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power to alleviate; but out of it came the first hopeful sign that Grant's iron will could give way; that he could feel not merely remorse, but repentance. "If," he said, "Mainwaring saves her; if he undoes what I have done, he may come and put his foot on my neck!"

CHAP. LII.

LOOKING FOR THE DAWN.

Dr. Crutchley arrived; and, after revisiting my room to remedy the defects of my hasty toilet, I joined Alice in a walk in the orchard. Our assistant nurses being on duty she wished me to go with her across the fields to the embankment; but I waited for the doctor's report; and it proved, as I feared, an unfavourable one. He was evidently anxious about his patient's state, and said he should return in an hour.

Merton Brown had followed into the front garden, and the doctor being gone, requested I would tell Grant that his father was in some degree appeased. At all events he was fully persuaded he had no willing connection with the Black Band. "The poor man, "Merton said; "is really in the greatest trouble; but his want of self-control makes him say now one thing, now another; and it is not at all fitting with all you have on your hands, that he should be at Darliston. He will not go to the Rood Farm, so I have pursuaded him to occupy my quarters with Mrs. Peters. Although a gossip, she is a kind-hearted woman, and he will do as well there as anywhere else. You look harassed, Mrs. Gainsborough," he concluded, "and Miss Alice is pale."

I am tired and very anxious," I replied. "Although inclined to be hopeful about poor Helen, it is a terrible uncertainty. And I feel the condition of my charge yonder entails a heavy responsibility. Mr. Gray, I have no doubt, will come to us when his afternoon duties in church are over. I hope Grant will listen to him,"

"Do what you can and you may be hopeful of a good result; but avoid the thought that all depends upon yourself. You know it cannot be." "Dr. Crutchley, I have no doubt, is a skilful surgeon," I said, "but in other matters he is distressingly wavering. He quite acquiesced in the propriety of Mr. Gray being requested to see Grant; admitting that he might not live till tomorrow; and then again he deprecated any matter being stirred that could distress him, for depression, he said, of all things must be avoided. He will sink if his spirits are not kept up.". "Then the nurse must not despond. Will you let me come and look after you now and then?" Oh, do; it would cheer me; and do him good, too, I believe. But here's this dear girl Alice wants looking after too. I wish you would take her for a walk on the cop. The sea air would brace her for her work."

66

"Come, then, Miss Alice; we had better go

at once, for we shall have rain before the day is over. I have not seen the place where poor Grant was captured; shall we go there ?"

Merton was right about rain; only he had not expected it to come so soon. A heavy thundershower fell; in the midst of which Dr. Crutchley again arrived, this time accompanied by Mr Gray.

Grant had lain in an uneasy slumber induced by medicine since the doctor's last visit, and was scarcely free from the stupor-attendant when the good minister had his interview with him. Mr. Gray told me he had given a sort of civil attention and general assent to what he had said to him, but expressed neither feeling nor opinion.

In accordance with Dr. Crutchley's view of what was likely to result from an interview with the clergyman, some medicine having a tendency to revive the spirits was administered to his patient, and I found him in a state of some excitement when I entered the room.

"I think you are not likely to be troubled with me long, Mrs. Gainsborough," so he spoke. "Dr. Crutchley has thought fit to hand me over to the parson.'

"Mr. Gray wished to come," I said; "it is his duty to try and help you. Dr. Crutchley thinks your hurts will do well if you will be patient, and endeavour to keep your mind quiet and hopeful."

"You hope still for Helen, do you not ?"
"Yes."

I

"I want to live to hear that she is safe should like to live to hear that cunning villain Witham is unmasked. If I had not been mad enough to disable myself I might have helped in the hunt; but now, the hand that should have gripped him, is powerless.

He sighed; and after a little silence, resumed: "There is one thing Mr. Gray said I could do, and it seems right I should. I must clear poor Helen of the lies that have appeared in the papers. He said people may think, even now, that though I have been baulked by Witham, she was willing to break her marriage vows for my sake. I wish she had been!"

"Oh, Grant, what are you saying?"

"Well-I was not thinking. I do not wish Helen to be a sinner like myself; but it is not easy to get over the feeling of wishing that she loved me. I thought once she did; but I took it too matter of course. She must hate me now, and I hope the husband she has chosen, though he comes of a bad, proud lot, may be good to her when I am lying quiet in Dingleton churchyard. I don't want him to throw in her teeth what she don't deserve; so, as I cannot write, perhaps you, Mrs. Gainsborough, will be good enough to do it for me. It had better be done at once while I have strength, and you can have in some one afterwards to attest it."

