On the day after the funeral—and there had been no mourner found to follow that poor young man to his last home, but one who had been fellow curate with him, and who was now in London—Mrs. Dundyke and her visitor were alone when a gentleman was shown in. A fine man yet, of middle age, but with a slight bend in the shoulders, as if from care, and grey threads mingling with his dark hair. It was not a time for Mrs. Carr to see strangers, and she rose to quit the drawing-room, after hurriedly replacing some papers in a desk she was examining. But there was something so noble, so pleasing, so refined, in the countenance of the man standing there, his hands held out to Mrs. Dundyke, and a sweet smile upon his lips, that she stopped involuntarily.

"Have you forgotten me, Betsey?"

For the moment she really had, for he was much changed; but the voice and the smile recalled her memory, and with a glad cry of recognition Mrs. Dundyke sprang forward, and received on her lips a sisterly kiss.

"Emma, don't go. This is your husband's friend, and my brother-in-law, William Arkell."

Mrs. Carr gladly held out her hand; her pretty face raised in its widow's cap. A shade came over William Arkell's at seeing that badge on one so young.

He had a little business in London, he explained, connected with the transfer of some of his property, and came up, instead of writing; came up—there was no doubt of it, though he did not say so—that he might have the opportunity of seeing Mrs. Dundyke.

Mrs. Carr left the room, and Mr. Arkell drew his chair nearer to his sister-in-law.

"You have heard nothing further, Betsey, of—of of your lost husband?"

She shook her head; she should never hear that again.

It was only natural that she should relate the circumstances to him, now that they met, although he had heard them so fully from Mr. Prattleton. Where much mystery exists, especially pertaining to undiscovered crime, it seems that we can never be tired of attempting to solve it. Human nature is the same all the world over, and these things do possess an irrepressible attraction for the human heart—very human it is, now and then. Mr. Arkell sat with his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his chin resting on his hand; he was looking dreamily into the fire as they talked.

"I should strongly suspect that Mr. Hardcastle, Betsey; should you know him if you saw him again?"

"Know him! know that same Mr. Hardcastle!" she repeated, wondering at what seemed so superfluous a question. "I should know him to the very end of my life. I should know him by his eyes, if by nothing else. They seem to be always before mine."

"Were they peculiar eyes, then?"

"Very. The first time I saw him, that morning at breakfast, his eyes seemed to strike upon my memory with a sort of repulsion. I felt sure I had seen eyes like them somewhere; and that the other eyes had caused me repulse likewise. All the time we were together at Geneva, his eyes kept puzzling me; it was like a word we have on the tip of the tongue, every moment thinking we must recollect it, but it keeps baffling us. So was it with Mr. Hardcastle's eyes; and it was only in the moment he was leaving for Genoa that I recollected whose they were like."

"And whose were they like?"

"A gentleman's I never saw but twice; once at your house, at your own wedding breakfast, and once in the week subsequent to it at Mrs. Daniel Arkell's: Benjamin Carr."

"Who?" exclaimed Mr. Arkell.

"Benjamin Carr, the present squire's son."

He sat with sudden uprightness in his chair, staring at her. The strange scene, when Robert Carr had likened Benjamin to the suspected murderer, was flashing into his mind. What did it mean, that agitation of Benjamin's? What did this likeness, now spoken of, mean? A wild doubt of horror came creeping over Mr. Arkell.

He opened his lips to speak, but recollected himself before the hasty impulse was put in force. Mrs. Dundyke noticed nothing unusual; her eyes and her thoughts were alike absorbed in the past.

"Will you describe this Mr. Hardcastle to me?" he asked presently, breaking the pause of silence: "as accurately and minutely as you can."

He noted every point that she gave in answer, every little detail. And he came to the conclusion that if Benjamin Carr was not Mr. Hardcastle, he might certainly have sat for his portrait.

"Unfortunately," said Mr. Arkell, speaking more to himself than to her, "were this man apprehended and punished, it could not bring poor Mr. Dundyke back to life."

"Alas no, it could not. I would almost rather let things remain as they are. If the man is guilty, his daily life must be one perpetual, ever-present punishment."

"Ay, indeed," murmured Mr. Arkell; "better leave him to it."

And he rather persistently, had her suspicions been awakened, led the conversation into other channels.

"Let me say to you what I chiefly came to say, Betsey," he whispered to Mrs. Dundyke in parting. "This has been a sudden and unexpected blow for you. I do not know how you may be left in regard to means; but if you have need of help, temporary or otherwise, you will let me know it. I have a right to give it, you know: you are Charlotte's sister."

The tears fell from her eyes on his hands as she pressed them gratefully in hers. She did not say how well she was left off, for her heart was full; she only thanked him, and intimated that she had enough.

Mr. Arkell went away in a sort of perplexed dream. Could that suspicion of Benjamin Carr be a true one? He would be silent; but it was nearly certain to come out in some other way: murder generally does. From Mrs. Dundyke's he went straight up to Lady Dewsbury's, and found that she and Miss Arkell had again gone out of town. It was a disappointment; he had not seen Mildred for years and years.

Mrs. Carr came back to the room, and resumed her occupation after he had gone—that of searching amid the papers in the desk of the late Robert Carr the elder. It had proved to be his own desk that her husband had wanted her to bring over—but that is of no consequence. She was searching for a very simple thing—merely a receipt for a small sum of money which she had herself paid for Mr. Carr just before he died, and had returned the receipt to him; but it is often upon the merest trifles that the great events of life turn. The claim for this small sum she heard was sent in again, and she thought perhaps she might find the receipt in the desk, where Mr. Carr had sometimes used to place such papers. She did not find that, but she found something else.

Mrs. Dundyke was sitting by, between the other side of the table and the fire. She was talking about the Arkells—the kindly generosity of William, the selfishness and persistent ill-will of Charlotte.

"And the children?" asked Mrs. Carr, as she stood, opening paper after paper. "Do they follow their father or mother in their treatment of you?"

"Of the daughters I know little; I may say nothing. They have never noticed me, even by a message. But the son—ah! you should know Travice Arkell! I cannot tell you how I love him. Will you believe that Charlotte——What is the matter?"

Emma Carr had come upon a sealed letter in an old blotting-book. The superscription was in the handwriting of her father-in-law, and ran as follows:—"To my son Robert. Not to be opened until after the death of my father, Marmaduke Carr."

