of dreamy unreality seemed to steal over the pair so unaccustomed to the City. They were bound on a very serious mission, and yet, had they been walking in their sleep, they would have felt their mission more actual than was the case.

Is Sir John Moffat in?' asked Doctor Dilton, going up to one of the clerks. Remembering the morning's inquiries,his companion deemed it best to leave all preliminaries to him.

'Yes, Sir John is in,' answered the person addressed.

'Can I see him?' asked the doctor.

The clerk did not know. He got down off his stool and went and held a whispered conference with the elderly bookkeeper previously mentioned, then he came back.

'Sir John is engaged just now,' he explained.

When will he be disengaged? 'I am sure I can't say. It is a very bad time to see him; and this is foreign-post night alsoand-'

Doctor Dilton moved back a step and spoke to his companion, who remained near the door.

'I must see him,' was the answer; which reaching the clerk, he asked if Mr. Bickton would do.

'No,' Doctor Dilton was quite sure Mr. Bickton would not do.

'Well, then, sir, I am very much afraid I must trouble you to call again, or write, because-'

"You had better refer the matter to Sir John himself,' said the gentleman standing near the door, stepping forward. 'I do not think he would very greatly thank you for compelling me to state my business to him on the door-step, which I shall do if I fail to see him in his office.'

There was something in the tone

and manner of this address which moved even the clerk, who happened, like all modern clerks, to be a very Cerberus for preventing intruders crossing the business threshold.

'Very well, sir,' he said resignedly. If you give me your name, and state the nature of the matter you have called about, I will see what can be done; but I am very much afraid-'

'Say a gentleman from Australia wishes to see him on private business,' interrupted Doctor Dilton diplomatically.

'I am sorry to say I must trouble you for your card,' persisted the clerk.

'Bless my soul !' exclaimed the doctor pettishly. Any one would think this was Buckingham Palace, and you Lord Chamberlain ;' but his companion produced a card.

'Here,' he said, 'give this to your master; and remember you tell him it is private businessstrictly private.'

The clerk took the card and looked at it; then he went away into some remote region, for they heard the closing of two or three doors behind him.

Doctor Dilton and his friend stood together by the door, and at a distance from the clerks who remained.

'I happened to have one of the General's cards in my case,' said the gentleman from Australia, in a low voice, and I sent that in.’

If it should not be he after all?' suggested the doctor.

'I am sure it is he; but you will know,' was the answer.

Yes, I shall know,' agreed Doctor Dilton.

If you step this way, Sir John will see you,' said the clerk, returning almost on the instant.

Following him they passed through a second door, along a

passage, through a third door, then across a room out of which another opened.

In this inner apartment, behind a table on which a shaded lamp was placed, sat a gentleman engaged in writing. As his visitors entered he bowed, half rose, and, motioning them to be seated, resumed his chair.

The clerk left the room, carefully closing the door behind him. There was a moment's silence, which Sir John broke by asking, What can I do for you, gentlemen?'

As he looked up and spoke the light fell full upon his face, which had previously been in shadow.

Then Doctor Dilton, turning towards his companion, gave an almost imperceptible nod. Unblinded by passion, undistracted by doubt, he, at least, could have sworn to him amongst ten thousand.

'I want you to tell me where my wife is.'

Strange as the words were, the way in which they were spoken was stranger still. They were tumbled out one on the top of another, as if the man who uttered them hastened to deliver himself of the sentence ere his breath failed altogether.

A very desperate-looking man, with his thick hair tangled over his forehead, his face brown with exposure to the sun, his heavy beard and moustache, his anxious eyes and distressed expression.

'There is some mistake, I think,' suggested Sir John mildly, glancing at Doctor Dilton; for indeed at the moment he believed there was this much of a mistake, that one of his visitors was mad and the other his keeper.

'No, there is no mistake,' replied the stranger, whose hand grasped the edge of the table convulsively.

'I really am at a loss,' said Sir John, once again glancing towards Doctor Dilton, to imagine what you mean. How should I know anything about your wife? I never heard your name till within the last five minutes; and he looked towards the card which lay before him on the table.

That is not my name,' explained the other, following the direction of Sir John's eyes. 'I only sent it in because your people would not take my message to you otherwise.'

