appeared on the strange, dimly-lighted scene quickly. Her natural curiosity seemed to be overawed by some influence not yet explained.

Joshua moved the candle so that it fell full upon her face.

"These premises have been entered during the night," he began, with a certain grandiloquence; "I have every reason to believe that they have been entered by my son Julian. I wish to know whether you can throw any light upon the matter. In the first place, were the doors and windows at the back of the house all fastened as usual when you came down this morning?"

"Exactly as usual, sir; but-"

"Wait, wait! Speak only when you are spoken to. Did you hear any noise during the night?". "I never heard nothing after I went upstairs, sir."

"What time was it when you went upstairs?" Hannah blushed and hesitated. "It was going on for four o'clock this morning," she said, at

I FOUND THAT DOOR OPEN."

Yes; I let him in-an' I let him out again." "How long was he in?"

"Not more than ten minutes, an' he hardly spoke. He went into the shop, but he hardly made no noise at all. He never so much as said 'at I wasn't to tell nobody he'd been in."

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That will do, that will do! You can go back to your work now."

"Give her a word of caution about speaking of this," implored Martin, in a whisper.

"Not a syllable, not a syllable!" said the old man, sternly.

He would make no hue and cry, this he had decided already; but neither would he so much as raise his finger to ensure concealment. A little more or less scandal could make no matter now. If the thing could have been managed so that no one should have known save himself, who had

been sinned against, and his son, who had sinned, it would have made no difference. It would be no more possible for Julian to take his position again than it would have been possible for him to come back from death to life.

Poor old Serlcote! It was as if an earthquake had opened the ground under his feet; as if the walls that made his house and home were tottering; as if only ruin and degradation could be the lot of him and his for ever.

He sat with his bowed head between his hands, trying to soothe its hot aching by pressure, trying to relieve his troubled senses by rocking himself slowly to and fro. Martin had wisely left him alone with his great grief. Daylight came slowly through the wide, low window behind him, the candle burnt down into its socket, sounds reached him from the house and from the street; still it was a hard matter for him to raise that white head of his and face life again, knowing so certainly as he did that he could never face it as he had done before.

Martin's trouble was great, but it was not as his uncle's trouble. He was younger and more sanguine; besides, he had known so much more of Julian's desperate position that he was less surprised. His one present idea was secrecy. If his uncle would do nothing to ensure that, then he would do all that could be done himself.

Hannah was easily bribed. The girl was in tears when Martin went into the kitchen, and labouring under an uneasy sense of error which she was altogether unable to define. She gave a fuller account to Martin than Joshua had permitted her to give, but she had no new light to throw upon the matter. Mr. Julian had startled her by tapping at the kitchen window; she recognised his voice when he spoke, and opened the door for him without hesitation, supposing that he had forgotten his latchkey. She had not known till then that Mr. Serlcote had barred the sidedoor when he went to bed.

No, she would not tell any one, she said, closing her hand with a good deal of reluctance over the sovereign that Martin insisted on placing there; and as for telling Miss Dyne, that she would never have dreamed of. Martin was very emphatic here, and repeated his injunction with a certain amount of embarrassment.

After a time he went back to the shop to plead with his uncle, and his effort was not altogether wasted. Joshua agreed that it would avail little to plunge the whole household into the depths of a misery that they could barely understand, and could in no wise alleviate. Martin quickly put the empty cases out of sight, and persuaded his uncle to take his place at the breakfast-table as usual. It was better that he did so; but the trouble that had fallen upon him passed through the others as an electric shock passes. They dared not ask what new thing had happened, nor could they talk of indifferent things. Altogether that Christmas Day was as the day when one lies newly dead in a house.

By degrees it came to be understood, even by the little ones, and without any openly uttered word, that Julian's return was not to be looked

for. Joshua insisted that the children's party, for which the invitations had already been issued, should be given as originally planned, on the day after Christmas Day. He even forced himself to be present, and strove to the uttermost to put away from him that dark shadow that had fallen into his life. No one knew the effort it cost him, because it was felt that such an occasion would have been rather trying to him in his brightest days. His smile had never been a happy one, nor his manner easy. If there was more pathos in his endeavour to seem easy and happy it is probable that no one noticed it save his niece, who was herself under the necessity of making a certain amount of effort. The need for it passed away as the evening went on. Her nature was one of those whose darkest troubles are lightened by children's mirth.

