bridge--that centre of
gaiety--slipped rumbling down the hill towards Bursley.

'What do you want--disturbing a respectable house at this time of
night?' she called in a loud whisper when the car had passed. 'The
door's bolted, and I can't come down. You must come in the morning.'

'Miss Beechinor, ye will let us in--I charge ye.'

'It's useless, Mr. Baines.'

'I'll break the door down. I'm a strong man, and a determined. Ye are
carrying things too far.'

In another moment the two men heard the creak of the bolts. Mary stood
before them, vaguely discernible, but a forbidding figure.

'If you must--come upstairs,' she said coldly.

'Stay here in the passage, Arthur,' said Mr. Baines; 'I'll call ye when
I want ye;' and he followed Mary up the stairs.

Edward Beechinor lay on his back, and his sunken eyes stared glassily at
the ceiling. The skin of his emaciated face, stretched tightly over the
protruding bones, had lost all its crimson, and was green, white,
yellow. The mouth was wide open. His drawn features wore a terribly
sardonic look--a purely physical effect of the disease; but it seemed to
the two spectators that this mean and disappointed slave of a miserly
habit had by one superb imaginative effort realized the full vanity of
all human wishes and pretensions.

'Ye can go; I shan't want ye,' said Mr. Baines, returning to the clerk.

The lawyer never spoke of that night's business. Why should he? To what
end? Mark Beechinor, under the old will, inherited the seven hundred
pounds and the house. Miss Mellor of Hanbridge is still Miss Mellor, her
hand not having been formally sought. But Mark, secretary of the Labour
Church, is married. Miss Mellor, with a quite pardonable air of tolerant
superiority, refers to his wife as 'a strange, timid little
creature--she couldn't say Bo to a goose.'

* * * * *

THE DOG

This is a scandalous story. It scandalized the best people in Bursley;
some of them would wish it forgotten. But since I have begun to tell it
I may as well finish. Moreover, like most tales whispered behind fans
and across club-tables, it carries a high and valuable moral. The
moral--I will let you have it at once--is that those who love in glass
houses should pull down the blinds.

I

He had got his collar on safely; it bore his name--Ellis Carter. Strange
name for a dog, perhaps; and perhaps it was even more strange that his
collar should be white.