a little
confused and contradictory in his statements to Pike: no wonder he
fancied the ghost of the man he could have saved and did not, might now
and then be hovering about him. Pike learned the real truth at last; and
a compunction had come over him, now that he was dying, for having
doubted Lord Hartledon.

"My lord, I can only ask you to forgive me. I ought to have known you
better. But things seemed to corroborate it so: I've heard people say the
new lord was as a man who had some great care upon him. Oh, I was a
fool!"

"At any rate it was not _that_ care, Pike; I would have saved my
brother's life with my own, had I been at hand to do it. As to
Ripper--I shall never bear to look upon him again."

"He's gone away," said Pike.

"Where has he gone?"

"The miller turned him off for idleness, and he's gone away, nobody knows
where, to get work: I don't suppose he'll ever come back again. This is
the real truth of the matter as it occurred, my lord; and there's no more
behind it. Ripper has now told all he knows, just as fully as if he had
been put to torture."

Lord Hartledon remained with Pike some time longer, soothing the man as
much as it was in his power and kindly nature to soothe. He whispered a
word of the clergyman, Dr. Ashton.

"Father says he shall bring him to-night," was the answer. "It's all a
farce."

"I am sorry to hear you say that," returned Lord Hartledon, gravely.

"If I had never said a worse thing than that, my lord, I shouldn't hurt.
Unless the accounts are made up beforehand, parsons can't avail much at
the twelfth hour. Mother's lessons to me when a child, and her reading
the Bible as she sits here in the night, are worth more than Dr. Ashton
could do. But for those old lessons' having come home to me now, I might
not have cared to ask your forgiveness. Dr. Ashton! what is he? For an
awful sinner--and it's what I've been--there's only Christ. At times I
think I've been too bad even for Him. I've only my sins to take to Him:
never were worse in this world."

Lord Hartledon went out rather bewildered with the occurrences of the
morning. Thinking it might be only kind to step into the clerk's, he
crossed the stile and went in without ceremony by the open back-door.
Mrs. Gum was alone in the kitchen, crying bitterly. She dried her eyes
in confusion, as she curtsied to her visitor.

"I know all," he interrupted, in low, considerate tones, to the poor
suffering woman. "I have been to