Into the Highways and Hedges

After the storm there was a calm.

Margaret lay on the settle in the farm kitchen recovering slowly from a sharp attack of marsh fever, and declaring in apparent jest, that had more than a substratum of truth, that she was in no hurry to get well.

"Some people hate being waited on and made a fuss over," she said; "but I really like it; I like it when Tom brings me books, and Mr. Thorpe flowers, and Cousin Tremnell tats lace caps for me. You are all so nice when I am ill, that I don't see why I should give up being an invalid. Why should I sit on a bench and spread my own bread and dripping, when some one else will make toast for me and bring it over here? I am not at all sure that I'll even condescend to put it into my own mouth! You must cut it into three-cornered pieces, or I won't look at it!"

And in the general laugh over her pretended airs, only one of her hearers guessed how often the joke, that had become a family joke, about liking to be waited on, hid real weariness and exhaustion.

She could hardly have found a shorter cut to the favour of these strange kinsfolk. They all united in petting her now that she was really ill.

Mrs. Tremnell certainly liked her better for her delicacy. Meg always privately believed that the good woman thought ill-health ladylike and more befitting her birth. Tom and her father-in-law could never do enough for her.

She was, like her father, a charming patient, ready with prettiest thanks for any service, and never complaining. Not one of them but would have been sorry to miss the very feminine element she had brought into that rather rough household.

"A young woman do make it more interestin', if only 'cause you can never count for sartain on what she'll say next," Tom remarked; and the whole household had a habit of bringing any piece of news, from the birth of a calf to the last town gossip, to Meg's settle.

The 'little lady' saw all life, both her own and other people's, more vividly and picturesquely than they did; and her sympathy was genuine and quick.

"If ye live here always, I believe ye'll become a sort o' little wise woman to all the foalk hereabouts," her father-in-law said to her one day. But Meg shook her head. She was doing her best to lie on the bed she had made for herself; but she did not care to look forward.

She was recovering morally as well as physically; but she couldn't go too fast.

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" is a piece of wisdom that we recognise at last, when we are tired out with the treble burden of to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow.

Barnabas worked on the farm through that August and the first half of September, and Tom was glad enough to have him.

The preacher had a wonderful faculty for turning his hands to anything; and this was, perhaps, a counter-balance to his incapacity for and dislike of "book-larning".

He was in request as veterinary surgeon and bone-setter; and Meg used to wonder that his strong clever fingers should have so delicate a touch.

She learned to depend on him herself, insensibly, in a way that she would once hardly have thought possible.

Barnabas was a born nurse, and could lift her into an easier position and slip her pillows into the right angle as no one else could.

Mrs. Tremnell had an aimless manner of fluttering about on tip-toe in a sick-room,—a habit which set Meg's nerves on edge, and which it taxed all her self-command to endure without signs of impatience; but the preacher's heavy tread never jarred on her. He always knew exactly what he meant to do in small as well as in big things; and both his decision and his strength were restful.

Possibly, if she had owed him less, she would have drawn near to loving him.

She had fancied when first taken ill that she was going to die.

The shivering and burning, which left her daily weaker, which wearied and exhausted her, would, she suspected, very effectually solve all the difficulties that surrounded Barnabas and herself. But, after all, her youth asserted itself. A spell of sharp, fresh weather seemed to give her new life; the attacks of fever became shorter; and, very much to her own surprise, she recognised that she was—albeit painfully and with many relapses—getting better!

She had been kept to the house for weeks; but there was no doubt as to her convalescence, when, on one fine afternoon in September, Barnabas carried her into the fields, where she lay under a rick watching the men at work, the soft pink of returning health in her cheeks, her eyes soft with pleasure at the wonder of summer growth and sweetness.

Meg had not much wished to live; but, after all, the world was beautiful!

As she sat leaning against the rick, watching the in-gathering of the scanty crop, listening to the rough voices a little mellowed by distance, the preacher's wife knew that both place and people had now a warm corner in her heart.

Her gaze wandered past the low boundary fence, far away over the flats. How often she had run out of the house and down to the field to look at that view!

She had thought that she should not see it again; and, even now, while sitting there, a dreamy presentiment, that she could not shake off, came over her.

She felt as if she had got to the bottom of a page,—a page on which such strange things had been written, both good and bad. Efforts, desperate at times, to adapt herself to circumstances, failures sudden and overwhelming, courage lost—and found again.

"They have been very good to the stranger within their gates," she said to herself. "I wish I could show them how grateful I am now! I wish I were a saint to call down blessings on their harvest!"

And she wished it with that fervour which one cannot help hoping is not entirely wasted, even in the entire absence of saintship.

She was so full of her own thoughts that she did not hear steps coming over the stubble behind her.

George Sauls had been up to the house and found the door set wide open, and every one out; then, with a shrug of his shoulders at the primitive confidence that still reigned in these parts, had gone on to the hay-field, where he descried Mrs. Thorpe sitting under the rick.

He stood behind her now without speaking. He was shocked to see how ill she looked. He had always felt that Meg's beauty was of too spiritual a kind; now, her complexion was more transparent than usual, and the intent expression in her eyes made her look more spirit-like than ever.

George felt his hatred of her husband leap up like a flame; it was dangerously hot. She turned round and saw him.

"Ah, I beg your pardon!" he cried. "I have frightened you! I ought not to have appeared on the scene with such startling effect. I am a fool, Mrs. Thorpe" ("and a greater fool than you guess," he added inwardly), "and you? You have been ill?"

"I am sure that you bring me news. Tell me quickly," said Meg.

"I come from Mr. Deane; he has sent for you," answered George concisely.

He put her father's note into her hand, and turned his back on her, staring stolidly in front of him.

"Has he told her he is dying, or has he left that pleasing piece of intelligence for me to break to her?" he questioned.

What a remarkably ugly view it was! He wondered whether the preacher was among the men down there, or confined himself to preaching and left working to the sinners. What should he do if Mrs. Thorpe cried?

"Mr. Sauls!" said Meg; and he turned round and met her glance. She was quivering with happiness. Her eyes were misty with tears, but her joy shone through them. He had never seen any face that expressed joy so vividly as hers.

"No; he has not told her,—I can't," George decided hastily. He did not often fail in moral courage, and over-sensitiveness was not among his faults; but this woman always brought out a side of his character that was exceedingly unfamiliar to himself.

"I am so very, very glad that he will see me!" she cried. "You can't guess what it is to have a word from him again. I don't know how to thank you enough for bringing it." She looked again at the precious slip of paper in her hand, and a fresh thought struck her.

