping her hands. Then she said in a whisper:

"You don't mean—murder?"

Her brother's silence gave her the answer.

There was a long pause. Then she spoke in a changed voice, under her breath:

"Poor Dudley!"

Max was astonished to see her take the announcement so quietly.

"Well, now you see that it is impossible to do anything for him, don't you?"

"Indeed, I do not!" retorted Doreen, with spirit. "We don't know the story yet. We don't know whether there is any truth in it at all; or, if there is, what the difficulties were that he was in. Look, Max. You must remember how worried he has been lately. I have heard him make excuses for people who did rash things, and I have always agreed with him. You see, I knew how good-hearted he was, and I know that he would never have done anything mean or underhand or unworthy."

"Don't you call murder, manslaughter—whatever it is—unworthy?" asked Max, irritably.

"Not without knowing something about it," answered she. "And I think there's generally more to be said for the man who commits murder than for any other criminal. And—and"—her voice gave way and began to shake with tears—"I don't care what he's done, I'm sorry for him. I—I want to help him, or—or, at least, I want to see him to tell him so!"

Max was alarmed. Knowing the spirit and courage of his brilliant sister, he was afraid lest she should conceive the idea of starting off herself on some mad enterprise; so he said hastily:

"He's away now, you know. He's gone without leaving any address. Perhaps I was wrong, after all. Perhaps when he comes back he will be himself again, and—and everything will be cleared up. We can only wait and see."

But this lame attempt at comfort met with no warm response from his sister. She looked at him with a poor little attempt at a contemptuous smile, and then, afraid of breaking down altogether, sprang up from the arm-chair in which she had been sitting and left him to himself.

Max did not recover his usual spirits at luncheon, where everybody else was full of mirthful anticipation of the household dance, another idea of Mr. Wedmore's, which was to be a feature of the evening. And after that meal, instead of offering to drive to the station to meet Miss Appleby, as everybody had expected, Max took himself off, nobody knew where, and did not return home until dusk.

Coming through a little side gate in the park, he got into the great yard behind the house, where the stables stood on one side and a huge barn, which was only used as a storage place for lumber, on the other. And it occurred to him that if the woman of whom the groom told him were still hanging about the premises, as the servants seemed to think, this was the very place she might be expected to choose as a hiding-place.

So he pushed open the great, creaking door of the barn and went in. It was very dark in there, and the air was cold and damp. A musty smell from old sacks, rotting wood and mildewed straw came to his nostrils, as he made his way carefully over the boards with which the middle part of the barn had, for some forgotten purpose or other, been floored.

Little chinks of light from above showed great beams, some with ropes hanging from them, and stacks of huge lumber of fantastic shapes to right and left.

Max stood still in the middle of the floor and listened for a sound. But he heard nothing. Suddenly he thought of the signal by the use of which he had summoned Carrie to the door of the house by the wharf.

Getting close to one of the piles of lumber, he gave two taps on the panel of a broken wooden chest, waited a couple of seconds, and then gave two taps more.

There was a shuffling noise along the boards on the other side of the stack, followed by the striking of a match.

Max was around the obstacle in a moment. Holding a piece of candle in her bony hand was Mrs. Higgs.

"Hello!" said he.

She said nothing. But the candle shook in her hand, and by the glassy look of dull yet fierce surprise in her colorless eyes Max saw that this woman, who had connived at his imprisonment in the room with the dead man, had never expected to see him again—alive.



CHAPTER XV.

MR. WEDMORE'S SECOND FREAK.

Even if Max had not had such an ugly experience of the ways of Mrs. Higgs, even if this meeting with her in the barn had been his first, his sensations would hardly have been agreeable ones. There was something uncanny about the old woman, something which her quiet, shuffling movements and her apparent lack of interest in what went on around her only served to accentuate. Even now, while suffering the shock of a great surprise, Max could feel rather than see the effect which the unexpected meeting had upon her.

For she uttered no cry, no word; her eyes scarcely opened wider than before. Her jaw dropped a little, and then began to move rapidly up and down; that was all. And yet, as Max looked at her—at this helpless, infirm old creature with the palsied hands and the lackluster eyes—he shivered.

"You vile old hag!" thought he to himself. And then his thoughts flew to Carrie, and he asked himself what the attraction could be which bound her to this wicked old woman.

Mrs. Higgs, after staring at him in dead silence for what seemed a long time, asked, as composedly as if their meeting had been the most natural thing in the world:

"Where's your friend, young man?"

"W—what friend?" stammered Max.

"Oh, you don't know, I suppose!" retorted Mrs. Higgs, derisively. "No more than you know what you wanted to come spying about Plumtree Wharf for, eh?"

Max made no answer. There came a vixenish gleam into the old woman's faded eyes.

"What did you come for, eh?" pursued she, sharply. "Who sent you? Not he, I know! When he's got anything to do at the wharf he comes himself."

And Mrs. Higgs gave an ugly, mirthless chuckle.

As Max stared at the withered, lined face, which was growing each moment more repulsive in his eyes, a feeling of horror and of intense pity for Dudley seized him. To be pursued, as his friend evidently was pursued, by this vicious old hag, was a fate hideous enough to expiate every crime in the Decalogue.

A little rapid reflection made him decide that a bold course of defiance was the best to be taken. Whatever Dudley might have done, and whatever terrors Mrs. Higgs might hold over his head, it was very certain, after all, that the evidence of such a creature, living in such an underground fashion, could never be a serious danger to a man in his position. Dudley himself seemed rather to have lost sight of this fact, certainly; but it could not be less than a fact for all that.

"Mr. Horne is not likely to trouble you or the rest of the thieves at the wharf again," said Max, with decision. "He's gone abroad for a holiday. And if you don't take yourself off at once, or if you turn up here again, or if you attempt to annoy us or Mr. Horne, in any way whatever, you'll find the police at your heels before you know where you are."

Then into her dull eyes there came a look of malignity which made Max doubt whether he had done well to be so bold.

"Thieves, eh? Tell your friend we're thieves, and see what he says to that! Police, eh? Tell your friend that, tell your friend that, and see whether he'll thank you for your interference!"

"Mr. Horne is away, as I told you."

"Away, is he? But he won't be away long. Oh, no; he'll come back—he'll come back. Or if he doesn't," added Mrs. Higgs, with complacency, "I'll fetch him."

"Well, you've got to leave this place at once," said Max, with decision. "We don't allow strangers in the barn, and if you don't go quietly at once, I must send somebody to turn you out."

Mrs. Higgs kept her eyes fixed upon him with her usual blank stare while he said this in a very loud and decided tone. When he had finished she suddenly blew out the light with so much unnecessary force that Max felt something like a gust of wind upon his face.

"Turn me out!" and she laughed harshly. "Turn me out! Send for the police to do it, if you like."

Max went out of the barn, listening to her cackling laugh, and not feeling comfortable until he had found his way into the open air. He at once gave orders to the stablemen and gardeners to search the barn and to turn out the strangers they might find there.

