The Pit Town Coronet: A Family Mystery, Volume 3 (of 3)

CHAPTER III.

Mrs. Haggard and her husband, both in deep mourning, sat in the special boudoir at Walls End Castle which had been furnished and set apart for his grand-nephew's wife on her first arrival years ago by old Lord Pit Town. Haggard looked pale and weary, and well he might, for he had gone straight to Monte Carlo and had come straight back, stopping only forty-eight hours there, just time enough to lay Lucy Warrender in her grave. He had not gone alone; at his wife's insistance he had taken the young Lucius with him. He had been astonished at the determined manner in which Georgie pressed this arrangement upon him; he yielded, though with a bad grace. When he reached the Hotel de Russie, both he and Lucius had declined to look on the face of the dead woman. Haggard had a long interview with Fanchette, and then he called upon the Commissary of Police. The night before his mother was laid in her grave, Lucius Haggard, unknown to his companion, who was shut up in his room writing, visited the Rooms, won a couple of thousand francs, and thoroughly enjoyed himself.

The next day the two men stood by the side of the shallow grave; graves are shallow in Monaco, for the ground is very rocky. A wandering English clergyman, of more than doubtful reputation, gabbled through the service for the burial of the dead. The stones and bits of rock rattled upon the coffin with a hollow sound, for the grave-digger didn't trouble himself much about the feelings of the relatives of the foreign heretic.

"I think my aunt Lucy went off tremendously in the last year," said young Lucius to his companion as they left the cemetery.

"Let her rest, boy, let her rest," was all the answer he got.

There was a sort of grey look of horror about Haggard's face, that the boy put down to grief for the departed. He was a hard-hearted youth, and was frankly surprised that Haggard showed any feeling at all.

The husband and wife, as we have said, sat in Georgie's boudoir. This was what passed between them.

"Your cousin seems to have made a nice mess of it," said Haggard. "Why she was penniless."

"Well, that wouldn't much matter, Reginald; she could have written to Coutts' for more."

"Gad, they write me that she drew out the last farthing she had in the world two months ago. And that woman Fanchette, who is a very bad lot indeed, or I'm very much, mistaken, told me she pawned her earrings the day before she—died."

Georgie nodded. "I remember them, a pair of large single-stone earrings. I fancy she must have bought them when she first came into her property. I saw them quite by chance last summer, for the first time; and when I admired them, she said that she had had them for years, that they had been her first folly and had cost her dear."

"Well, here they are at any rate," said Haggard; "she pawned them for seven thousand francs, and I redeemed them after a lot of bother. And that's all that remains. She had spent or gambled away every farthing of the rest. I don't know whether I ought to tell you, Georgie," he continued in a softer tone.

"Tell me, Reginald, tell me what? Did you know?" and the light of love came back into Georgie Haggard's eyes, as she thought that perhaps her careless heartless husband had, from a wish to shield her cousin's honour, silently and deliberately allowed poor Lucy's bastard child to be fathered upon him. But the light quickly faded, and the eyes were suffused with tears, as her husband answered coarsely:

"Did I know what? I know this—she poisoned herself, there's not a doubt of that."

And then, without the slightest attempt to soften the ghastly details, he brutally told his wife the particulars of her cousin's end.

"They manage these things much better there than here," he said. "Twelve Tom Fools are not called upon to sit in one's dining room and give their opinion. The Commissary of Police had the whole matter cut and dried. I saw the official doctor too—a hungry fellow that. Of course I had to bribe the pair of them. Lucy Warrender poisoned herself, Georgie. She did it artfully enough, with chloral. Why, they showed me the bottle; she had swallowed enough to kill half-a-dozen women. What a fool she was, when one comes to think of it! Why, she could have married well any number of times, if she'd liked; she could have had Spunyarn years and years ago, if she had chosen to lift her finger. What a fool she was!"

Yes, that was her epitaph: "What a fool she was!" You couldn't have put it more tersely and more truly, Reginald Haggard. What a thoughtless wicked fool she had been; she had wrecked her own life and her cousin's by her wicked folly. "What a fool she was!"

I verily believe that if Haggard had shown one spark of feeling in the matter of poor Lucy's death, his wife would have spoken, after a silence of twenty years; but his last words had checked the impulse, and Georgie merely nodded, while the tears rolled down her cheeks, as she silently accepted the justice of her husband's verdict.

As she sat and pondered over her cousin's sorry ending, she felt that the least she could do for the dead girl was still to jealously guard her miserable secret.