"My father says, 'I would have seen you before if I had known'. Was it you who found out that I tried to see him? and did you tell him so?—Yes? Oh, you have been a very good"—"friend" was on the tip of her tongue, but she suddenly remembered his odd disclaimer of friendship—"have been very kind to me; though I wonder" (thoughtfully) "that Mrs. Russelthorpe let you tell him."

"She was a little disinclined to allow an interview at first," said George smiling; "but—but she felt the force of my arguments."

"You must be very clever at persuading people."

"I was very persuasive," he said drily.

The remembrance of his "persuasion" amused him somewhat; but he did not care about giving Meg the details of that scene.

"Look here, Mrs. Thorpe; I've brought you something else which you won't like quite so much as that scrap of paper; but which I fancied you might be pleased to have, for I remembered that you once told me that you valued it." And he held out her locket.

"Why, it has come back to me again!" cried Meg. "The first time it was stolen; and Barnabas moved to repentance the poor girl who took it; but this time, I sold it of my own free will, and——"

"And I moved no one to repentance," said George. "I can't compete with the preacher; I paid over the counter. His was the more excellent way!"

Meg drew back a step. Whenever she felt most kindly to Mr. Sauls something in his tone jarred on her. It had been so in her girlhood; it was so now.

"There is no question of competition," she said. "Shall we try to find Barnabas? Oh! there he is."

He was coming towards them across the field; but he did not at first see Mr. Sauls, who was in the shadow.

George would have preferred to meet Meg's husband when Meg was not by; but he stood his ground. He was not going to be driven away by the fellow, much as he disliked him.

He had often said to himself that it was more than possible that the canting humbug ill-treated the woman he had stolen. Such a belief would justify any amount of hatred; but he knew it to be untenable when he saw the expression of the preacher's eyes as they turned to Meg.

He ought, logically, to have hated the preacher less in consequence; but, on the contrary, a tingling sensation assailed his foot; he wanted to kick the man with a longing the fierceness of which surprised himself. Mr. Sauls was a highly sophisticated product of a rather artificial age; but certain primitive instincts have an astonishing way of asserting themselves at times.

"Barnabas, this is Mr. Sauls, who has brought me a letter from my father," said Meg. She felt a slight uneasiness while making the introduction; the two men were so thoroughly antipathetical. But she had great trust in the preacher's instinct of hospitality, and in Mr. Sauls' savoir faire. She was not in the least prepared for what followed. The preacher's countenance changed when he looked at her visitor.

"I've seen ye afore, sir," he said in a low voice. "It passes me how ye are not 'shamed to be i' this county again. If I'd been here, I'd not ha' let my wife sit at th' same table with ye."

His fingers clenched unconsciously, his face grew stern, his blue eyes very bright. Meg had seen him look like that only once before—when he had caught the idiot frightening her.

Mr. Sauls put up his eyeglass and stared deliberately, and a little insolently. He always grew outwardly cool when an adversary waxed hot.

"You have the advantage of me," he said. "I don't know to what particular cause for shame you are alluding. Mrs. Thorpe has never, I believe, been the worse for my acquaintance, either from a spiritual or worldly point of view."

The innuendo made Meg hot, but the preacher did not notice it.

"Ye need not tell me that," he said; "but ye are no' fit company for her, unless ye ha' repented."

Meg put her hand on his arm. "I don't know what all this is about," she said; "but Mr. Sauls has come a long way to bring me news of my father. I am very grateful to him for that."

A month ago she would not have tried to remonstrate.

"You need not be afraid, Mrs. Thorpe," said George. "I don't quarrel before ladies; but, if your husband likes to attempt 'bringing me to repentance' when you are not by, I shall be delighted, and will promise to give him every attention."

He paused; but the preacher kept a tense silence. The appeal in his wife's voice, and, perhaps, the touch of her fingers, restrained him.

"Good-afternoon!" said George, and turned on his heel.

"Good-bye!" said Meg, and then held out her hand. She had been angry at the sneer at the preacher; but she could not bear, even seemingly, to desert any one who had done her a service.

"Please shake hands with me," she said. "And don't go away angry, after having brought me such good news."

She felt a little as if she were standing between fire and gunpowder, but that did not appear in her manner. She would have thought it "beneath" both herself and Barnabas to allow it to.

George took the hand, and held it a moment in his. He would have liked to kiss it, and all the more because that "canting brute" was looking on; but he did not: he reverenced Meg too much.

"Give my most humble respects to Mrs. Russelthorpe," he said; and then, with real kindliness: "I am glad you are going to your father. You will go soon? That's right! He is waiting for you. He told me to tell you to make haste. He will do his best to wait till you come."

"He will!" said Meg. "I think we shall see each other this once more, because we both want it so."

"A most illogical 'because,'" said George to himself. "But yet, God bless her, and give her her heart's desire!"

He looked back once, and saw the two still standing under the rick.

"And d——n the preacher!" he added. "By-the-bye, what had that fellow meant?" George grew angry in thinking of him.

But in Margaret's heart there was a great peace.

Her father had not cast her off; it was only she who had been faithless.

Oh! it was so much easier to cry, Mea culpa! than to allow that he had forgotten.

She had tried to offer God resignation, but He had given her joy. The level rays of the setting sun lit up her happy face, and made her short hair shine like a halo round her head. She put her hand before her eyes, and laughed a low, soft laugh like a contented child.

Mr. Sauls was not a very angelic messenger; but he had brought her peace and goodwill. With a radiant smile she watched him make his way over the shining, sun-tinged stubble. That smile, however, was not for him.

The preacher woke her from her golden reverie.

"What does he call himself?" he asked.

"My father?—oh, you mean Mr. Sauls?"

"Then he lies!" said Barnabas succinctly. "For his name's Cohen, and he's the man who ruined Lydia. His hand is not clean enough to touch you, Margaret. It were all I could do not to pull ye back; only," cried the preacher with sudden bitterness, "I minded he's a gentleman, who ye'd naturally trust, an' I might ha' scared ye."

"I am not scared by you," said Meg. "I never am now."

She brought her thoughts back from London and her father with something of a jerk. How could this be? Surely it was a mistake. It was impossible to connect Mr. Sauls' familiar, and, to her, commonplace figure, with the villain of the preacher's tragedy. Mr. Sauls wasn't a villain, and he was never tragic.

