musement, but his brain was overcrowded already.

"It's a judgment," she went on incoherently, wringing her hands;
"and I thought I had planned it so cleverly. I dressed up his
double-bass, Sam, and put it in the bed--oh! I am a wicked woman--and
pinned a note to the pin-cushion to say he had driven me to it,
throwing the breakfast things over the quay-door--real Worcester,
Sam, and marked at the bottom of each piece; and a carriage from the
Five Lanes Hotel to meet me at twelve o'clock; but I'd rather go
home, Sam; I've been longing, all the way, to go back; it's been
haunting me, that double-bass, all the time--with my nightcap,
too--the one with real lace--on the head of it. Oh! take me home,
Sam. I'm a wicked woman!"

Sam, after all, was a Trojan, and I therefore like to record his
graces. He drew his mother's arm within his with much tenderness,
kissed her, and began to lead her homewards quietly and without
question.

But the poor soul could not be silent; and so, very soon, the whole
story came out. At the mention of Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys Sam shut his
teeth sharply.

"I shall never be able to face her, Sam."

"I don't think you need trouble about that, mother," he answered
grimly.

"But I do. It was she--"

But at this moment, from the hedge, a few yards in front, there
issued a hollow groan.

They halted, and questioned each other with frightened eyes.

"Geraldine!" wailed the voice. "Cruel, perjured Geraldine!"

"It was going on just like this," whispered Mrs. Buzza, "when I came
along. I shut my eyes, and ran past as hard as I could; but my head
was so full of voices and cries that I didn't know if 'twas real or
only my fancy."

"Geraldine!" continued the voice. "Oh! dig my grave--my shroud
prepare; for she was false as she was fair. Geraldine, my
Geraldine!"

"Moggridge, by all that's holy!" cried Sam.

It was even so. They advanced a few yards, and to the right of the
road, beside a gate, they saw him. The poet reclined limply against
the hedge, and with his head propped upon a carpet-bag gazed
dolefully into the moon's face.

"Thou bid'st me," he began again, "thou bid'st me think no more about
thee; but, tell me, what is life without thee? A scentless flower, a
blighted--"

At the sound of their footsteps he looked round, stared blankly into
Sam's face, and then, snatching up the carpet-bag, leapt to his feet
and tore down the road as fast as he could go.

Sam paused. Th