clear him? Elinor, Elinor,
this must not be--unless I can go and be his witness in your place. I
might do that," said Mrs. Dennistoun, seriously. She paused a moment,
and then she said, "But I think you are wrong about the sixth. He stayed
only one night, and the night he went away was the night that Alick
Hudson--who was going up for his examination. I can make it out exactly,
if you will give me a little time to think it over. My poor child! that
you should have this to disturb your peace. But I will go, Elinor. I can
clear him as well as you."

Elinor stood up before her, pallid as a ghost. "For God's sake, mother,
not another word," she said, with a dreadful solemnity. "The burden is
mine, and I must bear it. Let us not say a word more."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

I will not confuse the reader with a description of all Elinor's
thoughts during the slow progress of that afternoon and evening, which
were as the slow passing of a year to her impatient spirit. She
took the usual afternoon walk with her mother soberly, as became Mrs.
Dennistoun's increasing years, and then she made a pretext of some
errands in the village to occupy her until dark, or rather to leave
her free to twist the thread of her own thoughts as she went along the
silent country road. Her thoughts varied in the afternoon from those
which had seized upon her with such vulture's claws in the morning; but
they were not less overwhelming in that respect. Her mother's suggestion
that _she_ and not Elinor should be the witness of that date, and then
her ponderings as to that date, her slow certainty that she could make
it out, or puzzle it out, as Elinor in her impatience said, which was
the last of all things to be desired--had stung the daughter into a new
and miserable realization of what it was that was demanded of her, which
nobody could do but she. What was it that would be demanded of her? To
stand up in the face of God and man and swear to tell the truth, and
tell--a lie: or else let the man who had been her husband, the love of
her youth, the father of her boy, sink into an abyss of shame. She
thought rapidly, knowing nothing, that surely there could be no
punishment for him, even if it were proved, at the long interval of
twenty years. But, shame--there would be shame. Nothing could save him
from that. Shame which would descend more or less to his son. And then
Elinor reflected, with hot moisture coming out upon her forehead against
the cold