While the elders were talking, the two young men were walking in the great avenue that for nearly half a mile runs from the principal entrance of the park to the big hall door of Walls End Castle. Lucius had much to tell; he was full of the journey, and he went over all the details of the funeral to the younger man.

"Battling good place, that Hotel de Russie; they gave us an uncommonly good dinner, and ortolans. I didn't think much of them, but the governor was very enthusiastic, and ordered them again for breakfast. By Jove! George," continued the young fellow, "he's so fond of them that I believe if mother, or even I, were to die to-morrow, the governor would order ortolans for breakfast if he could get them. I say, George," he added, "I'm in funds, and I don't mind doing the generous thing, if you like. I know you're hard up—beastly hard up—you always are. I'll make you a present of a pony, George."

Young George Haggard smiled, and took the five-and-twenty pounds, in crisp bank notes, which his father's heir produced from his waistcoat pocket. "I'll take it as a loan, Lucius," he said with a little laugh, "to be repaid when I become Lord Chancellor."

"All right, my boy," said the other. "Now if you can keep a secret, I'll tell you how I got it." And then he went off into a long description of the great Temple of Fortune on the shores of the Mediterranean. How he had retired early, on the plea of fatigue; how he had escaped undiscovered to the Rooms; how he had backed his luck and won his money. "Eighty pounds wasn't bad for a first attempt, you know," he said. "I saw old Pepper," he continued, "in the thick of it; but I had to keep dark, you know, for I shouldn't have cared for the old boy to see me there."

George still held his brother's welcome present in his hand, and the boy twisted the notes nervously in his fingers. He hesitated, but not for long.

"Don't be offended, Lucius," he said; "I think I'd rather not take it, if you don't mind."

"As you please, my boy," said the other, holding out his hand willingly enough. "As they say in the schools, Non olet."

"It does to me, Lucius—it does to me."

The young men continued their walk up and down the great aisle of old beech trees, and Lucius returned to his ecstatic description of the scene in the Halls of Dazzling Delight; but I don't think the other young fellow heard him, for he was thinking of the dead woman who was sleeping in her lonely grave.

Lucky Lucy! dead a week, and you have two human beings who still mourn your loss.

"I always thought you were a fool, George; but you really are a bigger fool than even I ever took you to be. I actually hand you five-and-twenty pounds, which you decline with thanks. I don't understand you, George. You neglect your opportunities. Why don't you make up to the old man, or cultivate a taste for art, as I do; I mean to make art pay, my boy."

"Well, you see, Lucius, it might be awkward if his lordship found me out. I'm afraid I find more pleasure in walking up and down this big avenue and staring up at the rooks, than in spending my time in the Pit Town galleries."

"Oh! I see; Child of Nature, and all that sort of thing. Why don't you go in for being a poet, George? It's the only real business that I know of suited for a thorough-paced fool, though as a rule it don't pay."

"Simply because I'm not a humbug, my boy."

"You might do a good deal with a rhyming dictionary, you know; particularly if you let your hair grow."

"I don't think there's much poetry about me, Lucius. I like the air, and the light, and the green leaves, and those black chaps who hop about from branch to branch, and who look like a lot of disreputable parsons, all preaching at once about nothing at all."

"Oh, I see, you admire the beauties of nature. Now I look upon this old avenue from quite another standpoint. Sooner or later it'll be mine, and all the rest of the pomps and vanities too, I suppose—the plate and the pictures, and the title, George. Yes, there's something in a title. But they're a precious long while coming."

"Don't be a brute, Lucius," was all his brother replied.

While the two young fellows carelessly talked and smoked in the great avenue, old Lord Pit Town sat in his study and held a momentous conversation with Georgie's husband. Reginald Haggard stood before the fire looking exceedingly uncomfortable.

"I wish you'd be candid with me, Haggard. Was there any informality about your marriage with Georgina?"

"Good gracious, no. What makes your lordship hint at such a thing?"

"That I will explain to you directly. In the meantime answer me honestly; don't forget that as the head of the family I stand in the position of a father to you. Anything you may say to me will of course be between ourselves. Can you assure me, as between gentlemen, that you made no previous marriage? Was there any such entanglement in America?"

"It seems to me that your lordship is asking me to say that I am an unmitigated villain. Still, to satisfy you as the head of the family, I give you my word that nothing of the sort ever occurred. Of course like most young fellows I have made a fool of myself with dozens of women, or rather perhaps they made a fool of me. I sighed and dangled, perhaps I even hinted at marriage. Doubtless I was a young idiot, like most young fellows of my age, but my peculiar form of idiotcy never developed itself in a matrimonial direction."

