At last I mastered my emotion. I was not dead yet; hope still remained to me. Perhaps my enemy might be induced to relent. The attempt at least was worth a trial.

'Mr. Sugg,' I said, as calmly as was possible under the circumstances, I admit that I did not treat you altogether well. But remember the provocation you gave me. Not content with appropriating my property, you threatened my life. If I took yours it was in self-defence. Recollect, too, that, at considerable inconvenience to myself, I lent you my body that you might save your own reputation. I do not wish to recriminate. Nevertheless I cannot but feel that you have used me unfairly.'

I spoke feelingly, and my words seemed to have their effect. 'What do you want me to do?' said Sugg's spirit.

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'The merest trifle,' I continued, gaining confidence as I proceeded. Simply to speak a word in my favour. With you to corroborate my story-without, of course, referring to the way in which you came by your own death-I cannot fail in obtaining a reprieve. Come,' I added coaxingly, 'say that you will.' Then, after a short interval, as he did not answer, I added, 'Surely you will show me some mercy!'

'I don't know what you mean by mercy,' he rejoined. The words were the very same that I had used to him on that fatal night.

I recognised then that my case was hopeless. Ah,' I cried in despair, ‘if you were a man you would not let an innocent being go to the scaffold for your offence.'

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Again I heard that horrible chuckle which had before chilled me to the bone. If I were a man,' he laughed; 'and whose fault is it, pray, that I am not? But there, I can't stay here arguing any longer. Good-night and pleasant dreams.'

And with a repetition of the weird laugh he vanished.

T. MALCOLM WATSON.

99

6

'The Wearing of the Green.'

BY BASIL, AUTHOR OF LOVE THE DEBT.'

When laws can stop the blades of grass
From growing as they grow;

And when the flowers in summer time
Their colours daren't show:

Why then I'll change the colour that
I wear in my caubeen;

But, till that day, please God, I'll stick
To the Wearing of the Green.

CHAPTER XXV.

A NIGHT OF TERROR.

Whom when his lady saw, to him she ran

With hasty joy: to see him made her glad,

And sad to view his visage pale and wan

Who erst in flowers of freshest youth was clad.- The Fairie Queen. THE sun had some time set when they started from the station, and before they reached Mossmoor the dove's twilight' had deepened into the raven's twilight,' and 'all the paths were dim.' At the edge of the moor the road Y-shaped right and left, and Reid unhesitatingly took the right branch. He remembered the porter's saying, Keep to the right,' but had forgotten, or, in his prepossession with the wretched prospect before him, he had not heeded, the limitation, 'when you get out of the station yard.' Anyway, he had got it fixed firmly in his head that he was to keep throughout to the right, which, most unfortunately, was the wrong road. That he had got wrong did not, however, occur to Reid until they had gone the full distance named by the porter without a sign of the appearance or of the approach to a town, village, or station. There was no sign, indeed, even of a house, and, from the moment they had entered upon the moor, they hadn't met a creature. Suddenly Reid stopped to strike a match to look at his watch.

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'Good gracious!' he exclaimed, 'it's half-past nine; we must have lost our way!' Norah was silent in sheer dismay. That confounded porter!' added Reid, enraged with every one but himself.

'Oh, do let us hurry back!' cried Norah.

There's no use hurrying back or forward now,' he answered irritably.

6

Was there ever anything so'

He broke off as though no words could express his disgust at

the situation. His sole thought of Norah in the matter was that she was responsible for involving him in such a ridiculous, unpleasant, and compromising situation. In truth, her peremptory rejection of him had so mortified his self-esteem that his light love, like a sweet light wine, was soured in a moment into a rather biting vinegar. Guardati d' aceto di vin dolce,' to use in a new sense that happy Italian proverb. So much of his love for her as was not self-love slightly disguised had but little body in it, and was quickly and tartly soured by the souring of his self-love.

'We'd better push on,' he said, after a pause of self-commiseration. 'We must be nearer some place ahead than that little hole of a Selborne.' So saying he walked on, with Norah silent at his side. Presently he said, perfunctorily, 'I'm afraid you must be very tired.'

'Not very, thank you.' But, in truth, she was worn out completely. Not being over-strong to begin with, she was pretty nearly done up with walking and climbing before they started from the station. Since, she had had a long hill-climb to the moor and then two miles on a mere skeleton of a road-all bones and boulders, from which the flesh, so to speak, had been worn away with traffic, or washed away by rains. But, besides this physical fatigue, there was the depression of such a walk, after such a scene, with such a companion! And now upon this comes the nightmare horror of hopelessness of escape from her wretchedness-lost on this endless moor at night-all night, perhaps! What would her father think? It was characteristic of Norah that she never for a moment troubled herself about what Mrs. Grundy (as impersonated by the Summers family or any one else) would think. Indeed, she never for a moment thought of the thing herself from Mrs. Grundy's point of view. She was swallowed up in anxiety about her father's anxiety. Her secluded life, which had given her a woman's self-reliance, had left her the innocence of a child, and her idea of her father's fears for her was a child's idea altogether. Such as it was, however, it constituted the greater part of her unhappiness. If only she could have telegraphed to her father to set his mind at rest about her safety, she would have felt comparatively easy.

