t knowledge of God's ways--"

She ran on incoherently, while my thoughts harked back to the voice I
had heard wailing behind the door of the _entresol_ at Brussels; to
the young Laird's face, his furious indignation, followed by hopeless
apathy, as of one who in the interval had learnt what he could never
explain; to the marked coin so mysteriously spirited from sight; to
Mr. Urquhart's words before he left me on the night of Quatre Bras.

"But he was sorry," the woman ran on; "he was sorry--sorry. He came
wailing to me that night; yes, and sobbing. He meant no wrong; it was
just that he loved his own father's son, and knew no better. There was
no priest living within thirty miles; so I dressed, and ran to the
minister here. He gave me no rest until I started."

I addressed Mr. Saul. "Is there reason to suppose that, besides this
woman and (let us say) her accomplice, any one shared the secret of
these pilferings?"

"Ardlaugh never knew," put in the woman quickly. "He may have guessed
we were helping him; but the lad knew nothing, and may the saints
in heaven love him as they ought! He trusted me with his purse, and
slight it was to maintain him. But until too late, he never knew--no,
never, sir!"

I thought again of that voice behind the door of the _entresol_.

"Elspeth Mackenzie," I said, "I and two other living men alone know
of what your master was accused. It cannot affect him; but these two
shall hear your exculpation of him. And I will write the whole story
down, so that the world, if it ever hears the charge, may also hear
your testimony, which of the two (though both are strange) I believe
to be not the less credible."

THREE MEN OF BADAJOS

I

You enter the village of Gantick between two round-houses set one on
each side of the high road where it dips steeply towards the valley
bottom. On the west of the opposite hill the road passes out between
another pair of round-houses. And down in the heart of the village
among the elms facing the churchyard lych-gate stands a fifth, alone.

The five, therefore, form an elongated St. Andrew's cross; but nobody
can tell for certain who built them, or why. They are all alike; each,
built of cob, circular, whitewashed, having pointed windows and a
conical roof of thatch with a wooden cross on the apex. When I was a
boy these thatched roofs used to be pointed out to me as masterpieces;
and they still endure. But the race of skilled thatchers, once the
p