lordship had left the river; indeed, there was a witness whom, at Cuffing's suggestion, Jeffs had sent down to Gravesend on business, who would put this pretty well on record if he had been called.] I wrote to the Steamship Company, and yesterday afternoon had arranged to go down to the Cuttle Fish, and see my friend off. He had been drinking, and I fancy was bordering on an attack of delirium tremens. At the last moment, when he had packed his bag, he said I should not go with him; he would go alone; he cursed me and grew furious, and all of a sudden fell upon me and tried to strangle me-(sensation)-he took a revolver from my pocket-I have always carried a revolver since I lived in America-flung it into the opposite room, pulled another from his own pocket, threatened to shoot me, and ended by forcing a gag into my mouth, and tying me to his bedstead. He then left me. I could not move for a long time, but finally got free, and hurried to the train, following him to Erith. I engaged a boat, and on landing encountered Jeffs. I asked him if the gentleman had arrived, and he said "Yes, a long time ago." I said I was later than I expected, and hurried to the house. I dare say I was a little excited; for, apart from the treatment I had received, I feared that something serious might happen; I did not know what, but I was really not surprised to find my client dead. He was the sort of person to commit suicide, and he had threatened to do so more than once. He suffered from remorse to such an extent that he taunted me with being his solicitor, and said I ought not to have believed him. Yesterday, in his mad passion, he associated me with the cause of his anguish, and assaulted me as I have stated. And this, gentlemen, is all I have to say, unless you have any questions to ask.

The Coroner: At present I think it will be best to take Mr. Cuffing's statement as it stands. It will be necessary to adjourn the inquiry.

The inspector of police said it was only just to inform the Court that the condition of the deceased's rooms at Piccadilly quite bore out Mr. Cuffing's description of the struggle which had taken place there; but the officer said nothing about the condition of Cuffing's chambers, though the lawyer was quite prepared with a plausible explanation upon that point if he had been called upon.

The Coroner Gentlemen, I do not propose to hear further evidence to-day; we will adjourn until to-morrow morning at ten o'clock.

Cuffing went to London. He had a widowed sister living in one of the numerous courts in Bow Street. For years he had neither

seen nor heard of her; but he went straight to her house, with his bag, from Charing Cross Station. She was not well off, and his offer to take her first floor at a weekly rent of twenty-five shillings, together with many expressions of affectionate regard, made his visit perfectly satisfactory. If she were ever asked when he took the rooms she must forget the exact date; he had a reason for this, and the widow saw no difficulty in complying. Cuffing thereupon went to two newspaper offices and succeeded in getting an advertisement in the next morning's publications announcing that he had removed his offices to the court in question. During the night he pasted a similar notice on the door in Casel Street, and the next day the policeman who had examined the premises could not satisfy his chief whether the notice was there on the previous day or not. Cuffing having played these last cards set about making himself comfortable in his new quarters, and sat down to wait results.

CHAPTER XII.

DREAMS AND REALITIES.

In the meantime Lady St. Barnard was happy in a delicious unconsciousness. She was rambling through the fields at Dunelm ; she was walking down the Bailey with admiring eyes upon her; she was in church waiting for her grandfather to finish his closing voluntary with the sunbeams wandering into the chancel. It was a hot summer Sunday with her long ago. The bells were chiming. The sun slumbered on the river. The water was a mirror for the tall cathedral towers. There was no sound beyond the drowsy hum of the bells as their music fell through the trees. The laburnums were yellow with blossoms, and the scent of the lilac filled the hot pulsations of the air.

Lord St. Barnard sat beside her, but she did not recognise him; she only muttered in her delirium. If he could have understood that there was anything akin to happiness in her dreaming he would have felt consoled for her want of recognition. If Kalmat had known that she saw him, during her mental wanderings, on that summer Sunday in the cathedral city, he also would have felt that there was a tinge of light in the gravity of the situation. The doctor said

there was no cause for serious alarm. His patient was strong, and she had inherited a fine constitution. He hoped to see her fit to travel in a few weeks. The fever was abating somewhat. It must run its course.

While the patient was still dreaming, Lord St. Barnard and Kalmat had a conversation about her. It was on the second day after their arrival in Boulogne, and the first time that Lord St. Barnard had left her for more than a quarter of an hour at a time. They were sitting in the hotel yard. was Saturday morning following after the Sunday when Lady St. Barnard disappeared. What a world of events had happened in those few days!

"She was wonderfully beautiful as a girl,” said Kalmat; “you will not be jealous of my admiration ?"

"Jealous!" said his lordship, smiling.

"I call her to mind one summer Sunday long ago. She wore a light silk dress with lilac flowers in the pattern of it, slightly open at the neck. Do you know the bust of Clytie ?—the original, I think, is in the British Museum."

"I know it well."

"She was like that bust-her head was just as gracefully set upon her shoulders. I used to call her Clytie. Not to any one but myself. I had an exquisite bust of Clytie in my room. I used to talk to it."

66

You have the true poetic temperament," said his lordship.

