Mr. Grimstone emerged dirty and discomforted, from one of these dark recesses, after a profitless search, which had occupied a couple of weary hours.
"Some other chap'll go in and cut the ground under my feet, if I waste my time this way," thought the detective. "I'm blest if I don't think I've been a fool for my pains. The man carries the money about him,—that's as clear as mud; and if I were to search Doncaster till my hair got gray, I shouldn't find what I want."
Mr. Grimstone shut the door of the last cupboard which he had examined, with an impatient slam, and then turned towards the window. There was no sign of his scout in the little alley before the house, and he had time therefore for further business.
He had examined everything in the "Softy's" apartment, and he had paid particular attention to the state of Mr. Hargraves' wardrobe, which consisted of a pile of garments, every one of which bore in its cut and fashion the stamp of a different individuality, and thereby proclaimed itself as having belonged to another master. There was a Newmarket coat of John Mellish's, and a pair of hunting-breeches, which could only have built by the great Poole himself, split across the knees, but otherwise little the worse for wear. There was a linen jacket, and an old livery waistcoat that had belonged to one of the servants at the Park; odd tops of every shade known in the hunting-field, from the spotless white, or the delicate champagne-cleaned cream colour of the dandy, to the favourite vinegar hue of the hard-riding country squire; a groom's hat with a tarnished band and a battered crown; hob-nailed boots, which may have belonged to Mr. Dawson; corduroy breeches that could only have fitted a dropsical lodge-keeper, long deceased; and there was one garment which bore upon it the ghastly impress of a dreadful deed that had but lately been done. This was the velveteen shooting-coat worn by James Conyers, the trainer, which, pierced with the murderous bullet, and stiffened by the soaking torrent of blood, had been appropriated by Mr. Stephen Hargraves in the confusion of the catastrophe. All these things, with sundry rubbish in the way of odd spurs and whip-handles, scraps of broken harness, ends of rope, and such other scrapings as only a miser loves to accumulate, were packed in a lumbering trunk covered with mangy fur, and secured by about a dozen yards of knotted and jagged rope, tied about it in such a manner as the "Softy" had considered sufficient to defy the most artful thief in Christendom.
Mr. Grimstone had made very short work of all the elaborate defences in the way of knots and entanglements, and had ransacked the box from one end to the other; nay, had even closely examined the fur covering of the trunk, and had tested each separate brass-headed nail to ascertain if any of them had been removed or altered. He may have thought it just possible that two thousand pounds' worth of Bank of England paper had been nailed down under the mangy fur. He gave a weary sigh as he concluded his inspection, replaced the garments one by one in the trunk, reknotted and secured the jagged cord, and with a weary sigh turned his back upon the "Softy's" chamber.
"It's no good," he thought. "The yellow-striped waistcoat isn't among his clothes, and the money isn't hidden away anywhere. Can he be deep enough to have destroyed that waistcoat, I wonder? He'd got a red woollen one on this morning; perhaps he's got the yellow-striped one under it."
Mr. Grimstone brushed the dust and cobwebs off his clothes, washed his hands in a greasy wooden bowl of scalding water, which the old woman brought him, and then sat down before the fire, picking his teeth thoughtfully, and with his eyebrows set in a reflective frown over his small gray eyes.
"I don't like to be beat," he thought; "I don't like to be beat." He doubted if any magistrate would grant him a warrant against the "Softy" upon the strength of the evidence in his possession—the blood-stained button by Crosby of Birmingham; and without a warrant he could not search for the notes upon the person of the man he suspected. He had sounded all the out-door servants at Mellish Park, but had been able to discover nothing that threw any light upon the movements of Stephen Hargraves on the night of the murder. No one remembered having seen him; no one had been on the southern side of the wood that night. One of the lads had passed the north lodge on his way from the high-road to the stables, about the time at which Aurora had heard the shot fired in the wood, and had seen a light burning in the lower window; but this, of course, proved nothing either one way or the other.
"If we could find the moneyupon him," thought Mr. Grimstone; "it would be pretty strong proof of the robbery; and if we find the waistcoat off which that button came, in his possession, it wouldn't be bad evidence of the murder, putting the two things together; but we shall have to keep a precious sharp watch upon my friend, while we hunt up what we want, or I'm blest if he won't give us the slip, and be off to Liverpool and out of the country before we know where we are."
Now the truth of the matter is, that Mr. Joseph Grimstone was not, perhaps, acting quite so conscientiously in this business as he might have done, had the love of justice in the abstract, and without any relation to sublunary reward, been the ruling principle of his life. He might have had any help he pleased, from the Doncaster constabulary, had he chosen to confide in the members of that force; but, as a very knowing individual who owns a three-year old, which he has reason to believe "a flyer," is apt to keep the capabilities of his horse a secret from his friends and the sporting public, while he puts a "pot" of money upon the animal at enormous odds, so Mr. Grimstone desired to keep his information to himself, until it should have brought him its golden fruit in the shape of a small reward from Government, and a large one from John Mellish.
The detective had reason to know that the Dogberries of Doncaster, misled by a duplicate of that very letter which had first aroused the attention of Scotland Yard, were on the wrong scent, as he had been at first; and he was very well content to leave them where they were.
"No," he thought, "it's a critical game; but I'll play it single-handed, or, at least, with no one better than Tom Chivers to help me through with it; and a ten-pound note will satisfy him, if we win the day."
Pondering thus, Mr. Grimstone departed, after having recompensed the landlady for her civility by a donation which the old woman considered princely.
He had entirely deluded her as to the object of his search by telling her that he was a lawyer's clerk, commissioned by his employer to hunt for a codicil which had been hidden somewhere in that house by an old man who had lived in it in the year 1783; and he had contrived, in the course of conversation, to draw from the old woman, who was of a garrulous turn, all that she had to tell about the "Softy."
It was not much, certainly. Mr. Hargraves had never changed a bank-note with her knowledge. He had paid for his bit of victuals as he had it, but had not spent a shilling a day. As to bank-notes, it wasn't at all likely that he had any of them; for he was always complaining that he was very poor, and that his little bit of savings, scraped together out of his wages, wouldn't last him long.
"This Hargraves is a precious deep one for all they call him soft," thought Mr. Grimstone, as he left the lodging-house, and walked slowly towards the sporting public-house at which he had left the "Softy" under the watchful eye of Mr. Tom Chivers. "I've often heard say that these half-witted chaps have more cunning in their little fingers than a better man has in the whole of his composition. Another man would have never been able to stand against the temptation of changing one of those notes; or would have gone about wearing that identical waistcoat; or would have made a bolt of it the day after the murder; or tried on something or other that would have blown the gaff upon him; but not your 'Softy!' He hides the notes and he hides the waistcoat, and then he laughs in his sleeve at those that want him, and sits drinking his beer as comfortably as you please."
