VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE EXEMPLARY EARL

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VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE EXEMPLARY EARL

I. The Earl's Long-Lost Cousin

'A jilt in time saves nine,' says the proverbial wisdom of our forefathers, adding, 'One jilt makes many.' In the last chapter of the book of this chronicle, we told how the mercenary Mr. Jephson proved false to the beautiful Miss Willoughby, who supported existence by her skill in deciphering and transcribing the manuscript records of the past. We described the consequent visit of Miss Willoughby to the office of the Disentanglers, and how she reminded Merton that he had asked her once 'if she had a spark of the devil in her.' She had that morning received, in fact, a letter, crawling but explicit, from the unworthy Jephson, her lover. Retired, he said, to the rural loneliness of Derbyshire, he had read in his own heart, and what he there deciphered convinced him that, as a man of honour, he had but one course before him: he must free Miss Willoughby from her engagement. The lady was one of those who suffer in silence. She made no moan, and no reply to Jephson's letter; but she did visit Merton, and, practically, gave him to understand that she was ready to start as a Corsair on the seas of amorous adventure. She had nailed the black flag to the mast: unhappy herself, she was apt to have no mercy on the sentiments and affections of others.

Merton, as it chanced, had occasion for the services of a lady in this mood; a lady at once attractive, and steely-hearted; resolute to revenge, on the whole of the opposite sex, the baseness of a Fellow of his College. Such is the frenzy of an injured love--illogical indeed (for we are not responsible for the errors of isolated members of our sex), but primitive, natural to women, and even to some men, in Miss Willoughby's position.

The occasion for such services as she would perform was provided by a noble client who, on visiting the office, had found Merton out and Logan in attendance. The visitor was the Earl of Embleton, of the North. Entering the rooms, he fumbled with the string of his eyeglass, and, after capturing it, looked at Logan with an air of some bewilderment. He was a tall, erect, slim, and well-preserved patrician, with a manner really shy, though hasty critics interpreted it as arrogant. He was 'between two ages,' a very susceptible period in the history of the individual.

'I think we have met before,' said the Earl to Logan. 'Your face is not unfamiliar to me.'

'Yes,' said Logan, 'I have seen you at several places;' and he mumbled a number of names.

'Ah, I remember now--at Lady Lochmaben's,' said Lord Embleton. 'You are, I think, a relation of hers. . . .'

'A distant relation: my name is Logan.'

'What, of the Restalrig family?' said the Earl, with excitement.

'A far-off kinsman of the Marquis,' said Logan, adding, 'May I ask you to be seated?'

'This is really very interesting to me--surprisingly interesting,' said the Earl. 'What a strange coincidence! How small the world is, how brief are the ages! Our ancestors, Mr. Logan, were very intimate long ago.'

'Indeed?' said Logan.

'Yes. I would not speak of it to everybody; in fact, I have spoken of it to no one; but recently, examining some documents in my muniment-room, I made a discovery as interesting to me as it must be to you. Our ancestors three hundred years ago--in 1600, to be exact--were fellow conspirators.'

'Ah, the old Gowrie game, to capture the King?' asked Logan, who had once kidnapped a cat.

His knowledge of history was mainly confined to that obscure and unexplained affair, in which his wicked old ancestor is thought to have had a hand.

'That is it,' said the visitor--'the Gowrie mystery! You may remember that an unknown person, a friend of your ancestor, was engaged?'

'Yes,' said Logan; 'he was never identified. Was his name Harris?'

The peer half rose to his feet, flushed a fine purple, twiddled the obsolete little grey tuft on his chin, and sat down again.

'I think I said, Mr. Logan, that the hitherto unidentified associate of your ancestor was a member of my own family . Our name is not Harris--a name very honourably borne--our family name is Guevara. My ancestor was a cousin of the brave Lord Willoughby.'

'Most interesting! You must pardon me, but as nobody ever knew what you have just found out, you will excuse my ignorance,' said Logan, who, to be sure, had never heard of the brave Lord Willoughby.

'It is I who ought to apologise,' said the visitor. 'Your mention of the name of Harris appeared to me to indicate a frivolity as to matters of the past which, I must confess, is apt to make me occasionally forget myself. Noblesse oblige , you know: we respect ourselves--in our progenitors.'

'Unless he wants to prevent someone from marrying his great-grandmother, I wonder what he is doing with his Tales of a Grandfather here ,' thought Logan, but he only smiled, and said, 'Assuredly--my own opinion. I wish I could respect my ancestor!'

'The gentleman of whom I speak, the associate of your own distant progenitor, was the founder of our house, as far as mere titles are concerned. We were but squires of Northumbria, of ancient Celtic descent, before the time of Queen Elizabeth. My ancestor at that time--'

'Oh bother his pedigree!' thought Logan.

'--was a young officer in the English garrison of Berwick, and he , I find, was your ancestor's unknown correspondent. I am not skilled in reading old hands, and I am anxious to secure a trustworthy person--really trustworthy--to transcribe the manuscripts which contain these exciting details.'

Logan thought that the office of the Disentanglers was hardly the place to come to in search of an historical copyist. However, he remembered Miss Willoughby, and said that he knew a lady of great skill and industry, of good family too, upon whom his client might entirely depend. 'She is a Miss Willoughby,' he added.

'Not one of the Willoughbys of the Wicket, a most worthy, though unfortunate house, nearly allied, as I told you, to my own, about three hundred years ago?' said the Earl.

'Yes, she is a daughter of the last squire.'

'Ruined in the modern race for wealth, like so many!' exclaimed the peer, and he sat in silence, deeply moved; his lips formed a name familiar to Law Courts.

'Excuse my emotion, Mr. Logan,' he went on. 'I shall be happy to see and arrange with this lady, who, I trust will, as my cousin, accept my hospitality at Rookchester. I shall be deeply interested, as you, no doubt, will also be, in the result of her researches into an affair which so closely concerns both you and me.'

He was silent again, musing deeply, while Logan marvelled more and more what his real original business might be. All this affair of the documents and the muniment-room had arisen by the merest accident, and would not have arisen if the Earl had found Merton at home. The Earl obviously had a difficulty in coming to the point: many clients had. To approach a total stranger on the most intimate domestic affairs (even if his ancestor and yours were in a big thing together three hundred years ago) is, to a sensitive patrician, no easy task. In fact, even members of the middle class were, as clients, occasionally affected by shyness.

'Mr. Logan,' said the Earl, 'I am not a man of to-day. The cupidity of our age, the eagerness with which wealthy aliens are welcomed into our best houses and families, is to me, I may say, distasteful. Better that our coronets were dimmed than that they should be gilded with the gold eagles of Chicago or blazing with the diamonds of Kimberley. My feelings on this point are unusually--I do not think that they are unduly--acute.'

Logan murmured assent.

'I am poor,' said the Earl, with all the expansiveness of the shy; 'but I never held what is called a share in my life.'

'It is long,' said Logan, with perfect truth, 'since anything of that sort was in my own possession. In that respect my 'scutcheon, so to speak, is without a stain.'

'How fortunate I am to have fallen in with one of sentiments akin to my own, unusual as they are!' said the Earl. 'I am a widower,' he went on, 'and have but one son and one daughter.'