She uttered the exclamation which had attracted the attention of Mrs. Dundyke, and sat down on her chair. With a prevision that this letter had something to do with the question of the marriage, she tore the letter open and sat gazing on it spellbound.

"Have you found the receipt, my dear?"

Not the receipt. With her cheeks flushing, her pulses quickening, her hands trembling, she laid the letter open before Mrs. Dundyke. "Robert was right; Robert was right! Oh! if he had but lived to read this! How could he have overlooked this, when he examined the desk after his father's death? It must have slipped between the leaves of the blotting-book, and been hidden there."

"My dear Son Robert,—There may arise a question of your legitimacy when the time shall arrive for you to take possession of your grandfather's property. On the day I left Westerbury for ever, I married your mother, Martha Ann Hughes—she would not else have come with me. We were married in her parish church at Westerbury, St. James the Less, and you will find it duly entered in the register. This will be sufficient to prove your rights, so that there may be no litigation.

"Your affectionate father,
"Rt. Carr."

And, scarcely knowing whether she was awake or dreaming, while Mrs. Dundyke, in vain attempted to recover her astonishment, Mrs. Carr wrote a line of explanation inside an envelope, and despatched the all-important document to Westerbury to Mr. Fauntleroy.

CHAPTER XII.
MR. RICHARDS' MORNING CALL.

Mr. Fauntleroy was seated at breakfast, when this missive reached him. His two strapping daughters were with him: buxom, vulgar damsels, attired this morning in Magenta skirts and straw-coloured jackets. Mrs. Fauntleroy had been some years dead, and they ruled the house, and nearly ruled the lawyer. Strong-willed man though he was, carrying things out of doors with an iron hand, and sometimes a coarse one, he would yield to domestic tyranny; as many another has to do, if it were but known. It was fond tyranny, however, here; for whatever may have been the faults of the Miss Fauntleroys, they loved their father with a tender love. They were the only children of the lawyer—his co-heiresses—and to him they were as the apple of his eye.

The room they sat in faced the garden—a large fine garden at the back of the house. The leaves were red with the glowing tints of autumn, and as Mr. Fauntleroy looked up from his well-covered breakfast-table at the October sky, he made some remark upon the famous run the hounds would make; and a half sigh escaped his lips that his own hunting days were gone for ever.

"Would you be afraid to ride now, pa?"

"Look at my weight, Lizzy."

"I think some who ride are as heavy as you," was Miss Elizabeth's answer.

"Ah! but they are used to it; they have kept the practice up. Never a better follower than I in my younger days—always in at the death—but that's a long while ago now. I gave up hunting when I settled down. What d'ye call that, Bab?"

He was pointing with his fork to a dish apart. Miss Barbara looked at it critically, and did not recognise it. "I dare say it's some dish the new cook has sent up. It looks nice, pa."

"Hand some of it over, then," said Mr. Fauntleroy.

She helped him plentifully. The lawyer and his daughters were all fond of nice dishes, and liked good servings of them; as perhaps their large frames and their high colours testified. Miss Lizzy pushed up her plate.

"I'll take some, too, Bab."

"About that pic-nic, pa? Are we——"

"Oh! I don't know," interrupted the lawyer, with his mouth full. "You girls are always bothering for something of the sort. Get it up if you like, only don't expect me to go."

"The Arkells will join us, pa; Bab has asked them."

"He's over here for a few days, stopping with Mrs. Lewis. He wants to be off to Australia or some place, but the squire turns crusty about advancing the funds. Ben and he came to an explosion over it, and Ben has made himself scarce at home in consequence. What's the time, Bab?"

Barbara Fauntleroy glanced over her father's head at the French clock behind him. "It's twenty-five minutes after nine, pa."

"Eh!" cried the lawyer, starting up. "Why, what a time I have been at breakfast! You girls should not keep me with your chatter."

He gathered up his letters, which lay in a stack beside him, and hastened into his office. The head clerk, Kenneth, was in the outer room, with one of the other clerks, a young man named Omer. Mr. Fauntleroy went in to ask a question.

"Have those deeds come in yet from the engrosser's, Kenneth?"

"No, sir."

"Not come! Why they promised them for nine o'clock this morning, and now it's half-past. Go for them yourself, Kenneth, at once, and give them a word of a sort. It's not the first time by many that they've been behindhand."

Mr. Kenneth took his hat and went out; and his master shut himself in his private room and began to open his letters. Sometimes he opened his letters at breakfast time, at others he carried them, as now, into the office.

Amidst these letters was the envelope despatched by Mrs. Carr, containing the important letter found in the desk. To describe Mr. Fauntleroy's astonishment when he read it, would be beyond mortal pen. To think that they should have been looking half over the world for this marriage record, when it was lying quietly under their very nose!

"By George!" exclaimed Mr. Fauntleroy. "A clever trick, though, of Robert Carr's—if he did so marry her. The secret was well kept. He would be sure we should suspect any place rather than Westerbury." "Omer!" he called out aloud.

The clerk came in, in answer, and stood before the table of Mr. Fauntleroy.

"Go down to St. James the Less, and look through the register. See if there's a marriage entered between Robert Carr and—what was the girl's Christian name?—Martha Ann Hughes. Stop a minute, I'll give you the date of the year. And—Omer—keep a silent tongue in your head."

"By George!" repeated the lawyer. "Only to think of that! That's all, Omer," he added, after a pause. "Mr. Kenneth wants you. And mind what I charged you as to a silent tongue."

"No fear, sir," said Omer, as he retired. And to give him his due there was no fear. One clerk had been discharged from Mr. Fauntleroy's office six months before, some tattling having been traced back to him; but Omer was of a silent nature, and cautious besides.

"I shall never be surprised at anything again," soliloquized Mr. Fauntleroy. "A week longer, and I should have thrown up the cause, unless the Holland Carrs had come forward with money. Won't I go on with it now! But—I suppose—" he continued more slowly, and in due deliberation, "the cause will be at an end now. Old Carr can't hold out in the face of this. Shall I tell of it? If I don't—and they don't else come to know of it—and the cause goes on, there'll be a pretty picking for both sides; and old Carr can afford it, for it's his pocket that will have to stand costs now. I'm not obliged to tell them; and I won't," concluded Mr. Fauntleroy.