But though they hunted in every corner, they found no one, and Max was only too glad to come to the conclusion that Mrs. Higgs had taken his advice, and got away with as little delay as possible.

This incident, however, following so closely on the heels of his experiences at the wharf, took away all the zest with which Max should have entered into the programme which, by Mr. Wedmore's special wish, had been prepared for that evening; and while Doreen and Queenie and Mildred Appleby and two young nephews of Mr. Wedmore's chattered and laughed, and made dinner a very lively affair, Max was quiet and what his cousins called "grumpy," and threatened to be a wet blanket on the evening's entertainment.

"Going to have all the servants in to dance Sir Roger!" cried he, in dismay, when Doreen told him the news. "Good heavens! Hasn't he had a lesson in yesterday's tomfoolery and what came of it? How do the servants like the idea?"

"Of course they hate it," answered Doreen, "and mamma has been all day trying to coax the cook to indulge him, and not to walk off and leave us to cook the Christmas dinner. And, of course, this assurance that the notion was distasteful to everybody had made papa more obstinate than ever. Oh, we shall have a merry time."

Now, down in the depths of his heart Mr. Wedmore had begun to feel some misgivings about his plans for keeping Christmas in the good old fashion. But the first failure, the colossal mistake of the Yule Log, had made him obstinate instead of yielding, and he had set his teeth and made up his mind that they should all be merry in the way he chose, or they should not be merry at all.

The fact was that this prosaic middle-aged gentleman, who had passed the greater part of his life immersed in day-books and ledgers and the details of a busy city man's life, found time hang heavy on his hands in these prosperous days of his retirement, and in this condition he had had his mind inflamed by pictures of the life that was led in The Beeches by his forerunners, easy-going, hard-riding, hard-drinking country gentlemen, with whom, if the truth were known, he had nothing in common.

Fired by the desire to live the life they led, to enjoy it in the pleasant old fashion, it had seemed to him an especially happy custom to give a dance at which masters and servants should join hands and make merry together. He had never assisted at one of these balls, and he refused to listen to his wife's suggestion that it should take place in the servants' hall, that the servants should be allowed to invite their own friends, and that the family should limit itself to one brief dance with their dependants and then leave them to enjoy themselves in their own way.

No, it was his will that the dance should be held in the hall of the house, and that the pictures of the Illustrated Christmas Numbers should be realized to the utmost.

Dinner, therefore, was scrambled over in a hurry, and the family with their guests went upstairs to the drawing-room or out to the billiard-room, while preparations were made for the great event of the evening, the lighting of the Yule Log and Sir Roger de Coverley.

Then the first mishap occurred in the inopportune arrival of the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, whose rather sedate and solemn appearance cast a slight gloom upon everybody's spirits, which deepened when Queenie whispered to Mildred that he looked upon dancing as a frivolous and worldly amusement scarcely to be tolerated and never to be encouraged.

He soon made an opportunity of devoting himself to Doreen, who was playing the lightest of light music at the piano in the corner of the room.

It had been a fancy of Mr. Wedmore's, who had his own way in everything with his wife, to have this drawing-room, which was large and square and lighted by five windows, three at the front and two at the side, furnished entirely with old things of the style of eighty years back, with Empire chairs, sofas and cabinets, as little renovated as possible. The effect was quaint and not unpleasing; a little cold, perhaps, but picturesque and graceful.

The grand piano had a case specially made for it, painted a dull sage-green and finished in a manner to give it a look of the less massive harpsichord.

It was at this instrument that Doreen sat, making a very pretty picture in her white silk, square-necked frock, with bands of beaver fur on the bodice and sleeves and an edging of the same fur round the bottom of the skirt.

"My purpose in coming here to-night, Miss Wedmore," said Mr. Lindsay, when he had delivered an unimportant message from the vicar's wife about the church decorations, "was really to bring you my good wishes for this blessed season. I am afraid I shall have no opportunity of speaking to you to-morrow, though, of course, I shall see you in the church."

"Oh, yes, we shall all be at church," said Doreen, quickly.

She noted something rather unusual in the curate's manner—a nervous excitement which presaged danger; and she dashed into an air from "The Shop-Girl" with an energy which was meant to have the effect of checking his solemn ardor.

But the curate had the stuff of a man in him, and did not mean to be put off. This opportunity was really a good one, for the talk in the room, which his arrival had checked for an instant, was now going on merrily. Mrs. Wedmore did her best to keep up the conversation. Nothing would have pleased her better than to see Doreen transfer her tender feeling for the discredited Dudley to such a suitable and irreproachable person as Lisle Lindsay. She kept a hopeful eye on the pair at the piano while she went on talking to her husband's old friend, Mrs. Hutchinson, who was staying with them for Christmas.

"And at the same time," went on Mr. Lindsay, as he moved his chair a little nearer, so that, under cover of the music, he could speak without being overheard, "to speak to you on a subject which is—is—in fact, very near my heart."

This was worse than Doreen had expected. She glanced round at him with rather a frightened expression. "Oh, don't let us talk about anything—anything serious now," said she. "Just when we shall be going downstairs to—to dance—in a few minutes."

It was a very inconsequent objection to make, and Mr. Lindsay simply ignored it.

"It is, in fact, about myself that I wish to speak, Miss Wedmore," he pursued relentlessly. "You cannot have failed to notice what a—what a deep interest I take in all that concerns you. And latterly I have flattered myself that—"

"But people should never flatter themselves about anything!" cried Doreen, desperately, as she suddenly laid her hands in her lap and turned from the piano to face the worst. "Now I'll give you an example. I flattered myself a little while ago that a man cared a great deal about me—a man I cared a great deal for myself. And all the while he didn't; or, at least, I am afraid he didn't. And yet, you know, I can't help hoping that perhaps I didn't only flatter myself, after all; that perhaps he will come back some day and tell me I was right."

Mr. Lindsay heard her in silence, with his mild eyes fixed on the carpet. But when she had finished he looked up again, and she was shocked to find that the gentle obstinacy which had been in his face before was there still.

"I am, indeed, sorry for your disappointment," he said sweetly. "Or rather I should be if it were such a one that you could not hope to—to—in fact, to get over it. But—but these are trials which may be, perhaps, only sent to show that you, even you, happily placed as you are and gifted of the Almighty, are human, after all, and not beyond suffering. And—and it may give you an opportunity of seeing that there are others who can appreciate you better, and who would only be too glad to—to—to—"

"To step into his shoes!" finished Doreen for him, with a sigh. "I know what you were going to say, and if you won't be stopped, I suppose I must hear you out. But, oh, dear, I do wish you wouldn't!"

He was not to be put off like that. In fact, he was not to be put off by any available means. He sighed a little, and persisted.

"I am glad you have guessed what I was going to say, Miss Wedmore, though I should not have put it quite in that way. And why should you not want to hear it? I should have thought that even you must be not quite indifferent to any man's honest feelings of esteem and admiration toward you!"

