fication, and drummed frantically on her house door. A chorus of
laughter echoed from all sides, and Peckaby's casement flew open again.

"Will you stop that there knocking, then?" roared Peckaby, "Disturbing a
man's night's rest."

"I _will_ come in then, Peckaby," she stormed, plucking up a little
spirit in her desperation. "I be your wife, you know I be, and I will
come in."

"My good woman, what's took you?" cried Peckaby, in a tone of
compassionating suavity. "You ain't no wife of mine. My wife's miles on
her road by this time. She's off to New Jerusalem on a white donkey."

A new actor came up to the scene--no other than Jan Verner. Jan had been
sitting up with some poor patient, and was now going home. To describe
his surprise when he saw the windows alive with nightcapped heads, and
Mrs. Peckaby in her dripping discomfort, in her paint, in her state
altogether, outward and inward, would be a long task. Peckaby himself
undertook the explanation, in which he was aided by Chuff; and Jan sat
himself down on the public pump, and laughed till he was hoarse.

"Come, Peckaby, you'll let her in," cried he, before he went away.

"Let her in!" echoed Peckaby, "That would be a go, that would! What 'ud
the saints say? They'd be for prosecuting of her for bigamy. If she's
gone over to them, sir, she can't belong legal to me."

Jan laughed so that he had to hold his sides, and Mrs. Peckaby shrieked
and sobbed. Chuff began calling out that the best remedy for white paint
was turpentine.

"Coma along, Peckaby, and open the door," said Jan, rising. "She'll
catch an illness if she stops here in her wet clothes, and I shall have
a month's work, attending on her. Come!"

"Well, sir, to oblige you, I will," returned the man. "But let me ever
catch her snivelling after them saints again, that's all! They should
have her if they liked; I'd not."

"You hear, Mrs. Peckaby," said Jan in her ear. "I'd let the saints alone
for the future, if I were you."

"I mean to, sir," she meekly answered, between her sobs.

Peckaby in his shirt and nightcap, opened the door, and she bounded in.
The casements closed to the chorus of subsiding laughter, and the echoes
of Jan's footsteps died away in the distance.

CHAPTER LXXV.

AN EXPLOSION OF SIBYLLA'S.

Sibylla Verner sat at the window of her sitting-room in the twilight--a
cold evening in early winter. Sibylla was in an explosive temper. It was
nothing unusual for her to be