y in Richard's
face.

"You shall, dear father. Who knows but a month or two's bracing would
bring you quite round again? We might go all together, ourselves and the
Carlyles. Anne comes to stay with us next week, you know, and we might
go when her visit is over."

"Aye, all go together. Anne's coming?"

"Have you forgotten, dear Richard? She comes to stay a month with us,
and Mr. Clitheroe and the children. I am so pleased she will find you
better," added Mrs. Hare, her gentle eyes filling. "Mr. Wainwright says
you may go out for a drive to-morrow."

"And I'll be coachman," laughed Richard. "It will be the old times
come round again. Do you remember, father, my breaking the pole,
one moonlight night, and your not letting me drive for six months
afterwards?"

The poor justice laughed in answer to Richard, laughed till the tears
ran down his face, probably not knowing in the least what he was
laughing at.

"Richard," said Mrs. Hare to her son, almost in an apprehensive tone,
her hand pressing his nervously, "was not that Afy Hallijohn I saw you
speaking with at the gate?"

"Did you? What a spectacle she had made of herself! I wonder she is not
ashamed to go through the streets in such a guise! Indeed, I wonder she
shows herself at all."

"Richard, you--you--will not be drawn in again?" were the next whispered
words.

"Mother!" There was a sternness in his mild blue eyes as he cast
them upon his mother. Those beautiful eyes--the very counterpart of
Barbara's, both his and hers the counterpart of Mrs. Hare's. The look
had been sufficient refutation without words.

"Mother mine, I am going to belong to you in the future, and to nobody
else. West Lynne is already busy for me, I understand, pleasantly
carving out my destiny. One marvels whether I shall lose myself with
Miss Afy; another, that I shall set on offhand, and court Louisa Dobede.
They are all wrong; my place will be with my darling mother,--at least,
for several years to come."

She clasped his hand to her bosom in her glad delight.

"We want happiness together, mother, to enable us to forget the past;
for upon none did the blow fall, as upon you and upon me. And the
happiness we shall find, in our own home, living for each other, and
striving to amuse my poor father."

"Aye, aye," complacently put in Justice Hare.

So it would be. Richard had returned to his home, had become, to all
intent and purposes, its master; for the justice would never be