Of course I readily complied; and, at his dictation, wrote thus :-"Seeing it has been reported that my cousin, Miss Dalziel, was once engaged to me, I think it right to state that although such a thing was talked of between Mr. Wainwright and myself, she was no party to the matter, and refused when asked to marry me. I

did not choose to give her up, and learning that Mr. Mainwaring had authority to claim her on the death of my uncle, I, by advice of a person known as Carlton Witham, whom I supposed was disinterested, lured her out of Darliston Hall on Thursday evening last under pretence of requiring her candle, and throwing a cloak over her head, lifted her on to my horse. I rode for the west cop, where a boat from the Chaffinch was to take her on board; and, as I understood, she was to be carried to a house on the coast of Ayr, in Scotland. I purposed going there by land and marrying her. A I carried her, she, after praying me in vain to take her back, told me she was already married. I had had no encouragement from her. She was always true to her word and I believed what she said, but I did not choose to go back with her. I gave her into the hands of John Malone and two of his crew. There was a woman also whom Witham had recommended should attend her. I did not stop to see them go on board."

"Will that do," he questioned.

"I should think it would," I replied; "but will you tell me how it was you did not accompany Helen ?"

"Witham suggested that by remaining I could turn the pursuit in some other direction, and I left Marsham by the up train, just going far enough to catch the express northward. Besides it seemed that since we could not be married until we reached Scotland it would look better. Pernaps you will hardly believe it, seeing I could act so recklessly towards her afterwards, but when the matter was planned, I was anxious to spare poor Helen's proud heart as much as possible. When I found she was married it did not occur to me in the confusion of my mind that the last reason was no longer to be considered, since I had resolved to rob Mainwaring of her. Give me more of that stuff-the cordial; I am very faint. How one may be driven from one bad thing to another! I almost feel when speaking as if it were some other man had done and thought to do all this-this rascality. I was a ruffian to resist her entreaties; it was base, it was unmanly, to act as I did. I could not stop myself. If Mainwaring had been in the way I should have killed him before her eyes, I hated him so."

"You will not hate him now ?" "No; he may be a rake and a spendthrift, but I have no right to hate him."

"Who told you he was one or the other ?"

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'Well, I believe the worst I heard of him was from Witham; but he took Helen from me because he wanted her money to pay his debts; you can't deny that. And I loved her; I had every right to love her."

"I do not say your love for Helen was wrong, Grant. What you are to blame for is that you never acknowledged that the good you craved for-Helen's love-was, like any other good thing, for God to give or withhold. Is there good of any kind, is there a loveable thing, that does not proceed from Him ?"

"I know that, of course.

Helen is as God

made her; and so am I, am I not? Love is a natural feeling, and of course you may say it comes from God. But where does hate come from? Show me a man who cannot hate and you show me a ninny!"

"Grant, it is true in one sense that God made evil as well as good, hatred as well as love. He made good to be loved, evil to be hated. He has done all things well."

"Love for good, hatred for evil. There does scem some sense about that."

Grant lay still for some while, and then, in a quieter tone, asked:

"Why don't you hate me, Mrs. Gainsborough? I have treated you badly enough before now, and have done all this ?"

"I hate the evil you have done; I have been very angry and indignant with you at times; perhaps more than that when I have thought of Helen's betrayal. Yes, I have felt I could hardly bear to look upon you. Still it is possible to hate very heartily the evil we find in a person and not to hate himself. All human beings have so much to suffer in common, that I do not think I could hate anyone. Certainly I could not wish worse evil to them than the course of their destiny even in this world is likely to bring. I do not suppose my fate on earth has been worse than that of most others, and I know I could not witness that my worst enemy suffered as I have suffered, and not feel grief. You are in the hands of a wiser Judge of what is fitting that you should endure than I could be. Certainly I do not hate you, Grant, or I should not be here now. I am not so cruel as to feel pleasure in witnessing that you suffer."

"I have suffered-I do suffer. I have been in great pain to day, almost more than I could bear in silence. But the worst is thinking of Helen. Mrs. Gainsborough, I am glad you do not hate me. Does your friend Brown hate anybody do you think?"

"He has a good will towards you and I hope towards all mankind, as a Christian man should have."

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Do you mean he would not shoot Witham dead? I would."

"You would? What, out of vengeance?" "I don't know about that; but to save Helen I would."

"Yes, and I suppose he would; indeed, if it were the only means I am sure he would. I do not assert that Christian charity always involves non-resistance to wrong, or even that it often allows crime to go unpunished; only that it forbids personal feeling of enmity."

"Mr. Gray has been hammering at me that I must forgive if I would hope to be forgiven. It looks fair, that; but when I think of Witham it does not seem possible - it does not seem right."