But this little cunning plan of secresy on the part of Mr. Fauntleroy was destined to be defeated. Mynn and Mynn, the solicitors of Eckford, were in negotiation with a gentleman in London to take the head of their office, and act as its chief during their own frequent absence. This gentleman, by one of those coincidences that arise in this world, to help our projects or baffle them, as the case may be, happened to be Mr. Littelby. The negotiation had been opened for some little time, and was only waiting for a personal interview for completion; Mr. Littelby himself being rather anxious for it, as it held out greater advantages than he enjoyed in his present post, one of which was a possible partnership. Mr. George Mynn made a journey to London to see him; and while he was gone, it chanced that the clerk, Richards, had occasion to see Mr. Fauntleroy.

He, Richards, arrived in Westerbury betimes on this same morning, and was told by Kenneth that he might go in to Mr. Fauntleroy. Richards found, however, that the room was empty; Mr. Fauntleroy having quitted it for an instant, leaving the inner door ajar.

The morning's letters, open, lay in a stack on the table, one upon another, faces upwards. Mr. Richards, a prying man, with a curiosity as sharp as his nose, and both were sharp as a needle, saw these letters, and took the liberty of bending his body forward from the spot where he stood, to bring his eyes within range of their contents. He read the first, which did him no good whatever; and then gently lifted it an inch slant-wise with his thumb and finger, and so came to the second. That likewise afforded him scant gratification; for it did not concern him at all, or any business with which he could possibly be connected, and he lifted it gingerly and came to the third. The third was the all-important letter of the deceased Robert Carr; and Mr. Richards read it with devouring eyes.

He did not care to go on now to the other letters. This was enough; and he regaled himself with a second perusal. A faint foot-fall in the passage warned him, and Mr. Richards stole away from danger.

Mr. Fauntleroy entered, coming bustling in by the door he had left ajar. Surprised perhaps to see the room tenanted which he had left empty, he glanced at his letters. Thought is quick. They were lying in the stack just as he had placed them, certainly undisturbed for any sign they gave; and the visitor was sitting yards off, in a remote chair behind the other door, his legs crossed and his hat held on his knees.

"Ah, Richards! you are here early this morning!"

"I was obliged to come early, sir, to get back in time," said Richards as he rose. "Mr. Mynn is ill, as usual, and Mr. George went to London yesterday afternoon; so the office is left to me."

"Gone to engage his new clerk, isn't he?" asked Mr. Fauntleroy, who had no more objection than Richards to hear somewhat of his neighbours' business.

"I believe so; gone to see him, at all events," replied Richards, speaking with scant ceremony; but it was in his nature so to do. "They want him to come next month, I hear."

"What's his name?"

"Littelton, or Littelby, or some such name. I heard them talking of him in their room. We are going to have a busy winter of it, Mr. Fauntleroy," continued the candid Richards, brushing a speck off his hat; "so the governors want the new man to come to us next month, or in December at latest. We have three causes already on hand for the spring assizes."

"That's pretty well for your quiet folks," returned Mr. Fauntleroy, as he sat down and placed a large weight on the stack of letters. "Whose are they?"

"Well, there's that old-standing cause of the Whitcombs, the remanet from last assizes; and there's a new one that I suppose I must not talk about: it's a breach of trust affair, and our side want it kept close, meaning to have a try at going in for a compromise, which they'll never get: and then there's your cause, Carr versus Carr. But, Mr. Fauntleroy, surely you'll never bring that into court! you can't win, you know."

Mr. Fauntleroy's eyes rested lovingly for a moment on the stack of letters. "If clients are sanguine without reasonable cause, we can't help it you know, Richards."

"Well, how those Holland Carrs can be sanguine bangs me hollow!" was the retort of Mr. Richards. "They've never had the ghost of a case from the first. I was dining at the old squire's on Sunday again, and we got talking of it. The old man was saying he thought the Carrs over in Holland must be mad, to persist risking their money in this way; and so they must be. There never could have been any marriage, Mr. Fauntleroy: I dare say you feel as sure of it as everybody else does."

Mr. Fauntleroy shrugged his huge shoulders. "The clergyman is dead; and the rest may not be so sanguine as he was. I confess I did think him a little mad. And now to your business, Richards. I suppose you have come about that tithe affair. Will Kenneth do for you? I am busy this morning."

"Kenneth won't do until I have had a word with yourself, and shown you a paper," replied Richards, taking out his letter-case. "Just look at that, Mr. Fauntleroy."

Mr. Fauntleroy unfolded the paper handed to him. It had nothing to do with our history; but he apparently found it so interesting or important, that Richards was not dismissed for nearly an hour. And at his departure, to make up for lost time, Mr. Fauntleroy set to work with a will: one of his first tasks being to drop a line to Mrs. Carr, acknowledging the receipt of the important letter, and cautioning her to keep the discovery a strict secret. All unconscious, as he was, that one had seen it in his own office.

Mr. Richards was scuttering along the street to the railway station, when he encountered Benjamin Carr. He could hardly stop to speak, for his own office really wanted him. In the past few weeks, since their first introduction, he and Benjamin Carr had been a great deal together, and the latter placed himself right in his path.

"I can't stay a minute, Ben,"—they had grown familiar, as you perceive,—"I shall lose the train."

Benjamin Carr turned, and stepped out alongside him, with a pace as quick. He began telling him, as they walked, of an outbreak he had had with the "old man," as he was pleased to call his father. "It was all about this money," exclaimed Ben. "He refuses to give me any until this affair is settled; persists in saying he may lose the inheritance: altogether we got in a passion, both of us. As if he could lose it!"

"I suppose it is within the range of possibility," said Richards.

"Nonsense!" replied Benjamin Carr. "You'll say there was a marriage next."

"There might have been."

"Pigs might fly."

"Suppose there was a marriage—and that it can be proved? What then?"

"Suppose there wasn't," wrathfully returned Ben Carr. "I'm not in a mood for joking, Richards."

They stepped on to the platform. The train was not in yet; was scarcely due: one of the porters remarked that "that there mid-day train didn't keep her time as well as some on 'em did." Richards familiarly passed his arm within Benjamin Carr's, and drew him beyond the platform. They turned sideways and halted before a dwarf wall, looking over it at the town, which lay beneath.