Doreen was looking at him helplessly, with wide-open eyes. Did he really think any girl was ever moved by this sort of address, deliberately uttered, with the words well chosen, well considered? As different as possible from the abrupt, staccato method used by Dudley in the dear old days!

"Oh, I'm not indifferent at all!" said she, quickly. "I'm never indifferent to anything or anybody. But I'm sorry, very sorry that—that you should feel—"

She stopped short, looked at him for a moment curiously, and asked with great abruptness:

"Do you feel anything in the matter? Really feel, I mean? I don't think you do; I don't think you can. You couldn't speak so nicely, if you did."

He looked at her with gentle reproach. His was not a very tempestuous feeling, perhaps, but it was genuine, honest, sincere. He thought her the most splendid specimen of handsome, healthy well-brought-up womanhood he had ever met, and he thought also that the beneficent influence of the Church, exercised through the unworthy medium of himself, would mold her into a creature as near perfection as was humanly possible.

Her way of receiving his advances was perplexing. He was not easily disconcerted, but he did not answer her immediately. Then he said softly:

"How could I speak in any way but what you call 'nicely' to you? To the lady whom I am asking to be my wife?"

Doreen looked startled.

"Oh, don't, please! You don't know what a mistake you're making. I'm not at all the sort of wife for you, really! Indeed, I couldn't recommend myself as a wife to anybody, but especially to you."

"Why—especially to me?"

"Well, I'm not good enough."

"That sounds rather flattering. And yet, somehow, I don't fancy you mean it to be so."

"Well, no, I don't," said Doreen, frankly; "for I mean by 'good' a lot of qualities that I don't think highly of myself, such as getting up in the middle of the night to go to early service, and being civil to people I hate, and—and a lot of things like that. Don't you know that I'm eminently deficient in all the Christian virtues?"

This was a question the curate had never asked himself; but it came upon him at this moment with disconcerting force that she was right. Luckily for his self-esteem, it did not occur to him at the same time that it was this very lack of the conventional virtues, a certain freshness and originality born of her defiant neglect of them, which formed the stronger part of her attractiveness in his eyes.

After a short pause he answered, with his usual deliberation:

"Indeed, I am quite sure that you do yourself injustice."

"Oh, but I'm equally sure that I don't. I not only leave undone the things which you would say I ought to do, and do the things which I ought not to do, but I'm rather proud of it."

Still, Mr. Lindsay would not accept the repulse. He persisted in making excuses for her and in believing them.

"Well, you fulfill your most important duty; you are the happiness and the brightness of the house. Your father's face softens whenever you come near him. Now, as that is your chief duty, and you fulfill it so well, I am quite sure that if you entered another state of life where your duties would be different, you would accommodate yourself, you would fulfill your new duties as well as you did the old."

Doreen rewarded him for this speech with a humorous look, in which there was something of gratitude, but more of rebellion.

"Accommodate myself? No, I couldn't. I think, do you know, that if I were ever foolish enough to marry—and it would be foolishness in a spoiled creature like me—I should want a husband who could accommodate himself to me. Now, you couldn't. Clergymen never accommodate themselves to anything or anybody."

The Reverend Lisle Lindsay did at last look rather disconcerted. Mischievous Doreen saw her triumph and made the most of it.

"So that settles the matter, doesn't it? I can't accommodate myself; you can't either. What could possibly come of a union like that?"

"The greatest happiness this world is capable of affording, and the hope of a happiness more abiding hereafter," said he; "all the happiness that a true woman can bring to the man she loves."

Doreen threw up her head quickly.

"Ah! that's just it," cried she. "'To the man she loves!' But you are not the man I love, Mr. Lindsay. I suppose it's one of the things I ought not to do—one of the unconventional and so unchristian things—to own that I love a man who doesn't love me. But I do. Now, you know who it is, and everybody knows; but, for all that, you mustn't tell; you must keep it as a secret that Doreen Wedmore—proud, stuck-up Doreen—is breaking her heart for the sake of a man who—who—" Her voice broke and she paused for a moment to recover herself; then she said, in a lighter tone: "Ah, well, we mustn't be hard upon him, either, for we don't know—it's so difficult to know."

She sprang up from her seat; and the curate rose too. By her tactful mention of her own unlucky love she had softened the blow of her rejection of him. She had been rather too kind indeed, considering the tenacity of the person she had to deal with; for the curate considered his case by no means so hopeless as it was; and instead of taking himself off forlornly, as she would have wished, he stayed on until the young men swarmed up from the billiard-room and bore the whole party down to the hall.

Mr. Wedmore, in great glee at having carried his point in the face of the family resistance, led Mrs. Hutchinson down stairs, and then handed her over to Max, while he himself threw open the door leading to the servants' quarters, and invited the group of neat maids and stalwart young men from the garden and stable to enter.

But here there was a hitch in the arrangements. The cook, in a bad temper, smarting with disapproval of the whole business, had refused to join the others, and, as nothing could be done without her, Mr. Wedmore had to penetrate into the servants' hall, where he found her sitting in state, and, luckily, dressed for the occasion.

Never in his life had Mr. Wedmore exerted himself so much to please any woman as he now did to soften the outraged feelings of the cook, who was a stout, red-faced woman, whose days of comeliness and charm were long since gone by. He at last succeeded in inducing her to accompany him to the hall, where he arrived in triumph, with a flushed face and nervous manner, after an interval which had been put to great advantage by the younger gentlemen of the party, who were all anxious to dance with the prettiest housemaid.

Their eagerness had the effect of annoying the rest of the maids, and effectually spoiling whatever enjoyment they might have got out of the dance in the circumstances, while it by no means pleased the ladies of the family and their friends, who stood a little apart and whispered to each other that this sort of thing was bound to be a failure, and why couldn't papa, dear old, stupid papa, leave them out of the affair, and let the boys have a romp in the servants' hall without their assistance?

The pause had made the ladies so frigid and the men-servants so shy, the pretty housemaid so merry and the plain ones so solemn, that disaster threatened the gathering, when Mr. Wedmore and the cook made their opportune appearance.

Max, his cousins and young Hutchinson gave three cheers, in the midst of which demonstration the Rev. Lisle Lindsay endeavored to make his escape by the front door.

Unhappily, Mr. Wedmore, elated by his victory over the cook, espied him, and straightway forbade him to leave the house until after "Sir Roger." In vain the curate protested; pleaded the privileges and exemptions of his sacred calling.

Mr. Wedmore was obdurate; and, to the disgust of everybody, including himself, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay found himself told off to dance with the pretty housemaid, being the only man in the room who was not anxious for the honor.

This mishap cast a gloom over the proceedings. The rest of the gentlemen found it hard to extract a word from the other maids, who all considered themselves slighted. And Mr. Wedmore had great difficulty in persuading the men-servants to come forward and take their places by the partners he chose for them. To get them to choose for themselves was out of the question, after one young gardener had availed himself of the invitation by darting across the floor and asking Miss Queenie, in a hoarse voice and with many blushes, if she would dance with him.

Of course, this piece of daring made a sensation so great that to get another man follow the bold example was impossible.