'He is coming to business now ,' thought Logan.

'The former, I fear, is as good almost as affianced--is certainly in peril of betrothal--to a lady against whom I have not a word to say, except that she is inordinately wealthy, the sole heiress of--' Here the Earl gasped, and was visibly affected. 'You may have heard, sir,' the patrician went on, 'of a commercial transaction of nature unfathomable to myself--I have not sought for information,' he waved his hand impatiently, 'a transaction called a Straddle?'

Logan murmured that he was aware of the existence of the phrase, though unconscious of its precise meaning.

'The lady's wealth is based on a successful Straddle, operated by her only known male ancestor, in--Bristles--Hogs' Bristles and Lard,' said the Earl.

'Miss Bangs!' exclaimed Logan, knowing the name, wealth, and the source of the wealth of the ruling Chicago heiress of the day.

'I am to be understood to speak of Miss Bangs--as her name has been pronounced between us--with all the respect due to youth, beauty, and an amiable disposition,' said the peer; 'but Bristles, Mr. Logan, Hogs' Bristles and Lard. And a Straddle!'

'Lucky devil, Scremerston,' thought Logan, for Scremerston was the only son of Lord Embleton, and he, as it seemed, had secured that coveted prize of the youth of England, the heart of the opulent Miss Bangs. But Logan only sighed and stared at the wall as one who hears of an irremediable disaster.

'If they really were betrothed,' said Lord Embleton, 'I would have nothing to say or do in the way of terminating the connection, however unwelcome. A man's word is his word. It is in these circumstances of doubt (when the fortunes of a house ancient, though titularly of mere Tudor noblesse , hang in the balance) that, despairing of other help, I have come to you.'

'But,' asked Logan, 'have things gone so very far? Is the disaster irremediable? I am acquainted with your son, Lord Scremerston; in fact, he was my fag at school. May I speak quite freely?'

'Certainly; you will oblige me.'

'Well, by the candour of early friendship, Scremerston was called the Arcadian, an allusion to a certain tenderness of heart allied with--h'm--a rather confident and sanguine disposition. I think it may console you to reflect that perhaps he rather overestimates his success with the admirable young lady of whom we spoke. You are not certain that she has accepted him?'

'No,' said the Earl, obviously relieved. 'I am sure that he has not positively proposed to her. He knows my opinion: he is a dutiful son, but he did seem very confident--seemed to think that his honour was engaged.'

'I think we may discount that a little,' said Logan, 'and hope for the best.'

'I shall try to take that view,' said the Earl. 'You console me infinitely, Mr. Logan.'

Logan was about to speak again, when his client held up a gently deprecating hand.

'That is not all, Mr. Logan. I have a daughter--'

Logan chanced to be slightly acquainted with the daughter, Lady Alice Guevara, a very nice girl.

'Is she attached to a South African Jew?' Logan thought.

'In this case,' said the client, 'there is no want of blood; Royal in origin, if it comes to that. To the House of Bourbon I have no objection, in itself, that would be idle affectation.'

Logan gasped.

Was this extraordinary man anxious to reject a lady 'multimillionaire' for his son, and a crown of some sort or other for his daughter?

'But the stain of ill-gotten gold--silver too--is ineffaceable.'

'It really cannot be Bristles this time,' thought Logan.

'And a dynasty based on the roulette-table, . . . '

'Oh, the Prince of Scalastro!' cried Logan.

'I see that you know the worst,' said the Earl.

Logan knew the worst fairly well. The Prince of Scalastro owned a percentage of two or three thousand which Logan had dropped at the tables licensed in his principality.

'To the Prince, personally, I bear no ill-will,' said the Earl. 'He is young, brave, scientific, accomplished, and this unfortunate attachment began before he inherited his--h'm--dominions. I fear it is, on both sides, a deep and passionate sentiment. And now, Mr. Logan, you know the full extent of my misfortunes: what course does your experience recommend? I am not a harsh father. Could I disinherit Scremerston, which I cannot, the loss would not be felt by him in the circumstances. As to my daughter--'

The peer rose and walked to the window. When he came back and resumed his seat, Logan turned on him a countenance of mournful sympathy. The Earl silently extended his hand, which Logan took. On few occasions had a strain more severe been placed on his gravity, but, unlike a celebrated diplomatist, he 'could command his smile.'

'Your case,' he said, 'is one of the most singular, delicate, and distressing which I have met in the course of my experience. There is no objection to character, and poverty is not the impediment: the reverse. You will permit me, no doubt, to consult my partner, Mr. Merton; we have naturally no secrets between us, and he possesses a delicacy of touch and a power of insight which I can only regard with admiring envy. It was he who carried to a successful issue that difficult case in the family of the Sultan of Mingrelia (you will observe that I use a fictitious name). I can assure you, Lord Embleton, that polygamy presents problems almost insoluble; problems of extreme delicacy--or indelicacy.'

'I had not heard of that affair,' said the Earl. 'Like Eumaeus in Homer and in Mr. Stephen Phillips, I dwell among the swine, and come rarely to the city.'

'The matter never went beyond the inmost diplomatic circles,' said Logan. 'The Sultan's favourite son, the Jam, or Crown Prince, of Mingrelia ( Jamreal , they called him), loved four beautiful Bollachians, sisters--again I disguise the nationality.'

'Sisters!' exclaimed the peer; 'I have always given my vote against the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill; but four , and all alive!'

'The law of the Prophet, as you are aware, is not monogamous,' said Logan; 'and the Eastern races are not averse to connections which are reprobated by our Western ideas. The real difficulty was that of religion.

'Oh, why from the heretic girl of my soul
Should I fly, to seek elsewhere an orthodox kiss?'

hummed Logan, rather to the surprise of Lord Embleton. He went on: 'It is not so much that the Mingrelians object to mixed marriages in the matter of religion, but the Bollachians, being Christians, do object, and have a horror of polygamy. It was a cruel affair. All four girls, and the Jamreal himself, were passionately attached to each other. It was known, too, that, for political reasons, the maidens had received a dispensation from the leading Archimandrite, their metropolitan, to marry the proud Paynim. The Mingrelian Sultan is suzerain of Bollachia; his native subjects are addicted to massacring the Bollachians from religious motives, and the Bollachian Church (Nestorians, as you know) hoped that the four brides would convert the Jamreal to their creed, and so solve the Bollachian question. The end, they said, justified the means.'

'Jesuitical,' said the Earl, shaking his head sadly.

'That is what my friend and partner, Mr. Merton, thought,' said Logan, 'when we were applied to by the Sultan. Merton displayed extraordinary tact and address. All was happily settled, the Sultan and the Jamreal were reconciled, the young ladies met other admirers, and learned that what they had taken for love was but a momentary infatuation.'

The Earl sighed, ' Renovare dolorem ! My family,' said he, 'is, and has long been--ever since the Gunpowder Plot--firmly, if not passionately, attached to the Church of England. The Prince of Scalastro is a Catholic.'

'Had we a closer acquaintance with the parties concerned!' murmured Logan.

