s teeth
and they close on it. Then slowly, slowly, he goes down, noiseless as a
cat, and crouches on the long covert, whether turnips, rape, or clover.

Even so did this designing cur crouch in the Dun Cow.

The loyal quadruped is waiting for his master, and his anxiety is
disinterested. The biped cur was waiting for the first streak of dawn to
slip away to some more distant and safe hiding-place and sally-port than
the Dun Cow, kept by a woman who was devoted to Hope, to Walter, and to
Mary, and had all her wits about her--mother-wit included.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SERPENT.

Monckton slipped away at the dawn, and was off to Derby to prepare
first-rate disguises.

At Derby, going through the local papers, he found lodgings offered at a
farm-house to invalids, fresh milk and eggs, home-made bread, etc. The
place was within a few miles of Clifford Hall. Monckton thought this
would suit him much better than being too near. When his disguises were
ready, he hired a horse and dog-cart by the month, and paid a deposit,
and drove to the place in question. He put some shadow under his eyes to
look more like an invalid. He had got used to his own cadaverous tint, so
that seemed insufficient.

The farmer's wife looked at him, and hesitated.

"Well, sir," said she, with a blush, "we takes 'em in to cure, not to--"

"Not to bury," said Monckton. "Don't you be alarmed. I have got no time
to die; I'm too busy. Why, I have been much worse than this. I am
convalescent now."

"Ye don't say so, sir!" said she. "Well, I see your heart is good" (the
first time he had ever been told that), "and so I've a mind to risk it."

Then she quickly clapped on ten shillings a week more for color, and he
was installed. He washed his face, and then the woman conceived hopes of
him, and expressed them in rustic fashion. "Well," said she, "dirt is a
disguise. Now I look at you, you have got more mischief to do in the
world yet, I do believe."

"A deal more, I hope," said he.

It now occurred to him, all of a sudden, that really he was not in good
health, and that he had difficulties before him which required calm
nerves, and that nerves are affected by the stomach. So, not to throw a
chance away, he had the sense and the resolution to devote a few days to
health and unwholesome meditation.

This is a discordant world: even vices will not always pull the same
way. Here was a sinister villain distracted between avarice and revenge,
a