În a dazed vacant sort of way Sir John turned from the speaker to Doctor Dilton. Some sort of recollection seemed dawning upon him, for he asked,

'Have I ever seen you before,

sir?'

'Yes,' answered the doctor steadily.

'Where?' was the next ques

tion.

In Stratford.'

'Stratford ?' repeated Sir John. 'When?'

'When you went by another name and were called John Hay.'

Sir John did not answer immediately; he shrank back in his chair as if he had been struck, and cowered for a moment like one expecting another blow. He covered his face with his hand and remained motionless, whilst a dead silence reigned within the room. None of the three spoke a word; the very stillness of death seemed there.

At length Sir John removed his hand and lifted his head slowly, wearily.

You asked me some question a little while since,' he said, addressing his younger visitor; 'what was it?'

'I asked you to tell me where I should be likely to find Mira Palthorpe.'

Thomas Palthorpe-her husband.'

It is false' cried Sir John. 'Thomas Palthorpe was drowned —years ago.'

Thomas Palthorpe was not drowned years ago,' said the other, rising also, for he is alive now -and I am he.'

• You? Great God!' and Sir John dropped into his chair again, trembling in every limb.

The blinds in his office were not drawn down, and he could see from the window near which he sat into the old graveyard, lying cold and desolate without. Something in its forlorn loneliness, its unspeakable solitary aspect, attracted his attention, and he sat staring out into the night, thinking of the bright sunshiny morning when he read that the North Wales had gone down, and looked out on the scene he was gazing at now. They who had fretted out their little day lay mouldering there and were at rest. Lord, what weary, weary days he had passed through since he looked amongst the list of survivors in the Times! along what a darksome road he had stumbled painfully to the present hour! Would the time ever come when he should be at rest? Before he was carried to his grave would the whole world know the secret he had hesitated to intrust to the keeping of a single man?

What was this sudden blow which had stricken him? He had imagined and considered almost every possible way in which trouble might come to him, but

he had never thought of this. That the sea should give up its Idead! That after years and years a man, who through their long progress had made no sign, should come back from his grave! He did not think these things, for of all thought in its ordinary sense he was incapable; but he felt them. Fear, regret, dread, remorse, surged through his soul without sequence or connection; and yet, spite of all, had he been conscious of the fact there was the sense of some great relief.

The worst had come; it had come in an even more terrible form than any anticipated; but in its train there followed one blessing. If this thing were true, the man lived, was there before him! Uriah had not been slain-his wife's husband, Rachel's father! Good Heavens, what a complication was here! Whose hand should disentangle the twists and knots of such a human skein ?

Still looking out into the lonely churchyard, Sir John remained silent. Across the table the two men who had brought such news watched him intently; then Doctor Dilton, turning slightly towards his companion, shook his head, as one who should imply the sinner had borne all the punishment he could endure at once.

But Mr. Palthorpe would not take the hint. His brow darkened, and his face set, as he met the glance of compassion Doctor Dilton's countenance assumed; and without further delay he said, in a tone which sounded harsh and cruel by reason of the very restraint he was putting on himself,

'I am waiting for such tidings as you can give me of the woman who was my wife.'

At the words Sir John turned upon the speaker.

And if I could give you tid

ings of the woman you say was your wife, why should I? What can it signify to you whether she be living or not, happy or wretched, when all these years you have thought fit to leave her in ignorance of the fact of your existence ?'

With an incredulous wonder in his face the man addressed looked at Sir John when he uttered these words.

'In ignorance?' he repeated, ' in ignorance?

'Yes, you have never come back till now to tell man or woman of your rescue.'

'Did I not?' was the only comment. Did I not?'

'Did you?' asked Sir John. 'Yes,' the man who once lost all for love replied. I came back one golden summer to find I had no wife that she had stolen my child; that she had broken an old man's heart; that she had brought dishonour on my own name. I came back to find she had intercepted the letter I wrote to her aunt, asking her to break the good nows-I hoped then, in my folly, she might think it good news-to her niece. I crossed the threshold of an honest house only to learn she had left it, bearing with her a burden of shame. She knew well enough I had been saved, and so did you, Sir John Moffat, as the world calls you-so did you.'

God is my witness I never knew, never dreamt. If I hadO, if I only had!'