In the end, Mrs. Wedmore found a partner in the coachman, who was a portly and solemn person, with no talents in the way of dancing or of conversation. Doreen danced with the butler, who, between nervousness and gloom, found it impossible to conceal his opinion that master was making a fool of himself; and the rest of the company being quite as ill matched, "Sir Roger" was performed with little grace and less liveliness, while the Yule Log, after emitting a great deal of smoke, sputtered out into blackness, to everybody's relief.

The end of it was, however, a little better than the beginning. As the dancers warmed to their work, their latent enthusiasm for the exercise was awakened; and "Sir Roger" was kept up until the fingers of the organist, who had been engaged to play for them on a piano placed in a corner of one of the passages, ached with the cold and with the hard work.

When the dance was over and the party had broken up, Doreen, who had done her best to keep up the spirits of the rest, broke down. Max met her on her way to her room, and saw that the tears were very near her eyes.

"What's the matter now?" said he, crossly. "You seemed all right downstairs. I thought you and Lindsay seemed to be getting on very well together."

"Did you? Well, you were wrong," said she, briefly, as she shut herself into the room.



CHAPTER XVI.

A MESSAGE FROM THE WHARF.

Christmas was over, and The Beeches had subsided into its normal state of prosperous tranquility. Max had had a fresh situation discovered for him, and he was now wasting his time on a stool in a merchant's office, as he had wasted it in other offices many times before. His father's chronic state of exasperation with his laziness was growing acute, and he had informed Max that unless he chose to stick to his work this time he would have to be shipped off to the Cape. No entreaties on the part of Mrs. Wedmore or the girls were of any avail against this fixed resolution on Mr. Wedmore's part, or against the inflexible laziness of Max himself. He detested office work, and he confessed that if he was not to be allowed to lead the country life he loved, he would prefer enlistment in the Cape Mounted Police to drudgery in a dark corner of a city office.

It was on a foggy evening in January that Max, for the first time in three weeks (an unprecedented interval), knocked at the door of Dudley Horne's chambers.

There was a long delay, and Max, after a second knock, was going to withdraw, in the belief that Dudley was not in, after all, when he heard slow steps within, and paused.

The door was opened a very little way, and Dudley looked out.

Max stared at him for a moment without speaking. For over his friend there had passed some great change. Dudley had never been florid of complexion, but now he looked ghastly. His face had always been grave and strong rather than cheerful, but now the expression of his countenance was forbidding.

He looked at Max, glanced down the stairs, and nodded without a smile.

"Hello!" said he, with the letter of familiarity, but without its spirit. "Haven't seen anything of you for a century. Up in town again, eh?"

"Yes. Can't I come in?" said Max.

Dudley had come outside instead of inviting his friend in. At these words, however, he turned abruptly, and himself led the way into the little ante-chamber.

"Oh, yes, oh, yes, come in, of course. Come in."

Max accepted the cool invitation in silence, shut the door behind him, and followed his friend into the sitting-room, where the table was laid for a solitary dinner.

But it was the writing-table which caught the eye of Max and riveted his attention. For a photograph lay there, a woman's photograph, and as it was just in front of the chair Dudley had been using, as if he had been occupied in looking at it, it was not unnatural that the brother of Doreen should be curious to know whose picture it was.

So Max got around the table quickly by the opposite way to that which Dudley took, and threw himself into a chair by the writing-table in such a position that he could see what was on it. And he saw two things: One was that the photograph was that of Doreen; the other that a postal order for one pound, which lay beside the photograph, and upon which the ink was not yet dry, was made out to "Mrs. Edward Jacobs."

Max felt himself blushing as Dudley snatched up the postal orders—there were two of them—and slip them into an envelope. Then the eyes of the two men met. And Dudley knew what Max had seen.

He seemed to hesitate a moment, then glanced at Max again, sat down to the writing-table, and took up a pen. As he directed the letter, he said quietly:

"Do you know whom I'm sending this money to?"

"Well, I did catch sight of the name," stammered Max, unable to hide the fact that the question was an embarrassing one to him.

"Yes," went on Dudley, as he showed him the directed letter, "it is to the widow of the poor devil who was found in the Thames the other day—man who was once in my late father's employment—Edward Jacobs."

"Oh, yes, I've heard," stammered Max again.

The incident of Dudley sending money to the woman would have seemed to him trivial and even natural enough, if it had not been for the curious look of hard defiance which Dudley gave him out of his black eyes. It was like a challenge; it set his friend wondering again, asking himself again all those tormenting questions about Edward Jacobs's death which he had allowed to slip into a back place in his thoughts.

As he looked down at the end of the white table-cloth which touched the floor a loud laugh from Dudley startled him and made him look up. And when he did so the conviction that his friend was mad, or, at least, subject to attacks of insanity, flashed into his mind more strongly than ever. Dudley was leaning back, tilting his chair till it touched the dinner table, distending his jaws in a hard, mocking laugh as unlike mirth as possible.

"Oh, yes, so I've heard—so I've heard!" repeated he, mockingly. "And, of course, that's all you've heard, isn't it? And you've never taken the trouble to make any personal inquiries in the matter? Or thought of taking a journey, say, as far as Plumtree Wharf to make any private investigations?"

Max was startled. He saw clearly enough that which he would fain have denied—that Dudley was in communication with the people at the wharf, from whom he must have obtained this information. For a moment he was silent. It was not until Dudley's harsh laughter had died away, and he, rather surprised to see how quietly Max took his accusation, had wheeled round in his chair to look at his friend, that Max said:

"Well, I did go to the wharf. And I'll tell you why. Doreen is breaking her heart about you, and she would have me find out what was wrong with you."

Then there was silence.

"God bless her!" said Dudley at last, in a hoarse whisper.

Another silence.

"What did you tell her?" whispered Dudley.

"What could I tell her? I said you were mad."

"And what did you—think?"

"Well, I hardly know myself."

"That's right! That's the proper attitude!" cried Dudley.

And then he laughed again uproariously.

And in the midst of his laughter there was a knock at the door.

For a moment neither man moved. Then Dudley got up slowly and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. Max heard him open the outer door, and then he heard a voice he knew—a young girl's voice—say:

"This is Mr. Dudley Horne's place, and you are Mr. Dudley Horne?"

"Yes."

"Then let me come in. I've come from—"

The voice dropped, and Max did not catch the rest.

"Stop! I'll speak to you here," said Dudley, trying to keep her in the little ante-room.

But the girl came straight in. It was Carrie.



CHAPTER XVII.

A SORCERESS.

Max was standing on the other side of the lamp, and Carrie did not see him. She announced her errand at once in a straightforward and matter-of-fact manner.

"Dick Barker's been nabbed for stealing a watch. You've got to get him off."

"What do you mean? I've got to get him off?" cried Dudley, indignantly.

Carrie laughed.

"It's the message I was told to give you; that's all."

"Well, take this message back: that I refuse to have anything to do with your pickpocket."

Carrie turned to the door.

