a rapidly
moving slide, the white battlements of Caesar's Tower gleaming and
vanishing above the castle elms, and reappearing while their fierce
candour yet blinded the eye. The thunder-peals, blending, wrapped Warwick
as with one roar of artillery. Rosewarne had risen, and stood panting.
He grasped her shoulder. "Come!" he commanded. The girl, dazzled by the
lightning, puzzled by his sudden renewal of strength, turned and peered at
him. He declined her arm. They walked back across the sodden meadow to
the town, over the roofs of which, as the storm passed away northward, the
lightning yet glimmered at intervals, turning the gaslights to a dirty
orange.

At the summit of the High Street, hard by the Leycester Hospital, they
came to the doorway of a small shuttered shop, over which by the light of
a street lamp one could read the legend, "J. Marvin, Secondhand
Bookseller." The girl opened the door with a latchkey. An oil lamp burned
in an office at the back of the shop--if that can be spoken of as a
separate room which was, in fact, entirely walled off with books laid flat
and rising in stacks from the floor. The place, in fact, suggested a cave
or den rather than a shop, with stalagmites of piled literature and a
subtle pervading odour of dust and decayed leather. The girl, after
shutting the bolts behind her, led the way cautiously, and, crossing a
passage at the rear of the shop, opened a door upon a far more cheerful
scene. Here, in a neat parlour hung with old prints and mezzotints and
water-colours, a hanging lamp shed its rays on a China bowl heaped with
Warwickshire roses, and on a white cloth and a table spread for supper.

"H'm!" grunted Rosewarne, glancing in through the doorway, while she lit a
candle for him at the foot of the stairs. "Your father and I used to sup
in the kitchen, with old Selina to wait on us."

"But since there is no longer any Selina! I had to pension her off, poor
old soul, and she is gone to the almshouse."

She handed him the light.

"Now, if you will go up to your room, I will fetch the hot water, and then
you must give me your change of clothes. They shall be warmed for a few
minutes at the kitchen fire, and you shall have them hot-and-hot."

"It seems to me that while all this is doing, you will stand an excellent
chance of rheumatic fever."

"Oh, I shall be all right," she announced cheerfully. "No--don't look at
me, please. I know very well that the dye has run