'This interview shall not be prolonged,' broke in Doctor Dilton, who perhaps read accurately the signs of absolute physical distress in Sir John's worn face. "Of all men on earth you two are the last who should discuss this matter to the end-to the bitter, bitter end,' he added, with terrible emphasis. You have got the clue you wanted now, Mr. Pal

thorpe; come home with me. Sir John, I told you, if you remember, she was far too handsome. Tell your solicitor the whole story, whatever it may be; that is the best advice I can give you. Come away, Palthorpe-come away.'

'Not till he answers my question,' said Mr. Palthorpe, standing erect and fierce. 'He has taken wife and child from mewhere are they?'

'Give me a week-two days,' entreated Sir John; 'it has been all so sudden.'

'At least,' persisted Mr. Palthorpe, upon whose arm Doctor Dilton had laid a warning hand, 'tell me is my wife living?'

'She is living,' answered Sir John doggedly.

'And my daughter-the little child who seems to have possessed every quality her mother lacked, who was her poor old grandfather's treasure-is she-dead?'

'No, no, no!' cried Sir John, as he turned his face to the lonely graveyard, to hide the tears he could no longer repress, which trickled slowly down his haggard cheek.

'Come away,' insisted Doctor Dilton earnestly. Don't try the man any more.' And half leading, half dragging, he drew Mr. Palthorpe out of the office, along the passage, and so finally into the

street.

'There is more in this business than meets the eye,' he said, when he and his former patient were once again in a hansom, driving back to Kensington. I would not judge him yet if I were you.'

But Mr. Palthorpe did not answer. He was looking with weary thoughtful eyes out on the pageant of human life sweeping under the gaslight along the pavement-marvelling, perhaps, in some vague intangible sort of way (for he was not a man given

either to analysis of his own motives or those of any other person), whether, amongst all the mysteries of science, anything could be found so mysterious, so unsatisfactory, so contradictory as a human being.

All the way to Palace Gardens he did not speak one word; in fact he had not a word to say. He felt stunned, not more by the success which had attended his efforts than by the effect which that success produced upon himself.

It was the mournfullest success man ever achieved. He had hunted his enemy down, and found him more full of sorrows, unless his face and manner were deceitful, than himself!

Worn, weary! He at least could not doubt that Sir John had found the bed of sin a most uneasy couch.

In a distant land Thomas Palthorpe had not spent solitary days and kept lonely vigils all in vain. He had talked, if dumbly, in a language his Maker understood, with God; and all the clamour of a great city-all the mightier loneliness of a populated town-could not in a moment dull the lessons conned in a wilderness-the truths learned under the quiet stars, with no teacher save Nature, and the Bible he knew almost off by heart to point the way to the only lore which shall most certainly give a man peace at the last.

'I will see you to-morrow,' said Doctor Dilton, as they shook hands at parting.

'Thank you,' was the reply; and the man walked towards his temporary home with the gait and mien of one thoroughly wearied out.

And such a woman,' thought Doctor Dilton, while the cab sped down Palace Gardens on its way a little further westward, 'to spoil

the lives of two such men !' and his mind recurred not unfavourably to the contrast presented between his own little wife, who was not perhaps, in all respects, the wife he might have more happily chosen, and the physically magnificent creature who had wrought so terrible a shipwreck for two of his own sex.

I always distrusted her,' he considered, and yet even while he said that he shivered.

Supposing she had been civil to him-supposing she had vouchsafed to the medical attendant who was always in antagonism one of her rare smiles-how might he in such case have fared? Doctor Dilton knew enough of her sex and of his own to feel sure his repulsion to the woman owed its origin as much to dread as to aversion.

'She was far too handsome,' he repeated to himself, and I have no doubt she took that unfortunate Sir John completely captive. I wonder where she is; and I think I should like to know something more about him and his domestic relations.'

It seemed as though Doctor Dilton's wish had been heard and answered on the minute, for he was scarcely within his cousin's house before the servant said a messenger had been twice round from Holyrood House, wanting him to go there immediately.

'Holyrood House!' repeated Doctor Dilton, who had no associations with the name; where is Holyrood House?'

'Palace Gardens, sir. Sir John Moffat's place.'

'Who is ill there?' asked the doctor.

'Lady Moffat,' was the answer.

Doctor Dilton opened the halldoor. The cab which had brought him back from the City was still close by, as the driver had got down