"I'm uncommonly glad to hear it, Reginald, for I have been uncomfortable for a day or two, and now that my mind is at rest, you shall see what caused my apparently indiscreet questions."

The old lord opened a despatch-box which lay upon his writing-table, and taking from it a letter, handed the document to his heir. Haggard seated himself, opened the letter, and read it carefully through. It was a strangely written manuscript on ordinary thick note-paper. If the writer had intended to prevent any attempt at identification, he had thoroughly succeeded. The precaution he had taken was simple, but sufficiently ingenious. Your ordinary anonymous letter writer is content to slope his writing the wrong way, or if very acute he uses his left hand; but the expert, if placed upon his trail, generally succeeds in detecting some peculiarity sufficient to identify him. The writer of the letter which Lord Pit Town handed to Haggard was evidently a man of originality, for the letter and its address were not written in a running hand, but in carelessly printed Roman capitals.

As Haggard perused the letter his brow grew black as night, but when he had ended it, he tossed it with a contemptuous laugh upon the table.

Here is the letter verbatim:

"MY LORD,

"I ADDRESS YOU TO LET YOU KNOW THAT I AM POSSESSED OF INFORMATION WHICH WILL ENABLE ME, SHOULD I FEEL SO DISPOSED, TO ENTIRELY ALTER THE SUCCESSION TO YOUR TITLE AND TO UPSET ANY DISTRIBUTION OF YOUR PROPERTY THAT YOU MAY MAKE. I AM PREPARED TO SELL TO YOU THE INFORMATION FOR THE SUM OF £5000. I MAKE YOUR LORDSHIP THE FIRST OFFER, SIMPLY BECAUSE I THINK THAT YOU WILL AT ONCE SEE THE WISDOM OF ACCEPTING IT. SHOULD YOU DECIDE NOT TO DO SO, I SHALL STILL GET MY PRICE, THOUGH I MAY HAVE TO WAIT TILL YOUR LORDSHIP'S DEATH. LITIGATION WILL, OF COURSE, ENSUE, AND A DISGRACEFUL SCANDAL WILL BECOME COMMON PROPERTY. SHOULD YOUR LORDSHIP FEEL DISPOSED TO LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO TELL, A LINE ADDRESSED TO 193B, BROWN'S NEWS ROOMS, CHEAPSIDE, WILL BE SUFFICIENT. THE FACT OF MY NOT ASKING FOR PAYMENT FOR MY INFORMATION UNTIL I HAVE GIVEN IT SHOULD BE TO YOUR LORDSHIP A SUFFICIENT GUARANTEE OF ITS GENUINENESS."

"What can the fellow mean?" said the old lord. "Can Hetton have contracted a secret marriage?"

Haggard shook his head. "It's probably a mere vulgar trick to obtain money," said he. "Shall you see the fellow?"

"It would, perhaps, be better that you saw him, Reginald; you are as much concerned as I am, nay more so. Make an appointment to see the man in town. I will write to him, and if the secret he alludes to be genuine it is cheap at the money, if it were only to prevent expensive litigation and the worse horror that he hints at—the dragging of our name through the mire."

So it was arranged. A letter was dispatched to 193 B, making an appointment for the astute writer of the letter to see Mr. Reginald Haggard upon a certain day at the old lord's house in Grosvenor Square. Reginald Haggard sat for a whole hour waiting in vain. Nobody came to him with a mysterious communication, and at the end of a week both he and the old lord had dismissed the matter from their minds as an impudent and stupid hoax.

To the mind of the shrewd reader the name of the writer of the anonymous letter is no mystery. Mr. Maurice Capt had been seriously disappointed when, for the first time in his life, one of his applications to Lucy Warrender had been unsuccessful. But Lucy Warrender was now beyond his reach. Capt felt aggrieved; he considered that his demands upon Miss Warrender had been excessively moderate, and he felt a sort of pride in the fact that he had kept her secret so long and so cheaply. But now Lucy Warrender was dead, and the contract between Capt and the lady at an end. Mr. Capt, when he wrote his rather ambiguous anonymous communication to the old lord, had thought the matter well out; he had made up his mind not to reveal the nature of what he had to tell until he had the old lord's promise to let him have the sum he demanded. For Mr. Capt well knew that it is possible to provide even against extraordinary contingencies; he knew that there were such things as family treaties, and he knew that his threat, if he could only get Lord Pit Town to believe in its genuineness, would be only terrible to the old man by its rendering him practically incapable of disposing of his property, and leaving the very succession to his title in doubt. Mr. Capt was sharp enough to know that if once he had the old lord's promise, the five thousand pounds was as good as paid. But Mr. Capt had a holy horror of two things. The one, which he dreaded with a natural terror of the unknown, was the criminal law of England; the other was a desperate fear of the wrath of big Reginald Haggard. For once his master had lost his temper with the valet. It was nearly twenty years ago now since Reginald Haggard, in a moment of indignation, had literally thrashed Mr. Capt within an inch of his life, and though it was twenty years ago Mr. Capt's bones still ached with the remembrance of that tremendous beating. So that the suggested interview with Haggard entirely upset all the valet's well-arranged plans. Could he but have had a private conversation with the old lord, and the required promise, he felt that he would have proved his case up to the hilt, and thus have obtained what he looked upon as the honest reward of his long silence. But though a clever man, Mr. Capt was a coward, and he feared to face the fury of Lord Pit Town's heir.