Then she looked at Barnabas; and, at the sight of the strong indignation in his face, her sympathy suddenly turned to him. She had loved neither of these men; but the preacher's was the type she understood best. The man who sneered could never appeal to Meg, who was religious to her finger tips, as did the man who fought and agonised and prayed. Her loyalty and faith were on the preacher's side; and her loyalty and faith were strong allies. If the story was true, how durst Mr. Sauls have come and have met Barnabas unashamed?

"I don't understand," she said. "I don't want to think him wicked. He has been very good to me. Have you read my father's message? That was Mr. Sauls' doing; he told father how I had tried and failed. Oh, yes, and he brought back my locket too—though that is nothing in comparison to the message."

Barnabas turned the locket over in his hand. It was a curious possession to lie on his brown palm. It reminded him of a good many things.

"Ye canna keep it!" he said at last. "But ye shall go to your father. We'll start by to-morrow's coach, an' ye like. I'll be taking you to a sink of iniquity, but I knew I'd go to London some day. No! doan't thank me, lass. Do ye suppose I doan't see wi'out tellin' that that's what ye've wanted more nor ought else, an' that it's new life to 'ee? He pulls hardest. Ye'll go back to your own people!" He sighed heavily. A presentiment of parting was on him, and his dread of London amounted to an absolute and quite unreasoning horror.

"But for th' locket—I'll not hav' ye touch what that rascal's fingers ha' dirtied. I'll follow and tell him that."

"Not that, Barnabas! Promise me you won't quarrel with him! Take the locket, if you like—but promise."

"Are ye feared for him?"

"No. Though, if I were, I shouldn't be ashamed of it! I'm not afraid for him, but you'll never forgive yourself, if you hurt him. Oh, Barnabas!" cried Meg, half laughing. "You repent more bitterly over your sins than he does. I don't want you to go in sackcloth and ashes all your days for Mr. Sauls, who has never in his life, I suppose, felt for any one what you have."

"God forgi'e me! I ha' hated him sorely," said Barnabas; "but, an' it's for me, Margaret—I'll promise."

CHAPTER XII.

"What had the fellow meant?" George puzzled over that point on his way back to N——town. It had been more than a mere ranting denunciation of the "rich man" as a "rich man". The indignation had been evidently personal to himself.

"If I'd been here, I'd not ha' let my wife sit at table wi' ye! It passes me that ye are not ashamed to come to this county again." How did the man know that he had ever been before?

To tell the truth, Mr. Sauls had once or twice felt in Meg's presence a little ashamed of a certain old story, though he did not regard the sins of his youth with the loathing that filled Barnabas Thorpe's soul at the thought of past backsliding.

Very few men's lives could be laid entirely open to the inspection of a good woman, George supposed; and he had never professed to be one of the "unco guid".

He grew angrier still with the preacher, at the thought of his ferreting out and telling Meg that tale, and he pictured the horror with which she would hear it.

George used to notice long ago with some amusement (he had often been privately amused with Miss Deane) that she was apt to be rather sweeping in her condemnations; seeing, in her extremely youthful innocence, only black and white, with no shades of grey between; judging with the crude severity that has not known temptation. It did not "amuse" him now to think of that.

That hypocrite would paint his portrait as a profligate, and a seducer of innocence; and Meg, looking at it all from a woman's point of view, would feel as if her hand had touched pitch in touching his.

"For commend me to a preacher for hunting down a scandal, and to a good woman for a hard sentence," he thought bitterly. Yet, if she could only know, even then, even in his rowdy, unsatisfactory boyhood, he had not been so utterly bad.

"Innocence" had never been the worse for him—never once. It was not "innocence" that he had flirted with in the hotel in the market town of Clayton; he and all the rest of the rather fast set he had affected in those days. There are country girls as far from simplicity as any town maiden; as there are town maidens as freshly innocent as cowslips in a field. Lydia Tremnell, the pretty saucy school-friend of the hotel-keeper's daughter, certainly had not belonged to the latter genus; and, possibly, Mr. Sauls wouldn't have paid her attention if she had.

At one and twenty George had had no liking for bread-and-butter misses. If he had met a girl of Meg's type then, he would have found her dull; but he followed the prevailing fashion and raved about Lydia, who, indeed, was pretty enough to charm most men's senses, and witty, too, in a rather pert fashion.

Now he came to think of it (but it was all so long ago!) he had a faint recollection of a very irate cousin of Lydia's who came to fetch her home, very much against her will; could that have been Barnabas Thorpe?

He had kept up a half-joking correspondence with her afterwards; but no one could have been more astonished than he was when the young woman turned up at his rooms in London one day, and threw herself utterly and completely on his protection!

Looking back now across the years that separated his ambitious and successful manhood from his unpromising youth, Mr. Sauls said to himself, "what a young idiot he had been!" but it had been no case of betrayal.

He had never promised Lydia marriage; he had never lured her up to town; he would have sent her home, if she had chosen—only he was no Joseph. Yes! what a fool he had been; Meg would call him by a harder name!

There had been a very curious end to the vulgar story. Lydia fell ill with a most malignant form of small-pox when she had been with him a week.

She clung desperately to him then, entreating him to hold by her, not to send her away to die in a hospital; she had an absolute unreasoning fear of hospitals. She hardly expected him to accede to her agonised prayers; she would not have stood by him or by any one else in a like case; and, what there was of good in George Sauls, she had never been the woman to find out; but he did accede to them, greatly to her wonder.

George was not in love with her, he had not a shred of respect for her; but, when she turned to him in direst need, the something not ignoble in him responded and he did not desert her. To say that that loathsome disease had no terrors for him would scarcely be true; but he had a constitutional dislike to running away, and he faced the terrors; which, perhaps, on the whole, might be counted very much to his credit.

Lydia died after a week's illness. "I don't want to live with marks on my face," she had said. "What should I do, grown ugly? but you have been better than most men would have been." She had no qualms about her soul, and no longing for her mother. She had no violent affection for any one or anything, except, perhaps, her own beautiful body, which had been spoilt by the marks on it. If George Sauls had been a poor man, he would not have been troubled with her.

George experienced none of the terrible remorse that the preacher would have felt in like circumstances; but, nevertheless, while he stood by Lydia's grave, he made some resolutions which he kept.

Probably, in any case, the stronger qualities of the man, the intense ambition, and keen pleasure in work, the sweetening affection for the mother and sister he pulled up with him, would have asserted themselves, and kept his coarser qualities in subjection as he grew older; but the episode of Lydia and the hours spent beside her bedside ripened him fast. He made an end of the sowing of wild oats. They didn't pay!