'You must come and visit us at Rookchester,' said the Earl. 'In any case I am most anxious to know better one whose ancestor was so closely connected with my own. We shall examine my documents under the tuition of the lady you mentioned, Miss Willoughby, if she will accept the hospitality of a kinsman.'

Logan murmured acquiescence, and again asked permission to consult Merton, which was granted. The Earl then shook hands and departed, obviously somewhat easier in his mind.

This remarkable conversation was duly reported by Logan to Merton.

'What are we to do next?' asked Logan.

'Why you can do nothing but reconnoitre. Go down to Rookchester. It is in Northumberland, on the Coquet--a pretty place, but there is no fishing just now. Then we must ask Lord Embleton to meet Miss Willoughby. The interview can be here: Miss Willoughby will arrive, chaperoned by Miss Blossom, after the Earl makes his appearance.'

'That will do, as far as his bothering old manuscripts are concerned; but how about the real business--the two undesirable marriages?'

'We must first see how the land lies. I do not know any of the lovers. What sort of fellow is Scremerston?'

'Nothing remarkable about him--good, plucky, vain little fellow. I suppose he wants money, like the rest of the world: but his father won't let him be a director of anything, though he is in the House and his name would look well on a list.'

'So he wants to marry dollars?'

'I suppose he has no objection to them; but have you seen Miss Bangs?'

'I don't remember her,' said Merton.

'Then you have not seen her. She is beautiful, by Jove; and, I fancy, clever and nice, and gives herself no airs.'

'And she has all that money, and yet the old gentleman objects!'

'He can not stand the bristles and lard,' said Logan.

'Then the Prince of Scalastro--him I have come across. You would never take him for a foreigner,' said Merton, bestowing on the Royal youth the highest compliment which an Englishman can pay, but adding, 'only he is too intelligent and knows too much.'

'No; there is nothing the matter with him ,' Logan admitted--'nothing but happening to inherit a gambling establishment and the garden it stands in. He is a scientific character--a scientific soldier. I wish we had a few like him.'

'Well, it is a hard case,' said Merton. 'They all seem to be very good sort of people. And Lady Alice Guevara? I hardly know her at all; but she is pretty enough--tall, yellow hair, brown eyes.'

'And as good a girl as lives,' added Logan. 'Very religious, too.'

'She won't change her creed?' asked Merton.

'She would go to the stake for it,' said Logan. 'She is more likely to convert the Prince.'

'That would be one difficulty out of the way,' said Merton. 'But the gambling establishment? There is the rub! And the usual plan won't work. You are a captivating person, Logan, but I do not think that you could attract Lady Alice's affections and disentangle her in that way. Besides, the Prince would have you out. Then Miss Bangs' dollars, not to mention herself, must have too strong a hold on Scremerston. It really looks too hard a case for us on paper. You must go down and reconnoitre.'

Logan agreed, and wrote asking Lord Embleton to come to the office, where he could see Miss Willoughby and arrange about her visit to him and his manuscripts. The young lady was invited to arrive rather later, bringing Miss Blossom as her companion.

On the appointed day Logan and Merton awaited Lord Embleton. He entered with an air unwontedly buoyant, and was introduced to Merton. The first result was an access of shyness. The Earl hummed, began sentences, dropped them, and looked pathetically at Logan. Merton understood. The Earl had taken to Logan (on account of their hereditary partnership in an ancient iniquity), and it was obvious that he would say to him what he would not say to his partner. Merton therefore withdrew to the outer room (they had met in the inner), and the Earl delivered himself to Logan in a little speech.

'Since we met, Mr. Logan,' said he, 'a very fortunate event has occurred. The Prince of Scalastro, in a private interview, has done me the honour to take me into his confidence. He asked my permission to pay his addresses to my daughter, and informed me that, finding his ownership of the gambling establishment distasteful to her, he had determined not to renew the lease to the company. He added that since his boyhood, having been educated in Germany, he had entertained scruples about the position which he would one day occupy, that he had never entered the rooms (that haunt of vice), and that his acquaintance with my daughter had greatly increased his objections to gambling, though his scruples were not approved of by his confessor, a very learned priest.'

'That is curious,' said Logan.

'Very,' said the Earl. 'But as I expect the Prince and his confessor at Rookchester, where I hope you will join us, we may perhaps find out the reasons which actuate that no doubt respectable person. In the meantime, as I would constrain nobody in matters of religion, I informed the Prince that he had my permission to--well, to plead his cause for himself with Lady Alice.'

Logan warmly congratulated the Earl on the gratifying resolve of the Prince, and privately wondered how the young people would support life, when deprived of the profits from the tables.

It was manifest, however, from the buoyant air of the Earl, that this important question had never crossed his mind. He looked quite young in the gladness of his heart, 'he smelled April and May,' he was clad becomingly in summer raiment, and to Logan it was quite a pleasure to see such a happy man. Some fifteen years seemed to have been taken from the age of this buxom and simple-hearted patrician.

He began to discuss with Logan all conceivable reasons why the Prince's director had rather discouraged his idea of closing the gambling-rooms for ever.

'The Father, Father Riccoboni, is a Jesuit, Mr. Logan,' said the Earl gravely. 'I would not be uncharitable, I hope I am not prejudiced, but members of that community, I fear, often prefer what they think the interests of their Church to those of our common Christianity. A portion of the great wealth of the Scalastros was annually devoted to masses for the souls of the players--about fifteen per cent. I believe--who yearly shoot themselves in the gardens of the establishment.'

'No more suicides, no more subscriptions, I suppose,' said Logan; 'but the practice proved that the reigning Princes of Scalastro had feeling hearts.'

While the Earl developed this theme, Miss Willoughby, accompanied by Miss Blossom, had joined Merton in the outer room. Miss Blossom, being clad in white, with her blue eyes and apple-blossom complexion, looked like the month of May. But Merton could not but be struck by Miss Willoughby. She was tall and dark, with large grey eyes, a Greek profile, and a brow which could, on occasion, be thunderous and lowering, so that Miss Willoughby seemed to all a remarkably fine young woman; while the educated spectator was involuntarily reminded of the beautiful sister of the beautiful Helen, the celebrated Clytemnestra. The young lady was clad in very dark blue, with orange points, so to speak, and compared with her transcendent beauty, Miss Blossom, as Logan afterwards remarked, seemed a

'Wee modest crimson-tippit beastie,'

he intending to quote the poet Burns.

After salutations, Merton remarked to Miss Blossom that her well-known discretion might prompt her to take a seat near the window while he discussed private business with Miss Willoughby. The good-humoured girl retired to contemplate life from the casement, while Merton rapidly laid the nature of Lord Embleton's affairs before the other lady.

'You go down to Rookchester as a kinswoman and a guest, you understand, and to do the business of the manuscripts.'

'Oh, I shall rather like that than otherwise,' said Miss Willoughby, smiling.

'Then, as to the regular business of the Society, there is a Prince who seems to be thought unworthy of the daughter of the house; and the son of the house needs disentangling from an American heiress of great charm and wealth.'

'The tasks might satisfy any ambition,' said Miss Willoughby. 'Is the idea that the Prince and the Viscount should both neglect their former flames?'

