make her comfortable? It was on my lips to | going softly, and with a certain thrill of excitesay, Law! Miss, there's old Mrs. Fennell is older nor me.' "Fennell?" said Mrs. Preston; "I ought to know that name." "It was her own mamma's name," said Betty, "and I've met wi' them as seen the old lady with their own eyes. Hobson, the carrier, he goes and sees her regular with game and things; but what's game in comparison with your own flesh and blood?" "Perhaps the mother died young," said Mrs. Preston, with some anxiety - "that breaks the link, like. Fennell? I wonder what Fennells she belongs to. I once knew that name well. I wish the old lady was living here." You take my word, she'll never live here," said Mrs. Swayne. "She ain't grand enough. Old grandmothers is in the way when young folks sets up for lords and ladies. And it ain't that far to Masterton but you could go and see her. There's Hobson, he knows; he'd take you safe, never fear." ment, Mrs. Preston's mind was full of dreams more unreal than those which Pamela pondered before the fire. She was forming visions of a sweet, kind, fair old lady who would be good to Pamela. Already her heart was lighter for the thought. If she should be ill or feel any signs of breaking up, what a comfort to mount into the carrier's cart and go and commend her child to such a protector! If she had conceived at once the plan of marrying Pamela to Mr. John, and making her at one sweep mistress of Brownlows, the idea would have been wisdom itself in comparison; but she did not know that, poor soul! She came down with a visionary glow about her heart, the secret of which she told to no one, and roused up Pamela, who looked half dazed and dazzled as she drew her hands from before her face and rose from the rug she had been seated on. Pamela had been dreaming, but not more than her mother. She almost looked as if she had been sleeping as she opened her dazzled eyes. There are times Mrs. Preston shrank back a little from the when one sees clearer with one's eyes closed. suggestion. "I'm not one to pay visits," she The child had been looking at that picture of said. "But I'll say good-night to you all, hers so long that she felt guilty when her mothnow. I hope you'll soon be better, Mr. er woke her up. She had a kind of shamefaced Swayne. And, Betty, you should not be out consciousness, Mr. John having been so long of doors on such a cold night. My child will about, that her mother must find his presence be dull, all by herself." So saying, she left out-not knowing that her mother was preocthem; but she did not that moment return to cupied and full of her own imaginations too. Pamela. She went up-stairs by herself in the But they did not say anything to each other dark, with her heart beating quick in her ears. about their dreams. They dropped into siFennell!" she was saying to herself—“Ilence, each over her work, as people are so ought to know that name." It was very dark on the road, and there was nothing visible from the window but the red glow from Betty's lodge, where the door stood innocently open; but notwithstanding Mrs. Preston went and looked out, as if the scene could have thrown any enlightenment upon her thoughts. She was excited about it, unimportant though the matter seemed. What if perhaps she might be on the trace of friends-people who would be good to Pamela? There was once a FennellTom Fennell-who ages ago - No doubt he was dead and gone, with everybody who had belonged to her far-off early life. But standing there in the darkness, pressing her withered cheek close to the window, as if there was something to be seen outside, it went through the old woman's mind how, perhaps, if she had chosen Tom Fennell instead of the other one, things might have been different. If any life could ever have been real to the liver of it, surely her hard life, her many toils and sufferings, must have been such sure fact as to leave no room for fancy. Yet so truly, even to an unimaginative woman, was this fantastic existence such stuff as dreams are made of, that she stopped to think what the difference might have been if- She was nearly sixty, worn even beyond her years, incapable of very much thinking; and yet she took a moment to herself ere she could join her child, and permitted herself this strange indulgence. When she descended the stairs again, still in the dark, ready to do who have something to think of. Pamela's little field of imagination was limited, and did not carry her much beyond the encounters of to-day; but Mrs. Preston bent her head overr sewing with many an old scene coming up in her mind. She remembered the day when Tom Fennell "spoke to her first, as vividly in all its particulars as Pamela recollected Jack Brownlow's looks as he stood at the door. How strange if it should be the same Fennells! if Pamela's new friends should be related to her old one-if this lady at Masterton should be the woman in all the world pointed out by Providence to succour her darling. Poor Mrs. Preston uttered praises to Providence unawares she seemed to see the blessed, yet crooked, ways by which she had been drawn to such a discovery. Her heart accepted it as a plan long ago concerted in heaven for her help when she was most helpless, to surprise her, as it were, with the infinite thought taken for her, and tender kindness. These were the feelings that rose and swelled in her mind and went on from step to step of further certainty. One thing was very confusing, it is true; but still when a woman is in such a state of mind, she can swallow a good many confusing particulars. It was to make out what