e.

The next event which I can recall clearly is that my mother and three
brothers all fell ill of fever, owing, as I afterwards learned, to the
poisoning of our well by some evil-minded person, who threw a dead sheep
into it.

It must have been while they were ill that Squire Carson came one day
to the vicarage. The weather was still cold, for there was a fire in
the study, and I sat before the fire writing letters on a piece of paper
with a pencil, while my father walked up and down the room talking to
himself. Afterwards I knew that he was praying for the lives of his wife
and children. Presently a servant came to the door and said that some
one wanted to see him.

"It is the squire, sir," said the maid, "and he says he particularly
wishes to see you."

"Very well," answered my father, wearily, and presently Squire Carson
came in. His face was white and haggard, and his eyes shone so fiercely
that I was afraid of him.

"Forgive me for intruding on you at such a time, Quatermain," he said,
in a hoarse voice, "but to-morrow I leave this place for ever, and I
wish to speak to you before I go--indeed, I must speak to you."

"Shall I send Allan away?" said my father, pointing to me.

"No; let him bide. He will not understand." Nor, indeed, did I at the
time, but I remembered every word, and in after years their meaning grew
on me.

"First tell me," he went on, "how are they?" and he pointed upwards with
his thumb.

"My wife and two of the boys are beyond hope," my father answered, with
a groan. "I do not know how it will go with the third. The Lord's will
be done!"

"The Lord's will be done," the squire echoed, solemnly. "And now,
Quatermain, listen--my wife's gone."

"Gone!" my father answered. "Who with?"

"With that foreign cousin of hers. It seems from a letter she left me
that she always cared for him, not for me. She married me because she
thought me a rich English milord. Now she has run through my property,
or most of it, and gone. I don't know where. Luckily, she did not care
to encumber her new career with the child; Stella is left to me."

"That is what comes of marrying a papist, Carson," said my father. That
was his fault; he was as good and charitable a man as ever lived, but he
was bigoted. "What are you going to do--follow her?"

He laughed bitterly in answer.

"Follow her!" he said; "why should I follow her? If I met her I might
kill her or him, or both of them, because of the disgrace