'And burn incense at the altar of Venus Verticordia,' said Merton, with a bow.

'It is a large order,' replied Miss Willoughby, in the simple phrase of a commercial age: but as Merton looked at her, and remembered the vindictive feeling with which she now regarded his sex, he thought that she, if anyone, was capable of executing the commission. He was not, of course, as yet aware of the moral resolution lately arrived at by the young potentate of Scalastro.

'The manuscripts are the first thing, of course,' he said, and, as he spoke, Logan and Lord Embleton re-entered the room.

Merton presented the Earl to the ladies, and Miss Blossom soon retired to her own apartment, and wrestled with the correspondence of the Society and with her typewriting-machine.

The Earl proved not to be nearly so shy where ladies were concerned. He had not expected to find in his remote and long-lost cousin, Miss Willoughby, a magnificent being like Persephone on a coin of Syracuse, but it was plain that he was prepossessed in her favour, and there was a touch of the affectionate in his courtesy. After congratulating himself on recovering a kinswoman of a long-separated branch of his family, and after a good deal of genealogical disquisition, he explained the nature of the lady's historical tasks, and engaged her to visit him in the country at an early date. Miss Willoughby then said farewell, having an engagement at the Record Office, where, as the Earl gallantly observed, she would 'make a sunshine in a shady place.'

When she had gone, the Earl observed, ' Bon sang ne peut pas mentir ! To think of that beautiful creature condemned to waste her lovely eyes on faded ink and yellow papers! Why, she is, as the modern poet says, "a sight to make an old man young."'

He then asked Logan to acquaint Merton with the new and favourable aspect of his affairs, and, after fixing Logan's visit to Rookchester for the same date as Miss Willoughby's, he went off with a juvenile alertness.

'I say,' said Logan, 'I don't know what will come of this, but something will come of it. I had no idea that girl was such a paragon.'

'Take care, Logan,' said Merton. 'You ought only to have eyes for Miss Markham.'

Miss Markham, the precise student may remember, was the lady once known as the Venus of Milo to her young companions at St. Ursula's. Now mantles were draped on her stately shoulders at Madame Claudine's, and Logan and she were somewhat hopelessly attached to each other.

'Take care of yourself at Rookchester,' Merton went on, 'or the Disentangler may be entangled.'

'I am not a viscount and I am not an earl,' said Logan, with a reminiscence of an old popular song, 'nor I am not a prince, but a shade or two wuss ; and I think that Miss Willoughby will find other marks for the artillery of her eyes.'

'We shall have news of it,' said Merton.

 

II. The Affair of the Jesuit

Trains do not stop at the little Rookchester station except when the high and puissant prince the Earl of Embleton or his visitors, or his ministers, servants, solicitors, and agents of all kinds, are bound for that haven. When Logan arrived at the station, a bowery, flowery, amateur-looking depot, like one of the 'model villages' that we sometimes see off the stage, he was met by the Earl, his son Lord Scremerston, and Miss Willoughby. Logan's baggage was spirited away by menials, who doubtless bore it to the house in some ordinary conveyance, and by the vulgar road. But Lord Embleton explained that as the evening was warm, and the woodland path by the river was cool, they had walked down to welcome the coming guest.

The walk was beautiful indeed along the top of the precipitous red sandstone cliffs, with the deep, dark pools of the Coquet sleeping far below. Now and then a heron poised, or a rock pigeon flew by, between the river and the cliff-top. The opposite bank was embowered in deep green wood, and the place was very refreshing after the torrid bricks and distressing odours of the July streets of London.

The path was narrow: there was room for only two abreast. Miss Willoughby and Scremerston led the way, and were soon lost to sight by a turn in the path. As for Lord Embleton, he certainly seemed to have drunk of that fountain of youth about which the old French poet Pontus de Tyard reports to us, and to be going back, not forward, in age. He looked very neat, slim, and cool, but that could not be the only cause of the miracle of rejuvenescence. Closely regarding his host in profile, Logan remarked that he had shaved off his moustache and the little, obsolete, iron-grey chin-tuft which, in moments of perplexity, he had been wont to twiddle. Its loss was certainly a very great improvement to the clean-cut features of this patrician.

'We are a very small party,' said Lord Embleton, 'only the Prince, my daughter, Father Riccoboni, Miss Willoughby, my sister, Scremerston, and you and I. Miss Willoughby came last week. In the mornings she and I are busy with the manuscripts. We have found most interesting things. When their plot failed, your ancestor and mine prepared a ship to start for the Western seas and attack the treasure-ships of Spain. But peace broke out, and they never achieved that adventure. Miss Willoughby is a cousin well worth discovering, so intelligent, and so wonderfully attractive.'

'So Scremerston seems to think,' was Logan's idea, for the further he and the Earl advanced, the less, if possible, they saw of the pair in front of them; indeed, neither was visible again till the party met before dinner.

However, Logan only said that he had a great esteem for Miss Willoughby's courage and industry through the trying years of poverty since she left St. Ursula's.

'The Prince we have not seen very much of,' said the Earl, 'as is natural; for you will be glad to know that everything seems most happily arranged, except so far as the religious difficulty goes. As for Father Riccoboni, he is a quiet intelligent man, who passes most of his time in the library, but makes himself very agreeable at meals. And now here we are arrived.'

They had reached the south side of the house--an eighteenth-century building in the red sandstone of the district, giving on a grassy terrace. There the host's maiden sister, Lady Mary Guevara, was seated by a tea-table, surrounded by dogs--two collies and an Aberdeenshire terrier. Beside her were Father Riccoboni, with a newspaper in his hand, Lady Alice, with whom Logan had already some acquaintance, and the Prince of Scalastro. Logan was presented, and took quiet notes of the assembly, while the usual chatter about the weather and his journey got itself transacted, and the view of the valley of the Coquet had justice done to its charms.

Lady Mary was very like a feminine edition of the Earl, refined, shy, and with silvery hair. Lady Alice was a pretty, quiet type of the English girl who is not up to date, with a particularly happy and winning expression. The Prince was of a Teutonic fairness; for the Royal caste, whatever the nationality, is to a great extent made in Germany, and retains the physical characteristics of that ancient forest people whom the Roman historian (never having met them) so lovingly idealised. The Prince was tall, well-proportioned, and looked 'every inch a soldier.' There were a great many inches.

As for Father Riccoboni, the learned have remarked that there are two chief clerical types: the dark, ascetic type, to be found equally among Unitarians, Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Catholics, and the burly, well-fed, genial type, which 'cometh eating and drinking.' The Father was of this second kind; a lusty man--not that you could call him a sensual-looking man, still less was he a noisy humourist; but he had a considerable jowl, a strong jaw, a wide, firm mouth, and large teeth, very white and square. Logan thought that he, too, had the makings of a soldier, and also felt almost certain that he had seen him before. But where?--for Logan's acquaintance with the clergy, especially the foreign clergy, was not extensive. The Father spoke English very well, with a slight German accent and a little hoarseness; his voice, too, did not sound unfamiliar to Logan. But he delved in his subconscious memory in vain; there was the Father, a man with whom he certainly had some associations, yet he could not place the man.