could be the special relationship (taking it for granted that there was a relationship) between Tom Fennell and this old lady. She could not well have been his mother; perhaps his wife-his widow! This was scarcely a palatable thought, but still she swallowed it-swallowed it, and preferred to think of something else, and permitted the matter to fall back into its former uncertainty. What did it matter about particulars when Providence had been so good to her? Dying itself would be little if she could but make sure of friends for Pamela. She sang, as it were, a "Nunc dimittis" in her soul. Thus the acquaintance began between the young people at the great house and little Pamela in Mrs. Swayne's cottage. It was not an acquaintance which was likely to arise in the ordinary course of affairs, and naturally it called forth a little comment. Probably, had the mother been living, as Mrs. Preston wished, Sara would never have formed so unequal a friendship; but it was immaterial to Mr. Brownlow, who heard his child talk of her companion, and was pleased to think she was pleased: prepossessed as he was by the pretty face at the window which so often gleamed out upon him, he himself, though he scarcely saw any more of her than that passing glimpse in the morning, was taken with a certain fondness for the lovely little girl. He no longer said she was like Šara; she was like a face he had seen somewhere, he said, and he never failed to look out for her, and after a while gave her a friendly nod as he passed. It was more difficult to find out what were Jack's sentiments. He too saw a great deal of the little stranger, but it was in, of course, an accidental way. He used to happen to be in the avenue when she was coming or going. He happened to be in the park now and then when the spring brightened, and Pamela was able to take long walks. These things, of course, were pure accident, and he made no particular mention of them. As for Pamela herself, she would say, "I met Mr. John," in her innocent way, but that was about all. It is true that Mrs. Swayne in the cottage and Betty at the lodge both kept very close watch on the young people's proceedings. If these two had met at the other end of the parish, Betty, notwithstanding her rheumatics, would have managed to know it. But the only one who was aware of this scrutiny was Jack. Thus the spring came on, and the days grew pleasant. It was pleasant for them all, as the buds opened and the great chestnut-blossoms began to rise in milky spires among the big half-folded leaves. Even Mrs. Preston opened and smoothed out, and took to white caps and collars, and felt as if she might live till Pamela was five-and-twenty. Five-and-twenty is not a great age, but it is less helpless than seventeen, and in a last extremity there was always Mrs. Fennell in Masterton who could be appealed to. Sometimes even the two homely sentinels who watched over Pamela would relax in those lingering spring nights. Old Betty, though she was worldly-minded, was yet a motherly kind of old woman; her heart smote her when she looked in Pamela's face. "And why shouldn't he be honest and true, and marry a pretty lass if it was his fancy?" Betty would say. But as for Mrs. Swayne, she thanked Providence she had been in temptation herself, and knew what that sort meant; which was much more than any of the others did, up to this moment Jack, probably, least of all. CHAPTER XIII. A CRISIS. All this time affairs had been going on very quietly in the office. Mr. Brownlow came and went every day, and Jack when it suited him, and business went on as usual. As for young Powys, he had turned out an admirable clerk. Nothing could be more punctual, more painstaking than he was. Mr. Wrinkell the headclerk was so pleased that he invited him to tea and chapel on Sunday, which was an offer the stranger had not despised. And it was known that he had taken a little tiny house in the outskirts, not the Dewsbury way, but at the other side of the town - a little house with a garden, where he had been seen planting primroses, to the great amusement of the other clerks. They had tried jeers, but the jeers were not witty, and Powys's patience was found to have limits. And he was so big and strong, and looked so completely as if he meant it, that the merriment soon came to an end and he was allowed to take his own way. They said he was currying favour with old Wrinkell; they said he was trying to humbug the governor; they said he had his pleasures his own way, and kept close about them. But all these arrows did not touch the junior clerk. Mr. Brownlow watched the young man out of his private office with the most anxious mixture of feelings. Wrinkell himself, though he was of thirty years' standing in the office, and his employer and he had been youths together, did not occupy nearly so much room in Mr. Brownlow's favour as this new fellow." He took a livelier interest even in the papers that had come through his protègè's hands. "This is Powys's work, is it?" he would say, as he looked at the fair sheets which cost other people so much trouble. Powys did his work very well for one thing, but that did not explain it. Mr. Brownlow got into a way of drawing back the curtain which covered the glass partition between his own room and the outer office. He would draw back this curtain, accidentally as it were, the least in the world, and cast his eyes now and then on the desk at which the young man sat. He thought sometimes it was a pity to keep him there, a broadshouldered, deep-chested fellow like that, at a desk, and consulted with himself whether he could