till poor Mrs. Duke's brain reeled with vague admiration of Sarah's prodigious learning. The stalwart bailiff trembled before the mistress of the Black Bear, and went into long stammering explanations to account for a quarter of a truss of hay that had been twisted into bands, lest he should be suspected of dishonesty in the transaction.

When all was duly settled and adjusted, Millicent Duke found herself almost a rich woman. Rich enough, at any rate, to be considered a very wealthy person by the simple inhabitants of Compton-onthe-Moor.

The Hall was hers. The stout red brick edifice, with its handsome, heavy-framed windows, dating from the days of the Tudors, lighted by small diamond-shaped panes of glass, and bordered by flapping wreaths of ivy-ivy so old that its stems had grown massive as the trunks of trees. The noble building, with its square stoneflagged entrance-hall and broad oaken staircase, up which you might have driven your coach and pair, had you been so foolishly inclined the faded pictures and mouldering tapestry-the oak-panelled rooms, with their low ceilings, black oak, like the wainscot, and their wide hearths and square open chimneys, built surely for traitors to hide in-the roomy, rickety, tumble-down, ivy-covered stables, crowned with weathercocks and dove-cotes-the garden, and the shrubberies, with damp walks half choked with rank overgrowth, and tenanted by bold rabbits, who stared at you as an intruder if you ventured within their domain-the broad acres of arable land, not over-rich, it is true, but sufficiently profitable withal-all these were the property of Millicent Duke, to have and to hold for herself alone; unless, indeed, the long-missing husband, Captain George Duke, of the good ship Vulture, should return to claim a share in his wife's newly-acquired fortune.

The thought that there was a remote possibility, a shadowy chance of this, would send a cold chill to Millicent's heart, and seem almost to stop its beating. If he should come home! If, after all these years of fearful watching and waiting, of trembling at the sound of every manly footstep, and shuddering at every voice-if, after all, now that she had completely given him up-now that she was rich, and might perhaps by-and-bye be happy-if, at this time of all others, the Scourge of her young life should return and claim her once more as his to hold

and to torture by the laws of God and man! A kind of distraction would take possession of her at the thought. She would deliver herself up to the horrible fancy until she could call up the image of the Captain of the Vulture, standing on the threshold of the door, with the wicked, vengeful light in his brown eyes, and the faint, far off, breezy perfume of the ocean hovering about his chestnut hair. Then casting herself upon her knees, she would call upon Heaven to spare her from this terrible anguish. To strike her dead before that dreaded husband could retura to claim her.

The diamond earring, the fellow of which Captain Duke had taken from her on the night of their parting at Marley Water, had been religiously kept by her in a little red morocco-covered jewel-box. She was too simple and conscientious a creature to dream of disobeying her husband's commands. She looked sometimes at the solitary trinket; and seldom looked at it without praying that she might never see its fellow. She wished George Duke no harm. Her only wish was that they might never meet again. She would willingly have sold the Compton property, and have sent him every farthing yielded by its sale, had she known him to be living, so that he had but remained away from her.

Millicent was the only person in Comp ton who entertained any doubt of Captain Duke's decease. The seven years which had elapsed since his departure years of absence, unbroken by a single line from himself, or by one word of tidings from any accidental source the common occurrence of wreck and disaster upon the seas, the suspicions entertained by many as to the captain's unlawful mode of life, all pointed to one conclusion-he was dead. He had go to the bottom of the sea with his ow vessel, or had been hewn down by the cutlass of a Frenchman, or the scimitar of a

Moorish pirate. The story of Millicent's meeting with her husband's shadow upon the pier at Marley Water only confirmed this belief in the death of George Duke.

Of course, Millicent told her faithful friend, Sarah Pecker, of the letter written by Ringwood a few nights before his death, and to be delivered by her to Darrell Markham.

The two women looked long and inquisitively at the folded sheet of toolscap, with its sprawling red seal, wondering what mysterious lines were written on

looked as if it had been constructed out of coffin-lids-Sarah took care, I say, to casually inform this young person that her companion was one of the richest women in all Cumberland, and might have travelled post all the way from Compton to Snow. hill, had she been pleased so to spend her money. Mrs. Pecker, who had at first rather inclined towards the chambermaid, as a simple, plain-spoken young person, took offence at the cool way in which she received this information, and classed her forthwith amongst the "London madams."

Cumbrian gentry count for little with you, I make no doubt," Sarah remarked, with ironical humility; "but there are many in Cumberland who could buy up your fine town-folks, and leave enough for themselves after they'd made the bargain."

After having administered this dignified reproof to the chambermaid, who (no doubt penetrated and abashed) seemed in a great hurry to get out of the room, Sarah condescended to ask the way to St. James's-square, which she expected was either round the corner, or across the street; somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Fleet, or Hatton Garden.

She was told that a coach or a chair would take her to the desired locality, which was at the Court end of London, and much too far for her to walk, more especially as she was a stranger, and not likely to find her way thither.

Mrs. Pecker stared hard at the chambermaid, as if she would very much have liked to convict her in giving a false direction; but being unable to do so, submitted to be advised, and ordered a coach to be ready in an hour.

The "London madams" Mrs. Pecker saw from the coach window, as she and her fair charge were driven from Snowhill to St. James's, looked rather pinched and blue-nosed in the bitter January morning. The snow upon the pavement was a black compound unknown at Compton, and the darkness of the foggy at mosphere rendered the worthy Sarah rather uneasy as to the possible speedy advent of an earthquake.