"You say you are not in a mood for joking, Ben: neither am I; and what I said to you I said with a meaning," began Richards in a low tone. "It has come to my knowledge—and you needn't ask me how or when or where, for I shan't tell you—that old Marmaduke's money, so far as you Eckford Carrs go, is imperilled. If the thing goes on to trial, you'll lose it: but I should think it won't go on to trial, for you'd never let it when you come to know what I know. The other side has got hold of a piece of evidence that would swamp you."

Benjamin Carr's great dark eyes turned themselves fiercely upon his companion: he saw that he was, in truth, not jesting. "It's not the record of the marriage, is it?" he asked, after a pause.

"It must be kept safe for your own sake, for your family's sake. If any evidence has turned up, there's no cause to let the world know it before you are compelled. It would be damaging your cause irreparably."

Ben Carr nodded assent. "What is it?" he asked.

"Well, I think they have found out where the marriage was solemnized. I think so, mind; I am not positive. That is, I am not positive of the fact; only that they think it so."

"How did you hear it?"

"Now, Ben, you'll not get me to let out that. I've said so. Perhaps I dreamt it; perhaps a little bird told me: never mind. I mean to go over to your place to see Valentine to-night, and drop him a hint of the state of affairs. Shall you be at home?"

"I didn't mean to be at home for some days to come; but I'll meet you there. Take care of one thing: that you say nothing to the squire."

Mr. Richards gave a knowing nod sideways, as if to intimate that he knew just as well what to do and what not to do as Benjamin Carr. Just then the noise of a train was heard puffing up.

"Here it comes, Richards."

"Here it doesn't," was the reply. "It's coming the wrong way. This is the London train coming in."

The train came in, and stopped on the other side of the platform, while it discharged its passengers and any luggage pertaining to them. It then went puffing on, and the passengers crossed the line to this side, as they had to do before they could leave the station. Benjamin Carr and his friend stood still to look at them, and the former recognised in one of them Mr. Arkell.

"Mrs. Dundyke?" he repeated, vaguely, staring over the heads of the passing passengers. "Oh, ah, I remember, that connexion of yours. I don't know her."

"I got her to give me a description of the man, calling himself Hardcastle, who lies under the suspicion of knowing rather too clearly what became of Mr. Dundyke. Poor Robert Carr, just dead, attempted the description of him, you may remember, at your father's table."

"Ah; yes," said Ben, striving to be more vague than before: and his dark face perceptibly changed its hue.

"And I may tell you that this description of Mrs. Dundyke's has made a singular impression upon me, and a very disagreeable one. It is not my affair," he added, slowly and distinctly; "and for the present I shall not make it mine: but——"

"Here's your train, Richards. Got a return ticket?"

The two walked forward to meet it, Richards evidently pulled along by his companion. The train came dashing in too far, and had to be backed: porters ran about, departing passengers hustled each other. And altogether, in the general confusion, there was no more to be seen of Mr. Benjamin Carr.

CHAPTER XIII.
A DISLIKE THAT WAS TO BEAR ITS FRUITS.

The information, hinted at by Miss Beauclerc to Henry Arkell, had proved to be correct—the dean and chapter purposed to hold an examination of the college school.

To describe the consternation this caused would be difficult. It fell, not only upon the boys, but on the masters, like a clap of thunder: indeed the former cared for it the least. That the school was not in a state, in regard to its proficiency of study, to bear an examination, was a fact known to nearly everybody; and the head master, had it been possible, would have resisted the fiat of the dean.

In point of fact, the school had become notorious for its inefficiency. The old days of confining the boys' studies exclusively to Latin and Greek were over; but the additional branches inaugurated could scarcely be said to have begun. The masters, wedded to the old system, did not take to them kindly; the boys did not, of their own will, take to them at all. They could not spell; they knew nothing of English grammar, except what they could pick up of it through their acquaintance with the Latin; they hardly knew a single event in English, French, or modern history; and of geography they were intensively ignorant. What could be expected? For years and years, for many hours a day, had these boys been kept to work, always at the old routine work, Latin and Greek. Examine them in these classics, and Mr. Wilberforce would have no reason to complain of his pupils; but in all else a charity boy could beat them. Had one of those college boys been required to write a letter in English, every other word in it would have been spelled incorrectly. I am giving you a true account of the state of the school at that period: and I fear that you will scarcely believe it. A few of the boys, a very few, only some three or four, had been generally well educated; but these owed it to the care, the forethought, perhaps the means of their parents: home tutors were expensive.

As Miss Beauclerc had said, it was in consequence of a letter, written by one of the senior boys, that this trouble had come about. It was a disgraceful letter—speaking in reference to its spelling and composition—neither more nor less. The letter had been brought under the astonished eyes of one of the chapter, and he showed it to the dean. They awoke from their supineness, and much indignation at the young scholar was privately expressed. What did they expect? Did they think spelling came to the boys intuitively, as pecking at grain does to birds? It may be said that the boys ought to have been able to spell correctly before entering the school, and to have possessed some other general learning; that the parents ought to have taken care of that. But "ought" does not go for much in this world. Many of the boys were indulged children who had never been brought on at all, except in reading, and that was essential, or they could not be admitted; and, at that time, they entered young—nine years old. As they went in, little ignoramuses, so they remained, except in the classics. Many a boy has gone from that school to the university not educated at all, save in the dead languages.

Of course, when the innovation (as the masters regarded it) came in, a little stir was caused. A pretence was made of teaching the school foreign branches, such as spelling and geography; but whether it might be owing to the innate prejudice of their masters, or to their own stupidity, little, if any, progress was made. The boys remained lamentably deficient; and they thought it no shame to be so. Rather the contrary, in fact; for a feeling grew up in the school that these common branches of learning were not essential to them as gentlemen; that it was derogatory altogether to a foundation school to have them introduced. The masters had winked at this state of things, and they perhaps did not know how intensely ignorant some of their best classical scholars were.

It may be imagined, therefore, what the consternation was when the dean's announcement was received early in August. There was to be an examination held; but not until November; so the boys and the masters had three months to prepare. It's true you cannot convert ignorant boys into finished scholars in three months, however humble may be the attainments required; but you may do something towards it by means of drilling. So the boys, to their intense disgust, were drilled late and early—and that disgust did not render their apprehensions the quicker.

