ltogether--yet what a succession of
untoward events had passed in that short space of time!

For a long while after the women had left him, Mat stood motionless in
the furthest corner of the room from the folding-doors, looking vacantly
towards Zack's bedchamber. His first surprise on finding a stranger
talking in the passage, when he let himself in from the street; his
first vexation on hearing of Zack's accident from the landlady; his
momentary impulse to discover himself to Mary's child, when he saw
Madonna standing in his room, and again when he knew that she had come
there with her little offering, for the one kind purpose of helping the
sick lad in his distress--all these sensations were now gone from
his memory as well as from his heart; absorbed in the one predominant
emotion with which the discovery of the resemblance between Zack's hair
and the hair from Jane Holdworth's letter now filled him. No ordinary
shocks could strike Mat's mind hard enough to make it lose its
balance--_this_ shock prostrated it in an instant.

In proportion as he gradually recovered his self-possession so did the
desire strengthen in him to ascertain the resemblance between the
two kinds of hair once more--but in such a manner as it had not been
ascertained yet. He stole gently to the folding-doors and looked into
young Thorpe's room. Zack was still asleep.

After pausing for a moment, and shaking his head sorrowfully, as he
noticed how pale and wasted the lad's face looked, he approached the
pillow, and laid the lock of Arthur Carr's hair upon it, close to the
uninjured side of Zack's head. It was then late in the afternoon, but
not dusk yet. No blind hung over the bedroom window, and all the light
in the sky streamed full on to the pillow as Mat's eyes fastened on it.

The similarity between the sleeper's hair and the hair of Arthur Carr
was perfect! Both were of the same light brown color, and both had
running through that color the same delicate golden tinge, brightly
visible in the light, hardly to be detected at all in the shade.

Why had this extraordinary resemblance never struck him before? Perhaps
because he had never examined Arthur Carr's hair with attention until
he had possessed himself of Mary's bracelet, and had gone away to the
country. Perhaps also because he had never yet taken notice enough of
Zack's hair to care to look close at it. And now the resemblance was
traced, to what conclusion did it point? Plainly,