Pondering thus, the detective made his way to the public-house in which he had left Mr. Stephen Hargraves. He ordered a glass of brandy-and-water at the bar, and walked into the taproom, expecting to see the "Softy" still brooding sullenly over his drink, still guarded by the apparently indifferent eye of Mr. Chivers. But it was not so. The taproom was empty; and upon making cautious inquiries, Mr. Grimstone discovered that the "Softy" and his watcher had been gone for upwards of an hour.
Mr. Chivers had been forbidden to let his charge out of sight under any circumstances whatever, except indeed if the "Softy" had turned homewards while Mr. Grimstone was employed in ransacking his domicile, in which event Tom was to have slipped on a few paces before him, and given warning to his chief. Wherever Stephen Hargraves went, Mr. Thomas Chivers was to follow him; but he was, above all, to act in such a manner as would effectually prevent any suspicion arising in the "Softy's" mind as to the fact that he was followed.
It will be seen, therefore, that poor Chivers had no very easy task to perform, and it has been seen that he had heretofore contrived to perform it pretty skilfully. If Stephen Hargraves sat boozing in a taproom half the day, Mr. Chivers was also to booze or to make a pretence of boozing, for the same length of time. If the "Softy" showed any disposition to be social, and gave his companion any opportunity of getting friendly with him, the detective's underling was to employ his utmost skill and discretion in availing himself of that golden chance. It is a wondrous provision of Providence that the treachery which would be hateful and horrible in any other man, is considered perfectly legitimate in the man who is employed to hunt out a murderer or a thief. The vile instruments which the criminal employed against his unsuspecting victim are in due time used against himself; and the wretch who laughed at the poor unsuspecting dupe who was trapped to his destruction byhislies, is caught in his turn by some shallow deceit, or pitifully hackneyed device, of the paid spy, who has been bribed to lure him to his doom. For the outlaw of society, the code of honour is null and void. His existence is a perpetual peril to innocent women and honourable men; and the detective who beguiles him to his end does such a service to society as must doubtless counterbalance the treachery of the means by which it is done. The days of Jonathan Wild and his compeers are over, and the thief-taker no longer begins life as a thief. The detective officer is as honest as he is intrepid and astute, and it is not his own fault if the dirty nature of all crime gives him now and then dirty work to do.
But Mr. Stephen Hargraves did not give the opportunity for which Tom Chivers had been bidden to lie in wait; he sat sullen, silent, stupid, unapproachable; and as Tom's orders were not to force himself upon his companion, he was fain to abandon all thought of worming himself into the "Softy's" good graces. This made the task of watching him all the more difficult. It is not such a very easy matter to follow a man without seeming to follow him.
It was market-day too, and the town was crowded with noisy country people. Mr. Grimstone suddenly remembered this, and the recollection by no means added to his peace of mind.
"Chivers never did sell me," he thought, "and surely he won't do it now. I dare say they're safe enough, for the matter of that, in some other public. I'll slip out and look after them."
Mr. Grimstone had, as I have said, already made himself acquainted with all the haunts affected by the "Softy." It did not take him long, therefore, to look in at the three or four public-houses where Steeve Hargraves was likely to be found, and to discover that he was not there.
"He's slouching about the town somewhere or other, I dare say," thought the detective, "with my mate close upon his heels. I'll stroll towards the market-place, and see if I can find them anywhere that way."
Mr. Grimstone turned out of the by-street in which he had been walking, into a narrow alley leading to the broad open square upon which the market-place stands.
The detective went his way in a leisurely manner, with his hands in his pockets and a cigar in his mouth. He had perfect confidence in Mr. Thomas Chivers, and the crowded state of the market-place and its neighbourhood in no way weakened his sense of security.
"Chivers will stick to him through thick and thin," he thought; "he'd keep an eye upon his man if he had to look after him between Charing Cross and Whitehall when the Queen was going to open Parliament. He's not the man to be flummuxed by a crowd in a country market-place."
Serene in this sense of security, Mr. Grimstone amused himself by looking about him, with an expression of somewhat supercilious wonder, at the manners and customs of those indigenæ who, upon market-day, make their inroad into the quiet town. He paused upon the edge of a little sunken flight of worn steps leading down to the stage-door of the theatre, and read the fragments of old bills mouldering upon the door-posts and lintel. There were glowing announcements of dramatic performances that had long ago taken place; and above the rain and mud stained relics of the past, in bold black lettering, appeared the record of a drama as terrible as any that had ever been enacted in that provincial theatre. The bill-sticker had posted the announcement of the reward offered by John Mellish for the discovery of the murderer in every available spot, and had not forgotten this position, which commanded one of the entrances to the market-place.
"It's a wonder to me," muttered Mr. Grimstone, "that that blessed bill shouldn't have opened the eyes of these Doncaster noodles. But I dare say they think it's a blind, a planned thing to throw 'em off the scent their clever noses are sticking to so determined. If I can get my man before they open their eyes, I shall have such a haul as I haven't met with lately."
Musing thus pleasantly, Mr. Grimstone turned his back upon the theatre, and crossed over to the market. Within the building the clamour of buying and selling was at its height: noisy countrymen chaffering in their northernpatoisupon the value and merits of poultry, butter, and eggs; dealers in butchers' meat bewildering themselves in the endeavour to simultaneously satisfy the demands of half a dozen sharp and bargain-loving housekeepers; while from without there came a confused clatter of other merchants and other customers, clamouring and hustling round the stalls of greengrocers and the slimy barrows of blue-jacketed fishmongers. In the midst of all this bustle and confusion, Mr. Grimstone came suddenly upon his trusted ally, pale, terror-stricken, and—ALONE!
The detective's mind was not slow to grasp the full force of the situation.
"You've lost him!" he whispered fiercely, seizing the unfortunate Mr. Chivers by the collar, and pinning him as securely as if he had serious thoughts of making him a permanent fixture upon the stone-flags of the market-place. "You've lost him, Tom Chivers!" he continued, hoarse with agitation. "You've lost the party that I told you was worth more to me than any other party I ever gave you the office for. You've lost me the best chance I've ever had since I've been in Scotland Yard, and yourself too; for I should have acted liberal by you," added the detective, apparently oblivious of that morning's reverie, in which he had pre-determined offering his assistant ten pounds, in satisfaction of all his claims,—"I should have acted very liberal by you, Tom. But what's the use of standing jawing here? You come along with me; you can tell me how it happened as we go."