Amidst the very few who need not fear that, or any other examination, was Henry Arkell. He was not yet a senior boy (speaking of the four seniors), but he was by far the best scholar in the school. He owed this chiefly to his father. Mr. Peter Arkell was so finished a scholar himself, it had been strange indeed if he had not sought to render his son one; and Henry's abilities were of a most superior order. Indeed—but that a sort of prejudice exists against these clever lads, I could say a great deal more of his abilities, his attainments, than I mean to say—for this is no fictitious history. Intellectual, clever, good, refined, sensitive, Henry Arkell seemed to be one of those superior spirits not meant for this world. The event too often proves that they were not meant for it.

He was not a favourite in the school, except with a few. By the majority he was intensely disliked. The dislike arose from envy, and his own gifts excited it. His unusual beauty, his sensitive temperament, his refinement of manner, his ever-pervading sense of religion, his honourable nature, as seen in even the smallest action,—all and each of them were objectionable to the rough schoolboys. Most of these qualities he had inherited from his mother, and for any one of them, the school, as a whole, would have ridiculed and despised him. They would have been quite enough without his superior advancement; which put them to the shame, and called forth now and again some stinging comparison from the lips of the head master. When he first entered the school, he had unintentionally excited the ill-will of the two sons of Mrs. Lewis, and of their chosen companions, the two Aultanes. These boys longed above everything to thrash him every day of their lives; but he had been taken under the protection of Mr. St. John and Travice Arkell, and they dared not, and it did not increase their love for him.

But there was to arise a worse cause of enmity than any of these, as Henry grew older, and that was the favour shown him by the dean's daughter. To see him under the especial favour of the dean was aggravation enough; but that was as nothing compared to the intimacy accorded him by the dean's daughter. You know what these things are with schoolboys. Half the school believed themselves in love with this attractive girl, who condescended to freedom with them; the other half were in love with her. After their fashion, you know. It was not that serious love that makes or mars the heart for all time, though the boys might think it so. Lewis senior—his name was Roland, and he was one of the four senior boys—was especially envious of this favour of Miss Beauclerc's. He was very fond of her, and would have given all he possessed in the world for it to be accorded to him. He could only love and admire her at a distance; while Arkell might tell it to her face if he pleased—and Lewis felt sure he did. He hated Henry with a passionate hatred. He saw, with that intuition natural to these things, that Henry loved Georgina Beauclerc, and with no passing school-boy's love. He wished that the earth contained only their three selves, that he might set upon the fragile boy and kill him, and keep the young lady to himself ever afterwards—Adam and Eve in a second Paradise. Indeed, Mr. Lewis had got into a habit of indulging this train of thought rather more than was wholesome for him, and would have shot Henry Arkell in a duel with all the non-compunction in the world.

Not being able to do this—for the human race could not be exterminated so easily, and duels are not in fashion—he made up for the disappointment by rendering Henry Arkell's life as miserable as it is well possible for one boy to render another's. He excited the school against him; he openly derided the position and known poverty of his father, Peter Arkell; and he positively affected to rebel—he would have rebelled had he dared—when Henry came to reside temporarily in the head master's house. The scholars in that house had hitherto been gentlemen, he said, loudly. Indeed, but for one fortunate circumstance, Henry's life at the master's might have been rendered nearly unbearable; and this was, that he was in favour with the senior boy—an idle, gentlemanly fellow of the name of Jocelyn. So long as Jocelyn remained in the school, there could be no very undue open oppression put upon Henry Arkell. It was not that the head boy held Henry in any especial favour; but he was of too just a nature, too much the gentleman in ideas and habits, to permit cruelty or unfairness of any sort. But you have now heard enough to gather that Henry Arkell was not in favour with the majority of the college boys, his fellows; and you hear its causes.

The cramming that the boys were now subjected to, did not improve their temper. Unfortunately, the dean had not specified—perhaps purposely—what would be the branches chosen for examination. Mr. Wilberforce and the under masters presumed that it would chiefly lie in the classics, and, so far, were tolerably easy; but the result of this was, that the Latin and Greek lessons were increased, leaving less time for what they were pleased to consider inferior studies.

"Suppose," suggested the second master, one day, "it should be in those other studies that the dean purposes to examine them?"

Mr. Wilberforce turned purple.

"In those!—to the exclusion of the higher! Nonsense! It is not likely. The boys will cut a pretty figure if he should."

"The fact is, they are such a dull lot."

"Most of them: yes. I think, Mr. Roberts, you had better hold some dictation classes; and we'll get in a few conspicuous maps."

But all the studies that came in addition, whether dictation classes or the staring at maps, the boys resented wofully; and though they were obliged to submit, it did not, I say, improve their temper. One afternoon in October, when everything seemed to have gone wrong, and the school rather wished, on the whole, that they had never been born, or that books had not been invented, or that they were private pupils of the head master's (for they were not to be included in the examination, only the forty foundation boys, the king's scholars), the school was waiting impatiently to hear half-past four strike, for then only another half-hour must elapse before they would be released from school. The choristers had come in at four o'clock from service with the head master, whose week it was for chanting, and had settled down to their respective desks. Henry Arkell, who was at the first desk now, but nothing like its head, for promotion in the school was not attained by proficiency, but by priority of entrance, had come in with the rest; he was senior chorister now, and was seated bending over a book, his head half buried between his raised hands, and his elbows on the desk.

"What are you conning there so attentively, Mr. Arkell?"

The authoritative words came from Lewis. He was monitor that week, and therefore head of all the school, under the senior boy: his present position on the rolls was that of fourth senior.

"I'm reading Greek," replied Henry, without removing his hands or looking up. "I've done my lessons."

"Take your hands and elbows down. I should like to see."

Down went the hands and elbows, but he did not look up.

"I thought it might be an English comedy instead of a Greek tragedy," observed Lewis, satirically; "but it is Greek, I see. Boys, he's reading Greek! He's thinking to take the shine out of us at the examination. Preparing! Oh!"

"Not at all," said Henry, quietly. "I should have been as well prepared for the examination at a day's notice, as I am after nearly three months'. So might you have been if you'd chosen."

"You insolent young beggar! Do you mean to say I am not prepared?"

"I said nothing of the sort, Lewis."

"You implied it, though. You needn't think to get the prize—if it's true that the dean gives one."