"All right. I'm to say that to Mrs. Higgs?"

"Stop!" thundered Dudley.

Carrie paused, with her hand on the door.

"Did Mrs. Higgs send you?"

"Yes."

"Then wait a minute."

All the indignation, all the defiance, had gone from his tone. He looked anxious, haggard.

Carrie sat down like an automaton in the chair nearest to the door.

There was a silence of some minutes' duration when Carrie announced herself as a messenger from Mrs. Higgs.

Dudley, who had either forgotten the presence of Max or was past caring how much his friend learned, since he already knew so much, walked up and down between the fireplace and the bookcase on the opposite wall, evidently debating what he should do. Carrie never once raised her eyes from the carpet, but sat like a statue beside the door, apparently as indifferent as possible as to the message she should take back.

Max had risen from his seat and was standing where he could get a full view of her over the lamp on the dinner-table between them. Perhaps it was the yellow paper shade around the light which made the young girl's face look so ghastly, or the rusty black clothes she wore. A plain skirt, the same that she had worn when he saw her first, a black stuff cape of home-made pattern, and a big black straw hat which had evidently done duty throughout the summer; all were neatly brushed and clean, but well-worn and lusterless, and they heightened the appearance of deadly pallor which, struck Max so much.

Her eyes he could not see; her scarlet lips were tightly closed, and her face seemed to him to wear an air of dogged determination which helped him to understand how it was that she had escaped the perils of her unprotected girlhood. Certainly it would have taken a good deal of courage, impudence or alcoholic excitement to make a man address to this statuesque and cold-faced creature a flippant word.

She did not see Max, who kept so quiet that it was easy for her to overlook the presence of a third person in the room. He watched her intently, taking even more interest in her under these new conditions than he had done before. Would she retain her cold look and manner when he made his presence known to her, as he intended presently to do? The question was full of interest to him.

Presently Dudley stopped short in his walk, right in front of Carrie, who seemed, however, unconscious of or indifferent to the fact.

"Who are you?" he asked, abruptly.

Carrie looked up and surveyed him as if from a great distance.

"I don't know," she answered, rather quaintly, but evidently unconscious of the oddity of her own answer. There was a moment's pause, and then she asked, briskly:

"However, that doesn't matter to you, does it?"

"Well, yes, it does. You come here as a messenger. Now, I want to know your credentials."

"I don't know what you mean. I live with Mrs. Higgs. She makes me call her 'Granny.'"

Dudley at once became strongly interested.

"Live with her, do you, and call her Granny? I've never seen you when I have visited Mrs. Higgs."

"I've seen you, though. I've seen—"

She stopped.

Dudley's hand, the one Max could see from where he stood, moved convulsively. After another short pause, Carrie raised her head, and their eyes met. Each evidently saw something oddly interesting in the face of the other.

"I shall have to make some inquiries about you," said he at last.

"Very well. You can go and make them."

Her tone was matter-of-fact, but neither impudent nor defiant. She did not seem to care.

"This Dick Barker, who has been nabbed, as you elegantly express it, is some sweetheart of yours, I suppose? And you have persuaded Mrs. Higgs to send me this absurd message, asking me to appear for him?"

"No. He's nothing to me. Mrs. Higgs wants him got off, because if he's convicted he'll tell all he knows, or at least enough to set the police on."

"And what is that to me?"

Another pause, during which she looked down. Then Carrie raised her eyes again, and looked at him steadily.

"Oh, well, you know best."

Dudley turned away, muttering something under his breath. But the next moment he faced her again.

"And you are waiting to take my answer back?"

"Mrs. Higgs said there would be no answer."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"To see whether there is one or not."

"And you're going straight back with it to your granny, whatever it is?" asked Dudley, with the same sharp tone of cross-examination.

"No. I am not going back to her. But I shall give the message to some one who is."

There was another pause, longer than any of the previous ones. Then Dudley said, shortly:

"You need not wait here any longer. I am going to see her myself."

Carrie had got upon her feet in the automatic manner she had maintained throughout the interview.

"Going to the wharf, are you?" she said, with the first sign of human interest she had shown. "Oh, very well."

There was something noticeable in her tone, something which made Max suspicious and anxious on his friend's account. He came round the table with rapid steps, touched Dudley's shoulder, and said, in a low voice:

"I'll go with you!"

At the sound of his voice Carrie started violently, and looked up at Max, staring with eyes full of wonder and something very like delight. The rigidity with which she had held herself, the automatic manner, the hard, off-hand tone, all disappeared at once; and it was a new, a transformed Carrie, the fascinating, wayward, irresistible girl he had remembered, who gave him a smile and a nod, as she said, in a voice full of the old charm he remembered:

"You! Is it you?" Then, breathlessly, with a change to anxiety in her voice: "And are you going, too?"

"Yes. I'm going with my friend," said Max, as he came forward and held out a hand, into which she put hers very shyly; "from what I remember of my visit to your place, I think two visitors are better than one."

"I don't know whether granny will think so," said Carrie, still in the same altered voice.

She was shy, modest, charming. All her femininity had returned, and both the young men felt the influence of the change.

Dudley, who had instinctively stepped back to make way for his friend, was watching them both with surprise and uneasiness.

"We must risk Mrs. Higgs's displeasure," said Max, dryly, "unless, indeed, Dudley," and he turned to his friend, "you will give up this expedition altogether, as I strongly advise."

But Dudley had made up his mind. He did not want Max to go with him, but he was resolved to go to the wharf. And his friend's heart failed within him at the news.

"Don't you think it would be advisable to get a policeman to accompany you?" he hazarded in a low voice.

But Dudley started violently at the suggestion.

"Policeman!" repeated he in a louder tone than Max had used. "Good heavens, no!"

Max, looking round, saw that Carrie had overheard; but she betrayed no emotion at the suggestion, even if she felt any.

Dudley pulled out his watch.

"I have an appointment for this evening," said he; "I must get out of it. Max, if you persist in going with me to the wharf, you're a fool. When your friends are doing well, you should stick to them; when they have got into a mess, you should have appointments elsewhere." Although he spoke cynically, there was underneath his scoffing tone a strain of tenderness. He turned quickly to the girl at this point, as if afraid of betraying more feeling than he had intended to do. "You've delivered your message," said he, sharply, "now you can go."

But Carrie lingered. Looking shyly at Max, she said in a low voice:

"Have you made up your mind that you will go with him?"

"Yes," said Max.

"All right," nodded Carrie. "Then I'll go, too."

Dudley looked down at the girl with an impatient frown on his face.

"Supposing we don't want you?" said he, dryly.

"You will," she answered briefly, without even looking at him.

Dudley considered for a moment, and then said shortly:

"All right. We may as well keep an eye on you."

Carrie laughed, and then remained silent. As for Max, he was struck with an odd likeness between the girl's dry, short manner of speaking to Dudley and Dudley's manner of speaking to her.

At that moment there was an interruption in the shape of the waiter from a neighboring restaurant, who came in with the dinner Dudley had ordered for himself.

