light. A
prayer rose from heart to lip for the woman he loved, while he looked
up to the crimson glories of the western sky. Do such prayers fall
back in the form of curses on the heads of those who betray, haunting
them in their sorrows--at their need--worst of all in their supreme
moments of happiness and joy? God forbid! Rather let us believe that,
true to their heaven-born nature, they are blessings for those who
give and those who receive.

Some two hours later, Tom Ryfe found himself pacing to and fro under
the trees in the Birdcage Walk, with a happier heart, though it beat
so fast, than had been within his waistcoat for weeks.

It was getting very dark, and even beneath the gas-lamps it was
difficult to distinguish the figure of man or woman, flitting through
the deep shadows cast by trees still thick with their summer foliage.
Tom, peering anxiously into the obscure, could make out nothing but
a policeman, a foot-guardsman with a clothes-basket, and a drunken
slattern carrying her baby upside-down.

He was growing anxious. Big Ben's booming tones had already warned him
it was a quarter past eight, when, suddenly, so close to him he could
almost touch it, loomed the figure of a woman.

"Miss Bruce," he exclaimed--"Maud--is it you?"

Turning his own body, so as to take advantage of a dim ray from the
nearest gaslight, he was aware that the woman, shorter and stouter
than Miss Bruce, had muffled herself in a cloak, and was closely
veiled.

"You have a letter--a message," he continued in a whisper. "It's all
right. I'm the party you expected to meet--here--at eight--under the
trees."

"And wot the--are you at with my missus under the trees?" growled
a brutal voice over his shoulder, while Tom felt he was helplessly
pinioned by a pair of strong arms from behind, that crushed and
bruised him like iron. Ere he could twist his hands free to show
fight, which he meant to do pretty fiercely, he found himself baffled,
blinded, suffocated, by a handkerchief thrust into his face, while a
strong, pungent, yet not altogether unpleasant flavour of ether filled
eyes, mouth, and nostrils, till it permeated to his very lungs. Then
with every pulsation of the blood Big Ben seemed to be striking
inside his brain till something gave way with a great whizz! like
the mainspring of a watch, and Tom Ryfe was perfectly quiet and
comfortable henceforth.

Five minutes afterwards a belated bricklayer lounging home with his
mate