"You can, I hope, think of Mr. Mainwaring without enmity?"

"Yes; 1 feel the balance is against me there. If, as you say, he really has a regard for Helen, he has had already worse from my hands than in justice he deserves."

"You said yesterday, when you thought Wit

ham was in some sort a gentleman, that the part you had played was even worse than his. Do you now think you are fitted to judge him?”

"You mean it's like Satan correcting sin? that I have no right to cry shame upon him?" Grant seemed so agitated that I feared I had ventured too much.

"To think it should come to this!" he proceeded; "and six months ago I thought I was a decent sort of fellow. I hated cant, but I could sit through a sermon and not feel I was worse than my neighbours. I knew I was better than a great many of them. You said just now good was made to be loved; was not Helen good? And yet all this has come upon me through loving her. I meant to be fair and aboveboard, and I scorned lying; but I've lied through thick and thin, and acted lies as well as spoken them. I'm talked at for an hour by the parson as if I had broken every one of the ten commandments, and I have not a word to say in defence. I suppose I should have broken them all if they had stood between me and Helen!"

"But could this have been so if you had served God as a man should by acknowledging that His will had a right to come before your own?" He was silent.

"Oh, if you had only borne in mind that He who made you cared for you!"

"I used as a boy to think there was a Providence watching over me, I had so many narrow escapes. But it has not come natural to think much about such things of late. When we get among men the world seems different. We must take things as they come; and help ourselves pretty sharply too, to what we want; or others will be before us. While we are stopping to think if this is right or that is proper, it may be gone."

"I know men talk so; but I think that those who have been long in the world commonly arrive at the conclusion that the men who do stop to consider right and wrong, though they may lose this and that by it, are not in the long run worse off than the unscrupulous, even in regard to this world's good."

"Well, I have known some of the sharp ones come to grief, that is certain; and if I had had more of the fear of God I need not have hated myself as I do when I think of her. You think Providence is watching over her, Mrs. Gainsborough? Such a good brave girl as she is. I should go mad altogether if I did not think she would be protected from that devil Witham, for he is a devil. Give me more of that stuff, it revives me."

I saw that it excited him; that the strength given was factitious, and told him I dared give no more so soon again.

Soon after the door opened gently, and I saw Merton Brown. His general aspect has a something that tends to quicken cheerfulness, but in continual expectation of news I fancied it more than usually encouraging. I suppose I looked a question, for bis language took the form of an

answer.

"At least," he said, "all is going on well in the pursuit. The Chaffinch has been traced and is being enclosed in a cordon. Witham has evidently been seeking to make his way towards the same part of the coast she is known to be lurking in. He has doubled on the track several times, but has failed to escape."

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'Why do they not arrest him?" asked Grant Wainwright.

"It will be done now on the next opportunity. Collins was up with him at noon to-day at a place called Manor Hamilton; but the Chaffinch, not having then been heard of, it seemed still expedient to use him as a guide. He changed clothes with a person who arrived at one of the inns on the previous evening, but this person was known to the police, and Witham was recognized when leaving the town by the Sligo Road."

I had risen from my chair and stood by the open window inhaling the fresh air from the garden. Merton took my place beside Grant, and, after asking concerning his arm, said:

"I wish you to tell me some particulars respecting your servant Maclean, for whom we have a warrant out as concerned in this unhappy affair. But I must warn you that but for certain circumstances you would yourself, before this time, have been in custody; indeed virtually

are so."

Grant's pale face flushed.

"I suppose I am," he said. "Dr. Crutchley may safely go bail for me; or in any case there is no need for handcuffs. What is to be done with me if I live it out? Am I to be sent in company with Witham and his set to the hulks— or where ?"

"I cannot answer your question. I only surmise that it is possible if all goes well, and you make a free confession, Mainwaring may forbear to prosecute."

"I will not owe anything to Mr. Mainwaring's mercy."

"But Grant," I said; "you have confessed, not from wish to escape but from regard to Helen's welfare. And you said you no longer felt enmity against Mr. Mainwaring."

"I do not think I shall need his mercy. But if I only hear what I want to hear, whether I live or die, they may do as they please with me. They had better not chain me together with Witham-that's all."

"Why give way thus to your ill-fortune ?" said Merton. "It is foolish pride which forbids you to stoop to receive favour from a man whom you have sought to wrong. It may be painful to you, but you should consider the other course would bring far worse humiliation. Say as you will, Mr. Wainwright, it will make a vast difference to you if you are tried and convicted. Is it nothing that you may be free to redeem the past, to show men you yet can earn a worthy place among them ?"