not make some partial explanation to him, and advance him some money and send him off to a farm in his native Canada. It would be better for Powys, and it would be better for Brownlows. But he had not the courage to take such a direct step. Many a thought was in his mind as he sat glancing by turns from the side of the curtain-compunctions and self-reproaches now and then, but chiefly, it must be confessed, more selfish thoughts. Business went on just the same, but yet it cannot be denied that an occasional terror and steady intellect, that if that day had but seized Mr. Wrinkell's spirit that his principal's come, if that house were but attained, mind was "beginning to go." "And young his John never was fit to hold the candle to him,' Mr. Wrinkell said, in those moments of privacy when he confided his cares to the wife of his bosom. "When our Mr. Brownlow goes, the business will go, you'll see that. His opinion on that, Waterworks case was not so clear as it used to be - not near so clear as it used to be; he'll sit for an hour at a time and never put pen to paper. He is but a young man yet, for his time of life, but I'm afraid he's beginning to go; and when he goes, the business will go. You'll see young John, with his fine notions, will never keep it up for a year." natural freedom would come back to him. If he had been consulted about his own case, he would have seen through this vain supposition; but it was his own case, and he did not see through it. Meanwhile, in the interval, what was he to do? He drew his curtain aside, and sat and watched the changed looks of this unfortunate boy. He had begun so innocently and well, was he to be allowed to end badly, like so many? Had not he himself, in receiving the lad, and trading as it were on his ignorance, taken on himself something of the responsibility? He sat thinking of this when he ought to have been thinking of other people's business. There was not one of all his clients whose affairs were so complicated and engrossing as his own. He was more perplexed and beaten about in his own mind than any of the people who came to ask him for his advice. Oh, the sounding nothings they would bring before him; he who was engaged in personal conflict with the very first principles of honour and rectitude. Was he to let the lad perish? was he to interfere? What was he to do? "Well, Thomas, never mind," said Mrs. Wrinkell; "its sure to last out our time." "Ah! that's just like women," said her husband "after me the deluge; but I can tell you I do mind." He had the same opinion of women as Mrs. Swayne had of men, and it sprang from personal superiority in both cases, which is stronger than theory. But still he did let himself be comforted by the feminine suggestion. "There will be peace in my time;" this was the judgment formed by his head-clerk who At the very height of his perplexity, one of knew so well of Mr. Brownlow's altered ways. those April days, Mr. Brownlow was very late All this went on for some months after the at the office. Not exactly on account of the admission of young Powys, and then all at confusion of mind he was in, and yet because once there was a change. The change made the intrusion of this personal subject had reitself apparent in the Canadian, to begin with. tarded him in his business. He was there afAt first it was only like a shadow creeping over ter all the clerks were gone-even Mr. Wrinthe young man; then by degrees the difference kell. He had watched young Powys go away grew more and more marked. He ceased to be from that very window where he had once held up as a model by the sorrowing Wrinkell; watched Bessie Fennell passing in her thin he ceased to be an example of the punctual cloak. The young man went off by himself, and accurate. His eyes began to be red and taking the contrary road, as Mr. Brownlow bloodshot in the mornings; he looked weary, knew, from that which led to his home. He heavy, languid sick of work, and sick of ev- looked ill-he looked unhappy; and his emery thing. Evidently he had taken to bad ways. ployer watched him with a sickening at his So all his companions in the office concluded, heart. Was it his fault? and could he mend not without satisfaction. Mr. Wrinkell made it or stop the evil, even were he to make up his up his mind to it sorrowing. "I've seen many mind to try? After that he had more than an go, but I thought the root of the matter was in hour's work, and sent off the dogcart to wait him," he said to his domestic counsellor. for him at the Green Man in the market-place. “Well, Thomas, we did our best for him," that It was very quiet in the office when all his peosympathetic woman replied. It was not every-ple were gone. As he sat working, there came body that Mr. Wrinkell would have asked to chapel and tea. And this was how his kindness was to be rewarded. As for Mr. Brownlow, when he awoke to a sense of the change, it had a very strange effect upon him. He had a distinct impression of pain, for he liked the lad, about whom he knew so much more than anybody else knew. And in the midst of his pain there came a guilty throb of satisfaction, which woke him thoroughly up, and made him ask himself sternly what this all meant. Was he glad to see the young man go wrong because he stood in his own miserable selfish way? This was what a few months of such a secret had brought him to. It was now April, and in November the year would be out, and all the danger over. Once more, and always with a deeper impatience, he longed for this moment. It seemed to him, notwithstanding his matured over him memories of other times when he had good