w of the legacy. Si should be defeated without the legacy,
or he should be made to suffer the humiliation of yielding after being
confronted with the accomplished fact of a secret marriage. Herbert was
fairly sure that he would yield, and in any case, with a couple of
thousand at his wife's back, Herbert could afford to take the risks of
war.

So Herbert, who had something of the devil in him, approached his uncle
once more, with a deceitful respect, and he was once more politely
rebuffed--as indeed he had half hoped to be. He then began his
clandestine measures--measures which culminated in him leaving the house
one autumn morning dressed in a rather stylish travelling suit.

The tramcar came down presently from Hanbridge. Not one of the swift
thunderous electrical things that now chase each other all over the Five
Towns in every direction at intervals of about thirty seconds; but the
old horse-car that ran between Hanbridge and Bursley twice an hour and
no oftener, announcing its departure by a big bell, and stopping at
toll-gates with broad eaves, and climbing hills with the aid of a
tip-horse and a boy perched on the back thereof. That was a calm and
spacious age.

Herbert boarded the car, and raised his hat rather stiffly to a nice
girl sitting in a corner. He then sat down in another corner, far away
from her. Such is the capacity of youth for chicane! For that nice girl
was exactly Alice, and her presence on the car was part of the plot.
When the car arrived at Bursley these monsters of duplicity descended
together, and went to a small public building and entered therein, and
were directed to an official and inhospitable room which was only saved
from absolute nakedness by a desk, four Windsor chairs, some
blotting-paper, pens, ink and a copy of Keats's Directory of the Five
Towns. An amiable old man received them with a perfunctory gravity, and
two acquaintances of Herbert's strolled in, blushing. The old man told
everybody to sit down, asked them questions of no spiritual import,
abruptly told them to stand up, taught them to say a few phrases, in the
tone of a person buying a ha'-porth of tin-tacks, told them to sit down,
filled a form or two, took some of Herbert's money, and told them that
that was all, and that they could go. So they went, secretly surprised.
This was the august ritual, and this the imposing theatre, provided by
the State in those far-off days for the solemnizing of the most
important ac