I held her hands, and, wondering, asked, “Who are the Craikes, then? What is the doomed house? Why have we passed for all these years as Howe, and lived as village folk at Chelton, if our name be Craike? Hiding from them—my father’s kinsfolk?”

“Yes, yes, hiding from them, and from their wealth—their ill-gotten wealth.”

“Ill-gotten,—how?”

“You’ll know—oh, soon enough, you’ll know.”

“Mr. Bradbury said a week to-day I go away with him. And you—what of you, mother?”

“I stay here!”

“You stay here alone, and I go to London and on to my grandfather’s house? Not I!”

“Yes, you go! You go to your grandfather—to be rich—his heir. You go to bring to nothing p. 43all your uncle’s years of plotting, all the hurt that he has ever done to mine and me. Surely you go! But never shall I set foot in that accursed house.”

p. 43

“And yet you’d have me go.”

She answered, “I’d have you go to your own. I’d have you go, thinking I’ve made you man—not as old Edward Craike or his son Charles. Your father’s son.”

“My father, you have heard of him? He is alive?”

“I have heard nothing—nothing. I think him dead. He does not come to me in dreams as living. Charles Craike would have him dead; and he is surely dead. And oh, at last to have my reckoning with Charles Craike—to have my reckoning, as surely I shall have!”

“Tell me more! I do not understand. Why do you hate the Craikes so much? What wrong have they done you? Tell me all!”

She rose up from her chair and drew her hands from mine. “Your father, whom we loved so much,” she said, “was taken from us. Whether he was done to death, or carried out of England by the plotting of Charles Craike, I do not know. I think his brother guilty, knowing his hate for him and me. Charles Craike has thought to profit by your father’s death. I’d have you go p. 44with Mr. Bradbury to your grandfather. I am assured by Mr. Bradbury that you shall go in safety and return in safety. I fear Charles Craike—I fear for you, as I have feared these years that we have hidden here. I fear the fortune of old Edward Craike, piled 

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