h; and then to himself: "Serve the beast right! What's he been
doing now?"

Richard Frayne met a couple more of the "Heavy Coach's" pupils as he
crossed the Cathedral Close, where the calm silence of the old place
ought to have quelled the angry throbbing in his veins; but it had an
opposite effect, and the cries of the jackdaws which clung about the
mouldering tower sounded like impish derisive laughter.

"Anything the matter?" said one of the pair.

"Yes; seen my cousin?"

"Yes; he's down in the ruins, seated, like Patience on a broken
monument, smoking and smiling at the river. Don't pitch him in. I say:
is there a row on?"

Richard Frayne did not answer, but walked away, crossed the creek
bridge, beneath which the water ran thundering as it hurried toward the
river, giving indications that there must have been a heavy rainstorm in
the hills twenty miles away, though all was sunshine there.

He hurried on along the lane, turned out of it, crossed a couple of
fields, and made his way toward a pile of ivy-clad ruins, whose base was
washed by the river, now brimful, and here and there making patches and
pools in the lower meadows further on.

These ruins were the remains of one of the great ecclesiastical
buildings dismantled in the days of Bluff King Hal, and still showed the
importance of the edifice, with its lancet windows and high walls
surrounding a green patch that was at one time an inner garden
surrounded by cloisters, of which only a few columns were left, and was
now as secluded and lonely a spot as could be found for miles.

A visitor would have paused directly to admire the beauty of the old
place, which raised up thoughts of the past, but Richard did not stay,
for to him it only raised up secular thoughts of the present, with
tailors' bills, borrowed money, forgery, and lies.

But there was no sign of Mark Frayne; and, growing moment by moment more
excited and angry, Richard hurried here and there, looking sharply
round, coming to the conclusion that either he had been misinformed or
his cousin had gone, when he caught sight of a yellow and black fragment
of flannel projecting from behind a pile of stones at the corner
farthest away from the swollen river.

"The cur!" he muttered, as he hurried forward, leaping over fallen
blocks and fragments which showed still the groinings of the old
cloisters.

"That's like you!" he cried, as he came suddenly upon Mark leaning back
in a niche, and who