He had lived a clean life since; but Meg would not know that—and it was fifteen years ago!

George felt it unfair that so old a sin should rise up now to blacken his image in the mind of the woman he had the misfortune to love.

He had been surprised when he had first heard the name of Tremnell again; but Lydia's mother had never so much as seen him, and his name bore no association for her. He had changed it, on coming into money, and was Cohen-Sauls, instead of Cohen, now; and his cool assurance had carried him safely through the unexpected encounter. The difference between thirty-six and twenty-one was so wide that he hardly even felt self-conscious.

It was odd that the preacher should have recognised him. "The pious humbug!" said George between his teeth; "at least, my hands are cleaner than his! I never took advantage of her faith, though certainly I never had the chance. He'll draw a sweet picture of the wicked man for her; I shall point a moral to several sermons. If I might meet him this once, with no woman standing by, perhaps I might deliver a message too. Hallo, what's this?"

He had been walking quickly, not looking much at the flat landscape around him; but his eye was caught by a newly made fence round the "Pixies' Pool" which lay a little off the regular track.

Moved by curiosity, he turned towards it, and leaning his arms on the rail, stared down into the salt depths that had had such fascination for Meg.

Mr. Sauls was not in the least imaginative, but while thus engaged he had rather an odd sensation,—a sensation as if some one behind him were watching him; and he turned round sharply.

No one was by his side; it must have been fancy; but, the next minute, he did descry a man walking along the track he had just left, walking at full speed, with a long swinging step; and, with the man's approach, Mr. Sauls recognised the preacher.

Barnabas came deliberately towards him.

"Have the pixies granted me my wish?" thought George with a sneer. "Now, my holy friend, we'll have it out! I wouldn't have gone out of my way to quarrel with you, for her sake; but if you choose to follow me, why, the meekest of men could not stand that."

He lighted a cigar leisurely, and, with his back against the rail, awaited the preacher's approach; with a satisfaction which, perhaps, the "meekest of men" would hardly have experienced.

"I wanted to catch ye up," said Barnabas; and so the two stood face to face at last, with no one between them.

"At your service," said George. His tone was lazily insolent, though, as a rule, he carefully abstained from patronising his inferiors in rank.

He scanned Barnabas between half-shut eyelids. It was not the least of this fellow's offences that he looked so honest.

"I followed to give ye back this. It's not fitting my wife should tak' aught fro' ye; I'd liefer ye had it again. She's no need o' diamonds, an' if she had, they shouldna be bought wi' your money. She's obliged to 'ee, sir," with an evident after-thought; "an' here they be."

"I am sorry to disoblige," said George, lifting his shoulders. "I will not press a gift on Mrs. Thorpe against her will. When she gives it back to me herself, I'll take it; till then I had 'liefer' she kept it."

The preacher put the locket down on the rail that fenced the pond. "She'll not do that," he said quietly. "Take it or leave it, as you like; it's yours." And he turned to go.

"Stop!" said George, standing upright. "You were loud enough in your denunciations when a lady,"—somehow he hated saying "your wife"—"when a lady was present. Let's hear the whole matter now. When did you meet me before, and where? And why, pray, don't you take this opportunity for a word in season? Do you only preach under shelter of petticoats?"

"There's been matter enough atwixt you and me," said Barnabas. Good God! there had been matter enough, indeed!

He would have answered Mr. Sauls differently in his hot youth; now, after many seasons of constant labour for a Master who claimed his fighting powers, his reply came slowly, with no loss of self-command; but none the less forcibly for that.

"I've seen ye twice afore. If it were twice fifteen years ago I'd know ye again. I saw ye once fooling with a maid, teachin' her the devil's game, that meant play to ye, and death to her. I saw ye a second time standin' by her grave."

The veil of those fifteen years seemed lifted for a moment; both men felt themselves back in that London churchyard thick with fog, with Lydia's grave between.

"She paid the price, and you got off scot free," said the preacher. "It seemed to me then as if it would ha' evened things to ha' laid ye dead too; but they held me back, and now——" He broke off short, and there was silence for a moment.

George broke it with the elaborately nonchalant accent that showed he was a little stirred. "Ah well! I was shockingly out of training in those days," said he. "It was lucky that you didn't yield to your desire to even things; for you'd have swung for it, you know. Let's hear all you have to say; for you won't get another chance of converting this reprobate—and now!" For all the studied coolness of his tone, his fingers clenched; it was not Lydia he was thinking of now.

"And now," said the preacher steadily, "I will let vengeance alone. No, I've naught to say. I didn't come to preach to ye; I've hated ye too much for that. Ye asked me where we'd met, and why I said ye are no fit company for her. Now ye know."

"Thanks!" said George. "Yes—now I know." That stress on the "her," that reverence and something more than reverence in the preacher's voice, stung his desire to quarrel. It became uncontrollable; he must.

"I don't pretend to piety," he said, playing with the chain of the locket he had picked up, after all; for his common-sense could not allow him to leave it hanging on a fence. "I am no saint, as you are very much aware. Perhaps that's why I've an unholy horror of men who make sermons a vehicle for love-making, and catch good women by trading on an instinct for self-sacrifice; women who would never dream of looking at them, if they were approached in any other way. I may have done things to be ashamed of; most men have. But there are forms of hypocrisy that make one sick to contemplate. I don't know that I was ever a hypocrite." He put up his eyeglass, and stared at the preacher slowly from head to foot. "Nevertheless, I own that your plan has paid best. I congratulate you on the success of your preaching."

It was as deliberate an insult as could have been elaborated. Mr. Sauls felt better when he had said that. The pleasure of telling Meg's husband what he thought of him was worth a good deal; and his words hit. Barnabas flushed hotly, and stood crushing his fingers together.

"I'm sworn not to fight on my own quarrel," he said in a choked voice; and the reply cost him a hard struggle with the "old Adam". Meekness was not the preacher's natural characteristic.

"That was a most convenient oath!" said George. Was the man a coward? he wondered. "Do you go so far as turning the other cheek?"

"I'm not meaning to fight with ye; I told her I'd not do it; but," said the preacher, drawing his breath hard, "it 'ud take more nor a man to do that."

"Ah! I am glad you draw the line at that," said George. Again it was the pronoun that was more than he could stand. He raised his cane with a sudden swift movement.

"Come! you draw it at the 'other cheek,' eh?"

