ation of his own heart. 'It's the weir, the weir--a-washing me
away--thundering over me.--Squire, I'm drowning,--drowning and
choking! Oh, Lord, how deep! Now it's running quieter--now I can
breathe again--swift and oily--running on, running on, down to the
sea. See how the grayling sparkle! There's a pike! 'Tain't my
fault, squire, so help me--Don't swear, now, squire; old men and
dying maun't swear, squire. How steady the river runs down? Lower
and slower--lower and slower: now it's quite still--still--still--'

His voice sank away--he was dead!

No! once more the light flashed up in the socket. He sprang upright
in the bed, and held out his withered paw with a kind of wild
majesty, as he shouted,--

'There ain't such a head of hares on any manor in the county. And
them's the last words of Harry Verney!'

He fell back--shuddered--a rattle in his throat--another--and all
was over.

CHAPTER X: 'MURDER WILL OUT,' AND LOVE TOO

Argemone need never have known of Lancelot's share in the poaching
affray; but he dared not conceal anything from her. And so he
boldly went up the next day to the Priory, not to beg pardon, but to
justify himself, and succeeded. And, before long, he found himself
fairly installed as her pupil, nominally in spiritual matters, but
really in subjects of which she little dreamed.

Every day he came to read and talk with her, and whatever objections
Mrs. Lavington expressed were silenced by Argemone. She would have
it so, and her mother neither dared nor knew how to control her.
The daughter had utterly out-read and out-thought her less educated
parent, who was clinging in honest bigotry to the old forms, while
Argemone was wandering forth over the chaos of the strange new age,-
-a poor homeless Noah's dove, seeking rest for the sole of her foot
and finding none. And now all motherly influence and sympathy had
vanished, and Mrs. Lavington, in fear and wonder, let her daughter
go her own way. She could not have done better, perhaps; for
Providence had found for Argemone a better guide than her mother
could have done, and her new pupil was rapidly becoming her teacher.
She was matched, for the first time, with a man who was her own
equal in intellect and knowledge; and she felt how real was that
sexual difference which she had been accustomed to consider as an
insolent calumny against woman. Proudly and indignantly she
struggled against