Children of all ages and both sexes were there, bright merry little things, whose untroubled faces and free glad laughter came into that sad household like a breeze from the hills into a close hot city, or like a flood of sunshine into a darkened room. Fanny and Nellie, dressed in new white muslin dresses and crimson sashes, gave themselves up at once and without reserve; Sam, who was timid and shy, yielded more slowly. John, who was growing tall, and had been promoted that very evening to a dress coat and a white tie, looked grave and conscious, but it might be that his promotion was slightly oppressive. Elizabeth's pleasant homely face showed no sign of sadness; she rustled awkwardly about in her mauve silk dress, which was amply trimmed with white imitation lace, but her smiles were not so unforced as they seemed to be. Mrs. Serlcote was the only fretful person present. She resented all attention, more especially the attention of her husband and Agnes. She had a very firm impression that her son had not been dealt with fairly.

The giving out of the presents from the Christmas-tree by lottery was the grand feature of the evening. The presiding genius seemed to be in a perverse mood. Joshua received a tiny silver thimble, Elizabeth a walking-stick, and Martin Brooke a doll dressed as a fairy. Then, when the laughter was loudest, a heavy distressing sob was heard, a sob that hushed every other sound at once, and drew every eye to the shadowy corner behind the tree. There was only little Nellie there, Nellie who had been the brightest and merriest of the whole party. It was all so new to her, so delightful, so different from all the other days of her prosaic little life, that it was not to be wondered at that she had forgotten the existence of any such thing as sorrow. She might have continued to forget, but her eye had fallen on a cigar-case that she had bought with her own money. It had not been put into the lottery; she had wished to be quite sure of its reaching the person for whom it was designed. In her excitement she had glanced round the room for him; then she had remembered, and the remembrance was more than she was able to bear.

"Oh, what is it? What is the matter?" came from all sides.

The child in her distress only sobbed out quietly, "Julian would have liked it so."

Agnes drew the little thing to her side comfortingly, and Martin, with quiet prescience, made an attempt to go on at once with the giving out of the presents. But this was not to be. Emotion had grasped Joshua Serlcote with a stronger grasp than he was able to shake off. He had turned white, or rather grey, and he was trembling visibly. For a moment he could not speak, but he was conscious that every one was watching him, wondering at his weakness. And the consciousness lent to his emotion the strength and appearance of anger.

"Ellen," he said, speaking sharply and hardly. "Ellen, leave the room at once; but before you go hear this, and let every one else hear it." Then he stopped and drew himself up to his full height, and raised his hand as if in denunciation. "Let every one present listen to this, and remember it that I forbid any human being ever to mention my son Julian's name to me again. I disown him. From this hour I cast him off for ever."

More than this the old man might have said, but Agnes laid her hand gently on his outstretched arm. He turned, and saw the sad pleading look that was yet full of sweetness, and his anger seemed to die out as suddenly as it had arisen. Nellie was going sobbing from the room, but he brought her back, and went out himself instead.

Elizabeth, Agnes, and Martin made every possible effort to restore the easy, natural mirth of the previous hours, but their success was only partial. Some of the elder children never forgot the consternation that seized them that evening when Joshua Serlcote thus publicly cast off his son, the young man whom they had looked up to with such keen and unfailing admiration. touched them as, generally speaking, only personal things touch the very young.

