strolled out, after taking a walking stick from its place in the hall.

“A dead man’s house—a dead man’s cigar—a dead man’s walking stick!” he said to himself, as he went down the long drive. “I don’t like it; it smothers me. And yet—and yet——”

He did not finish the sentence; some thought was evidently running in his mind, to the exclusion of everything else. He turned away from the village, and made his way across some fields, and sat down, in the winter sunlight, on the footstone of a stile. Looking cautiously about him, he pulled from his pocket the papers he had taken from the body of Dandy Chater.

There was a cheque book, with one cheque filled up, even to the signature, but still remaining in the book. There was a pocketbook, with various entries in regard to betting, and to sporting engagements generally. And there were one or two letters, in the same handwriting as that seen by him that day. These last he read carefully.

They were couched in terms of friendly advice, and even of remonstrance—with sometimes a little note of anger to be read between the lines. Yet they breathed a very true and very disinterested affection, and were, in every way, full of true womanly feeling.

“Ah—Margaret Barnshaw—(sometimes she signs herself ‘Madge,’ I see)—that’s the lady who’s going to marry me—which is more than I bargained for, when I stepped into Dandy Chater’s shoes. Well, I’ll go through these more carefully later on. Now, as it’s evident that I am expected at the Chater Arms, I’ll make my way there.”

He did so; to the accompaniment of friendly nods, and rustic curtesyings and salutations. But at the Chater Arms he received a shock.

It was a bright little place—much better and more cleanly kept than the house he had patronised on the previous day. From its well sanded floors to the black beams which crossed its ceilings, it was a picture of comfort and prosperity. And, seated behind the hospitable-looking bar, was the neatest and trimmest landlady imaginable.

Yet it was precisely this landlady—or the sight of her—which gave Mr. Philip Crowdy such an unpleasant shock. As he entered the door, and she turned her head to look at him, he had but one glance at her; yet that glance was sufficient to sweep him back through many years, and across many miles of land and sea. If the woman had risen calmly and awfully from the grave, her appearance could not have been more startling to the man.

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