There could be no doubt that Matthew Starr had lately been doing a great deal to spread a distrust of Montana and his scheme amongst people of his own class, and especially amongst the devotees of the Church of Free Souls. The wild energy with which the old Chartist declared his own utter want of faith in Montana any more had something electric in it. It brought conviction to men of his own class and of his order of mind. It is true that his story, when he told it, had no logical force as a condemnation of Montana. Montana had evidently done all he could for the man, had rescued his daughter once, and was anxious to rescue her again. Still, what Starr said did impress men and women of his own like, worn down with hard work and suffering, and for a time filled with a sudden wild hope-it did impress them much when this man, who had had such belief in Montana's scheme, and had built his hopes and staked his life and his daughter's life upon it, now went round declaring that there was no such scheme, that there was nothing in Montana, that he was an impostor, and that they had all been led astray and deceived by him. In any case, Montana had been too long in London without giving clear evidence that he had some practical scheme in hand not to encourage a feeling of doubt. He had not lately been to the Church of Free Souls as often as his admirers and worshippers down there could have desired, and Starr had sent the word out amongst all his own class that Montana passed his time in the West End, and was to be seen perpetually with duchesses and countesses. The duchesses and countesses, if they had come to be tested by critical examination, would have dwindled down to Lady Vanessa Barnes, because, although Montana did sometimes visit at the houses of great ladies, it was by no means easy to get him there. He was the pursued, and not the pursuer, so far as rank and fashion were concerned; and Lady Vanessa Barnes was the only woman of rank with whom he was often seen. But there is nothing, perhaps, in life so sensitive, so easily roused, as the jealousy of the very poor concerning one of their leaders who is supposed to be drawing away from their side in order to keep well with the great and the high-born. The train that Starr had wildly laid took fire somehow, and with a certain blaze and explosion, in that physical and intellectual region out of which most of the humblest worshippers in the Church of Free Souls were drawn.

CHAPTER XXX.

DANGER SIGNALS.

FRANK TRESCOE and young Fanshawe were approaching London in a train from the North. They had been travelling through the night, and trying to sleep, and waking up and taking an interlude of smoke, and exchanging a word or two now and then in an undertone. They had had little talk on the way, however, for the smokingcarriage had other passengers, and it was not until morning that these others were dropped successively at stations on the way, and Trescoe and Fanshawe were left alone. Then they struggled up into wakefulness, and began with half-dazed eyes to look out on the quiet fields and the soft sunshine.

Soon they resumed a conversation on a subject which had lately occupied them a good deal. Their conversation was about Montana. They had not been very successful in their inquiries concerning him. They had got what might be called fair historical evidence to show that Montana was the son of Varlowe, the livery-stable keeper. If a man were writing Montana's biography, years after Montana's death, he might be well justified in describing him on the strength of that evidence as Varlowe's son, the man who had married pretty Miss Fanshawe. But there was no evidence to bring into a court of law or to confute denial or to overwhelm a defendant's

case.

Moreover, Fanshawe, at least, was beginning to take new thought on the matter.

“That's my ultimatum, Trescoe," he said. "I don't care what becomes of the whole affair any more. I'll have no further hand or part in it. Let him be who he will, I'll do nothing to injure him. He is going to marry Aquitaine's daughter. He has behaved well to her, and for her sake and for Aquitaine's I will have nothing more to do with this business."

"Then," Trescoe said angrily, "you really mean to say you will let this man go on, even though he is an impostor? You will let him go on swindling you don't know how many thousands of people, and you will do nothing to expose him, just because he is marrying Aquitaine's daughter ?"

"Quite so; I'll have nothing to do with it. You see, I was willing enough to make some sacrifice in my own person and my own family for the sake of having the man shown up in his true colours, whatever they are. If he had turned out to be what we thought he was, he

would have turned out to be the husband of my sister, and I should not particularly delight in such a disclosure as that. But I didn't mind that. I was willing to stand all that. That belongs to the past. Nothing can harm her, and I don't mind what talk might be brought up about her family. But it is different in the case of this poor little girl, Melissa Aquitaine. She was a fool. She was ridiculously in love with this man; but I suppose we mustn't wonder at that."

Trescoe looked darkly at him, as if he thought Fanshawe's words had a double meaning in them. But Fanshawe went on unheeding. "Anyhow, he has acted very well in the affair, and she is going to be Mrs. Montana, and I believe she is off her head with delight, and of course Aquitaine thinks it the best thing that can possibly happen now, although he does not like Montana himself any more than you or I, and I'll not do anything that might spoil that little girl's happiness. No, not if I know it. If I can't make anybody happy, I'll not try to make anybody unhappy."

"How do you know," Trescoe argued, "what mischief he may have done already? You see how he attracts women and all that; you can't tell what harm he may do yet. He ought to be stopped. He ought to be shown up. He ought to be shamed or punished somehow."