It

Meanwhile Joshua Serlcote had shut himself up in his own room, and was walking up and down there in the darkness, twining his hands tightly together, uttering broken words, fighting against the strange sorrow that had come upon him with all the strength he had. He went back over the past, over the days of Julian's childhood and boyhood and his early youth; he remembered his own kindnesses and indulgences; he recalled things that he had done many a time with outward bad grace because they were so directly opposed to all his theories, but in which he had found compensating internal satisfaction because they were done for Julian. What had he not done for him? He had given him superior advantages in the way of education; year after year he had increased his allowance; and he had sent him abroad at great expense and inconvenience to himself. Since his return had he not treated him more like a superior than like a son? Julian's time had been his own, his expenditure had seemed almost unlimited, and when reproof and remonstrance became duties that could no longer be delayed, had he not tried to the uttermost to prevent himself from using any word that should even savour of harshness? As to forgiveness, he had

been impelled to forgive him even when he had half scorned himself for his own weakness in so doing. A word, a look of Julian's had at any time been sufficient to neutralise the secretly nourished soreness and resentment of days. "But now-now it is all over," the old man said to himself, sinking into a chair. Then the tears began to fall, hot, bitter tears that dropped slowly over his withered face, and two tremulous hands were stretched out imploringly in the darkness. "Julian, Julian," the old man said aloud, “I could have borne it if I had not loved you so. I could have borne even this if I had not loved you."

After that day a calmer sadness settled down upon the household in the Corn Market. The elder members felt that there was some mystery, that something had come to light after Julian's depar ture of which his father and Martin knew, but there seemed to be a tacit agreement among them that it was better to let it remain a mystery so far as themselves were concerned. It was very pathetic the way they dreaded being compelled to think with anything but tenderness and affection of that wandering prodigal of theirs. They only spoke of him at night round the fire, when tears might fall unobserved and whispers be heard without effort. Agnes was the only hopeful one among them. Her hope was distant and undefined, but it was not the less a strong hope.

66

He will come back," she said, gently, "and his father will receive him."

The others listened doubtfully, almost despairingly. This was especially true of Martin. He could not help looking wistfully at Agnes as she spoke, and wondering what she would think and feel if she knew all." He did not know that he himself did not know all, that Julian's debts, strange, inexplicable debts, were daily coming to his father's knowledge. The old man paid them quickly and secretly and silently, but, unknown to himself, his heart was hardening rapidly in the process. That matter of Grant and Greenlow's was as keen a blow in its way as was the more direct robbery of Christmas Eve. The knowledge that Julian had been wilfully and recklessly deceiving him almost ever since his return from the Continent was almost unbearable to a man so stern-principled as Joshua Serlcote. not forget, he could not forgive. He had no wish to forgive now that all tenderness was dead or dying within him. No one, not even his own wife, had dared to mention his son's name to him since that sad evening. It was seen by every one that he was growing rapidly older and sterner and more silent. The few people who knew his sorrow and sympathised with it yet avoided the man who sorrowed so hardly and proudly.

He could

Of course the tragic occurrences of that Christmas night were soon known in one form of another to every dweller in that little town of Lyme-St.-Mary's, save and except only the dwellers under Joshua Serlcote's own roof. No two accounts agreed as to detail. Circumstances were added, pathetic, romantic, picturesque, with wonderful ingenuity, and all more or less betray

ing the almost universal sympathy with Julian. His father's will had driven him to consent to an uncongenial engagement; his father's penuriousness had driven him into debt; finally, his father's well-known pride and sternness had driven him to open rebellion. For weeks little else was talked of save Julian Serlcote and his strange disappearance. All that was good and amiable in him was recalled and dwelt upon sadly. His geniality, his unfailing courtesy, his ready goodnature, his winning ways, all were heightened, exaggerated, until his character became invested with a halo that would certainly never have surrounded it had he remained in his own place and gone on his own downward way by the same paths by which he had been descending so long. Those who had been among the first to prophesy his ruin were among the last to blame him now that ruin had come. He might be as one dead, but there was a feeling in the town of Lyme-St.Mary's that he would never be as one forgotten.

CHAPTER XI.-MARTIN MAKES ANOTHER MISTAKE.
Love is eternal.

Whatever dies, that lives. I feel and know
It is too great a thing to die.

-Philip Van Artevelde.

T is often a very perplexing thing to look back upon great sorrows. Sometimes the cause of the grief-the actual thing itself-seems to fade away, while the sorrow that we spent or wasted upon it is with us still-a black, heavy memory, from which we turn with pain. In other nstances it is the event that stands out in bold relief, while the feeling we had concerning it seems to have been transient and shallow in proportion. Few of us have any standard by which o measure our earthly griefs; or if we hold by he standard we are too much weighed down for measurement. Grief is "her own mistress," and

urs.