A bell jangled somewhere without as they took tea and tattled; and, looking towards the place whence the sound came, Logan saw a little group of Italian musicians walking down the avenue which led through the park to the east side of the house and the main entrance. They entered, with many obeisances, through the old gate of floreated wrought iron, and stopping there, about forty yards away, they piped, while a girl, in the usual contadina dress, clashed her cymbals and danced not ungracefully. The Father, who either did not like music or did not like it of that sort, sighed, rose from his seat, and went into the house by an open French window. The Prince also rose, but he went forward to the group of Italians, and spoke to them for a few minutes. If he did not like that sort of music, he took the more excellent way, for the action of his elbow indicated a movement of his hand towards his waistcoat-pocket. He returned to the party on the terrace, and the itinerant artists, after more obeisances, walked slowly back by the way they had come.

'They are Genoese,' said the Prince, 'tramping north to Scotland for the holiday season.'

'They will meet strong competition from the pipers,' said Logan, while the Earl rose, and walked rapidly after the musicians.

'I do not like the pipes myself,' Logan went on, 'but when I hear them in a London street my heart does warm to the skirl and the shabby tartans.'

'I feel with you,' said the Prince, 'when I see the smiling faces of these poor sons of the South among--well, your English faces are not usually joyous--if one may venture to be critical.'

He looked up, and, his eyes meeting those of Lady Alice, he had occasion to learn that every rule has its exceptions. The young people rose and wandered off on the lawn, while the Earl came back and said that he had invited the foreigners to refresh themselves.

'I saw Father Riccoboni in the hall, and asked him to speak to them a little in their own lingo,' he added, 'though he does not appear to be partial to the music of his native land.'

'He seems to be of the Romansch districts,' Logan said; 'his accent is almost German.'

'I daresay he will make himself understood,' said the Earl. 'Do you understand this house, Mr. Logan? It looks very modern, does it not?'

'Early Georgian, surely?' said Logan.

'The shell, at least on this side, is early Georgian--I rather regret it; but the interior, northward, except for the rooms in front here, is of the good old times. We have secret stairs--not that there is any secret about them--and odd cubicles, in the old Border keep, which was re-faced about 1750; and we have a priest's hole or two, in which Father Riccoboni might have been safe, but would have been very uncomfortable, three hundred years ago. I can show you the places to-morrow; indeed, we have very little in the way of amusement to offer you. Do you fish?'

'I always take a trout rod about with me, in case of the best,' said Logan, 'but this is "soolky July," you know, and the trout usually seem sound asleep.'

'Their habits are dissipated here,' said Lord Embleton. 'They begin to feed about ten o'clock at night. Did you ever try night fishing with the bustard?'

'The bustard?' asked Logan.

'It is a big fluffy fly, like a draggled mayfly, fished wet, in the dark. I used to be fond of it, but age,' sighed the Earl, 'and fear of rheumatism have separated the bustard and me.'

'I should like to try it very much,' said Logan. 'I often fished Tweed and Whitadder, at night, when I was a boy, but we used a small dark fly.'

'You must be very careful if you fish at night here,' said Lady Mary. 'It is so dark in the valley under the woods, and the Coquet is so dangerous. The flat sandstone ledges are like the floor of a room, and then a step may land you in water ten feet deep, flowing in a narrow channel. I am always anxious when anyone fishes here at night. You can swim?'

Logan confessed that he was not destitute of that accomplishment, and that he liked, of all things, to be by a darkling river, where you came across the night side of nature in the way of birds, beasts, and fishes.

'Mr. Logan can take very good care of himself, I am sure,' said Lord Embleton, 'and Fenwick knows every inch of the water, and will go with him. Fenwick is the water-keeper, Mr. Logan, and represents man in the fishing and shooting stage. His one thought is the destruction of animal life. He is a very happy man.'

'I never knew but one keeper who was not,' said Logan. 'That was in Galloway. He hated shooting, he hated fishing. My impression is that he was what we call a "Stickit Minister."'

'Nothing of that about Fenwick,' said the Earl. 'I daresay you would like to see your room?'

Thither Logan was conducted, through a hall hung with pikes, and guns, and bows, and clubs from the South Seas, and Zulu shields and assegais, while a few empty figures in tilting armour, lance in hand, stood on pedestals. Thence up a broad staircase, along a little gallery, up a few steps of an old 'turnpike' staircase, Logan reached his room, which looked down through the trees of the cliff to the Coquet.

Dinner passed in the silver light of the long northern day, that threw strange blue reflections, softer than sapphire, on the ancient plate--the ambassadorial plate of a Jacobean ancestor.

'It should all have gone to the melting-pot for King Charles's service,' said the Earl, with a sigh, 'but my ancestor of that day stood for the Parliament.'

Logan's position at dinner was better for observation than for entertainment. He sat on the right hand of Lady Mary, where the Prince ought to have been seated, but Lady Alice sat on her father's left, and next her, of course, the Prince. 'Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,' and Love deranged the accustomed order, for the Prince sat between Lady Alice and Logan. Opposite Logan, and at Lady Mary's left, was the Jesuit, and next him, Scremerston, beside whom was Miss Willoughby, on the Earl's right. Inevitably the conversation of the Prince and Lady Alice was mainly directed to each other--so much so that Logan did not once perceive the princely eyes attracted to Miss Willoughby opposite to him, though it was not easy for another to look at anyone else. Logan, in the pauses of his rather conventional entertainment by Lady Mary, did look, and he was amazed no less by the beauty than by the spirits and gaiety of the young lady so recently left forlorn by the recreant Jephson. This flower of the Record Office and of the British Museum was obviously not destined to blush unseen any longer. She manifestly dazzled Scremerston, who seemed to remember Miss Bangs, her charms, and her dollars no more than Miss Willoughby appeared to remember the treacherous Don.

Scremerston was very unlike his father: he was a small, rather fair man, with a slight moustache, a close-clipped beard, and little grey eyes with pink lids. His health was not good: he had been invalided home from the Imperial Yeomanry, after a slight wound and a dangerous attack of enteric fever, and he had secured a pair for the rest of the Session. He was not very clever, but he certainly laughed sufficiently at what Miss Willoughby said, who also managed to entertain the Earl with great dexterity and aplomb . Meanwhile Logan and the Jesuit amused the excellent Lady Mary as best they might, which was not saying much. Lady Mary, though extremely amiable, was far from brilliant, and never having met a Jesuit before, she regarded Father Riccoboni with a certain hereditary horror, as an animal of a rare species, and, of habits perhaps startling and certainly perfidious. However, the lady was philanthropic in a rural way, and Father Riccoboni enlightened her as to the reasons why his enterprising countrymen leave their smiling land, and open small ice-shops in little English towns, or, less ambitious, invest their slender capital in a monkey and a barrel-organ.

'I don't so very much mind barrel-organs myself,' said Logan; 'I don't know anything prettier than to see the little girls dancing to the music in a London side street.'

'But do not the musicians all belong to that dreadful Camorra?' asked the lady.

'Not if they come from the North, madam,' said the Jesuit. 'And do not all your Irish reapers belong to that dreadful Land League, or whatever it is called?'