"I don't think to get it. I wish you'd let me go on with my book."

"Oh yes, you do. You think to creep up the dean's sleeve, at second hand, through somebody that's a friend of yours; or that you are presumptuous enough to fancy is."

He understood the allusion, and suddenly raised his hands again, for the delicate hue of his transparent cheek changed to crimson. Lewis noted the movement.

"Now, by Jove, I'll put you up for punishment. I order your elbows off the desk, and you fling them on again in defiance. Wilberforce has flogged for less."

"Be quiet, Lewis," interposed Jocelyn. "Arkell's doing nothing that you need trouble him for. Just turn your attention to that second desk, and see what's going on there. They'll get Mr. Wilberforce's eyes upon them directly."

Lewis could have found in his heart to hang the senior boy. He was always interfering with him in this manner whenever he was monitor, to the detriment of his dignity as such. Lewis immediately struck up a wordy war, until the master's attention was excited and he commanded silence.

Oh, if this dislike of Henry Arkell had but died out at first! half this history would not then have been written. It might have done so under different circumstances; it might, perhaps, have done so but for the dean's daughter. From the very first hour that she knew him, Georgina Beauclerc made no secret of her liking. When she met the college boys, child though she was then, she would single him out from the rest, and stop talking to him. Her governess used to look defiance, but that made not the least impression on Miss Beauclerc. She invited him to the deanery; they never were allowed to put their noses inside it, except at those odd moments when they went to solicit the dean to allow them holiday from the cathedral; she would pass them sometimes without the slightest notice in the world, but she never so passed him.

If he had but been a dull, stupid, clumsy boy! Strange though it may seem, the rest hated him because he did his lessons. Their tasks were hurried over, imperfectly learnt at the best, if at all, and were generally concluded with a caning. His were always perfectly and efficiently done. They called him hard names for this; prig, snob, sneak; but, in point of fact, the boy was never allowed the opportunity of not doing them, for his father on that score was a martinet, and drilled him at home just as much as Mr. Wilberforce did at school. And, greatest of all advantages, his early education had been so comprehensive and sound. The horribly hard lessons, that were as death to the rest, seemed but play to him; and the natural consequence was, that the envy boiled over. Circumstances, in this point of view, were not favourable to him.

The long afternoon came to an end, five o'clock struck, and the boys clattered down the broad schoolroom steps, making the grounds and the old cloisters echo with their noise. There had been little time for play latterly; since the announcement of the forthcoming examination, the head and other masters had been awfully exacting on the subject of lessons, not to be trifled with. Henry Arkell, from the state of preparation in which he always was, had nearly as much time on his hands as usual, and had not ceased to take his lessons on the organ, or to practise on it twice a week, as was his custom. He learnt of the cathedral organist, Mr. Paul; for Mrs. Peter Arkell had deemed it well that Henry's great taste for music should continue to be cultivated. Another of the boys, named Robbins, a private pupil of the head master's, also learnt. The organist would not allow them to touch the noted cathedral instrument, save in his presence; and they were permitted by Mr. Wilberforce to practise in the church of St. James the Less, of which, as you may remember, he was the incumbent. One of the minor canons invariably held this living, for it was in the gift of the Dean and Chapter.

Henry was going there to practise this evening. He was at the house of the head master yet; his friends being still absent from Westerbury, for the family who had taken their house wished to remain in it until Christmas. The sea-side was doing Mrs. Peter Arkell a vast deal of good; her husband had obtained some teaching there, and Mr. Wilberforce had kindly intimated that Henry was welcome to remain with him a twelvemonth, if it suited their plans that he should; but the boy was beginning to long for them back with an intense longing.

He walked across the grounds to the master's house; put down his books, got his music, and went on towards the church of St. James the Less. It was a large, ancient church, with thick walls and little windows, and it stood all solitary by itself, in the midst of its churchyard, beyond the town on that side, but not many minutes' walk from the cathedral. The only house near it was the clerk's, and that not close to it: a poor, low, damp, aguish building, surrounded by grass as long as that in the neighbouring graveyard. The clerk was a bent, withered old man, always complaining of rheumatism; he had been clerk of that church now for many years.

Once beyond the grounds, Henry Arkell set off at his utmost speed. The evenings were growing dusk early, and Mr. Wilberforce allowed no light in the church, so he had to make the most of the daylight. He was flying past the palmery, when in making a dexterous spring to avoid a truck of apples standing there, he let his roll of music fly out of his hand; and it was in turning to pick up this that his eyes caught sight of a tall form at the palmery door; a distinguished, noble-looking young man, whose deep blue eyes were gazing at him in doubt. One moment's hesitation, on Henry's part, and he made but a step towards him.

"Oh, Mr. St. John! I did not know you were back."

"I thought it was certainly you, Harry, but your height puzzled me. How you have grown!"

Henry laughed. "They say I bid fair to be as tall as my cousin Travice. I hope I shan't be as tall as papa! When did you come home, Mr. St. John?"

"Now: an hour ago. I am going to look in at the deanery. Will you come with me, lest I should have forgotten the way?"

It was not often that Henry Arkell put aside duty for pleasure; he had been too well trained for that; but this temptation was irresistible. What would he not have put aside for the sake of seeing Georgina Beauclerc; and, it may be, that that wild suspicion of where Georgina's love was given, made him wish to witness the meeting.

A couple of minutes brought them to the deanery. St. John's joke of not finding the way might have some point in it, for he had been absent at least two years. In the room where you first saw her, gliding softly over the carpet with a waltzing step, was Georgina Beauclerc; and close to the window, listlessly looking out, sat a young lady of delicate beauty, one of the fairest girls it was ever Mr. St. John's lot to look upon. But this was not the first time he had seen her. It was the dean's niece, Sarah Beauclerc.

Henry was in the room first; St. John pushed him on, and followed him; he was in time therefore to see the momentary suspense, the start of surprise, the deep glow of crimson, of love, that rushed over the face of Georgina. Was it at himself, or at him? But never yet, so far as Henry saw, had that crimson hue dyed her face at his own approach.

One moment, and she had recovered herself. She went up to Mr. St. John with an outstretched hand, bantering words on her tongue.

"So you really are alive! We thought you had been buried in the Red Sea."