daylight, and put away his papers and buttoned his coat, and set out in an easy way. There was nothing particular to hurry him. There was Jack's mare, which flew rather than trotted, to take him home. Thus thinking, he went out, drawing on his gloves. Opposite him, as he opened the door, the sky was glowing in the west after the sunset, and he could see a woman's figure against it passing slowly, as if waiting for some one. Before he could shut the door, it became evident that it was for himself that she was waiting. Somehow he divined who she was before she said a word. A comely, elderly, motherly woman, dressed like a farmer's or a shopkeeper's wife, in the days when people dressed like their condition. She had a large figured shawl on, and a bonnet with black ribbons. And he knew she was Powys's mother - the woman on earth he most dreaded -come to speak to him about her son. "Mr. Brownlow," she said, coming up to him with a nervous movement of her hands, "I've been waiting about this hour not to be troublesome. Oh! could you let me speak to you ten minutes? I won't keep you. Oh please, if I might speak to you five minutes now. "Surely," he said; he was not quite sure if it was audible, but he said it with his lips. And he went in and held the door open for her. Then, though he never could tell why, he took her up-stairs not to the office which he had just closed, but up to the long silent drawingroom which he had not entered for years. There came upon his mind an impression that Bessie was surely about somewhere, to come and stand by him, if he could only call her. But in the first place he had to do with his guest. He gave her a chair and made her sit down, and stood before her. "Tell me how I can serve you," he said. It seemed to him like a dream, and he could not understand it. Would she tell her fatal name, and make her claim, and end it all at once? That was folly. But still it seemed somehow natural to think that this was why she had come. The woman he had hunted for far and wide-whom he had then neglected and thought no more ofwhom lately he had woke up to such horror and fear of, his greatest danger, his worst enemy, -was it she who was sitting so humbly before him now? " "Your son is young Powys," said Mr. Brownlow" yes; I knew by-by the face. He has gone home some time ago. I wonder you did not meet him in the street.' "Gone away from the office -not gone home," said Mrs. Powys. "Oh, Mr. Brownlow, I want to speak to you about him. He is as good as gold. He never had another thought in his mind but his sisters and me. He'd come and spend all his time with us when other young men were going about their pleasure. There never was such a son as he was- nor a brother. And oh, Mr. Brownlow, now it's come to this! I feel as if it would break my heart." "What has it come to?" said Mr. Brownlow. He drew forward a chair and sat down facing her, and the noise he made in doing so seemed to waken thunders in the empty house. He had got over his agitation by this time, and was as calm as he always was. And his profession came to his help, and opened his eyes and ears to everything that might be of use to him, notwithstanding the effect the house had upon him in its stillness, and this meeting which he had so much reason to fear. 64 'Oh, sir, it's come to grief and trouble,” said the poor woman. Something has come between my boy and me. We are parted as far as if the Atlantic was between us. I don't know what is in his heart. Oh, sir, it's for your influence I've come. He'll do anything for you. It's hard to ask a stranger to help me with my own son, and him so good and so kind; but if it goes on like this, it will break my heart." "I feared there was something wrong," said Mr. Brownlow; "I feared it, though I never thought it could have gone so far. I'll do what I can, but I fear it is little I can do. If he has taken to bad ways But here the stranger gave a cry of denial which rang through the room. "Bad ways!my boy!" said the mother. "Mr. Brownlow, you know a great deal more than I do, but you don't know my son. He taken to bad ways. I would sooner believe I was wicked myself. I am wicked, to come and complain of him to them that don't know." "Then what in the name of goodness is it?" said the lawyer, startled out of his seriousness. He began to lose the tragic sense of a dangerous presence. It might be the woman he feared; but it was a homely, incoherent, inconsequent personage all the same. Mrs. Powys drew herself up solemnly. She too was less respectful of the man who did not understand. "What it is, sir," she said, slowly, and with a certain pomp, "is, that my boy has something on his mind." Something on his mind! John Brownlow sank again into a strange fever of suspense and curiosity and unreasonable panic. Could it be so? Could the youth have found out something, and be sifting it to get at the truth? The room seemed to take life and become a conscious spectator, looking at him, to see how he would act in this emergency. But yet he persevered in the course he had decided on, not giving in to his own feelings. "What can he have on his mind?" he asked. His pretended ignorance sounded in his own ears like a lie; but nevertheless he went on all the same. "That's what I don't know, sir," said Mrs. Powys, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. 