The valet repeatedly turned the matter over in his mind, and found it a very complicated question. Of course, the one person in the world to whom the secret was most valuable was young George Haggard. The facts had but to be published to the world and George would jump at once from the precarious position of a younger son into that of the direct heir to an earldom and the property of a man of enormous wealth, while as for Lucius, he would become but the nameless byblow of old Warrender's niece. But there were several disturbing influences to Mr. Capt's calculations. To neither of the young men could he sell his secret for money down. This was a very serious consideration indeed. As for George, he might decline to do business at all, from loyalty to his mother; while as for Lucius, Mr. Capt well knew that it was impossible to trust him. The valet at length determined that he would sound young George Haggard upon the matter, and having made up his mind, proceeded to do so at the first opportunity.

Mr. Capt had not long to wait, for he encountered the young fellow in one of his solitary rambles in the park, and seeing that they were secure from interruption, plunged at once in medias res.

Young George Haggard was seated upon a stile meditatively gazing upon the landscape, when he was roused by a slight cough behind him, which proceeded from his father's discreet body servant.

"Halloa! Capt," said the youth good-naturedly; "enjoying the beauties of nature?"

"Yes, Mr. George; one can't well help it in such a lovely place as this."

"I suppose ordinary people like you and I, Capt, don't appreciate it as we ought. That, as my brother tells me, requires culture. He would doubtless see more in it than we do, being a man of culture, as he is, you know."

"Perhaps the old place, sir, may look all the pleasanter to him, for in the ordinary course of things, you see, sir, he must come into it some day or other. That must be a very pleasant thought, sir," added the valet after a pause.

"Well, I'm not so sure about that, you know; there are lots of responsibilities, you see," and the young man proceeded to fill his pipe philosophically.

"You may come into it yourself, sir, one of these days, who knows?" said the valet in a carneying tone.

Young George Haggard started, and stared at Mr. Capt, who seemed to him to have slightly forgotten himself.

"Stranger things than that have happened, sir," continued the Swiss.

"Well, you see, my man, as my father and Mr. Lucius—to say nothing of his lordship—would both have to go to the wall first, it doesn't seem a likely contingency. And do you know I don't think it's quite the thing to talk about, Capt."

But the valet was not to be put down.

"Anyhow, it's a great position for so young a gentleman as Mr. Lucius," insisted the man. "Many a man has sold his soul for less than that," he continued, as he gazed admiringly at the Castle, which occupied the centre of the peacefully romantic landscape.

Young George Haggard stared at the valet in undisguised astonishment. "Fellow's been drinking," he thought; "he seems strangely impertinent, that accounts for it."

"Ah, they manage things differently, sir, in my country. It's share and share alike there. My father, sir, had seven sons, and we each of us took an equal share of his little bit of land as a matter of right."

"Well, perhaps, Capt, that's what they'll do here when England becomes a republic. But I don't think that it'll happen in my time, and I don't think I could persuade Lucius to go halves with me."

Seeing that the young man was disinclined to continue the conversation, the valet touched his hat respectfully and took himself off.

It is a highly respectable thing to be a landowner; the freeholder has many advantages, but getting rid of the property, particularly in the present day, is as a rule both difficult and expensive. Mr. Capt was like the proprietor of an Irish estate; far from being able to dispose of it at a reasonable figure, he was unable to obtain even an offer for his secret, and it was a valuable secret; but then, though a white elephant is a valuable animal, it is not an investment that most people would care to hold, and Mr. Capt's property now seemed indeed but a white elephant. Had it not been for his holy fear of his master he might have attempted to make terms with Mrs. Haggard, but his terror of Lord Pit Town's heir was extreme and had become a second nature to him.

