may give you another chance, and tell him later, if I find you deserving. What is your address ? '

"I am at the "Bull and Staff," muttered Felton. It was a small public-house of no very good repute.

'Well, stay there,' Stephen Clode answered after a moment's thought. But see you get into no harm. And since you are living on the rector's bounty, you may say so.'

The man looked puzzled as well as relieved, but, stealing a doubtful glance at the curate's dark face, he found his eyes still upon him, and cowered afresh. Yes, take care,' said Clode, smiling unpleasantly as he saw the effect his look produced. Do not try to evade me or it will be the worse for you, Felton. And now go! But see you take nothing from here.'

The detected one cast a sly glance at the half-rifled box which still lay on the carpet at his feet, a few gold coins scattered round it; then he looked up again. It is all there, sir,' he said, cring

ing. 'I had but just begun.'

'Then go!' said the curate impatiently, pointing with emphasis to the door. 'Go, I tell you!'

The man's presence annoyed and humiliated him so that he felt a positive relief when the valet's back was turned. Left alone he stood listening, a cloud on his brow, until the faint sound of the outer door being pulled to reached his ear; and then, stooping hastily, he gathered up the sovereigns and half-sovereigns, which lay where they had fallen, and put them into the box. This done, he rose and laid the box itself upon the table by his side; and again he stood, still and listening, a dark shade on his face.

Long ago, almost at the moment of his entrance, he had seen the pale shimmer of papers at the back of the little cupboard ; and his heart had bounded at the sight. Now, still listening stealthily, he thrust in his hand and drew out one of the bundles of papers and opened it. The papers were parish accounts in his own handwriting! With a gesture of fierce impatience he thrust them back and drew out others, and, disappointed again in these, exchanged them hastily for a third set. In vain! The last were as worthless to him as the first.

He was turning away baffled and defeated, when he saw lying at the back of the lower compartment of the cupboard, whence the cash-box had come, two or three smaller packets, consisting apparently of letters. The curate reached hastily for one of these, and the discovery that it contained some of Lindo's private

accounts, dated before his appointment, made his face flush and his fingers tremble with eagerness. He glanced nervously round the room and stopped to listen; then, moving the candle a little nearer, he ran his eye over the papers. But here, too, though the scent was hot, he took nothing, and he exchanged the packet for one of the others. Looking at this, he saw that it was indorsed in the rector's handwriting, 'Letters relating to the Claversham Living.'

'At last,' Clode muttered, his eyes burning. I have it now.' The string which bound the packet was knotted tightly, and his fingers seemed all thumbs as he laboured to unfasten it. But he succeeded at length, and opening the uppermost letter (they were all folded across), saw that it was written from Lincoln's Inn Fields. My dear sir,' he read-just so far; and then-with a mighty crash which sounded awfully in his ears—the door behind him was flung open just as he had flung it open himself an hour before, and, dropping the letter, he sprang round, to find the young rector confronting him with a face of stupid astonishment.

CHAPTER IX.

TOWN TALK.

He was a man, as the reader will perhaps have gathered, of many shifts, and cool-headed; but for a moment he felt something of the anguish of discovery which had so tortured the surprised servant. The table shook beneath his hand, and it was with difficulty he repressed a wild impulse to overturn the candle, and escape in the darkness. He did repress it, however; nay, he forced his eyes to meet the rector's, and twisted his lips into the likeness of a smile. But when he thought of the scene afterwards he found his chief comfort in the reflection that the light had been too faint to betray his full embarrassment.

Naturally the rector was the first to speak. Clode!' he ejaculated, with a soft whistle, his surprise above words. 'Is it you? Why, man,' he continued, still standing with his hand on the door and his eyes devouring the scene, 'what is up?'

The money-box stood open at the curate's side, and the letters lay about his feet where they had fallen. The little cupboard yawned among the books. No wonder that Lindo's amazement, as he gradually took it all in, rather increased than diminished, or VOL. XVII.-NO. 98, N.S.

7

that the curate's heart for a moment stood still: that his tongue was dry and his throat husky when he at last found his voice. It is all right. I will explain it,' he stammered, almost upsetting the table in his agitation. I expected you before,' he' added fussily, moving the light.

6

'The dickens you did!' the rector ejaculated. It was difficult for him not to believe that his arrival had been the last thing expected.

'Yes,' returned the curate, with a little snap of defiance. He was recovering himself, and could look the other in the face now. 'But I am glad you did not come before, all the same.'

'Why?'

'I will explain.'

The light which the one candle gave was not so meagre that Clode's embarrassment had altogether escaped Lindo; and had the latter been a suspicious man he might have had queer thoughts, and possibly expressed them. As it was, he was only puzzled, and when the curate said he would explain, answered simply, ' Do.'