Barnabas sprang forward and caught the descending blow on the palm of his hand; his fingers closed on the cane. He jerked it out of his enemy's grasp, broke it across his knee, and flung it into the pool. God knew how fierce was the longing in him to send Mr. Sauls after it. He had forced his assailant backwards in the half-minute's struggle, and George himself had wondered for a second whether a plunge into the black water would be the end of it all.

"Ye can think me a coward if ye choose," said Barnabas. "Happen I'd be one if I broke an oath for your thinking. I'll not fight with ye, man."

George, who had felt the preacher's strength, eyed him thoughtfully. Even he recognised that it was not fear that had flashed into those blue eyes a few moments ago.

"Well, you see," he remarked coolly, "men who won't fight usually are cowards in this wicked world; and poor men who walk off with confiding young ladies, blest with rich papas, usually have an eye to the main chance; but I own I—I half believe you honest after all."

"I'd just as lief ye' didn't," said Barnabas shortly; "I'm not wishful for your good opinion."

And Mr. Sauls turned and went his way, a little breathless; for, if Barnabas hadn't fought, he'd done something rather like it; but George liked him a shade the better for that last unsaintly speech.

"I am afraid the preacher would have got the best of it, though I am not a weakling," he reflected. "He would have liked to put me on my back too. He didn't enjoy having to refuse that fight and play the peaceful rôle, in spite of 'not being wishful for my good opinion'. Is he, after all, more fanatic than hypocrite? Can he be——Hallo! where am I getting to?"

His reflections were cut short by his foot sinking ankle-deep in a bog. Mr. Sauls turned to the right and walked a few paces further; then, becoming aware that some one was following him, was about to turn round, laughing at the foolish fancy that had attacked him for the second time, when a sudden shock brought bright flashes of light before his eyes; the earth seemed to spin round with him, the ground gave way. He was struck down by a blow from behind, and fell without a cry, lying still and white amongst the rank grass.

The next morning Barnabas and Margaret started for London.

Meg had packed her few possessions before day-break, and was standing by her window with her bundle beside her, when Mrs. Tremnell called her downstairs.

"There's Granny Dale wanting to see you, Margaret. Tom won't let her in the house; he's that angry with her for something Barnabas told him she'd said to you. But she won't go away. She just rampages outside in a way that is most annoying for a decent person to listen to."

"I'll come," said Meg, though rather unwillingly; and she ran down into the paved yard, guided by the sound of Granny Dale's shouts.

Granny stopped "rampaging" at the sight of her; and burst at once into a whining torrent of apology for past bad behaviour to the sweet lady who, she was sure, would "forgive a poor owd body, who hadn't touched bite or sup since, for thinkin' on it".

The old woman looked dirtier and more disreputable than ever; and her eyes had a malicious and rather scornful gleam in them that belied her words, the while Meg confusedly accepted her repentance.

"It was all my silliness, granny," cried the preacher's wife.

"An' it's like the dear to say so! Didn't I knaw as yo'd not be down on a poor soul as has wark eno' to keep hersel', let alone her son and her deead darter's son, out o' the house? Yo' as be th' apple o' thy husband's eye too; for sartain I wur 'mazed to say——"

"Ask what she's wanting, and cut it short," said Tom, to Meg's relief appearing behind her. "What a little fool ye were to come down, Barnabas' wife! I'd ha' made short work of her. Well, granny, what's the output? What do 'ee want Mrs. Thorpe to do for 'ee that you're so sweet on her to-day?"

"If she'd just spake a word for me to the preacher." And this time there was a genuine anxiety in granny's tone. "He's that angered wi' me that he's gi'en me ower to the devil."

"Oh Lord!" said Tom, "but there wasn't much required on the part of Barnabas. The devil must ha' cried small thanks for givin' him his own."

"Don't, Tom; she is so unhappy," said Meg. "I am sure the preacher did not mean that," turning to granny. "No man could give any one to the devil—even if he wanted to."

"Couldn't he now?" cried the old woman sharply. "Thee's but out o' th' egg-shell, my dear; an', happen, ye doan't knaw that as well as I! I doan't want 'ee to tell me what can an' can't. I want 'ee to spake a word for me, an' get him to take off his curse an' come an' look to my pig, as is ta'en wi' sickness, an' to see to my donkey, as has broke his knees, an' to find Timothy—Timothy, as has never come whoam all this blessed night."

Her voice broke into a wail with the recapitulation of her woes. Granny could not cry; she was too old for tears to be near the surface; but she covered her face with her ragged skirt, and moaned like a banshee.

"He allus stood atween me an' them," rocking herself to and fro; and whether "them" meant heavenly or diabolical powers, or both, Meg could not tell.

"He wur allus there when I wur took bad; an' now he's angered wi' me, and, if ye don't spake a word, my pig 'ull die, and Timothy won't never be found, an' I'll die wi' no one to say a prayer for me, an' the devil 'ull ha' my soul!"

Tom laughed hard-heartedly at the climax. "And serve ye right," he said. "Look 'ee, granny: Mrs. Thorpe's a deal too soft-hearted, but I ain't, and ye'd best be off now. Hullo! here is the preacher. Come, lad; granny's wantin' your wife to coax ye to cheat Satan, as she says ye've made her ower to."

Barnabas Thorpe's face wore the rather strained look that Meg had learned to know meant a night's "wrestling with the spirit," probably on the marshes.

He found it hard to pray under a roof; and these nightly communings seemed a sort of necessity to him, giving him fresh power for the work that had a physical as well as a spiritual side.

"What are ye doin' here?" he said sternly; and the old woman edged away from him in such evident fear that Meg's chivalry was aroused; she could never bear to see any one frightened.

"What have you said to make her fancy such terrible things?" she cried.

"Naught but the truth," said Barnabas. "Have me an' mine done anything but good to 'ee, Granny Dale? For what did ye set to work to hurt my wife wi' your foul tongue? For love o' wickedness? I never sent ye to th' devil. Ye are fond o' his service wi'out my sending."

"Which was what I said," laughed Tom. "No, it ain't no use your lookin' shocked at us, Barnabas' wife. Granny should ha' minded which side her bread's buttered, and kep' a civil tongue. She'll get no more fro' me."

And granny wailed again, as well she might; for no more from Tom meant short commons in the winter. It was hard to say which oppressed her most, the spiritual or the temporal look-out.

Meg looked from one brother to the other. There was something grotesque in the scene; but the old woman's genuine misery moved her.

"Oh, do go and help her!" she exclaimed. "Barnabas, do go—for my sake!"