After they had walked on for some time in silence, it occurred at last to Reid that if Norah was responsible for the compromising and intolerable situation in which they found themselves, at least she was paying the worst part of the penalty. Therefore he began to relent towards her in some measure.

You must be quite done up, Miss Wyndham; I wish you'd take my arm.'

"No, thank you,' replied she frigidly, in her disgust at his selfishness and sullenness. He put the rebuff down to pruderyperhaps natural in so compromising a situation-and did not again break silence till he was brought to a sudden stand. The road seemed gradually to grow more and more rugged, to judge at least by their many stumbles, for they couldn't see a yard before them, till at last Reid nearly fell over a tangled mass of heather.

'I'm afraid we've lost the road!' he cried in dismay when he had recovered himself.

After striking three or four matches, which burned steadily in the still night, he discerned the track-a mere bridle-path-from which they had strayed, and helped Norah to regain it. Along this they crept slowly and with extreme caution in the fear of again losing it, and yet in another hour they lost it, or, perhaps, it lost itself in the heather.

It didn't seem to matter much to Norah, who was done up so utterly that she couldn't have dragged her weary limbs another mile along the best road in England. While Reid was trying to recover the path, she sat down in the heather in a stupor of weariness and wretchedness. She tried to rouse herself a little when Reid, after half an hour's search, returned to say that they had lost the track hopelessly.

'What on earth are we to do?' he exclaimed helplessly and querulously.

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'I'm afraid I'm a drag on you,' replied she. Perhaps if you would leave me here you could find some village or house.'

But I can't find the path even,' he answered irritably. 'Besides, I couldn't think of leaving you here alone,' he added as an after-thought.

'I don't in the least mind being left alone,' cried Norah with evident and earnest sincerity; for it was a very weak expression of her longing to be left alone and allowed to rest. Do, pray, try by yourself to find some house.'

But then I should probably lose you.'

Norah could have survived this, and, on the whole, would have infinitely preferred it either to the resumption of their weary tramp or to his night-long company on the heath.

Oh no; if you should find a house and send some one to guide me there, I can hear and answer if he will shout. You can hear a sound a long way to-night; or, if you could spare me a few matches, I could make up a fire.'

'A fire! By George! the very thing. We may either find the road by it, or some one may find us by it.'

So saying, he proceeded to pluck and heap up the heather to the height of his waist, which, with the help of some paper, he soon had ablaze. It was a very effective signal-much more effective than he had meant, or hoped it to be-for the flames spread in a moment to the surrounding heather, which was dry as tinder. The fire, like some fierce creature let suddenly loose, darted for a short distance in leaps and bounds, then disappeared for a moment, and then, as though roused from its covert, reappeared and raged wildly on all sides. Reid, after a faint attempt to stamp it out, which resulted only in the singeing of his beard, stood looking helplessly on in dismay. Here was a conflagration which would be reported in all the papers with the minutest details of its origin. Was there ever, he thought, such infernal ill-luck? The only thing to be done was to get Norah to some house before they were surprised together by those whom the fire would be certain to attract.

Meanwhile Norah, who had started up in consternation, was thinking, after her foolish manner, of the mischief and misery the fire would cause not only to man, but to her special clientsthe birds. In excuse for her, it must be said that she saw some of the birds, which rose in wild terror as the fire roared and raged onward, dash down again madly into its midst. But her thoughts were soon diverted to herself, for the fire took a sudden turn in her direction. It was amazing, considering the stillness of the night, how fast and far it spread. In a few minutes what at first was a sinuous stream of fire widened into a lake which began to swallow up the darkness of its shores on all sides at once, so that Reid and Norah had to retreat before it.

'We must find a bare place,' he said; and they soon reached an open space completely bare, and bald even, without a blade of grass upon its surface.

'If you wouldn't mind waiting here for me for a few minutes, I shall climb the hill to look for some house.'

After he had gone some minutes a wind sprang suddenly up, and, driving the fire racing before it in a flood, showed her what he sought a house right in its track. A sudden horror of fear lest the family should, through their carelessness, be burned alive in their beds filled her heart to the exclusion of all thought of him or of herself. She had plenty of time to warn them and return, but even of this she had no thought at the moment. She ran round to leeward of the house, her fatigue forgotten in her excitement, and would have reached it within ten minutes, if the rough ground and the thick and high tufts of heather hadn't made swift progress impossible. She stumbled at almost every other