The hostess of the Black Bear had neither read Mr. Creech's translation from Horace, nor Mr. Alexander Pope's quotation from the same, but she had resolutely determined on this her visit to London to preserve her dignity by a stolid and unmoved demeanour. Not to admire was all the art she knew! She

resolved that from the whispering gallery of St. Paul's Cathedral to the Merry Andrews in Bartholomew Fair, nothing she beheld should wring an exclamation of surprise from her tightly compressed lips. Although the distance between Holborn and Pall-mall appeared to her almost illimitable, she scrupulously preserved her equanimity, and looked from the coach window at the crowded London streets with as calm and critical an eye as that with which she would have examined a field of wheat in her native Cumberland.

All the busy panorama of the metropolis passed before the eyes of Millicent Duke as a dim and cloudy picture in which no figure was distinct or palpable. She might have been driven close beside a raging fire, and yet have never beheld the flames; or across a cataract, without hearing the roar of the boisterous waters. One thought and one image filled her heart and brain, and she had neither eyes nor ears for the busy world outside the coach windows, and Sarah Pecker on the seat opposite to her.

She was going to see Darrell Markham.

For the first time after seven yearsfor the first time since she stood beside the bed upon which he lay insensible, with blood bedabbled hair and pale lips that only uttered wandering words, she was to see him again-to see him, and perhaps to find him changed! So changed in that long lapse of time, that it would seem as if the old Darrell was dead and gone, and only a stranger, with some trick of his pace, left in his stead

And amongst all the other changes time had worked in this dear cousin, it might be that the old, hopeless love had faded out, and that another image had replaced Millicent's own pale face in Darrell Markham's heart. He was still unmar ried; she knew that by his letters to Sarah Pecker, which always came at intervals of about three months to tell of his own whereabouts, and to ask for tidings of Compton. Perhaps it was his poverty that had kept him so long a bachelor! A sudden crimson rushed to Mrs. Duke's face as she thought of this. If this were indeed so, would it be more than cousinly

would it be more than her duty to share her own ample fortune with her own relative, and to bid him marry the woman of his choice and be happy?

She made a picture of herself, with her pale face and mourning gown, bestowing her blessing and half of her estate upon

Darrell and some defiant brunette beauty with glowing cheeks and lustrous eyes altogether unlike her own. She acted over the imaginary scene, and composed a pretty self-abnegating, appropriate little speech with which to address the happy bride and bridegroom. It was so affecting a picture, that Mrs. Duke wept quietly for five minutes with her face turned towards the opposite window to that out of which Mrs. Pecker was looking. The tears were still in her eyes when the coach stopped before the big town mansion of Darrell Markham's Scottish patron. That old feeling at her heart seemed to stop its beating, as the coachman's loud rap resounded from the massive brazen knocker. The blinds were all down, and wisps of loose straw lay about the doorsteps.

"My lord is out of town, perhaps," said Mrs. Pecker, "and Mr. Darrell with him. Oh, Miss Milly, if we have had our journey for nothing!"

Millicent Duke had no power to reply; the question was doubtful now then. She was prepared for sudden death, but not for slow torture. For seven years she had lived in comparative contentment without seeing Darrell Markham; she felt now that she could scarcely exist seven minutes without looking at that familiar face.

An old woman opened the door. My lord was evidently out of town. Mrs. Pecker directed the coachman to inquire for Mr. Darrell Markham. The great carved doorway, the iron extinguishers upon the railings, the attenuated iron lamp frame, the figure of the old woman standing on the threshold, all reeled before Millicent's eyes, and she did not hear a word that was said. She only knew that the coach door was opened, and that Sarah Pecker told her to alight; that she tottered up the steps, across the threshold of the door, and into a noble stone-flagged hall, at the end of which a feeble handful of burning coals struggled for life in a grate wide enough to have held well nigh half a ton.

A stout gentleman, wrapped to the chin in a furred coat, and wearing high leather boots bespattered with mud and Snow, was standing against this fire, with his back to Millicent, reading a letter. His hat, gloves, riding-whip, and halfa-dozen unopened letters lay on a table

near him.

Millicent Duke only saw a blurred and indistinct figure of a man who seemed

one wavy mass of coat and boots; and a fire that resolved itself into one glaring round, like the red eye of a demon. Sarah Pecker had not alighted from the coach; the old woman stood curtsying to Mrs. Duke, and pointing to the gentleman by the fireplace. Millicent had a confused idea that she was to ask this gentleman to conduct her to Darrell Markham. His head was bent over the letter, which he could scarcely decipher in the dim light from the dirty window-panes and the struggling fire. Millicent was almost afraid to disturb him.

While she stood for a moment deliberating how she might best address him, he crumpled the letter into his pocket, and turning suddenly, stood face to face with her.

The stout gentleman was Darrell Markham.

CHAPTER XIV.

RINGWOOD'S LEGACY.

Or all the changes Millicent had ever dreamed of, none had come about. But this change, of which she had never dreamed, had certainly come to pass. Darrell Markham had grown stouter within the seven years; not unbecomingly so, of course, but he had changed from a stripling into a stalwart, broad-chested, and soldierly-looking fellow, whose very presence inspired a feeling of safety in Millicent's helpless nature. He clasped his poor little shivering cousin to his breast, and covered her cold forehead with kisses.

Yet I doubt if even George Duke's handsome sinister face could have peeped in at the half-open hall-door at that very moment, whether the Captain of the Vulture would have had just cause for either anger or alarm.

It was a brotherly embrace which drew Millicent's slender form to that manly heart-it was a brother's protecting affection that showered kisses thick and fast upon her blushing face, and spoiled the pretty mourning hat which Mrs. Pecker had been at such pains to trim.

Poor Sally Pecker! if she could only have known how little Darrell Markham saw of the crape ruches and streamers, the jet necklace and bracelets, and all the little coquetries she had prepared for his admiration. He only saw the soft blue eyes, with the old pleading look he re