ness.

court," said little Miss Turtle, the goverShe and her pupils had been watching Veronica unwinkingly all the afternoon, as their custom was.

The choir of St. Gildas dispersed. The Sheardowns drove away in their little ponycarriage, carrying with them Herbert Snowe, who usually stayed with them on Saturday evenings. Miss Turtle took her pupils, one on each arm, and her grey cloak and shabby hat with its black feather disappeared down the lane. The vicar, with his ward and his daughter, walked in the opposite direction towards their home.

The nearest way to the vicarage house was across St. Gildas's churchyard. But the melted snow lay in death-cold pools between the swelling grave-mounds, and although the lanes afforded no good walking in the present state of the weather, they were yet rather better than the way by the churchyard.

Mention has been made of a by-road through the village from Shipley Magna which skirted the garden wall of the vicarage. Mr. Levincourt and the two girls had not gone many paces down this byroad, when they perceived through the fastgathering dusk a figure, which had evidently been on the watch for them, start and run towards them very swiftly.

"I do believe it is Jemmy Sack!" exclaimed Maud Desmond.

Jemmy Sack it was, who presently came to a sudden stop in front of the vicar, and began a breathless and incoherent speech.

"Dunnot ye be frighted, please sir, Joe Dowsett says. They ha'n't a took him into the house, please sir. And it's the same un as I seed tumble off afore. On'y this here time he's in a reg'lar swound But Joe Dowsett says as ye bain't to be frighted, nor yet the young ladies nayther, please sir."

Long before the combined cross-examination of the vicar and the young ladies had succeeded in eliciting any explicit statement from Jemmy, they arrived at the garden door, and then the matter to a certain extent explained itself.

A man in a scarlet hunting coat thickly crusted with mud lay on his back in the road beneath the garden wall, and close by a heap of flint stones piled up for the use of the road-menders. On to these he had apparently been flung, for his face was cut, and a thin stream of blood trickled slowly down his forehead.

The prostrate man was totally insensible. His head was supported on the knee of Joe

Dowsett, the vicar's gardener, groom, and general factotum, who was endeavouring to pour some brandy down his throat. Ă carter, in a smock-frock, held a handsome horse by the bridle. Three of the village boys who had been practising in the schoolroom stood at a little distance looking on, and two frightened women-servants, with their aprons huddled round their shivering shoulders, peeped nervously from the garden door, and plied Joe Dowsett with shrill questions, of which he took no notice whatever.

A clamour of voices arose as soon as the vicar was perceived: but a few words will suffice to put the reader in possession of the facts of the case. The fallen man was the same gentleman whom Jemmy had seen thrown earlier in the day. The day's sport had terminated at a considerable distance from Shipley Magna. The gentleman was a stranger, had probably missed his way, and gone by roundabout roads. He had evidently at last been making for Shipley Magna, having struck into Bassett's-lane, as the by-road was called. His horse and he were both tired out, and he had begun to feel the effects of his first fall more severely than he had felt them in the heat of the chase and at the beginning of the day. The carter had perceived the gentleman's horse stumble, and at the same instant the boys returning from the school-house had appeared shouting and whooping at the end of the lane. In a moment the gentleman had been pitched heavily off his horse, and had fallen on the heap of flint stones. The carter couldn't say for sure, but he believed that the horse stumbled before the lads startled him. And now what was to be done? This question was put by Joe Dowsett, looking up at his master with the brandy bottle

in his hand.

The first thing to be done was to send for a doctor. Mr. Plew would probably not have reached his own home yet. Jemmy Sack was despatched to fetch him, and set off running at a famous rate, throwing out his long legs, and followed by the other boys, to all of whom the occasion seemed to be one of intense and concentrated ecstasy.