"Well, I don't know about that," Fanshawe said, with a half smile. "I fancy, if the women were foolish about him, the men were not much better. We all took up with him a great deal too readily and too much, and we let him come too near our women, I suspect, and we might have seen that such an awfully handsome fellow could not, even if he tried, have kept them from falling in love with him. Anyhow, Trescoe, take my word, the less said about the whole business now the better. What's done is done and can't be helped, and it is my confident belief that his marrying Melissa Aquitaine is about the best thing that can happen for a good many of us. There will be quiet in other families as well as in Melissa's when that job's done."

"That's not my way of looking at things," Trescoe said, "and I see my way pretty well in this matter. I am going to follow this out to the bitter end. I'll never let that man go until I have exposed him, and pulled him down from his confounded pedestal, and let the world know who he is and what he is."

"What's the use? You can't do it. You haven't got any proofs against him. You will get some people to say that he looks like the man who married my sister, and then a lot of others will say they don't see any resemblance, and the man himself will talk plausibly to

his own followers.

He has convinced them already. They will

believe anything he says."

"No, it's not so; you are wrong, Fanshawe. I have been looking into it. I find there are a good lot of people who are not inclined to believe in him any more than you and I. I can show them he is an impostor, and I am going to do it."

"What are you going to do?"

"Well, I will do this for one thing. He is going to have a great farewell meeting, or reception, or something down at that confounded hole of his in the East End, somewhere in the Minories or Petticoat Lane."

"You know where the place is well enough," Fanshawe interposed, "so do I. We have all been there. It isn't in Petticoat Lane, and it wouldn't alter the condition of things very materially even if it were. Let's hear what you are going to do there."

"When his meeting is full," said Trescoe, "I will get up and denounce him in the face of the whole crowd. I will tell them who he is; I will defy him to deny my statement, and I will dethrone him then and there."

"Stuff!" was Fanshawe's comment. "He will tell them that what you say is not true. He will put on an appearance of offended dignity and injured innocence, and they won't care twopence for what you say or what you do; and you will be ejected neck and crop, or very likely you will be torn in pieces."

"I don't think so," Trescoe said grimly. "I'll take care to have a few fellows to stand by me."

"Oh, I'll come and stand by you, for the matter of that. If you are going to be ejected or torn in pieces, I'll be in the row. But I don't suppose anything more will come of that than that I shall get a share of what is meant for you, and we shall both come out of it equally badly."

"I'll run the risk, anyhow," Trescoe declared, with set teeth. "I will have this thing out. I look forward with delight to the idea of exposing him in the face of his own friends. It is the only satisfaction I have had for months back. I hate the man, and I'll have it out with him. Some of his fine friends, I dare say, will be there : his patrons and patronesses from the West End; this Lady-what's her name—some duchess's daughter who has taken it into her head to patronise him; he's always tied to her petticoat-tail. I will expose him before her very eyes. Yes, I will make her laugh at him. There will be some satisfaction in that."

"Make her laugh at you very likely, I dare say," Fanshawe said,

"when she sees you being personally conducted out of the place by the horny hands of honest labour, with, it may be, an occasional impulse from honest labour's still more horny foot."

"This whole affair seems very trivial to you, Fanshawe, although I should think you might have some feeling against the man who married your sister and treated her badly."

"But come now, look here," Fanshawe said. "First of all, it is not certain that this is the man who married my sister; and next, it is certain that if he did marry her, he did not treat her badly. Our people did not like him because the fellow was a low fellow-son of a livery-stable keeper-and we thought we were bound to be tremendous people at that time-why, I don't know. Anyhow, they didn't like his marrying her, and they sulked about it, and they treated her badly. They may say what they like, but I never heard that he treated her badly, and I don't believe it. Anyhow, I have no personal feeling against the man. I think if this man is deceiving people he ought to be exposed, if we can do it; but I don't see my way to it; and now that he is going to marry little Melissa Aquitaine, I am rather glad that I don't see my way. I am very sorry for any of my dear brother and sister fellow-mortals in general who may be taken in by Montana; but really they must be left to open their eyes for themselves. I am a deal more concerned for Melissa Aquitaine. She is more to me than a couple of hundred or thousand swart mechanics from the East End, about whom I know nothing. I don't believe he is a swindler, mind you, or anything of the kind in the ordinary sense; but if he contrives to impose on them, it is their own affair; I can't help it; but I should be very sorry to distress. Aquitaine and Aquitaine's daughter."

Trescoe gave a growl of contempt or disapproval, and dropped out of the conversation.

"What a changed fellow you are, Frank Trescoe !" Fanshawe could not help saying. "I never saw a man pass through such a change in the same period of time. You have become a regular savage. You hate Montana with the hatred of a red Indian in a penny romance."

The train ran into the London station, and there was an end to the conversation for the moment. As the two young men were looking after their luggage, a man passed them, hurrying on his way to a train soon about to start for the north.

Trescoe saluted him in a gruff sort of way.

"Who is that man ?" Fanshawe asked, looking after him. "I know him, surely."