With his powerful grasp still on the underling's collar, Mr. Grimstone walked out of the market-place, neither looking to the right nor the left, though many a pair of rustic eyes opened to their widest as he passed, attracted no doubt by the rapidity of his pace and the obvious determination of his manner. Perhaps those rustic bystanders thought that the stern-looking gentleman in the black frock-coat had arrested the shabby little man in the act of picking his pocket, and was bearing him off to deliver him straight into the hands of justice.
Mr. Grimstone released his grasp when he and his companion had got clear of the market-place.
"Now," he said, breathless, but not slackening his pace,—"now I suppose you can tell me how you came to make such an"—inadmissable adjective—"fool of yourself? Never you mind where I'm goin'. I'm goin' to the railway station. Never you mind why I'm goin' there. You'd guess why, if you weren't a fool. Now tell me all about it, can't you?"
"It aint much to tell," the humble follower gasped, his respiratory functions sadly tried by the pace at which his superior went over the ground. "It aint much. I followed your instructions faithful. I tried, artful and quiet-like, to make acquaintance with him; but that warn't a bit o' good. He was as surly as a bull-terrier, so I didn't force him to it; but kept an eye upon him, and let out before him as it was racin' business as had brought me to Doncaster, and as I was here to look after a horse, what was in trainin' a few miles off, for a gent in London; and when he left the public, I went after him, but not conspicuous. But I think from that minute he was fly, for he didn't go three steps without lookin' back, and he led me such a chase as made my legs tremble under me, which they trembles at this moment; and then he gets me into the market-place, and he dodges here, and he dodges there, and wherever the crowd's thickest he dodges most, till he gets me at last in among a ring of market-people round a couple o' coves a-millin' with each other, and there I loses him. And I've been in and out the market, and here and there, until I'm fit to drop, but it aint no good; and you've no call to lay the blame on me, for mortal man couldn't have done more."
Mr. Chivers wiped the perspiration from his face in testimony of his exertions. Dirty little streams were rolling down his forehead and trickling upon his poor faded cheeks. He mopped up these evidences of his fatigue with a red cotton handkerchief, and gave a deprecatory sigh.
"If there's anybody to lay blame on, it aint me," he said mildly. "I said all along you ought to have had help. A man as is on his own ground, and knows his own ground, is more than a match for one cove, however hard he may work."
The detective turned fiercely upon his meek dependent.
"Who's blaming you?" he cried impatiently. "I wouldn't cry out before I was hurt, if I were you."
They had reached the railway station by this time.
"How long is it since you missed him?" asked Mr. Grimstone of the penitent Chivers.
"Three-quarters of a hour, or it may be a hour," Tom added doubtfully.
"I dare say itisan hour," muttered the detective.
He walked straight to one of the chief officials, and asked what trains had left within the last hour.
"Two—both market trains: one eastward, Selby way; the other for Penistone, and the intervening stations."
The detective looked at the time-table, running his thumb-nail along the names of the stations.
"That train will reach Penistone in time to catch the Liverpool train, won't it?" he asked.
"Just about."
"What time did it go?"
"The Penistone train?"
"Yes."
"About half an hour ago; at 2.30."
The clocks had struck three as Mr. Grimstone made his way to the station.
"Half an hour ago," muttered the detective. "He'd have had ample time to catch the train after giving Chivers the slip."
He questioned the guards and porters as to whether any of them had seen a man answering to the description of the "Softy:" a white-faced, hump-backed fellow, in corduroys and a fustian jacket; and even penetrated into the ticket-clerk's office to ask the same question.
No; none of them had seen Mr. Stephen Hargraves. Two or three of them recognized him by the detective's description, and asked if it was one of the stable-men from Mellish Park that the gentleman was inquiring after. Mr. Grimstone rather evaded any direct answer to this question. Secrecy was, as we know, the principle upon which he conducted his affairs.
"He may have contrived to give 'em all the slip," he said confidentially to his faithful but dispirited ally. "He may have got off without any of 'em seeing him. He's got the money about him, I'm all but certain of that; and his game is to get off to Liverpool. His inquiries after the trains yesterday proves that. Now I might telegraph, and have him stopped at Liverpool—supposing him to have given us all the slip, and gone off there—if I like to let others into the game; but I don't. I'll play to win or lose; but I'll play single-handed. He may try another dodge, and get off Hull way by the canal-boats that the market-people use, and then slip across to Hamburg, or something of that sort; but that aint likely,—these fellows always go one way. It seems as if the minute a man has taken another man's life, or forged his name, or embezzled his money, his ideas get fixed in one groove, and never can soar higher than Liverpool and the American packet."
Mr. Chivers listened respectfully to his patron's communications. He was very well pleased to see the serenity of his employer's mind gradually returning.
"Now, I'll tell you what, Tom," said Mr. Grimstone. "If this chap has given us the slip, why he's given us the slip, and he's got a start of us, which we sha'n't be able to pick up till half-past ten o'clock to-night, when there's a train that'll take us to Liverpool. If hehasn'tgiven us the slip, there's only one way he can leave Doncaster, and that's by this station; so you stay here patient and quiet till you see me, or hear from me. If he is in Doncaster, I'm jiggered if I don't find him."
With which powerful asseveration Mr. Grimstone walked away, leaving his scout to keep watch for the possible coming of the "Softy."
John Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode walked to and fro upon the lawn before the drawing-room windows on that afternoon on which the detective and his underling lost sight of Stephen Hargraves. It was a dreary time, this period of watching and waiting, of uncertainty and apprehension; and poor John Mellish chafed bitterly under the burden which he had to bear.
Now that his friend's common sense had come to his relief, and that a few plain out-spoken sentences had dispersed the terrible cloud of mystery; now that he himself was fully assured of his wife's innocence, he had no patience with the stupid country people who held themselves aloof from the woman he loved. He wanted to go out and do battle for his slandered wife; to hurl back every base suspicion into the faces that had scowled upon his idolized Aurora. How could they dare, these foul-minded slanderers, to harbour one base thought against the purest, the most perfect of women? Mr. Mellish of course quite forgot that he, the rightful defender of all this perfection, had suffered his mind to be for a time obscured beneath the black shadow of that vile suspicion.
He hated the old friends of his youth for their base avoidance of him; the servants of his household for a half-doubtful, half-solemn expression of face, which he knew had relation to that growing suspicion, that horrible suspicion, which seemed to grow stronger with every hour. He broke out into a storm of rage with the gray-haired butler, who had carried him pick-a-back in his infancy, because the faithful retainer tried to hold back certain newspapers which contained dark allusions to the Mellish mystery.
