ood by the
mantelpiece and shaded his eyes with his hand.

"Send your thoughts into the past, Anne; you may remember that an
accident happened to me in Scotland. It was before you and I were
engaged, or it would not have happened. Or, let me say, it might not;
for young men are reckless, and I was no better than others. Heaven have
mercy on their follies!"

"The accident might not have happened?"

"I do not speak of the accident. I mean what followed. When out shooting
I nearly blew off my arm. I was carried to the nearest medical man's, a
Dr. Mair's, and remained there; for it was not thought safe to move me;
they feared inflammation, and they feared locked-jaw. My father was
written to, and came; and when he left after the danger was over he made
arrangements with Dr. Mair to keep me on, for he was a skilful man, and
wished to perfect the cure. I thought the prolonged stay in the strange,
quiet house worse than all the rest. That feeling wore off; we grow
reconciled to most conditions; and things became more tolerable as I grew
better and joined the household. There was a wild, clever, random young
man staying there, the doctor's assistant--George Gordon; and there was
also a young girl, Agnes Waterlow. I used to wonder what this Agnes did
there, and one day asked the old housekeeper; she said the young lady was
there partly that the doctor might watch her health, partly because she
was a relative of his late wife's, and had no home."

He paused, as if in thought, but soon continued.

"We grew very intimate; I, Gordon, and Miss Waterlow. Neither of them was
the person I should have chosen for an intimacy; but there was, in a
sense, no help for it, living together. Agnes was a wild, free, rather
coarse-natured girl, and Gordon drank. That she fell in love with me
there's no doubt--and I grew to like her quite well enough to talk
nonsense to her. Whether any plot was laid between her and Gordon to
entrap me, or whether what happened arose in the recklessness of the
moment, I cannot decide to this hour. It was on my twenty-first birthday;
I was almost well again; we had what the doctor called a dinner, Gordon a
jollification, and Agnes a supper. It was late when we sat down to it,
eight o'clock; and there was a good deal of feasting and plenty of wine.
The doctor was called out afterwards to a patient several miles distant,
and George Gordon made some punch; which rendered none of our heads the
steadier. At least I