Nothing of any consequence, Guy. I looked over them all, and they were simply business notes. Have you had good

sport, my dear?"

"Pretty fair. Not much of a bag, after all. Silcote is a poor shot, and Nethecote was not there. Well, as I have ten minutes to spare, I may as well look at them now." And he left the room.

"I think Mr. Chichester looks brighter to-day," hazarded Dym; but Mrs. Chichester only sighed, and the silence was broken at last by the sound of his returning step in the corridor. This time he strode by Dym without a word.

66

Mother, when did this letter come?" he asked, in a tone of suppressed anger.

Dym looked almost as frightened as his mother, as she dropped her knitting and adjusted her eye-glass nervously. There was a dark look on the squire's face, and the veins of his temples were swollen like whipcord. If eyes ever flashed, his did then.

"Mother, one would think you had never seen the handwriting before," as Mrs. Chichester slowly and painfully inspected it.

"It is so dark," she stammered. 66 Oh, yes, I see from whom it is now. My dear boy, this was not among the other letters-yes, I am sure of that," speaking eagerly, but with decision.

"You are perfectly certain ?"

"Perfectly; this must have come by a later delivery-the three o'clock, no doubt. I never go into the library after the morning, and no one has brought it to me."

"I knew it was that fool Stewart's fault; and he has told me a lie to cover his blunder. This is the second time he has disobeyed my express orders to bring you my letters when I am out. Well, he shall know I am not to be trifled with." Oh, Guy, my dear boy, do wait a moment, and let me speak to him.

66

Why, mother?" very haughtily.

"You are so hasty, dear; and I know he will be too frightened and sorry to say anything. There, he is gone," as the squire merely walked out of the room with an additional frown on his face. "Oh, what shall I do?" she continued, clasping her hands in distress, and quite oblivious of Dym's presence.

"If Stewart has disobeyed orders, he deserves to be scolded,” observed Dym, soothingly. "Mr. Chichester has a right to be vexed at such negligence."

"Vexed! ah, but he will send him away; and Stewart is such a nice lad, and has a widowed mother and six or seven young brothers and sisters. He sends all his wages home to his mother it will break her heart if Guy sends him away. Oh, what shall I do?" repeated Mrs. Chichester, helplessly. "And I promised Stewart I would raise his wages next month for good conduct."

"Perhaps he will only give him a good scolding, and let him stay," suggested Dym; but Mrs. Chichester shook her head.

"You don't know Guy. I never knew him hard on a first offense; but he rarely passes over a second; and he so hates disobedience !"

"Was the letter so important, then?"

"I don't know; I suppose he thinks so. If it had been any one else's letter, he might not have noticed it so; but now -no, it is all over with Stewart.”

Dym was afraid this was the case when she saw Stewart's face at dinner: the poor lad's eyes were swollen with crying, and his hands quite shook when he handed the plates. She heard him blubbering out the whole tale after dinner into the ear of his sympathizing mistress.

Mrs. Chichester went into the library afterwards, and had a long talk with her son; but she came out with an agitated face, and told Dym her intercession for the culprit had been fruitless.

"He has given him only a week's notice; and the poor boy is so reckless that he declares he will enlist rather than go home and face his mother. I don't think I ever saw Guy so put out before; he will not hear a word."

Dym listened quite scared to this fresh revelation of the squire's character. Could this be Grace Dunster's hero-the man who tended Ned Smithers-who could grieve so tenderly over a dead babe? Strange inconsistency of a great nature warped and disturbed by passion! She little knew, though his mother guessed, that poor Stewart was only the scapegoat of another's fault. She could find nothing comforting to say as Mrs. Chichester sat down and cried softly in sheer vexation

and pity. The eyes that were too brave to weep over their approaching blindness could shed tears over a servant-lad's trouble.

"He must not go," she said, at last, wiping her eyes.

"He

is a good boy, and never told a lie before; and I promised his mother to look after him."

"But what can we do?" asked Dym, disconsolately, "if Mr. Chichester is so unjust, and will not allow you to plead for him?"

Mrs. Chichester's answer was singular.

"Oh, no, you must not say that he is never unjust; my boy is never unkind unless these moods are on him. Ah, well, my dear, it is no use talking; to-morrow we will go and see Honor."

CHAPTER XII.

THE VILLAGE PEACEMAKER.

GOOD sometimes comes out of evil.

Dym derived a crumb of consolation even from Stewart's misfortune. As the quaint old proverb hath it, "It is an ill wind that blows no one any good."