"Such as you may talk of the future; but for me, I see a night before me. I shall wake till I hear what next comes from Ireland. If it is not-if-if-"

The sentence was not completed, Grant had fainted.

An hour later I entered the drawing-room where Alice was sitting, and with a full heart and overflowing eyes cried, as I threw myself on the sofa:

"How I do love that Merton Brown!" Alice came to my side, and with her little white hand stroking my hair, said:

"What a shocking speech. I shall tell the Captain when he comes, Mrs. Gainsborough!" "I don't care if you do; he would love him too; and so would you if you heard him talk to poor Grant. He fainted awhile ago, and has since seemed so completely exhausted in spirit, that it is the most melancholy thing in the world to look at him. Hitherto his great spirit and courage have held their ground against the pain and misery of mind he has had to endure. Even now he struggles to bear up. But it is pitiable; it seems as if for the first time real dread of death had fallen upon him. I have tried, dear Alice, while nursing him, to speak as I ought to one in so hazardous a situation; but I feel a weakness in dealing with him. His answers on some subjects have been so outspoken. he has 30 little veneration, that it is only timidly I could speak of sacred things. I know it is of no use talking in a manner he cannot understand, and it is so difficult. But Merton has greater power than I have. He is more fearless and thorough; and yet so full of kindness, of tenderness there is a way with him which I think would be hard for anyone to withstand. Grant feels it."

And

I said well that I could not have done without Merton Brown. Dr. Crutchley indeed stayed with us until eleven, and it was before that hour that Grant had a fit of raving. I believe the case was so; that the doctor found it needful to administer stimulants, and that they tended to induce it. On leaving he said he could do no more. A little brandy might be given at intervals, but very sparingly. It was a question, Dr. Crutchley said, if his constitution were strong enough to carry him through the night. If so, and his mind were relieved, he should augur well for his recovery; as the state of the arm was not so bad as might have been expected. Sometimes when I found myself dwelling on the importance of the expected news as regarded our unhappy patient, I started in a sort of wonderment that I could look upon it in any other light than respected Helen.

Oh, the night was long; the news was long in coming. If I had had all to bear without the support given by the kindness, the courage, and the steadfast faith of my young friend, it would have overpowered my strength and I must have sunk under my duties; I fear I must, for those sad black eyes so constantly on my face scemed wearing my heart out, asking again and again "Any news yet?" when the voice was silent from

weakness.

I think even Merton had begun to think good news would never come; when, there was a sound of many footsteps; not coming-going.

I passed through Nanny's room to the

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servants' hall. It was vacant and I knew had been tenanted five minutes before by nearly all the servants in the house; for they were aware important intelligence was expected, and had sat up. The steps were coming back now. Foremost I saw Nanny Cargill's worn face. Shivering with anxiety, she cried:

"Oh, look at it, it's for you."

They all came round me as with trembling fingers I opened the enclosure; and, catching the reflection of its contents in my face, Will Harper's voice, in a subdued tone, proclaimed "It's good," before I read out

"Mr. and Mrs. Mainwaring send their love to Mrs. Gainsborough." That was all.

CHAP. LIII.

MR. WITHAM PLAYS THE HERO.

It was hard work with him, Grant afterwards owned to me, to act as he did towards Helen, │in

beguiling her from the hall: the mere act of her laying her hand caressingly on Gray Randal's neck, while he tightened the saddle girth, had nearly overthrown his resolution; but, from the moment he had snatched her, the rest of the part laid out for him had seemed, in his own words, " dreadfully easy.".

He says, and I believe him, that if he had had time for reflection after the knowledge gained of Helen's marriage, he would not have proceeded. Unhappily, that knowledge brought with it such a rush of fierce feeling towards the rival who was at hand to claim her for his own, that for the moment he had room for no other consideration. Helen was given up, and thenceforward he had gone on from no inclination for the course before him, but mainly because to proceed was less difficult to him than to reveal the treachery he had already been guilty of. Falsehood was new to him, but self-abasement, as yet, undreamed of; and a hardihood that dared all things in Heaven or on earth was in consonance with his nature.

In the excitement of action the voice of conscience was silent, and he was scarcely aware of any injury when the mare threw him: only when relieved from immediate probability of detection, when station after station on the line to Ayr was being passed by, a sensation of slight pain reminded him of his accident; and then, too, came thought with the question "What of the morrow? What had he done? He was going on-whither ?"