The love of home is specially developed among the honest and economical inhabitants of Switzerland; like the Scotchmen they quit their dear native land young, in the hope of making their fortunes; but unlike the Scots they inevitably return to the Fatherland with the results of a life of industry, and this was the dream of Mr. Capt's life. Like a wise man, finding he could not get a cash purchaser, he determined, though very much against his own inclination, to make a bargain with young Lucius Haggard at the earliest opportunity; but he knew that if he trusted to the honour of Lucy Warrender's son he would be leaning upon a broken reed, and he walked back to the discharge of his duties at the Castle in a state of considerable depression.

CHAPTER IV.

It was the second of September. Reginald Haggard's usual invitations had been accepted by a select party of his intimates. They had had a great slaughter in the well-stocked Walls End preserves on the day before. General Pepper, Lord Spunyarn, Colonel Spurbox, the host and the two young men sat down to breakfast, and Georgie Haggard presided at the meal, looking to Spunyarn's mind handsomer than ever in the deep mourning which she still wore for her cousin Lucy. But Mrs. Haggard was not the only lady who graced the breakfast-table at the Castle, for Mrs. Dodd had arrived to pay a long-promised visit the day before, of course accompanied by her husband. As some men never travel without a hat box, so Mrs. Dodd never left King's Warren without the Rev. John.

"I am so glad to have met you once more, Lord Spunyarn," said the vicar's wife; "isolated as I am at King's Warren, it is so seldom my privilege to meet any man having a purpose in life, and the men with a purpose, you know, are after all the only men worth knowing." Here she gave a benignant and comprehensive glance round the table, and every one felt that he at least was not worth Mrs. Dodd's notice, which was exactly the sensation the vicar's wife intended to produce.

"Awfully good of you, dear Mrs. Dodd, I'm sure, but I'm afraid I can hardly claim the credit of being a man with a purpose. I went to the East End first, you know, merely from curiosity and because the people were excessively amusing, but nowadays 'slumming' is the fashion and a great many smart people I know do as I do, merely for a new sensation."

"Ah, you do good by stealth and blush to find it fame," said the lady.

"I don't know if you can call it doing good. I give very little of my money away, though I certainly do spend a good deal of my time among the abjectly poor. I became a sort of confidential adviser to a good many of them, a kind of honorary amateur solicitor. I drifted into it somehow or other. I acted as a sort of buffer between the East End Lazarus and his landlord. I was instrumental in obtaining for Lazarus certain rights which had been long in abeyance in the East End; either my client didn't know his rights, or he found them difficult to enforce; the landlords would screw the uttermost farthing out of the poor wretches in the shape of rent, and if they didn't pay they were sold up. The quid pro quo they got for their rent was simply a place to rot and die in—no water, no drains, no ventilation, no anything. Then there was the sweating system; women working fifteen or sixteen hours a day for a pittance of ninepence: women doing men's work and getting next to nothing for it; and the attempted redress of a thousand and one nameless grievances and horrors."

"Oh, Lord Spunyarn," cried Mrs. Dodd, "would that I could walk hand in hand with you through those dreadful places, sharing in such work."

"I have no doubt Dodd could exchange and become one of the wise men of the East, if he tried," said Haggard maliciously.

"Ah, dear Mr. Haggard, my husband was never formed for missionary work. Ever since my girlhood I have tried to rouse his enthusiasm, but in vain. I don't believe he has any enthusiasm," and here the voice of the Reverend John Dodd was heard in an unctuous whisper addressing Colonel Spurbox in commendation of the dish in front of him, to which he helped himself copiously for the second time.

"I'm quite certain, my dear sir, that there is no more successful way of accommodating the freshly-killed partridge than in a salmi. I say this advisedly, and after many years' experience. I speak feelingly, colonel. Till the fourth you can't do better than stick to salmi; I always do."

"There's no want of enthusiasm in that, anyhow, Dodd," said Spunyarn with a smile, while the two young men laughed aloud.

"Ah," sighed the vicaress in a stage whisper, "forgive his little weakness; he will hanker after the flesh-pots—the flesh-pots of Egypt."

"Be exact, my dear, be exact," cried the vicar; "it was quail, probably roast quail, though that is a succulent dish, that is referred to; certainly not salmi of partridges."

"Don't trifle, John," cried Mrs. Dodd.