But pending Mr. Plew's arrival, the swooning man could not lie there, with the night falling fast, and a bitter wind blowing from the marshes, that was fit, Joe Dowsett said, to freeze the very marrow in your bones. The

There was no other house at hand.

vicarage was a lonely, isolated dwelling. Joe Dowsett and the carter, with a little assistance from Mr. Levincourt, carried the stranger into the house. The women hurried to take from an old oaken press, blankets and coverlets for the spare bed. A fire was lighted in the guest's chamber-a room on the ground-floor, looking towards the garden. For that night at least, the injured man must remain at the vicarage.

Mr. Levincourt was very uneasy, and asked Joe over and over again if he thought it was serious? To which queries Joe invariably replied that it might be or it mightn't, but that for his part he didn't think 't wouldn't be much: an oracular utterance in which his master seemed to find some comfort. Veronica sat at the window, straining eye and ear to catch the first signal of the doctor's coming.

"He's quite old, this poor man, isn't he, papa ?" said she, with her face pressed against the glass.

"Old? No. What do you call 'quite old?' It is difficult to judge under the circumstances, but I should say he can't be more than fifty."

"Ah! well-that's what I meant. Here is Mr. Plew at last! I hear his step on the gravel, although I can't see him yet."

Mr. Plew's opinion was not very reassuring. If the patient were not better by to-morrow, he should fear that he could not safely be moved for a day or two. Meanwhile Mr. Plew would like Dr. Gunnery of Danecester to be called in, in consultation. When Dr. Gunnery arrived on the following afternoon, he shook his head very gravely, and said that he had no hope of the patient being able to leave his bed for some weeks. Even if-and here Dr. Gunnery lowered his voice, and reversed the movement of his head: nodding it up and down instead of shaking it from side to side-even if he pulled through at all!

CHAPTER VI. SUSPENSE.

THE vicar's first thought on hearing Dr. Gunnery's opinion, was that it behoved him (the vicar) to communicate with the family of the stranger whom Fate had thrown -literally thrown-into the midst of the quiet household at the vicarage. As it was, they could hardly have known less about him, had he dropped among them from the moon, instead of from the back of a startled horse.

But for many hours the injured man was incapable of communicating with his host. Fever set in. He became delirious at

intervals. And on no account must he be disturbed or annoyed by questions. Dr. Gunnery confirmed Mr. Plew's first statement, that no irreparable injury had been done to the stranger by his fall.

"But," said he, "he is a bad subject. If we had a young constitution, or even a sound constitution for his years, to deal with, the whole affair would be a mere trifle. But in this case it is very different." "Very different, indeed," assented Mr. Plew.

"No stamina," continued the Danecester physician. "The whole machine is in a worn-out condition-constitution gone to the deuce."

"Then, Dr. Gunnery," said Mr. Levincourt, nervously, "do you mean to say that he is in danger? Dear me, this is dreadful! Really dreadful!"

But to so direct a question Dr. Gunnery could, or would, give no direct reply. He merely repeated that in his opinion Mr. Levincourt ought to lose no time in communicating with the sick man's family. And then, saying that he would return the day after to-morrow, and that meanwhile the patient could not possibly be in better hands than those of Mr. Plew, the great Danecester doctor drove away.

Beyond the facts that had come under his own eyes, the vicar knew but two circumstances regarding his involuntary guest. The first circumstance was, that he had been staying at the Crown, in Shipley Magna; the second was, that Lord George Segrave was said to be a friend of his.

Mr. Levincourt despatched a note to Lord George, and ordered Joe Dowsett (to whom the note was entrusted), to ride on from Hammick Lodge to Shipley Magna, and tell the people at the Crown what had happened.

From Hammick Lodge, Joe Dowsett brought back a very polite note.

It appeared that the acquaintance between Lord George Segrave and the stranger was of the slightest possible kind. They had met in Rome one season, and had hunted side by side on the Campagna. Lord George knew nothing whatever of the gentleman's family. His name was Gale, Sir John Gale. Lord George was deeply distressed that the vicar of Shipley and his family should be so seriously inconvenienced by this accident. At the same time he could hardly regret, on Sir John Gale's account, that the latter should

have fallen into such hands. Lord George would do himself the honour of calling at Shipley vicarage, and meanwhile he begged to know if there were any way in which he could be of service, either to Mr. Levincourt or to the invalid, under these painful circumstances.

