ent to fetch from Malta. You have been having nightmare! Don't you see
how you are frightening Miss Kendal?"

"'The Witch' of Endor, sir--"

"Deuce take the Witch of Endor and you also. There's a shilling. Go and
drink yourself into a more cheery frame of mind."

Widow Anne bit the shilling with one of her two remaining teeth, and
dropped a curtsey.

"You're a good, kind gentleman," she smirked, cheered at the idea of
unlimited gin. "And when my boy Sid do come home a corpse, I hope you'll
come to the funeral, sir."

"What a raven!" said Lucy, as Widow Anne toddled away in the direction
of the one public-house in Gartley village.

"I don't wonder that the late Mr. Bolton laid her out with a flat-iron.
To slay such a woman would be meritorious."

"I wonder how she came to be the mother of Sidney," said Miss Kendal
reflectively, as they resumed their walk, "he's such a clever, smart,
and handsome young man."

"I think Bolton owes everything to the Professor's teaching and example,
Lucy," replied her lover. "He was an uncouth lad, I understand, when
your step-father took him into the house six years ago. Now he is quite
presentable. I shouldn't wonder if he married Mrs. Jasher."

"H'm! I rather think Mrs. Jasher admires the Professor."

"Oh, he'll never marry her. If she were a mummy there might be a chance,
of course, but as a human being the Professor will never look at her."

"I don't know so much about that, Archie. Mrs. Jasher is attractive."

Hope laughed. "In a mutton-dressed-as-lamb way, no doubt."

"And she has money. My father is poor and so--"

"You make up a match at once, as every woman will do. Well, let us get
back to the Pyramids, and see how the flirtation is progressing."

Lucy walked on for a few steps in silence. "Do you believe in Mrs.
Bolton's dream, Archie?"

"No! I believe she eats heavy suppers. Bolton will return quite safe; he
is a clever fellow, not easily taken advantage of. Don't bother any more
about Widow Anne and her dismal prophecies."

"I'll try not to," replied Lucy dutifully. "All the same, I wish she had
not told me her dream," and she shivered.

CHAPTER II. PROFESSOR BRADDOCK

There was only one really palatial mansion in Gartley, and that was the
ancient Georgian house known as the Pyramids. Lucy's step-father had
given the place this eccentric name on taking up his abode there some
ten years previously. Before that time the dwelling had been occupied by