Just, with a hatred that was altogether unreasonable.

"I saw you here yesterday," she said, looking at me earnestly. "I need friends badly—and you have a good, kind face. Will you be my friend?"

I do not know what words I said; I only know that there, in the dark garden, as I bent over her little hands and put them to my lips, I vowed myself in my heart to her service.

CHAPTER III.

THE MISSING MAN.

I find it difficult to write, in my halting fashion, of what my sensations were at that time. God knows what good was in me, and only God and time could bring that good out of me; for I had had no childhood, and my manhood had been a thing thwarted and blighted.

You have to understand that in a matter of a few days I had lived years of an ordinary life; had been in prison, and had escaped; had come near to death; had found myself buried and done with, and yet enlisted on life under a new name; and, to crown it all, now come face to face with someone who believed in me and trusted me—broken reed though I was to lean upon.

I stood in the dark grounds, holding the girl's hands and looking into her eyes: and that was a new experience for me. I remembered how someone else—dead, and shamefully buried in the precincts of a prison—had held her hands but a little time before, and had begged that he might help her. Well, he was past all that now; and I, with my poor record behind me, stood, miraculously enough, in his place. Yet there were things I must understand, if I would help her at all: I wanted to know why she had fled from her guardian, and why, in his turn, he had chased her through the grounds.

"What were you afraid of?" I asked her gently; and it was pleasant to me that she should forget to take her hands out of mine.

"Of him," she said, with a glance towards the house; and I thought she shivered. "I wonder if you can understand what I feel, and of what I am afraid?" she went on, looking at me curiously. "I do not even know your name."

I laughed a little bitterly. "You must indeed be in need of friends if you come to me," I answered.

"But my name is John New, and I am a—a friend of Dr. Just."

"Oh!" She shrank away from me with a startled look. "I did not 

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