"And shall I take a thing so blind,

Embrace her as my natural good, Or crush her like a vice of blood Upon the threshold of the mind?"

Yet no

If such crushing were possible, sorrow for some f us would cease to be sorrow at all-not for hany though. We are all of us, more or less, not nly born to trouble, but provided with due capaity for trouble, which no amount of crushing will ender less keen, less constantly alive. wo of us are alike in our capacity for sorrow, nor our power for remembering sorrow; and no wo sorrows touch us to the same result. Only ne thing may be said of all alike. If when we alked through the midst of the burning fiery urnace One walked with us whose form was like o the Son of God, then we may know certainly hat we not only "had no hurt," but that that erce salting by fire was for our healing and blessng-yea, for our blessing, though we may seem t first to have hardly life left in us for receiving . But let us still wait upon God, and patiently, we would yet give Him thanks for the help of His countenance.

Imagine the passing of two years over that house in the Corn Market of Lyme-St.-Mary's-two slow eventless, silent years that seemed as ten even to the elder members of the stricken family; strangely stricken they were, and the feeling came out in strange ways. Had bereavement by death come to them they would have mourned as other people of this class mourned, not varying so much as an inch in the breadth of a crape fold. But there was no established precedent for behaviour in disgrace. They might not put the blinds down, nor provide themselves with three graduated suits of mourning, but a certain instinct forbade the usual spring and autumn display of carefullychosen millinery. If a new gown or bonnet had to be selected now, the children were made to feel that there would be a kind of heartlessness or shamelessness in choosing to wear any colour but brown or grey. This sense of a new subduedness, where all had been subdued before, might be very oppressive; but then they knew that they were oppressed-oppressed with a sense of open shame that seemed to resolve itself into something more and more tangible as the time went on. They could never hold up their heads as they had done before, therefore they made no effort to hold them up at all. Friends fell away slowly but surely, others grew colder; even the customers took a new tone, and bore themselves more diffidently or more haughtily, according to the view they took of Joshua Serlcote's trouble, and the blame they imagined must attach to himself. The gloom rested everywhere, and deepened on every occasion. Julian's name was never mentioned; the silence grew longer, and was kept more strictly;, but it did not fail to make itself felt more impressively. Joshua Serlcote's lost son was lost indeed, but not yet was he forgotten.

He was not forgotten-no, nor was he forgiven, though through these two long years the old man had hardly any abiding thought save thought of his absent son, yet never again had any burst of tenderness arrested the hardening of his grief.

Yes; daily had he grown harder and prouder in his sorrow. He had lived a long life, he had borne the burden and heat of the day bravely, but all through there had been the natural human looking-for of peace and rest and satisfaction in his old age. The details had been arranged, the touches of warmth and colour laid beforehand. He had encouraged a certain latent cheerfulness about the future. It was not strange, now that the future would not bear looking into at all, that his disappointment and desolation should turn to bitterness within him.

The memory of Julian held no bitterness for any one save his father. Elizabeth's grief was simply grief; she had nothing to forgive, there had been little to strain her blind, strong affection. She had never understood all that had happened, she had refrained from trying to understand. Julian had erred, and his error had been so severely visited that no chance of turning to better things had been given him. He had sinned, but most certainly had he been sinned against. Elizabeth was sad, but there was one whose life was more saddened still, though perhaps she showed

it even less openly. Agnes Dyne hardly understood herself in those days. Though Julian's name was never mentioned, though she had never heard one word from him nor concerning him, and therefore did not know whether he were living or dead, still her mental life had turned so ceaselessly toward him that her love had strengthened day by day. She knew that it was quite possible-nay, probable-that she would never see him again, that her life would go on growing drearier, less hopeful-yes, even less hopefulthan it was now; that all her natural, womanly dreams would fade out unfulfilled; yet none of the sweetness in her turned to bitterness under the knowledge. She was one of the few who seem to learn life's hardest lesson-submission to the will of God-with an ease that is perplexing to those who have required stroke upon stroke, and find themselves still murmuring under the rod. The years of her life might be long and dark and lonely, but she knew that she might not spend that life in idle moaning. She had work enough to do now, she would always find work of some kind lying ready to her hand; and if while she worked with hand or head her heart kept on beating time in this slow, sorrowful way it was surely for some sufficient reason.