He made some laughing answer, and passed on to Sarah Beauclerc. He clasped both her hands in his; he bent over her with only a word or two of greeting, his low voice subdued to tenderness. What did it mean? Georgina's lips turned white as ashes, but she could not see her cousin's face.

"How is Mrs. Beauclerc?" asked St. John, turning, and beginning to talk generally; "Harry tells me that the dean is well, to the consternation of the college school, which has to prepare itself for an examination."

"Oh, that examination!" laughed Georgina; "it is turning some of their senses upside down. But now," she added, standing in front of Mr. St. John, "what am I to call you? Frederick?—Or am I to be formal, and say 'Mr. St. John?'"

"You used to call me Fred."

"But I was not a grown-up young lady then," making him a mock curtsey; "after all, I suppose I must call you Fred still, for I should be sure to lapse into it. Where have you been all this while? We have heard of you everywhere; in Paris, in Madrid, in Vienna, in Rome, in Antwerp, in——oh, all over the world."

"I think I have been nearly all over Europe," said Mr. St. John.

"Which of us has the most changed?" she abruptly asked, a curl of the finger indicating that she meant to speak of her cousin.

"Sarah has not changed," he answered, turning to Sarah Beauclerc, and an involuntary tenderness was again perceptible in his tone. "You have not changed either, Georgie, in manner," he added, with a laugh.

Georgina pouted. "You are not to call me 'Georgie' any longer, Mr. St. John."

"Very well, Miss Beauclerc, our careless times have gone for ever, I suppose; old age is creeping upon us."

"Don't be stupid," said Georgina. "Have you seen Lady Anne since your return?"

"Yes."

"You have!" she exclaimed, not expecting the answer.

"I saw her in London, as I came through it."

"Ah—yes—of course, I might have guessed that," was Georgina's rejoinder, spoken mysteriously. "Shall we have a battle royal?"

"What do you mean?" asked Mr. St. John.

"Between Lady Anne and another; you can't cut yourself in two, you know. Sarah, what's the matter with your face?"

It was a very conscious face just then, and a very haughty one. St. John knitted his brows, as if he divined Georgina's meaning, and was angered at it; and he began speaking hastily.

"Mine has been one of the pleasantest of tours. The galleries of paintings alone would have been worth——"

"Now, Fred, if you begin upon that everlasting painting theme, you'll never leave off," unceremoniously interrupted Georgiana. "Mrs. St. John says paintings will be your ruin."

"Does she?"

"Your purse has a hole at both ends, she says, where pictures are concerned, and she wishes you had only a tithe of the prudence of Mr. Isaac St. John."

Another slight knit of the brows. Sarah Beauclerc went to a side table and opened a book of views, taken in Spain, artistic sketches, exquisitely done. She turned her fair face to Mr. St. John.

"Will you kindly tell me if these are correct, Mr. St. John? That is, if you are personally acquainted with the spots."

He needed no second invitation. He did know the spots, and they bent over the views together, St. John growing eloquent. Henry Arkell, tolerably at home at the deanery, had drawn away from the group and was touching the keys of the piano; some sweet, extemporized melody, played so softly that it could scarcely be heard. Suddenly he found Georgina at his side.

"What did I tell you?" she abruptly said.

"What did you tell me?" he replied. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Miss Beauclerc."

"Go on with your playing; why do you stop? I don't care to be heard by the chairs and tables. Did I not tell you that he was in love either with her or with her beauty? You see, and hear."

"Are you sure he is not in love with somebody else?" asked Henry, his heart beating with that wild tumult that it mostly did when in the presence of Miss Beauclerc.

She understood his meaning, however it might please her to affect not to do so. He did not raise his eyes to look at her; and he continued the soft sweet playing, as she desired.

"Somebody else! Do you mean Lady Anne?"

"Oh, Miss Beauclerc! I was not thinking of Lady Anne."

"Perhaps you mean me, you stupid boy; perhaps you would like to insinuate that I am in love with him. You are stupid, Henry. Play a little louder. How I wish I played with half your taste. I should not get so much of old Paul's frownings and mamma's reproachings. Do you think I'd have Fred St. John? No, not though he were worth his weight in gold. We should never get along together; you might as well try to mix oil and water."

Oh, false words! But how many such are uttered daily, in the natural reticence of the shy heart, loving for the first time! Henry Arkell believed her at the moment, and his heart bounded on in its wild love, in spite of that ever present conviction that had taken up an abode within it. The strain changed to a popular love melody; but the playing was soft and sweet as before. Few have the charmed gift of playing as he played.

"I have been making something for you. I can't give it you now with those two pairs of eyes in the room. Lovers though they may be, I dare say they are watching; and Sarah's blue ones are very sharp. She might get telling mamma that I flirt with the college boys. And I won't give it you at all if you are stupid. What's Fred St. John to me, do you suppose? It's nothing really worth having, you know; but your vanity likes to be humoured, and——"

"Henry! how exquisitely you play!"

Mr. St. John was coming towards them with the remark, and the spell was broken. Henry rose from the piano, laughing carelessly in answer; and Frederick St. John wondered at the bright light in his eye, the flush of emotion on his cheek. But he did not read the signs correctly.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE EXAMINATION.

November came in. The nineteenth approached, and the travelling carriages of the different prebendaries bowled into Westerbury, as was customary at that season, bringing their owners to their residences in the Grounds. A great day in cathedral life was the nineteenth of November. It was the grand chapter day; the day when every member attached to the cathedral had to attend in the chapter-house after morning prayers, and answer to their names, as called over from the roll by the chapter clerk. The dean, the canons, the minor canons, the king's scholars, the organist, the lay-clerks, the sextons, the vergers, the bedesmen, and the two men-cooks officiating for the audit dinners at the deanery; all had to be there, health permitting. It was also the grand audit day; and the first day of the series of dinners held at the deanery; the dinner on this day being confined to the members of the cathedral: that is, the clergy, the choristers, and the lay-clerks. The rest of the boys, those who were only king's scholars, were not included, and very savage they were; but things were done in accordance with ancient custom. When the dean, at the conclusion of the ceremonies in the chapter-house, proffered an invitation to the "gentlemen choristers" to dine with him that evening at the deanery, and the gentlemen choristers bowed a gracious or a confused acquiescence, according to their state of nerves, the thirty king's scholars turned rampant with envy; and always wished either the choristers or the dean might come to some grief before the night arrived.