'They are all Pap---' said Lady Mary, who then stopped, blushed, and said, with some presence of mind, 'paupers, I fear, but they are quite safe and well-behaved on this side of the Irish Channel.'

'And so are our poor people,' said the Jesuit. 'If they occasionally use the knife a little-- naturam expellas furca , Mr. Logan, but the knife is a different thing--it is only in a homely war among themselves that they handle it in the East-end of London.'

' Coelum non animum ,' said Logan, determined not to be outdone in classical felicities; and, indeed, he thought his own quotation the more appropriate.

At this moment a great silvery-grey Persian cat, which had sat hitherto in a stereotyped Egyptian attitude on the arm of the Earl's chair, leaped down and sprang affectionately on the shoulder of the Jesuit. He shuddered strongly and obviously repressed an exclamation with difficulty, as he gently removed the cat.

'Fie, Meriamoun!' said the Earl, as the puss resumed her Egyptian pose beside him. 'Shall I send the animal out of the room? I know some people cannot endure a cat,' and he mentioned the gallant Field Marshal who is commonly supposed to share this infirmity.

'By no means, my lord,' said the Jesuit, who looked strangely pale. 'Cats have an extraordinary instinct for caressing people who happen to be born with exactly the opposite instinct. I am like the man in Aristotle who was afraid of the cat.'

'I wish we knew more about that man,' said Miss Willoughby, who was stroking Meriamoun. 'Are you afraid of cats, Lord Scremerston?--but you, I suppose, are afraid of nothing.'

'I am terribly afraid of all manner of flying things that buzz and bite,' said Scremerston.

'Except bullets,' said Miss Willoughby--Beauty rewarding Valour with a smile and a glance so dazzling that the good little Yeoman blushed with pleasure.

'It is a shame!' thought Logan. 'I don't like it now I see it.'

'As to horror of cats,' said the Earl, 'I suppose evolution can explain it. I wonder how they would work it out in Science Jottings . There is a great deal of electricity in a cat.'

'Evolution can explain everything,' said the Jesuit demurely, 'but who can explain evolution?'

'As to electricity in the cat,' said Logan, 'I daresay there is as much in the dog, only everybody has tried stroking a cat in the dark to see the sparks fly, and who ever tried stroking a dog in the dark, for experimental purposes?--did you, Lady Mary?'

Lady Mary never had tried, but the idea was new to her, and she would make the experiment in winter.

'Deer skins, stroked, do sparkle,' said Logan, 'I read that in a book. I daresay horses do, only nobody tries. I don't think electricity is the explanation of why some people can't bear cats.'

'Electricity is the modern explanation of everything--love, faith, everything,' remarked the Jesuit; 'but, as I said, who shall explain electricity?'

Lady Mary, recognising the orthodoxy of these sentiments, felt more friendly towards Father Riccoboni. He might be a Jesuit, but he was bien pensant .

'What I am afraid of is not a cat, but a mouse,' said Miss Willoughby, and the two other ladies admitted that their own terrors were of the same kind.

'What I am afraid of,' said the Prince, 'is a banging door, by day or night. I am not, otherwise, of a nervous constitution, but if I hear a door bang, I must go and hunt for it, and stop the noise, either by shutting the door, or leaving it wide open. I am a sound sleeper, but, if a door bangs, it wakens me at once. I try not to notice it. I hope it will leave off. Then it does leave off--that is the artfulness of it--and, just as you are falling asleep, knock it goes! A double knock, sometimes. Then I simply must get up, and hunt for that door, upstairs or downstairs--'

'Or in my--' interrupted Miss Willoughby, and stopped, thinking better of it, and not finishing the quotation, which passed unheard.

'That research has taken me into some odd places,' the Prince ended; and Logan reminded the Society of the Bravest of the Brave. What he was afraid of was a pair of tight boots.

These innocent conversations ended, and, after dinner, the company walked about or sat beneath the stars in the fragrant evening air, the Earl seated by Miss Willoughby, Scremerston smoking with Logan; while the white dress of Lady Alice flitted ghost-like on the lawn, and the tip of the Prince's cigar burned red in the neighbourhood. In the drawing-room Lady Mary was tentatively conversing with the Jesuit, that mild but probably dangerous animal. She had the curiosity which pious maiden ladies feel about the member of a community which they only know through novels. Certainly this Jesuit was very unlike Aramis.

'And who is he like?' Logan happened to be asking Scremerston at that moment. 'I know the face--I know the voice; hang it!--where have I seen the man?'

'Now you mention it,' said Scremerston, ' I seem to remember him too. But I can't place him. What do you think of a game of billiards, father?' he asked, rising and addressing Lord Embleton. 'Rosamond--Miss Willoughby, I mean--'

'Oh, we are cousins, Lord Embleton says, and you may call me Rosamond. I have never had any cousins before,' interrupted the young lady.

'Rosamond,' said Scremerston, with a gulp, 'is getting on wonderfully well for a beginner.'

'Then let us proceed with her education: it is growing chilly, too,' said the Earl; and they all went to billiards, the Jesuit marking with much attention and precision. Later he took a cue, and was easily the master of every man there, though better acquainted, he said, with the foreign game. The late Pope used to play, he said, nearly as well as Mr. Herbert Spencer. Even for a beginner, Miss Willoughby was not a brilliant player; but she did not cut the cloth, and her arms were remarkably beautiful--an excellent but an extremely rare thing in woman. She was rewarded, finally, by a choice between bedroom candles lit and offered by her younger and her elder cousins, and, after a momentary hesitation, accepted that of the Earl.

'How is this going to end?' thought Logan, when he was alone. 'Miss Bangs is out of the running, that is certain: millions of dollars cannot bring her near Miss Willoughby with Scremerston. The old gentleman ought to like that--it relieves him from the bacon and lard, and the dollars, and the associations with a Straddle; and then Miss Willoughby's family is all right, but the girl is reckless. A demon has entered into her: she used to be so quiet. I'd rather marry Miss Bangs without the dollars. Then it is all very well for Scremerston to yield to Venus Verticordia, and transfer his heart to this new enchantress. But, if I am not mistaken, the Earl himself is much more kind than kin. The heart has no age, and he is a very well-preserved peer. You might take him for little more than forty, though he quite looked his years when I saw him first. Well, I am safe enough, in spite of Merton's warning: this new Helen has no eyes for me, and the Prince has no eyes for her, I think. But who is the Jesuit?'

Logan fought with his memory till he fell asleep, but he recovered no gleam of recollection about the holy man.

It did not seem to Logan, next day, that he was in for a very lively holiday. His host carried off Miss Willoughby to the muniment-room after breakfast; that was an advantage he had over Scremerston, who was decidedly restless and ill at ease. He took Logan to see the keeper, and they talked about fish and examined local flies, and Logan arranged to go and try the trout with the bustard some night; and then they pottered about, and ate cherries in the garden, and finally the Earl found them half asleep in the smoking-room. He routed the Jesuit out of the library, where he was absorbed in a folio containing the works of the sainted Father Parsons, and then the Earl showed Logan and Father Riccoboni over the house. From a window of the gallery Scremerston could be descried playing croquet with Miss Willoughby, an apparition radiant in white.