"Who told you I didn't want the 'Manchester Guardian,' Jarvis?" he cried fiercely; "who gave you the right to dictate what I'm to read or what I'm to leave unread? I do want to-day's 'Guardian;' to-day's, and yesterday's, and to-morrow's, and every other newspaper that comes into this house. I won't have them overhauled by you, or anyone, to see whether they're pleasant reading or not, before they're brought to me. Do you thinkI'mafraid of anything these penny-a-liner fellows can write?" roared the young squire, striking his open hand upon the table at which he sat. "Let them write their best or their worst of me. But let them write one word that can be twisted into an insinuation upon the purest and truest woman in all Christendom, and, by the Lord above me, I'll give them such a thrashing—penny-a-liners, printers, publishers, and every man-Jack of them—as shall make them remember the business to the last hour of their lives!"
Mr. Mellish said all this in despite of the restraining presence of Talbot Bulstrode. Indeed, the young member for Penruthy had by no means a pleasant time of it during those few days of anxiety and suspense. A keeper set to watch over a hearty young jungle-tiger, and bidden to prevent the noble animal from committing any imprudence, might have found his work little harder than that which Mr. Bulstrode did, patiently and uncomplainingly, for pure friendship's sake.
John Mellish roamed about in the custody of this friendly keeper, with his short auburn hair tumbled into a feverish-looking mass, like a field of ripening corn that had been beaten by a summer hurricane, his cheeks sunken and haggard, and a bristling yellow stubble upon his chin. I dare say he had made a vow neither to shave nor be shaven until the murderer of James Conyers should be found. He clung desperately to Talbot Bulstrode, but he clung with still wilder desperation to the detective, the professional criminal hunter, who had in a manner tacitly pledged himself to the discovery of the real homicide.
All through the fitful August day, now hot and still, now overclouded and showery, the master of Mellish Park went hither and thither,—now sitting in his study; now roaming out on the lawn; now pacing up and down the drawing-room, displacing, disarranging, and overturning the pretty furniture; now wandering up and down the staircase, lolling on the landing-places, and patrolling the corridor outside the rooms in which Lucy and Aurora sat together making a show of employing themselves, but only waiting, waiting, waiting, for the hoped-for end.
Poor John scarcely cared to meet that dearly-loved wife; for the great earnest eyes that looked in his face always asked the same question so plainly,—always appealed so piteously for the answer that could not be given.
It was a weary and a bitter time. I wonder, as I write of it, when I think of a quiet Somersetshire household in which a dreadful deed was done, the secret of which has never yet been brought to light, and perhaps never will be revealed until the Day of Judgment, what must have been suffered by each member ofthatfamily? What slow agonies, what ever-increasing tortures, while that cruel mystery was the "sensation" topic of conversation in a thousand happy home-circles, in a thousand tavern-parlours and pleasant club-rooms!—a common and ever-interesting topic, by means of which travellers in first-class railway carriages might break down the ceremonial icebergs which surround each travelling Englishman, and grow friendly and confidential; a safe topic upon which even tacit enemies might talk pleasantly without fear of wrecking themselves upon hidden rocks of personal insinuation. God help that household, or any such household, through the weary time of waiting which it may please Him to appoint, until that day in which it shall be His good pleasure to reveal the truth! God help all patient creatures labouring under the burden of an unjust suspicion, and support them unto the end!
John Mellish chafed and fretted himself ceaselessly all through that August day at the non-appearance of the detective. Why didn't he come? He had promised to bring or send them news of his proceedings. Talbot in vain assured his friend that Mr. Grimstone was no doubt hard at work; that such a discovery as he had to make was not to be made in a day; and that Mr. Mellish had nothing to do but to make himself as comfortable as he could, and wait quietly for the event he desired so eagerly.
"I should not say this to you, John," Mr. Bulstrode said by-and-by, "if I did not believe—as I know this man Grimstone believes—that we are upon the right track, and are pretty sure to bring the crime home to the wretch who committed it. You can do nothing but be patient, and wait the result of Grimstone's labours."
"Yes," cried John Mellish; "and in the mean time all these people are to say cruel things of my darling, and keep aloof from her, and—No, Ican'tbear it, Talbot; I can't bear it. I'll turn my back upon this confounded place; I'll sell it; I'll burn it down; I'll—I'll do anything to get away, and take my precious one from the wretches who have slandered her!"
"That you shallnotdo, John Mellish," exclaimed Talbot Bulstrode, "until the murderer of James Conyers has been discovered. Go away, then, as soon as you like; for the associations of this place cannot be otherwise than disagreeable to you—for a time, at least. But until the truth is out, you must remain here. If there is any foul suspicion against Aurora, her presence here will best give the lie to that suspicion. It was her hurried journey to London which first set people talking of her, I dare say," added Mr. Bulstrode, who was of course entirely ignorant of the fact that an anonymous letter from Mrs. Powell had originally aroused the suspicions of the Doncaster constabulary.
So through the long summer's day Talbot reasoned with and comforted his friend, never growing weary of his task, never for one moment losing sight of the interests of Aurora Mellish and her husband.
Perhaps this was a self-imposed penalty for the wrong which he had done the banker's daughter long ago in the dim star-lit chamber at Felden. If it was so, he did penance very cheerfully.
"Heaven knows how gladly I would do her a service," he thought; "her life has been a troubled one, in spite of her father's thousands. Thank Heaven, my poor little Lucy has never been forced into playing the heroine of a tragedy like this; thank Heaven, my poor little darling's life flows evenly and placidly in a smooth channel!"
He could not but reflect with something of a shudder that it might have been his wife whose history was being canvassed throughout the West Riding. He could not be otherwise than pleased to remember that the name of the woman he had chosen had never gone beyond the holy circle of her own home, to be the common talk among strangers.
There are things which are utterly unendurable to some people, but which are not at all terrible in the eyes of others. John Mellish, secure in his own belief in his wife's innocence, would have been content to carry her away with him, after razing the home of his forefathers to the ground, and defying all Yorkshire to find a flaw or speck upon her fair fame. But Talbot Bulstrode would have gone mad with the agony of the thought that common tongues had defiled the name he loved, and would, in no after-triumph of his wife's innocence, been able to forget or to recover from the torture of that unendurable agony. There are people who cannot forget, and Talbot Bulstrode was one of them. He had never forgotten his Christmas agony at Felden Woods, and the after-struggle at Bulstrode Castle; nor did he ever hope to forget it. The happiness of the present, pure and unalloyed though it was, could not annihilate the anguish of the past.Thatstood alone,—so many months, weeks, days, and hours of unutterable misery, riven away from the rest of his life, to remain for ever a stony memorial upon the smooth plains of the past.