This note, although extremely civil, left matters pretty much as they had been before. But from the Crown Inn, Joe Dowsett brought back something more tangible and unexpected.

He brought back, that is to say, Sir John Gale's foreign servant, who announced himself as Paul," and who immediately took upon himself all the duties of waiting on the sick man.

"If you will permit, sir," said Paul, in very good English, "I will have a mattress laid by the side of my master's bed for a few nights. When Sir John gets better, and needs not to have me all night, I shall find to sleep at the village. There is a small cabaret there, as I have informed myself."

The arrival of this man, which was at first looked upon with dismay by the inmates of the vicarage, proved before long to be an inestimable comfort and relief.

In the first place, he eased the vicar's mind by taking upon himself the responsibility of communicating with Sir John's friends. Or rather he proved that no such responsibility existed. Sir John had, Paul declared, no relatives. He had neither wife nor child, brother nor sister, uncle nor cousin. He had lived a great deal abroad. Paul had not been with Sir John in England, before this winter. He would write to Sir John's agent and man of business. That was all that would be necessary.

Mr. Levincourt, never unwilling to shift responsibility on to the shoulders of others, told Paul that he must do as he thought best. There was something in the grave, steady aspect of the little man that inspired confidence. Then Paul took upon himself the whole business of the sick room. He waited by day, and watched by night. He administered the medicines. He reported progress to the doctors, with an intelligence and accuracy which won those gentlemen's good opinion very soon. He relieved the vicar's servants of all trouble as regarded Sir John Gale. He even went into the kitchen, and, with a certain grave tact which characterised him, won over old Joanna to allow him to prepare sundry articles of invalid diet for his master. He

was always at hand when wanted, and yet entirely unobtrusive. He was never tired, never sleepy, never sulky, never indiscreet.

In a word, before many days of his sojourn at the vicarage had passed over, the whole household began to wonder how they had managed to get through the few hours that had intervened between the accident, and the arrival of the admirable Paul.

He very soon contrived to let it be understood that money expenses would not at all events be added to the burthen thrown on the vicar's family by his master's accident and illness. Sir John was rich: very rich. No expense need be spared. If, even, it were deemed necessary to send to London for additional medical assistance, they need not hesitate to do so. This, however, did not appear to be desirable. And as soon as Sir John was enabled to understand his own condition, he expressed himself entirely satisfied with the skill and care of the doctors who were attending him.

Lord George Segrave fulfilled his promise of calling. Lord George was a bachelor. He was a great sportsman, and some folks said that he was too fond of other pursuits which persons holding strict views could not approve. Lord George was well known on the turf; and in his youthful days had been a patron of the Prize Ring. Without belonging to the category of those whose lives were openly scandalous, he yet was a man whose acquaintance could by no means be taken to be a certificate of good character.

Retired as was Mr. Levincourt's life at Shipley-in-the-Wold, he yet knew this much of the present occupant of Hammick Lodge, and the knowledge had not served to make Sir John Gale's enforced presence beneath his own roof the more agreeable to him.

But Lord George Segrave soon made it apparent that his acquaintance with Sir John was really and truly no closer than he had stated in his note. It need scarcely be said that Lord George had no idea what a signal service he was rendering to the invalid in his host's opinion, by disclaiming anything like intimacy with the former.

Lord George was rather good-natured, and extremely selfish, and he desired that it should be at once clearly understood that while he was willing to send his servants scouring the country on any errand for Sir John that the vicar might suggest, he (Lord George) by no means

intended to put himself to the personal inconvenience of making frequent visits of inquiry at the vicarage.