She hardly expected her appeal to be successful; but it was, and on the instant.

Granny, who had been watching furtively behind her uplifted skirt, stopped moaning at once.

"Come along; though ye doan't deserve it," said the preacher. "Ye can tell me what's wrong as we go. Catch hold of my arm, for we'll ha' to hurry. I'll be back in time, Margaret; I can run comin' home."

And granny, clutching his arm hard, poured forth the tale of her misfortunes while she trotted by his side, with evident relief at being reconciled to the "powers that be".

"It is very extraordinary," said Meg.

Tom laughed gruffly.

"Ay, it is. I doan't know how ye do it, but ye do twist him round that little finger o' yours, times; though ye look as if butter wouldn't melt i' your mouth."

"It is extraordinary that that old woman should feel safe if the preacher forgives her, and given over to the devil if he is angry. If he were a Roman Catholic priest, one could understand it; but Barnabas, who thinks the pope 'Antichrist,' and a priest a 'messenger of Satan'!"

"H'm! Natures come out th' same, whether they're Methodies, or Catholics, or Heathen Chinees. There'll allus be some as like to put a shelter 'twixt them an' th' Almighty. Happen moast women do; an' whether it's pope, or kirk, or priest, 'tain't much real odds, I expects. It saves them trouble. Barnabas is cocksure o' everything, an' it's cocksureness as takes; an' so long as he's strong, weak foalk 'ull cling to him. That ain't odd as t'other. Well, it's moast a pity ye are goin', now ye ha'e got sure we ain't ogres. My word! how scared ye were of us at first! Do 'ee mind running away i' th' middle o' dinner? An' how ye looked when I axed your name? I shook i' my shoes then!"

"You have all been very good to me," cried Meg gratefully. "Oh, let me say it for once, Tom."

He grunted impatiently.

"And I shouldn't 'look' if you called me 'Margaret' now—I should like it."

"No," said Tom, puckering up his face into rather an odd expression. "Ye shall be 'Barnabas' wife' to me till th' end o' th' chapter."

He went off whistling, and Meg presently went down to the field to wait for Barnabas.

Granny Dale's cottage was some way off; but she had no doubt that the preacher would be back in time; she had implicit faith in his promises, and there were still a few minutes to spare when she saw him return.

She noticed again, when he drew near, that he looked worn and harassed; but his expression softened, as it always did, at sight of her.

"Ye'll be glad enough to leave th' place," he said. His voice sounded so dispirited that Meg, with an unusual impulse, put her arm through his as they stood together, and moved closer to him.

It had been dawning on her of late that this man's love for her gave her a power to help or hinder him, such as no one else, not even Tom, possessed; and that, occasionally, for all his strength, he needed help. It was an idea slow to take root, an idea she was half afraid of, which, once accepted, might work strange wonders.

"What is the matter?" she asked.

"It's a fearful thing to hate a man!" said the preacher. "One fasts and prays all night, but in the morning it's still there, and stronger. One thinks that one has been on the Lord's side, and wakes up to see that in one's heart one has been on the devil's—and after years. For 'Whoso hateth his brother'—and after years!"

The horror in his face was so intense, bringing out a curious likeness to the father, to whom, in the main, he was so unlike, that Meg's desire to comfort waxed strong.

"You are on the Lord's side, Barnabas!" she cried. "He knows that you are, whatever your heart may say. Your whole will and life are His. Well," after a pause, "did you find granny's son for her?"

"Happen we'll find him in London," said Barnabas. "It's nearer hell than any other place i' God's earth, an' Timothy has a natural hankerin' after what's foul."

"You hate going there," said Meg softly; "but I am glad you are coming with me, Barnabas. Even though I am going to my father—I am glad! As for Timothy, I don't see how it's possible to find him in London. I almost think" (with a shudder) "that he is better lost. Even you can't convert him, for there's nothing in him to convert."

But the man's face brightened.

"Glad, are ye?" he said. "There's naught that's impossible, my lass!"

And so life at the farm came to an end; and they went out together again.

THIRD PART.

CHAPTER I.

Barnabas Thorpe stood preaching by the river. He had preached in northern manufacturing towns, where the struggle for life is hard; he had preached by the sea shore, and in little outlying hamlets in the mining districts; but he had spoken nowhere as he spoke to-day in London.

This city, of great wealth and great poverty; of idlers and slaves; these churches, where the rich man sat on cushioned seats, and the poor man on benches hard as charity; these women, with hoarse voices and hungry eyes, who followed him in the streets; these children, for whom the Kingdom of Heaven might indeed be open, but for whom earth had more kicks than blessings—all these stung him to a passionate eloquence that almost touched despair.

Did Luxury never look backwards over her shoulder at the black misery treading close at her heel? he wondered. Would the men of Sodom and Gomorrah rise up in judgment on this place?

Perhaps (though he did not know it, being little given to analysis), a sharp personal want pointed his realisation of the contrast between the Dives and the Lazarus of London; for his wife at this moment was with her father.

He stood on a barrel by the water's edge—the Thames was neither sweet nor clean at Stepney—and preached of Heaven in the midst of, what seemed to him, an uncommonly good imitation of hell.

It was a close evening; but there was a fine drizzling rain falling, that damped everything except the preacher's ardour, which always burnt more fiercely for opposition, either physical or moral.

Even without his barrel he would have been a head taller than most of his hearers. His vigorous manhood was in strong contrast to the stunted specimens of riverside humanity gathered round him—under-sized, unhealthy youths, who looked as if they had done nothing but "loaf" from the day they were born; girls with straight fringes, and paper feathers stuck in their hats, and just a sprinkling of navvies, a burlier and more hopeful, though brutal, element.

Barnabas Thorpe's voice rang through the heavy air, and all these faces were upturned towards him, as if under a spell. To his left stood a group of swarthy-complexioned foreign sailors; black-haired, with earrings in their ears. One of them wore a saffron-coloured handkerchief round his throat, and had a green parrot on his wrist; he made a spot of brightness in the prevailing dun colour of the crowd.

Probably these strangers understood hardly one word in ten of that vehement discourse, delivered with a strong L——shire drawl; but they also listened, as if something in the man's personality, the something stronger than words, held their attention.

With those closely packed squalid houses on the one side of him; with the slowly flowing river, whose waters had given the quietus to so many a miserable body (as for the desperate souls, God only knew what had become of them), on the other, he painted that second coming, when the glory of the Lord shall flash from East to West, and His judgment shall tarry no longer.

