ned to with a faint smile of incredulity.

The secretary was a stolid Yorkshireman, who affected whatever measure
of bluffness had not been natural to him from birth. He first looked at
his visitor with obvious doubts of his sanity; and when this suspicion
had been set at rest by Hugh's incisive explanation, with an equally
obvious desire to feel his bumps.

But the face of the Yorkshireman soon became complicated by other shades
of expression than such as come of distrust of a man's reason or
contempt of his sentimentality.

"Hadn't you better sleep on it, and come to see me at Whitehall in the
morning?" he said, with more respect than he had yet shown. "Then if you
are still of the same mind, I will send for the Public Prosecutor."

Hugh Ritson bowed his acquiescence.

"And can I have the order for Portland?" he said.

"Probably. It will be against the new regulation that none may visit a
convict prison except prison officials and persons interested in prison
discipline. But we'll see what can be done."

That night, Hugh Ritson called at the Convent of St. Margaret. It was
late when he entered, and when he came out again, half an hour
afterward, the lamps were lighted in the Abbey Gardens. The light fell
on the face of the lay sister who opened the door to him. She wore a
gray gown, but no veil or scapular, and beneath the linen band that
covered her hair her eyes were red and swollen.

Hugh Ritson hailed a hansom in the Broad Sanctuary, and drove to Hendon.
The bar of the Hawk and Heron was full of carriers, carters,
road-menders, and farm-laborers, all drinking, and all noisy. But,
despite this evidence of a thriving trade, the whole place had a
bankrupt appearance as of things going to wreck. Jabez served behind the
counter. He had developed a good deal of personal consequence, and held
up his head, and repeatedly felt the altitude of a top-knot that curled
there, and bore himself generally with the cockety air of the young
rooster after the neck of the old one has been screwed. Mrs. Drayton sat
knitting in the room where Mercy and the neighbor's children once played
together. When Hugh Ritson went in to her, the old body started.

"Lor's a mercy, me, sir, to think it's you! I'm that fearsome, that I
declare I shiver and quake at nothing. And good for nowt i' the world
neither, not since my own flesh and blood, as you might say, disowned
me."

"Do you mean at the trial?" asked Hugh Ritson.

"The trial,