econd. Publish it if you please. If
not, throw it into the fire. Both are equally indifferent to me. It has
done its work; it has helped me through half a century of living.'

'It shall be to me a sacred trust,' said Elsmere with emotion. 'Of
course if you don't publish it, I shall publish it.'

'As you please. Well, then, if you have nothing more rational to tell me
about, tell me of this ridiculous Brotherhood of yours.'

Robert, so adjured, began to talk, but with difficulty. The words would
not flow, and it was almost a relief when in the middle that strange
creeping sleep overtook the squire again.

Meyrick, who was staying in the house, and who had been coming in and
out through the evening, eyeing Elsmere, now that there was more light
on the scene, with almost as much anxiety and misgiving as the squire,
was summoned. The squire was put into his carrying-chair. Vincent and a
male attendant appeared, and he was borne to his room, Meyrick
peremptorily refusing to allow Robert to lend so much as a finger to the
performance. They took him up the library stairs, through the empty
book-rooms and that dreary room which had been his father's, and so into
his own. By the time they set him down he was quite awake and conscious
again.

'It can't be said that I follow my own precepts,' he said to Robert
grimly as they put him down. 'Not much of the open eye about this. I
shall sleep myself into the unknown as sweetly as any saint in the
calendar.'

Robert was going when the squire called him back.

'You'll stay to-morrow, Elsmere?'

'Of course, if you wish it.'

The wrinkled eyes fixed him intently.

'Why did you ever go?'

'As I told you before, Squire, because there was nothing else for an
honest man to do.'

The squire turned round with a frown.

'What the deuce are you dawdling about, Benson? Give me my stick and get
me out of this.'

By midnight all was still in the vast pile of Murewell. Outside, the
night was slightly frosty. A clear moon shone over the sloping reaches
of the park; the trees shone silverly in the cold light, their black
shadows cast along the grass. Robert found himself quartered in the
Stuart room, where James II. had slept, and where the tartan hangings of
the ponderous carved bed, and the rose and thistle reliefs of the walls
and ceilings, untouched for two hundred years, bore witness to the loyal
preparations made by some bygone Wendover. He was mortally tired, but by
way of di