"I shan't want it now," said Dudley, as the man put down the covered dishes on the table.

"Why, surely you're not in such a hurry that you haven't time to dine?" said Max.

Dudley made an impatient gesture.

"I can get a biscuit somewhere, if I want it. I can't eat just now."

"Let me eat your dinner for you, then," said Max. "I've had none. And if I'm to go rambling all over the town to look after you, I shall want something to keep me going."

"All right," said Dudley. "I'm to come back here for you, then?"

And he took up his overcoat. Max began to help him on with it.

"Come in here a moment," said Dudley, in the same dry, abrupt manner as before; "I want to speak to you."

Max followed him into the ante-room, and Dudley shut the sitting-room door.

"That girl," said he, with, a frown—"where did you pick her up? At the wharf?"

"I met her there. She was walking about outside, afraid to go in. The old woman had left her there alone, with a—a—dead body in the place."

At these words a change came over Dudley's face.

"You had better have left her alone," said he, sharply. "I wonder you hadn't more sense than to take up with a girl like that."

Max fired up indignantly.

"Like what? There's nothing wrong with the girl—nothing whatever. Surely her behavior to-night showed you that."

"Her behavior!" said Dudley, mockingly. "Do you mean her behavior to me, or to you?"

"Both. It was that of a modest, straightforward girl."

"Very straightforward—to me. Very modest to you. But I would not waste too much time over her virtues if I were you."

"I don't want to waste any," replied Max, shortly. "I don't see how we can shake her off, since she has offered to go back to the wharf with us. But I shall only be alone with her for the few minutes you leave us here. Or, better still, I'll go with you, and wait while you see your friend."

"What friend?"

"I thought you said you had an appointment with some one, and were going to put him off."

"Oh, yes. Well, let us go to him now."

And Dudley softly opened the outer door.

Max perceived that what he proposed was to give Carrie the slip. He drew back a step.

"We can't go without telling her, at least I can't. The girl's quite right. It would be safer for her to go with us. For it's an awful place, not fit to trust oneself in."

"And you think it would be the safer for the presence with us of one of the gang?"

"She is not one of the gang!" cried Max, involuntarily raising his voice. "I'd stake my life on there being no harm in her!"

The door of the sitting-room was opened behind them, and Carrie came out.

"I couldn't help hearing what you said," she said, quietly. "But you needn't quarrel about me. One of you says there's no harm in me; the other says there is. I dare say you're both right. If you don't want me to go to the wharf with you, Mr. Horne, why, I won't go, of course. Good evening."

She wanted to go out, but Dudley stood in the way, preventing her.

"You're quite wrong, I assure you," said he, quickly. "There has been a little discussion about it, certainly; but I think you and my friend are quite right, and it would be much better if you would go with us—much better. Pray don't be annoyed at anything I've said. Remember, I have never seen you before, while my friend, who knows you better, naturally appreciates you more."

Carrie maintained an attitude of cold stolidity while Dudley spoke.

"Am I to go with you now, then?" she asked, coldly, when he had finished speaking.

"Well, no, I think not. It will only take me ten minutes to go down into the Strand and put off the fellow I was going to the theatre with. I'll come back here, and we'll all go on together."

Carrie looked at him steadfastly while he spoke, and he returned her gaze. For a few moments there was silence, and then it was broken by an exclamation from Max. He was staring first at one and then at the other with a face full of perplexity.

"Do you know," cried he at last, "that when you both look like that, and I turn from one to the other, it is as if I were looking all the time at the same face?"

Both Dudley and Carrie looked startled as they withdrew their eyes from each other's face. Then each sought the eyes of the other again as if it were furtively. Dudley seemed, of the two, the more impressed by his friend's words. He laughed with some constraint.

"Fanciful, very fanciful," said he, mockingly. "What likeness can there be between a girl with a white face, fair hair and blue eyes," and he gave a glance at Carrie which had in it something of fear, "and a man of my type?"

Max looked at him, and then said slowly:

"It's not in the features, I know; it's not in the coloring; but it is there, for all that."

"The young lady will not feel flattered," said Dudley, ironically. "I will leave you to make your peace with her, and when I come back, in ten minutes, I expect to find you both ready to start."

He had his hand on the door, when some thought seemed to strike him, and he hesitated and turned to put his hand on the shoulder of Max. Then he swung the young man round in such a way that his own back was turned to Carrie. Looking steadily and with a certain look of affectionate regard into his friend's face, he formed with his lips and eyes a final warning against the girl. Then, with a nod, he went out, closing the door behind him.



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SWORD FALLS.

When Max turned, he found that Carrie had retreated within the door of the sitting-room. He followed her into the room.

"I hope he'll give us the full ten minutes," said he, "for I had no luncheon to-day, and when I'm hungry I always get very cross. Is that your experience?"

Carrie looked at the table with a strange smile.

"You ought to know," said she.

His face showed that he had not forgotten.

"Those biscuits!" said he. "I remember. Does your granny treat you better now?"

Carrie's face grew gloomy and cold. And Max noticed that, thin as she had been when he saw her last, she was much thinner now. The outline of her cheek was pathetically pinched, almost sunken.

"No. Worse," she said at last, in a low voice.

"You don't mean that she—starves you?"

To his dismay, he saw the tears welling up in the girl's blue eyes, which looked preternaturally large in her wasted face.

"Pretty nearly," said she.

Max stared at her for about the space of a second; then he went behind her, put his hands lightly on her shoulders and inducted her into the chair Dudley had placed for himself at the dinner-table.

"It is evident," said he, gravely, "that Providence has appointed me purveyor of food to you, for this is the second time, within a comparatively short acquaintance, that I have had the honor of providing you with a repast. This time it's quite in the manner of 'The Arabian Nights,' isn't it?"

It was indeed a fairy-tale banquet, this dinner of steak and chip potatoes, followed by meringues a la creme, and finishing up with bread and butter and cheese and celery.

There was enough for two, the only drawback being a deficiency of plates, which Max put right, in homely fashion, by eating his share from the dish. Such a tragedy it was to him to find a beautiful girl who was hungry, actually hungry from want of food, that the appetite he had talked so much about failed him, and he found it difficult to eat his share and to keep up the light tone of talk which he judged to be necessary to the situation.

He wanted to ask her a hundred questions about the people at the wharf and the awful thing which had happened there; but none of these subjects seemed appropriate to the dinner-table, and Max decided to leave them to another and a better opportunity.

In the meanwhile he was getting more forgetful of Dudley's warning every moment. Carrie seemed to guess his feelings, and to be grateful for them. She said very little, but she listened and she laughed, and gave him such pretty, touching glances, such half-mournful, half-merry looks when she thought he was not looking, that by the time they came to the cheese he was in a state of infatuation, in which he forgot to notice what a very long ten minutes Dudley was giving them.

He thought, as he watched Carrie in the lamplight, that he had greatly underrated her attractions on the occasion of their first meeting. She had been so deadly white, so pinched about the cheeks; while now there was a little trace of pink color under the skin; and her blue eyes were bright and sparkling with enjoyment.