'The truth is,' said Clode, beginning with an effort, ‘I have taken a good deal on myself, and I am afraid you will blame me, Mr. Lindo. If so, I cannot help it.' His face flushed, and he beat a tattoo on the table with his fingers. 'I came across,' he continued, 'to borrow a book a little before ten. The lights here were out; but, to my surprise, your house-door was open.'

'As I found it myself!' the rector exclaimed.

'Precisely. Naturally I had misgivings, and I looked into the hall. I saw a streak of light proceeding from the doorway of this room, and I came in softly to see what it meant. I heard a man moving about in here, and I threw open the door much as you did.'

'Did you?' said Lindo eagerly. And who was it—the man, I mean?'

'That is just what I cannot tell you,' the curate replied. His face was pale, but there was a smile upon it, and he met the other's gaze without flinching. He had settled his plan now.

'He got away, then?' said the rector, disappointed.

'No. He did not try either to escape or to resist,' was the

answer.

'But was he really a burglar?'

'Yes.'

'Then where is he?' The rector looked round as if he

expected to see the man lying bound on the floor. What did you do with him?'

'I let him go.'

Lindo opened his mouth, and whistled; and when he had done whistling still stood with his mouth open and a face of the most complete mystification. 'You let him go?' he repeated mechanically, but not until after a pause of half a minute or so. Why, may I ask?'

'You have every right to ask,' the curate answered with firmness, and yet despondently. 'I will tell you why-why I let him go, and why I cannot tell you his name, Mr. Lindo. He is a parishioner of yours. It was his first offence, and I believe him to be sincerely penitent. I believe, too, that he will never repeat the attempt, and that the accident of my entrance saved him from a life of crime. I may have been wrong-I dare say I was wrong,' continued the curate, growing excited-excitement came very easily to him at the moment- 'but I cannot go back from my word. The man's misery moved me. I thought what I should have felt in his place, and I promised him, in return for his pledge that he would live honestly in the future, that he should go free, and that I would not betray his name to anyone-to anyone!'

'Well!' exclaimed the rector, his tone one of unbounded admiration in every sense of the word. When you do a thing nobly, my dear fellow, you do do it nobly, and no mistake! I wonder who it was! But I must not ask you.'

'No,' said Clode. And now,' he continued, still beating the tattoo on the table, you do not blame me greatly?'

'I do not, indeed. No. Only I think perhaps that you should have retained the right to tell me.'

'I should have done so,' said the curate regretfully.

'He has taken nothing, I suppose?' the rector continued, turning to the cupboard, and, not only satisfied with the explanation, but liking Clode better than he had liked him before; speaking to him, indeed, with increased frankness.

'No,' the other answered. 'I was putting things straight when you entered and startled me. He had dropped the money about the floor, but you will find it right, I think. He has made a mess among the papers, I fear, and damaged the cupboard door in forcing it, but that is the extent of the mischief. By the way,' the curate added, 'I have a key to this cupboard at my lodgings. Williams gave it to me. He only kept parish matters here. I must let you have it.'

'Right,' said the rector carelessly; and, a few more words passed between them as to the attempted robbery, and the manner in which the outer door had been opened. Then the curate took his hat and prepared to go. You had a pleasant party, I suppose?' he said, pausing and turning when half-way across the hall. 'A very pleasant one,' Lindo answered with enthusiasm.

They are nice people,' said Clode smoothly.

'They are very nice. You told me I should find them so, and you were right. Good-night.'

'Good-night.'

Such harmless words! And yet they roused the curate's jealousy anew. As he walked home, the church clock tolling midnight above his head, he drank in no peaceful influence from the dark stillness or the solemn sound. He was gnawed by no remorse, but by fresh hatred of the man who had surprised and confounded him, and forced him to lie and quibble in order to escape from a dishonourable position. If you would make a man your enemy, come upon him when he is doing something of which he is ashamed. He will fear you afterwards, but he will hate you more. In the curate's case it was only he who knew himself discovered, so that he had no ground for fear. But he hated none the less vigorously.

And in some strange way an ugly rumour of which the new rector was the subject began in a few days to gain currency in the town. It was an ill-defined rumour, coming to one thing in one person's mouth and to a different thing in another's-a kind of cloud on the young man's fair fame, shifting from moment to moment, and taking ever a fresh shape, yet always a cloud.

One whispered that he had obtained the presentation as the reward of questionable services rendered to the patron. Another that he had forged his own deed of presentation, if such a thing existed. A third that he had been presented by mistake; and a fourth that he had deceived the authorities as to his age. It was noticeable that these rumours began low down in the social scale of the town and worked their way upwards, which was odd; and that, whatever form the rumour took, there was not one who heard it who did not within a fortnight or three weeks come to associate it with the presence of a seedy, down-looking, unwholesome man, who was much about the rector's doorway, and, when he was not there, was generally to be found at the 'Bull and Staff. Whether he was the disseminator of the reports, or, alike with the rector,