Archibald Martin Floyd sat with his daughter and Lucy, in Mrs. Mellish's morning-room, the pleasantest chamber for many reasons, but chiefly because it was removed from the bustle of the house, and from the chance of unwelcome intrusion. All the troubles of that household had been made light of in the presence of the old man, and no word had been dropped before him, which could give him reason to guess that his only child had been suspected of the most fearful crime that man or woman can commit. But Archibald Floyd was not easily to be deceived where his daughter's happiness was in question; he had watched that beautiful face—whose ever-varying expression was its highest charm—so long and earnestly, as to have grown familiar with its every look. No shadow upon the brightness of his daughter's beauty could possibly escape the old man's eyes, dim as they may have grown for the figures in his banking-book. It was Aurora's business, therefore, to sit by her father's side in the pleasant morning-room, to talk to him and amuse him; while John rambled hither and thither, and made himself otherwise tiresome to his patient companion, Talbot Bulstrode. Mrs. Mellish repeated to her father again and again, that there was no cause for uneasiness; they were merely anxious—naturally anxious—that the guilty man should be found and brought to justice; nothing more.
The banker accepted this explanation of his daughter's pale face very quietly; but he was not the less anxious,—anxious he scarcely knew why, but with the shadow of a dark cloud hanging over him, that was not to be driven away.
Thus the long August day wore itself out, and the low sun—blazing a lurid red behind the trees in Mellish Wood, until it made that pool beside which the murdered man had fallen, seem a pool of blood—gave warning that one weary day of watching and suspense was nearly done.
John Mellish, far too restless to sit long at dessert, had roamed out upon the lawn: still attended by his indefatigable keeper, Talbot Bulstrode, and employed himself in pacing up and down the smooth grass amid Mr. Dawson's flower-beds, looking always towards the pathway that led to the house, and breathing suppressed anathemas against the dilatory detective.
"One day nearly gone, thank Heaven, Talbot!" he said, with an impatient sigh. "Will to-morrow bring us no nearer what we want, I wonder? What if it should go on like this for long? what if it should go on for ever, until Aurora and I go mad with this wretched anxiety and suspense? Yes, I know you think me a fool and a coward, Talbot Bulstrode; but I can't bear it quietly, I tell you I can't. I know there are some people who can shut themselves up with their troubles, and sit down quietly and suffer without a groan; but I can't. I must cry out when I am tortured, or I should dash my brains out against the first wall I came to, and make an end of it. To think that anybody should suspect my darling! to think that they should believe her to be——"
"To think thatyoushould have believed it, John!" said Mr. Bulstrode, gravely.
"Ah, there's the cruelest stab of all," cried John; "ifI,—I who know her, and love her, and believe in her as man never yet believed in woman,—ifIcould have been bewildered and maddened by that horrible chain of cruel circumstances, every one of which pointed—Heaven help me!—at her!—ifIcould be deluded by these things until my brain reeled, and I went nearly mad with doubting my own dearest love, what may strangers think—strangers who neither know nor love her, but who are only too ready to believe anything unnaturally infamous? Talbot, Iwon'tendure this any longer. I'll ride into Doncaster and see this man Grimstone. Hemusthave done some good to-day. I'll go at once."
Mr. Mellish would have walked straight off to the stables; but Talbot Bulstrode caught him by the arm.
"You may miss the man on the road, John," he said. "He came last night after dark, and may come as late to-night. There's no knowing whether he'll come by the road, or the short cut across the fields. You're as likely to miss him as not."
Mr. Mellish hesitated.
"He mayn't come at all to-night," he said; "and I tell you I can't bear this suspense."
"Letmeride into Doncaster, then, John," urged Talbot; "and you stay here to receive Grimstone if he should come."
Mr. Mellish was considerably mollified by this proposition.
"Will you ride into the town, Talbot?" he said. "Upon my word, it's very kind of you to propose it. I shouldn't like to miss this man upon any account; but at the same time I don't feel inclined to wait for the chance of his coming or staying away. I'm afraid I'm a great nuisance to you, Bulstrode."
"Not a bit of it," answered Talbot, with a smile.
Perhaps he smiled involuntarily at the notion of how little John Mellish knew what a nuisance he had been through that weary day.
"I'll go with very great pleasure, John," he said, "if you'll tell them to saddle a horse for me."
"To be sure; you shall have Red Rover, my covert hack. We'll go round to the stables, and see about him at once."
The truth of the matter is, Talbot Bulstrode was very well pleased himself to hunt up the detective, rather than that John Mellish should execute that errand in person; for it would have been about as easy for the young squire to have translated a number of the 'Sporting Magazine' into Porsonian Greek, as to have kept a secret for half an hour, however earnestly entreated, or however conscientiously determined to do so.
Mr. Bulstrode had made it his particular business, therefore, during the whole of that day, to keep his friend as much as possible out of the way of every living creature, fully aware that Mr. Mellish's manner would most certainly betray him to the least observant eyes that might chance to fall upon him.
Red Rover was saddled, and, after twenty loudly whispered injunctions from John, Talbot Bulstrode rode away in the evening sunlight. The nearest way from the stables to the high road took him past the north lodge. It had been shut up since the day of the trainer's funeral, and such furniture as it contained left to become a prey to moths and rats; for the Mellish servants were a great deal too superstitiously impressed with the story of the murder to dream of readmitting those goods and chattels which had been selected for Mr. Conyers's accommodation to the garrets whence they had been taken. The door had been locked, therefore, and the key given to Dawson the gardener, who was to be once more free to use the place as a storehouse for roots and matting, superannuated cucumber-frames, and crippled garden tools.
The place looked dreary enough, though the low sun made a gorgeous illumination upon one of the latticed windows that faced the crimson west, and though the last leaves of the roses were still lying upon the long grass in the patch of garden before the door out of which Mr. Conyers had gone to his last resting-place. One of the stable-boys had accompanied Mr. Bulstrode to the lodge in order to open the rusty iron gates, which hung loosely on their hinges, and were never locked.
Talbot rode at a brisk pace into Doncaster, never drawing rein until he reached the little inn at which the detective had taken up his quarters. Mr. Grimstone had been snatching a hasty refreshment, after a weary and useless perambulation about the town, and came out with his mouth full, to speak to Mr. Bulstrode. But he took very good care not to confess that since three o'clock that day neither he nor his ally had seen or heard of Mr. Stephen Hargraves, or that he was actually no nearer the discovery of the murderer than he had been at eleven o'clock upon the previous night, when he had discovered the original proprietor of the fancy waistcoat, with buttons by Crosby, Birmingham, in the person of Dawson the gardener.