66

'Pray command me, Mr. Levincourt,' he said, as he took his leave, "in any way. I quite feel what an uncommon bore this business must be for you. Though, as I said before, Gale may think himself in luck that he didn't get spilt on any other heap of flint stones than the one at your door. I'm sure I hope he'll pull through, and all that sort of thing. You know I had only just a kind of bowing acquaintance with him in Rome. And then he hailed me on the hunting-field at Stubbs's Corner the other day, you know, and-and that sort of thing. Hammick Lodge is twelve miles from Shipley as the crow flies, you know, and-and so I'm afraid I shan't be able to look him up myself very often, you know. But I hope you will do me the favour to command me if there's anything in the world my fellows can do, or-or that sort of thing.

And then Lord George Segrave departed, feeling that he had done all that could reasonably be expected of him.

Dr. Gunnery came again and again. And Mr. Plew was unremitting in his at

tentions.

The house, always quiet, was now hushed into stillness. The piano remained closed. Joe Dowsett ceased to whistle as he worked in the garden. The servants stole up to bed past the door of the guest-room, making every board of the staircase creak under their elaborately cautious footfall. Paul's noiseless step glided through the passages, and he came on you like a ghost.

Riot and merriment are contagious. So are silence, and the hush of suspense. But though the vicarage was stiller than it was wont to be, it was less dull. All the household was conscious of a suppressed excitement, which was merely stirring, and did not reach to pain. Every day, every hour of the day, presented a question whose answer was deferred-Will he live or die? And on the answer to this question hung no agonised human heart-none, at least, within that house.

Was there anywhere a breast fluttered by hopes, oppressed by fears, for the sick man who lay feverish and uneasy on the stranger's bed in Shipley vicarage?

No letters came for him. No friends inquired.

He was discussed in the vicarage kitchen, and in other kitchens in the neighbourhood.

He was discussed in the village ale-house, in the farm-houses, in the tap-room and the stables of the Crown at Shipley Magna. He was spoken of, once or twice, at the different meets of the West Daneshire hunt. Lord George Segrave mentioned that he believed Gale was going on all right, you know, and that sort of thing. That was a niceish nag of his, not the one he had been riding when he was thrown, you know; no, that little chesnut. Lord George wouldn't mind having him. He wondered what the figure would be. If Gale's horses were still at the Crown, he had a good mind to go over and have another look at the chesnut, and to ask Gale's groom whether he thought his master would sell him. He supposed that Gale had had enough of hunting in England.

He was dooced sorry for him, you know, and that sort of thing, but what the

could he expect? With that seat, he (Lord George) only wondered how Gale had been able to stick on his saddle five minutes! And most of the field wondered too. For it has been observed that of all the trials to which human candour, modesty, and magnanimity, are ordinarily apt to be subjected, the trial of comparing your own riding with another man's is the one that most frequently developes mortal frailty.

There was probably not a man who habitually hunted with the West Daneshire, who did not secretly nourish the conviction that his own seat on horseback was admirable, and that the majority of his friends and acquaintances rode like tailors!

Little it mattered to Sir John Gale what was said of him in parlour, kitchen, stable, or hunting-field. Little, perhaps, would it ever matter to him more. For although, as Dr. Gunnery had said, the absolute injuries resulting from the accident were trifling, and to a young and vigorous constitution would have been matters of small importance, yet in this case there seemed to be no elasticity, or power of rebound in the sick man's frame. A low fever took hold of him: a dreadful insidious fever, that might be figured as a weird phantom invisible to the eyes of men, but with two bony cruel hands, whose touch was terrible. Of these hands, one was cold as ice; the other burning, like the heart of a furnace. Alternately the viewless fingers stroked the sick man's body, drawing long shuddering thrills through every limb; or clutched him with a lingering gripe that made his very heart sick. Now, he was consumed

with scorching heat; anon, he shivered to the marrow of his bones.