'He's been rummaging among my papers, and he's maybe found something, or he's heard some talk that has put things in his head. I know he has heard things in this very house people talking about families, and wills and all that. His father was of a very good family, Mr. Brownlow. I don't know them, but I know they're rich people. Maybe it's that, or perhaps - but I don't know how to account for it. It's something that is eating into his heart. And he has such a confidence in you! It was you that took him up when we were strangers, and had nobody to look to us. I have a little that my poor husband left me; but it's very little to keep four upon; and I may say it's you that gave us bread, for that matter. There's nothing in this world my boy wouldn't do for you." Then there was a pause. The poor woman had exhausted her words and her self-command and her breath, and stopped perforce, and Mr. Brownlow did not know how to reply. What could he say to her? It was a matter of death and life between him and her boy, instead of the indifferent question she thought. 'Would you like me to speak to him?" he said at last, with a little difficulty of utterance; "should I ask him what is occupying his mind? But he might not choose to tell me. What would you wish me to do?" "Oh, sir, you're very good," said Mrs. Powys, melting into gratitude. "I never can thank God enough that my poor boy has met with such a kind friend." "Hush!" said Mr. Brownlow, rising from his chair. He could not bear this; thanking God, as if God did not know well enough, too well, how the real state of the matter was! He was not a man used to deception, or who could adapt himself to it readily. He had all the habits of an honest life against him, and that impulse to speak truth and do right which he struggled with as if it were a temptation. Thus his position was awfully the reverse of that of a man tempting and falling. He was doing wrong with all the force of his will, and striving against his own inclination and instinct of uprightness; but here was one thing beyond his strength. To bring God in, and render Him, as it were, a party, was more than he could bear. "I am not so kind as you think," he said, hoarsely. "I am not I mean your son deserves all that I can do." -- "Oh, sir, that's kind - that's kindness itself to say so," cried the poor mother. "Nothing that could be said is so kind as that - and me, that was beginning to lose faith in him! It was to ask you to speak to him, Mr. Brownlow. If you were to ask him. he might open his heart to you. A gentleman is different from a poor woman. Not that anybody could feel for him like me, but he would think such a deal of your advice. If you would speak and get him to open his heart. That was what I wanted to ask you, if it's not too much. If you would be so kind and God knows, if ever it was in my power or my children's, though I'm but a poor creature, to do anything in this world that would be a service to you—" He God again. What did the woman mean? And she was a widow, one of those that God was said to take special charge of. It was bad enough before without that. John Brownlow had gone to the fireless hearth, and was standing by it leaning his head against the high carved wooden mantelpiece, and looking down upon the cold vacancy where for so many years the fire that warmed his inmost life had blazed and sparkled. He stood thus and listened, and within him the void seemed as cold, and the emptiness as profound. It was his moment of fate. He was going to cast himself off from the life he had lived at that hearth to make a separation for ever and ever between the John Brownlow, honest and generous, who had been trained to manhood within these walls, and had loved and married, and brought his bride to this fireside and the country gentleman who, in all his great house, would never more find the easy heart and clear conscience which were natural to this atmosphere. stood there, and looked down on the old domestic centre, and asked himself if it was worth the terrible sacrifice; honour and honesty and truth- and all to keep Brownlows for Sara, to preserve the greys, and the flowers, and the park, and Jack's wonderful mare, and all the superfluities that these young creatures treated so lightly? Was it worth the price? This was the wide fundamental question he was asking himself, while his visitor, in her chair be-. tween him and the window, spoke of her gratitude. But there was no trace in his face, even if she could have seen it, that he had descended into the very depths, and was debating with himself a matter of life and death. When her voice ceased, Mr. Brownlow's self-debate ceased too, coming to a sharp and sudden end, as if it was only under cover of her words that it could pass unnoted. Then he came towards her slowly, and took the chair opposite her, and met her eye. The colour had gone out of his face, but he was too self-possessed and experienced a man to show what the struggle was through which he had just come. And the poor woman thought it so natural that he should be full of thought. Was he not considering, in his wonderful kindness, what he could do for her boy? "I will do what you ask me," he said. "It may be difficult, but I will try. Don't thank me, for you don't know whether I shall succeed. I will do — what I can. I will speak to your son, perhaps to-morrow - the earliest opportunity I have. You were quite right to come. And you may-trust him-to me," said Mr. Brownlow. He did not mean to say these last words. What was it that drew them dragged them from his lips? "You may trust him to me," He even repeated it twice, wondering at himself all the while, and not knowing what he meant. As for poor Mrs. Powys, she was overwhelmed by her gratitude. "Oh, sir, with all my heart," she cried, "him, and all my hopes in this world!" And then she bade God bless him, who was so good |