And it struck him with a pang that she looked so lovely, so bewitching, because of the change from cold and hunger which, as he knew, and as she had acknowledged, were her usual portion.

"Shall we sit by the fire?" asked he suddenly.

And he jumped up from the table, and turned Dudley's biggest and coziest arm-chair round toward the warmth and the glow.

Carrie hesitated. She rose slowly from her chair, and took up from the side-table, on which Max had placed it, the shabby black cape.

"Oh, you needn't be in such a hurry," said Max. "I dare say he'll be a great deal more than the ten minutes he said he should take."

It was her action which had recalled Dudley to his mind. And, for the first time, as he uttered these words, a doubt sprang up as to his friend's good faith. What if Dudley meant to give them both the slip, and to go off to the wharf by himself, after all?

Carrie's eyes met his; perhaps she guessed what was passing in his mind.

"Oh, yes, he is sure to be longer than that," said she at once; and, putting her cape down again, she took the chair Max had placed for her, while he sat in the opposite one.

"It's beautiful to be warm!" cried she, softly, as she held out her hands to the blaze which Max had made.

Then there was a long pause. Max had so much to say to her that he didn't know where to begin. And in the meantime to sit near her and to watch the play of the firelight on her happy face was pleasant enough. But presently perceiving that she threw another uneasy glance in the direction of her cape, he broke the silence hastily.

"You said," began he, abruptly, "that you were not going back to the wharf. Where were you going, then?"

"I don't know," said Carrie, after a pause.

Her face had clouded again. Her manner had changed a little also; it had become colder, more reserved.

"Do you mean that—really? Or do you only mean that you don't mean to tell me, that I have no business to ask?"

"I mean just what I said—that I didn't know."

"You are going to leave Mrs. Higgs and her friends, then?" asked Max, in a tone between doubt and hope.

"Yes."

She made this answer rather by a motion of the head than by her voice.

"Well, I am very glad to hear it—very glad."

"Are you? I'm not. Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful to lose one's home, any sort of home."

"But could you call that a home? A hole like that? Among people like this Mrs. Higgs and this Dick!"

"Oh, poor Dick! If they had all been like him it would not have mattered."

"What! A pickpocket!" cried Max in disgust.

"What difference did that make? Do you suppose the wives and daughters of the men in the city, financiers and the rest, love them the less because they pass their lives trying to get the better of other people? Isn't it just as dishonest to issue a false prospectus to get people to put their money into worthless companies as to steal a watch? It's nonsense to pretend it isn't."

Carrie spoke sharply. She had grown warm in defense of her felonious friend.

Max thought a little before he answered.

"But you're not this man's wife or his daughter."

"Well, no. But he wanted to marry me; and if he hadn't been caught yesterday, perhaps I should have let him."

"What?"

"Don't look so disgusted. He would have been kind to me."

"And do you think you couldn't find a better husband than a—than a pickpocket?"

"He would have been honest if I'd married him," said Carrie, quietly.

"He says so, of course; but he wouldn't. A man says anything to get the girl he's fond of to promise to marry him. Do you think it's possible to change the habits of years, of all a man's life, perhaps, like that?"

"I know it would have been possible," persisted she, obstinately. "I know I could have worried him, and nagged at him, and worked for him, till I made him do what I wanted."

And Max saw in her face, as she looked solemnly at the fire, that dogged, steady resolution of the blue-eyed races.

"Well," said he crossly, "then I'm very glad he's been caught."

"Ah!" cried she, quickly, "you don't know what it will lead to, though. He knows something, and if your friend, Mr. Horne, won't try to get him off, why, he'll be sorry."

Max looked worried and thoughtful at this threat.

"I won't believe," said he, stoutly, "that my friend had anything to do with—with what happened at the place. It's monstrous!—impossible!"

Carrie said nothing.

"Who would believe this pack of thieves against a man like Dudley Horne?"

Carrie laughed cynically.

"Then why is he afraid?"

This indeed was the question which made the mystery inexplicable. What reason could Dudley have for wishing to hush up the matter unless he himself had brought about Edward Jacobs's violent death This was the old, old difficulty in which any discussion of the subject or any meditation on it always landed him.

He got up from his chair and began to walk about the room.

"Why are you leaving Mrs. Higgs?" asked he at last, suddenly.

Max was not without hope that the answer might give him a clue to something more.

"I couldn't bear it any longer. She has been different lately. She has left me alone for days together, and besides—besides—she has been changed, unkind, since Christmas."

Now Max remembered that it was on Christmas Eve that he had met Mrs. Higgs in the barn at The Beeches; and he wondered whether that amiable lady had visited upon Carrie her displeasure on finding that he had escaped alive from the wharf by the docks.

"I believe," said he, suddenly, "that it was your precious Mrs. Higgs that murdered the man. I'm quite sure she's capable of it, or of any other villainy."

Carrie leaned forward and looked at him earnestly.

"But what should he want to shelter Mrs. Higgs for, if she had done it?"

And to this Max could find no answer.

"And why, if he had nothing to do with the murder, should he be so much afraid of Mrs. Higgs that he steals away by himself to see her when she sends him a message?"

Max sprang up.

"Steals away! By himself!" faltered he.

"Why, yes. Did you really think he would come back? Didn't you know that the ten minutes he spoke of were only a blind, so that he could shake you off, and not make Mrs. Higgs angry by taking another man with him? Surely, surely, you guessed that! Surely, you knew that if the ten minutes had not been an excuse, he would have been back here long ago."

Max felt the blood surging to his head. The girl was right, of course. He leaned against the bookcase, breathing heavily.

"You knew! You guessed! Why didn't you—why didn't you tell me?"

Carrie stood up, as much excited as he was. Her blue eyes flashed, her lips trembled as she spoke.

"What do I care—for him?" she said under her breath. "A man must take the risk of the things he does, mustn't he? But you—you had done nothing; and—and you have been kind to me. I didn't want you to go. I couldn't let you go. So I tried to keep you. I didn't want you to remember. And it was easy enough."

Max felt a pang of keen self-reproach. Yes, it had been easy enough for a girl with a pretty face to make him forget his friend. He turned quickly toward the door. But Carrie moved even more rapidly, and by the time he reached it she was there before him.

"It's too late now," she said in that deep voice of hers, which, when she was herself moved, was capable of imparting her own emotion to her hearers. "He's been gone an hour. He'll be there by this time. What good could you do him by going? There's an understanding between her and him. He'll be all right. Now you would not."

Max stared at the girl in perplexity. She spoke with confidence, with knowledge. A great dread on his friend's account began to creep over him. Why should Dudley be safe where he himself was not, unless he were in league with the old hag? Or, again, was it possible that Carrie—pretty, sweet-faced Carrie—was acting in concert with the gang, detaining him so that Dudley might be an easier prey to her accomplices?

As this suspicion crossed his mind, he, knowing his own weakness, resolved to act without the hesitation which would be fatal to his purpose.

