r a
bat?"

How the wild, mad heart of the night leaped up!

A man passed through the throng with eyes that seemed to see nothing of
its frantic frenzy and joyless joy--a stalwart man, who strode along
like a giant among midgets, his vacant eyes fixed before him, his strong
white face expressionless. Hugh Ritson saw him. They passed within two
paces, but without recognition. The one was wandering aimlessly in his
blind misery toward the Convent of St. Margaret, the other was making
for the old inn at Hendon.

* * * * *

An hour later Hugh Ritson was standing in the bar of the Hawk and Heron.
His mind was made up; his resolve was fixed; his plan was complete.

"Anybody with him?" he said to the landlady, motioning toward the
stairs.

"Not as I knows on, sir, but he do seem that restless and off his
wittals, and I don't know as I quite understands why--"

Hugh Ritson stopped her garrulous tongue. "I have found the girl. She
will come back to you to-night, Mrs. Drayton. If she brings with her the
gentleman who left these boxes in your care, take him to your son's
bedroom and tell him the person he wishes to see has arrived, and will
be with him directly."

With this he went up the stairs. Then, calling down, he added: "The
moment he is in the room come up and tell me."

A minute later he called again: "Where's the key to this door? Let me
have it."

The landlady hobbled up with the key to Drayton's bedroom; the room was
empty and the door stood open. Hugh Ritson tried the key in the lock and
saw that the wards moved freely. "That will do," he said, in a satisfied
tone.

The old woman was hobbling back. Hugh was standing in thought, with head
bent, and the nail of his forefinger on his cheek.

"By the way, Mrs. Drayton," he said, "you should get the girl to help
you a little sometimes."

"Lor's, sir, I never troubles her, being as she's like a visitor."

"Nonsense, Mrs. Drayton. She's young and hearty, and your own years are
just a little past their best, you know. How's your breathing
to-day--any easier?"

"Well, I can't say as it's a mort better, neither, thanking you the
same, sir," and a protracted fit of coughing bore timely witness to the
landlady's words.

"Ah! that's' a bad bout, my good woman."

"Well, it is, sir; and I get no sympathy, neither--leastways not from
him as a mother might look to--in a manner of speaking."

"Bethink you. Is there nothing the girl