The house was chiefly remarkable for queer passages, which, beginning from the roof of the old tower, above the Father's chamber, radiated about, emerging in unexpected places. The priests' holes had offered to the persecuted clergy of old times the choice between being grilled erect behind a chimney, or of lying flat in a chamber about the size of a coffin near the roof, where the martyr Jesuits lived on suction, like the snipe, absorbing soup from a long straw passed through a wall into a neighbouring garret.

'Those were cruel times,' said Father Riccoboni, who presently, at luncheon, showed that he could thoroughly appreciate the tender mercies of the present or Christian era. Logan watched him, and once when, something that interested him being said, the Father swept the table with his glance without raising his head, a memory for a fraction of a moment seemed to float towards the surface of Logan's consciousness. Even as when an angler, having hooked a salmon, a monster of the stream, long the fish bores down impetuous, seeking the sunken rocks, disdainful of the steel, and the dark wave conceals him; then anon is beheld a gleam of silver, and again is lost to view, and the heart of the man rejoices--even so fugitive a glimpse had Logan of what he sought in the depths of memory. But it fled, and still he was puzzled.

Logan loafed out after luncheon to a seat on the lawn in the shade of a tree. They were all to be driven over to an Abbey not very far away, for, indeed, in July, there is little for a man to do in the country. Logan sat and mused. Looking up he saw Miss Willoughby approaching, twirling an open parasol on her shoulder. Her face was radiant; of old it had often looked as if it might be stormy, as if there were thunder behind those dark eyebrows. Logan rose, but the lady sat down on the garden seat, and he followed her example.

'This is better than Bloomsbury, Mr. Logan, and cocoa pour tout potage : singed cocoa usually.'

'The potage here is certainly all that heart can wish,' said Logan.

'The chrysalis,' said Miss Willoughby, 'in its wildest moments never dreamed of being a butterfly, as the man said in the sermon; and I feel like a butterfly that remembers being a chrysalis. Look at me now!'

'I could look for ever,' said Logan, 'like the sportsman in Keats's Grecian Urn : "For ever let me look, and thou be fair!"'

'I am so sorry for people in town,' said Miss Willoughby. 'Don't you wish dear old Milo was here?'

Milo was the affectionate nickname--a tribute to her charms--borne by Miss Markham at St. Ursula's.

'How can I wish that anyone was here but you?' asked Logan. 'But, indeed, as to her being here, I should like to know in what capacity she was a guest.'

The Clytemnestra glance came into Miss Willoughby's grey eyes for a moment, but she was not to be put out of humour.

'To be here as a kinswoman, and an historian, with a maid--fancy me with a maid!--and everything handsome about me, is sufficiently excellent for me, Mr. Logan; and if it were otherwise, do you disapprove of the proceedings of your own Society? But there is Lord Scremerston calling to us, and a four-in-hand waiting at the door. And I am to sit on the box-seat. Oh, this is better than the dingy old Record Office all day.'

With these words Miss Willoughby tripped over the sod as lightly as the Fairy Queen, and Logan slowly followed. No; he did not approve of the proceedings of his Society as exemplified by Miss Willoughby, and he was nearly guilty of falling asleep during the drive to Winderby Abbey. Scremerston was not much more genial, for his father was driving and conversing very gaily with his fair kinswoman.

'Talk about a distant cousin!' thought Logan, who in fact felt ill-treated. However deep in love a man may be, he does not like to see a fair lady conspicuously much more interested in other members of his sex than in himself.

The Abbey was a beautiful ruin, and Father Riccoboni did not conceal from Lady Mary the melancholy emotions with which it inspired him.

'When shall our prayers be heard?' he murmured. 'When shall England return to her Mother's bosom?'

Lady Mary said nothing, but privately trusted that the winds would disperse the orisons of which the Father spoke. Perhaps nuns had been bricked up in these innocent-looking mossy walls, thought Lady Mary, whose ideas on this matter were derived from a scene in the poem of Marmion . And deep in Lady Mary's heart was a half-formed wish that, if there was to be any bricking up, Miss Willoughby might be the interesting victim. Unlike her brother the Earl, she was all for the Bangs alliance.

Scremerston took the reins on the homeward way, the Earl being rather fatigued; and, after dinner, two white robes flitted ghost-like on the lawn, and the light which burned red beside one of them was the cigar-tip of Scremerston. The Earl had fallen asleep in the drawing-room, and Logan took a lonely stroll, much regretting that he had come to a house where he felt decidedly 'out of it.' He wandered down to the river, and stood watching. He was beside the dark-brown water in the latest twilight, beside a long pool with a boat moored on the near bank. He sat down in the boat pensively, and then--what was that? It was the sound of a heavy trout rising. ' Plop , plop !' They were feeding all round him.

'By Jove! I'll try the bustard to-morrow night, and then I'll go back to town next day,' thought Logan. 'I am doing no good here, and I don't like it. I shall tell Merton that I have moral objections to the whole affair. Miserable, mercenary fraud!' Thus, feeling very moral and discontented, Logan walked back to the house, carefully avoiding the ghostly robes that still glimmered on the lawn, and did not re-enter the house till bedtime.

The following day began as the last had done; Lord Embleton and Miss Willoughby retiring to the muniment-room, the lovers vanishing among the walks. Scremerston later took Logan to consult Fenwick, who visibly brightened at the idea of night-fishing.

'You must take one of those long landing-nets, Logan,' said Scremerston. 'They are about as tall as yourself, and as stout as lance-shafts. They are for steadying you when you wade, and feeling the depth of the water in front of you.'

Scremerston seemed very pensive. The day was hot; they wandered to the smoking-room. Scremerston took up a novel, which he did not read; Logan began a letter to Merton--a gloomy epistle.

'I say, Logan,' suddenly said Scremerston, 'if your letter is not very important, I wish you would listen to me for a moment.'

Logan turned round. 'Fire away,' he said; 'my letter can wait.'

Scremerston was in an attitude of deep dejection. Logan lit a cigarette and waited.

'Logan, I am the most miserable beggar alive.'

'What is the matter? You seem rather in-and-out in your moods,' said Logan.

'Why, you know, I am in a regular tight place. I don't know how to put it. You see, I can't help thinking that--that--I have rather committed myself--it seems a beastly conceited thing to say--that there's a girl who likes me, I'm afraid.'

'I don't want to be inquisitive, but is she in this country?' asked Logan.

'No; she's at Homburg.'

'Has it gone very far? Have you said anything?' asked Logan.

'No; my father did not like it. I hoped to bring him round.'

'Have you written anything? Do you correspond?'

'No, but I'm afraid I have looked a lot.'

As the Viscount Scremerston's eyes were by no means fitted to express with magnetic force the language of the affections, Logan had to command his smile.

'But why have you changed your mind, if you liked her?' he asked.

'Oh, you know very well! Can anybody see her and not love her?' said Scremerston, with a vagueness in his pronouns, but referring to Miss Willoughby.

Logan was inclined to reply that he could furnish, at first hand, an exception to the rule, but this appeared tactless.

'No one, I daresay, whose affections were not already engaged, could see her without loving her; but I thought yours had been engaged to a lady now at Homburg?'

