isen, and was sitting by the fire writing. Hugh
observed, as she rose, that there were tears in her eyes, and that the
paper beneath her pen was stained with great drops that had fallen as
she wrote. A woman was busy on her knees on the floor sorting linen into
a trunk. This garrulous body, old Dinah Wilson, was talking as Hugh
entered.

"It caps all--you niver heard sec feckless wark," she was saying. "And
Reuben threept me down, too. There he was in the peat loft when I went
for the peats, and he had it all as fine as clerk after passon. 'It was
Master Paul at the fire, certain sure,' he says, ower and ower again.
'What, man, get away wi' thy botheration--Mister Paul was off to
London!' I says. 'Go and see if tha can leet on a straight waistcoat any
spot,' I says. But he threept and he threept. 'It was Master Paul or his
own birth brother,' he says."

"Hush, Dinah!" said Mrs. Ritson.

Hugh told his mother, in a quiet voice, that business was taking him
away. Then he turned about and said "Good-day" without emotion.

She held out her hand to him and looked him tenderly in the eyes.

"Is this our parting?" she said, and then leaned forward and touched his
cheek with her lips.

He seemed surprised, and turned pale; but he went out calmly and without
speaking. In half an hour he was walking rapidly over the snow-crusted
road to the station.

CHAPTER XI.

When Paul parted from Natt at the station on Saturday night, he had told
the stableman to meet him with the trap at the same spot and at the same
hour on Wednesday. Since receiving these instructions, however, Natt
had, as we have seen, arrived at conclusions of his own respecting
certain events. The futility of doing as he had been bidden began to
present itself to his mind with peculiar force. What was the good of
going to the station for a man who was not coming by the train? What was
the use of pretending to bring home a person who had never been away?
These and other equivocal problems defied solution when Natt essayed
them.

He revolved the situation fully on his way home from Mr. Bonnithorne's,
and decided that to go to the station that night at eight o'clock would
be only a fine way of making a fool of a body. But when he reached the
stable, and sat down to smoke, and saw the hour approaching, his
instinct began to act automatically, and in sheer defiance of the thing
he called his reason. In short, Natt pulled off his coat and proceeded
to har