"I don't, my dear; I assure you that I am seriously, profitably and pleasantly employed. Good gracious me, is there anything one need be ashamed of in the admiration of art? And what art can be higher than the culinary art, which must have been necessarily one of the earliest, if not the very earliest of all? Some people are born without an ear for music; I am one of those unfortunates myself, but to make up for it I have been blessed by heaven with an appreciative palate. Would you have me neglect my advantage, would you wish me to bury my one talent in a napkin? Certainly not, Mrs. Dodd. Art I appreciate, especially high art, and I'll trouble you for a little more of the salmi, Dr. Wolff."

"And how are things going on in the parish, Mr. Dodd?" said Georgie. "Are the Dissenters as active as ever?"

"No, my dear madam; just now the Church is far more popular."

"Thanks to organization, thanks to organization," burst in the vicar's wife impetuously. "Our curates' wives are admirable organizers. You remember the Misses Sleek, Mr. Haggard?"

"That I do; uncommonly good-looking girls they were too."

"Well, Mr. Haggard, it was the last thing that I should have expected, but they both went into the Church."

"You mean that they married my curates, my dear," interrupted the vicar.

"No, Mr. Dodd, I said it advisedly, they went into the Church. I suppose that in the old days when high-born ladies became nuns that they went into the Church, and in doing so vowed themselves to a life of self-denial. And in this present time any lady who marries a clergyman, Mr. Dodd, vows herself to a life of self-denial and penance, and certainly enters the Church. I did," she added with a sigh, "and I glory in it. The humble curate may rise to rank and title, but in the highly unlikely event of your becoming a bishop, John, I should remain plain Mrs. Dodd still."

"Not plain, my dear—not plain."

But Mrs. Dodd did not condescend to reprove him; she forgave the flippancy of the remark for the sake of the compliment.

"The fact is," said the vicar, "that since that fellow Smiter left King's Warren a great many of the better-disposed of his people have come over to us. The services are more ornate than they were, and consequently more attractive. So are the sermons, I suppose. At all events, they are shorter. Then we've got a Sisterhood and a Young Men's Christian Association, who play cricket in summer and football in winter. Then again we use collecting bags, while at Gilgal they still stick to the plates. Of course the collections have dropped off to a mere nothing, but the congregations have increased wonderfully. Certainly the plates produced a healthy rivalry, but the bags, I take it, are less of a tax, and the congregation assuredly prefers them. It's a mystery to me where they get all the threepenny-pieces, and I am sorry to say that farthings, and even buttons, are not uncommon. Still, your father and Justice Sleek—everybody calls him Justice Sleek now—let us have all we want in the shape of money, so I suppose there's nothing to complain of."

"Whatever my husband may say, dear Mrs. Haggard, there has been a great awakening, and though he may not see it, for none are so proverbially blind as those who won't see, I look upon it as principally due, at all events in my own parish, to the exertions of my own sex. My curates are both highly popular."

"My dear, curates always are highly popular when they are married to wealthy good-looking young women, and their pockets consequently bursting, literally bursting, with half-crowns; I may add that, in my experience, these are the only circumstances under which married curates are popular."

"You have much to be grateful for, John."

"I know it, my dear—I know it," said the vicar as he finished his coffee. And then the party broke up to commence the real business of the day.

No one would have recognized in the well-appointed and terribly respectable head keeper who touched his hat to the party of gentlemen as they emerged upon the lawn, the former village reprobate—Blogg, the whilom King's Warren poacher. But so it was. By some strange fatality or other your poacher either becomes a confirmed reprobate or blossoms into the very best kind of gamekeeper. Perhaps it's on the principle of set a thief to catch a thief that those estates are best preserved where the head keeper has been poacher in his youth. Just as the man who has risen from the ranks makes the sternest martinet and the strictest disciplinarian, so the reformed poacher is invariably the prince of gamekeepers, when honest.

The vicar of King's Warren was a High Churchman. I believe he would have ridden to hounds with pleasure but for the fact that he found it impossible to find anything up to his weight. But he sternly drew the line at carrying a gun. Though the vicar denied himself this pleasure, he joined the shooting party, for his intense appreciation of the culinary art made violent exercise a necessity of his existence.

As Mrs. Haggard and the vicar's wife sat and chatted over the little details of life at the village of King's Warren, the happy home of the former's girlhood, Mrs. Haggard remarked to her companion that it was strange that they had not heard a shot for at least half an hour. As she uttered the words Lord Spunyarn entered the room, pale and out of breath, and evidently hardly able to control his emotion.

"What! back so soon, Lord Spunyarn? Is anything the matter?" said Mrs. Dodd.

"Something dreadful has happened."

"Has there been an accident? Has anything happened to George?" cried the mother, and the colour left her lips as she rose excitedly.

At that moment the old lord entered the room.

