ere a maiden at home."

"Ah, so I did. Why did I do that? My mind is lost--it had to do with
the mumming, had it not?"

"Yes, you wanted to go in my place."

"I remember. I do indeed remember--too well!"

She again became utterly downcast; and Charley, seeing that she was
not going to eat or drink any more, took away the tray.

Afterwards he occasionally came in to see if the fire was burning, to
ask her if she wanted anything, to tell her that the wind had shifted
from south to west, to ask her if she would like him to gather her
some blackberries; to all which inquiries she replied in the negative
or with indifference.

She remained on the settee some time longer, when she aroused herself
and went upstairs. The room in which she had formerly slept still
remained much as she had left it, and the recollection that this
forced upon her of her own greatly changed and infinitely worsened
situation again set on her face the undetermined and formless
misery which it had worn on her first arrival. She peeped into her
grandfather's room, through which the fresh autumn air was blowing
from the open window. Her eye was arrested by what was a familiar
sight enough, though it broke upon her now with a new significance.

It was a brace of pistols, hanging near the head of her grandfather's
bed, which he always kept there loaded, as a precaution against
possible burglars, the house being very lonely. Eustacia regarded
them long, as if they were the page of a book in which she read a
new and a strange matter. Quickly, like one afraid of herself, she
returned downstairs and stood in deep thought.

"If I could only do it!" she said. "It would be doing much good to
myself and all connected with me, and no harm to a single one."

The idea seemed to gather force within her, and she remained in
a fixed attitude nearly ten minutes, when a certain finality was
expressed in her gaze, and no longer the blankness of indecision.

She turned and went up the second time--softly and stealthily now--and
entered her grandfather's room, her eyes at once seeking the head of
the bed. The pistols were gone.

The instant quashing of her purpose by their absence affected her
brain as a sudden vacuum affects the body: she nearly fainted. Who
had done this? There was only one person on the premises besides
herself. Eustacia involuntarily turned to the open window which
overlooked the garden as far as the bank that bounded it. On the
summit of t