Seizing her by the arm, he drew her almost roughly out of the way, and, opening the door, went out into the ante-room.

But before he could open the outer door, Carrie had overtaken him and seized him by the arm in her turn.

"No, no," said she, passionately. "I will not let you go. You don't know what you are rushing into; you don't know what I do."

"What do you mean?"

"That if you were to go into that house again, you wouldn't leave it alive!"

"All the more reason," said Max, struggling to free himself from the tenacious grasp of her fingers, which were a good deal stronger than he had supposed, "why I should not let him go into such a place alone."

"Well, if you go, you will take me," said Carrie, almost fiercely.

"Come along, then."

He had his hand on the door, when he noticed that she had left her cape in the room.

"Fetch your cloak," said he, shortly.

She hesitated.

"Give me your honor that you won't go without me."

"All right. I'll wait for you."

She disappeared into the sitting-room, leaving the door open, however. While she was gone, Max, still with his fingers on the handle of the door, heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. It was not Dudley's tread, and, the sound being a common one enough, Max did not pay particular attention to it, and he was surprised when Carrie suddenly thrust forth her head through the sitting-room doorway, with a look of excitement and terror on her face.

"Listen!" said she, in a very low whisper.

"Well, it's only some one going up the stairs," said he, in a reassuring tone.

Carrie shook her head emphatically.

"Coming, not going," said she. "And it's a policeman's tread. Don't you know that?"

Max grew rather cold.

"Oh, nonsense!" said he, quickly. "What should—"

She stopped him by a rapid gesture, and at the same moment there was a ring at the bell. For a moment, Max, alarmed by the girl's words, hesitated to open it. Carrie made a rapid gesture to him to do so, at the same time disappearing herself into the sitting-room.

Max opened the door.

A man in plain clothes stood outside, and at the head of the stairs behind him was a policeman in uniform.

"Mr. Dudley Horne?" said the man.

"These are his rooms, but Mr. Horne is not here."

"You are a friend of his, sir?"

"Yes. My name is Wedmore."

If the man had had a momentary doubt about him, it was by this time dispelled. He stepped inside the door.

"I must have a look round, if you please, sir." Max held his ground. "I have a warrant for Mr. Horne's arrest."

Max staggered back. And the man passed him and went in.



CHAPTER XIX.

A STRANGE PAIR.

As Carrie, with her feminine acuteness, had guessed, Dudley Horne had never had any intention of returning to his chambers for her and Max.

On the contrary, he was delighted to have the opportunity of slipping quietly away, and of evading the solicitude of his friend, as well as the society of Carrie herself, of whom he had a strong but not unnatural mistrust.

No sooner did he reach the street than he hailed a hansom and directed the driver to take him to Limehouse, and to lose no time. Then he sat back in the cab, staring at the reins, while the haggard look on his face grew more intense and the eager expression of expectancy and dread of something impending became deeper every moment.

During the last fortnight, Max, having had his thoughts occupied with his own affairs, had not had so much time for the consideration of those of his friend; and he had lost sight altogether of the theory that Dudley was mad. But if he could have seen Dudley now, with the wild look in his eyes, could have noted the restless movements of his hands, the twitching of his face, the impatience with which he now leaned forward, now back, as if alternately urging the horse forward and holding him back, Max would have felt bound to admit that the case for the young barrister's insanity was very strong.

As soon as the hansom began to thread the narrow streets which lie between Commercial Road and the riverside, Dudley sprang out, paid the man his fare, and walked off at a rapid pace. It was a frosty night, and the ill-clad women who shuffled past him looked pinched and miserable. Even they, with cares enough of their own on their shoulders, turned to look at him as he passed. There was a glare in his black eyes, an uncanny something in his walk, in his look, which made them watch him and wonder who he was, and where he was going to.

But by the time he had reached the riverside street to which his steps were directed, even a chance passer-by was a rarity; and the gas-lamps had become so few and far between that no notice would have been taken of him if the traffic had been greater.

His footsteps echoed in the silent street until he reached the wooden door which was the entrance by night to Plumtree Wharf.

The door was shut, and Dudley, apparently surprised by the circumstance, gave it an impatient shake. Then he heard a slight sound within which told him of the approach of some living creature, and the next moment the door was opened a few inches, and the face of Mrs. Higgs appeared at the aperture.

She uttered a little mocking laugh when she saw who her visitor was and let him in without any other comment.

Dudley strode in, with a frown of displeasure on his face, and waited under the piles of timber while Mrs. Higgs relocked the door. There was a lamp just outside the wooden boarding which shut the wharf in, and by the light of it Dudley got a good look at the old woman's face before she rejoined him; and it seemed to him that the placid expression she usually wore had given place to a look more sinister, more repellent. She passed him, still without a word, but with a nod which he took for an invitation to him to follow her. They passed through the little wash-house into the inner room, and Mrs. Higgs seated herself by the fire, and gave her visitor another nod to imply that he might be seated also.

But Dudley was not in a friendly mood. He would not even come near the hearth, but remained close to the door by which he had entered, and gave searching look round the room.

The apartment was so small and so bare that it was not difficult to take stock of its contents, and Mrs. Higgs laughed ironically.

"Isn't the place furnished to your liking?" she asked in a mocking tone. "Are you looking for the sofas and the sideboards and the silver and the plate?"

Dudley cast at the old woman a look which was more eloquent than he knew of hatred and disgust.

"No," said he, shortly. "I was looking to see whether any of your precious pals were about."

Mrs. Higgs drew her chair nearer to the deal table, and leaning on it with her head resting in her hands, stared at him malignantly.

"My precious pals! My precious pals!" muttered she to herself in an angry tone. "That's the way he talks to me! To me, he owes so much to! Ah! Ah! Ah!"

These three last ejaculations were uttered with so much suppressed passion, and there gleamed in her dull eyes such a dull look of stupid ferocity, that Dudley withdrew his attention from the cupboard and walls and transferred it wholly to her. After a pause, during which the two seemed to measure each other with cautious eyes, he said, abruptly:

"Do you know why I have come here to-night?"

"To show me a little gratitude at last, perhaps," suggested Mrs. Higgs, sharply. "To do your duty—yes, it's no more than your duty, you know, to do what I tell you—and to help yourself in helping me. That's true, isn't it?"

Dudley stared at her in silence for a few moments before he answered:

"Duty is an odd word to use—a very odd word. But we won't waste time discussing that. You sent a message to me by a girl this evening?"

Mrs. Higgs nodded.

"You want me to defend one of the rascals who make this place their hole, their den?"

Again Mrs. Higgs signified assent.

"Well, I shall do nothing of the kind. I have done more than enough for you already. I have offered you the means of taking yourself off and of living like a decent creature. I have done everything you could expect, and more. But I will not be mixed up with you and the gang you choose to make your friends; and I will not lift a finger to save your friend the pickpocket from the punishment he deserves."

Dudley spoke with decision, but he made no impression worth speaking of upon his hearer. She continued to look at him with the same expression of dull malignity; and when she spoke, it was without vehemence.