rm
seated--doubtless the owner; but the form did not seem "elderly." If
inferior to Jasper's in physical power, it still was that of vigorous
and unbroken manhood. Cutts did not like the appearance of that
form, and he retreated to outer air with some misgivings. However, on
rejoining Losely, he said: "As yet things look promising-place still as
death--only one door locked, and that the common country lock, which a
schoolboy might pick with his knife."

"Or a crooked nail," said Jasper.

"Ay, no better picklock in good hands. But there are other things
besides locks to think of."

Cutts then hurried on to suggest that it was just the hour when some
of the workmen employed on the premises might be found in the Fawley
public-house; that he should ride on, dismount there, and take his
chance of picking up details of useful information as to localities and
household. He should represent himself as a commercial traveller on
his road to the town they had quitted; he should take out his cheap
newspapers and tracts; he should talk politics--all workmen love
politics, especially the politics of cheap newspapers and tracts. He
would rejoin Losely in an hour or so.

The bravo waited--his horse grazed--the moon came forth, stealing
through the trees, bringing into fantastic light the melancholy old
dwelling-house--the yet more melancholy new pile. Jasper was not, as we
have seen, without certain superstitious fancies, and they had grown
on him more of late as his brain had become chronically heated and his
nerves relaxed by pain. He began to feel the awe of the silence and the
moonlight; and some vague remembrances of earlier guiltless days--of a
father's genial love--of joyous sensations in the priceless possession
of youth and vigour--of the admiring smiles and cordial hands which his
beauty, his daring, and high spirits had attracted towards him--of the
all that he had been, mixed with the consciousness of what he was, and
an uneasy conjecture of the probable depth of the final fall--came dimly
over his thoughts, and seemed like the whispers of remorse. But it is
rarely that man continues to lay blame on himself; and Jasper hastened
to do, as many a better person does without a blush for his folly--viz.,
shift upon the innocent shoulders of fellow-men, or on the hazy outlines
of that clouded form which ancient schools and modern plagiarists call
sometimes "Circumstance," sometimes "Chance," sometimes "Fate," all the
guilt d