--of his own accord, mind, Mr. Carley, wholly and
solely of his own spontaneous desire. It is a thing that I should only
have been too proud to suggest; but the responsibility of such a
suggestion is one which I could never have taken upon myself. It would
have been out of my province, indeed. You will be kind enough to remember
this by-and-by, my dear sir."

The bailiff was puzzled, and showed Mr. Pivott to the door with a moody
countenance.

"I thought there was some devil's work," he muttered to himself, as he
watched the lawyer mount his stiff brown cob and ride away into the
night; "but what does it all mean? and what has Stephen Whitelaw done
with his money? We shall know that pretty soon, anyhow. He can't last
long."

CHAPTER XLVI.

ELLEN REGAINS HER LIBERTY.

Stephen Whitelaw lingered for two days and two nights, and at the
expiration of that time departed this life, making a very decent end of
it, and troubled by no thought that his existence had been an unworthy
one.

Before he died, he told his wife something of how he had been tempted
into the doing of that foul deed whereof Marian Saltram had been the
victim. Those two were alone together the day before he died, when
Stephen, of his own free will, made the following statement:----

"It was Mrs. Holbrook's father, you see," he said, in a plausible tone,
"that put it to me, how he might want his daughter taken care of for a
time--it might be a short time, or it might be rather a longish time,
according to how circumstances should work out. We'd met once before at
the King's Arms at Malsham, where Mr. Nowell was staying, and where I
went in of an evening, once in a way, after market; and he'd made pretty
free with me, and asked me a good many questions about myself, and told
me a good bit about himself, in a friendly way. He told me how his
daughter had gone against him, and was likely to go against him, and how
some property that ought in common justice to have been left to him, had
been left to her. He was going to give her a fair chance, he said, if she
liked to leave her husband, who was a scheming scoundrel, and obey him.
She might have a happy home with him, if she was reasonable. If not, he
should use his authority as a father.

"He came to see me at Wyncomb next day--dropped in unawares like, when
mother Tadman was out of the way--not that I had asked him, you see. He
seemed to be quite taken with the place, and made me show him all o