Mr. Plew did not trouble his brain-or perhaps it were better to say his brain was not troubled; seeing that such fancies come to a man, or stay away from him, without any conscious exercise of his will-with any fantastic embodiment of a Fever PhanBut he reported day after day, that Sir John was in a nasty low way-a ve-ry na-asty, low way-and that he couldn't get him to rally.

tom.

"Do you think he is troubled in his mind?" asked Mr. Levincourt. "Is his heart ill at ease? He is perfectly conscious now; and, I think, clear-headed enough to give orders. And yet Paul tells me that his master has entirely approved what has been done, and what has been left undone. He desires to see no one; has received no letters-except, as Paul tells me, one from his agent sent to the Post Office at Shipley Magna-and, in short, appears to be singularly isolated in the world, for a man of his wealth and position. I should fear his life has not been a very happy one."

"Well," said Mr. Plew, musingly, "I don't know, of course. But but he doesn't seem to me to be at all that sort of man."

Mr. Plew's statement was vague enough: and the vicar did not care to be at the pains of probing the little surgeon's meaning. Yet the latter had a meaning, although he would have found it difficult to put it into clear words.

His meaning was this; that from his observation of Sir John Gale, he had, half instinctively, drawn the conclusion that his rich patient was not a man to allow sentimental troubles to prey on him. Wounded love, tender regrets, affectionate yearnings after a lost friendship, or a longing for softer tendance and closer companionship than could be had from servants and strangers, did not seem to Mr. Plew likely to enter into the category of drawbacks to Sir John's recovery. Material comforts, nay luxuries, he did not lack. As to sentiment-Mr. Plew of course had encountered ailments arising from purely spiritual causes. Very troublesome ailments they were, and very inefficacious proved the power of physic to cure them. He remembered a saying of an old clergyman who had been a famous preacher in the days when Benjamin Plew was walking the hospitals in London. The saying was to the effect that the bodily health of half the world

would be marvellously improved, if a mechanical cunningly contrived piece of granite could be substituted for a heart of flesh in the human breast. "We might defy the doctors then," said this old clergyman, "and life would not be worth having!" But of Sir John Gale, neither Mr. Plew nor the reader, as yet knows enough to enable him to judge whether the baronet's heart be of flesh or of stone.

A fortnight passed: three weeks: a month had nearly dragged itself away since the accident, when the doctors pronounced that Sir John was somewhat stronger.

The phantom hands, the hand of fire and the hand of ice, slowly relinquished their prey. By degrees the intervals be tween their alternate touches grew wider. At last they ceased. Danger was over; and from the beginning of March, the invalid began slowly, but surely, to mend.

WHAT BECOMES OF THINGS?

WHAT becomes of the enormous quantity of objects, natural and artificial, which are daily, weekly, monthly, annually, perennially, produced and sent forth into the world?

What becomes (to plunge in medias res) of all the pictures which our painters paint, and exhibit, at the metropolitan and provincial exhibitions, season after season, year after year? We see them at the Royal Academy, at the Asylum for Rejected Contributions to the Royal Academy, at the Water-colour Galleries, and at all the other Art Exhibition Rooms. What becomes of them all? Of some of them-the best-we know the fate. They go into the hands of certain collectors in the taste for art. Of some others we also know manufacturing districts who luckily have a the fate. They hang up in the studios of our friends who painted them. Sometimes, again, we come upon one in some carver's and gilder's shop. But where are all the rest? Where are the views of "Bettws-y-coed" and has necessitated long journeyings and much of "Loch Coruisk," the production of which sitting out under white umbrellas? Where are the representations of Dead Game, the Italian Peasants, the "Studies of Heads"?

The books, again, what becomes of them? These come out in legions, season after season, representing, in addition to an enormous amount of labour of different kinds, a considerable metallic types, of ink, of millboard, of cloth, accumulation of actual material: of paper, of

of leather. What becomes of all this matter?

What sort of proportion do the number of books that are sold, bear to those that are brought out? And, again, of those that are sold, what becomes? Those that we see on the