ied--altogether
a very unclerical-looking figure. On the way back to his inn he kept
looking at his cut knuckles, and, arriving, called for a noggin of
brandy. By midday he was drunk, and at one o'clock he was due to
appear at the Chapter House. The hour struck: but John Romley sat on
in the coffee-room staring stupidly at his knuckles.

And all this while in the lodging-house parlour sat or paced the man
who has no name in this book. He also was drinking: but the
brandy-and-water, though he gulped it fiercely, neither unsteadied
his legs nor confused his brain. Only it deadened by degrees the
ruddy colour in his face to a gray shining pallor, showing up one
angry spot on the cheek-bone. Though he frowned as he paced and
muttered now and again to himself, he was not thinking of John
Romley.

Some men are born to be the curse of women and, through women, of the
world. Despicable in themselves they inherit a dreadful secret
before which, as in a fortress betrayed to a false password, the
proudest virtue hauls down its flag, and kneeling, proffers its keys.
Doubtless they move under fate to an end appointed, though to us they
appear but as sightseers, obscure and irresponsible, who passing
through a temple defile its holies and go their casual ways.
We wonder that this should be. But so it is, and such was this man.
Let his name perish.

CHAPTER III.

Late that evening and a little after moonrise, Johnny Whitelamb,
going out to the woodstack for a faggot, stood still for a moment at
sight of a figure half-blotted in the shadow.

"Miss Hetty--oh, Miss Hetty!" he called softly.

Hetty did not run; but as he stepped to her, let him take her hands
and lifted her face to the moonlight.

"What are they doing?" she whispered.

Johnny was never eloquent. "They are sitting by the fire, just as
usual," he answered her, but his voice shook over the words.

"Just as usual?" she echoed dully. "Mother and the girls, you mean?"

"Yes: the Rector is in his study. I have not seen him to-day: only
the mistress has seen him." He paused: Hetty shivered. She was weak
and woefully tired: for, excepting a lift at Marton and a second in a
wagon from Gainsborough to Haxey, she had walked from Lincoln and had
been walking all day.

"I cannot tell what mistress thinks," Johnny went on: "the others
talk to each other--a word now and then--but she sits looking at the
fire and says nothing. I think she means to sit up