m bells a-clattering for?"

Brought to thus summarily, the boy had no resource but to stop. It was a
young gentleman whom you have had the pleasure of meeting before--Master
Dan Duff. So fast had he been flying, that a moment or two elapsed ere
he could get breath to speak.

The delay did not tend to soothe his capturer; and he administered a
slight shake. "Can't you speak, Dan Duff? Don't you see who it is that's
a-asking of you? What be them bells a-working for?"

"Please, sir, it's for Mr. Lionel Verner."

The answer took Roy somewhat aback. He knew--as everybody else
knew--that Mr. Lionel Verner's departure from Deerham was fixed for that
day; but to believe that the bells would ring out a peal of joy on that
account was a staggerer even to Roy's ears. Dan Duff found himself
treated to another shake, together with a sharp reprimand.

"So they be a-ringing for him!" panted he. "There ain't no call to
shake my inside out of me for saying so. Mr. Lionel have got Verner's
Pride at last, and he ain't a-going away at all, and the bells be
a-ringing for it. Mother have sent me to tell the gamekeeper. She said
he'd sure to give me a penny, if I was the first to tell him."

Roy let go the boy. His arms and his mouth alike dropped. "Is that--that
there codicil found?" gasped he.

Dan Duff shook his head. "I dun know nothink about codinals," said he.
"Mr. Fred Massingbird's dead. He can't keep Mr. Lionel out of his own
any longer, and the bells is a-ringing for it."

Unrestrained now, he sped away. Roy was not altogether in a state to
stop him. He had turned of a glowing heat, and was asking himself
whether the news could be true. Mrs. Roy stepped forward, her tears
arrested.

"Law, Roy, whatever shall you do?" spoke she deprecatingly. "I said as
you should have kept in with Mr. Lionel. You'll have to eat humble pie,
for certain."

The humble pie would taste none the more palatable for his being
reminded of it by his wife, and Roy drove her back with a shower of
harsh words. He shut the door with a bang, and went out, a forlorn hope
lighting him that the news might be false.

But the news, he found, was too true. Frederick Massingbird was really
dead, and the true heir had come into his own.

Roy stood in much inward perturbation. The eating of humble pie--as Mrs.
Roy had been kind enough to suggest--would not cost much to a man of his
cringing nature; but he entertained a shrewd suspicion that no amount of
humb