Meantime Mr. Finnigan had sought out Dr. Ralph and heard news that subsequently proved to be of utmost import. That very night Luke Kellinack, without the doctor's sanction, though he had protested that to keep the unfortunate gentleman captive any longer would gravely jeopardize his recovery, had taken the prisoner out to sea. The lieutenant had been taken ill and brought back by Luke in company with a young female, and was now sleeping under the influence of drugs; but he would in a day or two be well enough to leave, if the liberation were effected with due precaution.

This determined Mr. Finnigan upon his course of action Lady Evangeline must be spared a meeting and must be put off the scent until some means had been devised for secretly and safely setting her husband free. Accordingly he returned to the crypt, saying that their prisoner was at liberty and that Dr. Ralph knew nothing about it. Lady Evangeline rose at once and, with something less than her usual control, plied the chaplain with question and command.

"But where is he? Above stairs? This storm will kill him if he's out in it! You must get men from somewhere and at once! . . . Oh, Mr. Finnigan, you will forgive my importunity. It's all so pitiful and I . . .”

She turned her head away sharply.

"My lady," said Mr. Finnigan very earnestly, "of one thing I am persuaded: the gentleman is well taken care of. Only one man could have set him free, and he, I swear, will entreat him well. But it is no use rousing the neighbourhood. He is, for aught I know to the contrary, nearing Alderney by this time."

Alderney! At sea in such weather?" said Lady Evangeline, in utter dismay, yet remembering the postmark of her letter.

My lady, I pray you, let me serve you. You would not, for Mr. Walrond's sake, appear in this matter, I think. He cannot desire, on many grounds, his

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identification to be divulged. Indeed, for reasons I may not tell you, I may assure your ladyship that I know he is in safe keeping and shelter !'

Lady Evangeline looked straight into his eyes for three seconds: in spite of his devotion, the facile Irishman did not flinch in his deception.

"Mr. Finnigan, we must get back to the Hall. I can walk, I am sure I would prefer not to stay here while you get horses."

As they fought their way through the storm, Mr. Finnigan endeavoured to make clear certain points. Mr. Walrond would have been taken in very warm fisherman's garb to avoid detection; and to some distant point whence he would not be able to conjecture the original place of his detention. Also would she please remember that he had probably not heard the name of any one who frequented the crypt and caves. "It is always, among ourselves, Parson, Chaplain, Captain, and so forth."

"But he must have asked for your names?" she said incredulously.

"I doubt if he was interested enough in us-we being not of his world. Indeed, my lady," he stopped shortly, as if considering his words, and then resumed, "if I am not disrespectful, I venture to think he understood the two dogs better than us men, who, after all, ministered to him and restored him. Yet he asked me once if the parson was not as mad as the doctor! I wonder if you think so, my lady? It's only the simple folk-and I-that think him the wisest man that we ever consorted with. A Bayard too in chivalry, fearless of man or devil, or storms or fevers. The tinners, as the miners are named, are Wesleyans to a man, but they come to our friend in sickness, for baptism or burying, for marrying and churching, and even for Holy Communion. Yet they vow he has not found Grace, or 'tis the fourth Commandment he'd keep more strict and holy, and renounce the old devil and his

merry-maid for once and all. But he is touched in the upper storey-touched by the Holy Ghost, my lady!" Please rank me with the simple folks, Mr. Finnigan!" she said, very quietly.

"Then, my lady, am I not right in surmising that you know him better than you would have me suppose?" "Perhaps," was the only answer, "but till to-day, I had not seen him for sixteen years!"

When they reached the hall, Lady Beckensawe was almost scandalized at finding her friend none the worse for her foolhardy expedition. Horses had been sent. by the bridle path to meet them, a roaring fire and relays of warming pans were doing duty in the chamber of her ladyship, who would, it was supposed, be carried thither unconscious The apothecary was sent for and it was thought he would bleed her; but the poor man whom she consented to see that he might earn his fee, went away in great distress because she refused even a sudorific as a precautionary measure. Mr. Finnigan declared that this apothecary's advice never varied : "Take Time by the forelock and bleed: or, should there be contra-indication, exhibit a blue pill! "

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CHAPTER XXI

CONFLICTING DUTIES

ADY EVANGELINE'S delight in adventure had made her adorable to all healthy people. Of nursery correction she possibly had none. Of school discipline she had needed so little that she was at once the despair and delight of her beloved Madame Lawrie. She learned her tasks with astonishing ease, and turned all school-room precepts into ridicule. One delight was to burlesque in the dormitory Madame Lawrie's divinity lecture "On the Presages of Spiritual Death." She would wrap her little form in sheet and hoop, and, with indrawn cheeks and scraggy hands, would wickedly imitate her mistress's solemn tones. Or, with hairbrush for kit and fan for bow, with a long sable boa like a prodigious tail hanging from beneath her night-dress, she would ridicule the dancing master and frisk about in mockery of the stately minuet. Sometimes her pitifulness would discover a school-fellow's difficulties where a mistress had totally failed, and, by loving pains, would change the child's burden into pleasure. Madame Lawrie, wise beyond her century, once wrote to Lord Blakistonbury in anxiety lest he should misunderstand his daughter's native enthusiasm, "Though I cannot but regard it as a danger in her ladyship's character and as a constant menace to authority, yet it is of so ingenuous and captivating a nature that I should be unwilling to suppress it. Were the same particularities pourtrayed in one of the nobler sex, I should apprehend

either the délabrement of its possessor, or his élévation to some notorious position in the land—perhaps as a Mr. Wilkes or a Mr. Burke, if your Lordship will pardon a not disrespectful plaisanterie.'

But his Lordship had not been sympathetic: "plague on the little gipsy!" had been his sole reply. "Take my advice and permission: trounce her soundly, Madam, and Deuce take her enthusiastick squeals!"

But if Lady Evangeline was still young enough to enjoy a long walk in the snow, her soul had perhaps aged somewhat in the discipline of her unhappy marriage; and the wet blanket of convention, then dominating all intellectual adventure, had certainly shaken her spiritual confidence, even though she had been, thanks to Mr. Trevenna, steadily freeing herself from the fashionable slavery. Little wonder, therefore, that she scarcely slept upon the night following her expedition to St. Neot's, even though she was physically none the worse for it. The fierce, alternating moods of joy and anguish were nigh intolerable. At one moment she felt as if the restraint she had systematically practised, the philosophic maxims she had harboured, the religious resignation she had forced upon herself, were swept away the light in which all these for the moment vanished and meant nothing at all, was shining all about her as never before. There in a half-ruined little church, she had once again listened to that silvery voice tremulous in its reading of gospel and prayers, the voice she had not heard since those seven halcyon days, the redletter week of the long years. Middle-aged, as she called herself, a mother of brave sons as she was, the spirit of her girlhood rose once more from its grave in an exuberant joie de vivre. And the desire for that joy, wherever it should lead her, was knocking, knocking at her soul, demanding free entry. In her old passionate honesty, she even claimed that it was an angelic voice that now bade her get speech with Christopher, openly and fearlessly...