There was a mark on the preacher's left shoulder where some one had playfully thrown a rotten egg at him, and a cut across his forehead, to which he put his handkerchief once or twice; both were visible signs that, in spite of the present breathless lull, Barnabas was not likely to suffer from too much adulation. Indeed, he was a fighter born, and it was, perhaps, the impress of strenuous effort that made his rugged face a striking and rather refreshing sight in the midst of men who looked, for the most part, as if the beast had decidedly got the better of the angel in them.

He stood bare-headed, his hand stretched out, his gaunt figure silhouetted against the leaden sky, pleading with passionate force. He felt the misery of London too strong for him at times; the atmosphere oppressed him both mentally and physically; but the very sense of oppression made preaching a relief. Better wear himself out striving against this horror, than acquiesce, letting it stifle and choke him.

There was a stir, a movement; the preacher lost hold of his audience. Suddenly, as the snapping of the thread of a necklace which has been strained tight sends each bead a different way, so attention was snapt, the spell broken.

The preacher, looking over the heads of the people, saw, first, a confused mass of jeering, struggling lads, coming towards him, shouting hoarsely; then, that they had in their midst some poor creature whom they were baiting mercilessly, some one either drunk or mad; then, that they scattered a little to the right and left, and the man (he could see it was a man now) had broken loose and made a dash forward, panting and stumbling.

Instinctively, Barnabas shouted encouragingly, and jumping off his barrel, held out his hands. He could never, for the life of him, keep clear of a fray—especially if it were a case of overwhelming odds.

The victim, when he heard the shout, looked up; his face ghastly, his eyes wide open, with the strained, agonised look of a hunted hare. His persecutors were closing on him again; when, with an inarticulate cry, he shook himself free once more, and, running desperately forward, fell at the preacher's feet, clinging to his knees. "Doan't let them!" he cried; and Barnabas recognised him as Timothy.

For one moment the preacher hesitated; he had a horror of the man.

Then, "They'll shut me up!" cried Timothy; and there was a ring of mortal terror in his voice.

Barnabas himself would, any day, have preferred to face death to a long imprisonment. He freed himself from Timothy's grasp, and stepped between hunter and hunted.

"I think ye should be 'shamed!" he said. "Ha' ye nought better to do than to hound that poor creature to death or to Bedlam? which, happen, is a deal worse! Let him be; he's past doin' any harm. Any way, ye'll ha' to do wi' me first."

There was a pause; the united strength of all this riff-raff would, probably, have been more than a match for the preacher; but no one quite cared to be the first to make the rush and "do wi' him".

A big coalheaver in the background shouted derisively: "A nice, white-livered set you are! Blessed if the Methody ain't a match for all of you!"

And then, all at once, the group broke up and scuttled away, dividing itself among the labyrinth of squalid streets that sloped down to the river; and tramp, tramp, with heavy, warning steps, in their tightly buttoned swallow-tail coats and white trousers, came a detachment of four City police, who promptly arrested Barnabas for making a disturbance, and Timothy for being drunk, on the king's highway.

"That he's not," remarked the preacher. "He's got too little, not too much, aboard this time."

But he went to the police station without remonstrance, for he didn't mean to lose sight of Timothy.

Certainly Barnabas ought to have had enough of taking uncalled-for responsibilities on his shoulders; but there were some simple lessons which Dame Experience never could teach him, though she tried her hardest, and punished him well for his denseness in learning. He never could turn a deaf ear to a cry for mercy, nor refrain from burning his own fingers in attempts to save other people's from fire. If his doctrines were narrow, his pity was wide. It is a combination of characteristics that gives an infinity of trouble—especially to the owner.

Timothy complicated matters by dropping on the floor of the police station in an exhausted heap; but the officer in charge, having at last arrived at the conclusion that the idiot was ill, not drunk, and that the preacher had protected, not assaulted him, dismissed both with a warning; and Barnabas found himself saddled with this most unprepossessing incubus, whose present helplessness was his only recommendation.

It was as well, after all, that Margaret was not with him, he reflected; he could not have borne to have had Timothy under the same roof with her. The preacher had said many times, in the course of his experiences in London, that it was "as well"; and said it with a sigh.

He lodged at this time in one of the streets turning out of Commercial Road. He always seemed to have an extraordinary knack of getting employment. His fingers, which never held money long, were seldom at a loss in making it; and, perhaps, his luck had something to do with the fact that no one ever forgot him, his personality being so strongly marked.

He had made one friend in London during that short visit fifteen years before, namely Giles Potter, rat catcher, bird fancier, and bird stuffer; and some people whispered dog stealer as well. Why the tipsy, jolly, old reprobate was so fond of the preacher, of all men, no one ever knew.

The Barnabas Thorpe of the present, with his fanatical and water-drinking earnestness, who preached in season and out of season, would seem to have little to do with the desperate and crack-brained young sailor, whom Giles had held back from murdering the man who had robbed him of his sweetheart in the winter of 1834; but Giles had recognised and welcomed him.

The preacher worked all day in the back room of 33 Walton Street, curing and stuffing with fingers that were a good deal steadier than his companion's, and in grave silence for the most part, till the light faded, when he would go out into the streets to preach; all the suppressed energy of those long hours in a close atmosphere finding vent in sermons that attracted larger crowds daily, and were beginning to be talked about, even in the West End. Giles would go to hear him sometimes; a disreputable, slouching old figure, in a rough fur cap; a figure with loose thick lips and stubbled chin and kindly merry black eyes.

"Lord bless you, I always knew Barnabas had something queer inside him!" he would say; "but I didn't reckon it would take this shape. To think of him turning Methody! But he was bound to be something. If he hadn't turned saint, he'd have swung from the gallows by now; he's the sort who serves any master hard, whether it's God, or the devil! Let's drink to his being made archbishop! He'd wake them all up a bit."

Giles drank to that end pretty often, and Barnabas did the work meanwhile: the business had not been so flourishing for years.

Possibly it was out of consideration for those services, or, possibly, because, with all his faults, a kinder-hearted old rascal never breathed, that Giles, after much grumbling, allowed Barnabas to bring Timothy under his roof.

"You'll repent it, Barnabas!" he said. "Mark my words, we shall have an inquest and no end of bother; and you'll wish you had taken good advice, which is always as much wasted on you as good beer. That's as evil-looking a sneak as ever I saw, and he's capable of dying on purpose to spite you. Bring him in, if you're a fool; but you'll live to repent it!"