"George is safe, dear madam," said her husband's old friend, "but I have hurried here as the bearer of bad news, and I must bid you prepare for the worst."

"Gad, sir, don't keep us in suspense," cried old Lord Pit Town, with the irritability of age. "Is Lucius the victim?"

"No, the boys are safe, dear Mrs. Haggard," he continued. "My old friend is badly hurt. In passing through a hedge——"

But Mrs. Haggard had fainted in the arms of the vicar's wife.

And then Lord Spunyarn told his tale to the old man, while Mrs. Dodd and the women-servants who, unsummoned, had appeared upon the scene, busied themselves around the fainting woman.

It appeared that in getting through a hedge to pick up a bird that, wounded, had managed to struggle through it, Reginald Haggard's gun had suddenly exploded and lodged a charge of shot in his chest. It was not from carelessness; but Haggard's foot had caught in a rabbit burrow, and as he fell the accident happened. Before their eyes the thing had taken place. There was nothing mysterious about it. It was terribly sudden, that was all.

Hardly had Spunyarn told his tale when Mrs. Haggard came to herself. Tearless and wan she rose to her feet, and taking the old earl's arm, she said simply but in a broken voice, "Let us go to him—let us go to him at once, Lord Pit Town; there may be hope—there may be hope yet."

The old man looked towards Spunyarn interrogatively, but a shake of the head was the only response.

Mrs. Haggard hadn't to go far to meet her wounded husband, for as they passed into the great entrance hall of the Castle a melancholy little procession came in by the main doorway. Four keepers bore a hurdle, upon which lay Lord Pit Town's wounded heir. His face was pale, the lips bloodless, while cold drops stood upon his brow. The four men halted, uncertain where to deposit their burden. Georgie Haggard, quitting the old lord's arm, sprang at once to her husband's side, seized his hand, and attempted to wipe the death drops from his brow.

"Don't touch me, Georgie," he muttered, and the voice sounded unequal and cavernous. "I've suffered untold tortures in being brought here," and his pale fingers, whose nails had become livid, vainly fumbled at his collar. The faithful wife tenderly loosened the band, which appeared to almost strangle him. "Georgie," he continued to his wife, "where is Spunyarn? I must speak with him at once."

He who had been his faithful friend from youth to middle age stepped forward and bent his head over the mouth of the dying man, for he was dying. For several seconds Haggard whispered a hurried communication to his friend, while the bystanders, including the old lord and Haggard's wife, stood aside, so as not to interrupt the privacy of the communication. Ever and anon Haggard paused for breath.

"Shirtings," he said at last, "you will remember?"

"I will see to it, be assured of that," replied his friend, Lord Spunyarn. And then Haggard motioned the old earl to his side, and addressed him with considerable effort.

They had dragged forward a couple of oaken benches, and had placed them one under either end of the hurdle upon which Haggard lay. There was a dead silence in the great entrance hall, only broken by a loud succession of regular ticks, caused by Haggard's life blood, which in great drops fell upon the tesselated pavement below with a monotonously dreadful sound.

"Good-bye, my lord," he said simply, as with an effort he stretched out his hand, which was affectionately grasped by the trembling fingers of the old nobleman. "I am going," he continued, "but you have the boys, my boys."

"Perhaps it's not so bad as you think, Reginald. Assistance will be here shortly. We will move you out of this at once."

"There won't be time, Lord Pit Town. Take care of Lucius."

The dying man's eyes fell upon his wife, and a smile passed over his pale face. "Georgie," he gasped out with an effort, "say you forgive me and I shall die easier."

"Reginald," she whispered, "I have nothing to forgive, but," she added through her sobs, "there is something I must tell you."

"I know it, Georgie. I have known it all along. Kiss me, dear," he added with an effort, and with the kiss his spirit passed away.

Reginald Haggard was dead, stricken down ere he could succeed to the title and estates which would have been his in the ordinary course of nature; but as the aged earl turned away from the body of the man who had been his heir, his eye fell upon the two young men, and motioning to Lucius he said in a broken voice, "Give me your arm, boy; you're all I have left in the world now."

All sign of grief left Lucius Haggard's face at this public notification of his change of position. He drew himself up proudly, and deferentially led the old man away. But young George Haggard didn't hear the words; he stood staring at his dead father, like a man in a dream.

"Is there no hope?" he said to those who crowded round the hurdle upon which the body lay. The ominous tick of the falling blood had ceased now, and as if in answer to the young fellow's question, the dead man's jaw fell, disclosing the white teeth. Then George Haggard turned to his mother, and at a sign from Spunyarn he led her from the spot.