Conscience he could still put off. It was useless now to think what had been done, it could not be undone so he argued. But he must face the coming time, and his mind was all confusion. He had no plans: he had had, but Helen's marriage had altered all. Another station passed: would he had not stirred from the first train he had entered, and were then half way to London! What! to sneak out of it that fashion, and leave those who had engaged

to befriend him to bear the blunt? no; he must go on; he must decide on what he meant should be further done. Decide? but decision involved reflection. Conscience might be avoided, but he felt also that it must be avoided; he dared not reflect; he could decide nothing; he could only drift, whither he knew not.

Witham had not reckoned on this new fact of the marriage. How would he take it? He certainly was no scrupulous moralist, but some persons had already fixed suspicion on him as one concerned; that was awkward; considerations for his own safety might induce him to turn against him. He did not yet dream of pre-conceived treachery; he had yet before him hours of hurried, anxious, search for the house on the sea-coast so particularly described to him the house to be so cautiously inquired for, lest suspicion should be excited; the house he at the first looked upon entering with a sort of dread, and afterwards sought for with overpowering eagerness; for the fear at last had taken possession of him, could Witham have acted for himself in the matter?

:

And where was Helen?

Cooped in the dark hole of a small and wretchedly dirty craft, the poor girl's physical condition was wretched in the extreme, but her mind was in an agony from which present physical suffering was a positive relief.

A woman came frequently to her, but she felt no hope of sympathy or help, for in her she recognized the before-suspected fortune-teller. Only when the hatchway was raised to admit this woman, could day be distinguished from night. Once when that was done she plainly discerned the voice of Maclean, and this tended to contradict the idea that Witham had engaged in this matter for his own purpose.

Above the hammock on which she lay a lantern shed some dim rays; but there was no resource to beguile the hours, had she been capable of availing herself of any. Time, however, brought something of calmness to her mind, something of returning energy. There was no present possibility of escape; but neither Grant nor Witham were in the vessel-of that she was well assured; and she roused herself from the state of nervous weakness into which she had at first fallen, and prepared to take advantage of every chance in her favour. She made an endeavour to interest the cupidity of the woman by speaking of liberal reward to any one who would aid her in escaping, but received in answer that she could do nothing without her husband. The same day Helen believed they had touched land, but many hours passed over, and, saving that there was more than usual quietness on board, no difference appeared.

This quiet was suddenly disturbed by shouts, and a rush of feet overhead. The hatchway was opened, showing gleams of an evening sky, the ladder was flung down as usual, the woman hastily descended, and it was again closed, Helen's hopes were raised by an ap

pearance of alarm in her companion and by the sort of appeal she made to her.

"You'll not have had any cause to complain of me, ma'am, I'm sure, let what will happen, I've done my duty to him that paid me, and I knew nothing further about the matter than that you had used Mr. Grant Wainwright cruelly, and jilted him, and what not. Oh, giminy, how they are fighting! don't you hear them, miss ?"

There was indeed a sound of scuffling and shouting: the hatchway opened, Helen sprang to her feet, and the woman threw an old shawl around her with an air of civil care.

The light fell on a descending figure; to Helen's horror it was that of Witham. A drawn sword was in his hand, and pistols in his belt. She heard him exclaim as if in delight at finding her, but a strange faintness overcame her senses and she fell backwards into the arms of the woman. Everything was confused to her: she was aware of being carried on deck and treated as with great consideration, and was able to recognize Grant's servant, who, with two other men appeared to be bound. Reproaches were hurled upon them by Witham and another man, and the woman seemed to come in for her share.

Still helpless and speechless, Helen was lifted into a small boat by Witham and his assistant, and rowed a short distance, towards what appeared to be a ruined building of stone. They carried her across a small court-yard and up a staircase, and laid her on a sofa in a furnished refused to take it; and, leaving the glass on the chamber. Witham offered her wine, but she table, he hastily quitted the room, together with

the man.

Helen was under the impression that something more than long confinement in the choking atmosphere of the hold had induced her faintness. Suspecting the shawl that had been thrown around her she flung it off, and, with giddy head, supporting herself by the furniture and walls, began to consider the place to which she had been brought. There was another door near the sofa; she passed through it and found a small bed-room. Eagerly she sought for water and laved her face and hands: this brought her partial refreshment, but her senses were not yet fully awakened, and she scarce yet could stand without support. Finding no other outlet from the bed-room, she returned to the adjoining apartment to ascertain whether or not she was imprisoned. The door was not closed but beyond it, down a few stone steps, another, strong oak door, fast locked, proved to her that she was indeed a prisoner. The window was next examined. It was made to open on a small terrace or balcony of stone, which extended also in front of the bed-room window, but this one was securely fastened, and the other was latticed with only sufficient opening to admit air. Beyond, nothing appeared but a boundless sea, with the fading tints of sunset sinking below it.

Helen removed the glass from the toilette

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