t
sides, and the tears filled his eyes and blotted it all out. The
sedge-warbler was singing with the wheatear, and, though he could not
see them now, he knew where they were: the sedge-warbler was flitting
among the rushes of the low-land mere; the wheatear was perched on the
crevice of gray rock in which it had laid its pale-blue eggs; the sheep
were bleating on the fells, and he knew their haunts by the lea of the
bowlders and along the rocky ledges where grew the freshest grasses.
Down the corries of Blencathra, long drifts of sheep were coming before
the dogs, and he knew that the shepherds had been out on the fells
during the short summer night, numbering the sheep for the washing in
the beck below.

Everything came back upon him like a memory of yesterday. He stood up
and thrust out his head, and did not think of his gray jacket and blue
cap until a carter who watered his horses at a pool near the railway
lines started and stared as if he had seen a "boggle" at noonday.

Then Paul Ritson remembered that he was still a convict, that his hands
wore irons, that the man who lay sleeping on the seat of the carriage
was his warder, and that the steely thing that peeped from the belt of
the sleeping man was a revolver, to be promptly used if he attempted to
escape.

But not even these reflections sufficed to dissipate the emotion that
had taken hold of him. He began at length to think of Hugh Ritson, and
to wonder why he had been brought back home. Home!--home? It was a
melancholy home-coming, but it was coming home, nevertheless.

CHAPTER XVI.

Two days later the gray old town-hall that stands in the market-place of
Keswick was surrounded by a busy throng. The Civil Court of the County
Assize was sitting in this little place for the nonce to try a curious
case of local interest. It was an action for ejectment brought by Greta,
Mrs. Paul Ritson, against a defendant whose name was entered on the
sheet as Paul Drayton, alias Paul Ritson, now of the Ghyll, in the
Parish of Newlands.

The court-room was crowded. It was a large, bare room, with a long table
and two rows of chairs crossing the end, the one row occupied by the
judge and a special jury, the other by the lawyers for the prosecution
and defense. The rest of the chamber was not provided with seats, and
there the dalespeople huddled together.

A seat had been found for Greta at one end of the table. Her cheek
rested on her hand. She dropped her eye