Her external cheerfulness was delusive, especially was it delusive to him who watched her most closely. Not the minutest change passed over the face of Agnes when Martin Brooke was by that he did not notice; not the slightest variation came into her voice or accent without causing corresponding varying emotion in him.

Since the very first day of Julian's departure he had consciously set himself to be to Agnes as a brother. This he might be; it would be a satisfaction to himself; it might be some alleviation to her. It was not much he could do, at least it did not seem much to himself, but Agnes had come by slow degrees to be unceasingly grateful for those ceaseless little attentions of which Martin thought so lightly. She made not the smallest effort to hide her gratitude; nay, it was a pleasure to her to show how pleased she

was.

Martin still kept that strong check upon himself which had been so necessary before; at first he would not allow himself to dream for a moment that it could be less necessary now. But thoughts come unallowed, and however strong the will may be to banish them, they are apt to leave feelings behind them over which the will has less control. It was part of Martin's duty now to bring the letters from the box in the morning. For many months he had looked eagerly for Julian's handwriting, wishing and longing to see it there. Now when he detected his own thought it was as if he had detected himself in uttering a falsehood. He was relieved-beyond doubt he was relieved when day after day, week after week, the silence remained unbroken. He might hate himself for the feeling, but still it was there.

Life was getting more and more intense with him; every meal-time was an event, and every evening a strange sweet delirium. The power he had over his outward man was remarkable; he

could control everything but his voice, and he exposed himself seldomer than ever to danger here.

The second winter after Julian's departure had passed not unhappily for him. He had grown more and more necessary to Agnes's comfort, and he could not but perceive it. He it was to whom she turned instinctively for the thousand and one little services to be rendered in daily life where means are not limitless and servants few. He brought her books from the library; often she left the choice to him; they read them together, discussed them, and discovered strange similarities of taste and opinion. And now that the spring had come and the days were longer, Martin had remembered her love for wild flowers; and three or four times a week he came in with both hands filled with fresh, sweet, graceful things that roused her to emotions nearly ecstatic. Martin was often more curt, more odd than usual on these occasions. He would blush, throw his flowers down carelessly, and then walk off as if he had been offended.

"Disagreeable boy he is," Mrs. Serlcote said on one occasion when Martin had walked away the middle of Agnes's thanks and delight, banging the door after him as he went out.

"But he is so very very good," Agnes said, she stood flushed with pleasure by the table singling out long scented sprays of woodruff, turquoise forget-me-nots, and sweet blue violets. It was 3 little grieving to Mrs. Serlcote to see her new crimson table-cover littered with trash, and it was altogether perplexing to see any grown-up person blushing with delight in it. Slowly it occurred to her perplexed brain that there might be deeper cause for the blushes.

Surely you are not falling in love with Martin," she said, her cap-ribbons trembling with irritation at the thought.

Agnes's colour went deeper still-this time with pure resentment. She hesitated as she general did when touched to anything like anger; then slowly the feeling died away, and a pleasant smile broke over her face.

"No, I'm not falling in love with him now. Aunt Susan," she said, turning to the flowers again. "I have loved him ever since I have known him. If I had a brother of my own I don't think I could have cared more for him than I care for Martin."

That was all; no more was said; there was no need for more. Agnes's eyes had been opened ruthlessly, and it seemed to her that she would have given all that she had to give if she might have been blind again. Never once had it crossed her mind that anything was possible between Martin and herself save friendship-the deep quiet brotherly friendship that she had been so glad to receive, the warm grateful sisterly friendship that she had been so ready to give.

She knew now that nothing in her earthly life was so much to her as this was. Take Martin out of it, with all his flowers and his s and his thoughtful little kindnesses, and what be left?

She was grieved and saddened, and tr