"I shall see Honor again," was her first waking thought the next morning, as she puzzled out of a labyrinth of dreams to find a fresh September wind blowing over the sunny terraces, and "the last rose of summer" tapping softly against her window pane.

That evening at Nidderdale Cottage seemed full of far-off sweetness in the retrospect a confusion of lilies, moonlight, and low-toned talk. Some "long-drawn-out chord of sympathy" never ceased to vibrate strangely in the girl's heart at the mere mention of Honor's name. Sometimes a chance speech from the squire or a trick of his voice brought her vividly before her. The odd abruptness, the undercurrent of deep feeling, the slow vein of mingled thought and satire, now dreamy, now breaking into full current of speech, all returned again and again to Dym's memory. Her interest had been

strongly excited to tell the truth, she was secretly wearying to see Miss Nethecote's face again.

But since the village flower-show they had never met. Twice a day on Sundays Dym had caught sight of a pure Greek profile and gray silk dress in a little side-pew appropriated to the female singers; for the vicar, in spite of his High-Church proclivities, had not yet succeeded in organizing a trained choir, though report whispered that a few plowmen and farmers' lads were being secretly drilled by the vicar and Miss Nethecote in a far-off barn, not a great distance from Nidderdale Cottage.

In default of white surplices and boy-choristers, the choirstalls remained suggestively empty, and the cantori side was distantly represented by the miller's stalwart sons, a harmonious blacksmith, and the baker's assistant, who was fictitiously supposed to have the purest bass in the village; while the decani side responded in a variety of sweet trebles, led by Miss Nethecote's fine soprano.

Dym sat with Mrs. Chichester in the squire's pew, which commanded a good view of the chancel and vacant stalls; the squire himself preferred occupying one of the free seats near the door; he always sat on a bench in company with Dame Ford, and an old patriarch in a smock-frock, who looked about a hundred, and was only sixty-five and toothless. Dym, feeling faint one Sunday, and sitting in the cool porch a while to recover herself, saw the patriarch, with horn spectacles on nose, looking over the squire's big book and whining out a dreary falsetto. How rich and full Guy's tones sounded by contrast!

Dym marveled not a little over this whim of the squire's. "Does not St. James tell us to have no respect of persons ?" he returned, gravely, when Dym had hazarded some inquiry as to this curious choice of seat. "Though I am a Broad Churchman, Miss Elliott, I am all for free and open churches. There is no rank in religion, and for myself I would as soon go to heaven with the dame and old Martin as with your titled folks."

"Is that why you sit near the door?" asked Dym, with unusual boldness, for she was curious on the subject; but the squire only turned off the question with a jest. He had met them as usual at the bottom of the steps, and had given his

mother his arm. It was their custom to linger a moment and exchange greetings and little civilities with their neighbors. "Kindness is cheap; it costs nothing to pat a curly head and ask after mother, and you have no idea how popular it makes one," he said, once, laughing. Sometimes some wee toddling mite would run out from the group of school-children and clasp the squire round the knee; if the cheeks were clean and rosy, there were kisses and half-pence as well as pats; but they always left him if they caught sight of Honor. Miss Nethecote always came out last with her brother, and the children clustered round her like bees round their queenboys as well as girls. Honor would take a chubby hand or two and walk on swiftly-she never volunteered more than a smile and a nod to the squire's party as she passed.

"You shall have plenty of lollipops if you will stay with me," the squire said once to a little village beauty that he much affected; she had come running to him over the graves with her red hood down on her neck and her fair hair streaming. "You will stay with me, Susie, won't you?" Susie would not.

But

"I'll give 'ee a kiss, but I must go to Nannygoat"—for thereto had Miss Nethecote's name degenerated on baby lips. "Great mammie, tell he to put Susie down."

"She is always wild to go to the good lady, Mr. Chitterful,” explained Dame Ford, apologetically, for Susie was her grandchild.

"Faithless Susie, like the rest of your fair sex," quoth the squire, as he put her down gently from his arms. "There, run away, you baby.' "Red riding-hood" Susie had hold of the gray silk after that, and trotted confidingly along, chattering in her broken baby dialect to Honor.

"It is well to be Squire Chitterful—do you admire Dame Ford's pronunciation, Miss Elliott ?—but it is better to be 'the good lady' isn't it, now?"

Evidently Miss Nethecote heard him, for she colored high as she passed on. Dym found out afterwards that Miss Nethecote was chiefly known by this name in the village; and certainly the contest for popularity between the two might have run hot and high. Perhaps the balance was in Honor's favor. "You see, the squire have moods, and Miss Nethecote have none," as an old almsman once expressed it.