The great day came; an unusually great day, this, for the school, the examination having been fixed to take place on it by the dean. The morning service in the cathedral was at ten o'clock, the usual daily hour; and at eleven began the business in the chapter-house. Next came the examination. There had been some consultation between the dean and canons as to whether the examination should take place in the college hall, as the schoolroom was called, or the chapter-house; but they decided in favour of the college hall. As the boys were passing through the cloisters from the chapter-house on their way to it, walking orderly two and two in their surplices and trenchers, Georgina Beauclerc met them, her blue eyes smiling, the blue strings of her bonnet flying. The undaunted girl stopped to have a word, although the clergy, with the dean at their head, were actually coming out of the chapter-house, within view.

"There is to be a prize, boys," she whispered. "Good luck to whoever gets it. Will it be you, Jocelyn?"

"That it will not, Miss Beauclerc," was the reply of the senior boy. None knew better than he his own deficiencies, and that they chiefly arose through his own idleness.

"Whose will it be, then?"

"Well, if it turns upon general scholarship it ought to be Arkell's no doubt, Miss Beauclerc, only you see he is not a senior. If we are examined in Greek and Latin only, the merit may lie between him and Lewis senior."

Lewis senior, a great big hulky fellow, with hair as black as his uncle Ben's, sly eyes, and an ugly face, was standing close to Jocelyn. Taking the classics only, he was the best scholar in the school, Henry Arkell excepted; but he was more than a year older than Henry. Miss Beauclerc saw his countenance light up with triumph, and she threw back her pretty head. She detested Lewis, though perfectly conscious that he entertained more than a liking for her.

"You won't have much chance, Lewis, by the side of Arkell. Don't deceive yourself; don't faint with the disappointment."

She turned round and flew off, for the dean and clergy were close at hand. The boys continued their way to the college hall, Lewis's amiability not improved by the taunt. The general opinion in the school was, that if a prize was given, Lewis would gain it. He was a clever boy, though not popular; more clever than any one of the other seniors. Seniority went for everything in the college school, and for the dean to be guilty of the heterodoxy of awarding the prize to any except one of the four seniors had not occurred to the boys as being within the range of serious possibility.

The boys took their station in the school, and the dean proceeded to the examination. Two of the canons were with him, and the masters of the school, one of whom was the Rev. Mr. Prattleton; but he attended only twice a week for an especial branch of study. The clergy and boys all wore their surplices, and the dean and prebendaries retained their caps on their heads.

The examination proceeded smoothly enough, for the complaisant dean confined himself chiefly to the classics. He questioned the boys in the books and at the places put into his hands by the masters, and he winked metaphorically at the low promptings administered when the classes came to a full stop or a stammer. The masters recovered confidence, and were congratulating themselves inwardly at the dreaded event being well over, when, to their unspeakable dismay, the dean disbanded the classes, and, desiring the forty boys to stand indiscriminately before him, began to question them.

This was the real examination: some of the questions were simple, some difficult, embracing various subjects. But, simple or difficult, it was all one, for, taken by surprise, ill-educated, ill-grounded, the boys could not answer. One of them alone proved himself equal to the emergency. You need not be told that it was Henry Arkell. Not at a single question did he hesitate, till at length the dean told him, with a smile, not to answer, until the questions had gone the round of the school. Of all branches of education, save their rote of Latin and Greek, the boys were entirely ignorant, though some of the dean's questions were ludicrously simple.

"Can you make the square of a cube?"

Nobody answered, save by a prodigious deal of coughing, and Henry Arkell had once more to be appealed to.

"What is the difference between a right angle and an acute one?"

More coughing, and then a dead silence. The dean happened to be looking hard at one particular boy, or the boy fancied so, and his ears became as red as the head master's. "If you please, Mr. Dean, our desk is not in algebra."

"Who was Caligula?" continued the dean.

"King of France in the ninth century," was the prompt answer from one who thought he was in luck.

It was now the dean's turn to cough, as he replaced the question by another: "Can you tell me anything about Charles the Second?"

"He invented black lap-dogs with long ears."

The dean nearly choked.

"And was beheaded," added a timid voice.

"Was he?" retorted the dean. "Can you say anything about Charles the First, and the events of his reign?"

"Yes, sir. He found out the Gunpowder Plot, and was succeeded by Oliver Cromwell."

"Where are the Bahama Isles," asked the dean, in despair.

"In the Mediterranean," cried a tall boy.—"And they are very fertile," added another.

The dean paused a hopeless pause. "Can you spell 'Dutch?'"

"D-u-c-h." "D-u-t-s-h." "D-u-s-h-t," escaped from various tongues, drowning other novel phases of the word.

"Spell 'Cane,'" frowned the dean, though he was laughing inwardly.

"K-a-n-e," was the eager reply.

"Perhaps you can spell 'birch,'" roared Dr. Ferraday, an irascible prebendary.

They could: "B-u-r-c-h."

"What was the social condition of the Ancient Britons when their country was invaded by Julius Cæsar?" the dean asked, rubbing his face.

"They always went about naked, and never shaved, and their clothes were made of the skins of beasts."

"This is frightful," interrupted Dr. Ferraday. "The school reflects the greatest discredit upon—somebody," glaring through his spectacles at the purple and scarlet faces of the masters. "There's only one boy who is not a living monument of ignorance. He—what's your name, boy?"

"Arkell, sir."

"True; Arkell," assented Dr. Ferraday. He knew who he was perfectly well, but he was the proudest man of all the canons, and would not condescend to show that he remembered. "Sir, for your age you are a brilliant scholar."

"How is it?" puzzled Mr. Meddler, another of the prebendaries: "has Arkell superior abilities, and have all the rest none? Answer for yourself, Arkell."

The boy hesitated. Both in mind and manners he was so different from the general run of schoolboys; and he could not bear to be thus held out as a sort of pattern for the rest.

"It is not my fault, sir—or theirs. My father has always kept me to my studies so closely out of school hours, and attended to them himself, that I could not help getting on in advance of the school."

"Wilberforce," roughly spoke up Dr. Ferraday, in his overbearing manner, "how is it that this boy is not senior?"

"That post is attained by priority of entrance, sir," replied the master. "Arkell can only become senior boy when those above him leave."

"He ought to be senior now."