Something in the words made the preacher's careworn face graver still.

"Happen I may," he said. "He said as bad luck was following me, but I ain't goin' to be stopped by that."

"Best turn him out again to make his ill prophecies in the gutter," said Giles crossly.

The two men were standing in the doorway now, Barnabas having deposited Timothy on his own bed upstairs, and come down to breathe the cool night air.

In Commercial Road the shops and warehouses were still alight; he could hear the continual roar of the traffic, but this little off-street was nearly dark, and the battered figure-head of a ship gleamed ghostly and white in the yard. The preacher stretched himself wearily and then smiled.

"That old Miranda must feel precious queer here," said he. He stepped into the yard, and put his hand on it. He had been sickened by what he had been hearing; his patient, in mortal terror of death, had been pouring forth a crazy confession of iniquities that made the preacher's brain reel, though he had heard a good many "confessions" before now.

Was it possible that any human being could really have committed all these unspeakable horrors, or were they the mad imaginings of a diseased brain? And was Timothy possessed by an unclean spirit, like the people in the Bible whom the Christ cured?

Barnabas at that moment felt that it would be easier to pray for fire from Heaven to destroy, than for healing power to save. Surely it was time for that second coming that should purge the world of its sins! How he hated this place!

Then the touch of the figure-head under his hand brought him a vision of nights at sea; the hum of the great vans in Commercial Road changed to the sound of water, and his soul was refreshed. The everlasting power he had felt near in the salt strength of the sea, in the solemn wideness of his native marshes, in the cold stillness of many an early morning among the hills, was alive still. His heart went out to the strong Maker of all things, with a cry for strength.

"What are you thinking of?" said Giles.

"I was thinking," said the preacher, "that if I was never to see the country again, still I'd ha' been luckier than most o' the people here, seein' I've been bred in it. An' that I've been an unprofitable servant, too easy disgusted and weary in His service; that I've been given much an' done little. I've had a near sight o' the Maker as town folk miss; an' yet I ha' been cold an' out o' heart. I've been thinkin' I'll do more if He'll show me how."

Giles put his head on one side, like a wise old bird, and peered up at Barnabas through the gathering gloom.

"I wouldn't say that if I was you," he remarked. "Don't you be righteous overmuch; it ain't safe."

But the preacher went back to his post with fresh zeal.

Timothy was sitting upright, staring and pointing wildly at a corner of the room; he shrieked to Barnabas to come and stand between him and "it".

It was curious how, in his extremity, with the terror of death before him, he clung to Barnabas, whom he had always feared and hated, as the only person capable of exorcising the horrors that surrounded him. Barnabas lighted a candle and examined the corner.

"There's naught there!" he said.

"It's shifted; it wur afeart o' ye; it's behind me now!" cried Timothy. "It's makin' signs; it's pointin' to its head, and I didn't go to kill him. I only meant—it's comin' nearer—doan't, doan't! Ah!—--"

There was another agonised shriek. Timothy tried to spring out of bed, the drops of sweat standing on his forehead.

Barnabas put his hands on the madman's shoulders and forced him back. This sort of thing had been going on at intervals for the last three hours, and the preacher began to feel as if he were the unwilling spectator of the tortures of the damned. Indeed, he believed, almost as firmly as the miserable Timothy, that there was a devil in the room.

"It's no good doing that, man," he said at last, when Timothy made another frantic attempt to hide. "If it's a spirit ye are scared of, ye can't escape it so. If ye ha' done it a wrong, confess afore it's too late; and the Lord will, mayhap, ha' mercy on ye an' lay it."

"You'll not call in any one to shut me up, and I'll tell ye," said Timothy. "I'll be glad to get rid of 'em; but you'll not shut me up! The stones wur burning through my cap into my brain; I see 'em all on fire now—there! blazin' away. Ye must see 'em. Look inside the cap there in the corner, where it's standin' again."

The preacher glanced at Timothy's cloth cap, an ordinary enough article, such as nearly all the L——shire men of that part wore, himself included. He picked it up and shook it. Needless to say, no burning stones fell out. Possibly the whole story was a delusion, but he could not look on at this agony of terror any longer.

"Tell me what ye ha' done, an' ease your mind," he said.

"Ye'll not let me hang: ye'll not tell!" said Timothy. "Swear ye'll not."

"There's no need," said the preacher, "for me to swear, who've never betrayed any man, nor never could. I'll not betray ye."

"It wur the back o' his skull," said Timothy, in an eager whisper; "just here," putting his hand up to indicate the place. "He didn't bleed much, but went down straight; an' I turned him over an' tuk 'em out o' his pocket. I'd think it wur a dream, only he's followed me ever since. That's becos they've not buried him. Ye'll find him two stones' throw from the Pixies' Pond, lyin' very white an' quiet as if there weren't no more mischief in him; but there be; he b'ain't one to forget, an' he's tryin' to drag me to hell. He's makin' signs now. Barnabas, Barnabas, he's——"

"How long ago did ye kill him?" said the preacher.

"Eh? how long? I should think it must ha' been a matter o' ninety-nine years or maybe a hundred. Quite a hundred takin' it all round; what with the time I was hidin' in the marshes, with him allus creepin' round and peepin' behind bushes at me—tho' all the time pretendin' to lie quite stiff, for I kep' goin' back to see—an' the time I was gettin' to town, where they came hollerin' arter me an' said as I was mad. They allus say that, if one speaks the truth."

"So they do," said Barnabas. "So ye knocked a man down in the Caulderwell marsh and robbed him, and ran away and came to London, eh?"

"That's it!" cried Timothy. He leaned forward and caught the preacher's coat, holding him as a drowning man might clutch at an arm stretched out to save.

"An' he won't forget; he's been huntin' me ever since, like a cat a mouse, an' he'll have me this night if ye won't lay him; for I feel him gettin' stronger every minute, an' I'm growin' weaker. He's a bit scared o' ye, but if ye leave me a minute—there, there! he's yammerin' for me from behind that curtain. Oh, doan't let him, for God's sake, Barnabas!"

The poor wretch was shaking from head to foot. The spirit he feared was the mad creation of his own brain; yet, none the less, it was hunting him to death. Barnabas Thorpe stood upright, and lifted up his hands solemnly.

"If there is any evil spirit here," he said, and his voice rang with undoubting conviction, "I bid it begone, in the name of Jesus Christ the Master." Timothy fell back panting, with a look of utter relief.

"Ay, it's gone; I seed it go!" he said.