her dees-imbodied
spirit is anywhere aboot, she must be in a sair plight to think I've got
it, after a' her curses!"

"How much?" asked Lorimer amused.

"Oh, just a fair seventy thousand or so," answered Macfarlane
carelessly.

"Well done, Mac!" said Errington, with a smile, endeavoring to appear
interested. "You're quite rich, then? I congratulate you!"

"Riches are a snare," observed Macfarlane, sententiously, "a snare and a
decoy to both soul and body!" He laughed and rubbed his hands,--then
added with some eagerness, "I say, how is Lady Errington?"

"She's very well," answered Sir Philip hurriedly, exchanging a quick
look with Lorimer, which the latter at once understood. "She's away on a
visit just now. I'm going to join her this afternoon."

"I'm sorry she's away," said Sandy, and he looked very disappointed;
"but I'll see her when she comes back. Will she be long absent?"

"No, not long--a few days only"--and as Errington said this an
involuntary sigh escaped him.

A few days only!--God grant it! But what--what if he should find her
_dead_?

Macfarlane noticed the sadness of his expression, but prudently forbore
to make any remark upon it. He contented himself with saying--

"Weel, ye've got a wife worth having--as I dare say ye know. I shall be
glad to pay my respects to her as soon as she returns. I've got your
address, Errington--will ye take mine?"

And he handed him a small card on which was written in pencil the number
of a house in one of the lowest streets in the East-end of London.
Philip glanced at it with some surprise.

"Is _this_ where you live?" he asked with emphatic amazement.

"Yes. It's just the cleanest tenement I could find in that neighborhood.
And the woman that keeps it is fairly respectable."

"But with your money," remonstrated Lorimer, who also looked at the
card, "I rather wonder at your choice of abode. Why, my dear fellow, do
you _know_ what sort of a place it is?"

A steadfast, earnest, _thinking_ look came into Macfarlane's deep-set,
grey eyes.

"Yes, I do know, pairfectly," he said in answer to the question. "It's a
place where there's misery, starvation, and crime of all sorts,--and
there I am in the very midst of it--just where I want to be. Ye see, I
was meant to be a meenister--one of those douce, cannie, comfortable
bodies that drone in the pulpit about predestination and original sin,
and so forth a--sort, of palaver that does no good to ony resonable
cre