"I'm not losing any time, sir," he said, in answer to Talbot's inquiries; "my sort of work's quiet work, and don't make no show till it's done. I've reason to think the man we want is in Doncaster; so I stick in Doncaster, and mean to, till I lay my hand upon him, unless I should get information as would point further off. Tell Mr. Mellish I'm doing my duty, sir, and doing it conscientious; and that I shall neither eat nor drink nor sleep more than just as much as'll keep human nature together, until I've done what I've set my mind on doing."
"But you've discovered nothing fresh, then?" said Talbot; "you've nothing new to tell me?"
"Whatever I've discovered is neither here nor there yet awhile, sir," answered the detective vaguely. "You keep your heart up, and tell Mr. Mellish to keep his heart up, and trust in me."
Talbot Bulstrode was obliged to be content with this rather doubtful comfort. It was not much, certainly; but he determined to make the best of it to John Mellish.
He rode out of Doncaster, past the Reindeer and the white-fronted houses of the wealthier citizens of that prosperous borough, and away upon the smooth high road. The faint shimmer of the pale pearly moonlight lit up the tree-tops right and left of him, as he left the suburb behind, and made the road ghostly beneath his horse's feet. He was in no very hopeful humour, after his interview with Mr. Grimstone, and he knew that hungry-eyed members of the Doncaster constabulary were keeping stealthy watch upon every creature in the Mellish household, and that the slanderous tongues of a greedy public were swelling into a loud and ominous murmur against the wife John loved. Every hour, every moment, was of vital importance. A hundred perils menaced them on every side. What might they not have to dread from eager busy-bodies anxious to distinguish themselves, and proud of being the first to circulate a foul scandal against the lovely daughter of one of the richest men upon the Stock Exchange? Hayward the coroner, and Lofthouse the rector, both knew the secret of Aurora's life; and it would be little wonder if, looking at the trainer's death by the light of that knowledge, they believed her guilty of some share in the ghastly business which had terminated the trainer's service at Mellish Park.
What if, by some horrible fatality, the guilty man should escape, and the truth never be revealed! For ever and for ever, until her blighted name should be written upon a tombstone, Aurora Mellish must rest under the shadow of this suspicion. Could there be any doubt that the sensitive and highly-strung nature would give way under the unendurable burden; that the proud heart would break beneath the undeserved disgrace? What misery for her! and not for her alone, but for every one who loved her, or had any share in her history! Heaven pardon the selfishness that prompted the thought, if Talbot Bulstrode remembered that he would have some part in that bitter disgrace; that his name was allied, if only remotely, with that of his wife's cousin; and that the shame which would make the name of Mellish a byword, must also cast some slur upon the escutcheon of the Bulstrodes. Sir Bernard Burke, compiling the romance of the county families, would tell that cruel story, and hinting cautiously at Aurora's guilt, would scarcely fail to add, that the suspected lady's cousin had married Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode, Esq., eldest son and heir of Sir John Walter Raleigh Bulstrode, Baronet, of Bulstrode Castle, Cornwall.
Now, although the detective had affected a hopeful and even mysterious manner in his brief interview with Talbot, he had not succeeded in hoodwinking that gentleman, who had a vague suspicion that all was not quite right, and that Mr. Joseph Grimstone was by no means so certain of success as he pretended to be.
"It's my firm belief that this man Hargraves has given him the slip," Talbot thought. "He said something about believing him to be in Doncaster, and then the next moment added that he might be further off. It's clear, therefore, that Grimstone doesn't know where he is; and in that case it's as likely as not that the man's made off with his money, and will get away from England, in spite of us. If he does this——"
Mr. Bulstrode did not finish the sentence. He had reached the north lodge, and dismounted to open the iron gate. The lights of the house shone hospitably far away beyond the wood, and the voices of some men about the stable-gates sounded faintly in the distance; but the north lodge and the neglected shrubbery around it were as silent as the grave, and had a certain phantom-like air in the dim moonlight.
Talbot led his horse through the gates. He looked up at the windows of the lodge, as he passed, half involuntarily; but he stopped with a suppressed exclamation of surprise, at the sight of a feeble glimmer, which was not the moonlight, in the window of that upper chamber in which the murdered man had slept. Before that exclamation had well-nigh crossed his lips, the light had disappeared.
If any one of the Mellish grooms or stable-boys had beheld that brief apparition, he would have incontinently taken to his heels, and rushed breathless to the stables, with a wild story of some supernatural horror in the north lodge; but Mr. Bulstrode being altogether of another mettle, walked softly on, still leading his horse, until he was well out of ear-shot of any one within the lodge, when he stopped and tied the Red Rover's bridle to a tree, and turned back towards the north gates, leaving the corn-fed covert hack cropping greedily at dewy hazel twigs, and any greenmeat within his reach.
The heir of Sir John Walter Raleigh Bulstrode crept back to the lodge, almost as noiselessly as if he had been educated for Mr. Grimstone's profession, choosing the grassy pathway beneath the trees for his cautious footsteps. As he approached the wooden paling that shut in the little garden of the lodge, the light which had been so suddenly extinguished, reappeared behind the white curtain of the upper window.
"It's queer!" mused Mr. Bulstrode, as he watched the feeble glimmer; "but I dare say there's nothing in it. The associations of this place are strong enough to make one attach a foolish importance to anything connected with it. I think I heard John say the gardeners keep their tools there, and I suppose it's one of them. But it's late, too, for any of them to be at work."
It had struck ten while Mr. Bulstrode rode homeward; and it was more than unlikely that any of the Mellish servants would be out at such a time.
Talbot lingered by the wicket-gate, irresolute as to what he should do next, but thoroughly determined to see the last of this late visitor at the north lodge, when the shadow of a man flitted across the white curtain,—a shadow even more weird and ungainly than such things are;—the shadow of a man with a hump-back!
Talbot Bulstrode uttered no cry of surprise; but his heart knocked furiously against his ribs, and the blood rushed hotly to his face. He never remembered having seen the "Softy;" but he had always heard him described as a hump-backed man. There could be no doubt of the shadow's identity; there could be still less doubt that Stephen Hargraves had visited that place for no good purpose. What could bring him there—to that place above all other places, which, if he were indeed guilty, he would surely most desire to avoid? Stolid, semi-idiotic, as he was supposed to be, surely the common terrors of the lowest assassin, half brute, half Caliban, would keep him away from that spot. These thoughts did not occupy more than those few moments in which the violent beating of Talbot Bulstrode's heart held him powerless to move or act; then, pushing open the gate, he rushed across the tiny garden, trampling recklessly upon the neglected flower-beds, and softly tried the door. It was firmly secured with a heavy chain and padlock.
