d. But I wish I knew where he
was."

Presently a servant brought the tea in.

Miss Carden inquired after Mr. Raby.

"He is gone out, miss; but he won't be long, I was to tell you."

Grace felt terribly uneasy and restless! rang the bell and asked for
Jael Dence. The reply was that she had not been to the hall that day.

But, soon afterward, Jael came up from the village, and went into the
kitchen of Raby. There she heard news, which soon took her into the
drawing-room.

"Oh, miss," said she, "do you know where the squire is?"

"Gone to the church?" asked Grace, trembling.

"Ay, and all the sword-dancers at his back." And she stood there and
wrung her hands with dismay.

The ancients had a proverb, "Better is an army of stags with a lion for
their leader, than an army of lions with a stag for their leader."
The Cairnhope sword-dancers, though stout fellows and strong against
a mortal foe, were but stags against the supernatural; yet, led by Guy
Raby, they advanced upon the old church with a pretty bold front, only
they kept twenty yards in their leader's rear. The order was to march in
dead silence.

At the last turn in the road their leader suddenly halted, and, kneeling
on one knee, waved to his men to keep quiet: he had seen several dark
figures busy about the porch.

After many minutes of thrilling, yet chilling, expectation, he rose and
told his men, in a whisper, to follow him again.

The pace was now expedited greatly, and still Mr. Raby, with his
double-barreled gun in his hand, maintained a lead of some yards and his
men followed as noiselessly as they could, and made for the church: sure
enough it was lighted inside.

The young man who was thus beset by two distinct bands of enemies,
deserved a very different fate at the hands of his fellow-creatures.

For, at this moment, though any thing but happy himself, he was working
some hours every day for the good of mankind; and was every day visiting
as a friend the battered saw-grinder who had once put his own life in
mortal peril.

He had not fathomed the letter Grace had sent him. He was a young man
and a straightforward; he did not understand the amiable defects of the
female character. He studied every line of this letter, and it angered
and almost disgusted him. It was the letter of a lady; but beneath the
surface of gentleness and politeness lay a proposal which he considered
mean and cold-blooded. It lowered his esteem for her.

His p