ed!"--"Ay, that I am; and I flung a stone at you, not knowing you,
with hope that you would be, by such means, perhaps, scared away, and so
leave the coast clear for him."

"Then you have an appointment with him?"--"By no means; but he has made
such repeated and determined attacks upon this house that the family who
inhabited it were compelled to leave it, and I am here to watch him, and
ascertain what can possibly be his object."

"It is as I suspected, then," muttered this man. "Confound him! Now can
I read, as if in a book, most clearly, the game that he is playing!"

"Can you?" cried the doctor, energetically--"can you? What is it? Tell
me, for that is the very thing I want to discover."--"You don't say so?"

"It is, indeed; and I assure you that it concerns the peace of a whole
family to know it. You say you have made inquiries about this
neighbourhood, and, if you have done so, you have discovered how the
family of the Bannerworths have been persecuted by Varney, and how, in
particular, Flora Bannerworth, a beautiful and intelligent girl, has
been most cruelly made to suffer."

"I have heard all that, and I dare say with many exaggerations."--"It
would be difficult for any one really to exaggerate the horrors that
have taken place in this house, so that any information which you can
give respecting the motives of Varney will tend, probably, to restore
peace to those who have been so cruelly persecuted, and be an act of
kindness which I think not altogether inconsistent with your nature."

"You think so, and yet know who I am."--"I do, indeed."

"And what I am. Why, if I were to go into the market-place of yon town,
and proclaim myself, would not all shun me--ay, even the very lowest and
vilest; and yet you talk of an act of kindness not being altogether
inconsistent with my nature!"--"I do, because I know something more of
you than many."

There was a silence of some moments' duration, and then the stranger
spoke in a tone of voice which looked as it he were struggling with some
emotion.

"Sir, you do know more of me than many. You know what I have been, and
you know how I left an occupation which would have made me loathed. But
you--even you--do not know what made me take to so terrible a
trade."--"I do not."

"Would it suit you for me now to tell you?"--"Will you first promise me
that you will do all you can for this persecuted family of the
Bannerworths, in whom I take so strange an interest?"

"I