"He has got in at the window, then," thought Mr. Bulstrode. "What, in Heaven's name, could be his motive in coming here?"
Talbot was right. The little lattice-window had been wrenched nearly off its hinges, and hung loosely among the tangled foliage that surrounded it. Mr. Bulstrode did not hesitate a moment before he plunged head foremost into the narrow aperture through which the "Softy" must have found his way, and scrambled as he could into the little room. The lattice, strained still further, dropped, with a crashing noise, behind him; but not soon enough to serve as a warning for Stephen Hargraves, who appeared upon the lowest step of the tiny corkscrew staircase at the same moment. He was carrying a tallow candle in a battered tin candlestick in his right hand, and he had a small bundle under his left arm. His white face was no whiter than usual, but he presented an awfully corpse-like appearance to Mr. Bulstrode, who had never seen him, or noticed him, before. The "Softy" recoiled, with a gesture of intense terror, as he saw Talbot; and a box of lucifer-matches, which he had been carrying in the candlestick, rolled to the ground.
"What are you doing here?" asked Mr. Bulstrode, sternly; "and why did you come in at the window?"
"I warn't doin' no wrong;" the "Softy" whined piteously; "and it aint your business neither," he added, with a feeble attempt at insolence.
"It is my business. I am Mr. Mellish's friend and relation; and I have reason to suspect that you are here for no good purpose," answered Talbot. "I insist upon knowing what you came for."
"I haven't come to steal owght, anyhow," said Mr. Hargraves; "there's nothing here but chairs and tables, and 'taint loikely I've come arter them."
"Perhaps not; but you have come after something, and I insist upon knowing what it is. You wouldn't come to this place unless you'd a very strong reason for coming. What have you got there?"
Mr. Bulstrode pointed to the bundle carried by the "Softy." Stephen Hargraves' small red-brown eyes evaded those of his questioner, and made believe to mistake the direction in which Talbot looked.
"What have you got there?" repeated Mr. Bulstrode; "you know well enough what I mean. What have you got there, in that bundle under your arm?"
The "Softy" clutched convulsively at the dingy bundle, and glared at his questioner with something of the savage terror of some ugly animal at bay. Except that in his brutalized manhood, he was more awkward, and perhaps more repulsive, than the ugliest of the lower animals.
"It's nowght to you, nor to anybody else," he muttered sulkily. "I suppose a poor chap may fetch his few bits of clothes without beingcalledlike this?"
"What clothes? Let me see the clothes."
"No, I won't; they're nowght to you. They—it's only an old weskit as was give me by one o' th' lads in th' steables."
"A waistcoat!" cried Mr. Bulstrode; "let me see it this instant. A waistcoat of yours has been particularly inquired for, Mr. Hargraves. It's a chocolate waistcoat, with yellow stripes and brass buttons, unless I'm very much mistaken. Let me see it."
Talbot Bulstrode was almost breathless with excitement. The "Softy" stared aghast at the description of his waistcoat, but he was too stupid to comprehend instantaneously the reason for which this garment was wanted. He recoiled for a few paces, and then made a rush towards the window; but Talbot's hands closed upon his collar, and held him as if in a vice.
"You'd better not trifle with me," cried Mr. Bulstrode; "I've been accustomed to deal with refractory Sepoys in India, and I've had a struggle with a tiger before now. Show me that waistcoat!"
"I won't!"
"By the Heaven above us, you shall!"
"I won't!"
The two men closed with each other in a hand-to-hand struggle. Powerful as the soldier was, he found himself more than matched by Stephen Hargraves, whose thick-set frame, broad shoulders, and sinewy arms were almost Herculean in, their build. The struggle lasted for a considerable time,—or for a time that seemed considerable to both of the combatants; but at last it drew towards its termination, and the heir of all the Bulstrodes, the commander of squadrons of horse, the man who had done battle with bloodthirsty Sikhs, and ridden against the black mouths of Russian cannon at Balaclava, felt that he could scarcely hope to hold out much longer against the half-witted hanger-on of the Mellish stables. The horny fingers of the "Softy" were upon his throat, the long arms of the "Softy" were writhing round him, and in another moment Talbot Bulstrode lay upon the floor of the north lodge, with the "Softy's" knee planted upon his heaving chest.
Another moment, and in the dim moonlight,—the candle had been thrown down and trampled upon in the beginning of the scuffle,—the heir of Bulstrode Castle saw Stephen Hargraves fumbling with his disengaged hand in his breast-pocket.
One moment more, and Mr. Bulstrode heard that sharp metallic noise only associated with the opening of a clasp-knife.
"E'es," hissed the "Softy," with his hot breath close upon the fallen man's cheek, "you wanted t' see th' weskit, did you; but you sha'n't, for I'll serve you as I served him. 'Taint loikely I'll let you stand between me and two thousand pound."
Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode had a faint notion that a broad Sheffield blade flashed in the silvery moonlight; but at this moment his senses grew confused under the iron grip of the "Softy's" hand, and he knew little, except that there was a sudden crashing of glass behind him, a quick trampling of feet, and a strange voice roaring some seafaring oath above his head. The suffocating pressure was suddenly removed from his throat; some one, or something, was hurled into a corner of the little room; and Mr. Bulstrode sprang to his feet, a trifle dazed and bewildered, but quite ready to do battle again.
"Who is it?' he cried.
"It's me, Samuel Prodder," answered the voice that had uttered that dreadful seafaring oath. "You were pretty nigh done for, mate, when I came aboard. It aint the first time I've been up here after dark, takin' a quiet stroll and a pipe, before turning in over yonder." Mr. Prodder indicated Doncaster by a backward jerk of his thumb. "I'd been watchin' the light from a distance, till it went out suddenly five minutes ago, and then I came up close to see what was the matter. I don't know who you are, or what you are, or why you've been quarrelling; but I know you've been pretty near as nigh your death to-night as ever that chap was in the wood."
"The waistcoat!" gasped Mr. Bulstrode; "let me see the waistcoat!"
He sprang once more upon the "Softy," who had rushed towards the door, and was trying to beat out the panel with his iron-bound clog; but this time Mr. Bulstrode had a stalwart ally in the merchant-captain.
"A bit of rope comes uncommon handy in these cases," said Samuel Prodder; "for which reason I always make a point of carrying it somewhere about me."
He plunged up to his elbow in one of the capacious pockets of his tourist peg-tops, and produced a short coil of tarry rope. As he might have lashed a seaman to a mast in the last crisis of a wreck, so he lashed Mr. Stephen Hargraves now, binding him right and left, until the struggling arms and legs, and writhing trunk, were fain to be still.