"If talking to inanimate things is evidence of the poetic temperament, I have it strongly; for I have talked by the hour to trees and rivers. There are a cluster of oaks and pines overlooking the Sacramento Valley which are in full possession of some of my most secret thoughts. There was an Indian girl in that distant village. I used to think her like Mary Waller. She had a similar soft expression of the eye. The chief, her father, was killed, and I obtained permission to have her educated. I sent her to Boston three years ago, and have had remarkable accounts of her progress. My first idea was when she came of age, if her heart were not engaged in the meantime, to offer her my hand and after a tour through Europe to settle down in the golden West. Poor Shaseta, I suppose she will regard me more as a parent than a lover."

"You have wandered a long way from Dunelm." "I fear I am becoming garrulous," said Kalmat.

"That Sunday

in Dunelm and your wife! I shall never forget the radiant beauty of her girlhood; and on that Sunday in particular, old Waller at the organ seemed as if he had set it to music and was repeating the nature of it in an harmonious and melodic idyll. He was a master of sweet sounds; she might have inspired and warmed a statue into life. Shaseta was about her age when first I saw her, and the

remembrance of both is strongly fixed in my mind. Clytie's face and figure is surrounded by crumbling moss-grown walls that glass themselves in a river; by old English trees with rooks in them; by meadows and woodland walks. Shaseta, the Indian maiden, comes upon me in the light of camp fires, and her cry goes up to heaven in the midst of a dropping fire of rifles and revolvers. Her father fell in that bitter Indian warfare; I saved her life, and was rewarded by an expression of the eyes and a pout of the lips that carried me back to Dunelm and touched a chord in my heart awakening strangely sad-sweet memories."

"Did you know that man Ransford ?”

Only slightly. She did not care for him. Poor girl, she cared for neither of us, and she told me so with an innocent frankness that was touching in its simplicity of ingenuous surprise. Ah, Barnard, if you have ever doubted the truth and honour of that truly noble woman, that child of Nature, you have wronged the best and most persecuted of her sex."

"You have saved us both, my dear, dear friend," said St. Barnard, taking Kalmat's hand.

"The London papers," said an English servant, handing the journals of the previous day to Kalmat. "You requested me to bring them the moment they arrived."

"Thank you,” said Kalmat. "I will read them while you go back to your wife, Barnard."

His lordship acknowledged Kalmat's wish with a frank courteous smile, and crossed the court to the wing of the hotel in which his wife's apartments were situated, and Kalmat opened the papers and read with deep interest the report of the inquest at Longreach. The evidence of Cuffing puzzled him. He tucked the papers under his arm and walked down to the beach. The tide was rolling in with a full voluptuous swing upon the yellow sand. Scores of bathers were He walked steadily for a

in the water.

Kalmat saw none of them.

mile with his own thoughts and then sat down upon a piece of broken rock to discount the situation. He was a shrewd judge of men's thoughts and actions, a keen observer, and was not likely to be far out in his estimate of Cuffing's motives in shielding Lord St. Barnard.

Half an hour later he had despatched the following message to the coroner at Longreach :

"From St. Barnard, Hotel des Bains, Boulogne. To the coroner sitting at the Cuttle Fish Inn, Longreach, near Erith, London. Special messenger paid for from Erith. I am here with my wife.

Came over in the Fairy steam yacht as stated by Mr. Cuffing in his

Called at the Cuttle Fish

Cuffing's statement as to Shall attend at Bow Street on

evidence reported in the London papers. Inn, en route, but did not see Ransford. the confession and other matters true. Monday. Regret that Lady St. Barnard is too ill to be moved at present. The suicide of Ransford is a very sad ending to a most melancholy business. He did all he could in the way of atonement before committing the last rash act of his life.”

Then Kalmat sent for Lord St. Barnard, and gave him the papers to read.

"What is the meaning of it?" he asked, when he had read the report.

"I killed the scoundrel," said Kalmat.

Lord St. Barnard shrank back for a moment with an expression of horror.

"It was a duel: I gave him a chance of his life. He fired on me when I was unprepared. Before he could repeat the trick I shot

him."

"He deserved it; but do you know that in England we call this a most grave offence? It may, at least, place your liberty in danger; some people would call it murder."

"I have thought of that, and will explain all if you think I should; but for your own comfort I see a better plan. This statement of Cuffing and the confession will rehabilitate your wife, even in the eyes of Society. It may not be necessary now to seek the distant land which your feet would tread reluctantly. The peace of Grassnook and the hollow pleasures of the Court may be yours again as soon as your wife has recovered. And you would not like to take your children to that wild country of mine, beyond the golden gates. I have noticed how your heart clung to Grassnook and England. Well, here is a sudden incident that favours both the suicide of this scoundrel, the double confession, and Cuffing's remarkable evidence.

"There are flaws in the story that may be discovered, and reopen the social wound," said his lordship.

"I think not. Can you trust me? Will you let me still be your guide through this last bit of darkness that hides the daylight?" "I will, with one piece of advice that I would impress upon you strongly do not let us place ourselves in the hands of Cuffing."

"I note the point indelibly: Cuffing, as Ransford's lawyer, had a perfect right to change the details of the terms as regards money. Read that."