r schoolmaster
showed me on a globe how few days' sail it is to the Dogger Bank, and
how many to York Factory.

"But I will tell you of my reading of your letter, and of what I
thought. But first I must go back a little. When you went away that
wild, dark night, with bitter words on your lips to me, Cousin Dick, I
thought I should never feel the same again. You did not know it, but I
was bearing the misery of your trouble and of another's also, and of my
own as well; and so I said over and over again, Oh, why will men be hard
on women? Why do they look for them to be iron like themselves, bearing
double burdens as most women do? But afterwards I settled to a quietness
which I would not have you think was happiness, for I have given up
thought of that. Nor would I have you think me bearing trouble sweetly,
for sometimes I was most hard and stubborn. But I lived on in a sort of
stillness till that morning when, sitting by my window, I read all you
had written to me. And first of all I must tell you how my heart was
touched at your words about our childhood together. I had not thought
it lay so deep in your mind, Cousin Dick. It always stays in mine; but
then, women have more memories than men. The story of that night I
knew; but never fully as you have told it to me in your letter. Of what
happened after Lancy Doane left the inn, of which you have not written,
but promised the writing in your next letter, I think I know as well as
yourself. Nay, more, Cousin Dick. There are some matters concerning what
followed that night and after, which I know, and you do not know. But
you have guessed there was something which I did not tell you, and
so there was. And I will tell you of them now. But I will take up the
thread of the story where you dropped it, and reel it out.

"You left the inn soon after Lancy Doane, and James Faddo went then too,
riding hard for Theddlethorpe, for he knew that in less than an hour the
coast-guards would be rifling the hiding places of his smuggled stuff.
You did not take a horse, but, getting a musket, you walked the sands
hard to Theddlethorpe.

"I know it all, though you did not tell me, Cousin Dick. You had no
purpose in going, save to see the end of a wretched quarrel and a
smuggler's ill scheme. You carried a musket for your own safety, not
with any purpose. It was a day of weight in your own life, for on one
side you had an offer from the Earl Fitzwilliam to serve on his estate;
and on the