"Now, if you want to ask him any questions, I make no doubt he'll answer 'em," said Mr. Prodder, politely. "You'll find him a deal quieter after that."
"I can't thank you now," Talbot answered hurriedly; "there'll be time enough for that by-and-by."
"Ay, ay, to be sure, mate," growled the captain; "no thanks is needed where no thanks is due. Is there anything else I can do for you?"
"Yes, a good deal presently; but I must find this waistcoat first. Where did he put it, I wonder? Stay, I'd better try and get a light. Keep your eye upon that man while I look for it."
Captain Prodder only nodded. He looked upon his scientific lashing of the "Softy" as the triumph of art; but he hovered near his prisoner in compliance with Talbot's request, ready to fall upon him if he should make any attempt to stir.
There was enough moonlight to enable Mr. Bulstrode to find the lucifers and candlestick after a few minutes' search. The candle was not improved by having been trodden upon; but Talbot contrived to light it, and then set to work to look for the waistcoat.
The bundle had rolled into a corner. It was tightly bound with a quantity of whip-cord, and was harder than it could have been had it consisted solely of the waistcoat.
"Hold the light for me while I undo this," Talbot cried, thrusting the candlestick into Mr. Prodder's hand. He was so impatient that he could scarcely wait while he cut the whip-cord about the bundle with the "Softy's" huge clasp-knife, which he had picked up while searching for the candle.
"I thought so," he said, as he unrolled the waistcoat; "the money's here."
The money was there, in a small Russia-leather pocket-book, in which Aurora had given it to the murdered man. If there had been any confirmation needed for this fact, the savage yell of rage which broke from Stephen's lips would have afforded that confirmation.
"It's the money," cried Talbot Bulstrode. "I call upon you, sir, to bear witness, whoever you may be, that I find this waistcoat and this pocket-book in the possession of this man, and that I take them from him after a struggle, in which he attempts my life."
"Ay, ay! I know him well enough," muttered the sailor; "he's a bad 'un; and him and me have had a stand further, before this."
"And I call upon you to bear witness that this man is the murderer of James Conyers."
"WHAT?" roared Samuel Prodder; "him! Why, the double-dyed villain: it was him that put it into my head that it was my sister Eliza's chi—that it was Mrs. Mellish——"
"Yes, yes, I know. But we've got him now. Will you run to the house, and send some of the men to fetch a constable, while I stop here?"
Mr. Prodder assented willingly. He had assisted Talbot in the first instance without any idea of what the business was to lead to. Now he was quite as much excited as Mr. Bulstrode. He scrambled through the lattice, and ran off to the stables, guided by the lighted windows of the groom's dormitories.
Talbot waited very quietly while he was gone. He stood at a few paces from the "Softy," watching Mr. Hargraves as he gnawed savagely at his bonds, in the hope perhaps of setting himself free.
"I shall be ready for you," the young Cornishman said quietly, "whenever you're ready for me."
A crowd of grooms and hangers-on came with lanterns before the constables could arrive; and foremost amongst them came Mr. John Mellish, very noisy and very unintelligible. The door of the lodge was opened, and they all burst into the little chamber, where, heedless of grooms, gardeners, stable-boys, hangers-on, and rabble, John Mellish fell on his friend's breast and wept aloud.
L'ENVOI.
What more have I to tell of this simple drama of domestic life? The end has come. The element of tragedy which has been so intermingled in the history of a homely Yorkshire squire and his wife, is henceforth to be banished from the record of their lives. The dark story which began in Aurora Floyd's folly, and culminated in the crime of a half-witted serving-man, has been told from the beginning to the end. It would be worse than useless to linger upon the description of a trial which took place at York at the Michaelmas Assizes. The evidence against Stephen Hargraves was conclusive; and the gallows outside York Castle ended the life of a man who had never been either help or comfort to any one of his fellow-creatures. There was an attempt made to set up a plea of irresponsibility upon the part of the "Softy," and thesobriquetwhich had been given him was urged in his defence; but a set of matter-of-fact jurymen looking at the circumstances of the murder, saw nothing in it but a most cold-blooded assassination, perpetrated by a wretch whose sole motive was gain; and the verdict which found Stephen Hargraves guilty, was tempered by no recommendation to mercy. The condemned murderer protested his innocence up to the night before his execution, and upon that night made a full confession of his crime, as is generally the custom of his kind. He related how he had followed James Conyers into the wood upon the night of his assignation with Aurora, and how he had watched and listened during the interview. He had shot the trainer in the back while Mr. Conyers sat by the water's edge looking over the notes in the pocket-book, and he had used a button off his waistcoat instead of wadding, not finding anything else suitable for the purpose. He had hidden the waistcoat and pocket-book in a rat-hole in the wainscot of the murdered man's chamber, and, being dismissed from the lodge suddenly, had been compelled to leave his booty behind him, rather than excite suspicion. It was thus that he had returned upon the night on which Talbot found him, meaning to secure his prize and start for Liverpool at six o'clock the following morning.
Aurora and her husband left Mellish Park immediately after the committal of the "Softy" to York prison. They went to the south of France, accompanied by Archibald Floyd, and once more travelled together through scenes which were over-shadowed by no sorrowful association. They lingered long at Nice, and here Talbot and Lucy joined them, with an impedimental train of luggage and servants, and a Normandy nurse with a blue-eyed girl-baby. It was at Nice that another baby was born, a black-eyed child—a boy, I believe—but wonderfully like that solemn-faced infant which Mrs. Alexander Floyd carried to the widowed banker two-and-twenty years before at Felden Woods.
It is almost supererogatory to say that Samuel Prodder, the sea-captain, was cordially received by hearty John Mellish and his wife. He is to be a welcome visitor at the Park whenever he pleases to come; indeed, he is homeward bound from Barbadoes at this very time, his cabin-presses filled to overflowing with presents which he is carrying to Aurora, in the way of chillis preserved in vinegar, guava-jelly, the strongest Jamaica rum, and other trifles suitable for a lady's acceptance. It may be some comfort to the gentlemen in Scotland Yard to know that John Mellish acted liberally to the detective, and gave him the full reward, although Talbot Bulstrode had been the captor of the "Softy."
So we leave Aurora, a little changed, a shade less defiantly bright, perhaps, but unspeakably beautiful and tender, bending over the cradle of her first-born; and though there are alterations being made at Mellish, and loose-boxes for brood mares building upon the site of the north lodge, and a subscription tan-gallop being laid across Harper's Common, I doubt if my heroine will care so much for horseflesh, or take quite so keen an interest in weight-for-age races as compared to handicaps, as she has done in the days that are gone.