'So did I,' said the wretched Scremerston, 'but I was mistaken. Oh, Logan, you don't know the difference! This is genuine biz,' remarked the afflicted nobleman with much simplicity. He went on: 'Then there's my father--you know him. He was against the other affair, but, if he thinks I have committed myself and then want to back out, why, with his ideas, he'd rather see me dead. But I can't go on with the other thing now: I simply can not . I've a good mind to go out after rabbits, and pot myself crawling through a hedge.'

'Oh, nonsense!' said Logan; 'that is stale and superfluous. For all that I can see, there is no harm done. The young lady, depend upon it, won't break her heart. As a matter of fact, they don't-- we do. You have only to sit tight. You are no more committed than I am. You would only make both of you wretched if you went and committed yourself now, when you don't want to do it. In your position I would certainly sit tight: don't commit yourself--either here or there, so to speak; or, if you can't sit tight, make a bolt for it. Go to Norway. I am very strongly of opinion that the second plan is the best. But, anyhow, keep up your pecker. You are all right--I give you my word that I think you are all right.'

'Thanks, old cock,' said Scremerston. 'Sorry to have bored you, but I had to speak to somebody.'

* * * * * *

'Best thing you could do,' said Logan. 'You'll feel ever so much better. That kind of worry comes of keeping things to oneself, till molehills look mountains. If you like I'll go with you to Norway myself.'

'Thanks, awfully,' said Scremerston, but he did not seem very keen. Poor little Scremerston!

Logan 'breasted the brae' from the riverside to the house. His wading- boots were heavy, for he had twice got in over the tops thereof; heavy was his basket that Fenwick carried behind him, but light was Logan's heart, for the bustard had slain its dozens of good trout. He and the keeper emerged from the wood on the level of the lawn. All the great mass of the house lay dark before them. Logan was to let himself in by the locked French window; for it was very late--about two in the morning. He had the key of the window-door in his pocket. A light moved through the long gallery: he saw it pass each window and vanish. There was dead silence: not a leaf stirred. Then there rang out a pistol-shot, or was it two pistol-shots? Logan ran for the window, his rod, which he had taken down after fishing, in his hand.

'Hurry to the back door, Fenwick!' he said; and Fenwick, throwing down the creel, but grasping the long landing-net, flew to the back way. Logan opened the drawing-room window, took out his matchbox, with trembling ringers lit a candle, and, with the candle in one hand, the rod in the other, sped through the hall, and along a back passage leading to the gunroom. He had caught a glimpse of the Earl running down the main staircase, and had guessed that the trouble was on the ground floor. As he reached the end of the long dark passage, Fenwick leaped in by the back entrance, of which the door was open. What Logan saw was a writhing group--the Prince of Scalastro struggling in the arms of three men: a long white heap lay crumpled in a corner. Fenwick, at this moment, threw the landing-net over the head of one of the Prince's assailants, and with a twist, held the man half choked and powerless. Fenwick went on twisting, and, with the leverage of the long shaft of the net, dragged the wretch off the Prince, and threw him down. Another of the men turned on Logan with a loud guttural oath, and was raising a pistol. Logan knew the voice at last--knew the Jesuit now. ' Rien ne va plus !' he cried, and lunged, with all the force and speed of an expert fencer, at the fellow's face with the point of the rod. The metal joints clicked and crashed through the man's mouth, his pistol dropped, and he staggered, cursing through his blood, against the wall. Logan picked up the revolver as the Prince, whose hands were now free, floored the third of his assailants with an upper cut. Logan thrust the revolver into the Prince's hand. 'Keep them quiet with that,' he said, and ran to where the Earl, who had entered unseen in the struggle, was kneeling above the long, white, crumpled heap.

It was Scremerston, dead, in his night dress: poor plucky little Scremerston.

* * * * * *

Afterwards, before the trial, the Prince told Logan how matters had befallen. 'I was wakened,' he said--'you were very late, you know, and we had all gone to bed--I was wakened by a banging door. If you remember, I told you all, on the night of your arrival at Rookchester, how I hated that sound. I tried not to think of it, and was falling asleep when it banged again--a double knock. I was nearly asleep, when it clashed again. There was no wind, my window was open and I looked out: I only heard the river murmuring and the whistle of a passing train. The stillness made the abominable recurrent noise more extraordinary. I dressed in a moment in my smoking-clothes, lit a candle, and went out of my room, listening. I walked along the gallery--'

'It was your candle that I saw as I crossed the lawn,' said Logan.

'When a door opened,' the Prince went on--'the door of one of the rooms on the landing--and a figure, all in white,--it was Scremerston,--emerged and disappeared down the stairs. I followed at the top of my speed. I heard a shot, or rather two pistols that rang out together like one. I ran through the hall into the long back passage at right-angles to it, down the passage to the glimmer of light through the partly glazed door at the end of it. Then my candle was blown out and three men set on me. They had nearly pinioned me when you and Fenwick took them on both flanks. You know the rest. They had the boat unmoored, a light cart ready on the other side, and a steam-yacht lying off Warkworth. The object, of course, was to kidnap me, and coerce or torture me into renewing the lease of the tables at Scalastro. Poor Scremerston, who was a few seconds ahead of me, not carrying a candle, had fired in the dark, and missed. The answering fire, which was simultaneous, killed him. The shots saved me, for they brought you and Fenwick to the rescue. Two of the fellows whom we damaged were--'

'The Genoese pipers, of course,' said Logan.

'And you guessed, from the cry you gave, who my confessor ( he banged the door, of course to draw me) turned out to be?'

'Yes, the head croupier at Scalastro years ago; but he wore a beard and blue spectacles in the old time, when he raked in a good deal of my patrimony,' said Logan. 'But how was he planted on you ?'

'My old friend, Father Costa, had died, and it is too long a tale of forgery and fraud to tell you how this wretch was forced on me. He had been a Jesuit, but was unfrocked and expelled from Society for all sorts of namable and unnamable offences. His community believed that he was dead. So he fell to the profession in which you saw him, and, when the gambling company saw that I was disinclined to let that hell burn any longer on my rock, ingenious treachery did the rest.'

'By Jove!' said Logan.

* * * * *

The Prince of Scalastro, impoverished by his own generous impulse, now holds high rank in the Japanese service. His beautiful wife is much admired in Yokohama.

The Earl was nursed through the long and dangerous illness which followed the shock of that dreadful July night, by the unwearying assiduity of his kinswoman, Miss Willoughby. On his recovery, the bride (for the Earl won her heart and hand) who stood by him at the altar looked fainter and more ghostly than the bridegroom. But her dark hour of levity was passed and over. There is no more affectionate pair than the Earl and Countess of Embleton. Lady Mary, who lives with them, is once more an aunt, and spoils, it is to be feared, the young Viscount Scremerston, a fine but mischievous little boy. On the fate of the ex-Jesuit we do not dwell: enough to say that his punishment was decreed by the laws of our country, not of that which he had disgraced.

The manuscripts of the Earl have been edited by him and the Countess for the Roxburghe Club. _

Read next: VIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LADY PATRONESS

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