As soon as Mrs. Haggard found herself alone, she gave way to her natural grief. The hero of her girlish dreams had been snatched from her suddenly, so suddenly that she could hardly realize that he was actually gone from her for ever. She had continued to idolize the man and to remain unaware of his many deficiencies and failings, from the very moment he had first courted her in the rose garden at King's Warren until his death. He had been a fairly good husband to her, as husbands go, and she had never ceased to love him with a trusting affection. But bewildered as she was by the suddenness of her affliction, she could not help pondering over the strange communication he had made to her upon his death-bed.

"I have known it all along!" What had he known all along? Had he known that Lucius, instead of being his own son was but the bastard child of Lucy Warrender? Surely not. What could he mean, if he had known it all along, by his solemn adjuration to old Lord Pit Town to take care of Lucius. There could be but one interpretation to that, surely that he looked upon the boy as his eldest son, his heir, his first-born child. Why had her husband asked her to forgive him on his death-bed? Forgive him what? He had not bade good-bye to either of the young fellows, but then death had probably come upon him unawares. Could it possibly be that her dead husband, man of the world as he was, could have deliberately, for the mere sake of her cousin's honour, sacrificed the future of his only son designedly, and without that son's consent? That supposition was beyond even Georgina Haggard's credulity.

There was a mystery in the matter, a mystery she could not fathom. The more she thought over it, the more difficult she found it to attempt to arrive at any possible solution. Was it merely that he feared that George, being really his only child, that at the boy's death without heirs the Pit Town title and the Pit Town wealth should descend to some remote branch of the family, and so perhaps he may of a purpose have placed the second good young life between the old lord and his distant relatives? But that was hardly likely, for such a contingency could never happen till George was in his grave; and Haggard himself, be it remembered, was a wealthy man.

What then was Lucy Warrender's son to him?

Could it be that he had a stronger, a dearer interest in the child? But she thrust it from her as an unworthy thought; and she strove to banish the phantom she had unwittingly conjured up, by letting her mind return once more to its natural grief, in the thought of her awful bereavement, her sudden widowhood.

Reginald Haggard's death and Reginald Haggard's funeral were a nine days' wonder in the neighbourhood of Walls End Castle. Hundreds of people clad in black attended the ceremony. The old lord, the two young men and Lord Spunyarn were the mourners. The shooting party had been broken up on the day of the accident. A short obituary notice had appeared in the Times, and the penny papers had made capital of what they termed "The Shocking Accident in the Shooting Field," while the leader writers had earned their daily three guineas by more or less ingenious strings of the usual platitudes.

Lord Spunyarn was Haggard's sole executor. The will was opened, and commenced with a confirmation of the terms of his marriage settlement; it then proceeded to give a further legacy to his wife of half his property for her lifetime, and he made his "dear son, George Haggard," his residuary legatee; "my son, Lucius Haggard," the document continued, "being otherwise provided for as the heir to the entailed estates of Lord Pit Town."

It was all plain sailing, and the will was a very natural one for a man in Haggard's position to make.

Lord Spunyarn, who was still staying on at the Castle, waited for twenty-four hours after the funeral, and then he demanded a private interview with his friend's widow.

"I am sorry to trouble you, dear Mrs. Haggard, about business matters," he said as he entered the little boudoir which years ago had been devoted by the old lord to young Mrs. Haggard's use, "but I am compelled to worry you with a long and painful conversation on family matters. My dear lady," he continued, "I should have been the very last person to trouble you with the communication which I am about to make, had it not been my friend's dying wish and command."

"Sit down, Lord Spunyarn, sit down," she said, "nothing you can have to tell me can be more painful than the suspense, suspicion, and anxiety of mind which I have endured for the last few days. Tell me the worst at once. I have nothing to forgive my husband. When on his death-bed he asked for my forgiveness, I feared that there was something dreadful to come; but I fully and freely forgave him, Lord Spunyarn, and whatever you may have to tell, it will not alter my affection for his memory."

"Dear Mrs. Haggard," said the philanthropist, with a little sigh, "the matter concerns the future, as well as the past; the secret has been well kept, and my poor friend has done his duty in providing for his son George, and for you. I must tell you that at one time I had my suspicions, but the thing seemed in itself so monstrous, so improbable, that I put it from me as an unworthy thought. When your late husband whispered those last words to me as he was dying, he informed me that I was his executor, and told me to examine a little red box that I should find at his banker's, and then to tell you everything. I obtained the box; I have examined it, and it is here." As he said the words, he placed a little red morocco box upon the table.